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Your Love of Old Music Explains the Hard Problem of Artificial Creativity | A gallery of AI artists and their art. (Source: AIArtists.org)
Your Love of Old Music Explains the Hard Problem of Artificial Creativity
Our enduring musical preferences illustrate the challenge for AI.
It returns as predictably as the seasons. Call it Bacon’s Comet: The idea that the age of creative AI is now upon us. Machines are not only accelerating discoveries (so the argument goes), they’re now making their own independent discoveries. And just in time, since the world is demonstrably more complex than feeble human minds could hope to comprehend.
All of this is quite wrong. It’s been wrong for hundreds of years. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon claimed our only hope for liberation was an autonomous scientific method where knowledge emerges inductively from raw observations. He was wrong, but his idea retains all the commonsense appeal today that it once did. It was wrong in 1900, when Lord Kelvin remarked, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” It remained wrong when John Horgan popularized this same “evil idea” in The End of Science in 1996. It was wrong in 2008 when Chris Anderson celebrated the end of theory and the liberation of big data. And Bacon’s Comet is back again, this time riding contemplations on the end of physics and a host of compelling advancements in automated discovery.
And yes, this idea is still wrong.
But I don’t want to dwell on why it’s wrong. Instead, I want to celebrate why creativity remains a uniquely human pursuit. I’d like to discriminate between the ideas of applied and fundamental creativity, which in my mind illuminates the particular niche that today’s AI may soon dominate.
I’ll start with a simple observation: Creativity consists of both novelty and constraints. The first part is obvious enough. When we create, we’re expanding the range of possible solutions to our problems. That’s the part most people associate with the concept of creativity. The second part is more subtle and certainly more difficult. There’s a massive scaffolding of evaluative criteria through which creativity is selected. My dog plays the piano. (True fact, and it’s adorable.) But his paw-banging doesn’t play within the constraints of creativity, so in no sense is he acting creatively.
This contrast between creativity’s novel and (er) dogmatic aspects establishes a distinction between applied and fundamental creativity. We routinely create solutions within the established evaluative criteria of a given problem space: pop songs, advertisements, business franchises, movie sequels, incremental hypotheses, and on and on. What marks this large class of applied creative works is their derivative quality. They don’t break new ground as much as solve the narrow problems for which they were devised.
Applied creativity is well within the realm of today’s AI, just as any narrow application. This is readily explained: The human creators may represent a search space of creative hypotheses for an AI to explore, incorporating the known evaluative constraints of the problem. (Here’s a recent example of a problem related to understanding human behavior during a pandemic.) An implication of this “searching for hypotheses” view is that the possible solutions exist prior to the search. Another implication is that there is a human mind hiding in the background providing a creative catalyst. Routinely, as the system designers are evaluating the results generated by their AI, they’ll notice a new evaluative basis that they didn’t think of before they started. It’ll surprise them and they may be quick to credit their system with the discovery. But while AI may alleviate some of their perspiration, humans still provide the inspiration, the creative spark.
Not only is this applied approach readily explained, it’s readily demonstrated in AI-generated art. Admittedly, as emotive works, these examples of applied AI may be disconcerting. And if you harbor the idea that creative works are intrinsically different from other technical solutions, you may believe we’ve breached some monumental divide. But no, it’s still just applied AI.
Applied human creativity is so commonplace it goes largely unnoticed. It certainly doesn’t prompt soul-crushing conversations about the inevitable exhaustion of human creativity, or the perceived need for AI to liberate us from our creative limits. Again, I’m all-in on the vision of creative AI. But why are we getting so triggered about these narrow examples?
It helps to consider that fundamental creativity is much harder. These are your Einsteins, your Austens, your Picassos. These are the groundbreaking discoveries that are normally associated with the promise of AGI. These are the creations that not only introduce novelty, but novelty of a sort that forces us to reconsider the creative boundaries. Fundamental creations force a shift in the evaluative creative (even when some people don’t want them to move). Vexingly, the new creative criteria are not known in advance. And this difference explains why artificial creativity is presently out of reach. (Not always and necessarily as some would claim, but presently.)
That’s all numbingly abstract, so let’s put the problem to music. Consider all the possible melodies that could be constructed on a musical scale.
