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Introduction to Logistic Regression | Introduction to Logistic Regression
Part 1
Regression is basically a statistical approach to find the relationship between variables.
Regression methods are an important part of any data analysis concerned with describing the relationship between a response variable (output/outcome) and one or more explanatory variables(input). Pretty often the outcome variable is discrete, i.e. taking on two or more possible values.
Before starting studying the logistic regression model it is important to understand the goal of an analysis using this model: “it is the same as that of any other regression model used in statistics, that is, to find the best fitting and most parsimonious, interpretable model to describe the relationship between an outcome (dependent or response) variable and a set of independent (predictor or explanatory) variables’’.
Independent variables are also known as Covariates.
In the linear regression model, the outcome variable is assumed to be continuous.
Everything that distinguishes a logistic regression model from the linear regression model is the outcome variable in logistic regression is binary or dichotomous.
This difference between logistic and linear regression is recognized both in the form of the model and its assumptions. Once this difference is accounted for, the methods applied in an analysis using logistic regression follows the same basic principles used in linear regression.
For instance, we have a dataset of ‘Coronary Heart Disease’, with following columns age in years (AGE), and presence or absence of evidence of significant coronary heart disease (CHD), identifier variable (ID) and an age group variable (AGE_GROUP).
The outcome (dependent/response) variable is CHD, which is coded with a value of “0” to indicate that CHD is absent, or “1” that it is present in the individual. In general, any two values could be used, but working with 0 and 1 is more convenient.
To explore the relationship between AGE and the presence or absence of CHD in this group let’s plot a scatter plot outcome v/s the independent variable.
We will use this scatterplot to find the relationship between the outcome and the independent variable. Interestingly, all data points fall on one of two parallel lines representing the absence of CHD (y = 0) or the presence of CHD (y = 1).
Although this plot does represent the binary nature of the outcome variable pretty clearly, it does not provide a clear picture of the nature of the relationship between CHD and AGE.
However, The main problem here is that the variability in CHD at all ages is
large. This makes it difficult to see any functional relationship between AGE and CHD.
One common method of removing some variation, however preserving
the structure of the relationship between the outcome and the independent variable is to create intervals for the independent variable and compute the mean of the outcome variable within each group.
We can achieve the same with our dataset by grouping age into the categories (Age_Group). Doing so, we have, for each age group, the frequency of occurrence of each outcome, as well as the percent with CHD present.
On plotting to scatter plot we have:
Here, a clearer picture of the relationship begins to develop. It tells that as age increases, the proportion (mean) of individuals with the sign of CHD increases. This plot provides noteworthy insight into the relationship between CHD and AGE, but the functional form for this relationship needs to be drawn.
Here we have 2 important differences :
It concerns the nature of the relationship between the outcome and independent variables. In any regression problem, the key quantity is the mean value of the outcome variable, given the value of the independent variable. This quantity is called the conditional mean and is expressed as “E(Y |x)”,
Where:
Y = outcome variable
x = specific value of the independent variable.
The quantity E(Y |x) is read “the expected value of Y , given the value x”.
In linear regression, we assume this mean may be expressed as a linear equation, such as:
E(Y |x) = β 0 + β 1 x
It is possible for E(Y |x) to take on any value as x ranges between −∞ and +∞.
In our dataset column named “Mean” provides an estimate of E(Y |x). The estimated values plotted in Plot 2 are close enough to the true values of E(Y |x) to provide a reasonable estimation of the functional relationship between CHD and AGE.
The conditional mean must be greater than or equal to zero and less than 1 (i.e., 0 ≤ E(Y |x) ≤ 1). The change in the E(Y |x) per unit change in x becomes progressively smaller as the conditional mean gets closer to zero or one. The curve is said to be S-shaped. The model we use is based on the logistic distribution.
There are 2 reasons for using logistic distribution :
First, it is an extremely flexible and easily used function. Second, its model parameters provide the basis for estimates of effect.
The logistic regression model we use is
By the above equation: Logistic Regression can be defined as:
It is defined by the following expression ‘’exponential of a linear combination of inputs and coefficients divided by one plus the same exponential that form seems quite complex.’’
Logistic regression predicts the probability of the outcome variable being true. It can be considered the classification counterpart of linear regression.
A transformation of E(Y |x) is necessary for our study of logistic regression is the logit transformation.
This transformation has many desirable properties of a linear regression model. The logit, g(x), is linear in its parameters, may be continuous, and may range from −∞ to +∞.
The second difference between the linear and logistic regression models concerns with conditional distribution of the outcome variable. In the linear
regression model, the error term (ε) associated with the equation assumed to follows a normal distribution with mean zero
However, in logistic regression, the quantity ε may assume one of two possible values. If y = 1 then ε = 1 − E(Y |x)with probability E(Y |x), and if y = 0 then ε = −E(Y |x) with probability 1 − E(Y |x).
Thus, ε has a distribution with mean zero and variance equal to
E(Y |x)[1 − E(Y |x)].
That is, the conditional distribution of the outcome variable follows a binomial distribution with probability given by the conditional mean,
E(Y |x).
In nutshell, we can say that in regression analysis when the outcome variable is dichotomous:
1. The model for the conditional mean of the regression equation must be
bounded between zero and one.
2. The binomial, not the normal, distribution describes the distribution of the
errors and is the statistical distribution on which the analysis is based.
3. The principles that guide an analysis using linear regression also guide us in logistic regression. | https://medium.com/ai-in-plain-english/introduction-to-the-logistic-regression-part-1-9f004309e6c | ['Bhanu Soni'] | 2020-07-07 21:39:06.702000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Logistic Regression', 'Linear Regression', 'Regression'] |
“THROUGH THE APEX” for F1 using AR,VR and MR | Well as soon as we See the above Two pictures we know how fun it is to use snapchat filters and play Pokémon go. Well the Secret behind this fun is augmented reality. Augmented reality captures the reality through the camera vision by recognizing the real world objects creating customized views for the user. Today Most of the AR applications are In the mobile platform but these are heading towards to watches and AR glasses as well in the market.
Most Popular AR Products and its uses in the market.
Top AR PRODUCTS
1 .DoodleLens
DoodleLens is a fun AR app. You doodle a thing on a piece of paper and snap a photo of it with this app. The app turns it into an AR sticker and you can pop into whatever photo you want. You also get a frame-by-frame animator, some light editing features, and various effects
2. FACEBOOK / Instagram / Snap Chat
These social media apps uses filters which will give a customized view of the face to the user. These apps have been using AR features in order to deliver a good user selfie experience.
3.Google Translate
Google translate provides real time translation using the camera and translating words that consists inside the images. We can point the camera to the relevant text we need and it will translate and give the desired translation.
Virtual Reality
Unlike augmented reality virtual reality provides a total different world to the user. This will be a simulated experience for the user . This technology is used in several sectors such as ,
· Video games
· Medical Sector
· Military training
This is provided through a virtual reality headset and a suitable environment to provide the necessary feeling.
Best Products in the market
1. Oculus quest — This has the below features. Price 399$
2. Oculus Rift S — Price 399$
3. PlayStation VR — Price $275.02
Mixed Reality | https://medium.com/@rajitharul23/through-the-apex-for-f1-using-ar-vr-and-mr-4fc93eaf88cd | [] | 2020-12-05 22:11:46.434000+00:00 | ['VR', 'AR', 'Senna', 'F1', 'Mr'] |
Exploring Hub:>Activeloop A tale of Uploading Pokemon Data | Pokemon types by Google Images
What is Hub ?
image from Activeloop Hub
If you know about docker,which manages the different types of applications by storing them in an isolated container.Now the containers are very useful because you can run them on any platform or any os with any types of configuration.
image from saggle
Now above image you can see that you need to write a Dockerfile which contains the configuration of your application and it is used to build the docker image which is hosted to the docker hub and you can pull that on your machine to run directly without installing any other software just docker.
Now here comes into play the hub by Activeloop,Machine Learning,Deep Learning and AI are heavily rely on the data and this data is very much unstructured and disorganized.To prepare the data Data scientists,Machine Learning Engineers are use their 70% time and rest for model building,model deploy,model testing.
image by Activeloop
So The hub comes into play to minimize the time to prepare data and using them efficiently as a numpy array and can load to your machine in 2 seconds.
Hub takes the dataset as schema to build a meta.json file more like an Dockerfile by which while it uploading converts the each data and label in an numpy array.These array are stored to the cloud and you can use them from any device just like docker images.
Let’s See how to install hub:
The hub is a python based package hosted in pypi which you can install by just one command:
pip install hub
That’s all to install a hub now …
How I upload my Pokemons to hub:
Before two sections are for the basic knowledge ,from here begins the tale.I know about the activeloop and hub in the hacktoberfest while searching for the repositories to contribute.When found I think about how to use it and contribute to this awesome community,after some days I joined the activeloop/hub slack community workspace which is a good place to start your contribution in machine learning.
Now I learned how to use it then I start to find some suitable datasets to upload in hub and found a good pokemon dataset to upload.Pokemon is my favourite cartoon at all,so in a fun way I want to learn the hub and use it for my usage.
The dataset I use is from github by rileynwong/pokemon-images-dataset-by-type: Dataset of Pokemon images sorted by primary type.Now after gotten a suitable dataset I am like let’s get started.
image by wikipedia
Importing all libraries and preparing Schemas for the dataset:
Now I imported the required libraries for the reading and formatting data.The libraries are numpy,opencv,hub.
The code snippet is following,
import numpy as np
import os
from cv2 import imread
from hub import schema,Dataset
from hub.schema import ClassLabel,Image
The initial preparation is ready so I think about to take a look to the datasets structure which is consist of 19 folder between which all folder is not require at all the correct folder are below in the code:
all_labels = [‘bug’,’dark’,’dragon’,’electric’,’fairy’,’fighting’,’fire’,’flying’,’ghost’,’grass’,’ground’,’ice’,’normal’,’poison’,’psychic’,’rock’,’steel’,’water’]
Now I got the labels ready for use and need to define the schema for making it uploading to the hub.First try I can’t make it but by the help of Abhinav Tuli Bro I atlast made it and which looks like below.
classlabel = ClassLabel(names=[‘bug’,’dark’,’dragon’,’electric’,’fairy’,’fighting’,’fire’,’flying’,’ghost’,’grass’,’ground’,’ice’,’normal’,’poison’,’psychic’,’rock’,’steel’,’water’])
schema = {
“labels”: classlabel,
“image”:Image(
dtype=”uint8",
shape=((120,120,None)),max_shape=(120,120,4))
}
Now labels of the schema take the classlabel as a list and Images are a shape of 120 x 120.
Next will be reading the images and loading to a dictionary.
Loading Images to dictionary and upload to the hub:
I wrote this following code to load the images to the memory,take a look:
store = []
store_label = []
store_name = [] root = ‘/home/debo/uploadhub/pokemon-images-dataset-by-type’ for i in sorted(os.listdir(root)):
for j in sorted(os.listdir(root+’/’+i)):
image = imread(root+’/’+i+’/’+j)
store.append(np.asarray(image))
store_label.append(i)
store_name.append(j) classlabel = ClassLabel(names=[‘bug’,’dark’,’dragon’,’electric’,’fairy’,’fighting’,’fire’,’flying’,’ghost’,’grass’,’ground’,’ice’,’normal’,’poison’,’psychic’,’rock’,’steel’,’water’]) schema = {
“labels”: classlabel,
“image”:Image(
dtype=”uint8",
shape=((120,120,None)),max_shape=(120,120,4))
} ds = Dataset(
“darkdebo/pokemon_data”,
mode=”w+”,
schema=schema,
shape=(809,),
cache=2**26,
)
While two list store and store_label is for storing the images into store in a numpy array and store_label for storing label in a numerical way.But you can take another approach to make it more efficient.
Now this is done so final code to upload it to the hub…
for i in range(len(store_label)):
#print(store_name[i])
ds[‘image’,i] = store[i]
#print(ds[‘image’,i])
ds[‘labels’,i] = classlabel.str2int(store_label[i])
print(“uploading…”) print(“uploaded succesfully”) ds.commit()
This will commit the dataset to the hub and now available to use it from anywhere for every pokemon fans and machine learners.
Some Words….
Now the dataset you can check https://app.activeloop.ai/dataset/darkdebo/pokemon_data.
Some screenshot of the visualisation tool …
image by Author
Now I think next part of this blog will come how to load data using hub and make a ml model to do a task.for now listen to the pokecito in youtube and checkout these:
Activeloop website:https://docs.activeloop.ai/en/latest/
Activeloop website:https://www.activeloop.ai/
Github repository of hub:https://github.com/activeloopai/hub | https://debomastet335.medium.com/exploring-hub-activeloop-a-tale-of-uploading-pokemon-data-568b0028f7b3 | ["Darkdebo'S Tech Guide"] | 2020-12-08 16:47:36.712000+00:00 | ['Hub', 'Machine Learning', 'Activeloop', 'Data Science', 'Python'] |
3 Ways to Maintain Boundaries | I can’t help but notice.
As my children are getting older, they both have started to push against my boundaries to see what would happen.
From staying up past their bedtimes to talking back, the lines that were previously understood as the norm are being tested.
Although frustrating at times, they are helping me sharpen those skills for maintaining boundaries in other areas of my life.
Boundaries aren’t just a sign of a healthy relationship; they’re a sign of self-respect. So give yourself the permission to set boundaries and work to preserve them.
1. Be Mindful:
Paying attention to your present struggles by identifying how they are preventing you from progressing is often where we stop. However, going the extra step by recalling past moments of sadness that never had words to complement the impact of them could have a long-lasting positive result.
Pausing to think about the framework of my opinion has helped me a lot. Although some experiences were important to me when I was growing up; they may not be as important now. Issues are different and children are being raised in an environment that they are more equipped for than their parents.
2. Focus on Self-Care:
Understanding that being busy does not always mean I’m successful was a huge challenge to overcome. If I am burning out in the process; I failed myself.
Being exhausted from constantly balancing our time between school, practices, games, and recitals does not excuse me from being their source of what our boundaries are when situations arise.
When they violate them, my goal is always to focus on reinforcing the importance as opposed to their negative reaction.
By acknowledging and focusing on their backlash we are then subconsciously telling them that we are not grounded within ourselves and confident in what we want.
3. Practice Gratitude:
Changing your lifestyle can be extremely straining on existing relationships because you are reintroducing them to the new you which they may or may not understand.
Being grateful for the relationships that are able to stand up to change helps when dealing with longer periods of negativity due to a boundary reinforced.
Setting boundaries with people can actually help to improve your relationships in the long run. If you do not respect your personal boundaries (perhaps in fear of someone else’s reaction), it is likely to lead to bitterness and resentment over time. The people you want to surround yourself with are those who will respect your boundaries, even if they initially feel upset or disappointed.
Are you making sure others respect your boundaries? Now is the perfect time to start reinforcing this to those who have gone astray.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2017 Crystal Gibson | https://medium.com/thrive-global/3-ways-to-maintain-boundaries-31c599be4306 | ['Crystal J. Gibson'] | 2017-10-02 20:01:27.739000+00:00 | ['Self Care', 'Mindfulness', 'Boundaries', 'Self Improvement', 'Gratitude'] |
To the person who believed in me…. | The small fudge frosted cake became like a beacon, flashing “Buy me! Buy me”.
I smiled, knowing and smiling with memory. July 10th always holds a special place in my heart. I married my sweet first husband on July 10th. For 11 1/2 short months we made 25 years worth of memories and squeezed it into the short 11 1/2 months we had together that I will treasure forever. He died 2 weeks before our 1st wedding anniversary and left me a young widow at 34, three days shy of turning 35. Even though it’s been years, and though we never got to celebrate our wedding anniversary together, I still get a huge cupcake or a small fudge cake and remember our wedding day and I celebrate the day with something chocolate.
Photo by Kaffee Meister on Unsplash
In time, we soon learned my 1st husband was terminal with liver cancer. The doctor sobbed as he told us the news, knowing we had been married for only a few short months. We quietly talked about what life would be like after he was gone. I’d gotten a flyer about learning how to do medical coding. I was curious to say the least. My 1st husband kept encouraging me to go for it after his death. It took a year after his death from liver cancer before I found a school willing to take a chance on a young widow with a dream of becoming a medical coder. I went to 7 schools, only to get turned down because I was a young widow, and they were afraid I wouldn’t have the stamina to go through the school and pass the national exam. I kept going, gathering rejections like badges of honor until I found a school who said yes to a young widow with a dream of being a medical coder. I slept with my coding books under the bed, impatiently waiting for the first class a month later.
Photo by Max Nelson on Unsplash
I loved it! I soon found I was a natural medical coder, curious about everything medical coding. Soon I was doing more than the expected homework and wanting to learn more. My family soon realized I was happiest when I was looking through my coding books, looking up really zany codes in order to prepare for the national exam. I soon lived, breathed, bled and slept medical codes. This had been my 1st husband’s dream, of me finding something I loved to do. I found what made my heart sing, after a huge loss.
When the time came to take the national medical coding exam, I was ready. That’s the longest, most stressful 5 hours 40 minutes of my life. I also found myself in the ER a few days later for dehydration and a autoimmune disorder which took my mind off the week wait to get my results. I was busy trying to figure out what was wrong with my gut and why I was so freaking sick! When I got released from the hospital after a few days with a new diagnosis and feeling better, my hands shook as I logged in to see if I had passed the hardest national exam ever. I started sobbing as I read CPC after my name. I had done it. I had achieved my dream and passed the hardest exam I’d ever taken in my life..
Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash
Fast forward a few years, and I have had a wonderful career that I absolutely love with all my heart. All because my 1st husband encouraged me to follow my heart and go after medical coding with all I had in me.
Do I miss my 1st husband? Absolutely. Not one day goes by when I don’t think of him and how blessed I was to have those 11 1/2 short months that I now treasure.
If I could go back in time, if given the chance to do so, would I trade what happened? No, never. Not for anything. I have missed him dearly over the years, not going to lie. However, to be honest, I would not trade the experiences I’ve had over the years for anything as a medical coder, simply because I had someone who believed in me and I do what I do as a medical coder to honor my 1st husband’s memory, the man who believed in me and my dream. I’ve been able to share our love story and the experiences we had during his hospital visits and what happened on those visits on the blog I write as the Medical Coding Mama. I have found that by sharing what happened to us, I’ve been able to help others avoid or navigate the pitfalls we had been through. By sharing our story, I have changed the course of other lives, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Now back to the small fudge cake…..yes I did splurge and buy it. It’s waiting for me to dive in and eat some of it. Happy Anniversary to me and my 1st husband and the memory of someone who believed in me with all his heart. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some fudge cake to go eat and celebrate in my own small way my 1st husband and his memory on our wedding day anniversary.
. | https://medium.com/@medicalcodingmama/to-the-person-who-believed-in-me-9ca3cd8b5bc9 | ['Celia Reeves'] | 2019-07-10 21:07:22.803000+00:00 | ['Grief', 'Family', 'Belief In Someone', 'Medical', 'Love'] |
This isn’t How You Say “No to Racism.” | Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
French and Turkish players have to wake up!
For those who watch soccer, I believe you know what I am talking about. For those who don’t, let me sum this up very quickly.
In a nutshell,
During the UEFA Champions League game yesterday, both the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Istanbul Basaksehir’s players decided to walk off the stadium when the 4th official (referee) spat racist remarks at one of the coaching assistants during the game. Basaksehir’s Cameroonian assistant coach Pierre Webo was flashed a red for protesting against a referring decision.
This was what the 4th official said (loosely translated from his native language, Romanian, by the media):
“The black one over there. Go and check who he is. The black one over there, it’s not possible to act like that.”
And the imbecile’s response triggered the 22 players to walk their butts off the pitch.
I find this totally unfair to the fans who were eager to watch them play. I find that the players let their anger get the better of them.
Many might disagree with me. But I believe that they made a stupid move and the players could have responded to the racist remarks in a more mature manner.
Show your strength on the pitch
All 22 players (and the reserves on the bench) are at the stadium for one significant reason. It is for their love for football. If they don’t love football and don’t love playing football, then they shouldn’t even be there. At that moment, all of the players forgot their purpose. At that moment, they let respecting another human being overrule a football game.
Doc Rivers, an NBA veteran, said this to his players when they had to face a similar racist situation. He said:
“We are never going to be victims.”
Doc and the players were expected to boycott the game — instead, they designed their own protest, made the statement center court pre-game, and went back to play the game.
Likewise, the French and Turkish players should have finished the game. They should have played their best for the game, telling the world that racist comments are not more important than their love for the game. They should not have become victims. By walking out, they became the victims.
Show love, not hate
Racist comments were made. Players got angry and they walked out. And the score was:
Racism 1 People 0.
People showed unity the wrong way during that game. People of color had their feelings hurt. And this hurt resonated beyond the stadium.
Instead, they should have shown unity on the pitch by producing a good game and show unity amongst their team mates. When someone scored, they should have celebrated with hugs and love, regardless of the color of the skin. If the goalkeeper was a person of color and he kept a clean sheet, everyone should have praised him and gave him a pat on his back. If the defenders were persons of color and they did a fantastic job defending against the other team, then that should have been welcomed with hugs and kisses at the end of the game.
There are millions of fans who are watching games via the TV. It would have been a louder statement if they did this instead of running back to their locker rooms in anger and frustration over a racist comment.
At the end of the game, all the players could have simply walked out the pitch, hugging Webo and holding their heads held high- telling everyone that they respect the game and the coaches who act of their guides.
Show the Press who you are
After any football game, there will be a post-match press conference where the press will interview both the coaches and players.
And this should have been an excellent platform for them to voice out their anger and frustration. There were some heavyweight players on the PSG team like Kylian Mbappe and Neymar Jr — who have millions of followers all around the world.
Either Mbappe or Neymar should have grabbed the mic and said that people should not react to racism with more hate but to show the world what you are capable of so that ignorant people will look past the color of the skin and praise your talent. Racism can be stopped with talent. And this could have been easily highlighted via the press conference.
Also, the Turkish players could have used this opportunity to do something likewise and even praise Webo for his coaching efforts and their appreciation towards Webo on how they groomed them. It would have been an eye-opener for those who have not appreciated Webo to finally appreciate him as a coach. There would have been more visibility for him rather than being seen solely as a victim of racism that day.
At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself this question. Do you forever want to be victim of racism and not do what you love or do what you love and should how capable you are to the world?
Don’t let racism stop you from living your dream. | https://medium.com/@arulvelan85/this-isnt-how-you-say-no-to-racism-e4ac8d9bc71b | ['Arul Velan'] | 2021-03-08 13:19:33.587000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'Soccer', 'Thinking', 'Lists', 'Racism'] |
Informação: Entretenimento e Mercadoria | 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/devaneios-de-cibercultura/informa%C3%A7%C3%A3o-entretenimento-e-mercadoria-5168911749c7 | ['Thales Ayala'] | 2020-12-13 22:52:09.137000+00:00 | ['Informação', 'Cibercultura', 'Fake News', 'Ciencia', 'Conhecimento'] |
How to Secure a Spring Boot Application with TLS | Creating a Spring Boot Application
In this section, we will create a Spring boot application and expose the following endpoints:
GET v1/books/ : List all books
POST v1/books/: Create a new book
GET v1/books/{book_id}: Get a book resource
DELETE v1/books/{book_id}: Remove a book
Step 1: Creating a Spring Boot Project
Browse to your favorite IDE and create a Spring boot project with web, h2, data-jpa and Lombok dependencies. Following is the pom.xml file:
pom.xml
Step 2: Configuring h2 database
In this application, we will use the h2 in-memory database as our backing database. Add the following configuration in the application.properties file to configure h2 database:
application.properties
Step 3: Creating the domain object
In this application, we will manage book information. Users of this application/API can perform CRUD operations. We have created the following book entity:
Book entity
Step 4: Creating the REST endpoints
To facilitate the REST endpoints, we have created the following REST controller. It serves the aforementioned endpoints:
BookController.java
We also have created the following repository:
BookRepository
Step 5: Insert data at application startup
To help with the testing, let's insert a few book details in our database. To do so, create a new SQL file named data.sql in src/main/resources directory. Spring boot automatically executes this file at startup.
data.sql
Step 6: Testing the API
Let us now start the application and test a few endpoints to ensure the application is working as expected. We are using HTTPPie to access the endpoint and we are receiving data from the server as shown below: | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-secure-a-spring-boot-application-with-tls-176062895559 | ['Somnath Musib'] | 2019-12-03 05:01:02.046000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Software Engineering', 'Coding', 'Software Development', 'Programming'] |
Content Projection with Angular | Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash
I’m Jeffry Houser, a developer in the content engineering group at Disney Streaming Services. My team builds content portals that allow editors to create magic for our customers in the video services we power.
Today I’m going to write about content projection, sometimes called transclusion, in Angular. My team was building an application that needed a context sensitive header. The header had a lot of common elements, such as navigation and a user image, but also had parts that would change based on the screen currently displayed. Our solution was to build a component that used content projection. It allows us to encapsulate the shared elements into a component, while also letting us inject our own HTML into the component so we could customize as needed. I’ll show you how we did it.
Setup Your Angular Project
To follow these instructions, you’ll need to create an empty Angular project. If you don’t have it, I’d start by installing the Angular CLI using these instructions. The next step is to create the project with this command:
ng new
You’ll see something like this:
I created this project using Angular 7. It is named Transclusion02 , which is part of my own internal naming structure. You can name the project whatever you like. I also enabled routing and used CSS for this sample.
Create Some Angular Routes
The next step is to create some Angular routes. Each route will be represented by a component. Use the Angular CLI to generate a view component:
ng generate component view1
You’ll see something like this:
Now generate a second view component:
ng generate component view2
You’ll see something like this:
Now we have to make a few app changes. Open the src/app/app-routing.module.ts . Find the routes array, which should be blank:
const routes: Routes = [];
Change this to add some default routes:
const routes: Routes = [
{ path: 'view1', component: View1Component },
{ path: 'view2', component: View2Component},
{ path: '**', redirectTo: '/view1' }
];
Now we have one route for each view, and a default route that points to view1. Open up app.component.html , delete all the content and replace it with this:
<a routerLink="/view1" >View 1</a> |
<a routerLink="/view2" >View 2</a>
<router-outlet></router-outlet>
This will allow us to run the app and navigate between the routes:
ng serve
Open your browser to see the default view:
Click the View 2 link:
Run the app yourself and click around, I’ll be here when you’re ready to continue.
Create the Header
The next step is to create a header component. This is the structure we’re going to create
The header component will contain some navigation on the left, and a user profile image on the right. The center of the component will contain our context sensitive information. Create the component:
ng generate component header
You’ll see something like this:
Let’s get to work implementing the header component. We’re going to put our HTML in the header.component.html and CSS in header.component.css , both in the src/app/header directory.
Start with the HTML and add a div wrapper:
<div class="header">
</div>
The header wraps all the content in the component. It is primarily there to set up the FlexBox as you see with the CSS:
.header{
width: 100%;
display: flex;
}
The width property makes sure that the header expands to fill 100% of the available space. The display property sets the container to use Flexbox display containers, which allow containers to expand or collapse to fill the available space.
Inside the header wrapper, add the first column, a header-nav :
<div class="header-nav">
<a routerLink="/view1" >View 1</a> |
<a routerLink="/view2" >View 2</a>
</div>
This segment includes the navigation links that we created earlier that allow us to switch between the two views. Here is the CSS:
.header-nav{
order: 1;
width: 20%;
}
The width is set to 20% of the parent container’s available space. The order property says that this div is the first one to appear in the Flexbox alignment. While we’re at it be sure to remove the navigation links from src/app/app.component.html , so the file looks just like this:
<router-outlet></router-outlet>
Back to the header.component.html component, add the middle content:
<div class="header-context">
Context sensitive something here
</div>
This div is a placeholder for the dynamic content that will be set at runtime. We’ll loop back to this in the next section when I show you how to set up content projection. The CSS is for this block is simple:
.header-context{
order: 2;
width: 80%;
}
The order is set to 2. The width is set to 80%. Simple stuff.
Finally, add a header profile image. In this case, I’m just hard coding my initials and putting them in a circle:
<div class="header-profile-wrapper">
<div class="header-profile">
JH
</div>
</div>
A user profile link or menu will be more complex in a real app, but I just wanted to add a visual placeholder. The header-profile-wrapper CSS:
.header-profile-wrapper{
width: 20%;
order: 3;
}
The order is set to 3. The width is set to 80%. Finally, add the CSS for the header-profile:
.header-profile{
float: right;
width: 32px;
height: 32px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
border-radius: 50px;
text-align: center;
line-height: 2;
}
I used float to align the div to the right. A height and width to is set to 32 pixels. A solid black border is used with a border-radius of 50px. The border radius is what makes the final result look like a circle. The text is centered inside that circle with text-align , and I added a line-height to 2. The line-height value doubles the size of the text, relative to the current font.
Re-run the app and you should see something like this:
Try to navigate between views and everything should be working fine.
Set Up Content Projection
The last step is to set up the header component to support content projection. Open up the header.component.html file. Find our header-context div:
<div class="header-context">
Context sensitive something here
</div>
Remove the text inside the div and replace it with the ng-content tag, like this:
<div class="header-context">
<ng-content></ng-content>
</div>
That’s it, now any of the content that exists inside the app-header tag will show up here. Let me demonstrate by modifying the app-header in src/app/view1/view1.component.html :
<app-header>
<div style="text-align: center; width:100%">
View 1
</div>
</app-header>
This adds a div inside the app-header tag. Content is centered using text-align and the width is set to 100%:
We can set up something different for view 2 inside the src/app/view1/view2.component.html tag:
<app-header>
Welcome to View 2
</app-header>
You’ll see something like this:
Using content projection like this is super easy to set up, but very powerful.
What are some use cases for Content Projection?
I showed you some basics on how to set up Content Projection, but now what would you use it for? Anytime you want to inject any kind of HTML into a component, you can do so with content projection.
Here are a few possible use cases of things you may want to inject:
Custom Text : You might use it to add a custom or message on each screen, as I demonstrated in the previous section with view 2.
: You might use it to add a custom or message on each screen, as I demonstrated in the previous section with view 2. Custom HTML : You can use content projection to send HTML to your component, just as I did with view 1, injecting a div that centered the text inside it.
: You can use content projection to send HTML to your component, just as I did with view 1, injecting a div that centered the text inside it. Form Inputs: You could use it to add a search filter on top of a grid screen, like this:
<app-header>
<input type="text" placeholder="Filter Text Here"
(keyup)="filterSomeGrid($event)">
</app-header>
And you’ll see something like this:
This snippet shows off a great use case for this approach because the main component interacts with the projected content, with little control over it’s placement on the page, while the app-header component knows how to place the input on the page but does not interact with it.
Custom Components: Just like you can project HTML elements into a component with content projection, you can also project custom Angular components. Let’s create a new component and I’ll show you how:
ng generate component projected-text
You’ll see something like this:
For the purposes of this quick sample, I’m not going to modify the new projected-text component. You can add it like this:
<app-header>
<app-projected-text></app-projected-text>
</app-header>
You’ll see results like this:
· Wrap Inputs: The ng material library’s form field component uses content projection to wrap a traditional form field. The mat-form-field lets you apply common text field styles such as underlines, floating labels, hint, or error messages to your input. Here is a sample that adds a hint label:
<mat-form-field hintLabel=”Max 10 characters”>
<input matInput maxlength=”10" placeholder=”Enter some input”>
</mat-form-field>
You’ll see something like this:
This approach is used by multiple components throughout the ng material library.
Multiple Slot projection
The examples I showed to date tell you how to inject a single snippet of HTML into an Angular component, but Angular has the ability to inject multiple snippets. This section will create an expanded header to create a title and content.
First, create a new view:
ng generate component view-expanded
You should see this:
Then, create an expanded header:
ng generate component header-expanded
You’ll see something like this:
First, open the src/app/header/header.component.html and add a link to the new route as part of the header-nav section:
<a routerLink="/viewExpanded" >Expanded View</a> <br/>
Open the src/app/app-routing.module.ts to add the route to the routes array:
{path: 'viewExpanded', component: ViewExpandedComponent},
Now, copy the src/app/header/header.component.css to the src/app/header-expanded/header-expanded.component.css , and the src/app/header/header.component.html to the src/app/header-expanded/header-expanded.component.html .
At the beginning of the header-expanded.component.html add a header-title section:
<div class="header-title">
<ng-content select=".title"></ng-content>
</div>
The rest of the HTML can stay the same.
Notice that the ng-content tag has a select property with the value .title . This is a CSS selector and it will be used to distinguish the title projected content from the other projected content.
Put some CSS For this in the header-expanded.component.css :
.header-title{
width: 100%;
text-align: center;
}
Now, open src/app/view-expanded/view-expanded.component.html . Add the app-header-expanded to the top of the component:
<app-header-expanded>
<h1 class="title">This is the title</h1>
<p>Other Injected Content</p>
</app-header-expanded>
First, there is an h1 with the class named title. This is not a CSS class I defined in the application anywhere, this is used by the HeaderExpandedComponent to select this element and place it at the ng-content area with the .title selector. The paragraph with no specified CSS will be injected at the ng-content spot where no select property is specified.
Run the app and you’ll see this:
Final Thoughts
I don’t use content projection much in normal application development, but it can be a very powerful tool when you are building components intended for reuse. It was the perfect choice to meet our requirements, which mixed some static, consistent header elements with some ever changing elements dependent upon which screen it would be a part of. As I showed with the multiple projection sample it can get rather complex if you need it, and I see it used extensively in frameworks such as ng material. | https://medium.com/disney-streaming/content-projection-with-angular-dbc61c6c181 | ['Jeffry Houser'] | 2019-01-31 21:54:26.764000+00:00 | ['Application Development', 'Angular', 'Web Development', 'Technology'] |
The battle of narratives: Five new sustainability narratives for business | The battle of narratives: Five new sustainability narratives for business
There is one thing that both President Biden and Republicans share when it comes to climate change — understanding narratives. President Biden understands the need to frame the fight over climate as a way to improve people’s lives here and now. This is why he focuses on jobs when talking about the climate crisis (“For too long we’ve failed to use the most important word when it comes to meeting the climate crisis: Jobs. Jobs. Jobs”). His opponents try to do the exact opposite, which is why they falsely frame his plan as an effort to ban hamburgers.
It is no accident that both President Biden and the Republicans pay careful attention to narratives. They understand that to win the battle over climate change you need first to win the battle of narratives.
Defined by Dr. Katherine Knuth as “the stories people use to make sense of themselves, their connection to broader group, and to the world as a whole,” narratives are powerful tools for changemaking. They are “the most important human device for collective action,” as Dr. Frederick Mayer writes in his book Narrative Politics: Stories and Collective Action. My book considers the importance of narratives in the context of the need to shift from the current mental model dominating business in recognition of the power of narratives to change mental models. Overall, as Dr. Knuth finds in her research narratives are “a key element in deliberate transformation”, which is why any attempt for transformation in business needs to consider them carefully.
Fighting the narrative war is therefore a critical piece of any plan to change business. In this piece I would like to focus not on how we win this war, but what are the narratives we should be fighting for exactly? I present below five narratives that represent themes I consider to be key in any attempt to move away from sustainability-in-usual in business and replace it with a new and bold vision that I describe in my book, which is a good fit for the era of the climate crisis. The descriptions of the five new narratives presented below (together with the current narratives they aim to replace) are just a starting point. To win the narrative wars we need to design and develop these (and other new) narratives carefully to ensure they could support a viable theory of change to achieve the desired impact.
1. Sustainability first, profits second
Current dominant narrative: Profit maximization comes first, everything else (sustainability included) comes second.
This narrative is captured in McKinsey’s advice to companies: “Approach sustainability issues as business opportunities.” In other words, companies’ economic considerations of profit maximization transcend those of sustainability. The latter is always considered through the lenses of the former. This is how we end up with the constant search for the business case for sustainability — the Holy Grail is a sustainability strategy/practice that improves companies’ bottom line. This explains, for example, the popularity of shared value creation, or even more so of the circular economy, which is described as an opportunity to unlock trillions of dollars in economic value.
The new narrative: Sustainability always comes first. Everything else, profits included, comes second.
Rather than searching for the business case of sustainability, companies are looking to make the sustainability case of business. To put it another way: every business element is evaluated first on whether it meets certain social and environmental criteria, and only if it does so it can then be assessed based on its ability to create economic value.
The new narrative also reflects a necessary change in our understanding of sustainability in a business context. It is no longer manifested by “the sustainability sweet spot”: “The place where the pursuit of profit blends seamlessly with the pursuit of the common good”, or Elkington’s triple bottom line, which “focuses corporations not just on the economic value that they add, but also on the environmental and social value that they add — or destroy”. This seemingly equal footing of environmental, social, and economic considerations is replaced with a clear hierarchy based on the notion that true economic prosperity could be achieved only if it is built on socially just and ecologically sound foundations.
Don’t get it wrong — the new narrative does not aim to convert companies into non-profits: while sustainability is prioritized, the pursuit of profits remains a required condition for companies to succeed, although is no longer the key element for which they are optimized.
2. Overconsumption is socially unacceptable
Current dominant narrative: Overconsumption is not a problem, but an integral part of legitimate business models.
The more people buy, the better off the company is. Companies’ approach is usually anywhere between business-as-usual (utilizing planned obsolescence, fighting against the right to repair legislation, and making durable products the exception rather than the rule) and sustainability-as-usual (applying circular economy strategies that aim at ‘greening’ consumption, not reducing it). Driven by companies like Amazon, whose obsession with the improvement of the shopping experience of its customers has made it into a powerful economic force, overconsumption had become easier than ever.
The new narrative: Overconsumption is a serious societal problem with dire consequences for humanity.
There is a growing understanding of the serious and costly ramifications of overconsumption and more pushback against companies that ignore it, as well as the affluent consumers who are also responsible for it. Overconsumption becomes unacceptable not only as a way for companies to create value, but also as a way of life. With growing pressure on both companies and rich consumers, they are forced to abandon overconsumption both on the supply and demand side. If a few years ago, only a company like Patagonia could encourage its customers to buy less, now almost every company shares this message with its customers (the latest Levi’s campaign is a first sign of it). Additionally, once overconsumption loses its cool, affluent people adopt a more moderate lifestyle to ensure other parts of society do not revolt against them.
3. Degrowth should be part of the conversation on climate solutions
Current dominant narrative: Degrowth is not a viable option.
Growth is an essential component of our thinking about development and progress. As Jason Hickel explains in his book Less is more: “Growth isn’t just necessary for human progress, it’s also.. the only way to mobilise the financial resources for the energy transition, and the only way to get the innovation we need in order to make our economies more efficient.” This notion of growth as an indispensable element generated the concept of green growth as a way to address sustainability needs.
Green growth is best embodied in the European Green Deal, which suggests the following vision: “Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. To overcome these challenges, Europe needs a new growth strategy that will transform the Union into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050; economic growth is decoupled from resource use; no person and no place is left behind.” Supporters of growth (and green growth) view degrowth as everything growth is not and therefore believe “that degrowth is not necessary to solve ecological challenges and is a distraction from them, that degrowth is unjust, impoverishing and austerian, and that degrowth would bring progress to an end — the concept must be rejected.”
The new narrative: Degrowth is a viable pathway to a socially just and ecologically sound society.
Defined by Jason Hickel as “a planned downscaling of energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way”, degrowth becomes a viable component of the discourse on climate solutions. We can debate, for example, if the Green New Deal can be achieved without degrowth, but should not ignore questions about the effectiveness of “green growth” as a key framework of the climate agenda. Based on the experience we already have with the circular economy it becomes clear that the premise of decoupling growth of economic activity from the consumption of finite resources may be unrealistic, or more of a neoliberal fantasy as Robert Fletcher and Crelis Rammelt put it. One way or another, the more growth is challenged as a taken-for-granted assumption, the more the alternative of “an economy that’s organised around human flourishing and ecological stability, rather than around the constant accumulation of capital” becomes commonsensical.
4. Fighting climate change requires solving people’s current pain points, not just future ones
Current dominant narrative: Climate change is an imminent risk for the future of humanity on this planet.
In a 2020 paper that was published by Xu et al., the authors write the following: “we show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today.”
This quote captures the current narrative of the fight against climate change — we need to start changing our operating system now to ensure the habitability of the planet in the future. The relationship offered by this narrative between the present and the future is pretty straightforward — we should do X (changes in the way we live) today to avoid Y (climate impacts) in the future. The more X we do now, the lesser Y people will have to deal with in the future. While there is a counternarrative making the case that we can already see the impacts of climate change (i.e. do X now to avoid Y now), too many people still consider the climate crisis as just one more problem, certainly not the most important one (here’s one example from the U.S.). The “shifting baselines syndrome” definitely doesn’t help here.
The new narrative: Climate change is not just a present risk, but also an opportunity to address current critical needs.
Going back to the example of President Biden, he said in his remarks at the Climate Summit the following: “when people talk about climate, I think jobs. Within our climate response lies an extraordinary engine of job creation and economic opportunity ready to be fired up.“ Biden understands what many have failed to comprehend so far: improving people’s well-being solely in the future (even if it is “only” 15–20 years from now) is not a very compelling proposition for people who struggle with daily hardships now. This is especially true if future gains represent a trade-off against present concessions (this is the reason why Republicans try to portray Biden’s plans as an effort that to force Americans to stop eating red meat and replace hamburgers with Brussels sprouts).
The climate narrative, therefore, shifts to include a clear focus on recognizing positive outcomes in the present due to climate action — (e.g., discussing climate change in terms of “good jobs,” or immediate pollution reduction in underserved communities). Climate change needs reframing to get more people on board — “our house is on fire” has changed the discourse on climate, but to cross the chasm we need to find ways to get to the hearts and minds of more people. The way to do so is to frame climate solutions (and design them accordingly) as solutions to people’s most urgent problems. If climate solutions create good-paying jobs, provide free high education, or cheaper and better health insurance people will have a hard time saying no to them, no matter what they think about climate change in the first place. President Biden understands it. Others will follow.
5. The most important climate action: Fighting predatory delay
Current dominant narrative: A critical climate action = achieving net-zero goals (and the sooner the better).
Companies’ focus should be first on reducing their own emissions to meet the 1.5C warming limit. This narrative is best articulated by the 1.5C Business Playbook, which points out that “It is critical to mobilise the entire business sector for the 1.5°C ambition and to halve emissions before 2030. Businesses will contribute in several ways. First, by rapidly reducing their own emissions. Second, by reducing emissions in their value chains. Third, and most importantly, by scaling products, services and projects that enable reduction of emissions or even remove carbon from the atmosphere. Finally, by displaying climate leadership and influencing wider action in society.” Coalitions like We Mean Business suggest that this focus should be on the agenda of every forward-looking business, echoing Larry Fink’s latest letter to CEOs, where he asks companies “to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy — that is, one where global warming is limited to well below 2ºC, consistent with a global aspiration of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”
The new narrative: A critical climate action = fighting predatory delay.
Given the power of forces benefiting from the status quo to prevent or slow change (predatory delay) the need to weaken these forces becomes a priority for any transformational change. As Kurt Lewin suggested in his force field analysis it is more effective for changemakers to focus first on diminishing the forces resisting change rather than on increasing the forces supporting change, as the latter tend to be offset by increased opposition of the former. Michael Mann describes in his new book, The New Climate War, the forces opposing action on climate change as “the forces of denial and delay — the fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and oil-funded governments that continue to profit from our dependence on fossil fuels.” These forces need to be in a weaker position, with less influence, to advance any serious climate action. Therefore, this becomes the first priority of any company interested in advancing a climate agenda.
There is already a growing understanding that the most powerful tool corporations have in the fight against climate change is their political clout. Additionally, we can see banks and tech companies pushed to consider their financial and commercial relationships with fossil fuel companies, as well as companies reassessing their relationships with industry associations based on the latter’s positions on climate change. Companies understand that no matter what they do within their value chain, they cannot make any difference if the business environment does not support these changes, and therefore fighting those who try to stop or slow changes in the business environment (i.e. those involved in predatory delay) becomes their number one priority. This may require companies to get out of their comfort zone, but once the story of climate action becomes about the fight against predatory delay they have no other choice but to do it so they can move on then to work on their zero-emission goals.
Raz is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design — The New School in NY, where he serves as an Associate Director of the Strategic Design & Management BBA Program. His new book “Rethinking Corporate Sustainability in the Era of Climate Crisis — A Strategic Design Approach” will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in July 2021. For more information on his work see Sandbox Zero. Feel free to connect on Twitter and LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/@razgo/the-battle-of-narratives-designing-new-sustainability-narratives-for-corporations-880f1419391e | ['Raz Godelnik'] | 2021-08-21 16:02:12.763000+00:00 | ['Sustainability', 'Sustainable Business', 'Narratives', 'Climate Change', 'Stories'] |
Three Steps To Setting An Effective Marketing Budget | This article is a spin-off from our podcast episode titled, “How Do You Set Up An Effective Marketing Budget?”
It’s is a common topic for most first time founders and digital marketers. Many startups make a mistake of putting in X amount for channels as the official budget without any correlation to its effectiveness or any method of measuring the success (or failure) of the Marketing Campaigns. This often leads to them spending more than they need to in the initial months, which is also when cash burn really does matter.
To answer this question we’ve got Ahmad our Director of Marketing & Learning Programs at AstroLabs. He’s also our lead instructor in the Digital Marketing Track and has advised startups on their Marketing strategy.
Raunak: Why do you think entrepreneurs have challenges with setting up an effective marketing budget?
Ahmad: It is because they come at it from the point of view of, “I wanna have a certain budget per month and I want to spend this budget on Marketing.” The problem is you cannot know if the budget you have set is effective for your business until you find a way to track your goals. Only they can you determine if your marketing spend is effective for your goals. So people formalize a budget without even determining a way to measure the effectiveness of the spend versus their goals.
There is an old saying that goes like this, “Half of your marketing budget is wasted, but you just don’t know which half.” Now with Digital Marketing, you can know what’s wasted and what’s not. I would recommend anyone setting up a marketing budget to follow these three steps.
The first step is to clearly define what you want to track as a goal. So a goal is something that is valuable to the business, for example, if you are an e-commerce store, your goal would be to get someone to buy something from your shop. You might also have secondary goals like to have someone to sign up for your newsletter. Typically, primary goals are revenue driven. If you are a consultancy, your goal would be for customers to contact you on some kind of a form and then after that, you would try to sign them up as clients.
The next step is to figure out is how much are you willing to spend to get one goal. Let’s say you sell sneakers online and are trying to understand how much should you budget for. Let’s say you sell one pair for a $100 including margins. In that, you want to decide you want to allocate 20% of that to marketing spend. So you are willing to spend 20$ for every sale you make. This is your initial benchmark spend per
Once you start testing campaigns, you would look at the marketing channels to see if you are reaching a $20 Cost Per Acquisition or CPA in the campaign you are running. This is where the third steps happen, testing and measuring if your campaigns are reaching your goals or not.
If you are a founder or a marketer looking to upgrade your skillset and get certified, check out our upcoming Digital Marketing tracks here: astrolabs.com/academy or reach out to me at [email protected] | https://medium.com/astrolabs/three-steps-to-setting-an-effective-marketing-budget-ba70f9e2f28a | ['Raunak Datt'] | 2017-11-23 08:47:27.810000+00:00 | ['Budget', 'Digital', 'Digital Marketing', 'Goals', 'Marketing'] |
Agree with the concept but not the practice. | Agree with the concept but not the practice. Your view implies people went into these professions knowing it was going to be an unlive-able wage. More likely they went into it with a sense that it is both an honorable profession and one that would allow them a modest life. Under your line of thinking everyone should understand the supply, demand and ordering of labor and wages by unknowable corporate entities at the time they study for a job. If you have that kind of wisdom please let us all know: what are these “sure thing" skills that will provide people living wages for the next 20 years? The entirety of working class America would love to know….assuming you can articulate a strong argument for why your view will prove correct. Look forward to seeing your response ☺ | https://medium.com/@lost-in-translation/agree-with-the-concept-but-not-the-practice-8ced188b5fa | [] | 2020-12-25 01:59:54.570000+00:00 | ['First Responder', 'Income Inequality', 'Onlyfans', 'Sex Workers', 'Capitalism'] |
SQL Concepts Organized | Concepts of SQL organized in a Q&A format
What is DBMS?
A Database Management System (DBMS) is a program that controls creation, maintenance and use of a database. DBMS can be termed as File Manager that manages data in a database rather than saving it in file systems.
2. What is RDBMS?
RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System. RDBMS store the data into the collection of tables, which is related by common fields between the columns of the table. It also provides relational operators to manipulate the data stored into the tables.
3. What are tables and Fields?
A table is a set of data that are organized in a model with Columns and Rows. Columns can be categorized as vertical, and Rows are horizontal. A table has specified number of column called fields but can have any number of rows which is called record.
Example:.
Table: Employee.
Field: Emp ID, Emp Name, Date of Birth.
Data: 201456, David, 11/15/1960.
4. Difference between Primary Key and Unique Key?
Primary Key:
There can only be one primary key in a table
In some DBMS it cannot be NULL - e.g. MySQL adds NOT NULL
- e.g. MySQL adds Primary Key is a unique key identifier of the record
Unique Key:
Can be more than one unique key in one table
Unique key can have NULL values
values It can be a candidate key
5. What is normalization?
Normalization is the process of minimizing redundancy and dependency by organizing fields and table of a database. The main aim of Normalization is to add, delete or modify field that can be made in a single table.
6.. What is an Index?
An index is performance tuning method of allowing faster retrieval of records from the table. An index creates an entry for each value and it will be faster to retrieve data. These indexes need extra space on disk, but they allow faster search according to different frequently searched values.
7 . What is the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE commands?
DELETE command is used to remove rows from the table, and WHERE clause can be used for conditional set of parameters. Commit and Rollback can be performed after delete statement.
TRUNCATE removes all rows from the table. Truncate operation cannot be rolled back.
8. What is wrong with the below-given SQL query?
SELECT gender, AVG(age) FROM employee WHERE AVG(age)>30 GROUP BY gender
When we execute this command, we get the following error:
Msg 147, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Aggregation may not appear in the WHERE clause unless it is in a subquery contained in a HAVING clause or a select list, the column being aggregated is an outer reference.
Msg 147, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Invalid column name ‘gender’.
This basically means that whenever we are working with aggregate functions and we are using GROUP BY, we can’t use the WHERE clause. Therefore, instead of the WHERE clause, we should use the HAVING clause.
Also, when we are using the HAVING clause, GROUP BY should come first and HAVING should come next.
select e_gender, avg(e_age) from employee group by e_gender having avg(e_age)>30
9. Main difference between HAVING and WHERE clause
The main difference between WHERE and HAVING clause comes when used together with GROUP BY clause, In that case WHERE is used to filter rows before grouping and HAVING is used to exclude records after grouping.
WHERE clause cannot contain aggregate function like COUNT(), SUM(), MAX(), MIN(), etc but HAVING clause may contain aggregate functions.
Another worth noting the difference between WHERE and HAVING clause is that WHERE is used to impose filtering criterion on a SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE statement as well as single row function and used before group by clause but HAVING is always used after group by clause.
10. What is the difference between BETWEEN and IN operators?
The BETWEEN operator is used to fetch rows based on a range of values.
For example,
SELECT * FROM Students
WHERE ROLL_NO BETWEEN 20 AND 30;
This query will select all those rows from the table Students where the value of the field ROLL_NO lies between 20 and 30.
The IN operator is used to check for values contained in specific sets.
For example,
SELECT * FROM Students
WHERE ROLL_NO IN (20,21,23);
This query will select all those rows from the table Students where the value of the field ROLL_NO is either 20 or 21 or 23.
11. Write an SQL query to find names of employee start with ‘A’
SELECT * FROM Employees WHERE EmpName like 'A%' ;
References | https://david-kyungil.medium.com/sql-concepts-organized-7b90282b3f0c | ['David K. Kim'] | 2020-12-28 14:44:56.473000+00:00 | ['Sql', 'Database', 'Computer Science'] |
Brian Frank, Former LinkedIn VP, Advises Tech Professionals on Leadership and the Art of Getting Promoted | Brian Frank, Former LinkedIn VP, Advises Tech Professionals on Leadership and the Art of Getting Promoted Crossminds.ai Follow Mar 31, 2019 · 6 min read
Brian Frank, former Vice President of Global Sales Operations at LinkedIn, shared his personal experience and leadership lessons with Robin.ly.
Brian Frank @ Robin.ly Interview
Brian has 20+ years of experience in the business sector, helping numerous companies grow to significant lengths. He is most well-known for his achievement of helping LinkedIn grow from $75 million to over $3.5 billion in the space of ten years. Brian is initially trained as a lawyer, but when he noticed the exciting opportunities happening in Silicon Valley he shifted his career towards them.
Brian Frank & Robin.ly host Wenli
Early days in the tech world
Brian began working as an environmental lawyer, but it didn’t take long before he recognized the vast opportunities available in the tech world.
Brian was one of the first attorneys working at Ariba, an well-known software and information technology services company during the “.com bubble”; he stayed there for ten years, eventually expanding into sales.
“I wish I’d had that experience to know what it’s like to be a salesperson. And I had the opportunity to go start up a little sales organization inside of Ariba, called Contract Management Solutions, and I did so. I took that first job, I left my CFO job and became a salesperson.”
By following his interest in sales, Brian found himself at LinkedIn. One aspect that these two companies have in common is the fact that when Brian started working with them, they were both startups. This was an important factor as startups handle themselves differently from larger-scale businesses.
“I love startups and entrepreneurship. …I took small teams and launched new businesses. … And at LinkedIn, I actually launched our sales solutions business, which today is a multi-million dollar business selling a tool called Sales Navigator. So I love the startup feel. And I do a lot of advising to startups that are out there, and help them grow things. And I love the entrepreneurial spirit that basically comes through.”
Brian Frank @ Robin.ly interview
LinkedIn saved Brian’s career
Brian’s transition from law to sales did not come easy. If it wasn’t for his use of LinkedIn he may not have been able to successfully expand his horizons.
“I started making cold calls every day. And it was horrible. People would hang up the phone on me, they were very rude. And I did it for several months. I was about to quit, because it just seemed like the wrong thing. That’s when I rediscovered LinkedIn, once I started realizing that it was also great for sales. It was an amazing lead database for salespeople. So I started sending out a hundred of connection requests a day to anyone with ‘Lawyer’ in their title.”
Doing this allowed him to network in a much smarter and more efficient way, even though it caused him to get his account temporarily suspended. This occurred before he was hired to work at LinkedIn several years later. The fact that he managed to use the platform to propel his career was enough proof for him to that the company had the potential for huge growth.
LinkedIn changed his life
Brian’s 10-year work relationship with LinkedIn gave him the tools to grow as an individual, forever changing his life.
“Well actually working at LinkedIn for 10 years was incredibly transformative to me personally and professionally. As a sales person and a leader and executive, I grew, and I really learned a new set of skills as well as how to interact with people in a better way.”
One of the biggest lessons he learned is that business and sales is not all about winning. There is no necessity to always be right. Of course, this is deeply dissimilar to how the legal world works, where winning is the end-goal of most altercations. However, leadership requires more than a winning spirit.
“So when you’re a lawyer, you get paid to win, and you get paid to fight. No one wants to hire a lawyer who’s gentle and kindly collaborative. And some of that coming from law ended up probably rubbing off into business. As a leader, and just as someone who operates people… I never realized that I was being stubborn. I never realized that I wasn’t listening to others. And I had this in my mindset that once I had made up my mind about what the right answer was, it had to be right. That was one of the biggest failings I had.”
Lessons in leadership
Leading a team, regardless of its size, is a complex and often meticulous task. Brian, who considers himself to be a compassionate leader, provided his three essential elements to any successful leadership.
“Your job as a leader is to help others and to sort of put the effort into basically, doing the things that make their job better”.
“Leaders need to find a way to tap into their true self, and be able to find this connection with others that inspire them. And whether it’s the mission of the company, or whether it’s the operating values and culture that you have as a professional, finding that inspiration is key.”
“And then the last piece that’s critical to leadership is communication. So being able to say the right thing in the right way at the right time to the right audience, is the most important thing. If there was one word of advice I would give to you, it’ll be: Focus on great communication.”
These three principles are what Brian focuses on when he engages in his leadership roles.
How to propel a career
One of Brian’s most asked questions regards how one should go about getting a promotion and climbing up the careers ladder. For this, he offered several tips, however, his last piece of advice on the matter is perhaps most interesting.
“…The last one requires you to be strategic… my definition [of strategic] is making high quality, prioritized business decisions. That’s basically where you’re making a call which is going to have a high impact as well as a high probability of success, right? Because if I have a big dream, but it can never be achieved, that’s not strategic. If I want to achieve something very low, but it doesn’t matter, that’s not strategic. Strategic is where I can actually pull it off and it matters.”
Brian Frank @ Robin.ly Interview: Three steps to become a leader at work
Brian Frank’s leadership experience in the tech world is vast and unparalleled. Working with companies such as Ariba, BlueJeans Network, and of course LinkedIn means that he has a unique insight and perspective when it comes to success, management, and entrepreneurship. The fact that he has worked in both the sales industry as well as the legal sector additionally gives him a significant viewpoint unlike many others.
Visit Robin.ly to watch the full interview with Brian Frank and more inspiring talks from renowned tech leaders and entrepreneurs. | https://medium.com/robinly/brian-frank-former-linkedin-vp-advises-tech-professionals-on-leadership-and-the-art-of-getting-3e7598ed346a | [] | 2019-03-31 15:41:00.755000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Leadership', 'Business', 'Career Advice', 'LinkedIn'] |
Mark Old PL/SQL Code as "Not For Use":12 Things Developers Will Love About Oracle Database 12c Release 2 Part 11 | Mark Old PL/SQL Code as "Not For Use":12 Things Developers Will Love About Oracle Database 12c Release 2 Part 11 Chris Saxon Follow Oct 18, 2017 · 2 min read
Times change. New code quickly becomes legacy code. And legacy code is often superseded by better, faster code. So you deprecate the old code.
But this brings a problem:
How do you stop people using the legacy modules?
People tend to stick with what they know. Even after you’ve repeatedly told everyone to move to the new module there’s always (at least) one developer who insists on using the deprecated procedure instead of the newer, shinier option.
And in complex applications it’s tough to keep track of what’s obsolete.
This is tough to solve.
So to help you with the deprecation process, we’ve introduced a new pragma for this.
To use it, place
pragma deprecate (
deprecated_thing,
'Message to other developers'
);
below the retired section.
Great. But how does it help?
We’ve added a bunch of new PL/SQL warnings: PLW-6019 to PLW-6022. Enable these and Oracle will tell you if you’re using deprecated code:
alter session set plsql_warnings = 'enable:(6019,6020,6021,6022)'; create or replace procedure your_old_code is
pragma deprecate (
your_old_code,
'This is deprecated. Use new_code instead!'
);
begin
null;
end your_old_code;
/ show err
Warning(2,3): PLW-06019: entity YOUR_OLD_CODE is deprecated
This is great. But we’ve all been ignoring the “AUTHID DEFINER” warning forever! If code is truly obsolete, it would be good if you could stop people using it all together.
Fortunately you can!
Here’s the great thing about warnings. You can upgrade them to be errors! PLW-6020 is thrown when you write code calling a deprecated item. Set this to error and the offending code won’t compile:
alter session set plsql_warnings = 'error:6020'; create or replace procedure calling_old_code is
begin
your_old_code();
end calling_old_code;
/
show err
3/3 PLS-06020: reference to a deprecated entity:
This is deprecated. Use new_code instead!
Of course, if you turn PLW-6020 into an error system wide, a lot of stuff might break! So you can selectively upgrade it on given objects:
alter procedure calling_old_code compile
plsql_warnings = 'error:6020' reuse settings;
So now you have the power to force others to stop using pre-historic code. | https://medium.com/oracledevs/mark-old-code-as-not-for-use-12-things-developers-will-love-about-oracle-database-12c-release-2-d09eb1233f7a | ['Chris Saxon'] | 2017-10-18 19:33:29.768000+00:00 | ['Sql', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Plsql', 'Oracle Database'] |
A doula or three and a cup of tea… | What do you get when you put three doulas in a room with a voice recorder?
The answer to world tension.
A bit of a stretch perhaps, but let us explain.
Recently we had the privilege of sitting down with three Birth for Humankind volunteer doulas, Laura Lee Berlingieri, Julie Isaacson, and Maison Levot.
They are all at different stages on their doula journey and in their time with us. But in one short afternoon, they filled the room with so much laughter, wisdom and compassion, that solving world tension with a cup of tea and a doula or three seems entirely possible.
Birth for Humankind doulas, Laura Lee Berlingieri, Julie Isaacson and Maison Levot
As you can imagine, when you bring together three women whose jobs are to nurture and empower, it’s not difficult to see why and how doula-care is so important — for every woman, but especially for the women Birth for Humankind supports.
We asked them, “what do you love most about being a doula?”. The breadth of their replies highlights how multifaceted this work is.
Julie said, “What I love most about it is how useful it is. Women really do need this. It makes a difference.”
Maison talked about how she loves creating a safe and nurturing space, to help women feel like they’re enough. To feel like they are strong and capable.
And Laura Lee spoke about how being a doula sits at the intersection of her values: feminism, public health, and social justice. She said “If I can in any way increase [a client’s] sense of self-worth just by being with them, then I can help create healthier families, which will have a generational impact and a community impact.”
Purpose. Nurture. Self-worth. Community impact.
These are not words we typically associate with our current maternal health system, with its core focus on clinical health outcomes.
It’s not that doctors and midwives aren’t doing incredible work — far from it. It’s that the current maternal health-care model doesn’t allow them the time or space to invest in this form of care. As Laura Lee puts it, “there is so much busyness that takes place around birth — health professionals aren’t able to hold the space the way doulas can.”
And yet, we know that social connection and support is one of the most powerful ways to help improve birth and early parenting outcomes for women, and particularly women experiencing disadvantage.
Julie comments, “Often I find in hospitals that, that moment, that insane moment where a new family, a new mum, a new person is born, is completely lost — a doula can put her arms around that.
The doula can slot in and fill the gap, give that continuity of care. Where you are focusing on the woman’s strength, where you are hopefully enabling a transformative deep experience of birth. No matter how it goes, but where that woman can encounter her own strength, and the strength of her femininity, which is a colossal event. “
We asked how does a doula create and hold space for birthing women and why is it so important? Particularly for the women we support, who might be experiencing trauma, family violence, financial hardship, living with disability, at risk of post-natal depression or anxiety, identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, from culturally diverse backgrounds, under 25.
This is how: empathy, unconditional positive regard, respect, acceptance.
“Acceptance of that person’s life path, their culture, their decisions, the way they want to birth, the way they want to raise their baby, the way they want go through their pregnancy.” — Maison
Birth for Humankind has provided this kind of support to nearly 300 women experiencing social and financial disadvantage.
The impact of this work is profound. It is life-changing.
Birth for Humankind client, Micaela, spoke about the support she received:
“I had been walking alone for so long in a cold, dark tunnel frightened before my doulas started walking alongside with me. By the end of the tunnel where the light was, with my doula’s support, I could be ready to embrace my daughter as my companion in life.”
We want more women, like Micaela, to receive the kind of support she needs to have the best pregnancy, birth and early parenting experience possible.
Help us continue to provide life-changing doula-care to vulnerable pregnant women by donating to our Every Doula Count$ campaign, this World Doula Week.
Nearly 80 per cent of our clients would be without a friend or family member during birth, were it not for their Birth for Humankind volunteer doula.
Your support will not only help raise the flag for doulas, giving them the recognition they deserve, it will mean a woman who might be feeling frightened and isolated knows she is not alone.
Please donate today! | https://medium.com/@Birth_for_HumanKIND/a-doula-or-three-and-a-cup-of-tea-1dfa5a1ecf8e | ['Birth For Humankind'] | 2019-03-21 03:24:46.240000+00:00 | ['Birth', 'Doula', 'Maternal Health', 'Volunteering', 'Pregnancy'] |
Blockchain Reward Programs — the Future for the Airline Industry | Our prototype used technologies from all over the spectrum of popularity. To start off we used Weebly, a website builder owned by Square. According to web technology surveys, Weebly is responsible for 0.3% of all websites on the internet (w3techs, 2021). Weebly allowed us to develop a great working website with a fraction of the effort it would take to do it all with Html and CSS. Where in the past the website would have been developed by a software engineer with poor taste (cough Jacob), our website was designed beautifully by individuals with little coding knowledge. We simply used the embed code block within Weebly and added the other websites into the Weebly one to contact other technology tools.
Take a look at the website yourself: https://flywithskye.weebly.com/
GitHub is the go-to tool for developers. It allows developers to work together to achieve the great technology projects we all use today. A side functionality of GitHub is GitHub Pages. GitHub Pages will host websites for free in a quick easy way. Although sites like Weebly are incredibly useful, sometimes more complex functionality is easier to deal with for full control of the website. That is why we decided to use Github Pages to host the parts of our web pages that needed to communicate with the Waves Protocol. As mentioned above, we simply embedded this GitHub Pages website into Weebly minimizing the code needed.
If you want to take a look at the full code visit: https://github.com/obiwanjakobie/obiwanjakobie.github.io
Waves Protocol, the reason GitHub Pages was included, is an amazing technology tool. Waves allow for the creation of apps that utilize the waves blockchain. This tool has worked for some big-name cryptocurrencies such as the Tokes Platform, with a market cap of close to 40 million dollars. As stated above, we believe that the Waves Protocol is an excellent opportunity for WestJet. All customers need to get started to use the waves protocol is install the Waves Keeper browser extension.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waves-keeper/lpilbniiabackdjcionkobglmddfbcjo?hl=en
Zapier is a tool that helps connect different web apps to automate tasks. Do you want to post to one social media site and automatically have it posted on all social media sites? Yes? Then Zapier is the tool for you! Our team used Zapier in a simple way. There are google forms embedded into our Weebly site that update google sheets. Zapier reads these google sheets to trigger events. So when you enter positive COVID-19 results into our site, Zapier reads the new data and triggers an email to be sent to everyone to check this blockchain address. Although for privacy reasons, we can’t give out access to the google sheets behind the Zapier, there are other resources out there. We encourage you to learn about Zapier at https://zapier.com/learn/getting-started-guide/ | https://medium.com/@jacobwturnbul/blockchain-reward-programs-the-future-for-the-airline-industry-4584b7f9a566 | [] | 2021-04-25 22:36:42.437000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Wavesprotocol', 'Airlines'] |
Why Doesn’t the Law of Attraction Work To Make Your Dreams a Reality? | Do not break the chain.
Now let us see the common mistakes of practices the law of attraction. If you eliminate these mistakes, it will be easy to attract your desire. I call it “Do not break the chain.”
Day 1: You are so positive and filled with happiness and doing manifestation practices.
Day 2: Same as above
Day 10: Same as above
Day 11: A small thought of doubt is implanted in your subconscious mind
Day 12: That little thought of doubt/dis-belief grows faster
Day 13: You are trying to be positive but unable to focus on the positivity
Day 14: No result so far, no significant change or the manifestation of your desire
Day 15: You started blaming or thinking negatively about the Law of Attraction and thinking over and over of your past or failures
Day 16: Again, you wanted to be on track with positive thoughts/thinking.
Day 17: No No No, Day 17 should be DAY 1. Have you understood the secret now? To be precise, if you are positive for 14 days and if you become negative entirely on the 15th day, then you have to start from day 1.
Negative thoughts will destroy all your hard work on the first fourteen days, and from day 16, if you want to back with a positive thinking mindset, it will be considered Day1 because you have broken the chain!
Never get disappointed or never disbelieve for one day and spoil all the previous days’ efforts.
I have seen many practitioners in this mindset. They all do the right things. They all positive for several days, and when something is not coming their way, they start feeling low or sad.
It will make them to square one again. We all have only one life, and we should always self-focused on the right thing. If your desire is not manifested, you never know something big might be there for you!
So, never get sad or depressed or feeling low for the delay of your manifestation. You will get what you create. You will get the best of the best. “Have a never-ending FIRM belief even though your manifestation takes time, is the secret.” | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/why-doesnt-the-law-of-attraction-work-to-make-your-dreams-a-reality-be795fbfe086 | ['Rajesh Vairapandian'] | 2020-11-17 07:04:03.185000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Mindfulness', 'Meditation', 'Inspiration', 'Self Improvement'] |
China isn’t the only one to back out of the Crypto Race! | How much has the crackdown in China scaled in the last few weeks?
I think this tweet from CNBC reporter Eunice Yoon sums it up pretty well.
If you are an investor in Bitcoin, then looking at red graphs has become a habit at this point. Although this time, you can’t blame Elon Musk as this is even out of his control as China purges Bitcoin miners from every part of its country. However, it is still legal to own Bitcoin, which is even more confusing. China aims to maintain its authority over the economy, and Bitcoin certainly possesses a threat to that process. The autonomy that cryptocurrencies can offer with the help of the blockchain to most people is a menace to China. This also explains why they launched their own digital asset, the “yuan.”
Beijing has been the latest victim of this successful crackdown on Bitcoin miners who have resorted to using illegal methods to make ends meet after all mining is also a full-time job for many people. This has forced miners to hunt for places where they can continue to operate their mining activities. This will definitely take a lot of time which is great for people looking to buy as the prices will most likely continue to drop till the mining resumes.
Advocates of Bitcoin have resorted to buying more and “hodling” their tokens and are also asking others to do the same. They are also not too bothered by the migration of miners to the US as it eliminates China’s influence on the mining industry, which we have learned recently plays an important role.
This has certainly not convinced people like Jim Cramer to hold on to his remaining Bitcoin. Jim is a television personality and the host of Mad Money on CNBC. As someone who has profited from cryptocurrency, it is quite odd to sell most of your Bitcoin tokens. He also has doubts about the ability of the US to tackle attacks from hackers, especially the ones using ransomware which companies have seemingly not been able to prevent. | https://medium.com/the-capital/china-isnt-the-only-one-to-back-out-of-the-crypto-race-ad4a8c6116ed | ["Dwayne D'Cunha"] | 2021-06-23 01:43:28.087000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'China', 'Bitcoin Mining', 'Finance', 'Bitcoin'] |
FIND THE RIGHT PASSION | Passion serves as the purpose of life, it keeps our hearts filled and drives us with intense enthusiasm towards our goals and demands a lot of hard work, many seem to pour their hard work into the wrong areas or are puzzled about what they are passionate about. Here are 6 simple steps that help you choose the right passion. Whether you want to find the right passion or decide if the passion you already are pursuing is the right one, these 6 steps are all you need.
1. BEGIN WITH THE RIGHT MINDSET,
Start with the right step, develop the right kind of mindset.
Remember you are here to find your passion so set your mind to it, steady your mind and insert the belief that no matter how hard or easy it is going to be you will find a passion.
Here’s an example to understand the above statement- Imagine if you walk into a showroom that sells cars with the opinion that no car there was good enough! Then no matter how great the car is or how good the car deal is, you would never buy a car from there.
The very same applies here and developing the mindset that you will find your passion is crucial! adopting such a mindset will let you surf through the troublesome waves of finding a passion seamlessly.
The mind is the master of thoughts and setting control over it might be tricky, use this positive affirmation to help set the correct mindset. I AM HERE TO FIND THE RIGHT PASSION AND I WILL FIND IT AT ALL COST.
2. DISCOVER YOURSELF, now that you have the right mindset fixed, its time to understand that the origin of a passion is within you. Learning to understand yourself can make it easier to answer the call of passion finding.
· There is a possibility that you may already have something you love to do! Decode your mind and start leaning back on the memories you enjoyed. Maybe there is a memory where you were teaching a friend to play a musical instrument and you felt excited in doing so. Zoom in to your lifestyle and unwrap things that get you excited. Use a notepad and jot down the things you enjoy doing.
· Travel through some of your hobbies, discover what hobbies you catch yourself doing in spare times and how likely you could convert them into a full-time passion.
· Keep your pace slow and analyze the list you have made, don’t rush into any major decisions yet. If you haven’t made a convincing list yet, then don’t worry and move on to the next step.
3. PUT YOUR RESEARCH HAT ON! Dig into the internet and get your passion finding game on.
If you have made a list then, read extensively about it. Find out if the options on your list fall into your quadrant, look for answers to questions like- “what capabilities should I have to pursue this passion? Could I use this as my passion to make a living? etc.
Find people who already have a successful career in those areas and juggle into their social media profiles. Learn how they made it to the top of their fields and educate yourself about what kinda personality they carry, what their success story is, and if you could follow the same.
Well if you don’t have a list then the internet is a gold mine to find your passion. Firstly it’s important to narrow your search, ask yourself questions that could bottleneck your research, for example- What are the things you find boring? now you could eliminate all the things that bore you from your research. Don’t be random, and use the source of interests and things that intrigue you as the basis of your research.
Another interesting way is to look around the people you know, your family, friends, and maybe even neighbors. There could be someone who inspires you or a profession someone is in that you admire. Flex through all the possibilities and make a final list.
Lastly, do not dwell in uncertainty. Out of the options you put on the list, analyze how doable the options are, and have at least a foggy vision on how to pursue the passion.
4. ENVISIONING YOURSELF, with your list put together its time to try this basic but powerful tool.
This tool deals with the concept of imagination and visualization. Set yourself in a relaxed mood and start imagining yourself as a successful person in the areas you put down on your list. If you have written down, musician, teacher, and artist as your final list, all you have to do is to visualize in your head that you are a successful musician. Later do the same to the other options, imagine yourself as a successful teacher and go on.
While you are visualizing, take it step by step, start from where you currently are, and jump on to the path of hard work and dedication you need to follow to achieve success in that area of passion. Shower your visualization with a lot of details and surrender yourself to the process, take your time, and do this to all the options on your list.
The take away from this process is to identify which option gets you more excited and ultimately happier. The option that brings the most acceptance and self-satisfaction should be your choice.
This allows you to understand what you expect while following the path of your passion and realize how happy you’d be pursuing it. Seeing your self successful will boost your inner confidence and program yourself on fighting harder to do it.
5. TRY IT OUT, the only way to find out if you truly have made the right choice is to try it out. Follow the points and take your first step in pursuing your passion.
Taking baby steps — pull some time out of your routine to build on your passion before you go full swinging into it. For example, if pottery is what you decided then go visit pot manufacturers and people who already are pursuing it. Learn from them and start small.
Once you get a hang of it, quickly judge whether this is what you want to do as a passion. Make a strong decision and lay out the foundation, make a plan of moving into your life of passion, and slowly you will be living the life of your dreams.
If you are quite not sure yet, keep going on with baby steps and doing small things or try out the other options that were on your list before. Remember there is a passion for you and no matter how hard its going to be you will find it.
6. PURSUE IT, now that you got your passion insight, its time take the larger step.
Those baby steps you have taken must have laid the foundation, to strengthen your core and build pillars of growth you have to consider drawing a plan to swiftly re-route your time for pursuing your passion.
Do not engage in harsh decisions such as quitting your job or dropping out of studies. create a systematic plan that suits you and brings the best chance possible and shoot through it.
NEVER GIVE UP AND REMEMBER PASSION IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE! | https://medium.com/@prajwal9699/find-the-right-passion-cc84fd384867 | ['Prajwal Kr'] | 2020-12-17 09:31:08.163000+00:00 | ['Dreams', 'Passion', 'Finding Yourself', 'Ambition', 'Steps To Success'] |
COVID-19 Housing Crisis: The Worst is Yet to Come | COVID-19 Housing Crisis: The Worst is Yet to Come
Unsplash: Martin Sanchez
With stubbornly high levels of unemployment and widespread pay cuts in the region, New York City faces an unprecedented housing crisis. NYC Opportunity’s analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse data finds that many New Yorkers are facing housing insecurity and amassing millions, if not billions, of dollars in rent due. The current freeze on evictions expires in January 2021. Without further support measures, renters in particular will face severe debt levels and evictions.
Persistent Housing Insecurity
Although employment picked up as the city began to reopen, many New Yorkers remained behind on their rent and mortgage payments. Across 12 weeks of data pre- and post-opening, spanning from April 23rd to July 21st, 26% of renters had not paid last month’s rent, and 20% of mortgagors — those who own their home through a mortgage — either deferred or had not made last month’s payment (Fig.1A).
New Yorkers weren’t any more optimistic about their future payment ability: 39% of renters and 21% of mortgagors had little to no confidence in their ability to make next month’s payment, or had already planned to defer (Fig. 1B).
Strikingly, the divide between renters and mortgagors grew over time (Fig. 2). In pre-opening weeks, renters were one percentage point more likely than mortgagors to have missed last month’s payment or deferred. But as the city reopened, this difference grew. By the last reopening period, 31% of renters had missed last month’s payment — 14 percentage points higher than mortgagors.
The disparity between renters and mortgagors shows how the pandemic has magnified existing inequality. In general, homeowners have more financial resources than renters, as well as more sustainable options for managing back-payments. Consequently, back payments accrued during the pandemic will inherently place more burden on renters, though lower-income homeowners are also at risk.
Housing Insecurity Intensifies Inequality
The pandemic compounded financial difficulties for New Yorkers who were already struggling pre-COVID. Survey respondents with more financial challenges were more likely to be behind on housing payments and had the least confidence in their future payment ability.
Low-income households in particular experienced severe housing insecurity. Across 12 weeks pre- and post-opening, 32% of those who earned less than $50,000 a year were behind on last month’s payment (Fig. 3), and 44% — nearly half — had little to no confidence in their payment ability for next month or planned to defer (Fig. 4).
Individuals who lost their job or experienced a loss of employment income in their household were also more likely to have missed their housing payment: 24% of those in both groups had not paid last month’s rent or mortgage payment (Fig. 3). Similarly, they had little confidence in their future payment ability: 36% of individuals who recently lost employment and 32% of those who lost wages since March had little to no confidence in making next month’s payment or planned to defer (Fig. 4).
The pandemic disproportionally impacted Hispanic and Black respondents, two groups who have historically faced housing insecurity and disenfranchisement. Relative to White respondents, Black and Hispanic respondents were higher in non-payment and lower in confidence. Across pre- and post-opening periods, 28% of Black respondents and 19% of Hispanic respondents missed last month’s rent or mortgage payment (Fig. 3); 28% of Black respondents and 38% of Hispanic respondents had little to no confidence in their future payment ability (Fig. 4).
Due to small sample sizes and missing data, the results for non-White respondents are less precise than those of larger demographic subgroups such as White, Non-Hispanic respondents. However, other economic and housing research clearly indicates that Black and Hispanic individuals face disproportionate housing challenges, both before and as a result of the pandemic.
Protections are in Place, but Leave Many Vulnerable
Timeline of Evictions in NYC
A patchwork of policies currently protects some New Yorkers from the immediate threat of eviction (see Eviction Timeline in box). Under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order 202.66, evictions cannot be enforced against tenants who lost income during the pandemic. After this protection expires on January 1, 2021, some tenants will remain partially protected under the Safe Harbor Act (SHA). Under the SHA, courts cannot uphold evictions based on missed payments that accrued during the “COVID period,” which began March 7 and continues until all COVID-related restrictions are lifted in a tenant’s area.
But while the Executive Order and SHA prohibit the enforcement of evictions against tenants under financial hardship, neither policy stops landlords from filing eviction petitions. If a tenant receives a notice of eviction, even for non-payment accrued during the COVID period, the tenant must prove financial hardship in court with evidence like paystubs or other proof of income loss during the pandemic. This process disadvantages tenants with less accessible income documentation, like undocumented workers or those in the gig economy. And while tenants in New York City have access to counsel, economically disadvantaged tenants face further challenges. Those without reliable internet access or affordable data plans may not have the option to attend their eviction hearings remotely. Instead, they will have to physically go to court, possibly putting themselves and their family at risk.
Finally, none of the existing protections address the biggest challenge for renters — back-payments. Any tenant who missed rent for any reason still owes those accrued payments, including tenants covered by the SHA. Across New York State, renters may owe as much as 3.4 billion dollars in back payments by January 2021.
Without swift action by the government, these back payments threaten to devastate New York City households and to compound inequality. Lower-income tenants, who are more likely to be rent-burdened, will have to manage both rent and back payments — all while contending with wage reductions, childcare challenges, and possible eviction. Subsidy programs like the COVID Rent Relief program keep financially vulnerable households out of debt and in their homes by helping them repay their back payments. However, this program only helped with payments from April to July and, as of October 28, had only granted 40 million dollars in relief — a fraction of the amount New Yorkers may owe.
Crisis Requires Action
Our analysis of COVID data finds that between April and July, one in four tenants in the region were behind on rent, and nearly two in five tenants had little to no confidence in their ability to make next month’s rent payment. The high level of housing insecurity among renters suggests an even greater housing crisis to come, with a potential surge of evictions after the Executive Order expires in January 2021. Without swift action across state and federal government, financially vulnerable New Yorkers will bear the brunt of this devastation for years to come.
Resources for Tenants and Homeowners: | https://medium.com/nyc-opportunity/covid-19-housing-crisis-the-worst-is-yet-to-come-47c120940dc7 | ['Nyc Opportunity'] | 2020-11-23 22:05:09.667000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Covid 19 Crisis', 'Housing', 'NYC', 'Covid 19'] |
What To Do With Your Frozen Stash of Breast Milk During a Power Outage | What To Do With Your Frozen Stash of Breast Milk During a Power Outage Milk Stork Follow Jun 10 · 4 min read
When nature strikes and the power is out, these handy tips will help shed light on how you can keep your breast milk safe and your baby fed during a dreaded power failure!
How to keep your breast milk frozen as long as possible:
During a power outage, the most important thing to do is keep the freezer closed! According to the USDA, a full freezer can hold its temperature for approximately 48 hours if the door remains closed. The less full it is, the less time it will maintain its temperature.
If you are lucky enough to receive advanced notice from your power company that you will be losing power, stock your freezer up with frozen items to make it as full as possible. The frozen items will act as a cooling engine for the entire freezer. You will also want to situate your breast milk so it is in the middle of the frozen items and away from the freezer walls. If you have a chest freezer, make sure your frozen breast milk has several layers of frozen foods on top of it. Surrounding your stash of breast milk with frozen items will help keep it frozen longer.
Tip: If you don’t have enough items to fill up your freezer, pack the empty space with plastic bags of ice or frozen water bottles.
To prepare for natural disasters and power failures, it’s always good to know which of your neighbors has a generator. Make a list of who you might be able to lend you some generator-time if you are going without power for an extended period of time.
Using a cooler is also a great way to keep your stash cold. Our latest product is the Milk Stork Stash can keep 180 ounces of breast milk frozen for up to 96 hours. Additionally, the Milk Stork Stash is reusable so you can use it again if you face another power outage in the future. The Stash can also be taken with you or shipped to another location in the event that you need to evacuate or leave the area.
The Milk Stork Stash keeps 180 oz of breast milk frozen for 96 hours.
My breast milk has started to thaw, what should I do now?
Breast milk does not need to be rock hard to be considered frozen. If your breast milk feels like a snowball or is slushy, it is still frozen and can be put back into the freezer.
Breast milk is considered thawed when the last ice crystal melts. Once your frozen breast milk has thawed to a liquid state, it must be used within 24 hours. Do not refreeze breast milk that has completely thawed.
Help! I need to pump and there’s no power!
A power outlet is a pumping mom’s best friend. When the power is out, head to the car and use your pump’s car adaptor. Some models of cars have outlets making things extra easy.
Some pumps can also be converted into a manual hand pump. To see if this is an option, read your pump’s instruction manual.
Manual pumps are always great to have on hand in an emergency. They are easy to use, relatively affordable, and widely available.
Of course, you can also hand-express your milk. This is something that you will want to practice doing in advance. Here’s a video to show you how.
Most important… always have a backup plan in place to ensure that your baby is fed!
Fed is best! To ensure that you are prepared for anything that might come your way, keep a canister formula and bottled water with your emergency preparedness kit. And, make sure these items are in an area that can be easily accessed. Should you be separated from your baby, you will want to make sure that you and your baby’s caregivers are familiar with preparing formula and that they are ready to do so if required.
Power outages from rolling blackouts, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, and other natural disasters, can be stressful situations. We hope these tips and best practices will help you, your family, and your frozen stash stay cool in an emergency.
Share your tips and stories if you’ve ever lost electricity and had to find a resourceful way to pump or store your breast milk. | https://medium.com/milkstork/what-to-do-with-your-frozen-stash-of-breast-milk-during-a-power-outage-90797f2cf160 | ['Milk Stork'] | 2021-06-10 18:42:56.539000+00:00 | ['Breast Milk', 'Power Outage', 'Emergency Preparedness', 'Motherhood', 'Breastfeeding'] |
Can Electric Cars Save Pakistan’s Hazardous Air Quality? | It’s no secret that every country is concerned about climate change. High carbon pollution has become a posing crisis that humanity has yet to overcome through some advancements in its technology.
Photo by Ernest Ojeh on Unsplash
According to WHO, air pollution kills approximately 7 million people every year. This risk is, however, increased in most developing countries suffering from the highest exposures of carbon dioxide.
Unfortunately, this is where Pakistan comes in. In 2019 Pakistan was listed to be the second most polluted country after Bangladesh.
According to IQAir, Lahore suffers from high levels of air pollution emanated by both vehicle and industrial emissions.
Moreover, farmers dwelling in rural areas annually burn crop stubbles that further contribute to blinding smog in the urban cities.
This burning crop sequence usually occurs in October to November and by the time winter begins these pollutants gets trapped in the cold atmosphere; unable to escape, then the emitting carbon emissions by vehicles and factories are further stuck in the cities forming a giant deadly smog that sneaks into households and people’s lungs.
Photo by Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash
This smog crisis began in 2017 when IQAir monitored Pakistan’s air quality, they were shocked to see the results and when they published it on social media outlets, this quickly becomes a concerning topic among the people and the government.
However, the government, at that time, criticised this statement and brushed it off by saying that these pollutants may merely cause “coughing” for some sensitive groups.
Not only these pollutants are dangerous for the old and infirm, but long exposures to carbon dioxide and pollutants without a mask pose an increased risk of stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and acute respiratory infection.
The air pollution in Lahore is constantly ranked as hazardous to breathe by people and animals. According to the World Health Organisation, this poses an increased risk of premature death among people and reduced life expectancy.
Unappealing Transport Options Contribute to Carbon Emissions:
From Pixabay
Lack of comfortable and timely transportation leads people to purchase their own rides. Everyone in Pakistan possesses some kinds of transport, be it in form of bikes or cars, both runs on petrol and diesel.
Not only this creates unnecessary traffic on the highway but further contributes to carbon emissions to scatter in the environment.
To mitigate this drastic carbon dioxide pollution, Pakistan needs to look for other greener options.
Excessive traffic on the road can be discouraged when there are clean options like metros (or subways) that are powered by electricity made available to people to get to their work or school with comfort and security.
Countries to “Phase out” Cars powered by Fossil Fuels and Initiatives to be taken by Pakistan:
Image by Taken from Pixabay
Most countries have endorsed the notion to completely phase out transportation powered by fossil fuel technology, such as petrol, liquefied petroleum gas, and diesel in the future.
To take things further, most countries have plans to ban petrol and diesel-powered cars in the next two decades. Whereas some are to introduce partial bans depending on the fuel the vehicle takes.
High air pollution and aggravating human health leave us no excuse to not follow the same initiatives. As the transportation segment in Pakistan, accounts for 43% of the total carbon emissions. These emissions claim over 135,000 lives every year.
To counteract this persisting problem, Prime Minister Imran Khan has had taken an ambitious step towards a sustainable future for Pakistan by announcing his Reforestation Project to plant 10 billion trees across the country. This project took effect in 2018 and will finish in 2023.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
However, planting trees will not be enough to tackle this problem alone. As deforestation is happening just as quickly and the only way to mitigate this problem is by encouraging electric vehicles (EV) to fill in the gap of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
Fortunately, one of the ambitious goals of the PTI government was to introduce EVs to the Pakistani market. To encourage this, the Electric Vehicle Policy was announced and improved further on 22 December 2020.
From Tweeter
As per Geo News, the long-hated Federal Excise Duty (FED) is lifted from the taxation list. This is a green flag for the intrigued customers of this segment as the price of the upcoming EVs will be reduced.
This new EV policy can be alluring for those anticipating EV auto giants that are searching the market to establish their plants and inaugurate their sales.
Pakistan is already in talks with several auto giants, and now with these new incentives set earlier in the EV policy, we can expect the possible production of electric cars, vans, buses, rickshaws, and bikes.
The arrival of electric vehicles in the country will have a significant impact on the economy.
As per Dawn News, the Ministry of Climate Change believes to achieve a whopping $2 billion reduction in oil imports annually.
Moreover, the Ministry believes that the introduction of EVs can create hundreds of thousands of jobs among the people across the country.
The Minister in this regard also aims to transform the 3,000 gas stations that are shut closed due to scarcity of gas into Electric Charging Stations.
The government is already negotiating with the leading oil companies in Pakistan to set up charging stations to further facilitate the soaring demands of EVs.
After the first charging station was set up at one of the PSO stations in Islamabad, the Federal Ministry of Energy aims to install 24 more charging stations across the country.
Challenges Being Faced:
Photo by Toni Zaat on Unsplash
As every new product is rather looked doubtfully, this doesn’t exempt the very necessitated electric cars either. Most masses tend to underestimate the capabilities an electric vehicle has over its internal combustion engine counterpart.
For a long time, EVs were criticised and most automakers believed the technology to produce a functional electric car is yet to be discovered in the future.
However, this changed when Tesla, an electric car company, established its brand name and started rolling out its models, this forced other automakers to innovate or be left behind.
As of today, many automakers are working religiously to produce their own type of EVs before internal combustion engine vehicles are banned by most countries.
Advantages of Electric cars over Internal Combustion Engine cars:
Photo by Ye Massa on Unsplash
Electric cars have many advantages. They are fast, smooth, fun to drive, noiseless, secure, efficient and practically maintenance-free (no oil change, transmission fluid, spark plugs, fuel filters, or drive belts).
For instance, the running cost of an EV is set to be about Rs. 5–6 per kilometres as compared to Rs. 20–30 per kilometres of a petrol-based car.
Furthermore, research indicates that a typical electric car of today emits 50% fewer gas emissions than an average combustion engine car.
Similarly, an electric car also triumphs over to even the most efficient internal combustion engine cars in the market today, by being 30% more efficient throughout its lifecycle.
As electric cars don’t have exhaust, which means they emit no carbon dioxide footprints behind them, this is in favour of people, running outdoor activities such as errands, cycling, jogging, or just going on to their daily lives.
No engine means no sound. This gives an electric car an advantageous position as you can silently crawl up behind a pedestrian in your car!
Just kidding. On a positive standpoint, electric cars don’t contribute to noise pollution. This can create a considerably peaceful environment for everyone.
Making an Electric Vehicle Takes A Lot of Energy:
Image by Urs Widmer from Pixabay
As electric cars are relatively newer than their internal combustion engine counterpart, the emissions emanated to manufacture an electric car is higher than of an internal combustion engine car.
This is because of the lithium-ion batteries that are used to power the electric motor(s). As of now, the researchers are trying to find efficient ways to produce these batteries.
Every year, new advancements in electric vehicles are introduced, this could one day bring down the price of the batteries, making them more affordable for everyone.
Despite the emissions produced to manufacture these cars, an electric car is still a greener option as it will produce reduced emissions through its lifecycle.
A Step Towards the Renewable Source of Energy:
Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay
When we think of retrieving the lost environment, we must not neglect the elephant in the room; the electric power plant, which is also a big contributor to this air pollution, but we can’t simply shut it down.
When talking about electric cars being greener options for the environment, we must not forget that they charge on the same electricity that is produced by burning fossil fuels.
If Pakistan is certain about this transition to electric cars then it should look towards a renewable source of energy, at least for the sake of electric vehicles.
As for now, we also need to take electric producing companies into consideration. As the transition to electric cars is huge, this begs the question of whether the electric generating companies in Pakistan be able to cater to the soaring demands of the electric vehicles. As EVs require uninterrupted charging at homes or at the charging station.
For the time being, all we can say is that Pakistan is indeed headed towards an ambitious plan for the future. The arrival of the electric vehicles will be a huge leap forward for the country.
But Pakistan has to hurry as humans lives are on the line. | https://medium.com/@mghazirfreeman/how-electric-cars-can-save-pakistans-future-650dde109048 | ['M. Ghazir Freeman'] | 2021-01-25 09:00:36.588000+00:00 | ['Fossil Fuels', 'Pakistan', 'Renewable Energy', 'Electric Car', 'Climate Change'] |
It Takes a Village: Hariyali Clean Energy Solutions in India | Co-Authored with Anjali Jaiswal, Sameer Kwatra, and Marie McNamara
Indian villagers celebrated Kamala Harris during her swearing-in as the United States first female vice president. In many ways this moment exemplifies opportunity for continued women’s leadership, especially in rural villages. India’s villages present a major opportunity for green economic recovery. With pilots underway, Hariyali Green Village Plans shows that women-led programs can transform village energy use in India by making clean energy available and affordable while improving livelihoods.
SEWA-NRDC Group Discussions in Rajasthan Under the Hariyali Project on Energy Use in Summer 2019; Photo Credit: Madhura Joshi
To understand energy access needs at the village-level and spur clean energy transitions, NRDC and our partner, the Self-Employed Women’s Association, are implementing the Hariyali Green Villages initiative. The partners organized a virtual roundtable featuring implementing agencies, industry experts, financiers, and key stakeholders to discuss how these clean energy plans can be scaled up to hundreds of villages across India.
At the roundtable, NRDC and SEWA also released a new report It Takes A Village: Advancing Hariyali Clean Energy Solutions in Rural India, that presents in-depth research and implementable solutions to help promote clean energy transitions in Indian villages.
“It Takes A Village: Advancing Hariyali Solutions” launched at the webinar presents the survey results and details specific interventions that can help accelerate the uptake of clean energy solutions. The Green Village Energy Plans outlined policy, financial, and social frameworks to promote broader clean energy adoption and livelihood gains.
Some of the key recommendations highlighted in the report include:
Lighting: expand LED bulbs, solar lamps, and voltage stabilizers: Incentives to use LED bulbs through sales in common service centers at fair prices will help save energy and costs. Skill development at the local level is also needed to provide local maintenance support and voltage stabilizers can help sustain broader appliance adoption.
Cooling: increase efficient fans and cool roofs: Efficient fans can reduce electricity expenses and provide better indoor cooling and circulation. Passive cooling measures, such as cool roofs, can also help improve indoor thermal comfort and reduce household cooling requirements.
Irrigation: community-owned solar water pumps and micro-irrigation: Solar irrigation pumps increase agricultural productivity, and joint ownership models can reduce energy expenses. Micro-irrigation technologies and improved water-use efficiency are also key opportunities.
Household Cooking: explore cleaner cooking options and solar appliances: Biogas is a potential cleaner cooking option as well as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). While there are barriers to wide-scale adoption of LPG, improving LPG cylinders’ financial viability and usability would help promote broader village use. Solar milk chillers, solar flour mills, and solar oil mills also present cleaner cooking options.
Community Intervention: engage schools & health centers in clean energy transitions: Clean energy interventions in community spaces can serve as demonstration sites for the village to expand clean energy adoption.
Key Solutions for the study: It Takes A Village: Advancing Hariyali Clean Energy Solutions in Rural India
For clean energy transitions to take root, reliable energy supply and efficient appliances must meet specific village needs. Tailored policies, financial incentives, and implementation systems are needed to ensure solutions match the local context.
Access to reliable and affordable clean energy can improve livelihoods, alleviate poverty, and leads to emissions reductions and reduced dependence on fossil fuels. Families in rural India are keen to embrace clean energy and improve their livelihoods, as demonstrated by the women-led Hariyali Green Village initiative. Interventions that focus on inclusivity and community participation can help spur clean energy transitions across rural villages — especially in the face of multiple crisis facing the world — COVID-19, economic despair, and the climate crisis.
Anjali Jaiswal is Senior Director of the India Program on Climate & Clean Energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); Sameer Kwatra is Climate and Clean Energy Expert, NRDC India Program; and Marie McNamara is a Duke Stanback NRDC fellow, | https://medium.com/@madhura-joshi/it-takes-a-village-hariyali-clean-energy-solutions-in-india-bc89576871d | ['Madhura Joshi'] | 2021-03-18 09:43:40.430000+00:00 | ['Energy Transition', 'Energy Access', 'Sustainable Development', 'Rural Development', 'Clean Energy'] |
Journalists and their Journeys to Main Street Hub: Part I | Our team members have one thing in common — they want to help local businesses thrive — but everyone has varied backgrounds, skills, and interests.
Several of our Hubsters joined our company after studying or working in journalism.
Whether they’re using their photography skills to take photos for local businesses or their writing skills to compose perfect posts for our customers, their backgrounds in journalism have been integral to their success here at Main Street Hub.
Don’t miss part two of this spotlight series next week!
We sat down with Production Manager Derek Stout and Senior Community Manager Jordan Haeger to chat about their journalism backgrounds and how they use the skills they’ve learned to excel in their roles at Main Street Hub every day.
Derek Stout
Production Manager, Content Team
Tell us about yourself.
“I grew up in New Mexico. I started working at Main Street Hub in January doing freelance photography and videography, and then, I started full-time in May. I went to school at the University of Texas at Austin. I left Austin for a few years and came back about a year ago.”
Why did you decide to go to UT Austin and study Journalism?
“One of my older brothers was going there at the time, and my other brother was living in Austin. I was a Studio Art major originally, doing a lot of film. My brother was in the journalism school at the time, so he convinced me to take a few journalism classes and see if I liked it — I did, so I went the photojournalism direction.”
How did you get into photojournalism?
“I was into photography for a while — I probably didn’t do it very well, but I was definitely interested in it. I took some photojournalism classes and started working at The Daily Texan and developing a passion for that. I ran with it. It’s fantastic.
“For someone who’s generally curious like myself, it’s nice to shoot something completely different every single day not nailed to the same subject. I tend to get bored really easily, so that’s one way to combat that, doing different assignments daily. I really appreciated entering into photojournalism.”
What did you do after college?
“When I graduated, I got a fellowship with Princeton and got placed at a newspaper in Cambodia. I ended up signing on with that newspaper and working there for 16 months. After that, I moved back to New Mexico for a while and started doing a lot of commercial work. I built up a really big client base there and got to a pretty comfortable point and naturally, I got a little bored so I left and came back to Austin. I was taking gigs where I could, still going back and forth to go to Albuquerque to shoot for my clients there. I ended up doing a lot of work for Main Street Hub, and now, I’m here full-time.”
What has been your favorite story to photograph?
“I’m still working on this long project I’ve been working on for a couple of years with horse tracks. It’s been a lot of fun. That’s been great.
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to leave traditional journalism and come to Main Street Hub?
“I think there’s a lot of skills with photojournalism that are applicable across the board. In photojournalism, you’re trying to make something that doesn’t look good presentable for readers. Most photojournalists have the ability to talk to people, ask the right questions, and a general sense of curiosity which is why they’re in the field in the first place. They’re usually willing to go the extra mile with whatever they’re working on.”
How have your photojournalism skills helped you in your role as Production Manager at Main Street Hub?
“I think the ability to be flexible in any situation has been the most beneficial for me. There are new problems and new things we’re dealing with every day that we don’t have an answer to yet, so we’re just kind of workshopping it on the fly. I think the ability to adapt to the situation quickly is applicable.” | https://medium.com/main-street-hub/journalists-and-their-journey-to-main-street-hub-part-i-a690b542a8b4 | ['Main Street Hub'] | 2017-03-03 17:32:48.534000+00:00 | ['Company Culture', 'Careers', 'Work', 'Career Advice', 'Journalism'] |
The best businesses to start nowadays in a third-world country | The best businesses to start nowadays in a third-world country
Third World countries are developing countries that are still in the process of growing to their full potential and reaching the criteria required to be a developed country.
Photo by Barik5ive from Pexels
Such countries are the favorite place for businesses to grow since there is a big market waiting there for businesses to cater to their needs.
Firstly, in most developing countries you will find interest rates for loans quite high.
Secondly, you have to struggle a lot when it comes to getting documentation, registration, and office work. Thirdly, there is uncertainty to your business since the government mostly are not that great when it comes to supporting business and also the corruption and poor tax policies.
Here are ten business ideas that prosper in third world countries.
1). Real Estate Business
Before a country goes into the developing phase it mostly remains an agricultural country or most of the lands remain covered with forest. But as soon as it starts to get into developing mode, agricultural and forest land is utilized to build rail, road, infrastructures, residential apartments, special economic zones, etc.
Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash
The land which was quite cheap to buy suddenly becomes costly. The best way to earn money is to go into the real estate business. Buy some cheap land at places that are seeing new development work like installation of a factory or business house. Then you can build residential apartments or office space and can sell or rent it.
Those who have been into this business in developing countries are now today billionaires. There is a lot of money and support that comes from the government given the huge demand for houses especially in urban areas that are the epicenter of jobs and business.
2). Medicare and Hospitality Service:
Though the medical field is a noble profession yet it is certainly a business. You can certainly go to opening pharmaceutical shops that sell medicines and other medical items. Since developing countries require strong healthcare support your business will certainly see success since there is no shortage of diseases and patients in developing countries with poor hygiene.
Photo by Yilmaz Akin on Unsplash
You can also try your hands in building standard hospitals or medical centers that can be profitable to both you and your customers. To be very frank, medical shops are doing extremely well in countries like India where the medical sector is still very weak on behalf of the government thus people are required to buy most of the medicines from private shopkeepers who earn around 10–30% on medicines.