First, let’s reflect on the extent of this simple example: As the notes are combined and varied, the number of melodies rapidly increases to millions and trillions of possibilities. Often, the problem of creativity is falsely reduced to a problem of scale, which in turn suggests the idea that more data and computing power will inevitably rein in the problem. However, the scale of any given problem space isn’t the hard problem of creativity. If your goal is to create a fundamentally new type of music, how would you know, in advance, the new criteria by which a novel melody might be selected? And if your goal is to create something fundamentally new, how would you devise the new evaluative criteria that separates this AI masterpiece from my dog’s paw-banging?
My favorite example of this musical riddle is known as the diabolus in musica (Latin for “the Devil in music”). It refers to a highly dissonant interval called a tritone. You’d recognize it immediately as Enter Sandman, Maria, or Purple Haze. But these melodies wouldn’t be selected during Medieval times. Not because they weren’t there in the problem space, but because the necessary evaluative criteria had not yet been selected. The Devil in music was steadfastly avoided.
Contrasting the space of all possible melodies with evaluative criteria related to the tritone.
This example of classical music and the tritone is one tiny example to illustrate the enormity of the creativity challenge, as a dynamic and emergent process.
Consider your love of old music. Have you ever wondered why we still love the music we listened to back in high school? Our evaluative criteria are generally imprinted during adolescence and young adulthood. We tend thereafter to feel that music is getting worse, generation after generation, as new music evolves beyond our tastes. The old music embodies the criteria we value. New music embodies new criteria, as well as disregarding some of the old.
If you like, you can even build a system that “proves” that the old music is better than the new, just by selecting for those features that privilege the old evaluative criteria. Apparently today’s songs are less melodically complex, more repetitive, they embody fewer chord changes, their dynamic range is narrower, and today’s artists are irredeemably self-involved (!). Of course, the quality of the music and the selective criteria cannot be explained in terms of these descriptive features. And of course, none of these analyses admit whatever new and largely inexplicit selective criteria may actually be active in our cultural communities. But misunderstandings about what constitutes a scientific argument are as rampant as misunderstandings of creativity. (Now get off my lawn, you kids!)
I find this cultural impediment to creativity fascinating. I wonder how many great ideas have been hatched and summarily dismissed because they weren’t aligned with the prevailing culture. Artists working in isolation internalize the creative constraints of their community, embodying their own toughest critics. The pile of crumpled paper in the wastepaper basket is a testament to this process. The challenge isn’t so much in processes of creative variation (such as propping your dog up at the piano) as in the means for selection. Incidentally, this same environment-building challenge is what limits the reach of evolutionary approaches to the problem.
In truth, no one understands how this complex interplay of psychological and social factors drives creativity. It’s mysterious and wonderful. When the conditions are right, at the nexus of a creative mind and the vagaries of their social circumstances, something fundamentally new and important emerges.
It’ll happen again. Some genius working within the right community at the right time will solve the riddle of how creativity works. We’ll know because they’ll be able to explain it.
And quickly thereafter, AI will be truly creative. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/your-love-of-old-music-explains-the-hard-problem-of-artificial-creativity-57c693753ab3 | ['Peter Sweeney'] | 2020-12-03 15:35:19.935000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Philosophy', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Science', 'Creativity'] |
B2B Tech Marketing Predictions for 2021 are Inescapably Tied to COVID-19 | By Peter Jacobs
Binge-watching, sourdough baking, learning pods-all trends that we’ve read about endlessly as the world continues to combat the pandemic. But from a business perspective, the huge shifts in how society works, lives and interacts have impacted everything from budget priorities to supply chains. These changes and their effect on budgets and priorities will influence how B2B tech firms invest in outreach, branding and demand gen programs for much (if not all) of next year…and possibly for the long term.
Earned media shifts to new strategies
At Merritt Group, we have seen our clients move beyond pure earned media relations for several years, embracing more paid and owned marketing and communications strategies. With COVID forcing travel restrictions and furloughs in journalism, 2021 will see a marked shift to paid media and other content opportunities as well as an uptick in video and webinars to better communicate virtually. PR people still can sustain successful earned media programs through good relationships with the media, providing creative ideas backed with relevant validation and offering up quality subject matter experts that deliver value to journalists. — John Conrad, EVP & Senior Partner
The MarTech stack collapses, driving consolidated solutions
With the downward pressure of COVID-19, more senior marketing leaders are struggling to keep up with a martech landscape that’s exploded to over 8,000 martech solutions in 2020, a 13% increase over 2019. In a recent study of 400 marketers, Sirkin Research asked, “Are your current martech solutions a strategic enabler?” Only 24% said yes. As 2021 approaches, organizations will need to adopt a “less-is-more” approach to simplify, streamline and better operationalize their current marketing stack-not only to justify its expense, but to get the most out of their existing technology to drive results. — Pasha Irshad, Vice President, Digital
Content burnout becomes real; brands shift strategies to rescue the buyer journey
Doom scrolling notwithstanding, attention spans are getting shorter: while audiences viewed more B2B content since the pandemic began, they also engaged for less time-as much as 38 percent less. Post-COVID, snackable quick videos, blogs and bylines will remain more effective top-of-funnel elements. As decision-makers and influencers move through the journey, shift to longer content to deliver the level of detail they want. — Peter Jacobs, Sr. Content Strategist
Creating social proof will become a bigger need for B2B marketers
B2B marketers spend a lot of effort on getting Position Zero or Position One on Google, mastering targeting in a post-cookie world and standing out in the never-ending noise of social media, but many miss out on the power of creating social proof. But, that’s changing. Going into 2021, more and more organizations will use peer review platforms like Gartner Peer Review, TrustRadius, G2 Crowd and dozens of other similar tools to power a variety of use cases — from third-party validation to sourcing testimonials and case studies to using the dashboards provided by these platforms to access user and intent data. — Shahed Ahmed, SVP & Partner
ABM drives “narrowcasting” for content
Not all content needs to be produced for the broadest audience. As part of an ABM, deal-focused strategy, B2B marketers will focus COVID-limited resources on producing content specifically for a narrow audience — even as few as 10 key people. Showing that you’ve taken the time to understand what makes organizations unique can pay huge dividends, especially considering the size of enterprise deals. This holds true whether you’re reaching out to corporate CISOs or to government agency decision makers. — Peter Jacobs, Sr. Content Strategist
B2B brands that ignore social issues will go the way of the dinosaur
Millennials and Gen Z dominate today’s job and consumer markets. In fact, Millennials make up more than half of the global workforce; the Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2020 found that values and morals are the top factors influencing Millennials’ business decisions. Gone are the days of the “stay out of it” strategy; now more than ever, younger generations are challenging the brands they work with and buy from to take a stand on issues ranging from racial inequality to climate change. For 2021, brands will likely invest more in both internal and external efforts like employee resource groups (ERGs) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, respectively. — Natalie Robertson, Sr. Marketing Associate
Social responsibility will dominate B2B design
A study from McKinsey & Company found that 97% of senior executive boards in the U.S. “fail to reflect the country’s labor force and population demographics.” Diversity and inclusion have shifted to the forefront of most organizations’ minds, impacting every function from HR to Creative. Going forward, expect to see substantially more inclusive design practices such as racial diversity in photography and deaf-blind web accessibility, which will be critical in an increasingly digital, post-COVID world. — Natalie Robertson, Sr. Marketing Associate
Want to move the sales needle in 2021? Learn more about how our marketing services can help you shape brand perception, create awareness, drive new leads and convert more prospects into loyal customers. | https://medium.com/merritt-group/b2b-tech-marketing-predictions-for-2021-are-inescapably-tied-to-covid-19-3e67f16d034b | ['Melissa Chadwick'] | 2020-12-07 17:37:48.269000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Branding', 'Marketing', 'Pr', 'B2B'] |
The Joe Biden transitional runner bean linguine | The Joe Biden presidential transition has finally started.
Last week Donald Trump gave in; he’s no longer blocking Biden’s incoming administration.
Within hours Joe Biden took to the stage and declared, “America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it,” he said.
But because of Covid-19, this year’s presidential transition will be so much bleaker than in previous years. December’s annual sparkle will be a little less effervescent, and all those Christmas parties, bar those on zoom, are cancelled. This year we’ll no longer have to embarrassingly awkward drunk office parties, and inevitably our family turkeys will be much smaller — my turkey which will feed six to eight has already sold out on preorders.
As we transition into these colder months, so too will in-season food, with root vegetables taking centre stage.
My weekly fruit and vegetable box will no longer be green, save green topped carrots, and now is the time for me to flick through all my favourite soup recipes.
But for whatever reason, I’m still getting long, thick, stringy runner beans in my box. I’ve frozen some — they do freeze very well — and I love that they can be used to brighten up comforting pastas and risottos throughout the winter.