3). Education Sector:
There can’t be anything as flourishing as the education sector in developing countries. Most of them in their growth stage prefer to spend lots of money on education. Especially the parents are ready to spend much money on their children’s education. There are many options for you to start your business. For example, opening a nursery or playschool at a small level or opening a book store that sells books for a different standard for school level.
Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash
There are many national and international level exams that are conducted in every country. To prepare many students to join coaching institutions. One can also invest in this field since the return is very promising and the business is ever-growing. There is no such educational institution that has seen a downfall in the last few decades but has grown to multiple folds.
4). Textile and Fabric Business:
The day you grow rich the first change that can be seen is in your styling sense. Especially in developing countries, wearing good clothes is often seen as rising in standard and wealth. Most developing countries have seen the growth of international brands as those who have earned good sums have spent their money on buying good clothes.
Photo by Volha Flaxeco on Unsplash
The textile industry is also an ever-growing industry since the requirement never dies. With the rise in a craze for international brands, one can cash in by opening chain stores of such international brands at various places.
5). Contract or Contract Building Business:
Photo by Ono Kosuki from Pexels
Since developing countries have an ever-growing demand for infrastructure there is much need for standard contractors and builders who can construct various types of infrastructures. There are local builders and there are standard builders who take big government contracts of building roads, expressways, bridges, and so on.
Based on your plan you can go for the contract business since it is one of the most profitable businesses. Developing countries aim for enhancing their infra thus a lot of money is spent on infra building. If you are able to make good contacts within your area there is a lot of profit out here.
6). Restaurants and Food Services:
What about a franchise of KFC or McDonald’s? Or you can open your own restaurant offering foods loved at that place. Developing countries have shown much interest in food and styling since people become much wealthier thus can afford food of their choice in restaurants.
Photo by Aleks Dorohovich on Unsplash
Countries that have seen growth have also seen growth in the food sector, especially in the restaurant sector. The growth of McDonald’s, KFC, Dominoes, and other such food brands in developing countries have shown how people have opted for tasty food in their daily lives. A standard restaurant in a city never fails to give good returns given you offer tasty food and exemplary service at a reasonable price.
7). Cosmetic, Beauty, and Styling Business:
In the 1990s, Indian girls bragged universal and world titles for beauty pageants that opened the gate for cosmetic products in India. Many attributes that in order to make cosmetic products a success, Indian girls were awarded such titles. The core issue here is, as people get enough money to live a luxurious life they spend a good amount on pampering themselves.
Photo by Sam Moqadam on Unsplash
The success of international cosmetic brands in developing countries has been an example. One can not only try their hands in cosmetics but also in opening beauty parlor, spas, and other such beauty-enhancing stores. Where ever there are women there will be demand for parlors. It is not limited to women now but to men as well. Styling beards, hair trimming in various styles, facials have become common among men as well.
8). Import and Export Business:
Most of the developing countries have been following a market economy rather than a socialist model thus relying fairly on foreign imports and exports. One can invest in the import and export market since it has lots of return.
Photo by Sascha Hormel from Pexels
There are many sectors in which a product is obtained by import or is exported. You can become one such channel of importing and exporting goods. For this good research, great networking and investment are required. Apart from this, you need a good advisor to drive your business to success.
9). Waste and Scrap Business:
Developing countries are struggling a lot when it comes to sanitation and waste management in comparison to developed countries that have a systematic channel for waste management and disposal. One can turn waste into money with just a small initiative.
Photo by Antoine GIRET on Unsplash
You can operate a waste management and disposal business at the city and town level by collecting wastes like plastic, paper, tin, glass, metals, e-waste, etc., and recycle them or send them to a big recycling center. If executed well, this industry is gold in itself since it will only grow with more development and growth. A little investment and sufficient space are all needed to start a business with some network to collect and then sell such waste.
10). Various Kinds of Service Providers:
To things that mostly comprises a business is goods and service. Most of the above business ideas are goods business but service providing business is equally essential for the growth of any country.
Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash
Many businesses have flourished way ahead through service providing. Some fields of servicing are: software solutions, cloud solutions, services related to IT companies, AC service providers, automobile service providers, cleaning services, food services, hospitality services, repairing services, and many more services are there that are growing at a great pace.
Telecom service providers, internet service providers, and computer service providers are one of the most successful service providers. One can try their hands in any of the services they wish for. Home delivery of food is another such common service. You can choose services based on the necessity, requirement, and return expected.
Lastly, I’ll say don't just get ideas, execute them.
Thank you for reading :) | https://medium.com/@writernikunj/the-best-businesses-to-start-nowadays-in-a-third-world-country-95b121ba00e1 | ['Nikunj Savaliya'] | 2020-12-16 12:19:58.722000+00:00 | ['Business Ideas', 'Business Development', 'Ideas To Execution', 'Third World Countries', 'Low Cost Business Ideas'] |
FinanceX — How To Register Your Account | FinanceX crypto-exchange is a convenient, reliable and secure platform focusing on providing fiat-to-coin and coin-to-fiat trading on a real-time automatic trading platform.
To find out more information about FinanceX exchange click here.
Registering your account
First, you need to visit our trading website at: https://financex.io
Click “Sign Up” at the top-right of the screen. | https://medium.com/financex/financex-how-to-register-your-account-6556a7afee3 | [] | 2018-10-04 04:29:18.766000+00:00 | ['Exchange', 'Cryptocurrency', 'ICO', 'Bitcoin', 'Trading'] |
Bible do’er not a Bible study! | So many people in this world are so quick to join a bible study and sit around to read and study the Bible,during the Bible study though they ask questions about thoughts on what you read,and what you think that verse would mean to your life today,they ask things such as what do you think the character in this story is feeling and so much more.
During a bible study we are forgetting the true meaning of how God wants us to read the Bible with others and live it out.
We need less bible study’s and more Bible do’ers which means we need to read the Bible together. ask questions about how that could apply to our life today,what it’s speaking in our lives today and contuine to live it out throughout each day we live. It is time we stop studying the word of God to find out what he wrote thousands of years ago,it’s time we read the word and learn how to apply it to our life,we need to learn what those verses mean for the chapter were in today. The world is going crazy and now is the time more than ever to dive deeper into word and develop a deeper relationship with Christ like never before. | https://medium.com/@courtneyflowers715/bible-doer-not-a-bible-study-3d0b6748aff5 | ['Courtney Flowers'] | 2020-12-14 17:03:05.687000+00:00 | ['Christian', 'Read', 'Follow Me', '2020'] |
Reading: ENAS — Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Parameter Sharing (Image Classification) | Reading: ENAS — Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Parameter Sharing (Image Classification)
In this story, Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Parameter Sharing (ENAS), by Google Brain, Carnegie Mellon University, and Stanford University, is presented. In this paper:
ENAS constructs a large computational graph, where each subgraph represents a neural network architecture , hence forcing all architectures to share their parameters.
, hence forcing all architectures to share their parameters. Sharing parameters among child models allows ENAS to deliver strong empirical performances, whilst using much fewer GPU-hours than existing automatic model design approaches.
This is a paper in 2018 ICML with over 800 citations. (Sik-Ho Tsang @ Medium) | https://medium.com/@sh-tsang/reading-enas-efficient-neural-architecture-search-via-parameter-sharing-image-classification-418b2a067bba | ['Sik-Ho Tsang'] | 2021-03-15 14:03:58.876000+00:00 | ['Convolutional Network', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Image Classification', 'Deep Learning', 'Neuralarchitecturesearch'] |
Hypothesis Vetting: The Most Important Skill Every Successful Data Scientist Needs | The most successful Data Science starts with good hypothesis building. A well-thought hypothesis sets the direction and plan for a Data Science project. Accordingly, a hypothesis is the most important item for evaluating whether a Data Science project will be successful.
This skill is unfortunately often neglected or taught in a hand-wavy fashion, in favor of hands-on testing for feature significance and applying models on data in order to see if they are able to predict anything. While there is certainly always a need for feature engineering and model selection, doing so without true understanding of a problem can be dangerous and inefficient.
Through experience, I’ve derived a systematic way of approaching Data Science problems which guarantees both a relevant hypothesis and a strong signal as to whether a Data Science approach will be successful. In this article, I outline the steps used to do this: defining a data context, examining available data, and forming the hypothesis. I also take a look at a few completed competitions from Kaggle and run them through the process in order to provide real examples of this method in action.
Crafting the Perfect Hypothesis
1. Mapping the Data Context
Much like forming a Free Body Diagram in a physics problem or utilizing Object-Oriented Design in Computer Science, describing all valid entities in a given data context helps to map out the expected interplay between them. The goal of this step is to completely designate all the data that could possibly be collected about anything in the context i.e. a description of the perfect dataset. If all of this data were available, then the interactions between the components would be completely defined and heuristic formulas could be used to define every type of cause and effect.
2. Examining Overlap of Available Data to Data Context
Next, an observation is conducted to determine how much of the available data fits into the perfect dataset defined in the previous step. The more overlap found, the better a solution space for defining interactions between entities. While not a numeric metric, this observation gives a strong signal for intuition of whether the available data is appropriate and relevant enough. If there is a complete overlap, then a heuristic is probably a better solution than fitting a data model. If there is very little overlap, then even the best modeling techniques will be unable to consistently provide accurate predictions. Note that the strongest predictive signals will always be those that are directly related, thus indirect feature relation is given less emphasis in favor of the real thing. The intuition behind focusing mainly on strong signals is that collecting better data with strong signals will guarantee better performance and reliability. Conversely, predictions using weak signals are prime candidates to become obsolete once better data is available.
3. Forming the Hypothesis
Having completed the previous two steps, forming a hypothesis itself becomes trivial. Hypotheses are generally formed by combining a set of available features to predict the outcome of another feature that may be hard to collect in the future or whose value may be needed ahead of its outcome.
Now that the overlap between the data context and available data has been clearly defined, and assuming a reasonable amount of the available data is relevant/class-balanced/etc, a hypothesis can simply be stated as: “The available data can produce significant results predicting ____ in the given data context”. Note that the prediction label is left open-ended since it can potentially be filled in with many different things! This is because a hypothesis can be formed around almost any of the given features as long as it fits within the data context and there is enough overlap with the available data. Picking the specific feature to predict will depend upon what use cases are most beneficial.
Example Projects
Below, I’ve carefully selected a couple different Kaggle projects to analyze using the hypothesis forming technique. These examples illustrate some characteristic setups for hypothesis forming as well as each have a given hypothesis which can be evaluated in its respective data context.
Project 1: Predicting the Winner of a PubG Match (https://www.kaggle.com/c/pubg-finish-placement-prediction)
This project was selected because the data context is simplified, due to the nature that predictions are performed for a virtual world. Predictions of simulations are expected to behave much more consistently and operate along very clearly defined paths, as opposed to real-life systems which may have factors not easily observable. In other words, the data context can very confidently be exhaustively defined. In this video game, players control a single unit which can perform a limited set of actions. The data context has been mapped out below: | https://abbysobh.medium.com/hypothesis-vetting-the-most-important-skill-every-successful-data-scientist-needs-6b84126140f8 | ['Abderrahman Sobh'] | 2020-10-30 16:16:30.584000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Hypothesis Formation', 'Data Science', 'Kaggle', 'AI'] |
OB1 Raises $5 million Series A Financing to Grow World’s Largest Decentralized Marketplace | OMERS Leads Group of Top-Tier Investors Expressing Confidence in Direction of Peer-to-Peer Platform
Washington, D.C. — March 13, 2018 — OB1, the company building OpenBazaar, today announced a series A round of $5 million. The funds will help capitalize on the explosive growth that OpenBazaar has seen as blockchain and cryptocurrencies have become mainstream. OpenBazaar is the only e-commerce marketplace that offers secure, commission-free trade for both buyers and sellers.
Since the launch of the updated 2.0 platform near the end of 2017, over 40,000 nodes globally have joined the OpenBazaar network. In early 2018 OpenBazaar enhanced its value to buyers and sellers by enabling purchases with Bitcoin Cash and Zcash.
The round represents a strong validation of OB1’s stewardship of the OpenBazaar network and is led by OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the OMERS pension fund. Bitmain is also contributing to this round and joins existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, BlueYard Capital, Digital Currency Group, and angel investor William Mougayar.
“OB1 allows individuals, living anywhere, to buy and sell as part of a truly global marketplace” said Jim Orlando, Managing Partner, OMERS Ventures. “We are excited about the potential represented by OpenBazaar’s decentralized peer-to-peer protocol, and are thrilled about the various implementation paths that Brian and the rest of his team are pursuing.”
OB1 will continue to lead development of OpenBazaar to give users more flexibility and control over how they buy and sell goods and services online. Their plans for this year include releasing web and mobile versions of the application as well as giving users new ways to trade with each other, such as making requests and buying and selling cryptocurrencies. OB1 is also expanding the services it offers to users on OpenBazaar, such as the Verified Moderators program, released this week.
OB1 CEO Brian Hoffman said, “We are pleased to be partnering with both OMERS Ventures and Bitmain, adding them to a powerhouse international team of investors that are helping our team continue to build the future of free trade on the Internet worldwide. Our goal is to see the OpenBazaar protocol and software empower business owners and consumers alike to shift away from the corporate-controlled legacy systems and engage in ecommerce in a free, fair and independent way.”
Users and fans can follow the progress of this open source project and join their community onSlack, Twitter, and Reddit and download the desktop application at OpenBazaar.org ### | https://medium.com/omers-ventures/ob1-raises-5-million-series-a-financing-to-grow-worlds-largest-decentralized-marketplace-87ab8fe7cc48 | ['Omers Ventures'] | 2018-03-13 14:38:19.190000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Decentralization', 'Ovinvestmentnews', 'Ob1', 'Fundraising'] |
You’re Making History Without Even Trying | I keep telling myself the world is new every day. There are infinite, small opportunities to make history. Whether you realize it or not, you are making history with your life. Just your being here on the planet changes things. You get to design your life today; and it’s impossible to do it like anyone else before you in history. This one’s all yours. And mine. We don’t get to judge.
I recently took a job at a spa, finally making use of my massage therapy license. I am surprised I like it so much; both the work and the structure it provides after months of freefalling.
One of my clients yesterday was a 16-year-old girl, whose pants, by the way, were made of the exact same material as my high school uniform skirt. ( I could barely stop staring.) Her older sister was home from college for Thanksgiving break. To celebrate, her mom treated them all to a girls’ spa day. When the massage was finished, the teenager smiled and said, “I feel like a new woman.”
“You are,” I responded. “Every day, if you want to be.”
Did my own kid get that memo?
Stealing Joy Back
The other day I was running the trails at the county park, notorious for its poor signage and cryptic trail map. Of course, I got lost. This added about another mile to my intended hike.
Sometimes while running in the woods, I rant to invisible ghosts or my former self. That day, I was talking to Katie’s spirit, my far-flung daughter, inviting her to stop by anytime. We don’t have to wait for the proverbial joyous reunion. She could send a sign or something. How hard could it be to pierce this veil between us? Sheesh.
Instantly, there appeared a yellow butterfly, and the earworm from out of nowhere, the Beatles tune “She Loves You.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it’s corny, but there it was.
It occurred to me then. I was the first woman to ever… race a butterfly on a cloudy day, on that particular twisted route back to my car, wearing a Torchy's Tacos teeshirt. Never was there ever another moment like that one.
OK, maybe it’s more newsworthy to be the first woman in flight or on the local fire department, or the first scientist to discover a new element or the first person to climb a certain mountain.
But you also set yourself apart by praying to a God you don’t believe in, or writing an original essay, creating a recipe using flavors never joined together. Or you can paint an angel on a cardboard box. Any creative pursuit automatically adds you to the list of firsts.
I took a picture of her cardboard box art long ago. Glad I did. Image courtesy of the author.
It would never matter to me whether Katie left a legacy that the world noticed.
I just miss her in my life, like all parents who lose children, and like no other parent before me. She was the keeper of memories, and details I lost but for her. She was my meme-sharer and funny girl.
But to say that my life is an unbearably deep hole without her is to discount all this chewy goodness, post-Katie. So I keep at it, because what else is there? Not the stuff of legends, but…
We hand history to the great artists, the famous writers, the notorious politicians, the evil emperors, the wealthy benefactors, the selfless prophets, and the brilliant scientists.
And then there’s you and me.
What is history?
Does it count if no one knows about it? Does it count if the only one who reads your book is your sister and best friend? Does it count if your mom posts posthumous pictures of your art on her blog?
Who are the creators of history? I’m afraid to admit greatness is seated in people like my daughter, and like me.
And absolutely, in you… the very fact of you.
Every day we are creating the world, painting on cardboard, snapping skateboards, planting herbs in pots then letting them die of thirst, rallying energy in your team of gamers, losing mittens in the woods.
Original thoughts and ideas are popping to life every second of every life from our staggeringly common, yet individual brains. We send birthday cards to 100-year-old strangers we read about in the paper. We rescue turtles on the highway. We make soup. Collectively we make a new world every day.
One of Ursula Nordstrom’s favorite quotes, and now mine, was by the dancer Martha Graham. Nordstrom kept a ragged printed copy on a piece of paper in her purse.
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others”
Whether or not my daughter was recognized for her accomplishments, whether or not she was proud of her life as she lived it, she did indeed make history.
The artist as a child. Image courtesy of the author.
Now, if you’re reading this, the onus is on you. Ask yourself, “Why am I here? What more is expected of me?”
Every life leaves a legacy
You are a miracle. Never before seen and never to be seen again. I believe that now for sure.
I also know that no legacy is more valuable than any other. We will all wash up on the shores of history in equal measure. Another exquisite grain of sand tumbled by the ocean of eternity.
See you out there. | https://medium.com/portals-pub/youre-making-history-without-even-trying-f4d9630e826f | ['Jen Mcgahan'] | 2020-11-25 15:34:31.245000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Art', 'Health', 'Creativity', 'Personal Growth'] |
“My whole life was being lived around making sure nobody else found out.” | “My whole life was being lived around making sure nobody else found out.”
WO2 Deborah Penny has served in the British Army for 34 years, and even has a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, but it wasn’t until 2010 that she felt like she was serving as herself. Read her unique story here:
WO2 Deborah Penny
Deborah wanted to transition to live as a woman since she was young, but in her early career — more than 30 years ago — society viewed transgender people as ‘gay or mentally ill’. She says that without social media or computers, it was hard to know that there were others out there like her, or to find support.
Deborah felt for a long time that she was trying to lead multiple lives, none of them genuine. Despite this, she achieved many things in her career: completing a Commando course in 1986 and doing military exercises in many countries across more than a quarter of the Globe.
When she was doing a high pressure job as a Bomb Disposal Operator, her mental health began to suffer with the added pressure of putting on different faces for different parts of her life. She decided to take the brave step and transition.
The ban on transgender personnel in the military was lifted in 1999, one year before the ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual personnel was lifted.
After 18 years in the British Army, Deborah Penny approached a doctor: | https://medium.com/voices-of-the-armed-forces/my-whole-life-was-being-lived-around-making-sure-nobody-else-found-out-53486d28924f | ['Ministry Of Defence'] | 2020-12-04 15:50:35.835000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Army', 'Defence', 'Transgender', 'Military'] |
Meesho is looking to hire an Ops Design Head as a cross-functional problem-solver, who can impact the e-commerce space! | Vector courtesy: Free Pik
Every burgeoning company looks towards the operations team during times of expansion and Meesho is doing exactly that. From sales to acquisition of resellers and the number of employee, Meesho is currently focusing heavily on its core values of Thinking 10X and Making Resellers Successful. Right now, more than ever, we are also relying on our Operations team to take us to the next level of excellence.
Our Operations team, filled with talented problem solvers, is looking towards optimised direction from a leader who has experience thinking outside the box to solve the most dynamic problems while working in an e-commerce supply chain. From warehousing to city logistics and planning to operation of a control tower, and so much more, our growing Operations team is zeroing in on many big issues and is prioritising solving them.
Make an Impact
For a continued seamless flow within the delivery network that matches the likes of Amazon and Flipkart, we need a problem-solver waiting for that opportunity to make a huge impact in the e-commerce sphere. How, you ask? With no capex in the equation, we want to build a supply chain tailor-made to meet all the needs of our resellers through 3PL (Third-Party Logistics) network.
To achieve this goal in the most cost-effective manner while also improving the delivery experience, we need world-class problem solvers who have a high bias for action. You would be a perfect fit for this role if you would also have strong analytical skills and experience in designing supply chains in an e-commerce atmosphere.
Harshit Madan, Meesho’s General Manager & VP — Fulfillment and Experience, proposes a scenario:
Let’s say we are currently fielding 1 lakh orders per day and we need to scale up the network to 10 Lakh orders a day. To scale to that level, our network needs to be reliable, cost-efficient and performing at the same level as the Flipkarts and Amazons of the world. We have to figure out how to cut down the cost — Can we improve order consolidation in the supply chain? Can we build capabilities like regional handovers so that we can leverage competencies of regionally strong partners? To improve performance, how do we increase the speed in the network? Should we open warehouses? If yes, where do we do that? To combat any issues with reliability how do we maintain multiple partners so that there is always a backup of steady supply as at the same pin code? Worst case scenario, how do we build in-house capabilities so as to deploy some sort of logistics, and manpower of our own instead of multiple partners going to the supplier many times a day?
These are some of the problems that you will be expected to solve as an Ops Design Head.
What Meesho expects from the Ops Design Head
Harshit puts it simply, as a mix of problem solving and execution. “You have to set things from ground-up. You will be the one to frame the problem and then take the solution from zero to one,” he says, adding, “even taking from zero to one and from one to ten will require you to manage a team, to run operations for that pilot before the beta launch.”
The Ops Design Head will optimise an aspect of Operations until it can be handed over to someone else who will scale it at a pan-India level.
Not only will this individual have to hold regular meetings with their own team, but ensure the smooth running of Operations, they will also need to have regular conversations, and hence a good working relationship with everyone in the company — from Supplier Support to Delivery Partners. Harshit reinstates, “It is a role with cross-functional requirements”.
Why join Meesho?
Meesho has enabled 15,000 suppliers and 2,000,000 resellers to start and grow their online business without any investment, by providing them with the tools including sourcing, logistics and payments, has already made waves in India’s e-commerce market. From small retailers to housewives, students and retired folks, these social resellers are now fully financially independent.You can hear all about it from our resellers across the country here and to learn more about Meesho’s four year journey click here! If you did not already know about Meesho’s amazing work culture from the two consecutive times (2018 and 2019) we were named by LinkedIn as India’s Top 25 Startups to work for based on top talent pull, job-seeker interest and levels of professional engagement with its employees, spend a while longer on this blog.
Meesho is Series D funded with an investment round in 2019 led by South African company Naspers Ventures along with participation from Facebook and existing investors such as SAIF, Sequoia, Shunwei Capital, RPS and Venture Highway. We have raised $ 190 million till date. Meesho is headquartered in Bengaluru, India and was one of the three Indian companies to be selected for Y Combinator in 2016. It was also a part of the first batch of Google Launchpad — Solve for India programme. Recently, Meesho was also featured on Y Combinator’s Top Companies List 2019.
Want to join The Product team at Meesho and help create 20 million entrepreneurs in 2020? Then we are hiring. Apply here! | https://medium.com/meesho-tech/are-you-the-cross-functional-problem-solver-who-will-impact-the-e-commerce-space-as-meeshos-f171f4b56817 | ['Mangala Dilip'] | 2020-01-20 16:31:14.782000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Product', 'Problem Solving', 'Operations', 'Hiring'] |
One Moment | Now,
this moment,
I know sorrow
like never before,
yet
cannot say
it was different
in the past;
though
I would gladly
choose past tragedies
instead of this agony
of
keen foresight,
intense awareness
and bitter memory.
I
am standing clear
this one dying moment,
and realize
that
one day
I may say
of today
“Things
were better then.”
God willing,
I will remember. | https://medium.com/poetry-en-motion/one-moment-d9e75620efe5 | ['Tyrone Graham'] | 2017-07-31 16:09:47.747000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Dying Momernt', 'Keen Foresight', 'Past Tragedies', 'Bitter Memory'] |
Socialism Outside of a Textbook: Our Obligation to Support the Venezuelan Socialist Project | By Candy Herrera
In Miami, Venezuela is a topic of discussion wrought with misplaced anger, confusion, and, more often than not, a passionate hatred for socialist movements. Yet in the Pacific Northwest, where we struggle to hold on to the little diversity we have, conversations about Venezuela are virtually nonexistent. Local history notwithstanding, it is of importance to anyone who considers themselves a leftist to have a basic understanding of the Venezuelan socialist project and the significance of the monumental achievement the Bolivarian Revolution has been for socialists, communists, and anarchists around the world.
While the narrative concerning the global south makes us reflexively refer to states like Venezuela as “poor countries,” Venezuela’s immense wealth, now in the hands of those seeking a radical program of wealth distribution and social justice, is part of what’s allowed the Bolivarian Revolution to make tremendous gains in the past 20 years. Under Presidents Chavez and Maduro, Mission Barrio Adentro, in partnership with Cuba, provides free medical service, including dental care and medicines, to poor Venezuelans. The educational mission programs range from literacy classes (Mission Robinson) to high school education (Mission Ribas) and university education (Mission Sucre), meaning education in Venezuela is now free from daycare to college. Gran Misión de la Vivienda (Great Housing Mission) has built over 2.5 million homes for low-income Venezuelans at below-market cost since 2011.
As noted in Truthout’s excellent article by Greg Palast entitled “In Venezuela, White Supremacy Is a Key Driver of the Coup,” even the CIA factbook can attest to the Revolution’s successes — even if they’re intentionally muted: “Social investment in Venezuela during the Chavez administration reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to about 27% in 2011, increased school enrollment, substantially decreased infant and child mortality, and improved access to potable water and sanitation through social investment.”
Yet the response to these gains has ranged from silence to criticism of Venezuela’s political process from textbook socialists (see Jacobin’s dismally uninformed 2017 article “Being Honest About Venezuela”). I use the phrase “textbook socialists” to denounce those who embrace Marxism as philosophy but not as practice. Because radical democracy is at the heart of our movement, it is downright foolish to assume such a project would unfold in perfect lockstep with any type of planning. As a labor unionist for years, I can personally attest to the messiness of democracy. And I assure everyone that after the revolution we will still have freaks and weirdos, people who thrive in chaos, emasculated capitalists, imperialists, racists and TERFs attempting to undermine our project at every turn. That is exactly why we as socialists have a political and moral obligation to support the Venezuelan people, especially since the Bolivarian Revolution is a movement driven by the Black and Mestiza/o community. To ascribe to a theory of a workers’ democracy defined by perfection and present only in one’s head is not just naïve, it is also counter to the prospect of both Marxist praxis and proletarian internationalism.
My question to fellow socialists is, if we are actively anti-racist and attempting to build a multiracial socialist movement, why would we not look to Venezuela?
In the words of Workers World Party secretary Larry Holmes, speaking at the one-month anniversary of the U.S.’s failed coup in Caracas: “Every time an oppressed people try to take control of their destiny it is akin to a slave revolt. And those who think they are the rulers of this world forever cannot allow that and they will do anything to stop it.” | https://medium.com/@dsaportlandoregon/socialism-outside-of-a-textbook-our-obligation-to-support-the-venezuelan-socialist-project-64922ce499e | ['Portland Dsa'] | 2019-06-09 23:31:01.947000+00:00 | ['Venezuela', 'Democratic Socialism', 'Socialism', 'Dsa', 'Internationalism'] |
Episode 09: The “Mentor” | 👩💻 Projects
Joe Pascavage ✍🏼
What kind of projects have you been working on recently?
Brandy
Recently I’ve been shifting to a higher level leadership role at Vox Media. We are going through some organizational change management after the merger of Vox Media and New York Magazine, combining our design, engineering, and product teams. My role is now at the center of a lot of those changes, working closely with product and engineering to articulate vision and change management. We are also preparing for some robust 2021 business goals and ensuring our teams are prepared to tackle that work for our family of editorial brands.
We are also excited about investing more in our audiences at Vox Media through our platform work. We have some ambitious goals for our reader experiences, and a lot of our 2021 work will focus on holistic enhancements and platform capabilities. These enormous projects require that everyone leverage their leadership skills to ensure solid communication and collaboration.
Joe Pascavage ✍🏼
How is your background playing a pivotal role in the success of these projects?
Brandy
Through building brands and experiences for B to C’s, I’ve developed a rich understanding of the indirect, yet strong benefit of brand affinity. When users love the brand and experiences you’ve made, the entire business grows.
Witnessing the effectiveness of empowering others, I’ve built a set of behaviors that I pull out on every project. Teaching leadership skills to others, coaching quality, and prioritizing clarity are the secret sauce to high-performing teams.
I’ve seen designers, often women, experience a certain kind of burnout, where they aren’t given psychological safety or trust. That can deflate their confidence, leading to underperformance. But when we as leaders protect that confidence, keep feedback loops tight, and share explicitly what success looks like, those designers often blossom, turning into strong leaders themselves and scaling our capabilities as a result.
Joe Pascavage ✍🏼
What is the most interesting or exciting project you’ve worked on?
Brandy
In recent history, the Mailchimp brand redesign stands out as a bright spot. I joined Mailchimp to lead the brand and marketing design teams. Within three months of starting, I was leading a full brand redesign with partner agency COLLINS, a full marketing site redesign and ad campaign with partner agency R/GA, and a design system evolution with my internal product partners. To usher the beloved brand into a new era was a privilege. I got to work with some of the smartest, most talented people and we pulled off an *enormous* feat filled with risks that paid off. | https://medium.com/get-interviewed/the-mentor-537e9bd85a04 | ['Joe Pascavage'] | 2021-01-29 02:39:42.858000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Management', 'Mentorship', 'Design', 'Design Leadership'] |
Super Cool Tips For Editing Your Videos For Instagram | Not at all like photographs, altering motion pictures or recordings is surely nothing to joke about. Without altering motion pictures, we would not have starts, middles, and endings. Motion pictures would be exhausting to watch on the grounds that there would not be any turns, etc. On account of the new Instagram update, individuals would now be able to transfer executioner recordings on the site. This component is particularly valuable for advertisers and publicists. Notwithstanding, to have the option to transfer executioner recordings that affect supporters, you need to alter them impeccably. Here are a few cool tips to assist you with editing your Instagram recordings:
Take recordings with your telephone
To have the option to transfer recordings on the site they must be on your cell phone. The quickest method for getting recordings on your telephone is to take them utilizing your telephone. You have a few choices with regards to making recordings with your telephone. You can take them utilizing your gadget’s local camera, an outsider video application, or inside the Instagram application. The most ideal decision is to utilize your telephone’s local camera in light of the fact that the recordings you take will be as per your telephone’s capacities. You will likewise have more opportunities to record the video than when utilizing the site.
Use changes to add validity to your videos for Instagram post cordings
Rather than having your video with uneven-like scenes or exchanging unexpectedly from one scene to another, you can utilize advances to move starting with one scene then onto the next. This will give your recordings a realistic and expert shine paying little mind to the gadget you are utilizing. An amazing method for accomplishing these advances is to utilize objects as dividers between two totally various shots. To do this, skillet your gadget’s camera evenly across the principal scene then, at that point, place a progress object toward its finish. The changed article can be without question, anything from sacks, trees, individuals, creatures, etc. When you dish the video partially through the item, cut that scene. Move to another area of your next scene then, at that point, place a similar article toward the start.
Change the profundity of field
Changing the profundity of field or pulling center in the films is the extravagant thing film editors do to get watchers to really focus on an explicit piece of the screen or even brighten up a specific second in the scene. You have seen this in a film when something on the frontal area drops out of concentration or an item behind the scenes out of nowhere comes into extremely sharp concentration. In any case, a change of profundity can likewise just mean maintaining the subject in the center as they move inside your shots.
How to make a video for Instagram with pictures
Interestingly, you can change the profundity of the field utilizing only your telephone in two basic ways. One way is tapping to the center. At the point when your gadget’s camera doesn’t offer a lot of profundity of field, focus on how the focal point of the shot changes as you move with the camera and tap the screen to zero in strongly on what you need. For a sensational profundity of field, utilize a fax telephone focal point. | https://medium.com/@cleroahardy44/super-cool-tips-for-editing-your-videos-for-instagram-ffce08f3dfbf | [] | 2021-12-18 06:42:56.806000+00:00 | ['Instagram Stories', 'Instagram Post Ideas', 'Instagram Marketing'] |
A history of the cloud and an outlook to edge computing (part 2; deep-dive) | Pre-2000s — the adoption of PCs and early internet
In summary (internet 1.0)
The internet use-case of the early 90s was seen as web 1.0. Websites were seen as 1-way stream of information from content creators to a static HTML web page. As web-pages across the internet were now accessible (due to TCP/IP and enabled by internet browsers), users could access web pages as they wished. A problem was that although the internet was filled with information/content, there needed to be some sort of way to filter the internet to find what one is searching for. Google was one of the early companies which understood this problem and effectively solved it by scraping and indexing all pages of the internet and then ranking which pages have the best match with a certain “search” phrase, largely based on the text on a web site. As user-friendly tools emerged for web-search and communication (AOL, MSN, e-mail), internet adoption rapidly grew with the overall adoption of PCs.
A. Growth in CPU processing power and storage
The original method of calculation was by hand or with human “computers” which would add up mathematical equations. This cumbersome task was replaced when we found that mainframe “computers” could carry out many of these computations for us. These mainframe computers became increasingly advanced, however, they remained large, clunky, and took up significant space in rooms. Even when mainframe servers improved, the advances in virtualisation were not there yet, which meant that 1 application could run on 1 server at a time — this meant that the server was running idle for a large portion of its time, making it highly expensive to have a mainframe server.
Source: Computerhistory.org
Computers in the 70/80s were expensive and could only be funded by large organisations or well-funded universities. One of the main reasons which led to such a high cost profile was that there was a low ROI on mainframe computers due to the high percentage of time it was idle and not being used. Compute costs were high as the early mainframes were not designed to be used by multiple users. Soon advances in a “time-share” system allowed a mainframe’s resources to be evenly split so that multiple users could use the computer’s resources in parallel. This already improved the utilisation of mainframe’s, however, the biggest improvement came in 1972 when IBM introduced its first virtual machine (VM), allowing them to virtualise all operations and share the mainframe’s resources flexibly depending on the requests of users. This meant that each user had a “virtual environment” where they could run their applications, independent of other users, which dramatically increased the ROI of mainframe’s as the utilisation improved. Cost of computing therefore decreased, opening the use-case to a greater number of organisations and universities.
Source: Macquarie Cloud Services
B. Decreased cost of chips leads to increased household PC penetration
The processing power of microchips increased significantly from the 80s onwards and throughout the 90s, which decreased the cost of computing power, making it possible to bring CPU processing to the masses via the personal computer (PC). The decreased costs of PCs led to a growth of homeowners buying PCs as well as business users adopting PCs and software that runs on the PCs (i.e. Microsoft Office). In 1990, the percentage of US households that had a computer was 15%, which grew to 70% by 2010. With a growing PC user base, the ROI on developing software became higher as the market of potential buyers was growing exponentially.
Percentage of US households with a personal computer
Source: Statista
C. Adoption of PCs and dot-com boom leads to new internet use-cases / business models
PCs were effective for running simple applications such as Microsoft Office (i.e. Word, Excel, Powerpoint), games, communication tools as well as web browsing. The interaction with the internet was primarily one-way wherein websites had information that PC users would read. There was limited 2-way interaction in the sense that PC users were not uploading documents (i.e. images, files, videos) to the internet as the bandwidth was too slow. This age can be seen as being (relatively) good in CPU power, but limited by slow dial-up internet speeds. The “killer apps” were messaging (AOL, MSN), Microsoft Word/Powerpoint/Excel and basic browsing to find information online.
Source: The Verge
D. Network is improved to cater to new software use-cases
The Merriam-Webster definition of network is “an interconnected or interrelated chain, group, or system”. In today’s world it is an interconnected group of computers, linked by cables which, transmit electric signals. However, pre-computer days we had physical networks — enabled by railroads. In the early 1900s the United States embarked on a quest to link the east and west-coast to improve communications and to more effectively transport goods. Underneath the railroad tracks were simple cables, which were used to transmit signals from railway station to the next railway station (i.e. train has left, arriving soon, etc). Soon railway owners learned that the ability to send signals through the cables alongside the railroad tracks had commercial value — which they soon started selling to corporates. Many railway owners found it a highly profitable business to sell the capacity of their cables (which were laying alongside/underneath the railroad tracks). Railway owners invested in better cables, charged higher prices, and the rest is history as many switched towards becoming telecom businesses. SPRINT is a leading telecom company in the United States today, however it was originally a railway company called Southern Pacific Railroad. The map below shows that the cables alongside railway tracks kept getting improved and slowly started forming the backbone of the US cable networks. The image below shows a nearly 1-to-1 match of todays cable networks with the original railroads, which made sense due to the land that was already leveled and cleared.
Source: ParabolicArc
Despite an increase in computing capacity, networks were still limited by their overall reach and protocol standards. The standardization of network protocols (TCP/IP) was one of the most important steps in the overall development of the internet as we know it today. The origin of the internet comes from ARPANET, which was initially an initiative from the US Department of Defense to distribute information in the event of an attack on a central node (information broker) in the network. The idea to spread information was further developed and led to universities establishing an early network as depicted below.
Source: Wiki History of Internet
Over the years, ARPANET grew with more nodes and endpoints being connected over the network. Furthermore, multiple networks started being formed, which raised the question as to how they would all communicate with each other.
Source: Wikipedia
With the implementation of TCP/IP protocol, a standard protocol was developed for communication across multiple networks. This meant that a single network-of-networks was formed — which became to be known as the internet. Although the network could now communicate effectively with each other, this was still not the internet as we know it today as there was no browsable web. In 1989 a British researcher at CERN developed a way to link a hypertext document to an information system, which any member (node) of the network could have access to. This was the origin of the world-wide-web as we know it today, allowing us to navigate to websites.
2001–2010s — the adoption of PCs and smartphones
Improvements in network speeds change user online behaviour
As the number of users on the internet increased significantly, the (increasing) network value of the internet became obvious. Social media platforms popped up and rose quickly in popularity. Social media platforms were only made possible when the quality of the network improved so that it was now also possible for user-generated content and for richer media to be uploaded/downloaded by users. Users uploading pictures and having songs on their “page” was a highly popular feature — enabled by improvements in the network. The internet changed from a 1-way flow of content from companies to users (read-only information) to a 2-way flow where internet users were also contributing content (i.e. posts, pictures, videos). As the internet network rolled out and improved to 3G and then to 4G, increasingly rich content could be streamed and sent with low latency across the internet to enable use-cases such as YouTube and ultimately Netflix.
In 2001, with 3G networks, peak data transfer speed was ~2MB per seconds. By 2010, with the roll-out of 4G networks the network speed increased by 50x to 100MB per second at peak speeds.
Source: CTIA
Nielsen’s law predicts consistent growth in network bandwidth
Nielsen’s law of internet bandwidth states that a high-end user’s connection speed grows by 50% per year — which has held true from 1984 to 2019. The rate of internet speed development grows c. 10% lower than Moore’s law, which grows at c. 60% per year. The chart below shows a log scale of how many bits per second can be transferred across the internet.
Source: NNGroup
Low-latency network enables cloud-based servers
Due to the exponential rise of internet users (desktop and mobile), more companies shifted their business models to cater to online users. The processing power (CPU) for running the website and the company’s software came largely from on-premise servers, which each company managed themselves. In practical terms, this meant organisations typically had a large server room in the basement, where they would have all of the servers running. A key problem for companies was that managing their own servers was not their core-business and it was expensive as the servers were not being used to their full utilisation. Sometimes utilisation of servers was as low as 15% (source: Macquarie Cloud Service). Companies started looking for ways to outsource the management of their servers to others (i.e. datacenters), which ultimately led to centralised cloud service providers. By outsourcing server (CPU) to a 3rd party, a company does not need to invest upfront to buy servers. A company can now rent CPU processing power on a pay-as-you-go basis from cloud providers. For cloud providers, this model is also attractive due to the advances in virtualisation as they can offer multiple companies a piece of the same server — significantly improving the utilisation of each server. Hosting software and websites on 3rd party servers was only possible due to the significant improvements in network infrastructure, which meant that companies could trust that 3rd party cloud was reliable, safe, and had low latency (time required to send from server to end-user).
Source: SpiceWorks
Smartphones exponentially increase the number of internet users
As microchips continued getting smaller and being able to handle greater workloads, we reached a point where they were small enough to fit into a phone-device that could fit into a pocket. In 2007, with the launch of Apple’s iPhone, we would enter a new age based on capability and internet reach at our fingertips. From 1990 to 2007, the percentage of households with a computer grew from 15% to 70%. Few predicted that the adaptation of smartphones would grow at an even faster pace. Global adoption of smartphones grew +11x from 124 million in 2007 to 1.4 billion by 2015.
Source: Gartner, IDC, Apple
Cloud-based (high powered) servers enable new business models | https://medium.com/@cloudyinvestor/a-history-of-the-cloud-and-an-outlook-to-edge-computing-part-3-fec91f0a4b2d | [] | 2020-12-28 16:15:56.703000+00:00 | ['Cloud Computing', 'Future Technology', 'Cloud', 'History Of Technology', 'Edge Computing'] |
This list summarizes the top 10 mistakes that Java developers frequently make. | TOP 10 MISTAKES JAVA DEVELOPER MAKES
This list summarizes the top 10 mistakes that Java developers frequently make.
#1. Convert Array to ArrayList
To convert an array to an ArrayList , developers often do this:
List<String> list = Arrays.asList(arr);
Arrays.asList() will return an ArrayList which is a private static class inside Arrays , it is not the java.util.ArrayList class. The java.util.Arrays.ArrayList class has set() , get() , contains() methods, but does not have any methods for adding elements, so its size is fixed. To create a real ArrayList , you should do:
ArrayList<String> arrayList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(arr));
The constructor of ArrayList can accept a Collection type, which is also a super type for java.util.Arrays.ArrayList .
#2. Check If an Array Contains a Value
Developers often do:
Set<String> set = new HashSet<String>(Arrays.asList(arr));
return set.contains(targetValue);
The code works, but there is no need to convert a list to set first. Converting a list to a set requires extra time. It can as simple as:
Arrays.asList(arr).contains(targetValue);
or
for(String s: arr){
if(s.equals(targetValue))
return true;
}
return false;
The first one is more readable than the second one.
#3. Remove an Element from a List Inside a Loop
Consider the following code which removes elements during iteration:
ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("a", "b", "c", "d"));
for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
list.remove(i);
}
System.out.println(list);
The output is:
[b, d]
There is a serious problem in this method. When an element is removed, the size of the list shrinks and the index changes. So if you want to delete multiple elements inside a loop by using the index, that will not work properly.
You may know that using iterator is the right way to delete elements inside loops, and you know for each loop in Java works like an iterator, but actually it is not. Consider the following code:
ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("a", "b", "c", "d"));
for (String s : list) {
if (s.equals("a"))
list.remove(s);
}
It will throw out concurrentmodificationexception.
Instead the following is OK:
ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("a", "b", "c", "d"));
Iterator<String> iter = list.iterator();
while (iter.hasNext()) {
String s = iter.next();
if (s.equals("a")) {
iter.remove();
}
}
.next() must be called before .remove() . In the foreach loop, compiler will make the .next() called after the operation of removing element, which caused the ConcurrentModificationException . You may want to take a look at the source code of ArrayList.iterator().
#4. Hashtable vs HashMap
By conventions in algorithm, Hashtable is the name of the data structure. But in Java, the data structure’s name is HashMap . One of the key differences between Hashtable and HashMap is that Hashtable is synchronized. So very often you don't need Hashtable , instead HashMap should be used.
HashMap vs. TreeMap vs. Hashtable vs. LinkedHashMap
Top 10 questions about Map
#5. Use Raw Type of Collection
In Java, raw type and unbounded wildcard type are easy to mixed together. Take Set for example, Set is raw type, while Set<?> is unbounded wildcard type.
Consider the following code which uses a raw type List as a parameter:
public static void add(List list, Object o){
list.add(o);
}
public static void main(String[] args){
List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
add(list, 10);
String s = list.get(0);
}
This code will throw an exception:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.Integer cannot be cast to java.lang.String
at ...
Using raw type collection is dangerous as the raw type collections skip the generic type checking and not safe. There are huge differences between Set , Set<?> , and Set<Object> . Check out
Raw type vs. Unbounded wildcard and Type Erasure.
#6. Access Level
Very often developers use public for class field. It is easy to get the field value by directly referencing, but this is a very bad design. The rule of thumb is giving access level for members as low as possible.
public, default, protected, and private
#7. ArrayList vs. LinkedList
When developers do not know the difference between ArrayList and LinkedList , they often use ArrayList , because it looks familiar. However, there is a huge performance difference between them. In brief, LinkedList should be preferred if there are a large number of add/remove operations and there are not a lot of random access operations. Check out ArrayList vs. LinkedList to get more information about their performance if this is new to you.
#8. Mutable vs. Immutable
Immutable objects have many advantages such simplicity, safety, etc. But it requires a separate object for each distinct value, and too many objects might cause high cost of garbage collection. There should be a balance when choosing between mutable and immutable.
In general, mutable objects are used to avoid producing too many intermediate objects. One classic example is concatenating a large number of strings. If you use an immutable string, you would produce a lot of objects that are eligible for garbage collection immediately. This wastes time and energy on the CPU, using a mutable object the right solution (e.g. StringBuilder ).
String result="";
for(String s: arr){
result = result + s;
}
There are other situations when mutable objects are desirable. For example passing mutable objects into methods lets you collect multiple results without jumping through too many syntactic hoops. Another example is sorting and filtering: of course, you could make a method that takes the original collection, and returns a sorted one, but that would become extremely wasteful for larger collections. (From dasblinkenlight’s answer on Stack Overflow)
Why String is Immutable?
#9. Constructor of Super and Sub
This compilation error occurs because the default super constructor is undefined. In Java, if a class does not define a constructor, compiler will insert a default no-argument constructor for the class by default. If a constructor is defined in Super class, in this case Super(String s), compiler will not insert the default no-argument constructor. This is the situation for the Super class .
The constructors of the Sub class, either with-argument or no-argument, will call the no-argument Super constructor. Since compiler tries to insert super() to the 2 constructors in the Sub class, but the Super’s default constructor is not defined, compiler reports the error message.
To fix this problem, simply
1) add a Super() constructor to the Super class like
public Super(){
System.out.println("Super");
}
2) remove the self-defined Super constructor
3) add super(value) to sub constructors.
#10. “” or Constructor?
String can be created by two ways:
//1. use double quotes
String x = "abc";
//2. use constructor
String y = new String("abc");
What is the difference?
The following examples can provide a quick answer: | https://medium.com/@jones.chrismale/this-list-summarizes-the-top-10-mistakes-that-java-developers-frequently-make-c6381e765e6b | ['Chris Jones'] | 2019-03-19 18:46:15.205000+00:00 | ['Developer', 'Java Programming', 'Arrays', 'Backend Development', 'Programming'] |
Dear Hiring Manager, Please Stop Using Take-Home Assignments! | Dear Hiring Manager, Please Stop Using Take-Home Assignments!
Opinion on what you could use in data science/analyst interviews instead.
Photo by Headway on Unsplash
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are my own and not related to my employer in any way.
Data Science and Data Analytics are some of the hottest jobs on the market going into 2021. The field is so popular and job descriptions so broad that most job openings receive hundreds or even thousands of applicants because most men know they can apply to a position even when they don’t meet 100% of the requirements [Link]. For some reason, women are more conservative [Link].
With so many applications pouring in and Data Science/Analytics being new fields in many of these companies, hiring managers have resorted to using the dreaded “take-home” assignment to screen candidates.
In a take-home assignment, the candidate is given a dataset and, in most cases, given a blank cheque to come up with whatever insights he/she can find from the data.
Why Take-Home assignments are a terrible idea:
Your best candidates don’t have the time.
So much to do, so little time. Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
Think about it. Aren’t your current high performers the most hard-working bunch of people? The same goes for your prospective candidates. If he/she is a high performer in their current company, they would be loaded with work and working hard at their current job. They wouldn’t be able to spare the 10+ hours take-home assignments take on average [Link]. As a result, their take-home assignment might not look as polished as an average performer from the same company who has more time on their hands. I’m sure all hiring managers want to hire top performers, so why put them at a disadvantage during your interview process?
In business, goals are seldom vague and undefined.
Blur goals, blur results. Photo by Gabriel Santiago on Unsplash
Many, if not all, take-home assignments do not specify a concrete goal but rather take a “do-what-you-can” approach. This is an inferior way of evaluating prospective candidates unless your business also operates in such massive grey areas. For the most part, business goals are concrete. Increase revenue by X amount, or hit a minimum accuracy of Y% with your model, etc. Having vague and undefined goals hurt you because
It sends the message you don’t know what you are looking for, a big red flag for high-performing candidates. It hurts your company’s image when you reject a candidate without a concrete reason. Top candidates take massive pride in their work and want their time to be respected. If you can throw away 10+ hours of someone’s time with a simple “not a right fit” response, it speaks volumes of how much you might value their time as an employee later on.
It is discriminatory
Challenge of working parents. Photo by Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash
I’m a father to a toddler, a husband, and a son to an elderly parent. Take-home assignments discriminate against people with any responsibility in life outside of work. They are especially discriminatory against women with kids because most kids want their “mom” for some reason or the other every 5 minutes. This makes it incredibly difficult for working mothers to take time at home to work on your take-home assignment for 10+ hours, which could make their submission look inferior and worsen the gender gap already plaguing technology teams.
For these reasons, I don’t think any hiring manager should use a take-home assignment as part of their hiring process. If you are using one, I highly recommend considering some of the alternatives I propose below to maximize your potential of hiring the best, high performing candidate.
Here’s what you can do instead of Take-Home assignments:
Narrow your Job Description (JD)
Focus! Photo by photo-nic.co.uk nic on Unsplash
Many Data Scientist/Analyst Job Descriptions go like this: Proficiency in Python, R, Java, C++, Scala, Scientific computing (Pandas, Numpy, Tensorflow, Pytorch, OpenCV, Sklearn), Big Data (Hadoop, Hive, Spark, MapReduce), ETL, Databases (MS SQL, Oracle, MySQL, Teradata, BigQuery), No SQL (HBASE, Cassandra, MongoDB), Dashboarding (Tableau, PowerBI), Cloud computing (AWS, GCP, Azure), ElasticSearch, Kubernetes, even some web development (Angular, Node, etc.) The issue with such wide JDs is that you will get many applicants who dilute the best candidates you are looking for.