So as we transition to a new presidential administration, here’s a hint of green inspired by Joe Biden green credentials and the US transitioning back to a country respected by its world peers.
This pasta dish is fast, easy and even my picky eater son loves it. | https://medium.com/@elizabeth-rust/the-joe-biden-transitional-runner-bean-linguine-425e0f30d432 | ['Elizabeth Rust'] | 2020-12-07 13:50:02.114000+00:00 | ['Joe Biden', 'Inseasonnow', 'Climate', 'Green', 'Pasta'] |
Four Ways Doctor Who Reflects Our Rapidly Changing Conception of God | BBC Gallery
The New Reformation in Christianity, well underway but in no way winding down, will change how the faith looks in the decades and centuries to come. The movement has myriad streams, working their way into demoninational divots and cultural understandings of God. Ken Wilson and I wrote about some of these changes in Solus Jesus: A Theology of Resistance.
When cultures experience massive philosophical and religious shifts, their conversations work themselves out, in part, through art, literature, film, music, and so on. And, perhaps more than any other show in the English-speaking world right now, Doctor Who embodies the tensions of our God-thoughts.
The Doctor, a 2,000-ish year old alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, has long served as a metaphor for God in the British (and a growing American audience’s) imagination. As our conceptualization of God changes, the way we experience The Doctor naturally changes too; and, as with religion, some adherents don’t like the updates.
Here are four key ways I see The Doctor reflecting our collective conversation about God:
1. The gender of God is on the table.
The late Episcopalian mystic, Phyllis Tickle, liked to say Christians have a rummage sale every five hundred years or so. We keep and refine what is central to our faith and throw out superfluous doctrines that keep Christianity from flourishing and achieving what it’s meant to: helping followers love God and each other the best we can. A key item on the table this go-around is the gender of God. I’ve blogged about the evoloving theology surrounding God’s gender here and here (ignore the political aspect if it hinders you).
Ever since the 2005 re-boot of Doctor Who there have been calls for The Doctor to be a woman and/or a minority. The blatantly misogynist Steven Moffat, showrunner and head writer from 2010–2017, declared that having a female Doctor “didn’t feel right.” His last casting was Peter Capaldi, a grisly, grumpy white-haired Scotsman. Ratings tanked. Capaldi (a brilliant actor in his own right) and his storylines might’ve been great in another time, but not in 2013 as a character enmeshed with our God psychology.
Enter new showrunner Chris Chibnall, who cast Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor. Finally, in 2018, the show has a female face. This story update runs parallel to Christian denominations pushing forward changes in our liturgies and ways of talking about God in order to better reflect a God who is above gender — a God who is neither male nor female, and who is both male and female (conceptions of which are culturally defined). This makes both God and The Doctor genderqueer — God being neither/both and The Doctor incarnating as men and women. (For a good theological exploration of the genderqueerness of God, see Mihee Kim-Kort’s book, Outside the Lines.) Jodie Whittaker was cognizant of this when helping design her Doctor costume: “I just love the androgyny of it, without it being masculine, and I think that’s a really important line to find and quite a difficult one as well.”
As expected, controversy abounds. People who view God more akin to an old grumpy man — or at least to a swaggering man like David Tenant’s Doctor when he said, “just walk around like you own the place” to Martha, his black “companion” — take to Twitter, moaning about the “good ole days” of Doctor Who.
2. God’s acceptance of queer sexuality is on the table.
The Doctor, like God, is portrayed as somewhat asexual. So when the Doctor is seen in a romantic-type relationship it tends to bug some people on a subconcious level. Fair enough; no metaphor is perfect. Though one could argue there’s a simlar metphor running through the Song of Songs, but I digress …
The Doctor and Bill Potts, BBC
Who the Doctor loves — including romantically — represents the Western conception of who is acceptable and worthwhile, and what kinds of sexuality are acceptable and worthwhile. This article from 2013 details some of the Doctor’s loves — including platonic loves — and doesn’t even get to Bill Potts from series ten (2017). Bill was the first openly lesbian companion. Thankfully the series introduced her character well — her sexuality didn’t become the central narrative or really much of any ado. It was just one feature of her lovable self.