In my opinion, a better alternative is to look at the composition of your current team and post multiple JDs, each having a strong focus in one area. I’m sure not a single person on your current team knows all these technologies with the level of proficiency that you are expecting to hire for. Instead, you’ll have some folk that knows Python and Scientific Computing. Some others that are good in Databases and Cloud computing, some dashboarding experts, and so on. Why not split your JD into three JDs to reflect these lines as well? In that way, the candidates that apply will also be focussed on the areas you want to hire, and easier for you to shortlist good candidates, reducing the need for a take-home screening stage.
GitHub portfolio review
Portfolio Review. Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
Most real-world Data Science work takes weeks, if not months. To confidently assess a candidate’s capability to tackle real-world problems over an extended period of time, make it necessary for applicants to share their Github (or any other code repository profile) as a portfolio. For Data Analysts, you could request for their Tableau Public or any other published work. This is a much better way to assess their capability to tackle real-world problems since this kind of portfolio cannot be built overnight. Also, it helps you assess if a candidate has version control knowledge, which is absolutely critical in large scale collaborative data projects!
Publications/Kaggle projects review
Publications. Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Instead of a Github portfolio review, if your candidate has published work, you could assess that too! Papers, conferences, journals, medium posts, Kaggle projects, etc., are examples of what you can review to get a sense of the candidate’s technical and problem-solving skills.
Online Coding Test
Coding test. Photo by Danial RiCaRoS on Unsplash
I like this format because it is both time-bound and the task’s goal is clear. Various online testing platforms like HackerRank and Codility are popular these days to set up a concise coding test to assess your potential candidates’ programming and problem-solving skills. Feedback is instantaneous, and the candidate walks away with a sense of accomplishment. If you cannot spend the time to review someone’s Github profile or Publications, an Online Coding test can be a suitable alternative.
Peer and/or Stakeholder Interview
Peer Interview. Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash
Most Data Science and Data Analyst work are highly collaborative. It would be best to have people that are not only technically strong but also good communicators and work well with others. Soft skills are more important than what an individual can achieve on their own in 10 hours on a take-home assignment [Link]. Hence, a peer and/or a stakeholder interview is a game-changer for data science/analyst interviews to find people with the right fit.
That’s my opinion on this topic. As much as it being unfair and candidates hating it, take-home assignments stubbornly refuse to go away due to the difficulty in assessing a data professional’s capability. However, I hope more and more hiring managers can move away from this practice with these suggestions. Whether you agree or disagree with me, I hope to have an open conversation about this topic.
The first step towards solving a problem is to acknowledge it exists.
As always, thank you for reading! | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/dear-hiring-manager-please-stop-using-take-home-assignments-fa0ebae0a4e0 | ['Marie Stephen Leo'] | 2020-11-29 13:02:55.113000+00:00 | ['Hiring', 'Data Analysis', 'Interview', 'Data Science', 'Programming'] |
Spartans set new record for Code4rena audit contest participation | Code4rena audit contests hit a high water mark this week, with the Spartan Protocol contest drawing over 20 security researchers submitting over 220 security issues in competing for their share of the $80,000 USDC pool.
(Typical contests in the past have run 5–12 competitors generating 50–150 security findings.)
The contest’s security issues are being reviewed by the Spartan Protocol team and soon will head to judging prior to awarding the $80,000 USDC.
Not a bug bounty, an audit contest
Unlike bug bounty programs, there’s no spec work in Code4rena’s audit contests.
Projects are typically seeking audits on fresh code so there’s definitely vulnerabilities to be found for security researchers and solidity devs of a wide range of skill levels. And if a researcher submits a valid bug during the contest they’ll get paid for it —even if someone else submits the same bug first.
Big money bug hunt
With the audit contest format, researchers are getting paid well. C4 has now paid out $750,000 in awards.
Based on awards from our first four months of contests:
Code4rena’s #1 and #2 wardens — cmichel and 0xRajeev — are about to pass $200,000 and $150,000 in total earnings.
and in total earnings. The top 5 have earned over $80,000 each.
The top 50% have earned over $15,000 each— and some of those wardens have only competed in a handful of contests.
Results on the money
Sponsors have been happy with the results, too.
“This result far exceeded previous experiences I’ve had with 2–4 week-long audits by individual companies. I highly recommend the Code 423n4 competitive audit approach for anyone starting a new project and propose that we use it again in the future as we roll out new smart contracts.” — LSDan, ElasticDAO
Oh and Code4rena audit contests tend to be faster to book, too!
“There was really great feedback. Can’t get audits done this quickly even in a bear market. We’ll definitely be back!” — Layne, Connext
Want to sponsor a contest reviewing your smart contracts or participate as a researcher in an upcoming contest?
We presently have open windows on our schedule as soon as next week.
Just hop into Discord and say #i-want-to-be-a-sponsor. If you’re looking to compete, just howl #i-want-to-be-a-warden in our community chat. | https://medium.com/code-423n4/spartans-set-new-record-for-code4rena-audit-contest-participation-93c481d11b20 | [] | 2021-07-22 23:06:12.400000+00:00 | ['Solidity', 'Security Audit', 'Ethereum', 'Security', 'Bounty Program'] |
The Essence of Supervised Machine Learning | The Essence of Supervised Machine Learning
Two of the first computer programmers, programming the ENIAC computer, the first general-purpose digital computer, in operation from 1946 through 1955. Based on a public domain U.S. Army Photo from http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/.
The Machine
The ability to forecast the unknown is a skill in demand. Consider the future. From a business perspective, to make effective decisions today, managers need to know what will likely happen next week, next quarter, or next year. The better we predict, the better we can plan, and the better we can prevent problems from occurring. The forecasted variable could be inventory level for a particular SKU, mortgage interest rate, shipment time, demand for a product, customer churn (loss), housing prices, employee turnover, population size, percentage of quality shipped parts, and many, many other possibilities.
How to create a forecast? Learn how variables with known values relate to the variable with the unknown value to forecast. The intrigue is that a machine can now learn these relationships.
A machine? The word machine applied here is a trendy, almost cute, but effective reference to programmed instructions running on a computer.
Machine: A computer that runs a procedure according to programmed instructions to accomplish a given task, such as learning.
People have always learned. Now machines can learn.
As applied here, learning proceeds from searching for patterns of related information from many existing examples of data. Except instead of you searching for these patterns from the data, the machine does the searching. And guess what? Given its staggeringly massive superiority in data processing speed, the machine can uncover some patterns much more effectively than can people. That is why we need the machine’s help.
Machine learning: Instruct the machine to identify patterns inherent in data.
For example, as your phone’s computer searches your stored photographs to find those that contain you, the color of your hair helps distinguish you from your friend.
Prediction Equation
Patterns apply to many types of content. A person’s height, for example, can predict, i.e., forecast, their weight, albeit, as with most prediction, imperfectly. These discovered relationship patterns provide the basis for a specific type of machine learning.
Supervised machine learning: Methods to develop the best possible forecast of a value of the variable of interest from the related pattern of values with other variables.
The machine expresses its learning as one or more equations that transform the related information into a forecast. Recently developed learning algorithms such as neural networks are complex, sometimes with thousands of equations from which to estimate weights. The most straightforward forecast naturally follows from a single equation, illustrated here.
Model: A prediction equation that computes the value of the forecasted variable from the values of other variables.
The prediction equation is a recipe that transforms a set of entered numeric values into a forecasted value, as illustrated in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1: Forecast from information entered into a prediction equation.
To apply the equation, enter the related information, then compute the forecasted value.
Consider an example of an online clothing retailer who must correctly size the garment for a customer not present to verify fit. Returns annoy the customer and vaporize the profit margin for the retailer. Unfortunately, the customer sometimes omits from the online order form crucial measurements needed to fit a garment properly. If the customer omits their weight from the order, the retailer wishes to predict this unknown value from the measurements the customer did provide.
Both a person’s height and chest size relate to their weight. Leveraging these relationships, the retailer’s analyst first specifies a general form of the model. One popular choice is a model defined as a weighted sum of the variables, here height and chest size, plus a constant, what is called a linear relationship. What are the weights that optimize forecasting accuracy of a customer’s weight? That discovery is the machine’s job.
For simplicity, this initial model derived from the data analysis in this example applies only to their male customers.
Predicted Weight=3.80(Height)+7.32(Chest)−386.22
From examining the existing data values for each male customer’s height, chest size and weight, the machine learned the underlying weighted sum relationship. The machine estimated values of 3.80 and 7.32 for the respective weights of the two variables, plus the constant term of -386.22.
To apply the machine’s prediction model to a specific customer’s height and chest measurements, enter the corresponding data values, the measurements, into the equation in place of the variable names. Suppose the customer reports a height of 68 inches and a chest measurement of 35 inches, illustrated in Figure 1.2.
Figure 1.2: Forecast from information entered into the prediction equation.
The forecasting model computes a specific number, the forecast, from the specific values for each of the variables entered into the prediction equation. For a person 66 inches tall with a chest measurement of 36 inches, forecasted weight is 128.10 lbs.
Variables
The forecasting process begins with the choice of variable to forecast.
Target: The variable with the values to forecast.
Generically refer to the target variable as y, which assumes a specific variable name in a specific application, such as customer weight in the previous example. In traditional statistics, refer to the same y as the response variable or dependent variable, among other names.
From what information does the forecast of the value of the target, y, proceed? In the online clothing retailer example, enter a customer’s height and chest size into the model to calculate the forecast.
Feature: One of the one or more variables from which to predict the value of the target variable.
Generically refer to the variables from which to compute the forecast as X, uppercase to denote that typically X consists of more than one feature: x1, x2, etc. Traditional references to the X variables include predictor variables, independent variables, or explanatory variables.
The variables of interest for supervised machine learning models span a wide variety of applications. Table 1.1 lists some business forecasting scenarios, each with three predictor variables. Some of the target variables are continuous, measured on a quantitative scale. The values of other target variables in Table 1.1 are labels, where each label defines a single category.
The many applications of machine learning contribute to its increasingly widespread use.
Data
To begin the model development process, gather data for all the variables in the model. For computer analysis, organize the data into a table, such as in Figure 1.3, perhaps using a standard worksheet app such as Microsoft Excel, or the free and open-source LibreOffice Calc. List the data values for each variable in a single column. List the data values for each customer, in this example, in a single row.
Example: A row of data that contains the data values for the variables in the model for a specific person, company, region, or whatever the unit of analysis.
Figure 1.3: Excerpt from the full data table input into a machine learning algorithm to learn a prediction equation of male customer weight from height and chest size.
The ten rows of data shown in Figure 1.3, one row per customer, are illustrative only. In practice, provide many more examples from which the machine can learn. Also, be aware that the language that describes the data table is not always consistent. Other names for a data example, a row of data in a data table, include sample, instance, observation, and case.
After reading the data into your chosen machine learning application, such as provided by open-source and free R or Python, estimate the model with your chosen machine learning algorithm. Deriving the prediction equation(s) precedes actual forecasting. The purpose of this initial step is not to forecast as the values of y are already known from the data table. Instead, the (estimation algorithm implemented on the) machine learns the relationship between the X variables and the known values of y from the provided data.
Training data: Data from which the machine learns the relationships among all the variables in the model to construct a prediction equation.
To continue the trendy anthropomorphic wording, we want the machine to learn enough to fully understand whatever relationship exists between y and X. The resulting forecasting will not be perfect, but hopefully good enough to be useful.
Learn
The machine learns the patterns that relate the features to the target, expressed as a model. We inform the machine of only the general form of the model before learning begins. From this general form, such as a weighted sum in our online clothing retailer example, the machine analyzes the example training data to construct a specific model by estimating values of the weights. These weights optimize some aspect of forecasting accuracy, at least as it applies to the training data from which the model was derived.
We do not directly teach the machine.
The (estimation algorithm implemented on the) machine learns not by instruction, but by example.
The machine learning software provides the instructions for the machine to learn by analyzing the examples.
For each row of the training data, the learning algorithm relates the values of the features to the value of the corresponding target. The value of the target variable for any row of data is the correct answer, the value of y. The target variable provides the “supervision” that guides pattern discovery in the data related to it. Machine learning algorithms choose weights for the features so that, averaged across all the examples, the values of y computed from the model are as close to the actual values of y as possible.
Fitted value: Estimated value of the target variable computed from the prediction equation, the model.
For each example, the comparison of this fitted value to the corresponding actual value becomes the basis for the machine learning the relationships.
Error: Difference between the actual value of the target variable, and the value of the target fitted by the model.
The fitted value from the training data is not a forecast. The learning algorithm must know the correct answer for each of many examples. On the contrary, forecasting applies to unknown values.
The machine generally discovers relationships by trial and error, applying a process called gradient descent. The algorithm examines each example of data to relate the X variables to y. The algorithm, based upon the form of the model decided by the analyst, then tries various specific values for the weights across a series of successive steps. It revises the weights at each step, always obtaining less overall error for all the examples at each successive step. At some point, the machine concludes it cannot find a set of weights that result in a meaningful amount of less error than already obtained, such as the weights 3.80, 7.32, and -386.22 in our clothing example.
There are many possibilities for the machine to learn from the data. Choose from many different:
Types of models such as linear regression and non-linear regression, support vector machines, random forests, and neural networks.
Solution algorithms to estimate the weights of the given model.
Specific settings chosen for the solution algorithm, each of which can be tuned to potentially obtain better forecasting performance.
To learn how to do machine learning is to learn how to invoke these different types of models, estimation algorithms, and their associated settings, to derive the most effective forecasting model from a given set of data. An expert in machine learning understands all of these models and corresponding algorithms, how to implement them for computer analysis, how to best tune each procedure to obtain the best performance, and then ultimately deploy the learned model to the relevant forecasting setting. To attain a high level of expertise requires much practice and some mathematical training to better understand how the different procedures work for more effective tuning.
Perhaps other algorithms or functional forms or features would have lead to a more useful forecasting model in our online retail clothing example. Under the functional form imposed by the analyst, however, and given the chosen estimation algorithm, the resulting estimated weights — 3.80, 7.32, and -386.22 — minimize some function of the errors as applied to the training data.
Test
Teachers test students on their learning. The analyst tests the machine on its learning. People, and now machines, can try to learn, but was the learning successful? Maybe the person or machine could not apply a successful learning strategy, or maybe there was nothing there to learn, randomness rather than structure.
To validate an obtained model, test what the machine has learned on new examples, on previously unseen data. What is the source of this unseen data?
Testing data: A split of the original data held back from model estimation to test how well the machine can forecast from new data.
The machine already knows the values of y for the training data. The analyst knows the values of y for each set of example values of X in the testing data, but not the machine. When the model is applied to generate real-world predictions, neither the machine nor the analyst knows the value of y. Hence, the need for a prediction, or forecast.
Forecast: The fitted value the model computed from the values of the features with an unknown value of y.
Splitting the original data into training and testing data sets is a fundamental concept of data science. As with the training data, define an error as the difference between the actual value of y, and the model’s fitted value, the comparison of what is with what the model specifies to be.
Figure 1.4 illustrates a true forecast, where the true value of the target varaible is unknown.
Figure 1.4: Input a customer’s height and chest size into the model to forecast his unknown weight.
The need to evaluate the model with new data reveals an essential, but sobering, reality of machine learning. Eventually the unknown value of y will become known, and the associated error computed. The error from a forecast applied to new data, a true forecast, averages higher than the error from the model applied to the data from which the model was estimated, already knowing the answer.
The learning (estimation) process is biased in favor of its training data. The problem is that random variations across samples, sampling error, ensures that every sample is different.
Overfitting: The forecasting model fits the training data too well, reflecting random perturbations of the training data sample that do not generalize to new samples.
An overfit model can compute values of the target that nicely match the true values of the already known training data, and then fail miserably when forecasting new data. The goal is not to develop a model that minimizes the errors on the training data, but instead minimizes the errors on the testing data.
In pursuit of a continually better fit, the analyst may adjust and re-adjust the learning process and the model itself, running and revising the learning procedure over and over on the same training data. To assess forecasting accuracy by applying the model to the testing data is freedom. The analyst may freely tune the learning process with repeated modifications on the training data with one strong caveat: Test the final model on new data. A model cannot be properly tested on data for which it has been trained.
Do It
Model construction follows a general procedure. Regardless of the specific model and the particular implementation of a learning algorithm, the overall forecasting process remains the same.
Prepare: Gather, clean, transform data as needed, then split the data. Learn: Train the model on some of the data. Validate: With the remaining data, calculate the forecasted values and match to the true values. Deploy: If validated with sufficient accuracy, apply the model to real-world forecasting.
Our focus here has been Steps 2 and 3, the learning phase and the subsequent testing phase. What may be the easiest way to implement some machine learning algorithms is with the functions Regression() , for forecasting a continuous target variable, and Logit() , for forecasting a categorical target variable. Find these functions in my lessR package for the R data analysis system. To use these functions requires no programming expertise in R, Python, or anything else. Download the needed software, then just follow the following simple function calls to train and validate a model.
Run R by itself, or within RStudio.
Download R. Choose Windows, or Mac (click on the link several paragraphs down the page, left-hand margin).
(Optional) Download RStudio. Choose the first option, RStudio Desktop, Open Source License.
To access functions from the lessR package, first download those functions from the official R servers. One time only, when running R, enter the following to download.
install.packages("lessR")
You will download the lessR functions and data sets, plus several dependent packages, all automatically.
From then on, to begin each R session load the lessR functions with the library function.
library("lessR")
In this example, read the data from one of the built-in lessR data sets, named Employee — handy if you want to have some fun, need some data, and are off the Internet. To read any Excel or csv (or SPSS or SAS) data set from the web, simply insert the full URL between the quotes in the lessR Read() function. To browse for a data file on your computer system, just enter the two quotes with nothing in-between. Or enter a path name.
Here read the Employee data into the d data frame, which is the default data frame for the lessR analysis functions. (To see more detail regarding this data set, see my medium article on constructing bar charts with lessR.)
d = Read("Employee")
The Read() function displays all the variable names, sample data values for each variable, and more information. The Employee data set contains variables Salary for annual salary in USD, Years worked at the company, and Pre, a score on a pre-test before some skill-based training was implemented. Here use Years and Pre as features to forecast the target Salary.
Regression(Salary ~ Years + Pre, kfold=3)
The result is a complete regression analysis, with parameter estimates and corresponding hypothesis tests and confidence intervals, various fit indices, data visualizations, forecasted values, an outlier analysis, and multi-collinearity analysis. Perhaps this is the most complete analysis available with such a simple function call available in the R and Python software ecosystems.
The kfold parameter specifies for the analysis of three different randomly selected training/testing data sets, what is called cross-validation. The average value of R-squared across the three training sets provides a summary of the fit on the testing data sets.
Apply the Logit() function similarly, though the kfold option is not yet available. The function does, however, provide the confusion matrix for analysis of classification errors into the given categories, along with several classification fit indices. In this example, predict Gender from the value of Salary.
Logit(Gender ~ Salary)
Three lines of code for doing machine learning with one of two classic learning (estimation) algorithms, traditional least-squares regression analysis or traditional logistic regression for forecasting categories. If you wish to become more expert in machine learning, probably the best way forward is to explore the scikit-learn package in the Python data ecosystem, which provides a wide range of learning algorithms. But these two lessR functions provide the easiest way to get started, and their estimation algorithms, although simpler than more recently developed methods such as neural networks, are often sufficiently, if not surprisingly, robust.
To learn more about lessR and other analysis/visualization systems, check out my 2020 book from CRC Press, R Visualizations: Derive Meaning from Data. | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-essence-of-supervised-machine-learning-ec8dbbb49a75 | ['David Gerbing'] | 2021-02-07 12:22:00.842000+00:00 | ['Regression Analysis', 'Logistic Regression', 'Forecasting Models', 'Machine Learning'] |
Wyze Labs shakes up home security with an inexpensive pro service for 2021 | Wyze Labs shakes up home security with an inexpensive pro service for 2021 Joshua Dec 18, 2020·3 min read
Wyze Labs is shaking up yet another market with an incredibly inexpensive product and service offering. The company is taking preorders on a home security system with professional monitoring for just $60 per year that will be delivered in March 2021—and buyers will get the basic starter kit for free.
Customers who don’t want to commit to a full year of service will be given the option to pay $60 for the starter kit and $5 per month for the service. Either way, the monitoring service—which will be provided by a third party, Noonlight—will cost exactly half what Ring charges customers who opt in to monitoring for its Ring Alarm product line. And a similar Ring Alarm starter kit costs $200 (although they’re currently on sale for less).
Wyze Labs Users will arm and disarm the system using either the Wyze app or this keypad.
Mentioned in this article Wyze Cam v3 Read TechHive's review$19.99MSRP $19.99See iton Wyze Labs A Noonlight dispatcher will be notified when the system goes into an alarm state, and the dispatcher will attempt to contact the subscriber and coordinate help from first responders (police, fire, or ambulance) if there’s an emergency, including routing information to the appropriate 911 call center. If the subscriber can’t be reached, Noonlight will automatically summon an emergency response to the subscriber’s home.
The Wyze Home Monitoring Core Starter Kit will include a Wyze Sense V2 hub (the brains of the system and the bridge to your home network), a Wyze Sense keypad (for arming/disarming the system), two Wyze Sense V2 entry sensors (for doors or windows), and a Wyze Sense V2 motion sensor. The hub will operate on AC power with a battery backup good for about 10 hours. It will connect to your home network via ethernet or 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only), though it also supports Bluetooth 4.1 and Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1.
[ Further reading: The best smart home systems ]The system can be armed and disarmed from the keypad or via the Wyze app on a mobile device. The system will have Home and Away monitoring modes, so that the motion sensor won’t trigger an alarm while you’re home. The hub will have an 82dB siren onboard, which doesn’t strike us as very loud (the Ring Alarm siren puts out 105dB, and even that isn’t as loud as you might want). Perhaps more importantly, the Wyze hub doesn’t have an LTE radio onboard, so there’s no failover in case your broadband connection goes down (seasoned burglars know to cut your telephone and/or cable lines before breaking in).
Wyze Labs The Wyze Labs Home Monitoring System Hub has a battery backup, but there’s no LTE radio onboard for broadband backup.
The hub communicates with Wyze’s new sensors using unlicensed radio spectrum at 915MHz, which should provide excellent range (Wyze claims 500 feet for the keypad and sensors).
Mentioned in this article Ring Alarm Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $199.00See it Those outboard sensors can be configured to trigger cameras to begin recording video, but the motion sensors on the cameras cannot trigger an alarm state (a Wyze spokesperson said such a feature might be added down the road). Subscribers will receive one license for Wyze’s Cam Plus service, which brings AI notifications such as person detection along with event recordings of unlimited length on Wyze cameras. Additional licenses will be made available to subscribers at a discount.
Users will also be able to integrate other Wyze products—including its inexpensive smart bulb—into the Home Monitoring System, so that the system’s sensors will be able to trigger the bulb to turn on. And IFTTT users will be able to tie the Wyze system together with devices and systems from other vendors that also support IFTTT. Wyze says it intends to expand the system with water leak sensors (to mitigate water damage) and temperature sensors (to help avoid frozen pipes).
You’ll find more information about Wyze Home Monitoring Service at Wyze Labs’ website. We’re looking forward to getting a system in for an in-depth evaluation. Stay tuned.
Updated shortly after publication to clarify how the sensors on Wyze cameras interact with the system.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@joshua90295731/wyze-labs-shakes-up-home-security-with-an-inexpensive-pro-service-for-2021-4d7903c0b9e7 | [] | 2020-12-18 20:40:22.376000+00:00 | ['Home Tech', 'Music', 'Entertainment', 'Chromecast'] |
Tech Professionals vs. Recruiters | Published: 09. April 2019
Author: Wilbur von Biscuit
Last week, Caissa was happy to be a part of Talent in Tech, an annual recruitment forum organised by Mindspace. In one of the event’s blocks, “Tech Professionals vs. Recruiters: How Software Engineers experience recruitment in Berlin,” our Tech Recruiter Ewelina Kuzmicz spoke to three talented Senior Software Engineers about their experience of being recruited by tech companies in Berlin.
[The discussion was inspired by our last year’s survey findings. This year, we are doing the survey again, so feel free to share your experience of getting a job in Berlin here: bit.ly/CaissaSurvey2019 (till 10th June 2019).]
Below is a brief recap of the conversation between Ewelina, the audience and the panel speakers:
What can you tell us about the messages you’ve received from recruiters?
→ A lot of messages are generic; they lack essential information and context.
→ Know what the hiring company is makes the first call with a recruiter more meaningful.
→ Marking yourself as “not looking for work” on LinkedIn doesn’t guarantee that you stop getting tons of messages from recruiters.
→ Even when most recruiters’ messages are relevant in terms of technology, they are often irrelevant in terms of location or other things.
What channels do recruiters use to contact you?
→ LinkedIn and email are the two main channels of reaching out to engineers.
→ In some countries, recruiters call your phone number and demand to speak to you about the roles they have.
→ In other countries, Skype used to be massively overused by recruiters.
→ Sometimes, recruiters even contact engineers at their work emails. (And this is outrageous!)
Can you always tell the difference between messages from agency recruiters and messages from in-house recruiters?
→ In Germany, it’s mostly agency recruiters who approach people about jobs.
→ Internal recruiters tend to give more details about the company in the initial message.
→ Agency recruiters often talk about having “a number of new opportunities”.
What kind of message should it be that you reply to it and agree to have that first call?
→ It should give you an idea about the company and what they do.
→ It has to provide details about the role: technologies that are used and expectations from the potential employee.
→ It’s ideal when you have a link to the company’s tech blog, so that you can do your research.
What makes the recruitment process successful in your eyes?
→ The hiring process should not take too long.
→ The steps should logically follow one another.
→ Actionable, honest and timely feedback is essential to a great process.
What feels too little in terms of steps? And what feels too much?
→ 3 to 5 steps are usually OK, as long as they are not an eternity apart.
→ Every stage of the process should serve a purpose and not be redundant.
→ Each step should bring value to the job applicant, not just the company.
→ Necessary steps are: HR interview, tech assignment, office visit, talk with the tech team and managers.
What conclusions can you make from different tech assignments that companies give you?
→ Based on the types of assignments, you learn about who the company is really looking for.
→ Whiteboard interviews are too academical and not usually related to real-life problems. That’s why there is not much to learn from them.
→ You can learn a lot from the feedback you get after completing a tech assignment. If they didn’t approve it just because you didn’t solve the problem their way, it’s not a good sign.
→ You learn a lot about the company’s practicality from what’s in the assignment.
Is it OK for you to solve an actual company’s problem without knowing if they’ll hire you or not?
→ An actual problem both feels relevant and is more interesting than standard/academic challenges.
→ It doesn’t have to be a current problem the company’s trying to solve. It can be the one they have tackled in the past. It will be very interesting if the engineering candidate offers a completely different solution.
How do you know if the company really cares about you?
→ The hiring team sticks to the schedule and process.
→ The screening call takes place from somewhere where you can hear the interviewer well.
→ The recruiter/HR/hiring manager tries to find out more things about you and your experience.
→ The recruiter listens to you and supports you throughout the process.
How important is salary when you decide to accept a job offer?
→ It’s essential that the salary is decent and does not go much below your expectations.
→ Overall, salary is not as important as other factors (e.g. colleagues you can learn from, interesting and challenging tasks, great culture and a smooth hiring process).
Recruiters usually set some expectations for the job. In your experience, were these expectations met?
→ Really good recruiters should not keep job applicants’ expectations too high.
→ Transparent and honest communication with the hiring team is what helps you manage your expectations and keep them realistic.
How important is the “aftercare” from recruiters?
→ It’s good to have a partner relationship with your recruiter and hear from them even after some time in a new position.
→ It helps to have someone you can talk to about your current challenges and doubts, especially if you’ve just relocated from another country.
→ Receiving a welcome card or a fruit basket from the person who helped you get a new job can certainly make your day.
You’ve all walked in candidates’ shoes and now you are all hiring at your companies. How has your candidate experience influenced your recruitment practices?
→ After having been in the candidate’s shoes, you fully understand the importance of giving good and timely feedback.
→ You also realise how hard (and essential) it is to be unbiased towards people.
→ It’s not enough to have strong tech skills. Soft skills are just as important. People should be able to communicate and express themselves.
These were the main Qs and As discussed and voiced during our “Tech Professionals vs. Recruiters” session. If you are interested in last year’s survey, you can find it here.
And stay tuned for more discussions from Caissa! We’re certainly going to talk more about tech professionals’ recruitment journeys in Berlin. | https://medium.com/caissa-global/tech-professionals-vs-recruiters-184662cddc60 | ['Wilbur Von Biscuit'] | 2019-05-14 11:07:50.351000+00:00 | ['Recruiting', 'Job Search', 'Berlin Tech', 'Tech Recruiting', 'Hiring'] |
The Curse of Dimensionality… minus the curse of jargon Day | In a nutshell, it’s all about loneliness
The curse of dimensionality! What on earth is that? Besides being a prime example of shock-and-awe names in machine learning jargon (which often sound far fancier than they are), it’s a reference to the effect that adding more features has on your dataset. In a nutshell, the curse of dimensionality is all about loneliness.
In a nutshell, the curse of dimensionality is all about loneliness. Before I explain myself, let’s get some basic jargon out of the way. What’s a feature? It’s the machine learning word for what other disciplines might call a predictor / (independent) variable / attribute / signal. Information about each datapoint, in other words. … Before we dissect the nature of analytical excellence, let’s start with a quick summary of three common misconceptions about analytics from Part 1:
Analytics is statistics. (No.) Analytics is data journalism / marketing / storytelling. (No.) Analytics is decision-making. (No!)
Misconception #1: Analytics versus statistics
While the tools and equations they use are similar, analysts and statisticians are trained to do very different jobs:
Analytics helps you form hypotheses, improving the quality of your questions.
Statistics helps you test hypotheses, improving the quality of your answers.
If you’d like to learn more about these professions, check out my article
Now’s a good time to rethink our assumptions about fact and fiction
In my previous article, I explained why you shouldn’t look to statistical inference for truth. Given the prevalence of statistical techniques in scientific research, what does this mean for science?
Image from an xkcd t-shirt, which you can find here.
(For those who insist that you need credentials to have an opinion about science, this jerk of an author holds graduate degrees in neuroscience and mathematical statistics. Glad we got that out of the way.)
Scientific theory
A hypothesis is a description or explanation, but it needn’t be true. If it amuses me, I can hypothesize that no human is taller than five feet. …
Karolina Grabowska
https://honors.njit.edu/sites/honors/files/webform/akron-vs-buffalo-live-stream.pdf
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https://honors.njit.edu/sites/honors/files/webform/new-mexico-vs-fresno-state-live-stream.pdf
https://honors.njit.edu/sites/honors/files/webform/oregon-state-vs-stanford-live-stream.pdf
https://honors.njit.edu/sites/honors/files/webform/san-diego-state-vs-byu-live-stream.pdf
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https://honors.njit.edu/sites/honors/files/webform/tcu-vs-louisiana-tech-live-stream.pdf
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If I’m being honest I was the one who wasn’t ready and for the first time I’m proud of myself for it. I’m proud to admit I wasn’t ready for another flakey person or another half-hearted relationship. I wasn’t ready for another uncertain outcome. I wasn’t ready for low investment or low vibration or unmatched effort and excitement. I wasn’t ready for lame excuses and mixed signals. I wasn’t ready for another person to waste my time. | https://medium.com/@freyanhorton/the-curse-of-dimensionality-minus-the-curse-of-jargon-day-4db85360e670 | [] | 2020-12-12 16:51:16.239000+00:00 | ['Math', 'Life', 'Technology', 'Love', 'Science'] |
The API3 Public Token Distribution Event Has Ended | Dear API3 community,
We are very happy to announce that the full public allocation of 20M API3 has been distributed over our optimized fork of the Mesa DEX. With this, the API3 public distribution has been concluded. In total, the event ran for approximately four days and raised just under $23M USDC, making it one of the largest decentralized token offerings to date. We thank our whole community for their support in building towards API3’s vision of a Web 3.0 connected with the global API economy, and welcome you to build this vision alongside us.
From the raised funds, API3 DAO will give out grants to builder projects aligning with the initial Monolith infrastructure of the project, as well as fund continuous operations (such as business development) that benefit the API3 Project. In addition to grants, the funds will go towards covering the operational costs of dAPIs, including gas costs and API provider compensation. The distributed API3 tokens, in turn, will grant their holders voting rights and staking rewards in the authoritative API3 DAO, the development work of which is already well under-way. With its completion, all token holders will be able to stake and take part in API3 governance.
Important Vesting Announcement
Along with the news of finishing the public distribution, we are happy to announce that the API3 team, partners and contributors will be extending their vesting schedule. Previously set as a linear two-year vest with a six-month cliff, both the Founder and the Partners and Contributors allocations will be extended to three years with the cliff remaining at six months. This extension to the vesting schedule is done to show long-term commitment to the project by everyone working on it.
API3 Links
Twitter — https://twitter.com/API3DAO
Telegram — https://t.me/API3DAO (Community Chat)
Discord — https://discord.gg/qnRrcfnm5W (Builder Chat)
Github — https://github.com/api3dao
Reddit — https://www.reddit.com/r/API3/ | https://medium.com/api3/the-api3-public-token-distribution-event-has-ended-644e984f50fc | [] | 2021-05-10 22:00:49.099000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'API'] |
Purifying Our Heart from Negativity! | Written By: Shanzay Arshad
Ya Ahla Wa Sahla!! (Hello and welcome!!)
Hope you’re all well, and happy wherever you are and I wish the best for you and your families, may God bless you! :)
So, I had been thinking about an appropriate topic to discuss over in my new blog, and I found a topic very beneficial enough to be discussed over with the Muslim Ummah.
Today’s topic is regarding, “ The purification of the Heart”
I’ve spent half of my life while travelling around Pakistan and abroad, and of course with all this travelling, I had a whole lot of opportunity to learn and discover about many different things, presently I’m a medical university student, but in my middle school, I had countless books covering topics over national and international Geography, about lands and plains and all sort-of stuff like that. So, till I was in middle school I had only read about breathtaking places of Pakistan and the entire world and how the land was like, how the locals lived in different provinces, but just being able to witness all of that detail with my eyes was a completely different thing for me, and Alhamdulilahh (Thank’s to God) I learned quite a lot.
While, travelling across the motorway from Sukkur to Islamabad, I found out something I didn’t know about before, I mean I actually did experience this when I was a young kid, but I never actually gave it concern and tried looking up it’s definition in my “oxford dictionary” and that is the “mirage”, now it’s a very typical kind of illusion which can be spotted from a distance as a “shining road” and once you reach it, it’s nothing but an illusion, no glitter or aluminium foil shining by the reflection of the sun, It was nothing but just an:
optical Illusion.
It made me ponder over something very important, and that made me resemble this mirage to something too common in the present world and that is running behind something that doesn’t even matter.
Just like a mirage playing it’s role as an optical illusion that isn’t forever! and once you reach it, you won’t get anything out of it.
our problems, our love of Duniya (World) including money, riches, reputation, respect and much much more.
All of these momentarily existing things try deceiving us from our “real goal” and that is to worship the one and only God…..Allah (swt).
Once you’ll reach the end of a mirage it’d be nothing that you’d get.
We chase something that isn’t meant to be chased,
Respect.
Money.
Reputation.
Chasing worldly bounties and gold brings us to a very unexpected outcome,
“NOTHING”
Weird, right? but that’s a fact, and a universal Islamic belief that this world it’s gonna be nothing but a plain area with no vegetation, mountains, or buildings, or houses. Nothing but a plain dry land, where the world will one day gather.
Surah Al-Hadeed (meaning: the iron) is one of the Surah’s of the Qura’an which describe the end of this world and how this world is nothing but a temporary amusement:
“Know that the life of this world is only play and amusement, pomp and mutual boasting among you, and rivalry in respect of wealth and children, as the likeness of vegetation after rain, thereof the growth is pleasing to the tiller; afterwards it dries up and you see it turning yellow; then it becomes straw. But in the Hereafter (there is) a severe torment (for the disbelievers, evil-doers), and (there is) Forgiveness from Allah and (His) Good Pleasure (for the believers, good-doers), whereas the life of this world is only a deceiving enjoyment“. [57:20]
Not once, but innumerable times the Qura’an has described this over and over again.
The mutual rivalry for piling up (the good things of this world) diverts you (from the more serious things)“. [102:1]
but, in the end:
And surely, We have created many of the jinns and mankind for Hell. They have hearts wherewith they understand not, they have eyes wherewith they see not, and they have ears wherewith they hear not (the truth).
(Surah Al- A’Raf) verse 7:179
What happens when you let an impostor into your house, now I want you to imagine this, You dearly love your home, you love the way everything looks at it’s place, the furniture, the vase, the lamps.
Now, just imagine that the impostor, he alters the entire setting of your house, and not just that but he no longer keep’s your house clean as before, leaving rubbish everywhere and just messing it up!
Your heart is like a diamond, very delicate, very precious. Prevent it from shattering into pieces because it’s clear glass, it’s something we need to protect!
Dr. Haifaa Younis had an amazing lecture on the purification of heart, her words described exactly how delicate and priceless the heart is. I’ll link the YouTube video at the end, you can click the link and watch the video directly, In Sha Allah!!
Letting the love of the Duniya (World) into your heart alters the original setting of your heart, just like a newly furnished house: clean and beautiful, you wouldn’t wanna be allowing a stranger in and letting them tell you where that sofa should be or what the colour of your walls should be.
“Haraam” and “Halaal”
That isn’t what Islam is. It’s something much much more than that! we’d always be hearing these common phrases since our childhood and they go something like:
“Why you lie? It’s Haraam! Now, you’re gonna be going to a very bad place”
“You commit that sin, Now, you’re gonna be going to a very bad place, God won’t forgive you ever!”
I know, we’ve all heard things like this, Islam is more than just “what’s Haraam and what’s Halaal” That’s why the Qura’an didn’t start off with a list of things that were Haraam and Halaal, It started off with something much more valuable and something that’s more important than what’s Haraam and Halaal. It started off with this vast knowledge that “who is God?” What’s His mercy?
He’s split His mercy into a hundred parts and only one of those hundred divisions is sent over Earth, Just imagine how merciful He’d be if only one part of a hundred divisions is over Earth. As a Muslim, Atheist, Christian, Jew, You know we all worship something, some of us worship God, while other’s worship wealth, status or fashion trends.
But, we all need to know who exactly God is? and as a Muslim, Our Qura’an tells us about our God, The Holy Book, tell’s us who sent us in this world? who exactly Allah (SWT) is?
When we are preparing for an interview, now it can be any interview, a job interview, an interview for a university, now you know, that it’s a big deal for you, it’s your dream place, it’s one of your favourite institutions, You’ve heard that the people there are quite talented and well-experienced, the atmosphere is good and it comes with many other extra services for the person working there, so… what are you gonna do?
You’ll try reaching out to one of the people working there, maybe a friend who is already at that place and you’ll ask him or her about their own personal experience and then you’ll try adopting the same strategy, you might also ask them about the boss’s nature: is he calm or is he quick to anger?
Now, you’ll make sure you’re not too cocky and you’re honest about whatever that you’re asked about. Then, by taking all possible information regarding the boss’s preferences and dislikes, you’ll make the next move.
The Qura’an Kareem, gives us exact knowledge about who exactly God is? who the King is! That’s our master, and now what’s gonna be your next move??
Now, you’ll garner all possible information and make notes about what He likes and what pleases Him. You know exactly that impressing your Boss means an instant promotion and of-course respect+1000 and more! And, so when you decipher the Qura’an and learn what it exactly says, it will educate you about your Master, the King…..”The Boss!!”
Now, the step two is “What’s right and wrong”, “What’s legal and illegal”, “What’s Haraam and Halaal”!
Choosing what’s right and preventing yourself from letting impostor’s into your newly furnished dream house, The worldly love of objects knowing that this world is only a frenzy of monetarily lasting things! To believe that straggling behind other people would in-turn destroy YOU! “they’re doing that!” they’re clubbing, having parties all night and missing prayers, and the last thing that you’d wanna do is follow their example and fall astray.
Watching haraam and feeding yourself with negativity, end’s up making your body unhealthy, and constant bad habits would change you spiritually and physically both. Consuming negativity, negativity and more negativity all day……… EVERYDAY!
This makes your heart black, developing a thick layer on the top, a soggy layer, a crusty layer that leaves no light but darkness and some more darkness, now, of-course! not literally, but you’ll soon start feeling unmotivated towards prayer’s and that would end up making you lazy towards worship and you wouldn’t wanna go pray anymore with the same energy and motivation.
Constant sinning with No repentance will swerve you away from your main goal and that is:
worship.
With a dysfunctional heart, your entire body will eventually get deprived of a healthy oxygenated blood supply, leaving you entirely disturbed with eye’s veiled and heart covered.
Eventually, you leave yourself fettered from a clean oxygen supply, not feeding your body with the right things and constant sins and more sins without Istighfaar (repentance) would make you stubborn and deprived of true comfort:
The Salah.
Roring from corner to corner in search of peace, which already lies within you, but you just can’t see!
Cowered up with negativity, constant depression and never-ending anxiety and stress.
You can try pummelling out of these walls but nothing brings you hope. You stonewall the words of wisdom, and the people around you, you remain sceptical about who to trust and who to not? your loved-one’s try bringing you back but once a glass vase is pulverised, it can’t be turned back to it’s original state by any other human.
But,
There’s someone who help’s you! who guides you! who mends your soul! because as long as He is your doctor, it doesn’t matter if it’s a slight cut or a gash, You can trust the doctor this time! The Al-Shaafi!! Because now it isn’t someone else but the Boss of all boss’s!!
You’re in good hands.
The vase which was nothing, but a pile of smithereens, is glued together, piece by piece with no flaws, no gaps, better than ever! and Good as new! That feeling is gratifying like nothing else within the entire universe!
You pray, say Alhamdulilahh!! (Thank’s to God!!) Eventually, you’re motivated again, after all a diver only goes to the bottom of the sea to gather pearls, You know that sooner or later he’ll come back up much more stronger and happier! and of-course with the most precious pearls and stones.
SubhanAllah!!
Constant experiences and pain which bring you closer to Allah (SWT) are a blessing. A reward. Alhamdulilahh!! (Thank’s to God!!)
Repentance (Istighfaar) strengthens your soul, no matter what the weather outside is like, cloudburst, hurricane, storm, tsunami. You know you’re good to go with that Tawakkul! (Trust in God).
Describing this situation of the heart I found no good analogy than the heavily sugared candies we see at stalls and stores. They’re candied excessively and just imagine that the heart with constant sins is like that heavily blackened layered, just like sugar but this time you know that this layer is dirty, and no good! Once you repent, this soggy layer, scrapes off, It start’s purifying eventually the body starts receiving healthy blood supply, oxygen and all it’s essential proteins and carbs, you get the best of yourself! a healthy, better than ever YOU!! All thank’s to the Doctor of the doctor’s, the King of the king’s and the Master of the master’s……. The one and only… Allah (SWT)!!
SubhanAllah!!
But before really planning and choosing the right diet plan to healthy yourself and purify your heart, ask for Dua’a from Allah (SWT) to help you in this and purify your heart and soul and protect you from the evil and don’t forget to repeat Istighfaar! because Indeed, Allah (SWT)’s mercy is far more than His wrath.
Feed your car with the right fuel, or else it’ll just stumble and break. Just as the heart, remember it’s right oxygen is “Salah”, and it isn’t the negativity that welcome’s you everyday in your news feed.
In the end, There’s a little bounty for ya’ll:
(The everyday purification prescription) a little gift for everyone reading this ❤
“If a person says subhanallahi wa bi–hamdihi one hundred times a day, all his sins will be forgiven even if they are as abundant as the foam of the sea.” (Bukhari, Bad’ul–Khalq 11; Daawat 64, 65; Muslim, Dhikr 28.
“Astaghfirullah” (I seek forgiveness of Allah). It is the Sunnah of our beloved Prophet (ﷺ) to seek istighfaar 100 times daily.
Reciting at-least one page of the Qura’an per day.
This is the end to my today’s blog!
Don’t forget to pray and stay positive!!
May Allah (SWT) guide us all to the right path, and keep us firm over our faith and religion. Ameen!!
Assalam-O-Alaekumm!!
Written by: Shanzay Arshad a.k.a The veiled nugget
☺In the end, may Allah Almighty bless each and everyone who made it to the end of this blog and chose to read it. May Allah Almighty shower His endless blessings over you and your family. Keep smiling :) once again, Shukran Jazilan! (Thank You Very Much!)
Dr. Haifaa Younis’s lecture on “The purification of Heart”
you can watch it here :)
https://youtu.be/V3koHDrJ7NY
Ep 049-Turning back to Allah, Memorising the Qura’an, Purifying our hearts -Dr. Haifaa Younis (ilmfeed Podcast). | https://medium.com/@theveilednugget/purifying-our-heart-from-negativity-95539c0b8c90 | ['Shanzay Arshad - The Veiled Nugget'] | 2021-01-26 11:22:20.575000+00:00 | ['Hijab', 'Popular', 'Inspiration', 'Muslim', 'Islam'] |
What I Learned From Completing the MIT xPro Data Science Course | What I Learned From Completing the MIT xPro Data Science Course
The personal, professional, and learning platforms
Screenshot by Author
I am so happy I did this.
99/100, in the MIT xPro Data Science and Big Data Analytics online course, after 121 hours of work in the last few weeks.
Some say, it’s good to practice retrieval as part of the human learning process. So let me summarise. What have I learned?
Here is a 3-part article series about it:
The personal insights, on taking up a challenge and a new learning project; The professional insights, on data science and machine learning; and The modern way of learning, on virtual learning platforms, comparing MIT xPro vs popular alternatives like Udemy.
In short, my gut feeling says:
In the new world of technologies and machines, it is just as important, that I keep the dancing, keep the yoga, and take the time to walk away from the screen!
Hope you find the lessons shared here useful for your own learning journey. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/what-i-learned-from-completing-the-mit-xpro-data-science-course-314314fe558c | ['Nicole Liu'] | 2020-07-03 07:01:51.476000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Lifelong Learning', 'Data Science'] |
Sometimes Love Isn’t Bringing Out the Best in Each Other | Sometimes true love means bringing out the worst; the darkest moments, the disturbing pasts, your greatest failures and mistakes. The person you love may bring out the best in you, but they should also uncover your darkest secrets, your biggest flaws and at the end of the day, accept it all without remorse.
It is the notion of unconditional love — a love that is a process of awareness and acceptance, of pain and recovery, of truly working together and showing up for each other. Having an endless appreciation for who your partner is at their core regardless of the mistakes they've made or the flaws they have accumulated.
True love is when two people fail to give up on each other. Who recognize each other for who they truly are, the good and the bad, the light and the dark. We all indeed have darkness inside us, but it is which side we choose to act on that makes us who we are. We are all conscious and sentient beings who make mistakes, who act out of pain and fear, who hurt others out of our own darkness. But the more we acknowledge, the more we forgive, the more we inform and respect others and ourselves; we create space for true love. We create a space where light and darkness can coexist in comfort, a space where we do not need to feel ashamed or conceal parts of ourselves.
True love allows others and ourselves to exist in our truest form.
True love is to breathe a sigh of relief. | https://medium.com/@hayleybelle-11/sometimes-love-isnt-about-bringing-out-the-best-in-each-other-1776719d82fc | ['Hayley Macdonald'] | 2021-01-16 22:50:50.405000+00:00 | ['Emotions', 'Forgiveness', 'Relationships', 'Acceptance', 'Love'] |
Why, Yes, I Do Feel Like an Enormous Fraud | I don’t really like to talk about imposter syndrome. It’s not something I typically get into when I write about writing because, for me, it’s up there with writer’s block — everybody talks about it, everybody has an opinion about it, but neither of those things means my thoughts about it will make a difference.
For a long time, I’ve sort of just taken it for granted that every writer feels painfully inadequate some days. Don’t they?
Toward the beginning of October, I wrote a story that’s had about 360,000 views. It was a nice enough ride until the traffic began to sputter, and I wound up feeling a bit like a failure.
Maybe the story wasn’t good enough. Maybe other writers would have done much better. Maybe it was weird that the story quit spiking when it did. On and on it went with my mind making up imaginary problems just because my traffic went down again. Back to normal. Suddenly, my normal felt like a real deficit.
Everybody who deals with imposter syndrome knows that it doesn’t actually matter what you do or how well you do it. It follows you around wherever you go and beats you down just because it can. Imposter syndrome is opportunistic, and lately, it seems to find a lot more faults in me.
The truth is that my writing’s changed a lot in 2020. I suspect there’s a lot of that going around this year. A lot of general uneasiness among creatives.
For more than two-and-a-half years, I’ve been known for writing deeply vulnerable stories about my life and all the gory blunders. My best writing feels a lot like opening my veins — it’s cathartic — not just for me, but for certain readers too. For the readers who get it, who need it, there’s nothing tawdry or low-brow about bleeding on the page.
Even so, I find I do a lot less bleeding on the page these days. It feels like 2020 has chewed up and spit out more than enough of me. Much of it has to do with being a single working mother in the middle of a freaking pandemic. Some of it has to do with various health problems during a viral pandemic. A lot of it has to do with hitting perimenopause before I’m even forty… in the middle of a fucking viral pandemic.
And then, you know, there’s the election.
I mean, I’m tired and exhausted. Emotionally, mentally, and physically depleted. It feels a helluva lot better —or even safer? — to lean into cultural commentaries. Slightly less personal politics. Unpacking, reliving, and learning from my past? God, that’s so pre-corona.
For the past seven months or so, I’ve lived with so much heightened stress that I can’t get too excited about any deeply personal topic. And hello, imposter syndrome. I see how much you like to take advantage of that. | https://medium.com/honestly-yours/why-yes-i-do-feel-like-an-enormous-fraud-d70c06058972 | ['Shannon Ashley'] | 2020-10-22 07:59:18.584000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Life Lessons', 'Blogging', 'Success', 'Writing'] |
Non-Lessons from a Non-Year | Non-Lessons from a Non-Year
Sometimes we don’t need every answer. Sometimes the question in itself is enough.
Photo by brooklyn on Unsplash
I apologize for the lousy, clickbait-y title. It’s hard to think clearly when the past year has laid over your head the same foggy blanket the British sky has placed over its roofs. From where I stand, the urban lights are melting behind a thick, white veil of mist, as if filtered through milk. London has never looked more vulnerable, and I have never felt more practical.
I apologize for the title because I don’t know enough to teach anything to anyone, let alone myself. But this is what twenty-twenty has taught me. A non-lesson from a non-year. I am writing it down, pen on paper, fingers on a keyboard, in an attempt to remember. And if you find something here you feel the urge to remember too, perhaps we both got lucky.
Non-lesson one: Presence
Twenty-twenty will probably go down in history as a year of apocalyptic disruption, but also as a moment in which people from all over the world came together to rebel against stealthy, recurring injustice. A moment we might want to forget altogether but that we also feel compelled to preserve as the image of our wounded and healing humanity. An emblematic moment. And even more so on account of its transience.