When Russell T. Davies, a gay man, re-booted the show in 2005, he included LGBTQ+ characters from the get-go, and even insinuated the Doctor might be bi (cue the flirting between bisexual Jack Harkness and the Doctor alongside the Doctor’s love for Rose Tyler). Heck, in series one episode two Chris Eccelston’s Doctor flirts with an evolved tree alien. Matt Smith’s Doctor kissed Rory, smooched the personified T.A.R.D.I.S., played the coquet with Amy, and romped around with River Song (his wife).
The Doctor’s pansexuality aside, the character has not been seen on screen in a romantic relationship with someone of the same presenting gender. That might change in the coming season. Fans speculate about the nature of the friendship between Yasmin and the Doctor (see #thasmin on Twitter), and the outfit Whittaker deliberately chose is covered in rainbows (scarf, t-shirt, and the lining of her coat). She says: “Sometimes I look at other female characters and their costumes just don’t look that comfy. But with this we could create every detail from scratch and give things a meaning or purpose. One day, I might be able to tell you what it all means, but for now everything is a secret between me and Ray [the designer], so I’m not allowed to say.”
BBC gallery
It’s no secret that the full inclusion of LGTBQ+ people is a central point of discussion and turmoil in many Christian denominations. Who does God love? Who does God fully accept? Does God care that we have attractions to and sex with people of the same gender? The-Doctor-As-God replies everyone, everyone and no — and that’s really frustrating for some fans, while thrilling to others (myself included in the latter). Let’s play with these ideas through the art of television and test how they feel — see if this Doctor/God is more attractive, genuinely good news for the oppressed, and a better image of our evolving understanding of The Divine. The controversy is a given, and the backlash as strong as the cheers, but I think in the end we’ll see this Doctor’s pushing the ball forward on the inclusiveness of God to be more emblematic of what we hope in our deepest hearts God is actually like.
3. The goodness of God is on the table.
Speaking of what we hope God is like, our collective Western Christian conception of God’s goodness has grown leaps and bounds in the last decades. Maybe I should say White Western Christian, because African American churches have always known this about God. God is good, all the time! All the time, God is good!
Prior to Jodie Whittaker, the Doctor has been conceived of as a psychopath. In a panel interview for the Guardian, one man writes: “The Doctor, even in his most pleasant of incarnations, has had a singular trait — he is a psychopath. Not the serial-killer type of psychopath, but the Steve Jobs type. A benign psychopath who, for reasons as yet unknown, has decided to use his intelligence for the benefit of others … Unfortunately, from the outset, I felt Chibnall either doesn’t get the fundamentals of the Doctor’s inherent psychopathy, or has decided to write it out, making Whittaker a kinder, gentler, touchy-feely, kid-friendly Doctor.” In “The Angels Take Manhattan” in series 7, River Song (whom I adore) says: “One psychopath per T.A.R.D.I.S., don’t you think?” | https://medium.com/solus-jesus/four-ways-doctor-who-reflects-our-rapidly-changing-conception-of-god-ea8a10880769 | ['Emily Swan'] | 2018-12-11 23:12:40.889000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Television', 'Doctor Who', 'Christianity', 'Life'] |
Security Management for 2021 and Beyond- iBoss | As the world moves towards more powerful technologies, it also requires a different perspective on security management. Gone are the days when security managers had to adapt their security plans based on current problems. Now, the security management team needs to devise plans which can predict how and where the loopholes may crop up, and what would be the effective way to deal with the problems.
What is Security Management?
Security Management mainly deals with how the security managers of a business and a company can predict and tackle oncoming issues and problems. They check the current security protocols to check if there is a possibility of a data leak. They also ensure that the business or company adheres to the strict guidelines established by the state and federal governments. This includes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines. They may also ensure that the staff in the business are aware of the company protocols.
The Many Facets of Security Management
Security Management comprises of two different kinds of security: physical and digital. As such, there are different facets of Security Management that correlate to the two different kinds.
Physical Security: This relates to the protection of valuables and cash in an organization. It can also refer to building security, and the management of human resources. Information Security: The Security Management team also has to take care that there aren’t any data leaks through the company. The Security Management team may be contractually obligated to save certain data elements which can be considered sensitive. Computer Security: This refers to the protection of computers — both hardware and software. In terms of information leakage, they must employ special tools to track the leaks. Fraud Management: The Security Management team must devise plans in order to tackle instances of fraud. If valuables or information is stolen, then the team conducts behavior analysis and streams in order to get to the root cause of the problem. Forensic Auditing: If a certain issue occurs with the security (for example, a data leak), then the security team may have to cooperate with an independent third party in order to conduct an audit. This audit log will then be submitted to the investigative bodies.