If anything, these past months of forced self-reflection have shown me the essential beauty of the most inconsequential moment, the intrinsic magic of the bad, the good, and the in-between. The blank nothingness of most days served as a reminder that every fraction of life, no matter how irrelevant it seems, brings with itself some chemistry that won’t ever get back, an offering that demands to be heard, as if it wanted to tell you: This moment won’t happen again. This moment is all you have. This moment is your life. In other words: you have today. Don’t waste it replaying yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. Life is not a boomerang.
Non-lesson two: Self-education
The recent events that led to the Black Lives Matter protests all over the world are yet more proof that knowledge is the first building block of freedom. To be free is to have access to education, any kind. If we are informed enough, then we can maybe start to break the chains of our ignorance and begin to free ourselves from everything we didn’t know we could overthrow: unfair systems, unconscious bias, poor relationships, common myths, and false truths.
The only way to a better world is through a better society. The only way to a better society is through better individuals. And the only way to better individuals is through knowledge, or at least the humility to admit our lack of it and the willingness to do better.
Non-lesson three: Decisions
Everything happens because someone decided — consciously or otherwise — to make it happen. Nothing occurs by the sheer virtue of intention. Especially not the eradication of a deadly virus. Like writing, where every sentence is a careful construction of one right decision (or word) after the other, so life is a series of deliberate actions.
When, for any reason, we make the wrong decision and things don’t quite work out as we wished they would, the smartest thing we can do is to make another decision. And decide quickly, because time is one more thing we lack and the faster we fall, the faster we rise.
Non-lesson four: Love
I don’t know if I know what love really is about. Maybe I’m too young. Or maybe I’m too old. But I know that it’s the driving force behind most of our actions. Even bad guys would often explain their immoral behavior as a means to get something, somewhere, on account of the ideas, values, or people they love.
We do things, most things, because we love doing them, or because we love the person we are doing those things for. At the very least, we do things because we believe in them, or because we believe in the principles behind them. I don’t know if the past year has taught me enough about love but it has taught me that if you are not moved by love, whatever that means to you, you won’t go far.
Non-lesson five: Appreciation
Gratitude is perhaps the most important building block of any success. Without the willingness to appreciate the present moment as it is, no achievement will ever truly fulfill us.
Saying thank you when we mean it is one of the most powerful feelings we can experience as human beings. Not because it’s a sacred practice. Not because it grounds us. But because it reminds us that the future we so much envisioned for ourselves, always starts from now. Even when now is a global crisis.
Non-lesson six: Making a difference
The Earth may be in pain. The leaders of the world may not live up to their tasks. Some people’s negligence may make you want to lose every last hope in humankind. You can’t undo the bad that’s already been done. But you can always choose to create more of what you want to see: more awareness, more empathy, more love.
All it takes for us to make a difference as individuals is to act as if what we do makes a difference. Because it does. Sometimes one match can start a fire; one line can start a conversation; one dream can start a revolution.
Non-lesson seven: Solitude
Hunter S. Thompson explains solitude as an essential component of the human experience. “We shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way”, he writes. He insists on aloneness as a key component of what he calls “self-respect”, and goes on explaining: “I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
Solitude is different than loneliness. Loneliness is being alone and not liking it. Solitude, poet May Sarton writes, “is the richness of self”. Being alone is how I make sense of life, gather ideas, and make peace with my demons. The greatest, bravest act of self-love is perhaps to go alone once in a while. To walk alone, dance alone, eat alone, marvel at the world around us alone. To learn to stand on our feet, so we may one day stand taller, together.
Non-lesson eight: Questions
Following the recent tragedies that afflicted the black community and shook the world, the greatest gift we could give ourselves and each other is to not be afraid to ask more questions and stop assuming that things can’t be adjusted. There is no such thing as dumb people or smart people. There are only people who are willing to be curious and inspire change, and people who are not.
And if our questions are met with silence, perhaps it’s worth considering that sometimes we don’t need every answer. Sometimes the question in itself is enough. Lasting change always starts with a question: can this be different? Can this be better?
Non-lesson nine: Not knowing
Sometimes our emotions are not for analysis. Sometimes we can feel something and not know why. Often not knowing why is part of the feeling. Often, not knowing what’s going on is a sign that things are moving, that we are moving, whether we realize it or not.
Emotions have nothing to do with knowing. In fact, they are the opposite of logic. We don’t make sense of life by analyzing everything that comes our way. We make sense of life by witnessing and letting it unfold in all the mysterious, illogical ways life can unfold.
Non-lesson ten: Connection
Sometimes, when we feel out of sorts, we seek comfort in dull, trite optimism. A breakdown is the starting point of a victory. A pandemic shows us what we are capable of. An obstacle is there to be overcome. Every tragedy has its own silver lining. And so on.
It’s true, though, that when everything is broken, we have no choice but to start building something new with the pieces we have been given, knowing that nothing ever exists on its own, untouched by what came before. Everything is connected. Everything is moving, morphing, constantly evolving into something else, something greater. So is pain. Maybe one day we’ll look back and realize that every battle we had to fight was only preparing us for the smallest, most important victories of our time.
And maybe the fading city lights I see from my window are only as bright as I allow them to be. In the dim, crepuscular daylight they could be anything. They could even be non-lights, vestigial nonsense of a passing non-year. Something so surreal it almost feels as if it never existed. Something you are almost afraid to forget to remember. | https://medium.com/big-self-society/non-lessons-from-a-non-year-7a19322cfc98 | ['Marianna Saver'] | 2020-12-01 12:26:03.995000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Life', 'Inspiration', 'Culture'] |
Sure, AI can be creative, but it will never possess genius | Sarah Bernhardt plays Hamlet, London 1899
“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?”
The close of Act II Scene ii, and Hamlet questions how the performers in a play about the siege of Troy are able to convey such emotion — feel such empathy — for the stranger queen of an ancient city.
The construct here is complex. A play within a play, sparking a key moment of introspection, and ultimately self doubt. It is no coincidence that in this same work we find perhaps the earliest use of the term “my mind’s eye,” heralding a shift in theatrical focus from traditions of enacted disputes, lovers passions, and farce, to more a more nuanced kind of drama that issues from psychological turmoil.
Hamlet is generally considered to be a work of creative genius. For many laboring in the creative arts, works like this and those in its broader category serve as aspirational benchmarks. Indelible reminders of the brilliant outlands of human creativity.
Now, for the first time in our history, humans have a rival in deliberate acts of aesthetic creation. In the midst of the avalanche of artificial intelligence hype comes a new promise — creative AI; here to relieve us of burdensome tasks including musical, literary, and artistic composition.
In a recent episode of Gigaom’s Voices in AI podcast, Max Welling, a Vice President of Technologies at Qualcomm, explained the possibility of replicating an endeavor that, until now, was the sole purview of humanity:
“Sometimes people say that being creative is something very magical. That’s not something we could ever create in a computer, but I don’t agree… Creativity is really combining sort of elements of things that you’ve learned in the past in very surprising new ways, right? A recombination of modules into new ways that are very surprising to others. Now we are reasonably good at this as humans but I would say, with computers, there’s no reason why they couldn’t do that a lot better even than humans.”
Welling is not alone in either his view of what constitutes creativity or his ambition for intelligent machines. When asked about a future in which children might learn creativity from educational systems, a spokesman for edtech firm Squirrel AI similarly told me: “We believe artificial intelligence will surpass humanity in terms of creativity in 5 to 10 years.” Surpass! Apparently, they have ascertained the four component building blocks of creativity, each of which is now demonstrable in artificially intelligent computers: extensive knowledge, curiosity, divergent thinking, and logical induction.
Creative AI, another company invested in this growing field, may not have declared that the literary works of computers will make great novels look like bored doodles, but they have championed its burgeoning prowess in assisting human creativity. They say we’re trending towards unprecedented access to creative tools (photo editors, music studios, etc) as well as greater opportunity for collaboration (social online platforms). This is giving rise to what they’ve termed “the escalation of creativity”; or “a world where creativity is highly accessible and anyone can write at the level of Shakespeare, compose music on par with Bach, paint in the style of Van Gogh…”
Such opinions are indicative of a viral belief that just about anything can be broken into modules or captured as data, quantified, and ultimately replicated or coached by machines. Even creative brilliance.
Edmond de Bellamy, a generative adversarial network portrait painting
To me, this deeply misunderstands the goals and the joys of true creativity.
Even if we concede to Squirrel AI that curiosity (for example) is an axiomatic part of creation, they chose evidence it with reference to a deep learning system that recently outperformed human players of the game, Montezuma’s Revenge. This might be impressive, but its a kind of curiosity needs to be closely stewarded by the machine’s human creators. And while evidence suggests that toddlers learn and adapt in a markedly systematic way — making inferences based on statistical probability using similar “algorithms” to AI — they are indisputably the volitional prime mover in this process. As Berkeley University professor and developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik characterizes it, small children “get into everything” as part of their evidence gathering. We know from experience that this means exploring various surroundings, artefacts, emotions, communications, sensations, etc.
Even for a “curious” AI, their equivalent domain is necessarily limited. Artistic AI learns how to do art from art; it does not compose art in response to its environment. Yet this is a crucial component of what creative art is. It is a reaction to and an expression of our lived experiences.
Where we find creative genius — be it in a single work of creativity, or in the collective works of one human creator — we are taken with its ability to assimilate and transmit something profound. We may not be able to articulate its features, but we can say that it is a vehicle for message, usually wrapped in an emotion. A mechanical system might be able to produce something that looks just like a Banksy but, like a forgery, it’s affective inauthenticity invalidates it’s artistic value.
A true creator cannot be without thought or consciousness, and an AI cannot produce work that is a commentary on a world it cannot experience. Just as one can’t express the feeling of the wind in one’s hair if one has never experienced the wind, nor grown any hair.
Outside of the sensual or emotional, great feats of creativity generally draw down our dense networks of associations familiar to human beings, but often unspoken. Paul Sager has written of the massive emphasis humans place on associations, borrowing an example from Simon Blackburn:
“Imagine I invite you over to dinner and, while carving the roast, I casually mention that this is the very knife that the assassin used to murder my wife and children. Would you still be comfortable eating the slice of beef I’ve just plopped on to your plate?”
It is the salience of these types of social and psychological associations that creatively brilliant works play with so adeptly. As a corollary, much of our enjoyment is derived from our efforts to determine the creator’s motivations, or the subject’s intent.
Banksy, Girl With Heart Balloon
Is Hamlet really mad? Is the Mona Lisa smiling? What do Pi’s animals teach us about belief? And Willy Loman about success? Why does David look so mournfully at the Head of Goliath?These things are not accessible through the computational analysis of data. Nor can works of similar worth be produced without a species-level understanding of the human condition that underpins them.
This is not to say that science has no place in creativity. On the contrary, the history of creative artifacts would be much poorer without assistive technologies. Paintbrushes, pens, typewriters, photographic cameras, recording studios — the list goes on. With this prodigious ancestry, new artificially intelligent technologies will undoubtedly facilitate as yet unknown fields of creative art to amaze and challenge us all. The rather smug language of “augmentation” is the vogue way of describing this assistance, but it is just a veiled way of admitting that, when it comes to meaningful creative efforts , AI will be a tool, not a Tolkien.
This distinction is important, and especially at a time when practitioners are describing artificial creativity as “the ultimate moonshot” for AI. In reality, these systems are not striving to create beautiful, challenging things. Rather, they are trying to predict and produce things that humans may respond to as worthwhile or beautiful. In other walks of life — like marketing and advertising– such methods have so far been extremely successful in predicting, and then gradually shaping, our preferences and behaviors. Soon we may find our artistic tastes recalibrating in favor of creative works that are produced quickly, easily, and at a fraction of the cost of authentically composed pieces. This shaping may already be happening.
Like Hamlet’s players, AI does not portray true emotion, only its superficial signifiers. It is mimicry, which has its uses (including entertainment), but can never replace brilliance. Let’s make sure that, as attempts are made to boil human creativity down to its composite parts and cheaply simulate it, at the same time intelligent technologies are used to cultivate and elevate the real deal. | https://towardsdatascience.com/sure-ai-can-be-creative-but-it-will-never-possess-genius-8a6fecd7fbbc | ['Fiona J Mcevoy'] | 2019-08-28 15:02:28.875000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Creativity', 'Technology', 'Art', 'Future'] |
CELEBRATING A QUARANTINE BIRTHDAY IN STYLE | First things first, let’s be real and admit that navigating special days in lockdown is definitely an adventure! Quarantine has been an amazing opportunity to spend time at home with family, but we just can’t celebrate holidays or birthdays the way we used to. You know me, though–I always like to see the positive side of things, so I took this as a challenge to be extra creative this year
So if you’re like me and looking for ways to celebrate this year, this blog post has all the secrets you need!
HOW I CELEBRATED MY QUARANTINE BIRTHDAY IN STYLE
This year was extra special for me because Mother’s Day, my anniversary, and my birthday all fell in the same weekend. Crazy lucky right? I was trying to think of creative ways to celebrate the most amazing things in my life, when Jason suggested that we get away from the city to celebrate. I was skeptical at first–I couldn’t imagine leaving our new home that I’ve been enjoying so much, but I’m so glad we decided to go!
We decided to spend the weekend in a remote place in Michigan to enjoy nature and each other. (And don’t worry, we made sure to follow all the quarantine rules. The place was 100% safe and disinfected, and no guests stayed there during quarantine so we couldn’t feel safer.) This little trip was amazing, and made me realize how much I had missed being out in nature.
There’s not a lot we can control right now in terms of where we can go or how we can celebrate, but switching up the vibe makes all the difference. And I don’t just mean switching up locations, but the outfits, too! We have all gotten so used to loungewear and workout leggings that I almost forgot how amazing it feels to get dressed up. In fact, I realized that getting dressed up was the secret ingredient to the perfect celebration in quarantine! It seems so simple to change into a nicer outfit, but it made the celebration so much more special. So there you have it: my #1 tip for how to celebrate a quarantine birthday in style is wearing the perfect dress.
WHITE DRESSES
I have always been a fan of white dresses specifically because they work for every season and every style. My sheer and lace dress is sold out from Aritzia, but check out this similar affordable option from Akira. One of my favorite ways to style white dresses for a party is with ultra chic booties and layered necklaces! This time I even added unicorn face crystals.
FLORAL DRESSES
I knew this Akira dress was for me right away, because one of my signature styles is mixing feminine and edgy! The lace detail with long dark florals is exactly the unexpected vibe my birthday needed. I love floral dresses because they can be worn with sneakers, heel sandals, or booties. It creates the most effortless b-day look!
BIRTHDAY ACCESSORIES
Accessories are the icing on the birthday cake! Since we are celebrating, go all out with a head-to-toe including the most epic shoes, hats, and jewelry. Check out my top picks for accessories to pair with these birthday outfits. Also my gifts from Jason perfectly complimented both dresses! A heart necklace by Imperfect Grace and gorgeous earrings by Dana Rebecca.
And that’s it! An amazing outfit sets the vibe perfectly to enjoy your special day with all the people you love. My birthday was so special. I woke up to decorations everywhere and discovered that the kids had already been up working super hard to make me so many cards and crafts and decorate the place with balloons (seriously, my heart just melted it was so cute). All day I was on calls with family and friends who made me feel so loved and so special! And to top it all off, Jason cooked an epic dinner and a caviar birthday cake! Talk about celebrating!
So here’s to all my quarantine birthdays and anyone else celebrating. Grab a fabulous outfit, treat yourself to a delicious meal, spend time (irl or digitally!) with your favorite people and enjoy your special day!
Love,
Tali | https://medium.com/@talikogan/celebrating-a-quarantine-birthday-in-style-83d861da9e82 | ['Tali Kogan'] | 2020-05-20 02:05:03.766000+00:00 | ['Style', 'Quarantine'] |
Dear Australian Government - next is #RECOGNIZEJAVAKH! | Firstly, we write to you as Australian citizens, who appreciate the multicultural tolerance and diversity of our nation. Secondly, we address you as Australians with Azerbaijani roots to inform you of our utmost concern and your need to pay attention to the activities of the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANCA). Our community is composed of first-generation Australians and immigrants, who are diverse in their origins, religious affiliations and speak a number of different dialects and languages. The word ‘Azerbaijani’ does not constitute being ethnically Azerbaijani. On the 4th of December, ANCA made a post on their Facebook page calling “Hundreds of Armenian-Australians to Protest at Federal Parliament in Canberra, calling for Artsakh recognition”. We acknowledge that it is within any community’s rights to protest.
However, we would like to bring to your attention the falsified statements made by this organisation, that aims to wrongfully vilify Azerbaijanis and Turkish governments and their people, creating an agenda of open discrimination by bringing foreign politics and matters where they don’t belong.
Haig Kayserian, Chairman of ANC-AU commenting on the United Nations and asking to “take back” occupied territories which were under the Armenian occupation for almost 30 years.
Please refer to their Facebook page to read their full statement https://www.facebook.com/ancaustralia
Here are some known points about the ANCA organisation:
Armenian National Committee of Australia is a pan-Armenian global organisation, and has been found to have links with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) headquartered in Yerevan (capital of Armenia)
The ARF website (in Armenian version) cites ANC-AU as one of their overseas organisations.
The ARF is a marxist ultra-nationalist group founded in 1890.
ANC-AU is led by the former chairman of the ARF, both organisations share the same address in Sydney.
Haig Kayserian, former Chairman of ARF gives an interview to Armenia TV
ANC-AU representatives admitted this direct link to Yerevan in an interview with Wolvaardt Francois Adriaan for his PhD thesis.
The extremist ANCA group supports this idea of expansionism, as one of the agendas outlined on their website is the “Awareness of the status of Armenians in Javakh”. Javakheti (“Javakh” in Armenian) is part of Georgia with pre-dominantly Armenian population.
Source: Haig Kayserian’s Linkedin account
Source: ANCA
ARF was the founder of JCAG — Justice Commandos of Armenian Genocide — and recruited terrorists from its youth organisations, according to JCAG.
A JCAG cell in Australia between 1980 and 1986 carried out two deadly attacks and at least two other plots were thwarted by ASIO.
JCAG killed Turkish diplomats Engin Sever and Sarik Ariyak on 17 December 1980, in Sydney Dover Heights. Mr Ariyak was murdered before the very eyes of his then 8-year old daughter, Cagla.
A joint strike force (Esslemont) led by NSW Police Counter Terrorism officers, including officers from ASIO, AFP and NSW Crime Commision have been reinvestigating this case for over a year now.
Haig Kayserian writes about Javakheti and makes parallels with Karabakh
Here are the facts about the distorted claims made by ANCA on their social media platform
1.“Call to recognise Artsakh”- The illegitimate “Republic of Artsakh”, internationally known as ‘Nagorno-Karabakh’ has never been recognised by any United Nations member states, including Armenia. During the time of the illegal occupation of Nagorno Karabakh and the seven surrounding districts, from the period of 1992–2020, the Council of Europe and European Union condemned the ‘self-determined’ Government of Nagorno-Kabarabakh outlining that their elections “cannot be legimitate”. Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, represented by France, Russia and the United States who led the peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia for 28 years, did not recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state. Most importantly, on the 10th of November, a peace deal was signed between the three nations, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, which clearly outlines that the seven regions belonging to Azerbaijan will be returned to them, meaning the peaceful evacuation of Armenians from those lands, and the relocation of Azerbaijani Internally Displaced People back to their homes. Due to the volatile nature of the conflict Russian peacekeepers are being deployed along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor that connected the region to Armenia.
2. “Armenians under occupation following 44 days of war crimes by Azerbaijan”- The use of the word ‘war crimes’ is abhorrent. Armenian troops committed the biggest war crime in the 1990’s by forcibly removing 900,000 Azerbaijani people from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, resulting in the death of 20,000 individuals and 50,000 people became disabled.
The ANCA organisation has no justification to call upon the humanitarian displacement of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, after the Armenian forces committed large ethnic cleansing and a Genocide in the city of Khojaly. Close to a million Azerbaijanis lost their livelihood, loved ones and their dignity.
Source: Human Rights Watch / Helsinki
In the most recent conflict since September 27th, Armenian forces engaged in continued attacks on civilians in cities well outside of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Due to their defeat and military inferiority, they decided to target innocent men, women and children, often when they were fast asleep in their homes. Some of the cities attacked include: Ganja (second largest city of Azerbaijan), Barda, Aghdam, Terter, Beylagan, Fuzuli, Mingechevir and others. A simple google search will tell you that these cities are not situated in the conflict zone. Under the Geneva Conventions Act attacking civilians is a war crime. During the last bloodiest attack on the city of Barda, which resulted in the death of 21 civilians, including children, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report confirmed and condemned the use of banned Smerch MLRS/cluster munitions being used by the Armenian forces. We would like to inform you that during the current relocation of Armenians from the regions of Azerbaijan as outlined in the current peace treaty, not a single civilian of Armenian ethnicity was harmed. There is footage of them leaving the cities in their branded cars, guarded by Russian peacekeeping troops. Azerbaijan issued a clear timeline for the relocation from each city of Azerbaijan, and even offered extensions on occasions when requested, abiding by every humanitarian law, in sight of the war crimes committed by Armenia. This is in stark contrast to the ill-treatment Azerbaijanis received in the 1990’s often being given less than 10 hours to clear the region, by the same Armenians who had been their neighbours, whoever did not leave in time was brutally murdered, tortured or raped (Please watch the ‘Endless corridor’ film to have insight into the Khojaly massacre).
3. “Turkey’s support and Islamist Jihadi mercenaries”- If you are unfamiliar with the Azerbaijani demographics, we would like to inform you that Azerbaijan has a largely secular culture, that promotes the open freedom for people to practice their religion. There are; Armenian Apostollic Church, German Lutheran Church, Russian Orthodox church and a recently established Catholic church. In addition, around 30,000 Jews reside in Azerbaijan, and have Jewish synagogues. The claims that ‘Islamist Jihadi mercenaries’ were deployed for the Azerbaijani army are not based on any factual evidence. However, what is evident is that Azerbaijan did receive moral support from many allies including but not limited to: Turkey, Israel, Pakistan, Georgia, Ukraine, Italy, Moldova, Baltic countries and so forth. Throughout the course of the most recent conflict, Azerbaijan did not need or seek the support of external powers, as it had sufficient military power, unlike the Armenian government who engaged in frequent provocations to insight a bigger problem in the South Caucasus to justify the invitation of foreign militants.
4. “Armenian cultural and religious sites being desecrated”- What we have gathered over the period of this conflict is that Armenian propaganda is very artful in taking actions committed by them and painting them as being instigated by Azerbaijan. Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have committed immeasurable damage to historical, religious sites, have engaged in ecological destruction and have brutally murdered innocent animals, in defiance of being evacuated from regions that they forcibly took in the first place. Please see the following article to familiarise yourself with the ‘scorch the earth policy’ employed by Armenians.
During the period of occupation, 1891 cultural artefacts belonging to Azerbaijan were held under the occupation of Armenia, of these included were Albanian Agoglan Monastery of the VI century, the Malik Ajdar Turbeh of the XIV century, and many others. You can see that these historical sites outlived the Armenian relocation to these lands. During the period of occupation and most recently, Armenian separatists have destroyed numerous mosques, cemeteries, museums, and have stolen artefacts
Video which briefly captures, the desolated and destructed land left by the Armenian forces
5. “The neo-Ottoman pan-Turkic expansionism”- Firstly outlining that for Azerbaijan there was no expansion being committed, as the conflict occurred within the internationally recognised borders of Azerbaijan. The expansion and separatist ideals were committed by Armenia in the 1990’s when they took Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven adjacent districts (majority Azerbaijanis lived in the seven adjacent districts). At the time, the UN Security Council released resolutions 853, 874, 884 referring to Nagorno-Karabakh as a region of Azerbaijan, and demanded the unconditional withdrawal of all Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh.
It is important to point out that throughout history Azerbaijan has never been a part of the Ottoman empire. In addition, the extremist Armenian ideology to create ‘Magna Armenia’ or the ‘Great Armenia’ dates back to early 20th century, during which time the Armenian Revolutionary Party committed brutal massacres against Azerbaijanis with the purpose of ethnic cleansing Azerbaijanis from their traditional lands. At the time, “only 21 percent of the population (of Nagorno-Karabakh) was Armenian and 73 percent Moslem”. The creation of the current Armenia, was established “with the killing or expulsion of nearly 500,000 Azeris from their traditional lands, which had been Erivan Khanate” (present day capital of Armenia, Yerevan).
The expansionist ideology of Armenia is existent in present day, as they have made statements to claim the surrounding four neighbouring regions, in their efforts to create the Great Armenia.
The extremist ANCA group supports this idea of expansionism, as one of the agendas outlined on their website is the “Awareness of the status of Armenians in Javakh”- http://www.anc.org.au/about-us
Javakh is a city in the neighbouring country of Georgia (non-Turkic Christian country), to which Armenia made claims to take over during the most recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They received open backlash from Georgia, as you can imagine that ‘self-declaring’ in any state where Armenian communities reside is absurd and against international law and the OSCE Helsinki Final Act 1975, which clearly states that “states will refrain in their mutual relations, as well as their international relations in general, from the threat of or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State..”
The Azerbaijani community of Australia feels safe living in their homes knowing that the Australian Federal Government supports the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and does not recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state. We respect the Australian government for following International Law and the stance taken by UN countries around the world. We ask politicians and individuals with government affiliations to be informed and aware of the strong Armenian propaganda which is very diligent and exertive, and has succeeded in manipulating some Australian politicians to vehemently and wrongfully represent their side of the story, celebrating these politicians and awarding them with “Friend of the Year”.
ANCA promoting interference in Australian politics
We ask that you do not fall into the trap of the statements released by such organisations as ANCA, maintaining the stance set out by the Australian government and respecting the most recent peace treaty which has been signed and is being abided by.
And lastly, Azerbaijan is a multicultural state where Christians, Jews and Muslims have coexisted for centuries.
Read more: | https://medium.com/@azecomau/in-response-to-anca-demonstration-9-dec-2020-bb84fe74b76a | ['Azerbaijani Community Of Australia'] | 2020-12-08 01:06:15.147000+00:00 | ['Azerbaijan', 'Karabakh', 'Armenia', 'Foreign Policy'] |
The problem(s) with interviews | If your interview looks like this, run away… fast
By and large, the job application process has remained pretty much the same for decades: you apply for a job, maybe do some tests of some sort (largely unrelated to your job and in fact having a questionable scientific basis for being given), then do some interviews with HR and subsequently someone in the business then a decision is made about whether you get the role. There may be small variations on this approach, but it will be pretty recognisable whether you interview at Tesco or Tata Motors.
It has worked for many years so why change it I hear you ask?
Well, let’s look at the ways just the interview process can be (and often is) gamed or is ripe for manipulation.
Before we do though let’s all agree on what we are looking to achieve here — we want to hire the best possible person for the role, who is going to do a good job, in as little time as possible. As we can’t know any of this for sure when we interview the person, we want to optimise for the likelihood that this is the case.
Agency
The first problem (even before the candidate gets into the building/call) is often that (especially in larger companies) it may be that the candidate will never work for the interviewer and so the interviewer’s incentives are not necessarily aligned. They may be doing the interview to get out of other work, to look good to their managers or just because they have a power trip of some sort, none of which are particularly good starting points. The interviewer must be someone that the candidate will work for, to ensure that they have some skin in the game when making the decision.
Emotion
But that’s not the only issue that can arise before the interview even begins. What about the mood of the interviewer? If someone has had a crappy day prior to the interview then it is going to be hard for them to set aside their emotions when interviewing the candidate, resulting in them being unfocussed, potentially short and at worst, will make the candidate feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. This will likely lead to the interviewer not being able to impartially assess the candidate and even if they are able to, the candidate may be turned off by the interviewer, a proxy for the company, leading them to look elsewhere.
But this isn’t just an issue on the interviewer’s part, the candidate could also have been having a bad day, we all have them, should it stop someone from getting a job though?
One could argue you are looking for emotionally controlled people and so them having their mood affect their interview would be a bad sign anyway, right? But that would be incredibly short-sighted as, firstly, you are likely holding them to a higher standard than you hold yourself and secondly, you aren’t looking to hire a robot, you are hiring a person.
If they have emotions and are comfortable showing them then it may mean they are more emotionally intelligent and will recognise them in others — a key attribute for any people manager.
Preparation
What about the candidate’s preparatory time? Some candidates may have known about the interview and be given questions a week in advance whereas another may only be told the day before due to only getting the call back late in the day or finding the role near the deadline. This infers an unfair advantage in some ways on the former candidate, they’ve had time to think through specific questions, research the company, maybe even reach out to current employees through LinkedIn.
And what about their current employment status? If they are employed elsewhere will they have had time to prepare? Especially if they have other personal obligations.
Fatigue
Then there is the time of day the interview is held. You may be aware of the classic study around prisoner parole where prisoners were far less likely to be granted parole just before lunch/when hungry. You could feasibly propose that interviewing just before lunch or right at the end of the day would have a similar impact on your decision-making. Do you really want your stomach to be deciding who you should be hiring?
People often think the fairest way would be to interview everyone back-to-back to compare but once you’ve asked the same questions for the fifth interview in a row, you will undoubtedly get to a stage of ‘interview fatigue’, with your flagging enthusiasm and attention to detail are clear to all parties involved.
Subjectivity
Each role may have several interviewers assigned to it, but everyone has their own perspectives on things (just ask 10 people to describe the colour of the next car that drives past), so, how do you minimise the subjectivity across interviewers and prevent (relatively speaking) ‘worse’ candidates being pushed through one interviewer over another who is a little more stringent (and would not have put the same candidate through)?
Interviewer skills
So, to the interviewer’s abilities themselves. Firstly, how is it we ensure that they are unbiased, not just from a gender, race and ability perspective but also from a hobbies/interests perspective? Often people will look to hire people like them (affinity bias), and that may just mean people they see themselves “being able to have a drink with”, but that obviously doesn’t mean they will be the best candidate for the role or company.
Such biases could impact the types of questions that are asked, how comfortable the candidate feels, the interest and engagement the interviewer shows, all of which could have a huge impact on the direction of the interview.
And so, to the actual meat of the interview itself…
The ‘charisma trap’
Right off the bat, you are struck by the candidate’s confidence and charisma, they are giving good eye contact, sitting comfortably, speaking slowly and calmly. This must be the person you should be hiring right?
Wait one minute. Think. Does this have anything to do with the role you are hiring for? Sure, it may be magnetic but are you hiring a public speaker? And is it something that the candidate must have right away or is it something that can be taught? How have they got to that level of confidence and charisma? Maybe it is through a privileged upbringing or maybe they have interviewed so many times now that this is all second nature to them? Is this person going to be someone who will love getting their head down and doing the nitty-gritty work you need them for?
Don’t get distracted, think critically, it may be you are hiring for a leader and they have the substance to back up their charismatic demeanour but it also may just be a confidence-trick, so be careful.
Questions
Then come the questions, most interview questions are pretty unnatural (and likely irrelevant). Tell me about a time when you…, What would x say about you…, What are your weaknesses… All of which are things we don’t think about necessarily on a day-to-day basis and will probably not if we got the job itself. They test memory recall and ability to bullshit as much as anything else, attributes which, I’m pretty sure you aren’t optimising for…
Most candidates will also have prepped these answers to within an inch of their lives anyway, running them past friends and family so by the time they come to you they are franken-answers, amalgamating views of 15 different people, again, not useful when they are at work unless you are hiring the 14 others along with them. These kinds of questions might also appeal more to those who like talking about themselves, something a lot of (very capable people) can find awkward or embarrassing, often showing in their body language when answering.
Again, we also come back to the point that people answering such questions in perfect prose may be the ones who have been interviewing en masse and getting nowhere elsewhere when maybe they should have spent more time working on the skills relevant for their new job…
Questions that you ask in the interview itself should be related to the job the candidate is interviewing for. Give them examples of situations they will experience and see how they would deal with them prospectively, in detail, potentially demonstrated by behaviours they have exhibited in the past (but acknowledge this may not be accurate).
Rather than asking lots of questions, go deep on a few and really get into the little facts, as that is where they will stumble if they didn’t do the work. Try and do a role play with them if you can and see how they respond, some of the best ways to interview them may be to work through a real work problem with them and see how they attack it, after all, work is often not done in isolation.
Take your time
Finally, consider the length of the interview, this is a big decision to be made. You are hiring someone that you may be spending tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds on and (more importantly) someone you will be spending more time with than your family (potentially) so don’t just do a 30 min interview, get them in for a good amount of time and if you are unsure, get them in again, you’re either making a great decision or an expensive mistake after all… | https://medium.com/i-worked-with-them/the-problem-s-with-interviews-6f692dde7beb | ['Michael Heap'] | 2020-12-16 16:49:03.991000+00:00 | ['Job Hunting', 'Career Advice', 'Careers', 'Career Change', 'Interview'] |
Why I Left Academic Philosophy | My Bachelors degree was also in philosophy, and I thoroughly enjoyed the course. My university allowed students to flexibly choose modules, so there wasn’t anything I necessarily ‘had’ to study. I could choose whatever subjects I wanted, which is fitting for a course like philosophy - a pursuit encompassing a wide range of diffuse subjects (metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, etc).
My problems began when I went on to study a Masters degree. I was one of those lucky few who received a scholarship, so I often felt that whenever I had a grievance about my course, I would be ungrateful to complain about it. But knowing others, including friends, who paid a good amount of money to study the course, it made me think that most of the course was a scam.
Not only that, but academia very much remained an option for those who are able to afford it. I come from a working class family, and without luck on my side, it would be unthinkable for me to even get this far.
During a Bachelors degree, it is very much a matter of learning about the course content, enjoying the ride, and by the end of it, being able to say you know a good deal about philosophy.
During a Masters, you are expected to start contributing original research to the discipline. Not only is it a large amount of pressure to write something that holds up against the greatest historical thinkers of human history, but the subjects you write about end up being so esoteric and irrelevant, it can become ridiculously inaccessible and uninteresting for anyone who knows little to nothing about the subject.
That might not seem like a huge problem, as it is expected that a PhD student in Biology could discover a function of human anatomy that would be difficult to explain to an economist. It doesn’t necessarily devalue the achievements or discoveries made by that person, granted.
But at least there is often genuine potential for that student’s work to benefit humanity in some way, like curing a certain disease, or understanding how our bodies work in a way we have not understood before. With subjects regarding ‘The Ontological Status of Deceased Persons’, there are only a minority of philosophy students, let alone people, who would care about it.
Even that would be acceptable — if it involved some freedom in pursuing wildly original philosophical subjects. But everything had to be written in a particular way, about pre-existing subjects within the philosophical canon, that there were more limitations than instances of experimentation and innovation. Academic philosophy proved more than anything to be a breeding ground for sycophants.
“There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.” — Henry David Thoreau
The Bias Of Analytic Philosophy
But don’t get me wrong. The course absolutely is intellectually demanding. I was expected to not only write logically concise essays in taking a particular position in a certain debate, but to read an array of confusingly written papers again and again, undergoing several existential crisis, before summoning an essay idea, and then trying to work that into something nobody has ever said before.
It was a very insular experience to discuss the course with someone unaware of philosophy what I was writing about half the time. Metaphysical problems would deeply fester inside my head, which sometimes developed unhealthy patterns of overthinking, self-doubt, and considering too many sides of the equation when making important life decisions.
I learned to trust my gut feeling a lot less, and prioritise logic and rationality over my emotions, which may sound virtuous, but I sometimes felt like a malfunctioning robot over a human being with emotion.
Additionally, academic philosophy was often ignorant of other types of philosophy that wasn’t Western or from the analytic tradition. I would have loved a module on Eastern philosophy, Jainism, or a way of thinking that was solely concerted by rationality. It often feels disingenuous to call myself a philosophy student whilst learning absolutely nothing of Confucius, or Islamic philosophers like Averroes.
The Business That Is Academia
I have heard from many a Boomer that before the new millennium, admission into university was a special and uncommon occurrence. It was based on genuine merit and aptitude, rather than those who wanted to be sponsored by the government to get pissed up. This is where I feel academia has become a business, rather than an institution primarily concerned with producing lasting achievements in human knowledge.
Now anyone can go to university, with relatively mediocre grades, and pretty much study anything. Because of this, universities take on more students then they can chew, pushing inexperienced and occasionally vagabond PhD students to teach the subject to those satisfied with a grade sufficient enough to stay another year to take drugs.
The benefits? More money. The expense? Less shits given about education.
It is so shallow, and it becomes more transparent by the second. University has become an experience money can buy, rather than genuine will to push the boundaries of human knowledge. It is one of many reasons PhD students, particularly in philosophy, have expressed to me their desire to quit. Yet for some reason or another, they are now trapped in a heap of student debt, and must follow through and feign giving a shit.
The Future of Philosophy
Despite the above seeming a scathing polemic on philosophy, I honestly feel more than ever, that we can learn a lot from philosophy in a world where fake news, dogma, and propaganda pervade every corner. At the same time, I honestly feel that we do not necessarily have to adhere to philosophical traditions like academia does, and utilise the tools we have learned from the subject to advance the discipline further in other places.
There are many contemporary issues I feel could be discussed using philosophy, whilst being relevant and accessible for those who have no background in the subject — like whether privacy over our own data is a human right, or how our online identities factor into philosophical theories on personal identity. Currently, there seems to be no space for these things in academia, since they are often too focused on adhering to tradition.
My recent dissertation tackled contemporary issues of social media using ideas of previous philosophers, which considering my professor’s profuse enjoyment, suggests this could be a feasible direction philosophy can take. It also proved to me that the lessons I have learned from the degree, are not just pondering, but abilities to think critically, present arguments, and articulate conceptual ideas many struggle to finesse into words.
But rather than exclusively debate these issues with other fellow philosophers, I feel very strongly this is something that could be discussed in the public domain, which is why I want to articulate essays I have previously written for my course, as well as new ones, online.
For an incredibly long time, knowledge has been exclusive to those fortunate enough to enrol in an academic institution, and those patient enough to deal with pretentious, superfluous vocabulary. But the floodgates are open. The internet has now made it possible to share this information with everyone and anyone willing to learn.
Ultimately, I feel I would fare better sharing things online than with other sycophants, in a genuine pool of knowledge where complex jargon making philosophical ideas inaccessible can disappear when it is taught with simplicity and accuracy.
I believe it is a matter of time before others follow suit.
I do not hesitate or doubt there is much to be taken from a PhD, and at least it remains a viable window of opportunity if and when my heart wants to jump out for it.
But until then, it is a relief knowing I can put my efforts into hard labour, genuinely experimenting with new formats, rather than reading an archaic book about Kant for a seminar which is mostly an hour of silent anxiety. | https://medium.com/cosy/why-i-left-academic-philosophy-f99a3fd84a5 | ['Haider Saleem'] | 2020-02-18 23:11:36.230000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Internet', 'Work', 'Academia', 'Philosophy'] |
The Up and Down Day | (Credit unknown)
It’s been an up and down day
a black and white ride
says the girl
just a girl
on a star-drenched tide
I was here
then was there
but am getting nowhere
It’s been an up and down day
a rip-roaringdy flow
says the girl
just a girl
in the moon’s undertow
I twirl and I whirl
I crash and I dash
but the high and low track
never brings me right back
Confounded she calls
to deepest sir deep
that funny old Neptune
who’s surely still asleep
Rousing a rise
with a rattle and roar
Neptune emerges
from a slurb of a snore
I’m simply not getting it down
says the girl with a frown
This circular thing
won’t circle, my King!
Now old deepster Sir Neptune
is a man of few words
preferring instead
to nap like the dead
In a rush of a gush
he pats the girl’s head
hush shush,
hush, hush, hush
Then with a great thrust
he casts in a shine
a gold rod and gold line
the best of it’s kind
Plip ploppy blue
and in the King reels
twelve silver fish
for a young watery miss
With a flourish and grin
his hands start to spin
and his crafting begins
A sprite silver crown
he finally hands down
in a bend oh so deep
so the girl doesn’t weep
and forever can keep
Now the watery heart
of the fluid glass lass
forgets for a time
her worries in kind
She dive jives alive
tip tappity floppin’
a girl of pure ripple
and boisterous flipple
The girl
just a girl
with a crown
no more frowns
trails a glittery wake
foam sparkle
she makes
But still!
she tumbles and wrastles
end over end
never ebbing right back
not getting the knack
Hum thrummin’
hum do
through all of that sparkle
is how she meets Warkle!
Eight climbin’ fla flew
hum dum-didity-do
a fellow quite grim
and one sparklin’ limb
offers a hello and shake
straight up and straight through
that quite glittery wake
Hi there. I’m Warkle!
Well met. How d’you do?
says the girl
just a girl
to one very uncertain
eight-limbed octopi
Recede rippledy do
cascade dipplely don’t
I’ll never learn
this thing called to float
says the shy octopi
to the girl
just a girl
under the night-jeweled sky
in those waves
oh those waves
But it only takes one!
says the girl
not a girl
never a girl
who said a girl?
as the shy octopi
caught a wave
just one wave
and the girl realized
I am the ocean
not salt
nor mere spray
she shouts
to the heat of the day
Then she sighs
a big sigh
birthing the rhythm
of the tides
a repetitious spell
only she could tell
Now all remember her name
and it’s never quite been the same
Look! There she is
that woman of the waves
dancin’ as she please
to the tune that she made. | https://medium.com/poets-unlimited/the-up-and-down-day-f8e21c17da48 | ['Christine Ren'] | 2018-01-22 16:16:03.278000+00:00 | ['Children', 'Short Fiction', 'Short Story', 'Poetry', 'Poem'] |
View Constructors in Kotlin | Photo by SevenStorm
An extremely common thing to do when working on an Android app is to create reusable views. Historically this involves creating anywhere from 2 to 4 different constructors that initialize things like custom view properties. This was mandatory because Java forced you to specify each constructor manually and while you can still do it this way, there is now a much simpler way using the @JvmOverloads annotation when defining the constructor in Kotlin. The annotation is documented as such.
Instructs the Kotlin compiler to generate overloads for this function that substitute default parameter values.
In other words, all the methods (constructors in this case) will be written for you using the default values in places that do not provide their own.
A basic view constructor.
The example above will cover most custom views: just add some generic default values for the optional parameters and you're done. There are instances where you can have issues with those generic values, though. Extending an EditText is one such instance where a specific style is needed in order to make sure it looks correct.
A view constructor with a specialized style.
You can see the second example is extremely close to the first with only 2 primary differences:
The constructor only takes three parameters; this is because the EditText does not have the fourth constructor available.
does not have the fourth constructor available. The default value for defStyleAttr is not 0. This is because the view internally has a style set and using 0 would replace it, causing the view to look incorrect. The value I have used is the same one the view would apply internally maintaining a consistent baseline for the view before applying all the customizations.
Knowing when to use a specialized style can be difficult, but you will usually know when you first see the view. You can also investigate the source code for the View you are extending to see what it is doing. | https://medium.com/livefront/view-constructors-in-kotlin-f5a0bb701575 | ['David Perez'] | 2020-12-07 19:43:59.722000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Engineering'] |
OG Kush: How to Grow This Famous Hybrid Cannabis Strain | OG Kush is a classic amongst cannabis newbies and veterans alike. Yet, this famous strain’s origin remains somewhat mysterious. And the reasons go far beyond its origin as growing OG Kush (OGK) can be just as challenging as tracing its roots. But these tips will go a long way to help you grow OG Kush the right way and get the results you seek.
Brief Overview
While very little is known about its origin, OGK is known to have exceptional medicinal potential. This indica is a great choice for depression, stress, anxiety, and mood disorders.
Its uplifting and relaxing abilities also make OG Kush increasingly helpful in alleviating symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The high THC levels found in OG Kush makes it a useful treatment for many types of pain, insomnia, and nausea.
So, if you’ve been seeking a strain that is great for treating pains of all sorts, OG Kush is definitely worth a shot.
In recent years, OG Kush has been one of the most popular types of buds available on the legal market across the world.
Its smell is earthy and pungent and provides a euphoric high that is also calming and acts as a sedative. What’s more, OG Kush was already a household name in the underground cannabis industry long before legal dispensaries began springing up across the U.S and beyond.
Growing OG Kush
The OG Kush strain can be a tough one to grow; typically producing low yields if grown incorrectly. This makes the hybrid strain a risky investment for growers, especially newbies, which tends to be highly sought after but low in supply.
Regardless, OG Kush is still a highly sought-after strain because of its medicinal potential, scent, and unique taste.
Truth is, when grown correctly, the strain is a delicacy that deserves a spot on every marijuana enthusiast’s wish list.
If grown properly, you can expect around 14–18 ounces of the OG Kush cannabis per plant when grown outdoors, or approximately 16–18 ounces of marijuana per meter squared when grown indoors.
The question remains: “how do you grow OG Kush?”
Growing method
OG Kush grows well both indoors and outdoors. But it’s an especially great strain to grow indoors using either the SCROG or SOG methods to increase its yield and bud size. When growing this strain under a canopy, ensure to prune it regularly to improve airflow. What’s more, a hydroponic setup indoors can help keep the strain’s immune system intact, preventing disease.
If, however, you choose to grow it outdoors, be 100% sure you are in the right climate. Because OG Kush mainly grows in Southern California, you want to grow it under weather conditions that are identical. You should strive to get a hot and tropical climate with plenty of water and most importantly, regular full sun.
You also want to support the buds as they can become extremely heavy and dense as the plant matures. Then, of course, its dense buds make it very susceptible to bud rot when humidity is high. This makes it ideal for drier climates if grown outdoors.
Flowering time
This strain has an 8–9-week flowering period, which is average in comparison to other strains. While indoors is the most suitable location for growing OG Kush, be sure to keep your environment and climate extremely controlled.
Climate
OG Kush can handle colder nighttime temperatures and prefers lower humidity levels while flowering. Ideally, keep OG Kush at temperatures between 65- and 80-degrees Fahrenheit.
Feeding
OG Kush’s genetics require that you feed it with heavy amounts of magnesium and calcium. You also want to make sure it’s receiving enough food in flowering to allow the buds to develop to their full potential. Feed plants with compost tea to strengthen their immunity against powdery mildew.
Final thoughts on growing OG Kush
Other cannabis strains are much simpler to cultivate at-home with little experience. But even if you’re a newbie, you should never let a good challenge keep you from doing something you want. With these growing tips alongside extra care, you can now doubt grow OG Kush and produce a healthy, uber-potent yield that everyone will love.
Looking for the perfect place to buy OG Kush online? Check out Ramya Exports for everything marijuana.
Do you have any additional tips, questions, or concerns about growing the OG Kush strain? Be sure to leave a comment below! | https://medium.com/@edwardphilips18/og-kush-how-to-grow-this-famous-hybrid-cannabis-strain-bd3ef9797160 | ['Edward Philips'] | 2020-09-22 17:03:26.117000+00:00 | ['Og Kush For Sale', 'Cbd', 'Og Kush', 'Marijuana', 'Cannabis'] |
How to Crush the Curve | How to Crush the Curve
Q&A with Yaneer Bar-Yam, physicist, pandemic advisor
This isn’t the article I intended to write.
The article I wanted to write was going to be reeeally cooool.
**SPOILER ALERT: It was going to start with an allegory about WWI and turn into a cautionary tale about how the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to unexpected consequences. It had engaging characters, epic plot twists and an ambiguous cliffhanger ending.
It was going to read like a movie script.
As I was researching my article last week, I reached out to Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, to procure some interesting quotes that would fit the story I wanted to tell.
Except they didn’t really fit.
His responses, eschewing all bluster in favor of focusing on the task at hand, gave me pause to reconsider.
Instead of imagining I observed. Instead of thinking I listened.
Maybe we all should.
After all, as far as the current pandemic goes, he’s been ahead of the curve.
The Precautionary Principle
On January 26th, when most in the US — including its Commander-in-Chief — were still writing off the Coronavirus as a slightly-more-bad version of the flu, Yaneer Bar-Yam, along with his friend and colleague Nassim Nicolas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, published A Note entitled, “SYSTEMIC RISK OF PANDEMIC VIA NOVEL PATHOGENS — CORONAVIRUS.” In it, they implored governments to heed the potential threat of the virus becoming a pandemic and cautioned against relying on traditional academic models of risk assessment:
“The general (non-naive) precautionary principle [3] delineates conditions where actions must be taken to reduce risk of ruin, and traditional cost-benefit analyses must not be used.”
In other words, when the potential risk is an extinction event, you get all hands on deck, even if the models prove to be false.
Unfortunately, Yaneer and crew were right.
As the virus began to spread from country-to-country, and as the lines on graphs arched frighteningly upwards, the prevailing strategy became to “flatten the curve”; to visibly reduce the exponential growth rate of the virus to avoid overwhelming fragile health care infrastructures.
Yaneer thinks we should aim lower.
His new project, Endcoronavirus.org, seeks to crush the curve, by adopting community-based solutions to contact-trace, isolate and prevent outbreaks before they happen. His plan is a loud call against the fatalist notion that we can do nothing, or that we must settle for a perpetual state of damage control.
The Problem with Predictions
I asked Yaneer whether the public can be expected to continue to comply with CDC/federally-issued guidance (social distancing, shelter-in-place orders, etc.) if the models on which the guidelines were based prove to be wildly inaccurate. The concern has been raised by some in the media. “What happens depends sensitively on what we do. It is not just whether or not we have a lockdown but the specific details of how that is being done,” he writes.
When it comes to modeling a pandemic…it’s complicated.
Models work great for smaller-scale systems. Plug in three variables — me, a box of ice cream sandwiches and a Sunday night alone in quarantine, for instance — and I can calculate, with fair accuracy, that I will eat four — yes, all four — of those ice cream sandwiches by midnight.
When it comes to complex systems — like the weather, or pandemics — models tend to lose accuracy. Anyone who’s regretted leaving their umbrella at home after trusting their local weather forecast understands this implicitly.
So it’s no surprise to Yaneer that several of the models have been off the mark. As far as he’s concerned, that also doesn’t matter.
“Predictions are not helpful,” he says when I ask about the models. “‘What will happen?’ is not the right question to ask. Promoting effective action ‘What should we do?’ is.”
So what are “effective actions”? And what “specific details” will prove most effective for “crushing the curve”?
Community-Based Responsibility
For someone who professionally studies complexity, Yaneer talks very little about “[un]helpful” models and charts, focusing instead on the actions we can take now to affect the reality in front of us.
Perhaps that’s because he’s seen it work before.
From an interview on 4/1/2020:
“In 2014[…]Ebola started in West Africa and was ten times the size of what people had experienced. So you had cases of a few hundred deaths and then all of a sudden you had ten thousand deaths. But that wasn’t all. People were expecting, at some point, that there would be ten million deaths…What we recommended is that the communities should be responsible for themselves. Instead of waiting until people went to the hospital, and said ‘hey, I have Ebola,’ […]they went around in the neighborhood and they measured everyone’s temperature. And if they had a temperature, then they isolated them. And that stopped the outbreak.”
Yaneer advocates a similar approach to contain the current pandemic, invoking “focused, adaptive and creative solutions,” such as forming neighborhood coalitions on social media to help track infection and offer support. It’s a grassroots approach to pandemic control, placing responsibility on an individual level and galvanizing the community around common-sense solutions to a complex problem.
If his ideas seem unorthodox, that’s because they are. But let’s remember that Americans similarly had a less than enthusiastic response to wearing masks in public; in retrospect, the hesitancy to adopt new norms that make us uncomfortable may be one of the reasons why cases are still increasing in the United States, as they drop off in other parts of the world.
In his newly released Guideline, “How We Win,” Yaneer shares the plan in detail:
“Get everyone on board: All levels/aspects of government, communities, companies, individuals have to go all out to stop this disease, even small “leaks” can sink the ship. Galvanize everyone to be focused, adaptive and creative to maximize their role. This virus attacks us exponentially, but when we fight back, we do the same to the virus.”
It seems that others are taking note as well. On Friday, Google and Apple announced a partnership to alert people if they have recently come into contact with others found to be infected with the coronavirus. And in Boston, the governor’s office announced the nation’s first community-wide effort to contact trace.
Preventing the Spread
The threat of increased travel creating a tipping point in a pandemic is nothing new to Yaneer; he has been warning the world about it for fifteen years. His concern stems from a decades-old model he created that showed that with the advent of widely-available air travel, local outbreaks would, over time, pose an existential threat to humankind. According to Yaneer, however, there is hope, as his model “doesn’t take into account how we respond to outbreaks. We must recognize the risks and make decisions both about the nature of the transportation system and the response to outbreaks.”
Yaneer’s guidelines recommend the following travel restrictions to curb the spread:
“Nations and states should impose 14 day quarantines on travelers, as should separate regions within a state. Essential transportation of goods and people should follow no contact protocols into a zone or across one zone to another[…]These will stop new outbreaks from starting, make contact tracing feasible, and preserve local achievement for a ratchet effect — maintaining forward progress by preventing backward retreat. Otherwise, it is never ending, like draining a bathtub with a running tap.”
But what do we do if we imagine the outbreak resurges in multiple waves? As for how we deal with repeated outbreaks, Yaneer challenges the assumption, questioning whether we should be asking if instead of when:
“Again, whether or not there are waves depends on what we do. We can prevent them if we take the right actions. One of the keys is to use travel restrictions so that we eliminate the disease progressively across parts of a country[…]Eventually, we eliminate the restrictions when we have control of the disease in the last region that is affected. In order to do this we also need effective testing to prevent one or a few cases from turning into a new outbreak.”
Fear as a Variable
The uncertainty surrounding the disease and the unknowns have created a vacuum for faux-epidemiologists to espouse their views, leading to a proliferation of disinformation that exponentially increases the fear surrounding the disease (Nassim Taleb, with whom Yaneer co-authors much of his academic papers, cheekily refers to hypotheses that give the illusion of science minus the rigor as “Scientism”). Yaneer shares a similar derision for misinformation and its role in creating imaginary fears:
“People are worried about unknown aspects of the disease and creating fears based upon them. We have a hard enemy but we don’t have to create movie scripts, we have to focus on the reality that we are facing now.”
Part of the fear is the uncertainty surrounding the economy. In the past month, nearly 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment since mid-March, and it is projected that over 10% of the American workforce is currently out of a job. Yaneer agrees that the second greatest threat from the virus was to the economy, though he disagreed on the acute cause of the economic damage:
“The main problem is the confusion about the impact of an exponentially growing outbreak on an economy. Fast action is needed. The collateral damage is small if we act quickly to stop it. Instead the fear of action has made the damage worse, and every moment we wait increases the damage. We have a hard enemy but we don’t have to create movie scripts, we have to focus on the reality that we are facing now.”
As pandemics go, time is money. Physical losses are proportionally tied to financial losses.
According to Yaneer, though it appears to hurt the economy in the near-term, taking strict mitigating measures is the only way to preserve our long-term economic lifeblood. Delaying containment now or opening up the economy too soon will only leave a lingering wound, a pervasive fear that fluctuates the market alongside spikes in new cases.
If we want a healthy economy, the smartest investment we can make is in the health of our people.
Focus on the Reality to Avoid Dropping the Ball…Again
When I ask Yaneer what has surprised him the most about the current pandemic, his response again points back to a breakdown in common sense. “The thing that was surprising is that seeing what happened in China, the rest of the world didn’t take early action to stop it from coming here.”
Above all, his message is plain and simple.
There is no need to wait for a miracle drug or a new technology to save us; the solutions we seek are mostly common sense and are freely available to us now if we take action.
Willingness, then, may be the first (and only) thing we need to crush the curve and defy predictions.
The last thing we need is another movie script.
For more info, go to endcoronavirus.org or follow Yaneer at https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam
If you enjoyed this interview, consider subscribing to our mailing list: | https://medium.com/the-penny-press/how-to-crush-the-curve-2f0a92632570 | ['Travis Ronald Comstock'] | 2020-04-13 13:23:57.483000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Coronavirus', 'Flatten The Curve', 'Covid 19', 'Economics'] |
Five Megatrends to Watch in 2021 | 2021 will be a year of interactions between the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery and fractured geopolitics. The new year will start with mobilization of a global effort to bring the coronavirus under control through distribution of vaccines, a new administration taking office in Washington with a crowded agenda, and hopefully a chance for business and societies to begin to reengage in activities delayed or cancelled by the pandemic, from travel and cultural events to trade fairs and some level of a return to workplaces. Here are five trends that will shape our world in 2021.
#1: Vaccines and treatments are coming, but deployment will challenge governments and health systems.
Scaling up manufacturing, supply chain logistics, training and vaccine politics will complicate their global deployment. Vaccine nationalism may create tensions among countries and across demographic groups over access, effectiveness and safety. Vaccine misinformation may impact public acceptance. Companies will need to create new business strategies and workforce engagements once vaccines and treatments reduce the public health threat.
Administering more than a billion competing vaccine doses worldwide will present challenges for governments and their overburdened healthcare systems. But millions of lives, social cohesion and economic recovery will be at stake.
#2: Even if vaccines are successful, the global economic recovery will be uncertain and uneven.
The prospects for the global economy in 2021 rests with the spread or control of COVID-19. Governments will need to make difficult decisions on continuing or withdrawing fiscal aid to domestic companies and workers. Central banks will continue an accommodative monetary policy, providing financial sector stability. Debt and deficits crises may emerge. As vaccines are deployed, restrictions on mobility will be lessened progressively.
Recovery will be uneven across markets and sectors. China and East Asian markets will drive global growth, followed by the United States, with Europe, India, Australia, Latin America and MENA recovering slower. Global trade and cross-border investment will recover if countries do not erect protective barriers. The gap between rich and poor will widen, with uncertain social consequences. If the COVID threat diminishes, the global economy may expand by 4–5% in 2021, after an expected 4.2% decline this year.
#3: Geopolitical tensions will continue as countries pursue their national interests.
The United States, Europe, China, Russia and India are vying for geopolitical, economic, technology and security influence, creating a fractured global order and potential disruptions for business. Competing political and economic models are being tested for their ability to provide stability, economic and social progress.
The incoming Biden administration pledges cooperation with European and Asian allies to counter China, Russia and Iran. The president-elect pledges the United States will reengage on the global stage, but some world leaders may consider the other superpower, China, a more reliable partner, or at least one they do not want to challenge. Countries will pursue competing national interests. Europe wants to set global standards on tech and climate. The UK and EU will experience their first year apart. China is pursuing a global strategy that creates tension with the US, Europe and its Asian neighbors. Tensions will also remain between Japan and South Korea. Germany and Japan will hold national elections. The NATO alliance will look to shore up transatlantic security ties. The United States will mark the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. One sign of hopefulness: 50 countries have now signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNWW), which means it can come into force in early 2021. But unfortunately, none of the world’s existing nuclear powers plan to sign.
Global companies and regional powers will be caught in the crosshairs and will have to navigate an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape.
#4: 2021 will be a critical year to turn the corner on climate.
Global climate policy will enter a more active phase as countries and global companies make new commitments ahead of next year’s COP-26 climate summit. The European Union is advancing a green plan to be climate neutral by 2050. China, South Korea and Japan have announced carbon neutrality targets. President-elect Biden will prioritize climate in both US domestic policy and international relations. The World Bank and IMF are urging countries to build climate action into their pandemic and economic recoveries. Investors are integrating climate risk into decision-making. Total investments in renewables will exceed those in fossil fuels for the first time ever in 2020, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. The transport sector is on verge of a major revolution as battery-powered e-mobility continues to scale up.
Momentum for climate action has been building for decades, but progress has been disappointing. The COVID pandemic has reinforced the need for finance and industry to step up, sharpened awareness about our climate vulnerabilities and changed perceptions about long-term, science-informed risks. Countries will be under pressure to step up their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ahead of the COP-26 climate summit in November.
Market-led efforts, policy changes and recovery plans also set the stage for major systems changes. This means companies must review their climate actions in 2021 amidst growing pressure from regulators, activists, investors, employees and consumers. The urgency for climate action will drive country and business reputation, risk and competitiveness.
#5: Industries and societies will reboot in 2021 and define the now normal.
The pandemic has left destruction across economies and societies, shaking up global business, travel, retail, health, education, culture and politics. Events from the Tokyo Olympics and Dubai World Expo to thousands of sporting contests, cultural activities and business conferences, trade shows and political summits were postponed or held virtually.
2021 will be a year to measure the aftershocks: Will industries hardest hit by the pandemic and recession — travel, entertainment, food and other services — recover or continue to struggle? Will countries value science and prioritize collaboration on shared challenges? Will we rebuild “greener?” What changes to the way people now work, shop, learn, tech and interact will remain after the COVID threat passes and which will snap back? Will innovation and digitalization continue at the warp speed of this year? Finally, what lessons will the pandemic offer to prepare us for future crises?
If 2020 was the year of disruption, 2021 will be a year to reboot and define the now normal. | https://medium.com/issues-decoded/five-megatrends-to-watch-in-2021-349ae2083ea | ['Jim Meszaros'] | 2020-12-22 19:56:51.627000+00:00 | ['Vaccines', 'Geopolitics', 'Economic Development', 'Climate', 'New Normal'] |
Olódùmarè and The Concept of God of the Yoruba People. | This is one of the few books on Yoruba religion written from a Yoruba viewpoint; it contains a considerable amount of material-songs and verses quoted with English translations, which has never before been recorded.
In all the previous works which have reference to the religion of the Yoruba, the Deity has been assigned a place which makes Him very remote, of little account in the scheme of things. Very few people who really know the Yoruba can escape the uneasy feeling that there is something inadequate, to say the least, about such a notion; and it is that “uneasy feeling” that leads understanding what the Yoruba actually know and believe about the Deity.
This book thus presents a new study of the belief of the Yoruba with the specific aim of emphasising their concept of the Deity.
In order to do this objectively, Bolaji Idowu has endeavoured throughout, as much as possible, to let the Yoruba themselves tell us what they know and believe, as they are so well able to do through their myths, in the recitations of their philosophy, with their songs and sayings, and by their liturgies.
To translate Yoruba verses and sayings into English and yet preserve their exact meaning is not an easy task. He, however, tried to meet the difficulty by being rather literal and keeping very close to the original in his translations.
Throughout this work, he has reserved the title “Deity” for the Supreme Being alone, where he is not calling Him by His Yoruba name; and for the “gods many and lords many” he has used either the generic designation of “divinity” (or “divinities” as the case may be) or call them by their Yoruba generic name, orìs + ̩à when he is not using their individual names.
One secondary aim which he sought to fulfill through this book is to supply one of our deeply felt needs in the matter of good standard textbooks on Yoruba beliefs and thoughts.
But … let’s start from the beginning.
Creations stories hold me captive. It’s a fascination that began when I first listened to how elder villagers used to tell me stories about the formation of the universe and the evolutionary history of life on Earth. I got in bliss when I gained an understanding of the correlation between the story of the Fall of Man (which is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience) and the complexification of consciousness that occurred as a result of the evolution of the human brain, an event that naturally caused the early human to be “expelled from a state of innocence” into one rife with self-consciousness and inner conflict. For me, the intuitive depth of creation stories inspire wonder, and so I found myself rapt as I was drawn into Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief by E. Bolaji Idowu.
Idowu, the First Patriarch of the Methodist Church of Nigeria from 1972 to 1984, published his first book, a theogony, and cosmogony of the Yoruba religion of West Africa, in 1962. It was the result of his doctoral thesis, a heroic effort considering it was written during a violent anti-witchcraft craze led by both Christians and Muslims targeting Yoruba priests and priestesses. Idowu’s aim was to dispel the idea “circulated abroad and widely accepted… that the religion of West Africa is something without any real value — something in which barbaric crudeness is mercifully relieved by a touch of the ridiculous.” Clearly, however, the Yoruba religion was met with more than just condescension during Idowu’s time. For some it evoked a brutal fear, perhaps not just by perceived threats of differences, but also or perhaps even more so by similarities, for the Yoruba religion has many things in common with the Abrahamic religions, including but not limited to a Fall of Man and an underlying monotheistic concept of God.
The Yorubas, population approximately 45 million, occupy southwest Nigeria. They are one of the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria endowed with rich cultures, and in several ways, one of the most interesting peoples of Africa. Their tradition gives them a unique place among African societies. They have contributed to the cultures of the Caribbean and South America, in particular Cuba and Brazil, where the Yoruba religion is practiced. Within Nigeria, the Yoruba are one of the three largest ethnic groupings. According to Idowu, The Yoruba comprise several clans which are bound together by language, traditions, religious beliefs, and practices.
One certainty about the Yoruba is the fact that it is very hard to find an indigenous Yoruba who does not believe in the Supreme Being. If such a person exists, he or she must have been exposed to non- African influences. The Yoruba believe in the Supreme Being who is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the universe.
Baudin, a Roman Catholic priest of French descent, wrote about the Yoruba God in these words:
The Blacks have neither statutes, nor symbols to represent God. They consider him as the Supreme Primordial Being, author, and father of the gods and spirits. At the same time, they think that god after beginning the organization of the world, charged Obatala to finish it and govern it, then withdrew and went into an eternal rest to look after his happiness.
Idowu implies that the West does not have a clear grasp of the concept of God. The concept of God is not a monopoly of the traditional society. Upon further scrutiny of Baudin’s statement, one notes that he does not appreciate the fundamental idea of God as conceived by the Yoruba especially with regard to the creation. The most troubling thing is his racial overture and his condescending attitude toward the Yoruba.
In the 19th century, a British officer named A. B. Ellis claimed that:
Olorun is the sky god of the Yoruba, that is, he is deified firmament, or personal sky . . . He is merely a natured-god, the personally divine sky, and he only controls phenomena connected in the native mind with the roof of the world . . .Since he is too lazy or too indifferent to exercise any control over earthly affairs, man on his side does not waste time in endeavoring to propitiate him, but reserves his worship and sacrifices for more active agents . . . .In fact, each god, Olorun included, has, as it were, his own duties, . . . he cannot trespass upon the rights of others.
Here again, we see the ethnocentrism of western scholars. In the above observation, first, Ellis displays his lack of understanding about Olorun by associating Olorun with a “natured god”. Second, Ellis mixes Olorun with Eledaa. What Ellis says is far from the truth when he asserted that Eledaa and Olorun mean two different things. Olorun, in the Yoruba terminology, refers to the Supreme Being and Eledaa refers to “He who controls rain” while Olodumare is “Replenisher of brooks”. In actuality, these terms (Olorun, Olodumare, and Eledaa) are interchangeable for the same God, Olorun. Eledaa means he who creates in Yoruba language and Olodumare means the Almighty — the Supreme Being. Ellis’ error is that he ranks Olorun with the divinities when he said: “Olorun cannot trespass upon the rights of the others”.
By others, Ellis implies that Olorun is in no way superior to the divinities. This is false. The Yoruba people believe that Orisa cannot exist independent of the Supreme Being. The Yoruba view the divinities as “ministering spirits and intermediaries between man and the Supreme Being.” One can liken them to the angels of God, who are ministering to the Supreme Being according to Christian concepts. Ellis clearly demonstrates his lack of cultural competence when he claims that worship is rendered entirely to agents who are more active than Olorun. Ellis’ comments reflect further inaccuracies when he says that the Supreme Being is too lazy, distant, and indifferent.
The best, scholarly research, into the concept of the Supreme Being among the Yoruba comes from E.B. Idowu. In his book, Idowu states “Olodumare is the traditional name of the Supreme Being and that Olorun, though commonly used in popular language appears to have gained its predominating currency in consequence of Christian and Moslem impact upon the Yoruba thought”.
These scholars’ views of the concept of God has been an attempt to identify major errors in the scholarly assertions. Unfortunately, most of the scholars reviewed, demonstrated in their analyses, a lack of cultural sensitivity for those who are racially different.
To achieve an accurate view of the Yoruba concept of the Supreme Being, it is important to examine the names and the meanings, which are associated with the Supreme Being. It should be emphasized that the Yoruba interchangeably use the terms listed below to describe the supreme God. To the Yoruba, they are known as “oriki”, loosely translated as “nicknames”. According to Idowu, the Supreme Being is “acknowledged by all the divinities as the Head whom all authority belongs and all allegiance is due. He is no one among many. His status of supremacy is absolute . . . In worship, the Yoruba hold him ultimately first and last in man’s daily life. He is the preeminence. These names and their definitions follow:
Olodumare: The concept connotes one who has the fullness or superlative greatness, the everlasting majesty upon whom man can depend.
The concept connotes one who has the fullness or superlative greatness, the everlasting majesty upon whom man can depend. Olorun: The owner (Olorun), the heaven above or the Lord whose home is in heaven above. Sometimes the Yoruba use Olorun Olodumare together. This double word means the Supreme Being whose abode is in the heaven.
The owner (Olorun), the heaven above or the Lord whose home is in heaven above. Sometimes the Yoruba use Olorun Olodumare together. This double word means the Supreme Being whose abode is in the heaven. Eledaa: The creator. As the name suggests, the Supreme Being is responsible for all creation.
The creator. As the name suggests, the Supreme Being is responsible for all creation. Alaaye: The word means the living one. This means that the Yoruba believe that God is everlasting.
The word means the living one. This means that the Yoruba believe that God is everlasting. Elemi: Elemi is the keeper of life. Used to refer to the Supreme Being, it suggests that all living Beings owe their breath of life to the Supreme Being. It is believed by the Yoruba that when the keeper of life withdraws “life breath”, the living soul dies.
Elemi is the keeper of life. Used to refer to the Supreme Being, it suggests that all living Beings owe their breath of life to the Supreme Being. It is believed by the Yoruba that when the keeper of life withdraws “life breath”, the living soul dies. Olojo Oni: This word means the owner and controller of this day or of the daily happenings. To call Him Olojo Oni portrays that all men and women totally depend of the Supreme Being.
Attributes of the Supreme Being
To further enhance understanding of Yoruba belief, it is also necessary to explore the characteristics of Olodumare that differentiates God from other things that he created.
He is the Creator. Among the Yoruba, the myth of creation holds that in the beginning the world was a marshy, watery wasteland. Olodumare and some divinities lived in heaven, descending and ascending by means of spiders’ webs or a chain. They frequently visited the earth, particularly for hunting. Humankind was non-existent because there was no land.
Among the Yoruba, the myth of creation holds that in the beginning the world was a marshy, watery wasteland. Olodumare and some divinities lived in heaven, descending and ascending by means of spiders’ webs or a chain. They frequently visited the earth, particularly for hunting. Humankind was non-existent because there was no land. One day, Olodumare summoned His Chief, Orisa-nla, to his presence and commissioned him that He (Olodumare) wanted to create firm ground. For materials, Olodumare gave him loose earth in a snail shell, a pigeon and a hen. Orisa-nla descended to the marshy wasteland. He threw the earth from the shell. He put the chicken and the hen on earth, and they started to scratch and scatter the soil about. Orisa-nla reported to Olodumare that the work had been completed. Olodumare then dispatched a chameleon to go to inspect the work. The chameleons told Olodumare that the work was done but not dry enough. The chameleon was sent the second time. This time the report was that the land was wide and dry.
Olodumare next instructed Orisa-nla, the chief divinity, to equip the earth. Orisa-nla took with him Orunmila, the oracle divinity, as his advisor and counselor. The mission was to plant trees and to give food and wealth to humans. He provided the palm tree to be planted to provide food, drink, oil and leaves for shelter.
Following the equipping of the earth, Orisa-nla was asked to lead a delegation of sixteen persons already created by Olodumare. To populate the earth, Olodumare asked Orisa-nla to mold human forms. Orisa-nla molded human forms and kept them lifeless. Occasionally, Olodumare would come and breathe life into these forms. All that Orisa-nla could do was to mold the lifeless, human forms, but he lacked the power to give them life. The creation of life was entrusted to the Supreme God, Olodumare. It is said that Orisa-nla became envious of Olodumare for not sharing the ability to create life with him. So one day, when he had finished molding human forms, he hid himself in with the forms overnight so that he could watch Olodumare. But, Olodumare, being all knowing, put Orisa-nla to sleep, and when he awoke, the molded human forms had come to life. This is the story of the creation as told by the Yoruba.
He is Unique. The Yoruba believe that Olodumare is unique. This means that He is the only one; there is no one like Him. It is this belief in his uniqueness that prevents people from creating graven images or pictorial paintings of Him. There are symbols or emblems but no images for nothing can be compared to Him. Perhaps, this is the reason foreign observers of the people’s religion mistakenly assume that Olodumare is a withdrawn God about whom men are uncertain.
The Yoruba believe that Olodumare is unique. This means that He is the only one; there is no one like Him. It is this belief in his uniqueness that prevents people from creating graven images or pictorial paintings of Him. There are symbols or emblems but no images for nothing can be compared to Him. Perhaps, this is the reason foreign observers of the people’s religion mistakenly assume that Olodumare is a withdrawn God about whom men are uncertain. He is Omnipotent. As omnipotent, the Yoruba believe that with Olodumare, nothing is impossible. They describe Him as “Oba a se kan” meaning the King whose works are done to perfection. The idea is that when He sanctions something it is easily done. The Yoruba have a saying: “A dun ise bi ohun ti Olodumare lowo si, a soro bi ohun ko lowo si (anything that receives the approval of Olodumare is easy; what he does not sanction is difficult)”. This is why He is known as “Olorun Alagbara”-the powerful God. He is also called “oba ti dandan re ki iseke”, the king whose biddings are never unfulfilled.
As omnipotent, the Yoruba believe that with Olodumare, nothing is impossible. They describe Him as “Oba a se kan” meaning the King whose works are done to perfection. The idea is that when He sanctions something it is easily done. The Yoruba have a saying: “A dun ise bi ohun ti Olodumare lowo si, a soro bi ohun ko lowo si (anything that receives the approval of Olodumare is easy; what he does not sanction is difficult)”. This is why He is known as “Olorun Alagbara”-the powerful God. He is also called “oba ti dandan re ki iseke”, the king whose biddings are never unfulfilled. He is Immortal. The Olodumare never dies. The Yoruba believe that it is unimaginable for Elemi (the owner of life) to die. They praise him by singing “A ki igbo iku Olodumare” meaning He is an unmovable rock that never dies.
The Olodumare never dies. The Yoruba believe that it is unimaginable for Elemi (the owner of life) to die. They praise him by singing “A ki igbo iku Olodumare” meaning He is an unmovable rock that never dies. He is Omniscient. Olodumare knows everything. There is nothing hidden from Him. He is the wise one. Everything is within the reach of Olodumare. The knowledge of God penetrates all things (Mbiti, 1975). The Yoruba people often describe Him as “A-rinu-rode Olumo okan “ (the one who sees both inside and outside).
Olodumare knows everything. There is nothing hidden from Him. He is the wise one. Everything is within the reach of Olodumare. The knowledge of God penetrates all things (Mbiti, 1975). The Yoruba people often describe Him as “A-rinu-rode Olumo okan “ (the one who sees both inside and outside). He is King and Judge. The Yoruba see the Olodumare in the important position of King. The people often call Him “Oba Orun” (the King of Heaven). He is sometimes referred as “Oba dake dajo”, the King who sits in silence and dispenses judgment.
The Yoruba see the Olodumare in the important position of King. The people often call Him “Oba Orun” (the King of Heaven). He is sometimes referred as “Oba dake dajo”, the King who sits in silence and dispenses judgment. Olorun, the sky God.Olorun, who is known as Olodumare, is the Sky God which is reminiscent to the Judeo-Christian God and the Muslim Allah. The sky God is the creator of all things and other deities, and, like the Nyame of Ashanti and other West African cultures, He stands above and beyond other lesser gods. Unlike other deities, Olodumare is not worshipped, prayers are addressed to him but no sacrifices are offered. Not only does Olodumare create, sustain and protect men, He also shields men from mechanizations of other men. Nevertheless, Olodumare is neither so remote nor unconnected that He does not intervene in affairs on earth. Most of the sacrifices prescribed by Babalawo-the, his priest, are taken to Olorun by Eshu. According to the Yoruba, all men are children of God. As the deity who assigns and controls the individual destinies of mankind, Olorun can be considered as the God of Destiny. What should be emphasized is that the Yoruba give the Supreme Being various names and that the deities do not live independent from the Supreme Being -Olorun. He is their creator.
The Role of the Divinities
To complete the reader’s understanding of Yoruba belief, it is also important to understand the divinities. The paper will now identify the divinities and explain their roles.
Eshu, the Divine Messenger. Eshu, also known as Elegba or Elegbara, is the youngest and cleverest of the deities. He is the divine messenger who delivers sacrifices prescribed by the Babalawo to Olorun after they have been placed at his shrine. The shrine is made up of a simple chunk of literate (red sand) found in Ife, Nigeria. The Yoruba people believe Eshu is a trickster who delights in making trouble; that he serves other deities by making trouble for human beings who offend or neglect them. As an illustration, let’s say Sango, a God of Thunder, desires to kill a person with lightning. He must first ask Eshu to clear the road for him. Eshu may use various punishments at his disposal. The Yoruba knows Eshu as the law enforcer because he punishes those who fail to make sacrifices prescribed by the high priests and rewards those who do. When any of the deities desire to reward those on earth, they send Eshu to do it. Western scholars have made concerted efforts to paint Eshu as the equivalent of the Judeo-Christian “Devil”. This is not true. Eshu’s role is that of a messenger who delivers sacrifices to Olorun and does good for other deities. His remarkable even-handedness in his role as divine enforcer is not consistent with identification as Satan by Christians and Muslims (Bascom 1969). Regardless of what deity one serves, everyone prays to Eshu frequently so that he will not trouble them.
Eshu, also known as Elegba or Elegbara, is the youngest and cleverest of the deities. He is the divine messenger who delivers sacrifices prescribed by the Babalawo to Olorun after they have been placed at his shrine. The shrine is made up of a simple chunk of literate (red sand) found in Ife, Nigeria. The Yoruba people believe Eshu is a trickster who delights in making trouble; that he serves other deities by making trouble for human beings who offend or neglect them. As an illustration, let’s say Sango, a God of Thunder, desires to kill a person with lightning. He must first ask Eshu to clear the road for him. Eshu may use various punishments at his disposal. The Yoruba knows Eshu as the law enforcer because he punishes those who fail to make sacrifices prescribed by the high priests and rewards those who do. When any of the deities desire to reward those on earth, they send Eshu to do it. Western scholars have made concerted efforts to paint Eshu as the equivalent of the Judeo-Christian “Devil”. This is not true. Eshu’s role is that of a messenger who delivers sacrifices to Olorun and does good for other deities. His remarkable even-handedness in his role as divine enforcer is not consistent with identification as Satan by Christians and Muslims (Bascom 1969). Regardless of what deity one serves, everyone prays to Eshu frequently so that he will not trouble them. Ifa, the God of Divination. Ifa is the god (deity) of divination and a close friend to Eshu. He is known as the clerk for other deities and he is thought of as the high priest ( known in the Yoruba language as Babalawo ). Babalawo is often described as a learned man or scholar because of his knowledge and wisdom in the Ifa verses. He serves as the interpreter between the gods and humans. Olorun, the Supreme God, gave him power to speak for the gods and communicate with human beings through divination. For example, when a god of Thunder or any deity wants a special sacrifice, he sends messages to the human beings on earth through Ifa. Importantly, Ifa is the one who transmits and interprets the wishes of Olorun to mankind. He prescribes the sacrifices that Eshu carries with him. Whatever personal deities one may worship, all believers in the Yoruba religion turn to Ifa in time of trouble. Based on the advice of the Babalawo, appropriate sacrifices to Eshu are identified and made through Eshu to Olorun. Not all worshippers of Ifa can become Babalawo. The title of Babalawo is only given to special worshippers who have a vast mastery of Ifa. It requires an expensive initiation plus years of apprenticeship to learn the figures, sacrifices and medicines.
Ifa is the god (deity) of divination and a close friend to Eshu. He is known as the clerk for other deities and he is thought of as the high priest ( ). Babalawo is often described as a learned man or scholar because of his knowledge and wisdom in the Ifa verses. He serves as the interpreter between the gods and humans. Olorun, the Supreme God, gave him power to speak for the gods and communicate with human beings through divination. For example, when a god of Thunder or any deity wants a special sacrifice, he sends messages to the human beings on earth through Ifa. Importantly, Ifa is the one who transmits and interprets the wishes of Olorun to mankind. He prescribes the sacrifices that Eshu carries with him. Whatever personal deities one may worship, all believers in the Yoruba religion turn to Ifa in time of trouble. Based on the advice of the Babalawo, appropriate sacrifices to Eshu are identified and made through Eshu to Olorun. Not all worshippers of Ifa can become Babalawo. The title of Babalawo is only given to special worshippers who have a vast mastery of Ifa. It requires an expensive initiation plus years of apprenticeship to learn the figures, sacrifices and medicines. Odua, the Creator of the Earth and His Allies. Odua, is known as Oduduwa. The people of Yoruba believe that he is the creator of the Earth. He is considered as the progenitor of all Yoruba and the first to rule the earth as king of Ife.
Odua, is known as Oduduwa. The people of Yoruba believe that he is the creator of the Earth. He is considered as the progenitor of all Yoruba and the first to rule the earth as king of Ife. Orishala, the God of Whiteness and His Allies. Orishala or Oshala is best described as the God of Whiteness. He is believed to be the creator of mankind, having made the first man and woman. He has the role of fashioning the form of human beings in the womb before they are born. Working in the darkness with a knife, he shapes their bodies like a carver, and then separates the arms, legs, fingers and toes and opens the eyes, nose and mouth. He is also called Olorun the sculptor. Those that he fashioned as albinos (afin), hunchbacks (abuke), cripples (aro), dwarfs (arara) and mutes (Odi) are sacred to Orishala. They are not the result of mistakes; he makes them to mark them as his worshippers so that his worship will not be forgotten. Orishala is known as “King of the White Cloth” (Obatala). His worshippers may wear other clothes, but white is the proper attire.
Orishala or Oshala is best described as the God of Whiteness. He is believed to be the creator of mankind, having made the first man and woman. He has the role of fashioning the form of human beings in the womb before they are born. Working in the darkness with a knife, he shapes their bodies like a carver, and then separates the arms, legs, fingers and toes and opens the eyes, nose and mouth. He is also called Olorun the sculptor. Those that he fashioned as albinos (afin), hunchbacks (abuke), cripples (aro), dwarfs (arara) and mutes (Odi) are sacred to Orishala. They are not the result of mistakes; he makes them to mark them as his worshippers so that his worship will not be forgotten. Orishala is known as “King of the White Cloth” (Obatala). His worshippers may wear other clothes, but white is the proper attire. Ogun, the God of Iron. Ogun is the God of Iron and the patron of all those who use iron tools. He is known to be the patron of hunters, and various warriors and, thus, God of war, a patron of blacksmiths, barbers and, in recent times, a patron of locomotives and automobile drivers. The Yoruba’s believe that without Ogun, people could not have their hair cut, farms could not be tilled, paths and water holes would be overgrown with weeds and no one could have made fire without the strike lights which were used before matches were imported. The other deities are dependent on Ogun because he clears the path for them with his machete. He is renowned as a blacksmith and a warrior. If Ogun is annoyed or fighting with a person any of the following could cause the death of that person. For example, the person may be bitten by a snake, shot by a hunter, injured in a traffic accident, cut with a knife or a blacksmith may pound his finger. Ogun is always used for swearing an oath just as Christians use the Bible for swearing oaths.
Ogun is the God of Iron and the patron of all those who use iron tools. He is known to be the patron of hunters, and various warriors and, thus, God of war, a patron of blacksmiths, barbers and, in recent times, a patron of locomotives and automobile drivers. The Yoruba’s believe that without Ogun, people could not have their hair cut, farms could not be tilled, paths and water holes would be overgrown with weeds and no one could have made fire without the strike lights which were used before matches were imported. The other deities are dependent on Ogun because he clears the path for them with his machete. He is renowned as a blacksmith and a warrior. If Ogun is annoyed or fighting with a person any of the following could cause the death of that person. For example, the person may be bitten by a snake, shot by a hunter, injured in a traffic accident, cut with a knife or a blacksmith may pound his finger. Ogun is always used for swearing an oath just as Christians use the Bible for swearing oaths. Oranmiyan, the Son of Ogun and Odua. Oramiyan or Oranyan is said to have two fathers, Ogun and Odua. A myth tells how Ogun brought back many slaves from war and gave them all to Odua, the king, except a woman known as Lankange. Because Ogun loved Lankange, he kept her himself. When Odua learned of Ogun’s deed, he commanded Ogun to bring Lankange to him. Before Ogun did, he explained that he had intercourse with the Lankange. Nevertheless, Odua took Lankange as his wife. When Lankange gave birth to Oranmiyan, the son was half white skinned like Odua and half black skinned like Ogun (Bascom, 1969).
Oramiyan or Oranyan is said to have two fathers, Ogun and Odua. A myth tells how Ogun brought back many slaves from war and gave them all to Odua, the king, except a woman known as Lankange. Because Ogun loved Lankange, he kept her himself. When Odua learned of Ogun’s deed, he commanded Ogun to bring Lankange to him. Before Ogun did, he explained that he had intercourse with the Lankange. Nevertheless, Odua took Lankange as his wife. When Lankange gave birth to Oranmiyan, the son was half white skinned like Odua and half black skinned like Ogun (Bascom, 1969). Shango, the God of Thunder. Shango is the God of Thunder and the son of Oranmiyan. Living in the sky, he hurls thunderstorms to earth killing those who offend him or setting their houses ablaze. Shango fights with troublemakers and those who use bad medicines to harm others, as well as worshippers who offend him. Shango is likened to fire because when he spoke, fire came from his mouth. He is revered for his magical powers. According to myth, Shango left Ile Ife (a town in Southwest Nigeria) when he was defeated in a magical contest and hung himself. When lightning flashes, his worshippers shout: “The King does not hang himself” (Oba ko so).
The people of Yoruba, like the Akan of Ghana, have acknowledged Olorun ‘s providential care and other lesser gods that people approach when in trouble. It is believed that most of the lesser gods are agents of Olorun or the Supreme God. Olorun does not destroy life, he creates and nourishes life. He is the one who assigns destiny. When Olorun gives you sickness, he provides one with the appropriate medicines. Before a child is born, the guardian souls appears before Olorun, the Sky God to receive a new body, new breath and its destiny for its life on earth. Kneeling before Olorun, this soul is given the opportunity to choose its own destiny. It is believed that the soul may make any request be it reasonable or unreasonable. Destiny involves a fixed day upon which the soul must return to heaven and it involves the individual’s personality, occupation, and luck. The time of one’s death cannot be postponed, but other aspects of one’s destiny may be modified by human acts. The deities help individuals enjoy the destiny promised by God (Olorun). As a result, throughout one’s life, one makes sacrifices to his ancestral guardian and the deities. The charms and medicines are prescribed by Babalawo to assist individuals when in trouble. When one is in trouble, one consults a diviner of the God of Ifa (Babalawo) to determine what should be done to improve one’s lot on earth.
The Yoruba believes that when one dies, one makes farewell visits to the clan members. If a person lived a full span of life, his multiple souls proceed to the afterworld where the Sky God lives. When the soul reaches heaven, the soul gives an account before Olorun. If a man has been good and kind on earth his souls are sent to good heaven (orun rere). If his deeds have been bad, such as poisoning his neighbor, committing murder and engaging in deceit he is condemned to bad heaven (orun buru) or to “” (hell) by the Sky God. Those who did not live their full life remain on earth as ghosts. For example, one whose life was cut short by an automobile accident will exist on earth as a ghost. One thing is certain about the destiny assigned; any mortal cannot change it.
If every human being comes to the world with a prefixed destiny, and if Olorun is so kind, how do the Yoruba’s explain occurrences of premature death? The people in Yorubaland try to react to such incidents in the following ways:
First, the person might have offended the lesser gods thereby bringing the punishment to himself. Second, the person might have been destined to the occurrence and this is what he requested from Olorun before being born. Third, a Yoruba person may blame other persons for putting a “spell” on him thereby causing the misfortune.
Consequently, the Yoruba people believe in Olorun’s power of benevolence yet they hold that it is possible for both men and supernatural powers to induce men to engage in certain acts that will interfere with Olorun’s appointed destiny for each individual human being. So when misfortunes occur no one blames Olorun instead the Yoruba believe that it is the untrustworthiness of agents (deities) of Olorun that are responsible.
God in Yoruba Belief presents evidence that the concept of the Supreme Being is a Monotheistic principle of the Yoruba religion. According to Idowu, Yoruba religion is a “ diffused monotheism” in that the many Yoruba divinities are “ no more than conceptualizations of attributes of Olodumare “ the Yoruba Supreme God. Like a Yoruba ruler, or oba, Olodumare reigns supreme in the distant sky and rules the world through his intermediaries, the orisha. The sky dwelling Olodumare is transcendent, all knowing, and all-powerful. Unlike the orisha, he has no temples or priests, and no sacrifices or offerings made to him because his will cannot be influenced or changed. Yet Olodumare may be invoked by anyone, anywhere, at any time and let him know their needs. He is seen as invisible. Because of the invisibility of God, the Yoruba make no concerted efforts to erect a shrine of Him or any kind of “physical representation”
@Wizzy, Afro Bodhisattva, Entrepreneur, Physical Anthropologist, Freelance researcher of African Studies, culture, tradition and heritage, CEO Dolomite Aggregates LTD and Founder MBA Métissage Boss Academy & @metissagesanguemisto. References | https://metissagesanguemisto.medium.com/ol%C3%B3d%C3%B9mar%C3%A8-and-the-concept-of-god-of-the-yoruba-people-fb446d96df5 | [] | 2020-04-01 10:54:11.501000+00:00 | ['Yoruba', 'Olodumare', 'Belief', 'God', 'Religion'] |
The Need To Become More Productive | Introduction
Due to COVID, I think we have all had so much time to realise how much we waste and how it is flying by us with no plans of slowing down. I certainly have. Since the start of COVID my productivity has been up and down like a rollercoaster, and it is tiring and stressful having a ride like that daily. What is the reason for these peaks and troughs in my productivity?
Productivity
According to the Cambridge Dictionary (2020), productivity is “the rate at which a company or country makes goods, usually judged in connection with the number of people and the amount of materials necessary to produce the goods”.
How does this relate to an individual, and why does it have such a huge impact on their lives?
Becoming More Productive
Anybody given a choice would love to become more productive, it allows us to get more done, to have more time; with family, friends, personal time, exercise, etc. However, when an individual becomes interested in becoming more productive, they will often find a negative correlation between the effort they are putting in to become productive and the amount of work that they are getting done.
Positive Impacts
You can get more done
You feel better about yourself
You have new routines that create structure in your life
Negative Impacts
Can be hard to sustain
Burnout
How do you manage events you haven’t accounted for?
Personal Experience
My personal experience with productivity has been a difficult, confusing and slightly bipolar situation. There have been days where I have been able to get loads done and days where I haven’t even been able to motivate myself to get out of bed and do the work that I need to. I spend wasted hours browsing articles, Reddit, blogs and forums looking for ways to become more productive looking for solutions to a problem that I didn’t have. Before I started looking at how to be more productive, I was actually more productive.
I have become obsessed with managing my time that I am actually losing more time. Therefore becoming less productive.
The above statement is quite a scary one, and it shows that as humans, we can often become obsessed with things that we think are more important than another. In my own personal example, I have shown that I become more interested in becoming more productive than doing my work and this leads me to stop doing any studying or work and just lead to me become even more frustrated due to anger that I couldn’t get anything done.
The solution to my problems has been staring me in the face the whole time, and it is to simply just stop. Just to take a minute, stop trying to find out how to be more productive, breathe, focus on the things that are important. Think about what I need to do and just do it, instead of rigorously planning my days, to the point where every 5 minutes of my day was written down on a calendar.
How are things now?
Things are getting better, I recently took a new hobby, cycling. This is due to my having to commute to University. Cycling has taught me that the best way to get better at it is to cycle. Not research how to cycle better but to just get out on my bike and pedal. This way, my muscle builds, my endurance, my average speed, further distances and overall, I start to feel less tired during my rides.
This directly has an impact on my work and studying because by actually starting and doing the activities I am already in a better situation than what I was before I started.
Since I have started doing instead of researching what and how to do it better. I have ironically become much better, faster and more productive at doing my work. This has been my own personal struggles with a self-obsession of making myself better and trying to increase productivity.
What should you take away from this?
Yes, by all means, become a better you, become more productive, do more with your time. However don’t go down the never-ending dark hole that leads you to try to fix a small issue that you keep turning into bigger issues over time until it fully consumes all of your time, work, studying and personal time.
If you want to get more done, then spend more time doing it than reading how to do it faster and better. You will thank yourself for the more actual doing you do.
References
Cambridge Dictionary, 2020, Definition of Productivity, Online Resource, Link | https://medium.com/@tomsmithson18/the-impacts-of-micro-managing-of-lives-by-measuring-our-productivity-bc0f3777daf2 | [] | 2020-09-26 09:25:44.231000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Time', 'Students', 'Time Management', 'Procrastination'] |
Like the ocean wave — Grief. There is no one way to deal with the… | There is no one way to deal with the loss of someone. No wrong, no right way. The only thing that matters in the end is to not let it consume all of you. Don’t sink. You should, you must float back up.
This year, 2020, most of us have lost someone. I realised that the hardest thing to face alone, is the loss of a friend and having no one to experience that loss with you. With the lockdown, there weren’t many options of outlet, venting out the built up anger, frustration, the unfairness of it all. So all I could do was take it all in, feel, till it hurt lesser every time the wave hit.
In the process, I realised, the best way to deal with grief is to allow yourself to feel it. To let the pain break you, let it venture into the places you had closed yourself from, let it dig into the past, the memories playing and replaying. Even when your lungs seem too big for your ribs, when the rush of emotions, the wave makes you breathless, don’t numb it. Hug yourself if you have no one to hold onto and make sure to keep all the pieces intact. Allow yourself to break down, shout from the rooftops, laugh till you cry, you deserve it and so do they. Grieve.
Grief, much like an ocean wave, the only way to survive it is to let go, the more you struggle, trying to snatch at the emptiness.. the deeper you will sink. But if you dive under the wave, you’ll live. The key is to let go and let nature take its course.
The thing with grief is, it is never gone, all it takes is a fleeting thought, someone’s laughter or a random photo on your timeline, and the wave hits you again. But this time you’re equipped with experience. It doesn’t pain less, NO, but after a few times you adapt to it, live with it and even relish in the memories. | https://medium.com/@dipika2018kumar/like-the-ocean-wave-grief-cf031a3ab266 | ['Dipika Kumar'] | 2020-12-27 20:31:32.895000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Loss', 'Friend', 'Grief', 'Grief And Loss'] |
I can’t wrap a gift to save my life | I can’t wrap a gift to save my life
Photo by Mathilde Decourcelle on Unsplash
For our wedding, my wife wanted me to fold origami cranes to use as decorations. For those that don’t know, origami is the Japanese art of paper folding. Usually, but not always, animals are folded from a square piece of paper. Some paper is simple in design while others are very intricately decorated.
So, over the course of two weekends, and a total folding time of 24 1/2 hours, I created over 500 cranes, in three sizes (3 inches by 3 inches, 4 inches by 4 inches, and 6 inches by 6 inches) and in two styles, flying and nesting. They were used for everything from the wedding party’s boutonnieres and bouquets, to the table centerpieces and table number cards, to cascading around the wedding cake.
All folded to near perfection.
But this is gift-giving season. Where beautiful wrapping paper is adorned with ribbons and bows and nametags and all neatly folded and taped.
And I can’t do any of that.
I think it may have to do with the fact that I can’t cut a straight line using scissors. Not even close. I’m so bad at using scissors that my high school art teacher threatened to fail me if I didn’t learn to cut in a straight line. I didn’t. And lucky for me, she didn’t.
You see, origami paper is, for the most part, perfectly square. No need to cut it. All the edges line up when foldered so there is no guessing. Whereas when I cut paper, the line is anything but straight. Edges are ragged and go off at an angle. I try to fudge it by folding the cut edge over to create a straight edge but that only works if I’m using a piece of wrapping paper that came from the end of the roll where it was cut by the manufacutrer. If I start with an edge that came from a cut I made, then the folded edge is worse.
My entire family can tell who wrapped what gifts under the Christmas tree or who it was that wrapped a birthday gift.
And as I sit here, looking under the Christmas tree at the gifts all nicely wrapped on one side and my catastrophic wrapping on the other, I can give thanks to the fact that someone out there probably has the same problem I do, and created the gift bag as a result. | https://medium.com/@vinnf/i-cant-wrap-a-gift-to-save-my-life-31a8006f567f | ['Vince Ferraro'] | 2020-12-23 15:05:18.913000+00:00 | ['Wrapping', 'Origami', 'Birthday', 'Christmas', 'Gifts'] |
Why Is Ruth Ginsburg’s Death So Important? | The Supreme Court of the United States
This court is the highest in the land and will hear appeals to lower court decisions if four of the supreme court justices agree the case has merit. The concept of this court was established by the Constitution and created by the Judiciary Act of 1789.
The court’s goal is to ensure Equal Justice For All Americans under the law.
Currently, the court is made up of the Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices. The president is responsible to nominate any new Associate Justices. The positions are lifetime appointments.
How is the voting split now?
There are nine positions on the Supreme Court, with a firm split of five conservatives and four liberals. Justice Ginsberg held a liberal seat. One of the conservative justices, Chief Justice Roberts, has sometimes split from the other conservatives and cast his vote with the liberals.
If Justice Ginsburg is replaced by a conservative justice, it will require two conservative justices to shift their vote to the liberals in order to prevent major precedent-setting decisions such as overturning Roe vs Wade, a long-standing abortion rights decision.
Women’s rights have been teetering on the edge for years.
As an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Ruth was appointed to the supreme court in 1993. She was the only woman on the court for more than ten years.
A character and an icon, she died on September 18, 2020, after a long fight with pancreatic cancer.
Her last stated wish was that her replacement is to be made by the new President, after the election.
”Justice Ginsburg paved the way for so many women, including me. There will never be another like her. “Thank you RBG. — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 19, 2020
8 reasons why her death is significant at this moment in history. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/why-is-ruth-ginsburgs-death-so-important-11d931cb72ab | ['Tree Langdon'] | 2020-09-19 20:39:29.863000+00:00 | ['Law', 'Politics', 'History', 'Self Improvement', 'Justice'] |
I Will Learn to Live Without You | I want to admit.
I want to confess.
A truth that is hidden from you,
I didn’t do it on purpose,
But I forgot to mention.
Forgive me if it hurts.
But look through my eyes.
You will see what I saw.
So here I begin
You aren’t my first love
I had loved before
I had fallen in love before
I still love it
More than you
I know it’s painful
But you’ll be better
My passion calls me
My dreams influence me
To write and share
For writing is my first love.
It hugged me in private.
And then declared my status,
To the world,
That, I am a writer.
I love my work
More than you
It soothes me
It quenches my angst
I feel myself when I write.
My heart starts to beat.
I breathe life.
Judge me and lose me
For I can’t leave my love
I can’t leave my life
I will learn to live without you.
But how can I live without my life?
Forgive me for this betrayal.
Let me ask you about your first love.
Can you forget it for life? | https://medium.com/the-pom/i-will-learn-to-live-without-you-f5df5a5d1b1d | ['Darshak Rana'] | 2020-12-10 16:45:44.948000+00:00 | ['Passion', 'Poetry', 'Self', 'Love', 'Motivation'] |
What Does Justice for Breonna Taylor Look Like? | There is a common refrain uttered wide and far in the aftermath of every tragic death at the hands of police: Justice. Justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, William Green.
When news broke a few days ago that the Kentucky court would not indict Breonna Taylor’s murderers for her death, no doubt there was a lack of justice. But what kind of justice were we really searching for in a grand jury indictment, anyway?
What does justice for police murders look like?
Presumably, as Jalen Rose had demanded yesterday on ESPN, it is to see the four cops arrested and charged with murder of the first degree. As a measure of “justice,” the same had been argued for the cop who killed Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, and William Green. In all of these cases, then, what justice ultimately means is punishment — lock the killer cops up, make them suffer for what they did.
But is this justice, really? Is there justice in exchanging the loss of life with a prison sentence? Who does the affirmation of incarceration as a method of justice actually serve?
Such an equivalence does not serve those who are most heavily exposed to state violence. Rather, to equate the injustice of the loss of life with the “justice” of incarceration only serves those who are tending to the cells. That is to say, it legitimizes the very logic of “justice = punishment” responsible for injustice in the first place. As hard as it is to accept, jailing police officers will not bring justice for the slain victims of state violence. It will only reproduce the problem.
Concerning “what to do” with those cops responsible for these murders, I must confess I do not really know. Certainly, admittance back into society without any process of reconciliation or accountability is not acceptable. This would only serve to uphold the very unjust status quo, i.e. the wanton, state-sanctioned killing of Black people. But simply locking them up to punish them is, in my opinion, just as unacceptable.
All I do know is that these calls coming from all corners of the country to jail the cops are not really calls for “justice.” They are merely the repetition of the same punitive and carceral logics which have for centuries now criminalized Blackness and poverty. “Justice” never takes the form of a jailhouse.
On police and prison abolition
Of course, I am not the only one who thinks this way. Many Black-led violence police and prison abolition groups operate on the basis of dismantling penal and carceral logics of justice (see The Marshall Project for a depository of helpful information on these topics). These groups view the problem of state violence and criminalization of Blackness at a far more systemic level, according to which addressing the problem entails truly radical reorganizations of our relations to one another.