A Few facts of Security Management
Cyberattacks on organizations and companies are now exceeding losses of over $1 trillion. If a company does not safeguard itself against such cyberattacks, then its losses may be insurmountable. Keeping in mind this figure, here are a few facts about security and data management:
There are three different targets: The thieves which commit cyberattacks usually target businesses. If these businesses are government, technology, or retail-based, then there is a high chance of a cyberattack. These businesses tend to store valuable data and information in their data banks. In 2013, Target retail store was the victim of a cyberattack. Over 40 million customers had lost their data, and some even having their data stolen. This cyberattack and breach cost Target around $162 million. Most Organizations lack a plan: Considering the fact that there’s such a high chance of cyberattacks happening to any business, at any time, it is advisable to have a plan of action. However, this is not the case. To add to this, 77% of companies are devoid of a contingency plan. 54% of companies have been cyberattacked at least once a year. These facts and figures can be quite distressing, and to avoid being added to this list of casualties, a business needs to have a contingency plan for such eventualities. Bitcoin transactions entail illegality: Bitcoins were held as the economy change, especially considering the fact that they were more global in nature. However, it did not come to pass, and bitcoins’ values have become quite unstable and volatile. Moreover, at least 46% of all transactions with Bitcoins being related to some form of illegal activity. When you start a business/company, ensure that you read up on Bitcoins and instruct your Security Management team to instruct staff on protocols regarding the handling of such forms of internet currency.
These are just a few important facts and figures when it comes to data security management. In 2021, security management, especially at an online level, will be heralded as an important sphere. With the coronavirus pandemic restricting a lot of business to online servers, it is imperative that stringent security measures are taken in order to curb the probability of data leaks and other such issues.
iBoss security management solutions are helping the industries globally with their customized and robust methodologies. With a whopping 15 years of business and technical expertise, we are the team you need for safeguarding your business assets, resources & data.
So wait up no more and connect with us at [email protected]
www.ibosstechsolutions.com | https://medium.com/@markp-41148/security-management-for-2021-and-beyond-iboss-7ed10e8c3271 | ['Mark P.'] | 2021-09-16 00:00:00 | ['Security Management', 'Security', 'B2B', 'Software Development', '2021'] |
SuperCharged! : An evening with Annavi Khot | SuperCharged! : An evening with Annavi Khot
A couple of months back the CoolCoach Toppers got to interact with Annavi Khot, a Fitness Instructor and Nutritionist at Nitrro Wellness and Fitness Hub, Pune. Annavi is an inspiration for multiple reasons, but especially as a trainer conquering her work every day in an industry dominated by men. Apart from being a Pilates Mat Work Level 4 trainer and an ISSA certified Nutritionist and Fitness Trainer, she also has a certification from the American College of Sports Medicine. To top it all, Annavi also runs her own company called “Raw Treats”, selling vegan snacks and desserts!
Annavi Khot
CoolCoach met with Annavi a few times (for the interview and otherwise) and she always walks in with a warm smile on her face, hair scrunched up, looking the part of an ultra strong woman who is ready to very sweetly kick some ass! She is focused, passionate and serious about her work and is already showing her world what she is capable of!
We got her to take let her hair down and chill with us which wasn’t too tough because she’s super easy to talk to. Let us introduce you to Annavi Khot!
Are you a morning person or a night person?
I wake up at 5–5.30am. Does that answer it?
Whoa. Sure does! What does your average day look like?
5–5.30am : Wake up call
6.30 to 10.30–11am : Personal Training begins and I’m with my personal clients, making sure they’re hitting their goals.
11am : I head home and get started on the orders I get for my baked goods. That usually takes up my afternoons.
Between 3- 6pm : Head to the gym for my own workout. This is usually the time the gym is most free.
6.30 to 8pm : Back to my personal clients which ends my work day.
Night time routine post dinner is catching up on the studying for whatever courses I’m doing at any point in my life or just making sure I’m staying up to date on what’s happening in the fitness and nutrition industry.
11pm : Fast asleep having watched a movie or so.
Most popular Raw Treats goodie?
I get a lot of orders for protein bars (most popular being peanut butter + chocolate). They’re priced at Rs.120 per bar. I use almond/oat flour and have zero preservatives which make it very healthy. I also get a good amount of orders for vegan brownies and snacks.