Rather than see jailing cops as a measure of justice for Black lives, police and prison abolitionists work to completely rework the problem of violence and conflict arbitration from its very foundation. For them, there is no equivalency between “justice” and “punishment;” indeed, the very notion that there can be is in itself unjust. Justice is not a question of punishment but transformation of the conditions of injustice.
Often police and prison abolition is (ignorantly) ridiculed for being naïve and shortsighted, for e.g. having no clue what to do with “rapists and murderers” in the absence of prisons. There are two simple responses to this charge. For one, “rapes and murders” are still occurring even with mass incarceration and heavily funded police, so at the very least such a dismissal suffers from a severe lack of imagining better ways of preventing the injustices it claims to be concerned with. More often than not, charges of naïvety are simply a veil for complacency with a system which allows such abhorrent violences to continue.
But, more importantly, police and prison abolitionists do take seriously the question of “what to do about violence.” Non-punitive and recuperative conflict arbitration is part and parcel of the very theory of abolition. No abolitionist is blind to the fact that violence will still occur in the absence of policing and prisons (although, some would say on a considerably reduced scale), but the point is to shift our perspective to the root causes of said violence. It is of course true that we can’t prevent every single accident of violence — all abolitionists are saying is that we can do a far better job of dismantling the institutions themselves responsible for begetting a great deal of violence.
Thus, the only form of justice for Breonna Taylor worth its name is one which is truly transformative of the mechanisms of state violence which caused her death. Responsibility for her murder, that is to say, does not stop at the individual officers who killed her — it corresponds to an entire structure of power vested in the punitive and carceral logics which legitimize and reproduce anti-Black violence. There is no justice without abolition of that structure of power. | https://medium.com/discourse/should-justice-for-breonna-taylor-look-the-same-as-the-state-violence-which-killed-her-74b6487f99d5 | ['Aidan Hess'] | 2020-09-25 20:37:27.358000+00:00 | ['Society', 'Equality', 'Justice', 'Race', 'Racism'] |
Forsage Smart Contract — How To Make $1,778 in Forsage WITHOUT referring a single person. | Forsage Smart Contract — How To Make $1,778 in Forsage WITHOUT referring a single person.
FOLLOW THESE SIMPLE STEPS to discover how our teammate is able to generate $1,778 Eth in 4 hours WITHOUT referring a single person. Online Money Making Aug 20, 2020·12 min read
If you don’t take the right decision now, you won’t be benefiting from this great opportunity again.
Forsage is really paying big……
Forsage is really changing lives……
Forsage is really making people millionaires on daily basis.
Pls help broadcast this.. so your families and friends can be a part of this big life-changing business
This Systems Works For Anyone And Anywhere In The World!
Watch This Short 5 Minutes Video To Find Out How Does Forsage Works & How Does it Makes You Money!
✅ Recurring Income Without a Job
✅ You are in control of your money. Nobody can cheat you
✅ It has a compounding element, thus little effort can result in outstanding success
✅ Instant Pay Direct to your own personal wallet
✅ Your Money can not be Stolen
✅ A Platform that can work with no website
✅ Provides 24 simultaneous sources of Income
✅ Will last as long as the internet exists
✅ Everyone wins through Team Building
✅ Recruiting is Optional
✅ But if you share, you Make Much More
✅ No admin fees
✅ One-time low cost of $15 with No Monthly Payments
✅ Boost earnings 4x’s using strategy.
✅ It is secure and 100% safe
✅ Works anywhere in the world!
More Than 1,647 Members Worldwide Has Joined Our Forsage Team! Check Out Some Of The Testimonials Below!
Forsage allows you to earn ETH without referring anyone! You can also share with your friends and families by making use of our super high converting “Forsage” funnel that is credited with your forsage affiliate ID to help you convert leads into sales!
We all know the importance of joining the TOP team because you will be getting supported by our leaders! We will be providing you with frequent updates and training to teach you can make more money with Forsage!
Get access to our private rotator as a bonus so that I can drive traffic and sales for you when you contribute to our team. I’m buying thousands of dollar traffic and sending to the rotator to drive you FREE SALE!
MASSIVE Spillover Sales From Our Team
The key to a successful team is consistent training! Once you get access to our team, you will be provided with step by step instruction so that you won’t get struck or confused.
We also have DAILY ZOOM TRAINING for our members to help you get result in Forsage FAST!
Signup With Forsage Using The Link Below & Claim The $2,997 Worth Of Bonuses!
Welcome To this amazing forsage strategy
This is how it works
Welcome to forsage smart contract
Forsage was created on the blockchain on 6th February, 2020.
So, you are privileged to have gotten this info at this early stage because they say ‘things come to Africa so late’
We are about 350,000 members around the world at this moment and this is your time to be liberated financially.
Since my years online, I have never seen a solid and life-transforming project as this online that is giving hope.
Our confidence is the fact that is built on a blockchain technology and your earnings come to you directly without waiting to initiate withdrawal.
Let’s break this down.
Ethereum is a cryptocurrency with one of the best growth potential in forex. Experts have predicted it will rise by 400% in 2021–2022.
Presently, 1 Ethereum = N101,800
Crowdfunding is a gifting system, whereby other people contribute to a person for a project or a goal.
Forsage ensures people contribute to each other using Ethereum as the means of payment
Discentralization — Forsage has no central, no admin, and no headquarter. The system is totally automated.
Security:- all funds are processed from and to participate’s wallets.
-The system is totally unhackable.
It can only be stopped by stopping the internet and electricity.
-All contract are securely sealed and no one can re-edit it (not even those that program it)
Forsage has two components that runs concurrently — 3x and 4x.
Make money in 3x by referring 3 persons to the system.
But in 4x, you make money from spillovers, which will come from both your uplines and downlines.
So, you don’t need to refer anyone to make money from Forsage.
YOU NEED $14 /N8,000 ONLY, ONETIME to get started!!!!
As said earlier, Forsage have two Packages X3 & X4 and each of them has 12 Streams income that you can keep earning over and over again non Stop.
What it simply means is that the three people you are to bring into this business covers you both X3 & X4 Plan.
Level 1: You bring 3 Partners, you get 3x0.025ETH= 0.075ETH.
The system will Automatically use 0.025ETH to put you in that same level 1 for you to earn again, and it keeps happening like that till infinity.
The same applied to all Levels.
Profit in Dollars:- $10.68
Profit in Naira:- #4000
You get 3x 0.05 ETH =0.15 ETH. The system buy you level 2 again with 0.05 ETH. Profit 0.1ETH Profit in Dollars $21.37 Profit in Naira #8000
Now having explained how you make money in each level on X3 which I used level 1 and level 2 as an Example, I will now go straight to show how much profit you make per level on X3 Package.
Note the price of this currency goes up and down, so I’m using this minute’s price to explain
X3 PROFITS
Level 1:
0.05ETH
$10.68
N4000
Level 2:
0.1ETH
$21.37
N8000
Level 3:
0.2ETH
$42.74
N15,630
Level 4:
0.4ETH
$85.48
N31,627
Level 5:
0.8ETH
$172.44
N63,802
Level 6:
1.6ETH
$344.88
N127,605
Level 7
3.2ETH
$689.77
N254,214
Level 8:
6.4ETH
$1,379.55
N510,433
Level 9:
12.8ETH
$2,759.11
1,020,870
Level 10
25.6ETH
$5,518.22
N2,041,741
Level 11:
51.2ETH
$11,036.45
N4,083,486
Level 12:
102.4ETH
$21,900
N8,103,000
NOTE: ☝☝☝☝☝
This is just one cycle. The system automatically recycles.
You can imagine how much you will be making.
Now to the business of the day.
When you get a referral. you immediately earn $6 to your wallet
The second referral also earns you another $6 Which makes up $12.
If you do your calculation very well, you will see that you almost have gotten your investment back all in one day.
This is massive.
Once you get this, also get ready to earn from spillover.
What are smart contracts?
Like contracts that are made between two people with a role, through clauses, conditions, duties and rights and that can be modified, smart contracts have the same function of enforcing written conditions and agreements, but already not by means of a sheet of paper, but they will be encrypted in the blockchain of the ethereum cryptocurrency, ensuring that neither party can delete or change.
It is impossible to hack.
No one can change, not even the CEO
It will always be there as long as the blockchain itself exists.
The code is open source, anyone can read and audit.
Our Forsage.io smart contract is located on the Etherscan which is the Ethereum blockchain explorer and you can see it here at the following link:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x5acc84a3e955Bdd76467d3348077d003f00fFB97
Where does Forsage.io work?
It works through cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
Let’s remember that Bitcoin is a decentralized currency, which does not depend on the government nor does it require the bank to print the money.
This is a virtual currency that is used to buy and sell online and it works through blockchain or blockchain technology that makes all operations accurate, transparent, avoiding any type of corruption or fraud.
This business as I told you, works with the Ethereum currency, the second largest in the world after Bitcoin, and that soon according to some studies and news from Cointelegraph, the price of Ethereum could rise 3100% of its current price. So it is important that we can invest in this currency and what better way than to do it with Forsage.io.
Who is the CEO of Forsage?
This Forsage system was created by an entrepreneur of Russian origin named Lado Okhotnikov, who with many years of experience in MLM Marketing Multilevel and together with a team of programmers created this system with greater benefits than the traditional multilevel, so that we all won and that the work is rewarded, to the point of having more results even than the person who sponsors you.
Is Forsage a pyramid?
Traditional systems usually have a pyramid scheme, a ponzi scheme, and it’s understandable that when any business comes up, people immediately label it a pyramid.
And I can tell you that when I entered this business I did it with the same doubts that anyone who knows about these business models that arise in the digital market has, but in the first week of entering I had already recovered my investment and I realized This is not a pyramid.
Today I realize that Forsage.io goes beyond the traditional multilevel, where those who are above earn more and those who are below lose. There are many cases of experiences where the person who works with effort and dedication earns more than his sponsor. So the rule is one: whoever works more earns more.
And in fact, this business is also a type of crowdfunding, since its development and start-up is due to the work is done to form a team and the investment contributions they make to enter the business and create a powerful source of money.
Normally, the pyramid businesses get richer and those from below become poorer (because in many cases they lose their investment), but here everyone wins when the work is done. The person easily recovers his investment and earns much more than that and within this system, nothing is in private or secret because, because it is a smart contract, everything is public and can be audited.
Where are payments received and which wallet should I use?
The required wallet is the ethereum wallet that has the Decentralize app. On phones the application of this wallet is called Trust Wallet and on the computer it is with the Chrome extension called Metamask.
✅👉 Download Trust Wallet Application: https://share.trustwallet.com/hmJx0dg
✅👉 Download Metamask extension: https://metamask.io/
✅👉 Registration Link: https://forsage.io/i/kk8r26/
The task of this contract is to redirect member transactions from wallet to wallet, according to the given marketing conditions. It does not keep participants’ funds on the site, much less should you withdraw and expect them to pay you.
✅ Built on the Ethereum blockchain
✅ 100% decentralized
✅ No administrator involved
✅ No withdrawal request required
✅ Instant member payment for members directly to your wallet
✅Impossible to hack.
✅ Impossible to scam
How does Forsage.io work?
There are two ways to earn on this Smart Contract (2 matrices) and 24 ways to collect: one that is FORSAGE X3 and the other FORSAGE X4.
Forsage x3: will be your direct referrals, from each direct you will get 100% of the money depending on the level you are on. This matrix has 12 levels and each level has three baskets. Three baskets that will be your first three affiliates, of those three affiliates, the first two payments will be for you and the third payment for your third affiliate will be for your sponsor. When your three affiliates get their three affiliates, the first two payments from their two affiliates will go to them, but the third payment from your three affiliates will go to you who are their sponsor. That is the dynamics of the business.
Forsage x4: Here you make profit from overflow (with this you get payments from your global team, it is ascending or descending). In the same way it has 12 levels or baskets and each level has 6 spaces and it is being filled by the team you are part of and that you will also build later. Of these six slots (SLOT), two payments will be for the wallet of your superior partner, three payments will be for you and one payment for the reinvestment of the basket. This same cycle will be repeated over and over again. This matrix completely destroys the pyramid.
How do you access Forsage.io?
To make the deposit you must do the following:
✔ Download your wallet either Metamask (PC) or Trust Wallet (smart phone) https://share.trustwallet.com/hmJx0dg
✔ Register at: https://forsage.io/i/kk8r26/
✔ Accept your sponsor’s ID: ID 351731
👉 After downloading the INSTALL application
👉 Click CREATE ACCOUNT
👉 Save the 12-digit words preferably by writing them on paper or a secure book and also copy and send them to your personal email.
👉 The system will prompt you for those 12 words accordingly
👉 Check all 12 words and then create
👉 If you lose those 12 words, you may not be able to access your wallet if you want to use another phone or format your phone.
👉 Once you open a trusted wallet
👉 Click receive and copy your wallet address.
👉 Buy some ethereum in your ethereum wallet through your wallet address.
How to REGISTER AN ACCOUNT IN FORSAGE
Click on “Dapps” at the bottom just after “wallet”.
Once open paste this paste this registration link: https://forsage.io/i/kk8r26/ at the top of the folder.
👉 Click Done.
Run will run the link that opens a page,
👉 click sign up.
👉 It will take you to your ethereum account and deduct 0.05 ETH
👉 Click approve.
👉 Click on Dapp
👉 log in automatically.
Use the same procedure to recommend to your friends.
How much should I invest in Forsage.io?
The minimum investment is 0.05 ETH, a value that can increase or decrease depending on the flow of the market, you decide how much to invest and how much to earn, since you can start buying all the levels that are within your reach, and you can see those great results in a few days.
Currently 0.05 ETH is $ 12 plus the commission charged by the Ethereum (gas) network to make the transaction, which may also vary. Having 0.07 ETH is preferable to secure income.
Do you need experience in cryptocurrencies to enter Forsage.io?
No, basically the desire to start and succeed and above all the willingness to work as a team to achieve it
So join our team, if you don’t know how to do it we will teach you.
Here at Forsage.io you earn money while learning how to do it
It does not matter the country, the age you are or the trade to which you dedicate yourself
Or if you do not have the experience, we will give you the tools and training to do it professionally and from home.
You must understand that The world changed and the way of doing business too. You can earn Ethereum with Forsage.io
We are an active building team
Forsage is a Smart Contract Crypto earnings program that you work from home at your own leisure. There is no time limit or targets or pressure with this program. You may have heard or read about it recently.
It is based on the particular features of the Ethereum cryptocurrency and it enables you to earn a long term residual income just by reffering this to 3 other people and asking them to do the same as you.
We really need to think differently with this new type of program. In fact many of us online marketers often refer to earnings opportunities as programs, but this really is one — a Cryptocurrency / Ethereum program that can’t be changed as it is all based on a smart contract…..
The Smart Contract is an established blockchain technology that refers to a type of automated digital contract that is almost unbreakable and unchangeable. One of the consequences of this is that, if for any reason Forsage closed its doors or its website, this program would still automatically function. This means that no human being can ever interfere or prevent the intended functioning of the prescribed process, either by bad intention or incompetence.
For those of us that have been in MLM / Network marketing for years and seen all the associated failures, scams and shutdowns, then an unbreakable opportunity like this is surely a breath of fresh air, to say the least. This is huge and that is by no means an exaggeration. | https://medium.com/@christian4christ2018/forsage-smart-contract-how-to-make-1-778-in-forsage-without-referring-a-single-person-dd72d3ce8008 | ['Online Money Making'] | 2020-08-20 22:14:51.703000+00:00 | ['Forsage Smart Contract', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency Investment'] |
💛 Love is the biggest need | Love is the biggest need — of course after survival or security needs.
👨👩👧 Not to be loved by your child or by your parents may have a huge impact on all your love relationships. Including self-love.💞
When I was a child, I hadn’t been often warmly kissed and hugged. I was not magic, perfect, enough in the eyes of my parents. Neither my parents with their own parents. So, when I had my children, I had to reinvent how I wanted to love them. 🥰
👩👧👦 Here are few things I do:
- I share happy time with them,
- I suggest fun or/and healthy activities,
- I tell them that they’re great,
- I look at them as they were magic -and they are in my eyes,
- I listen to them,
- I kiss them when I really want to,
- I hug them when I really want to, or when they need it,
- I accept that sometimes they don’t want to kiss or to hug,
- I explain I also have needs and emotions,
- I welcome their emotions,
- I do my best to be available — sometimes with a delay if no emergency- and to feed their needs.
🤗 I give -with all my heart- what I am able to give, and I receive what they are able to give.
This is how I do my best to build a love bond with my children. | https://medium.com/superyogiz/love-is-the-biggest-need-86de6df80c04 | ['Touria', 'Superyogiz Founder'] | 2020-12-25 17:10:57.754000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Kids', 'Children', 'Relationships', 'Love'] |
Designing Remote Play for Kids on Arduino | Going off the theme of space, we first thought about a board that could have planets corresponding to their particular LED color. With each child having a board, they would work together by moving a handheld physical piece to meet or “catch” their friend on another planet. To prototype this, we rasterized a solar system to a plywood board and drill pressed cavities for our LEDs.
After receiving further critique and feedback, we found the form to be clunky and flat. Having tired of working off the space theme and feeling that it would only pique certain kids’ interest, we went back to the drawing board and thought more divergently after considering key pieces offeedback.
Simplifying our game to match color to color
Continuously simplifying and scrapping our matured ideas enabled us to focus on the sensory experience of play: what about sound, sight, and touch enhances play and makes it fun? How might we design a product that a child or adult might want to pick up and play with?
Technical Challenges over Iterations
We experienced a number of technical challenges since developing early prototypes, namely to try and accomodate all our desired features within one arduino board. Using analogWrite() to change the light intensities of our LEDs, we could not use digitalWrite(), which only has a binary state (i.e either 0 = LED off, 1 = LED on).
Working off of our nascent arduino knowledge, we set off scouring online boards and other microcontroller projects to troubleshoot. Below is a finite state machine diagram showing how we designed the functions and variables to support our game, with our final code linked here: | https://medium.com/@dana_kurniawan/designing-remote-play-for-kids-on-arduino-a2afad4aa5e4 | ['Dana Kurniawan'] | 2021-12-17 21:24:18.687000+00:00 | ['Play', 'Kids', 'Arduino', 'Remote Learning', '3D Printing'] |
Legacy | I’ve been thinking about legacy.
But not one I want to fabricate.
One I want to create and then let people make up their mind.
It’s important to recognise that people will see you differently to how you want to be seen.
This is just how it is.
But we can change and evolve.
That’s important too. | https://medium.com/@dnaqvi/legacy-c7703d58bbbc | ['Danial Naqvi'] | 2020-12-02 22:59:10.401000+00:00 | ['Evolution', 'Change', 'Difference', 'Legacy', 'Creativity'] |
High tide. | Please don’t forget
How soft I am.
Even though
My mouth is more sailor than siren
And
We’ve gone over it so many times
That only a smooth, unbothered surface
Is left.
Because even the ocean
Can shrink into small places
If necessary. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/high-tide-d55743ad6fb1 | [] | 2017-07-24 14:57:24.620000+00:00 | ['Relationships Love Dating', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poetry', 'Literally Literary', 'Mental Health'] |
How we powered a Halloween puppet with React Native and Arduino | Thank you for reading my first blog post! Feedback of any kind is greatly appreciated!
Sometimes a special occasion needs that something extra.. a stand-out centerpiece that makes it all-the-more memorable. This is a story of such an event, where we, a pair of techie housemates, were on the hook to host a Halloween party. Rather than settle for the out-of-the-box conveniences, we made it our mission to create something so ghoulishly novel, so over-the-top, so… D.I.Y., that it just might blur the lines between machine and magic.
We give you: Count Oinkula!
OK, so maybe one can only expect so much out of a 10 day budget.. But under the snout, oink, I mean, uh, hood, a lot of cool technology went into the build, and we’d love to share with you our journey through it all. | https://medium.com/@jcastorina/how-we-powered-a-halloween-puppet-with-react-native-and-arduino-a2d7b63e296d | ['Joseph C.'] | 2020-11-07 04:17:40.600000+00:00 | ['Halloween', 'DIY', 'Animatronics', 'Arduino', 'React Native'] |
Legislative session ends on time, provides funds for homelessness, transportation | A short but intense 60-day legislative session ended Thursday evening with lawmakers taking action on a number of the governor’s priorities, including more than $170 million for services to address the state’s homeless crisis. The Legislature also provided funds for crucial transportation needs; approved changes to a Boeing tax incentive that will help the state avoid international tariffs; took some steps on legislation to address climate change; and passed bills that will improve social equity statewide.
Gov. Jay Inslee speaks to the 2020 Legislature on its opening day, Jan. 14, in the State of the State address. The Legislature convened for a 60-day session and finished on time Thursday night. (Office of the Governor Photo)
The Legislature also fully funded the governor’s request of $200 million to address the coronavirus outbreak in Washington. Lawmakers voted unanimously to approve HB 2965, which provides $200 million from state reserves to help the state, local governments and federally recognized tribes respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. The funds will be used to slow the outbreak, test for the virus and help with treatment for more severe cases of respiratory illness.
There are resources available for businesses to help alleviate the unemployment tax impact of COVID-19 through the Employment Security Department. It also modifies the job search requirements for workers on unemployment benefits while they are quarantined.
“I am pleased the Legislature agreed with my plan to tackle homelessness and provide sheltering for some of our most vulnerable people. There was good progress made on a number of fronts during this supplemental budget year,” Inslee said. “However, I am disappointed that the Legislature failed to act on other important pieces of climate legislation as well as public safety legislation that would have reduced gun violence in Washington. While I wish they would have gone farther on a number of important issues, I thank the Legislature for their work on behalf of Washingtonians.”
Here are some legislative highlights:
Homelessness
The Legislature’s supplemental operating budget includes $156 million for essential needs like rent assistance, permanent supportive housing assistance, and help low-income seniors and the disabled with housing needs in certain counties. It puts $60 million to fund increased shelter capacity in localities across the state.
The capital budget includes another $14.5 million for shelter capacity and community housing developments.
The Legislature also passed governor-requested legislation (HB 2456) to implement a 12-month grace period for families that experience homelessness in the Working Connections Child Care subsidy program, which serves families up to 200% of the federal poverty level so they can work or prepare for work. Currently, the grace period is four months. This time frame is proving too short to meaningfully benefit many families that experience homelessness.
You can read more about the governor’s homelessness budget proposal on his Medium page.
Transportation
The Legislature also approved a supplemental transportation budget that will allow the governor to unpause highway, rail and other projects. The Department of Transportation froze these projects at the direction of Gov. Inslee after the November 2019 passage of Initiative 976.
The initiative is projected to reduce state transportation funding by about $454 million in the current biennium and by more than $1.9 billion over six years. In addition, total revenue losses for local governments and Sound Transit is projected at more than $2.3 billion over six years.
“Because of the resources saved during the pause — and due to some one-time opportunities to capture unspent funds this biennium — I am directing WSDOT to move forward on projects that have been paused,” Inslee said. “I have asked the department to move as expeditiously as possible to restart the paused projects.”
To balance the budget and unpause projects, the Legislature largely followed the governor’s proposed plans. These included fund swaps, using ending-fund balances and transferring sales tax on construction of Connecting Washington projects to the multimodal account.
The transportation budget also includes funding to meet the state’s obligation to improve fish passage barriers; continues to provide much-needed transit services for our most vulnerable; and prioritizes safety on our highways by retaining preservation funding and continuing to support the next class of state troopers.
Legislative transportation budget leaders stated this budget was designed to get the state through this biennium. But given the passage of the initiative and the growing needs of Washington’s transportation infrastructure, the state will need a plan in the next biennium for important transportation investments.
You can read more about how Washington is taking its first steps toward electric ferries on the governor’s Medium page.
Climate action
Lawmakers passed legislation to adopt a Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) standard, an important step toward accelerating the use of electric vehicles and ensuring Washington consumers have access to a full range of models. This legislation will require automakers to approximately double the number of electric vehicles sold annually in Washington.
The Legislature also approved a bill that commits our state to being carbon neutral by 2050. The legislation also strengthens intermediate goals for 2030 and 2040 to ensure the state is on course. Lawmakers also passed a bill to extend incentives for community solar energy projects that benefit low-income households (HB 2248), and legislation to authorize counties to create financing programs to help commercial building owners finance energy efficiency and earthquake resiliency (HB 2405).
Although the state’s electric marine battery incentive was designed to support battery electric propulsion systems in small craft, it can also help our state develop a home-grown marine battery supply chain for larger vessels, like electric ferries. Washington state is beginning a $14.6 billion long range ferry plan that will transform the fleet to battery electric propulsion. By extending the incentive’s sunset clause (HB 2486) from 2025 to 2035, we can provide predictability in this growing maritime business and, in the near-term, help recruit a strategic marine battery factory to our state that could provide up to $1 billion in private capital investment and hundreds of high paying clean-tech jobs, likely in a rural part of our state.
However, there were disappointments. A handful of state senators managed to block legislation that would have dramatically reduced carbon emissions in our state by implementing a clean fuel standard (HB 1110) to require fuels burn with reduced carbon. Senators also blocked legislation (SB 6628) that would have given Ecology clear authority to regulate “indirect emitters” of emissions, which contribute to the majority of the state’s air pollution.
You can read more about the governor’s initial climate legislation proposal on his Medium page.
Boeing
There was broad consensus among lawmakers, the governor, Boeing and its unions that action was needed this session to head off retaliatory tariffs that would harm a broad spectrum of industry and commerce in Washington. The Legislature passed legislation (SB 6690) to take the necessary action and keep Washington the best place in the world to build airplanes.
The Governor’s Office was deeply involved in negotiations, working with legislative leaders, Boeing and its unions to craft a solution to avoid tariffs by suspending tax incentives for Boeing. The action was in response to ongoing disputes between the United States and the European Union on subsidies for commercial airline manufacturers.
The legislation also has the first-ever aerospace requirements for using apprenticeships as a percentage of the total workforce in order to qualify for the incentive. Strengthening our state’s aerospace workforce was a goal for all involved when they crafted the proposal.
Equity
The budget fully funds the governor’s proposed state Equity Office (HB 1783). The office will help ensure all Washingtonians will be welcomed and included in Washington’s workforce regardless of race, ethnicity, country of origin, immigration status, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or military status.
The office will design a performance dashboard that measures state agencies’ progress in meeting diversity goals. The budget also provides funding for the Department of Enterprise Services to create and offer a standardized diversity, equity and inclusion online curriculum for state agencies.
In addition to funding from the operating budget, the Legislature added more than $4 million in the capital budget to support diversity, equity and inclusion. Lawmakers also passed a bill that bans hair discrimination in the state, an equity issue that affects people of color in particular.
Behavioral health, aging and disability
At the governor’s request, the Legislature approved the creation of a joint executive and legislative task force to implement recommendations from a report by the William D. Ruckelshaus Center regarding residential habilitation centers (SB 6419). Implementation of these recommendations will move our system of care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities toward a more community-based system of care and reduce the footprint of our state institutions.
The Legislature also approved a request bill (HB 2426) from the Department of Health to create greater oversight and enforcement over the state’s private psychiatric hospitals.
Investing in Washington’s workforce
The supplemental budget advances the governor’s previous work with business and labor on strategies to expand training and career-connected learning opportunities statewide.
The budget provides $21.5 million in investments in workforce development, including increased incumbent worker training for mid-career workers, targeted investments to build capacity in the aerospace sector, continue expansion of career-connected learning, new data reporting requirements to better inform future workforce investments, and continued work to establish protections for domestic workers.
Public safety
None of the governor’s or the attorney general’s request legislation to address gun violence passed this session. However, the budget does fund other measures that will address firearm safety. It gives the State Patrol $400,000 to develop a firearms background check unit and $1 million to implement it this biennium.
Health care
The Legislature approved two bills that would lower the cost of certain medications in Washington. Senate Bill 6088 would establish a drug-affordability board charged with identifying drugs that are excessively priced or quickly increasing in price, and set price limits for state purchasers.
House Bill 2662 creates a $100 cap on out-of-pocket costs for a month’s supply of insulin, expiring in 2023. It would establish a work group to explore how to reduce the cost of insulin, which may entail establishing a centralized purchasing program in the future.
“As I said when I rolled out my proposed supplemental budget in December, there’s nothing Washingtonians can’t accomplish when they are united,” Inslee said. “While we did not get everything we wanted for Washingtonians, our state showed we can act in the face of crises when we dedicate ourselves to it, as evidenced by our funding commitments to address homelessness and the unprecedented measures taken to address the COVID-19 outbreak.” | https://medium.com/wagovernor/legislative-session-ends-on-time-provides-funds-for-homelessness-transportation-739ed1aa930e | ['Wa Governor S Office'] | 2020-03-15 01:55:36.194000+00:00 | ['Session', 'Homelessness', 'Transportation', 'Equity', 'Government'] |
Simple Exercises to Lose Love Handles Forever | If you have a special event or party coming up, you probably want to look thin. Certainly, the last thing you want to have is love handles. Luckily, there are some exercises to lose love handles. As long as you learn the techniques, you could practice these exercises in your spare time. Even ten minutes of exercise has been shown to have some positive benefits. Read on to learn of some exercises to Lose Love Handles Forever.
Know in detail — What is Love Handle?
Side Crunch Exercise to Lose Love Handles
Side Crunch Exercise
Here is a great exercise that will be fantastic for solving the question of how to lose love handles. Place yourself face up on a good quality exercise mat. Lie with support for your head by putting your hands in a laced position behind your head.
As you maintain the upper region prone on the exercise mat, you should bend the knees and place your legs with knees together on the left side. Raise your upper portion of the body until the point where the shoulder blades arise up from the mat. Then do this exact thing on the right side too. Start by doing this great exercise ten times each.
Side Kick Exercise to Lose Love Handles
Side Kick Exercise
This is a fantastic exercise to enable you to lose your love handles. Stand up alongside a wall and place one hand directly on a wall to steady and position yourself for optimal balance. Kick your leg to the side a total of ten times. Then turn the body around to the other direction and hold onto the wall now along with the opposing hand. Now do the kicking movement on this opposite side as well. Bear in mind that the leg that presently you are not going to kick should remain somewhat bent for good balance.
Quick Weight Loss Strategies
First of all, naturally, you want to be certain that you are primarily eating a diet that is rich in fruit and vegetables. Lean protein is also great. Lean protein forms are found in beans as well as fish. Of course, you want to be drinking plenty of water- at least eight to ten glasses.
In fact, It is a good plan to add a Green Tea supplement or, even better, just begin drinking Green Tea regularly because it has plenty of antioxidants and it burns fat. On the topic of burning fat, you may want to take a fat burner supplement. It is up to you.
Finally, a colon cleanses product is highly recommended because it will completely detoxify your system and improve your elimination. This will leave you feeling incredibly young, energetic and positive. You will not believe the energy you will experience by using these strategies.
The above are some exercises to lose love handles forever. Explained are the exercises of side crunches, sidekicks as well as some quick weight loss strategies. Having love handles makes a person feel so sluggish. However, losing love handles is quite possible. Practice the above-described exercises to lose love handles forever and see yourself freed of those love handles and totally able to reach your goal.
Do you know?
Benefits of aloe vera on face overnight — 5 Magical things will happen to your skin! | https://medium.com/@aakashbachheriya24/simple-exercises-to-lose-love-handles-forever-2d5d2dd897b5 | ['Aakash Bachheriya'] | 2020-04-18 12:47:21.141000+00:00 | ['Healthcare', 'Exercise', 'Love Handles', 'Lose Weight', 'Weight Loss Tips'] |
Customer Data Platform: The Hero behind User Engagement at Tokopedia | As one of the biggest Indonesian technology companies, Tokopedia has hundred of million users who fulfill their daily needs through various services it offers. One of Tokopedia’s DNAs that embodies in our daily work as Nakama* is to Focus on Consumer, as each of them is special and cherished. However, with the magnitude of our user base, the challenges we face to engage and embrace them are enormous.
Consider a hypothetical case of John from Tokopedia Internet Marketing team who is in charge of building millennial user retention and at the same time promoting trending products from our merchants. Based on John’s problem, we could formulate the problem statement as below:
“Whom should receive emails about the newly arrived Yeezy shoes?” “Which user should I notify when there are good deals on a particular Marvel comic book?”
To solve the problem, and in turn reinforcing data-driven culture, we need a tool that can assist us in understanding our customers more. Specifically, customers are not only limited to buyers; they can also either be merchants or any partners within Tokopedia ecosystem. The tool must be capable of organizing the data of million Tokopedia customers efficiently, and at the same time supports multiple use cases of data retrieval.
Illustration of customer segmentation (source tellius.com)
Here comes the Customer Data Platform.
Customer Data Platform (CDP) collects and processes data from multiple sources and unify them in a single data platform.
This collection of customer profiles is made accessible to other systems, supporting multiple use cases from company-wide stakeholders.
An example of its utilization would be as a data source for the Data Scientist team to build predictive models based on the user’s individual preferences and their spending patterns.
The internet marketing John’s use case mentioned above can take advantage of the segmentation service that comes as the features of CDP. The purpose of this service is to support marketing decisions based on certain customer criteria, divided into three types of the following data:
User Data: email address, home, and delivery address, etc. Transaction Data: loyalty points, payment status, etc. Behavioral Data: search and click history, wishlist, etc.
Illustration of customer segmentation (source tellius.com)
To elaborate on how or what the service does, we will get back to John who plans to create a campaign to target “urban millennials who are inactive for the last three months”. He needs to get the list of users belong into the aforementioned segments and send them some special deals with products that may draw their interest. John will input age (User Data) and activity (Behavioral Data) criteria in the segmentation dashboard that connects into the Segmentation Services. The service will handle the request and John will be notified once the process is complete and results available.
The rest of this post will explain the technicalities of process taking place in the background while John is waiting for the segmentation result.
Illustration of the system
In general, the CDP Segmentation Service is divided into the following parts:
Data transformation
Data from multiple origins are collected, cleaned and transformed into a single customer profile database. We utilize existing Tokopedia ingestion data platform, doing the data processing job on the data lake and manage separate storage using Google BigQuery for segmentation objective in normalized data form. Cleansed and normalized data is appended on a daily basis using Apache Airflow.
Security Layer
The service is intended to accommodate broad use cases by different teams across the company. Consequently, the user may have different roles and therefore disparate access to the data. To ensure that the user is authorized, an audit in the finest granularity must be enforced. Access to our customers’ data is regulated to the column level.
Control layer
The mechanics of the main segmentation system is abstracted in this part, including the normalization and translation of user input to the database-specific language. We use the typical Golang, Postgre and Redis stack. Additionally, the service also logs and monitors all of the segmentation activity using Prometheus and Grafana in this module.
Executor
Acts as the last layer of the service, executor abstracts the data storage from the logical layer and will perform data retrieval job defined by the user-specified criteria. Big Data capable tools are presented in this layer. At the end of the job, a notification will be sent to update and notify the status of the task.
As each of the components mentioned is decoupled from one another, this setup provides scalability to the system. Changes in one layer are isolated, and each of them comes with an extensible set of tools it supports. The executor layer, for example, supports multiple ways and tools to retrieve data from our customer-profile database. You can think of this as strategy pattern in system level. | https://medium.com/tokopedia-data/customer-data-platform-the-hero-behind-user-engagement-at-tokopedia-f80658add046 | ['Yunita Ekawati Salim'] | 2019-06-26 16:18:54.641000+00:00 | ['Customer Segmentation', 'Tokopedia', 'Customer Data Platform', 'Data Engineering', 'Tokopedia Data'] |
How to Create a Toggle Button in Vue.js | In this quick tutorial, you’re going to learn how to create different types of toggle buttons such as:
Toggle a single class inside a single button
Toggle two classes inside a single button
Toggle a single class between two different buttons
Toggle A Single Class Inside A Single Button
In the Vue template, I have a simple button with some Semantic UI CSS framework classes: ui button toggle, which is just for visual purposes.
<button class="ui button toggle">OFF</button>
At this stage, the button has a grey background color like the screenshot below.
At this stage, toggling the active class to the button will change the background color from grey to green and vice versa.
Pretty straight forward.
To do that, we need to have a property that has a boolean value and inside every button click, we need to change the state of that property.
Based on that, we can determine when the active class should be added to the button.
Let’s define a property called isActive inside the data() model.
export default {
data() {
return {
isActive: false,
};
},
};
Then, attach a click event to the button so that we can change the state of the isActive property on every click.
<button class="ui button toggle" @click="toggle">OFF</button>
Invoke the toggle() callback function inside the methods object.
Set the isActive property to true if it’s false and vice versa.
There is more than one way to do this.
The naive approach would be like this:
toggle() {
if (!this.isActive) {
this.isActive = true;
} else {
this.isActive = false;
}
},
The reason I am checking first to see if this.isActive is false is because this is it’s initial value.
But a ternary operator would make it less cluttered.
toggle() {
this.isActive = this.isActive ? false : true;
},
This is fine, but we can still make it better.
toggle() {
this.isActive = !this.enable;
},
That looks nice.
You can actually add this code inline to the button like in the code below.
<button class="ui button toggle" @click="isActive = !isActive">OFF</button>
Toggle The Active CSS Class
Based on the isActive property, let’s toggle active class in the button element by adding an object to the :class.
<button class="ui button toggle" :class="{active:isActive}" @click="isActive = !isActive">OFF</button>
The active class, which is the key of the object, will get added to the button when isActive is set to true which is the value of the object.
Nice.
Toggle Button Text
Let’s swap the text between OFF and ON depending on the value of the isActive property.
<button
class="ui button big toggle"
:class="{active:isActive}"
@click="toggle"
>{{isActive ? 'ON' : 'OFF'}}</button>
Toggle Two Classes Inside A Single Button
Let's say you want the button to have a red background color when it’s OFF and green when it’s ON.
In that case, all we have to do is add an array instead of an object to the :class.
<button
class="ui button big"
:class="[isActive ? 'green' : 'red']"
@click="toggle"
>{{isActive ? 'ON' : 'OFF'}}</button>
In that array, we can use a ternary operator to swap two classes based on the value of the isActive property.
Toggle A Single Class Between Two Buttons
Let’s say you have a payment page that has two options; either pay by credit card or Paypal.
I’ve two buttons with some Semantic UI CSS classes and attached a click event to both with the callback function called toggle().
<div class="ui buttons big">
<button
class="ui button toggle"
@click="toggle"
>Credit Card</button>
<button
class="ui button toggle"
@click="toggle"
>Paypal</button>
</div>
Now, declare a property called showCreditCard inside the data() model.
Then, change the state of the showCreditCard property every time any button is pressed.
export default {
data() {
return {
showCreditCard: true,
};
},
methods: {
toggle() {
this.showCreditCard = !this.showCreditCard;
},
},
};
When the showCreditCard property is set to true, the active class will be added to the credit card button, otherwise, to the Paypal button.
<div class="ui buttons big">
<button
class="ui button toggle"
@click="toggle"
:class="[showCreditCard ? 'active' : '']"
>Credit Card</button>
<button
class="ui button toggle"
@click="toggle"
:class="[!showCreditCard ? 'active' : '']"
>Paypal</button>
</div>
There you have it!
Let me know by commenting below if you want to add anything that’s missing in this article.
Happy Coding! | https://javascript.plainenglish.io/toggle-button-in-vue-js-89c612ad6b1a | ['Raja Tamil'] | 2020-12-21 21:24:02.675000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Vuejs', 'Web Development', 'Programming', 'Coding'] |
Inheritance | Photo by Elias Schupmann on Unsplash
Fist sized dents mar the walls of my family home
My anger’s need for release overrides
The preservation of my own flesh and bone
Now my son doesn’t know his father
Because I grew up alone
Sins of my predecessors are passed along
Treat you bad cuz those who should’ve raised me right
Did me wrong
Momma worked hard for everything she had
Never saved a penny cuz she had to pay
For the absence of my dad
The well of wealth ran dry when it came to my generation
We quench our thirst in search of the next sensation | https://medium.com/@camgarnes/inheritance-8b18b9a65bc8 | ['Cameron Garnes'] | 2020-12-07 17:43:42.289000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Free Verse'] |
How to run Julia on Google Colab | From here, you have 2 options
Utilize Colab’s GPU
Just run on CPU
Just using CPU
Create a file with .ipynb extension and paste the following JSON in it
This article was written in June of 2020, please check for the newer version, if you can find it.
{
"nbformat": 4,
"nbformat_minor": 0,
"metadata": {
"colab": {
"name": "Julia on Colab.ipynb",
"version": "0.3.2",
"provenance": []
},
"kernelspec": {
"name": "julia-1.2",
"display_name": "Julia 1.2"
},
"accelerator": "GPU"
},
"cells": [
{
"metadata": {
"id": "oMSuTc3pDlHv",
"colab_type": "code",
"colab": {}
},
"cell_type": "code",
"source": [
""
],
"execution_count": 0,
"outputs": []
}
]
}
Open Google Colab and upload this notebook (don’t change any notebook setting now, even if google colab prompts you to do so)
Copy-paste the following code in a cell and run it using Shift+Enter :
!curl -sSL "https://julialang-s3.julialang.org/bin/linux/x64/1.2/julia-1.2.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz" -o julia.tar.gz !tar -xzf julia.tar.gz -C /usr --strip-components 1 !rm -rf julia.tar.gz* !julia -e 'using Pkg; pkg"add IJulia; precompile"' !echo "DONE"
Again, this is using Julia version 1.2, to use the newer version, just replace the URL of curl with the version you desire
That’s is, you can run your Julia code on colab with ease
Utilize Colab’s GPU
if you want the juicy graphics horsepower, please refer to this forum post :
CONGRATS !!!
I hope you were successful :
Follow me on
Github: https://github.com/dev117uday
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uday-yadav-4995a818a/ | https://medium.com/@dev117uday/how-to-run-julia-on-google-colab-dd631e6e7e43 | ['Uday Yadav'] | 2020-06-18 19:48:11.722000+00:00 | ['Julia', 'Getting Started', 'Data Science', 'Colab', 'Machine Learning'] |
Outsourcing Your Copywriting Is Costing You Money & Time. Here’s Why | One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given was by Tom Bilyeu. I was a guest on his show Startup Theory…
He said “Nick, keep your marketing in house and to yourself for as long as you can. Only you know what you’re creating, your message and how you want to say it — nobody can copy or do that for you as good as you can”…
Tom then went on to express that in the future, if we did outsource it to still stay in a co-creation relationship with the marketing agency or freelancer so we could keep control of the reigns and what is happening
We’ve been led to believe that it’s a smart move to delegate the things we suck at. It’s true — to a point. It does save us time, energy and money to offload the things that are energy vampires for us to people who are unique genius’ at tie. But, it’s also a trap — here’s why…
Aside from Tom’s truth about those people never knowing your own message as well as you will, there’s 2 main points to keep in mind here:
If you don’t have a basic understanding of what constitutes good marketing and copywriting — your freelancer can walk all over you. They could end up writing shit and you’ll never know until you test it. What this does is a. cost you money on the copy itself, and b. cost you extra money on the testing. They’ll simply say “you need to test copy and marketing to see if it works” — which is true, but you can also test your own creations for free AND develop the skill at the same time. Plus, you save time from having to communicate with the freelancer, making edits to their work and bringing them up to speed on everything… You’re limiting your future growth and earning potential. Copywriting is the skill that keeps on giving. It’s one of the only skills where what you receive back from your input can be astronomically higher than your input. You could spend a day working on a single piece of copy, only for it to work for you for YEARS and bring in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. All that from a few hours work… That’s leverage and a skill you can use for for remainder of your life
Let’s say you do develop the skill and use it for yourself for the rest of your life. Think about not only how much you’ll receive back from the skill financially, but also how much you’ll save (and therefore keep in profit) if you never outsource to a freelancer or company ever again…
That is a thought to give energy and attention to
Journaling Prompt: do I really need to hire a freelancer and outsource my copywriting/marketing OR do I simply need to up skill myself? If I’m against learning it myself, why? What story am I telling myself about why this is a bad move? Is it time, my abilities, or something else?
Want to learn to copywrite? Check out Skillshare, Udemy or Copywriting University
Nick Maier
@nickmaier__ | https://medium.com/@nick-maier/outsourcing-your-copywriting-is-costing-you-money-time-heres-why-7a6fbe83b99a | ['Nick Maier'] | 2020-12-12 22:00:49.708000+00:00 | ['Copywriting Tips', 'Words', 'Marketing Communication', 'Copywriting', 'Copywriting Services'] |
Giving with Love: B Corp Holiday Gift Guides | Delivered on Fridays, B the Change Weekly delivers the most important and most relevant stories about people using business as a force for good. The newsletter features a weekly note from the B the Change team alongside insight and context on the stories we share here on Medium. Below is our latest roundup. To receive these insights directly in your inbox, sign up for B the Change Weekly today. Now on to the good stuff:
As we near the end of 2020, we could all use a little extra love. Behind every Certified B Corporation product or service is a love for community, people, and the environment.
During the holidays, show love for your community by donating time or money to organizations that make an impact, and for the special people in your life by giving a B Corp gift made with love. The gift guides below offer ideas for a range of recipients and even some ways to shop with your local B Corps, so those on your gift list (and you!) can find holiday comfort in the global community of businesses making a difference.
Love Your Planet: 15 Sustainable, Earth-Friendly Gift Ideas
If you’re looking for gifts for the eco-conscious people on your list or you want to give some nifty gifts that help those you love give love back to the planet, this gift guide is for you. We’ve collected 15 sustainable, eco-friendly ideas from B Corps that are holistically working toward having a positive impact on workers, communities, customers and the planet.
Love Your Little Ones: 11 Family-Minded, Planet-Friendly Gift Ideas
Give a gift that nurtures children and nature by opting for products and services from Certified B Corporations that value people and planet as well as profit. These 11 B Corps offer tidings of comfort and joy for the youngest among us as well as those who love and care for them — helping families enjoy an active, healthy lifestyle while also protecting the Earth and empowering our communities.
Food Is Love: 18 Ethical Food Gift Ideas
The way we produce the food we eat and beverages we drink can have a negative or positive impact on the people and planet involved in the supply chain. This B Corp gift guide is dedicated to the food and drink that gives love to the communities and earth that produce them — and includes a special section on ethical coffee for all the coffee aficionados on your list.
Love Yourself: 13 Self-Care Suggestions to Grant Yourself Some Peace
This time of year is made for counting our blessings, but it’s when the stresses can pile up too. As you treat the loved ones in your life, be sure to include yourself and create some moments when all is calm and bright (or as close as you can get). Whether it’s a soothing scent, a soft fabric, or a smoothing balm, these products from B Corps are made to ease your mind and body while showing our planet some kindness as well.
Love Your Team: 9 Ideas to Boost Knowledge, Build Camaraderie, and Say Thanks
Show gratitude for the people who power your business with these products, services, and practices from B Corps. By including employees among the stakeholders that factor into each business decision, these companies forge stronger connections and communities while also advancing an economy that empowers and celebrates all workers.
Made With Love: 12 Ethically Produced Gift Ideas
The clothes, furniture, utensils — all the products — we use every day are made somewhere by someone, often by many someones in many different somewheres. This gift guide highlights 12 products and companies committed to treating those in their supply chains with dignity and with the goal of improving their lives and communities through their work.
Local Love
Shop with B Corps using the regional gift guides below:
Stay in the Know
Here’s your chance to catch up on recent articles: | https://bthechange.com/giving-with-love-b-corp-holiday-gift-guides-2e7e246a6098 | ['B The Change'] | 2020-12-11 20:58:14.722000+00:00 | ['Employee Engagement', 'Gift Guide', 'B Corp', 'Children', 'Food'] |
New airdrop: Stingcoin (TRX) | Reward: 100 TRX ($3.5)
Rate: ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Bot Airdrop Link: https://t.me/StingcoinAirdropBot
🔹 Join on Telegram group (https://t.me/Stingcoin) and channel (https://t.me/Stingcoin_info).
🔹 Submit your TRX address and details.
🔹 Get 2 TRX tokens for each referral.
🔹 1,500 lucky people will be rewarded.
Note: STN tokens have been listed on the Dcoin exchange (https://dcoindoc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360054011752-Dcoin-will-list-STN-ETH-on-December-21) but the team decided to airdrop TRX tokens to lucky 1,500 participants.
Done ✅ | https://medium.com/@eddgia/new-airdrop-stingcoin-trx-e54301d9e1d4 | [] | 2020-12-24 14:56:30.822000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Airdrop', 'Defi', 'Token', 'Blockchain'] |
15-Minute Manifestation Review (2021) — Your best health in 15 minutes? | I was able to bypass all the time-consuming techniques and go straight to the source — the subconscious.
It only took a few short minutes a day
I was able to make “corrections” to my subconscious thought patterns so they rejected negative thoughts that were deeply rooted, the thoughts that continued to hide even though I went through all the meditating, mantras, intending and all the rest of the techniques that are popular today
And I was able to form new, powerful thoughts that will become my reality in the same way the old thoughts did.
I’m sure by now you’re asking the same question I had when I first discovered this incredible program:
How does it work?
Let me explain it in simple terms.
15-Minute Manifestation uses theta brainwave technology to bring your brain into the theta state almost instantly. And this is where the magic happens. This is where the subconscious is most receptive to messages.
You may experience, as I did, vivid imagery, long-forgotten memories, and intuition leading to creative ideas. I experienced information that apparently was beyond what I am able to receive during my waking hours.
But I wasn’t asleep and I didn’t forget the thoughts I had, as is so often the case when we dream.
15-Minute Manifestation is the last tool I’ll ever need and it only took 15 minutes a day
There are no long and tedious books to read, no theories to understand, and nothing to memorize
All you need is a pair of headphones
Why are you still holding on to all those destructive subconscious thoughts? The technology is available NOW!
By utilizing your brain's naturally occurring theta waves — the same waves that occur in sleep and deep meditation — you can reprogram your thoughts to get rid of those that have been making you miserable and keeping you from moving forward.
15-Minute Manifestation is easy and inexpensive (thankfully, because I’d already spent a small fortune and a lot of time on books and seminars that didn’t work). And the benefits are enormous. There’s absolutely no risk because the program comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee!
Don’t waste any more precious time being frustrated because you’re unable to live a life that’s fulfilling your dreams. Get this program in hand today and discover what I did — that in just 15 minutes a day you can become the person you want to be. It’s easy and quick and you’ll wonder why you lived so long without it! I know I did!
Who is the creator of the 15-Minute Manifestation
15 Minute Manifestation is a product created by Eddie Sergey. It is a breakthrough personal development product that allows you to literarily reprogram your subconscious mind to allow you to manifest the life of your dreams. If I were to pick up only one personal development product when on a tight budget, I’d definitely choose 15 Minute Manifestation. Simply because it gives me something that other products can’t give.
Moon Reading: What You’ll Find Inside
Now, let us understand what this product is all about and how does it impact our lives by simply tuning the subconscious portion of our brain.