What kind of vegan snacks?
They’re mostly dry fruit based. There are trail mixes, and then there are caramelized dry fruits. You know what’s also popular? Laddoos! They’re a great pre-work energy bit, plus a snack that keeps you pretty full!
CoolCoach: When did you discover a passion for fitness?
Annavi: When I was in the 10th grade, I fell in love with dumbbells. It was the first time I had ever entered a gym, and I felt a chill down my spine when I touched them. While I was completing my degree in hospitality, I continued to train hard at the gym and eat healthy. It’s only after college that it hit me that my true passion lay in fitness and health.
Personal Transformation
CoolCoach: How and when did you decide that you wanted to make a career out of your passion in fitness?
Annavi: Honestly? I loved it a little too much and couldn’t imagine doing anything else! I knew it was going to be difficult, I knew that I’d have to fight my family and others, but this was it for me and I had to go for it! In fact, I began training to be a spinning instructor while completing my degree. I read many books, did online courses and made sure I was up to date in an ever-evolving industry. Nothing can beat knowledge and I knew that my hard work would pay off! Having chosen an off-beat profession, I knew I had to make my place in it, and one that made me irreplaceable.
CoolCoach: Tell us about your biggest strength and the biggest challenge you faced in your journey.
Annavi: My biggest strength have been the people I am surrounded by. They say who you are is defined by the people you spend the most time with, so choose wisely and that is something I live by. The biggest challenge I faced and continue to battle till today is the stigma attached with being a girl in the fitness industry. But here I still am, thriving! Our society is not very accepting of those who steer from the norm but I believe that facing these challenges made me stronger and helped me grow spiritually.
CoolCoach: Tell us more about your journey as a woman in this industry.
Annavi: Well, I would say that my biggest challenge has been making my place in an industry dominated by men. However, what remains with me is working with other women and showing them how strong they are, completely changing the idea that women do not belong in the gym.
CoolCoach: According to you, what is the role of a fitness instructor?
Annavi: A fitness instructor is not just one person! An instructor juggles multiples roles every day. The most challenging aspect of being one is realizing the huge responsibility one has towards another person’s body and health! As an instructor, I look out for my client’s physical and mental health. I try to push them to be the best version of themselves and guide them towards a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.
CoolCoach: What advice would you give those who are trying to make it in this industry?
Annavi : Read!Read!Read! I know I sound super nerdy but really, the key is to make sure you know your work really well. Reach out to the right people and don’t be afraid is what I’d say! Worry about money later and first work hard on making yourself valued. Where you come from does not matter, what matters is what you do!
Quick Fire QnAs with Annavi Khot
· Favourite form of exercise: Squats!
· Your cheat meal consists of: Vegan burgers and dessert. I have a surprisingly strong sweet tooth!
· Favourite fitness personality to follow on Instagram: Kaisa Keranen (kaisafit) and Frank Medrano (frank_medrano)
· Your go to midday snack: Dry Fruits!
Raw Treats getting prepared!
If these Raw Treats is getting your spinal cord in a tingle, head to Instagram or Facebook! Annavi accepts direct messages for orders (Instagram: Annavi.Khot and Facebook: RawTreats). Another good news is that she will soon be selling her goodies at popular vegan cafes around Pune city!
As for us, we’re looking forward to spending more time with her and maybe work in a baking lesson or two! | https://medium.com/coolcoach/supercharged-an-evening-with-annavi-khot-928460d5839a | ['Shranya Gambhir'] | 2018-12-14 06:10:09.085000+00:00 | ['Fitness', 'Health Foods', 'Gym', 'Womens Health', 'Nutrition'] |
An intro to Cloud Computing for Data Scientists and Data Engineers | An intro to Cloud Computing for Data Scientists and Data Engineers Nishant Shah Follow Nov 21 · 7 min read
There has been a lot of debate about what the cloud is. Many people think of the cloud as a collection of technologies. It’s true that there is a set of common technologies that typically make up a cloud environment, but these technologies are not the essence of the cloud. The cloud is actually a service or group of services. This is partially the reason that the cloud has been so hard to define. But let me make it simple and straightforward for you.
Cloud Computing Definition
Cloud computing is the delivery of technology services-including compute,storage,databases,networking,software,and many more-over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.