At one point in my life, I was in complete financial turmoil and my life was in disarray. Neither did I see a way out of it nor did I know what to do.
At this point, you might be thinking that I am just one of the sales guys convincing you to buy this product; but believe me, you’d be dead wrong to think this way! For me, it wasn’t even the 15 Minute Manifestation that helped me and put me on the right track in life.
It was a guy named Eddie Sergey.
During the post-recession period, the unemployment rate was high. And this led to a substantial cut in wages. I was desperate to do ANYTHING just to earn more for a living. Not to mention that I was already in a cloud of negativity and low energy.
I read many books on the law of attraction, took courses on manifestation and personal development. I even took a therapist session. Neither the therapist nor the courses were of any use. I got lost without any clue about my dreams or goals.
Then I came across this guy — a multimillionaire entrepreneur who claimed to have cracked the code to communicate with the subconscious mind and bring it in tune with the conscious portion of the brain. Or as he called it, “UPGRADE THE SOFTWARE”.
Eddie used the scientific concepts to correlate our thoughts, and hence our brain to the tiniest of particles, the sub-atomic particle. He devised a technique to focus energy waves around us to create a sense of positivity. He explained how “THE EDITOR” or the subconscious part of the brain limits our abilities and keeps us away from abundance by distracting our attention. And that there is a way to naturally reprogram this subconscious mind to lead us to the natural state of abundance.
But more than that, what impressed me the most was his own story. (you can learn about his personal story from his website). He had a very rough childhood and it was unbelievable how he overcame the hardships of his life through this technique he discovered and developed since he was nine years old.
I will not bore you with the deep research Eddie did on brain science and how he co-created the 15 Minute Manifestation together with a team of NLP and hypnosis experts. The bottom line is that if you are looking for a product to scientifically “re-wire” your subconscious brain, then you can trust 15-minute manifestation where you only have to listen to audio tracks, unlike other courses which ask you to do endless writing or read ebooks that bore you to death unnecessarily.
I got to try the first audio track to listen for 15 minutes a day for a week and I must say that those 15 minutes proved to be the greatest investment of my life and I mean it. I could feel the change within the first week and then I began to realize what he used to talk about. I was so motivated by the results that I took the complete course of 21 days.
15 Minute Manifestation is NOT woo-woo, made-up, or hocus-pocus nonsense. It is NOT one of those crappy, rehashed, useless junk programs which just deceive people to get their money. Neither is it “Think positive and the world will serve it to you” sort of thing.
15 Minute Manifestation also comes with 60 days no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.
But it does come with some CONS too.
15 Minute Manifestation yields proper results when you follow the course and listen to the audio tracks daily for the entire period of 21 days. You may be able to feel the change earlier but if you believe in overnight results, then there is no such thing as overnight success.
So if you’re one of those individuals who just collects programs and doesn’t do anything with the information inside them, I would advise you not to waste your money. This program is for dedicated and serious people only, who TRULY want to improve their lives!
“This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. Thanks.” | https://medium.com/@manifestationlaw/15-minute-manifestation-review-2021-your-best-health-in-15-minutes-a88ee2232996 | ['Chiristian D'] | 2021-07-06 05:01:36.747000+00:00 | ['Manifestation Magic', 'Manifesting', 'Law Of Attraction', 'Manifest', 'Manifestation'] |
How to get amazon $10 off coupon, free amazon promo codes, amazon free coupons, amazon coupons? | Amazon offers all things everywhere. From ladies’ attire to household appliances, from hardware and devices to mechanical supplies. The presence of different homegrown and worldwide brands makes the shopping experience even more agreeable. It unquestionably brings a great deal of assortment and scope of items on the table. However, what tops off an already good thing is that one can a huge load of cash while shopping from Amazon. They need not beg to be spent on encountering the delight of requesting their number one items. This should be possible through the different arrangements and offers that can be benefited while shopping from Amazon.
Consistently Amazon offers open doors for sparing more on the retail costs of the items through Lightning Deals, Deal of the Day, Savings and Sales, Amazon coupons code today and Amazon Promo Code Today, Prime Early Access Deals, and so on In any case, these offers and arrangements are regularly dissipated everywhere, and one can’t discover them at one spot without any problem. Perusing these worthwhile arrangements generally occupies a ton of time for a person. Now and again there are countless arrangements that an individual can’t look at them all and regularly misses on some alluring offers, in view of the absence of data about those arrangements.
Luckily, through a stage like Lockadeal, one can get to all these free amazon promo codes, offers, and arrangements in a single spot. It is a one-stop answer for all the deals and offers with the goal that a purchaser spares both their time and cash. Lockadeal gives a huge number of amazon free coupons that can be utilized in different classes of items while shopping from Amazon. Additionally, you will never get the notice that the coupon isn’t substantial, as Lockadeal consistently shows you the legitimacy of that coupon so you may profit of its advantage before the expiry date.
Additionally, the amazon free coupons accessible on Lockadeal are likewise plainly separated into different classes so your shopping experience becomes as easy to understand as could reasonably be expected, and you don’t burn through any of your valuable opportunity to chase for bargains, offers, and amazon $10 off coupon everywhere on the web. To wind up setting aside more cash on top of all these alluring arrangements and offers, you may likewise decide to benefit from the bank offers that Amazon gives. This bank offers causes you to get cashback and more limits on your buys. With all these astounding advantages sitting tight for you, why spend more when so much can be saved money on the acquisition of similar measures of items!
Thusly, with such a great amount coming up for you in Lockadeal, you can make your Amazon shopping experience a stunning one. There is no more need to peruse various destinations and ‘Hit and Try’ their coupons just to discover free amazon promotion codes that they aren’t working. Coupons and offers on Lockadeal will consistently work, and you can remain cheerful with regard to applying these coupons. You can likewise look at the Deal Alert tab on Lockadeal so you are refreshed previously pretty much all the ongoing arrangements that have been presented for shopping at Amazon. | https://medium.com/@lockadeal/how-to-get-amazon-10-off-coupon-free-amazon-promo-codes-amazon-free-coupons-amazon-coupons-b587a2614f9e | ['Lockadeal', 'Best Deals', 'Coupons', 'Promo Codes'] | 2020-12-16 11:01:53.023000+00:00 | ['Coupon', 'Coupon Codes', 'Amazon', 'Coupons And Deals'] |
On 4/20, Get Punted with Greenheart’s CBD Token | On 4/20, Get Punted with Greenheart’s CBD Token
The $CBD AME starts on World Cannabis Day. The combination of agribusiness and DeFi offers “high” potential. Launchpool Apr 19·4 min read
We are proud to announce the details of our next Allocation Mining Event (AME). The staking of $LPOOL into allocation mining pools has already been made available on our website. Rewards will begin to accrue tomorrow. The generous private sale allocation of $500,000 worth of $CBD tokens will last a whopping 2 weeks.
The combination of agriculture and decentralized financial services is a heretofore unexplored crypto niche, creating a unique opportunity known as AgriDeFi.
Dear Poolers,
Launchpool is proud to announce a partnership with Ireland’s best cannabidiol (CBD) oil producer, Greenheart. Greenheart is transforming CBD production by using DeFi powered loans and their own unique CBD production technology such as their drones which leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data to increase crop profitability for farmers.
Why is Launchpool Cultivating the Greenheart Crop?
A quick look at the numerous successful projects that Launchpool has started shows they embrace projects with cutting edge innovation, and Greenheart is about as cutting edge as they come! With the aim of transforming the lives of farmers through bringing DeFi and new technology to the international agriculture industry, Greenheart has acres of ambition. The 100% Irish owned business is laser focused on evolving their CBD oil production.
Plans include using smart contracts and DeFi to facilitate financing for farmers who need it most. On the production side they utilize a supply chain tracking system and AI-powered drones to collect data which guide farmers to make more profitable farming decisions. Greenheart’s use of CBD (a legal derivative of cannabis hemp) in production has overcome the traditional stigma associated with marijuana. As this Irish Times article indicates, the Greenheart time has even gotten the Irish government onside.
$CBD Tokenomics
The full tokenomics of the $CBD project is included below. Here’s a reminder that Launchpool is a unique crypto launch platform. While other IDO platforms focus on public sale pricing, we deliver private sale allocations to our loyal Pooler family. While that means we can typically get tokens for much cheaper than other IDO platforms, it does mean that we need to accept vesting terms to get that cheaper rate.
The Greenheart project is no different. Our Poolers will get to enjoy a 25% discount on their tokens as compared to the public sale price, but that preferential pricing comes at the expense of vesting. No $CBD tokens will be received at TGE. There will be a 1 month cliff followed by a 25% per month release schedule.
AME Info | https://medium.com/@launchpool/on-4-20-get-punted-with-greenhearts-cbd-token-d7fb73b08050 | [] | 2021-04-19 15:51:02.544000+00:00 | ['Blockchain Technology', 'Defi', 'Agriculture', 'Drones', 'Cbd'] |
What are the advantage of solar energy? | solar energy tip what are the advantage of solar energy
Anyone in the world who wants to get electricity using solar energy will have this question in their mind that what is the advantage of energy
Solar energy is currently used in many parts of the world and the use of this solar energy is also beneficial for the environment.
If we look at it this way, we have got information about the main advances of solar energy which are as follows:
1. Clean and Renewable Energy Source.
2. Reduces your electricity bills
3. Less Impact on Environment
4. It consumes low maintenance cost
5. Easy to Installation
6. In long term return on investment solar panels
In short, solar energy is a clean and renewable energy source that allows you to lower your home’s electricity bill. It has less impact on the environment. It has a lower maintenance charge after installation and gives you a long-term return.
To the best of my knowledge, I have given you information about the advantages of solar energy | https://medium.com/@solarenergytip/what-are-the-advantage-of-solar-energy-1b8e1a8f26b7 | ['Solar Energy Tip'] | 2021-04-25 08:45:22.388000+00:00 | ['Solar', 'Solar Energy', 'Solar Power World', 'Solar Energy System', 'Solar Power'] |
the Amazon rain forest : the oxygen generator and wildlife home, | hi I'm Akshay Singh. I love love to type blogs on earth nature wildlife. so please support and share it visit: https://www.earthh.me | https://medium.com/@ajaysir1968/the-amazon-rain-forest-the-oxygen-generator-and-wildlife-home-fb18e015a77b | ['Akshay Singh'] | 2020-12-22 03:16:24.928000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Earth', 'Amazon', 'Environment', 'Rainforest'] |
Appeasement Policy Led Both Hitler and Iran’s Regime To Spread Terrorism and War Across Europe. This Should End Now | Appeasement Policy Led Both Hitler and Iran’s Regime To Spread Terrorism and War Across Europe. This Should End Now Masoud Dalvand Follow Dec 15, 2020 · 3 min read
Iran-EU Relations
European governments’ disastrous policy of appeasement eventually emboldened Hitler to occupy France. Decades later, the European Union’s appeasement policy encouraged Iran’s terrorist rulers to plant a bomb, again in Paris, France. Has the time not come For the EU to stop appeasing dictators?
Assadollah Assadi, Iran’s diplomat-terrorist, and three of his accomplices were arrested in 2018 while trying to bomb the opposition rally in Paris, France. Besides the opposition president, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, and tens of thousands of Iranians, many western citizens, including hundreds of renowned politicians, attended the annual “Free Iran” gathering.
Assadi used his diplomatic passport to transfer 500 grams of TATP explosives from Iran to Austria, where he worked as the third secretary of the regime’s embassy. He later handed the bomb to a terrorist couple, Amir Sadouni, Nasimeh Naami, in Luxembourg on June 28, 2018.
During his trial in Antwerp, Belgium, Assadi refused to appear in court, on the direct order of Iran’s so-called “moderate” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Later, in his indictment, the prosecutor underlined that the Iranian regime’s order for Assadi to not appear in the court session and answer questions indicates that the regime was behind the terrorist operation.
According to the prosecutor, since Assadi was working with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the 2018 bomb plot was not a rogue operation by an individual, and the entire Iranian government was behind it.
The Iranian Resistance had previously revealed that Iran’s Supreme National Security Council had approved this terrorist attack. The regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani, presided over the Supreme National Security Council, and Zarif also attended this session.
Zarif and his ministry were tasked with facilitating the operation against the Iranian Resistance in Europe. When Assadi was caught red-handed on July 1, 2018, Zarif blatantly said this was a “false flag” operation.
In other words, Zarif not just facilitated and played a key role in this terrorist attack, but he tried to deceive the international community.
Yet, despite his role in spreading terrorism in Europe, the EU’s leaders continue to regard Zarif as a “moderate.” Recently, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was scheduled to hold the Europe-Iran Business Forum in Tehran with Zarif.
This meeting was canceled at the very last minute due to the regime’s execution of Ruhollah Zam, another former European resident. Although important, that does not mean the EU has changed course in dealing with Tehran’s terrorist regime.
Nevil Chamberlain claimed his appeasement policy with Hitler and the disgraceful Munich Agreement had secured “peace for our time.” Years later, Hitler captured Paris and bombarded England.
Winston Churchill once said: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
Perhaps, the European forgot this fact and the bitter experience of World War II. The foiled bomb plot by the religious fascism in the heart of Europe, once again, proves that appeasing a warmongering state, such as the Iranian regime, will only encourage it.
European policymakers should learn from Assadi’s case and their modern history that meeting and negotiating with criminals like Hitler or Zarif only encourages them to freely pursue their malign goals.
The foiled bomb plot in 2018 proved that the EU’s appeasement policy would make EU citizens and overall security the first victims of those “turbaned crocodiles” in Tehran.
Thus, European policymakers should sanction Zarif and his ministry for their role in terrorism.
The EU should shut down all the regime’s embassies and so-called cultural centers in Europe and expel its agents.
Holding the regime to account and taking a firm step to counter its terrorism will certainly “secure peace in our time.”
Originally published at http://freedomstarblog.wordpress.com on December 15, 2020. | https://medium.com/freedom-star/appeasement-policy-led-both-hitler-and-irans-regime-to-spread-terrorism-and-war-across-europe-925c0a91e46f | ['Masoud Dalvand'] | 2020-12-15 17:18:00.711000+00:00 | ['Europe', 'Appeasement', 'Iran', 'Terrorism', 'Eu'] |
Manage Docker Postgres | Port Exposed
In previous article, we already learn how to connect to database postgres docker container through the bash docker exec -ti postgresdb bash . Now we will try to direct connect to the database without bash. First, we will create the new container.
Pada artikel sebelumnya kita sudah belajar koneksi database melalui bash ke container docker postgres docker exec -ti postgresdb bash . Kali ini kita akan coba masuk ke databasenya langsung tanpa melalui bash. Tapi sebelumnya kita create dahulu container yang baru.
# docker container create --name postgresdb -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=[PASSWORDHERE] postgres:11-alpine
1499fc5ff2bb8378cf33a2af90a884462f8da30f015c11cf72ebcf0f2521ce52 # docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
1499fc5ff2bb postgres:11-alpine "docker-entrypoint.s…" 2 minutes ago Up About a minute 5432/tcp postgresdb
Then we will try direct connect without bash.
Kemudian kita coba connect langsung tanpa melalui bash.
# psql -d postgres -h localhost -U postgres -p 5432
psql: could not connect to server: Connection refused
Is the server running on host "localhost" (127.0.0.1) and accepting
TCP/IP connections on port 5432?
could not connect to server: Network is unreachable
Is the server running on host "localhost" (::1) and accepting
TCP/IP connections on port 5432?
So it is failed. So how to do the direct connect? By doing the Port Exposed, which binding the server’s port with the docker postgres port (default 5432).
Ternyata kita gagal connect langsung ke database. Terus bagaimana caranya melakukan koneksi langsung? Dengan Port Exposed, yaitu membinding port di server kita dengan port di docker postgres (default 5432).
docker run --name postgresdb5433 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=[PASSWORDHERE] -d -p 5433:5432 postgres:11-alpine
6bffd9c50e2a468f9b19d9ec4c76433de6a2757a1a8806b5fa5c59b2205d9551
In above sample, we binding the our server’s port 5433 with the docker postgres port 5432. That’s mean we will do direct connect through port 5433.
Pada contoh diatas kita membinding port server 5433 ke port 5432 docker postgres. Artinya kita akan dapat mengakses db tersebut melalui port 5433.
# docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
17fae2f1794a postgres:11-alpine "docker-entrypoint.s…" About a minute ago Up 23 seconds 5432/tcp postgresdb5433
Now we will try direct connect with the port 5433.
Sekarang kita akan mencoba koneksi langsung dengan port 5433.
# psql -h localhost -p 5433 -d postgres -W
Password:
psql (10.12 (Ubuntu 10.12-0ubuntu0.18.04.1), server 11.8)
WARNING: psql major version 10, server major version 11.
Some psql features might not work.
Type "help" for help.
postgres=# create database dockerpostgres;
CREATE DATABASE postgres=# \q
Success! But it will be failed if we run through the port 5432, because no database run at that port.
Berhasil! Tapi akan gagal jika connect ke port 5432, karena tidak ada database yang berjalan di port tersebut.
# psql -h localhost -p 5432 -d postgres -W
Password:
psql: could not connect to server: Connection refused
Is the server running on host "localhost" (127.0.0.1) and accepting
TCP/IP connections on port 5432?
could not connect to server: Network is unreachable
Is the server running on host "localhost" (::1) and accepting
TCP/IP connections on port 5432?
How if we try connect from other ip than localhost?
Bagaimana jika kita mencoba dari ip lain selain localhost?
# psql -h PUTSERVERIPHERE -p 5433 -d postgres -W
Password:
psql (11.6 (Ubuntu 11.6-1.pgdg18.04+1), server 11.8)
Type "help" for help. # postgres=# \c dockerpostgres
Password for user postgres:
psql (11.6 (Ubuntu 11.6-1.pgdg18.04+1), server 11.8)
You are now connected to database "dockerpostgres" as user "postgres".
dockerpostgres=#
Still connect! But this is dangerous because the default pg_hba will allow connection from others ip segment like 172.21. So how to edit the pg_hba and restrict the connection?
Tetap berhasil! Tapi ini cukup membahayakan karena default pg_hba akan mengijinkan koneksi dari segment ip lain seperti 172.21. Jadi bagaimana cara kita mengubah pg_hba nya dan memperketat koneksi yang masuk?
Manage pg_hba Docker Postgres
We know in postgres, to restrict the connection, we can specify which ip that allowed / rejected in pg_hba. Inside of docker postgres, we can find the pg_hba in /var/lib/postgresql/data/ , through the bash command. Now we will try to reject the segment 172.21 in pg_hba.
Kita tau bahwa di postgres untuk membatasi koneksi yang masuk adalah dengan mengubah ip yang diijinkan / ditolak di pg_hba. Di dalam docker postgres, pg_hba terletak di path berikut /var/lib/postgresql/data/ , melalui bash. Berikut kita akan coba menolak ip dengan segment 172.21.
bash-5.0# vi /var/lib/postgresql/data/pg_hba.conf host all all 172.21.0.0/16 reject
Then reload the configuration through database.
Kemudian reload config nya melalui database.
postgres=# select pg_reload_conf();
Then login again from servers with segment 172.21.
Kemudian login lagi dari server segment ip 172.21.
psql -h PUTSERVERIPHERE -p 5433 -d postgres -W
Password:
psql: FATAL: pg_hba.conf rejects connection for host "172.21.xxx.xxx", user "postgres", database "postgres", SSL off
Voila!! We can restrict the connection! But how if the connection from local?
Berhasil!! Kita berhasil menolak aksesnya! Lalu bagaimana jika dari local?
psql -h localhost -p 5433 -d postgres -W
Password:
psql (10.12 (Ubuntu 10.12-0ubuntu0.18.04.1), server 11.8)
WARNING: psql major version 10, server major version 11.
Some psql features might not work.
Type "help" for help. postgres=# \q
Voila again! This means that now only localhost can access the database.
Berhasil lagi! Artinya koneksi yang diijinkan sekarang hanya dari localhost. | https://medium.com/@oktislumbantoruan/manage-docker-postgres-1ddf41530357 | ['Oktis Lumbantoruan'] | 2020-06-12 17:57:35.093000+00:00 | ['Postgres', 'Docker', 'Database Administration', 'Database', 'Postgresql'] |
Ultimate Guide to pass eJPT in the first attempt by Mayur Parmar | Course: eJPT(eLearnSecurity Junior Penetration Tester)
https://elearnsecurity.com/product/ejpt-certification/
Cost: 200$(exam voucher)
Duration of exam: 72 Hours(3 days)
payment options: Paypal/credit card
Material(Lab,video,PDF): follow below steps
Steps: Register on ine.com(you will get starter pass with eJPT course material included)
goto this link: https://my.ine.com/CyberSecurity/learning-paths/a223968e-3a74-45ed-884d-2d16760b8bbd/penetration-testing-student (eJPT course material)
Introduction:
The eLearnSecurity Junior Penetration Tester (eJPT) is a 100% practical certification on penetration testing and information security essentials. Bypassing the exam, a cybersecurity professional proves to employers they are ready for a rewarding new career.
Prerequisites: Nothing (their material is enough even non-technical people can understand easily)
Outcome:
TCP/IP
IP routing
LAN protocols and devices
HTTP and web technologies
Essential penetration testing processes and methodologies
Basic vulnerability assessment of networks
Basic vulnerability assessment of web applications
Exploitation with Metasploit
Simple web application manual exploitation
Basic information gathering and reconnaissance
Simple scanning and profiling the target
Exam Format:
>They will give you 20 MCQ questions out of which you have to answer 15 questions correctly to pass the exam. and all the questions are based on practical. This is an open-book exam so you can check their material as well as use the internet.
Important Topics( from course material):
> Wireshark, Pivoting, Burpsuite, pentesting lifecycle, OSINT, Nmap, Nessus, Web attacks (XSS, SQL injection, directory bruteforcing), password attacks, authentication cracking, null session attack, Metasploit. Programming.
OS: Kali Linux or any ubuntu based(eg. popOS)
Tools(for the main exam):
OpenVPN, Nmap, Nessus, fping, dirt buster, burp suite, john the ripper, hashcat, Metasploit, hydra, Nmap automaton(https://github.com/21y4d/nmapAutomator), Wireshark, sublist3r, Netcat, dirb, enum4linux, samrdump, smbclient
Command cheatsheet:
https://kentosec.com/2019/08/04/how-to-pass-the-ejpt/
Notes:
https://github.com/tr0nucf/My-Tools/blob/master/eJPT%20Notes.txt
eJPT Resources(External Resources):
I made a one-word document that consists of all the best resources for dedicated topics that will prepare you for eJPT exam. and most important thing I have included some rooms from TryHackMe which is very helpful in the preparation of eJPT. so don't forget to checkout.
A few days ago I created a poll on Linkedin for eJPT V/S CEH exam. and most of the people voted for eJPT so decided to make this blog.
Tips for the exam:
> complete course material with labs
-> understand the concept of Pivoting( very important)
-> in the exam go through the pentesting phase and connect all dots.
-> Take notes for reference, Make new tabs in the terminal to do other tasks
-> do not take stress it is a very easy exam. consider you are solving CTF.
Final thoughts:
after taking eJPT certification one thing I can say it is one of the best exams I ever attended. and highly recommend it to every beginner who wants to start their journey in cybersecurity.
Follow me on below social media:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/th3cyb3rc0p/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/th3cyb3rc0p
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/th3cyb3rc0p/
If you like this write-up give clap.
incase you need any help feel free to message me on my social media handles. | https://infosecwriteups.com/ultimate-guide-to-pass-ejpt-in-the-first-attempt-by-mayur-parmar-75effc877394 | ['Mayur Parmar'] | 2021-04-19 15:01:58.666000+00:00 | ['Hacking', 'Certification', 'Pentesting', 'Cyber', 'Ejpt'] |
37 Ways To Avoid Social Media Burnout | In our digital culture, there’s no doubt that social media has revolutionised the way we communicate with one another. When you consider the strides forward we’ve taken in the field of technology over the last twenty years, it’s actually quite inspiring…and a little bit frightening. But what about social media burnout? Is it important and what do you need to be aware of?
Social media burnout is a very real thing, and it’s becoming even more prevalent of late. Our lifestyles are increasingly played out online now, and I’ve seen many good friends in the blogging world succumb to the utter boredom and exhaustion social media burnout can cause. It’s a shame, but to be honest, it’s not that surprising. In many cases, ‘social networking’ has become anything but ‘social’. What happens when we begin to view our digitally cultivated friendships as just another component of a marketing strategy?
Workplace burnout and digital burnout
Burnout in the workplace isn’t uncommon, and for many of us, the digital world is our workplace now. I spend the vast majority of my working day tied to my computer, tablet or smartphone, scheduling, hashtagging, writing and networking. It comes with the territory, I know, but it is becoming hard for many of us to keep on top of.
I remember when Facebook first came out. Everyone was still using MySpace, and you had to have a university email address to even join up. It was new, fun, and not all that serious. Now, Facebook and many other social media platforms are becoming little more than another means to an end for the shapers of our digital landscape. It’s tiresome for many, but especially for those of us who need to remain part of the network for our jobs.
So how do you avoid social media burnout when most of your work involves being ever-present online?
Getting a grip on being ‘social’
In 2019, I plan to get a real hold of my digital diary. I probably said that at the beginning of this year, but I’m serious about this goal now. I’ve seen so many people I actually care about pull themselves out of the online world completely because of burnout, and I don’t want that to happen to me.
So before we head into the New Year, here’s my 37-point plan for avoiding social media burnout.
Plan on paper, complete tasks online — by using a paper-based planner I can reconnect with my real-world ideas and goals in a distraction-free way, and be more efficient with my online time.
Impose a curfew — no staying up ridiculously late tweeting, schedule things in advance and get some proper sleep.
Plan meal breaks and stick to them — stop eating at your desk.
Streamline your ‘work’ social media and your ‘personal’ social media.
Work in hourly chunks — structure your time into the most vital tasks and pause for breath in-between.
Have a cut-off point for work-based social media.
Have a set time for personal social media.
Implement tech-free days at least once a month — unplug completely and see how it helps.
Learn which scheduling tools work for you and use them.
Invest some money in paid scheduling if you need to.
Identify the social media networks that work best for you and that you enjoy being part of.
Remind yourself who is worth your time — by this, I mean cultivate your online friendships carefully and treat them as you would reality-based friends. Don’t be a dick just because you can’t see someone in person.
Take time to plan a social strategy on paper — similarly to point one, planning a few months out on paper can help you really gain clarity in your thinking, and help identify the right social media communities for you.
Get outside and refocus. Leave your phone in the house.
Write/blog in the mornings, be social in the afternoons.
Schedule a time to sift through emails — stop letting them interrupt your flow of work.
Avoid biting on controversial threads — even if the argument is irritating you, it’s literally not worth your time.
Make time for your personal life.
Research the things that make you tick and write about them.
Interact meaningfully online — is there anything worse than those bot comments on your Instagram pictures? Yeah, don’t do that.
Streamline your systems — remove yourself from the 3,000 Facebook groups you’re idle in and just work to be present in the ones you actually find helpful.
Help others on social media — there are lots of people who you can share advice with. Be nice to them.
Plan a holiday — seriously, plan it, book it, and then work hard to feel the benefit of it when the time comes.
Forget about what everyone else is doing — stop comparing yourself to others, just do your own thing.
Find other social media avenues to explore — I’ve recently started following some writers’ hashtags on Instagram and also some about Viking mythology. Social media doesn’t always have to be related to your work.
and also some about Viking mythology. Social media doesn’t always have to be related to your work. Use the mute button if you need to.
Use video content more often.
Engage in Twitter chats purposefully — don’t waste time and energy on them if you’re not really getting anything out of it.
Take some time away from social media if you need to — or better yet, plan a scheduled break from it and make it known in advance online.
Don’t lose heart. Work smarter, not longer.
Remember that your digital footprint doesn’t define you — your reality is the most important thing.
Look for ways to refresh your earlier work and re-share things — you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Try to make time for your real-world friendships.
Share the load — if you have a team or someone else who can help, ask them to get involved with a few tasks.
Block any negativity or troll accounts instantly — don’t engage with them.
Stick to the schedule and cut-off points and don’t let social media take over your life.
Read paper-based books. Your brain and your eyes need them.
Key takeaways
The key thing to remember about avoiding social media burnout is that even though it feels like you have to be ‘always on’, the truth is, you don’t. It’s not healthy to be immersed in the online world 24/7, and it can have a massively detrimental effect on your health if you are.
Planning in advance is hopefully going to be my secret weapon for 2019. I’ve also been fairly lucky so far in avoiding the nasty underbelly of social media, where the trolls reside. It’s a sad truth that some people can’t separate the two anymore, but don’t let them suck you in. The block button is there for a reason; use your social media in whatever way you wish (as long as it’s not to troll others).
Have you got any tips for avoiding social media burnout? I’d love to hear from you if you’ve ever experienced it yourself. Please drop your thoughts into the comments or as always, you can get in touch over on Twitter or Facebook. | https://actualar.medium.com/37-ways-to-avoid-social-media-burnout-3ceec791644 | [] | 2019-03-27 13:42:50.940000+00:00 | ['Digital Health', 'Really Necessary', 'Social Media', 'Tech', 'Burnout'] |
Impacting Business As-It-Happens | To get value out of today’s big and fast data, organizations must evolve beyond traditional analytic cycles that are heavy with data transformation and schema management. The Hadoop revolution is about merging business analytics and production operations to create the ‘as-it-happens’ business. It’s not a matter of running a few queries to gain insight to make the next business decision, but to change the organization’s fundamental metabolic rate. It is essential to take a data-centric approach for infrastructure to provide flexible, real-time data access, collapsing data silos and automating data-to-action for immediate operational benefits.
Lesson #1 — Journey to the Real-Time Data-Centric Enterprise
There are two types of companies in the big data space. Those that are born in big data to deliver a competitive edge through the software or the processes for enabling big data and then there are the rest. Those who have a mandate to simultaneously cut IT and storage costs, and to create a platform for innovation.
There are a few MapR customers I want to highlight as they have been very successful on their journey to become Real-Time Data-Centric Enterprises and are great examples that this is real and completely possible.
Urban Airship sends over 180B text messages per month. Some of their users are sports fans who require information as-it-happens, and waiting for hours is not good enough. They deliver actionable information so that brands like Starbucks can ensure the best experience possible for their customers.
Rubicon Project created pioneering technology that created a new model for the advertising industry–similar to what NASDAQ did for stock trading. Rubicon Project’s automated advertising platform processes over 100B ad auctions each day and provides the most extensive reach in the industry, touching 96% of internet users in the US.
Machine Zone, creators of Game of War, had their operations isolated from analytics and their ability to deliver actionable data was limited. They reengineered their platform to deliver operations and analytics on the same platform and now support over 40M users and more than 300k events per second.
If you would like to read about more use cases for creating an as-it-happens business I recommend reading this new and freely downloadable O’Reilly book Real-World Hadoop written by Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman.
Lesson #2 — Replatforming the Enterprise
Real-time doesn’t require just big or just fast–or big in one cluster and fast in another. It requires big and fast together, working harmoniously. What we should be thinking about now is whether or not there is an overall architectural approach to bring the two together that can be followed to ensure success.
To answer this question we should step back and understand where we have been and where we are going. Applications have dictated the data format, but now we can see that the data should freely support varied compute engines. ETL is a very heavy complicated process that often takes an extensive amount of time and resources, thus we would be better served by handling fast growing data sources with a load and go philosophy. Finally, where there has been a tremendous amount of latency in systems, we must continually figure out how to remove the latency.
With this new architectural approach, we need to consider all of the hardware we have in our data centers. Not just the hardware set aside for Hadoop, but everything. We need to build on top of all the hardware and change our way of thinking. We need to get away from static partitioning of hardware and onto a more dynamic approach. On top of all the hardware we need to be able to manage all resources globally; we must be able to elastically expand and contract resources on-demand. An example of this would be a hybrid approach by using Project Myriad to allow Apache Mesos to manage YARN. 451 Research wrote a research brief about MapR co-launching the Myriad project to unite Apache YARN with Apache Mesos.
On top of global resource management we need a set of cohesive data storage services which any application can use, including: a distributed file system that can deliver against all of our business continuity needs, real-time storage and processing. To enable the most value on this new architectural approach MapR announced as part of the 4.1 release that there will be two new pieces of functionality added for MapR-DB:
First is the Multi-Master Replication between clusters. This means you will now be able to deploy multiple active (read/write) clusters across globally distributed data centers so that you may place live data closer to end users. MapR-DB will maintain global consistency via synchronous or asynchronous (when the network can’t handle synchronous) replication. This will minimize data loss (in the case of data center failure) with transaction-level replication.
Second is the new C API for MapR-DB, which lets you write native C/C++ applications for MapR-DB. Additionally, you can leverage this C API from more than 20 different languages by utilizing a framework like SWIG.
Finally, in order to complete the replatforming we need the distributed applications that drive our businesses to play nicely with these enabling technologies. With MapR any application that can read/write to an NFS mount is already capable of plugging directly into this architecture.
Lesson 3 — Data Agility
The real-time data-centric enterprise is not really driven by the data-to-insight cycle; it is really driven by the data-to-action cycle. Insights are great, but being able to take action on the information makes all the difference in an as-it-happens business.
If we want to have operations and analytics on the same platform, we need to think about how we get data in and how we handle it at scale to deliver real-time and actionable analytics. We must think about managing, processing, exploring and leveraging the data. In order to shorten the data-to-action cycle we have to remove steps in legacy processes to move forward. We no longer want to create and maintain schemas, or to transform or copy data. These processes take time and they don’t deliver value in a data-to-action cycle. What we want moving forward is low latency, scalability and integration with ubiquitous technologies like SQL and the BI tools already in use.
This is where Apache Drill comes in. This is a SQL query engine that supports self-service data exploration without the need to predefine a schema. Drill is ANSI SQL 2003 compliant and plugs right into all of those BI tools you are accustomed to using in an industry standard way. With Drill you simply query your data in place; there is no need to perform ETL or to move your data. After all, if you currently use business intelligence tools, you should be enabled to still use them.
Lesson 4 — Good Enough?
“Good enough” won’t be once your business users start experiencing the value of real-time big data. They will only want more and faster. No matter what use case you start with for your journey, your journey will require real-time and enterprise-grade.
It is paramount to remember that an as-it-happens business is as much about business process reinvention as it is about the technology that runs the business. Keep in mind that doesn’t mean replacing all the tools you use in your business. It means rethinking how you operate and augment your tools where necessary to impact your business as-it-happens. | https://medium.com/the-ramp/impacting-business-as-it-happens-8bdb367c3fd0 | ['Jim Scott'] | 2015-12-07 14:42:26.239000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Data Science', 'Hadoop'] |
İmrenilecek Başarıya Götüren Minik Dokunuşlar | 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/t%C3%BCrkiye/i%CC%87mrenilecek-ba%C5%9Far%C4%B1ya-g%C3%B6t%C3%BCren-minik-dokunu%C5%9Flar-bfb513891e65 | [] | 2020-12-21 10:58:43.866000+00:00 | ['Motivasyon', 'Türkçe', 'Edebiyat', 'Başarı', 'Kişisel Gelişim'] |
THE RISE OF BIGOTRY IN AMERICAN AND A SCATTERED DEMOCRATIC PARTY: WHEN THE APPLE RUNS FAR FROM THE… | THE RISE OF BIGOTRY IN AMERICAN AND A SCATTERED DEMOCRATIC PARTY: WHEN THE APPLE RUNS FAR FROM THE TREE.
For more than ten years, white liberals supporters or sympathizers of the Democratic party have enabled the rise of far-right and white supremacist groups in the United States. It is also important to mention that less well-known hate groups, falling under the umbrella of white nationalism with neo-fascists and ethnocentric beliefs, have grown and germinated in every corner of the country and beyond.
All of us have some responsibility for letting these far-right groups advance and carry political influence in all fairness. Granted, hate groups such as the Proud Boys have received support and encouragement from the Trump regime; these far-right extremists would not have gained strength if opposed by one united front. Still, is it all because of the Trump administration’s backing? Not entirely accurate; the rise of far-right conservatism intensified after the election of Barack Obama in 2008. In those years, an already agitated group of far-right conservatives began to show their disdain for the first Black American president openly. Even the late John McCain defended Obama during a political event over racist comments. However, the demonization campaign that started in the late 2000s continued non-stop directed by corporate conservative media outlets, both online and cable, financed by some of the most conservative figures on the top 1% percent category and amplified by political figures elected by the same far-right groups, along with white nationalist and white supremacist sympathizers.
Whether one agrees or disagrees, we must give them credit to organize and become such a powerful political force. President Trump took advantage of the silent majority, ready to succumb to any political dealer ready to take on their white supremacist beliefs. The silent majority has been getting louder and more robust since the early 2010s.
On the other hand, the Democratic party has lost track, and nowadays, the mistrust of underrepresented communities has grown, and its lack of confidence widen; the democratic party resist to acknowledge that their influence among communities of color has slipped away, fall behind, and break into pieces broken into different directions; left, right, center, and even far-right.
The Democratic party also seeks power just like their fellow legislators across the aisle; the party also receives corporate America’s financial support, gets funded by the other side of the top 1%. Let us be honest; The Democratic party is also prone to corrupt attitudes. The only difference nowadays is that the dark side of American politics is more powerful, more united, energetic, and not going anywhere. This powerful political force almost got President Trump reelected; if he lost the election, it was because of Donald Trump’s own doing.
Not all is lost; the brave members of generation Z have shown courage and strength in recent years, which older Gen X’s have shyly shown in the last four years. For example, in recent demonstrations in the nation’s capital, Gen Z’s have held the line while being beaten by far-right-wing agitators and far-right law enforcement sympathizers. Moreover, Gen Z’s have taken pepper spray like champs while running away from the oppressive law enforcement; that fellow reader is courageous. Sure, we can debate how, when being young, we behaved with more idealistic and intrepid motos; however, as older Gen X’s, we must be critical of our privilege and passive attitude when unaffected by national unrest or when experiencing an authoritarian government that promotes and supports neo-fascist ideologies. Fear and indifference gave them strength; closing our eyes, covering our ears, and looking the other way gives them power. Sadly, the self-proclaimed “liberal crowd,” especially Gen X’s, has empowered white supremacy with their unresponsive, submissive, and mean-spirited attitude. | https://medium.com/@agustin-aguirre/the-rise-of-bigotry-in-american-and-a-scattered-democratic-party-when-the-apple-runs-far-from-the-7b6f2aa4dd34 | ['Agustin Aguirre Herrera'] | 2021-03-07 16:34:56.837000+00:00 | ['White Privilege', 'Anti Racism', 'Opinion', 'Politics'] |
Gut Feelings, Good Riddance | We love to see opinionated people get their hat handed to them, don’t we? It serves this internal desire to witness justice, to know our gut feeling about them was dead on accurate.
Early in my career I worked for a company that was fairly small , four stores and about 50 employees, and the owner was still in a position to set the image and company lingo to his personal preference without too much disagreement from upper management.
During my first holiday season as an entry level employee, the owner visited our shop and gathered the front line workers together for a chat. “It’s not Happy Holidays. It’s Merry Christmas!” Those were the first words out of his mouth, and then he let this awkward silence fill the air, a common tactic for creating fear I would later find out.
The feeling in the room was part fear and part shame, unfortunately. Most of the staff was young, about high school age. We didn’t have a lot of experience yet and he knew it. We were getting a reprimand for being inclusive. It felt wrong. It was wrong.
All of us on staff had been ending our interactions with customers by saying, “Happy Holidays!” with a smile and a wave as they left the store. Apparently, this was viewed as a threat to the status quo and against the preference of some patrons to our little shop, and they must have complained.
I’ll never forget that feeling in my gut telling me something more was going on than what we were being told. It wasn’t clear what would happen to us if we continued saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. There wasn’t exactly a discussion afterward, or a reason given. Would we be fired? We didn’t know.
After that order from the boss, some of us felt threatened. Not all of the employees celebrated in the same way he did. Maybe he knew that, maybe not. But all of the staff was in agreement that saying Happy Holidays was the most inclusive we could be with our visitors, yet we were stuck in a job where it was no longer allowed. And we all needed our jobs.
We were very aware that not every customer would be celebrating in the same way during the season. What we wanted most was to be recognized as thoughtful, caring people. Instead, we felt like angry elves during the happiest season, elves who had no control over their personal beliefs in the workplace. Customer service is hard enough without adding an arrogant boss into the picture, putting pressure on the staff from the leadership as well as the public.
I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I said Merry Christmas as customers left the store. I’m sure they felt it, because I wasn’t genuine. It was an inauthentic delivery, customer service from a can we used to call it. So fake. I decided this wasn’t the place for me and started looking for somewhere else to work.
A couple of weeks later though, we all got the news that the business was being sold to a group of investors. The major investor was a well known leader in the community, so there was someone on staff who knew of him and a little about his personal life. “He’s Jewish” she said, raising her eyebrows and smiling as she left the store that afternoon.
Ah. We understood what was really going on. How that must have stung the boss, to know that a business he worked so hard to build was going to be bought out by someone who was going to completely change the culture. A welcome change as far as we were concerned.
Your words matter. People will remember you for things you’ve said and how they felt. Express yourself, but don’t be careless.
Two things happened as a result of that experience. First, if anyone responded with “Merry Christmas” when I said “Happy Holidays” after that, I equated this with anti-Semitism, which was incorrect. It took a long time to undo that belief festering in my subconscious. Second, I developed a fear of standing up for myself in the workplace.
Each time we have a negative experience, it’s an opportunity for growth. I reflect on it now and then, but didn’t dwell on it as somebody being mean to me or making me feel bad. I used it as fuel, and started paying more attention and talking with people I wouldn’t usually start conversations with.
Once I was working for a new employer, I surrounded myself more intentionally with people who were proven to challenge bad behavior. I joined diversity training programs and organizations that promoted an inclusive workplace. I learned more and let my experiences shape me into someone I may not have had the opportunity to become, had they not happened.
I would never encourage someone to be other than who they are, but if you’re thinking about building a business of your own, consider your biases and language you choose during difficult conversations with your teams. They listen and care about what you say.
Everyone in your organization, if they feel like a team, feels responsibility for the behavior of the whole team. One careless remark from you can destroy years of hard work in building that team.
Most important, keep your focus on being better tomorrow than you are today. There are opportunities for growth around every corner and there is no finish line for self improvement.
I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but when you get that weird gut feeling, say good riddance to the cause. You are worth it. Your future team is worth it. Isn’t it? | https://medium.com/@sharon-bond/gut-feelings-good-riddance-869c8afc488e | ['Sharon Bond'] | 2020-12-26 06:07:27.727000+00:00 | ['Workplace Relations', 'Workplace Diversity', 'Diversity', 'Workplace Culture', 'Inclusion'] |
Hundred Waters — Firelight. An exercise in inhabiting… | Hundred Waters — Firelight
An exercise in inhabiting contradictions
Photo by moein moradi from Pexels
Delicate and gritty, golden and heart-wrenching, intimate and epic: ‘Firelight’ is an exercise in inhabiting contradictions. It sits in that sweet spot right in the center of the chest, swaddling us in a blanket of vocals and pianos. The slow, steady groove leaves us with no choice but to move our bodies in time to the music. Our very ligaments twist and turn when the synth hook comes in with a hard hitting bass after the initial chorus.
All subtly layered and treated vocals dripping in reverb, ‘Firelight’ opens with lead singer Nicole Miglis posing a lonesome, double-edged question: “Sunshine, where’d you go?” Closing my eyes, I can almost see Miglis standing on the edge of a canyon, sending the question into the empty space. She waits less than a heartbeat before answering herself, and when she does, the broken way in which she places the words within the melody feels uncertain, hesitant. She’s both hopeful and hopeless — connecting to a place so many of us know too well.
The ballad continues with full force, as Miglis promises to “walk through your fire”. She continues to break with conventional sentence structure, as though stuttering her promises to whoever has gone missing.
Hundred Waters, courtesy of OWLSA
And then. Two choruses in. Just when we thought we knew what was happening. A full beat of silence—long enough to catch the ear of any casual listener. Long enough to remind us all just how powerful silence can be.
When the song comes back it’s just the piano for a moment, until a broken groove echoes the vocal stutter. Miglis sings one more desolate verse before returning to an even fuller chorus.
One more surprise awaits us, just a few seconds later, in the empty space left after the chorus. A distorted voice message — a man is asking someone to call him. ‘Te quiero mucho,’ he says, and then it just explodes, and we explode with it, now fully willing to go along for any ride as long as the members of Hundred Waters are holding the compass. A million Miglis’ are now singing: “You’re gonna come back”. We are the chorus, and it’s an ocean, and we’re giving ourselves up to the water, willingly drowning in vocals and longing. | https://medium.com/music-voices/hundred-waters-firelight-d909fc1c77b5 | ['Mikhal Weiner'] | 2020-10-21 15:17:25.135000+00:00 | ['Songs', 'Music', 'Music Voices', 'Pop Culture', 'Indie'] |
The Five Pillars of Why We Give a Fuck. | The Bad Influence Presents
Our singular objective is:
TO CHANGE THE WORLD
With every follower and every opportunity to extend our reach, we grow stronger as a community.
Our aim is to reach critical mass so we can begin to overhaul the structures that have kept us in check for centuries. We’ll achieve this by submitting proposals to governments, congress, European Union and the United Nations. To succeed, all it takes is 10,000 (UK Government) to 100,000 subscribers (Congress, EU and UN) to table our submission and allow the submitter to speak on the political stage.
We aren’t just another publication.
Our house is built upon strong foundations. These are the five pillars we stand by and why it’s important people believe that in life, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/the-five-pillars-of-why-we-give-a-fuck-adeec0ad6517 | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2020-02-11 17:04:35.995000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'The Bad Influence', 'Creativity', 'Ideas', 'Politics'] |
Digital Marketing is the future of work, We have moved! | Digital Marketing combined two major related fields that involve communication, these fields are Marketing and Mass Communication. Mass Communication is a process by which information is communicated to a heterogeneous audience by a person, group of people organization, while marketing is the process of promoting and selling goods and services using all available digital channels.
Mass communication and marketing both share a common relationship, they both involved a medium. Therefore, Digital marketing involves the use of digital/online/internet mediums such as phones, computers, desktop, etc to communicate so as to promote goods and services.
The medium adopted for communication clearly differentiates how marketing and communication have evolved over the years. A few years back radio, television, newspaper, magazines, billboards, referral (Word of mouth marketing), etc we're considered as modern means of communication and marketing. They replaced ancient mediums like Ekwe, Ikoro, Smoke signals, Open market, Age groups, palm fronds, The town crier Oja, etc.
Communication medium has once more evolved to Digital marketing, the earlier stated medium is still in use but gradually being replaced with Internet marketing. Companies have gradually started optimizing their marketing department, hardly can you find foot marketer because a lot of people now use the internet.
Because of this, business transaction has evolved, Digital marketing has affected how business implement marketing strategies. It has made it easier to reach people through the digital world. These decisions came about by increasing the use of the internet for day to day activities like; Buying, paying, entertainment etc.and has created a need for businesses to go online.
Are you really online?
The misconception people have about Digital marketing is thinking that opening a social media account for their business is all it takes for the business to be online. There are a lot of businesses online that haven't been found and these bring up the question, Are you really online?
There are several things to know about establishing a rooted presence online which would be discussed in detail in this book. The difference between digital marketing and social media is the fact that social media is one of the digital marketing channels. Strategies employed in digital marketing may involve other digital channels e.g internet ads, email, TV, mobile ads, content strategy, search engine marketing, blogging, etc while Social media strategies involve the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Digital marketing and the future of work:
Artificial intelligence is one of the major forces driving the future of work according to recent research, this includes Digital Marketing. As of 2030, it is projected that there would be more virtual Jobs and digital literacy would be among the high in-demand courses. Globalization caused by the wide acceptance of the internet and machine learning has affected the way if life. This in turn has affected our work and habit. Because of the trend, adjustment we're made to the current demand.
Right now, marketing and advertising funds are being diverted to online marketing and advertising, away from conventional marketing channels. This has generated a need for skills attributed to digital marketing. Ther e are over 1000 digital marketing related Jobs generated on LinkedIn each day in Nigeria. Just imagine the pool of opportunities that awaits people that have chosen Digital Marketing as their career.
The path to digital marketing can be tough for those attempting to understand on their own because the path to learn is detailed and extensive. Digital marketing curriculum is comprehensive and therefore resources are dispersed on the internet. You can't entirely get full mastery that way, you will need to learn the entire thing as a whole to have full knowledge. A fact missing in knowledge can put a dent in ones career. It is important to get broad knowledge by registering in digital marketing training.
Why not take a deep breath and think of any reputable company without social media presence online. They all know the importance of this skill and have all ditched traditional ways of marketing. These companies have adopted several digital methods to improve their brand.
Digital Marketing categories include;
1) Search engine marketing
2) Search engine optimization
3) Social media marketing & management
4) Copywriting, content marketing & strategy
5) Branding
6) Website management and development
7) Website & social media analytics
1) Search engine marketing:
When you search for anything with search engines, Take a look at the first result, you will notice some results with ads attached to it, these results were brought by paid adverts for visibility on search result pages. This paid advertisement can be done using Google Ads or binge ads. Don't get it all mixed up a pay per click and cost per click ads are still search engine marketing.
2) Search engine optimization:
It involves the use of specific methods to optimize website traffics from the search result page. Getting organic and unpaid traffic saves advertisement cost, it is easy to make your website visible on the first page on search results if you apply the principles.
3) Social media marketing and management:
It involves the use of social media ad tools and websites to advertise goods and services. It also involves creating and sharing content on social media to relate with customers to achieve marketing and branding goals.
4) Copywriting, content marketing & strategy:
Copywriting involves writing a sales copy or content to advertise products and services. The aim is usually for brand awareness or to generate a lead by instigating a call to action. While content marketing involves creating useful information as relevant content in a particular field. It mostly leads to brand awareness, and it generates leads. Content strategy involves careful planning, and the development of useful content to generate lead.
5) Branding:
Branding is the promotion of a particular product, services, or company by means of advertising and distinct pattern that is easily identifiable and specific.
6) Website management and development:
A website consists of a collection of web pages that can be identified by a common domain name. The website development process Involves a documented outline of the steps needed to be taken from start to finish too complete a typical Web Design project. Website management involves updating, analyzing, promoting, and developing a website.
7) Website analytics:
Web analytics involves measuring, collecting, researching, analyzing, and reporting web data so as to infer, understand nd use it for web usage. Web analytics results to make relevant decisions that marketing strategies and planning.
Digital marketing is not the next big thing but the current big thing. | https://medium.com/@adejugbagbehannah/we-have-moved-7ba804a02aad | ['Hannah Adejugbagbe'] | 2021-03-24 13:41:25.973000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Content Marketing', 'Writing', 'Content', 'Content Strategy'] |
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