Cloud computing mainly makes it possible for companies to get their applications deployed faster, without the need for excessive maintenance, which is managed by the service provider. This also leads to better use of computing resources, as per the needs and requirements of a business from time to time.
The importance of the cloud and cloud data services
The demand of cloud has been increased over the period of time and also in the past five years, a shift in Cloud Vendor offerings has fundamentally changed how companies buy, deploy and run big data systems. Cloud Vendors have absorbed more back-end data storage and transformation technologies into their core offerings and are now highlighting their data pipeline, analysis, and modeling tools. This is great news for companies deploying, migrating, or upgrading big data systems. Companies can now focus on generating value from data and Machine Learning (ML), rather than building teams to support hardware, infrastructure, and application deployment/monitoring.
Why the Data Scientist and Data Engineer Need to Understand the Cloud and it’s data services?
More and more application workloads are moving to the different cloud platforms. This could be a move to a public, private or hybrid cloud (where the latter is a mixture of public and private). Big data and analytics application workloads are on the move too. It is important that the data science engineering community has a good understanding of these clouds at a deeper level so as to make the best use of them for doing their analytics work more effectively.
Data scientists and data engineers have been accustomed to running their data processing and analysis work on a bare metal or physical environment up to now. But with the recent rapid growth in cloud infrastructure, these folks need to understand the new virtualized infrastructure within their clouds, as it is now underlying and controlling their workloads.
Source : kdnuggets
While the Internet is full of terms related to the cloud, here are some pretty basic, but important ones, that one should definitely have some knowledge about. Knowing these key terms will help you understand industry developments and future trends in cloud computing.
Let us have a look and understand the basics.
1. XaaS (Anything-as-a-Service)
This is a generic term which refers to any service which is available as cloud enabled service through internet. Some time it is also called ‘everything-as-a-service’. It includes SaaS, DaaS, PaaS and IaaS etc.
2. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
SaaS comprises of software applications, which are run on distantly located computers that happens to be owned, as well as operated by others. A good example of such an application would be Google Docs, which is an online word processor based on cloud environment.
SaaS offers several key benefits, such as instant access and usage of applications, accessibility from any machine that is connected, and also that there is no likely loss of data, as it is stored in the cloud.
3. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
PaaS is mainly a cloud-based environment that offers everything that is required to support the building and deployment of cloud-based applications. This is possible without the developer of the application having to purchase hardware, software, management and even hosting.
The primary benefits obtained from PaaS are that applications may be deployed really fast, without worrying about the platform. Also, these service models largely save costs and abstract the underlying intricacies.
4. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, provides basic infrastructure services to customers. These services may include physical machines, virtual machines, networking, storage, or some combination of these. You are then able to build whatever you need on top of the managed infrastructure. IaaS implementations are used to replace internally managed datacenters. They allow organizations more flexibility but at a reduced cost.
Let’s take a Car Analogy to understand the cloud service models.
Understanding cloud service models using car analogy
Compare the above image with the below one for better understanding
5. Public Cloud
When most people think about cloud computing, they are thinking of the public cloud service model. In the public service model, all the systems and resources that provide the service are housed at an external service provider. That service provider is responsible for the management and administration of the systems that are used to provide the service. The client is only responsible for any software or client application that is installed on the end-user system. Connections to public cloud providers are usually made through the Internet.
6. Private Cloud
In a private cloud, the systems and resources that provide the service are located internal to the company or organization that uses them. That organization is responsible for the management and administration of the systems that are used to provide the service. In addition, the organization is also responsible for any software or client application that is installed on the end-user system. Private clouds are usually accessed through the local LAN or wide area network (WAN). In the case of remote users, the access will generally be provided through the Internet or occasionally through the use of a virtual private network (VPN).
7. Hybrid Cloud
The term hybrid cloud implies the usage of a private cloud infrastructure, along with the use of cloud services that are public in nature. Truth be told, a private cloud cannot really exist solely by itself. Most businesses, which have a private cloud setup, end up accessing public cloud resources for various day-to-day tasks. This gives birth to the term hybrid cloud.
The power of the cloud-
Cloud Services :
Compute: provide the brains to process your workload
Storage: save and store data
Databases: store more structured sets of data
Cloud Computing Characteristics :
1.Virtualization- Fundamental technology that powers cloud computing .
Virtualization is at the core of all modern cloud environments — it is the cloud infrastructure shown below. The unit that provides the flexibility, elasticity, ease of management and scaling in any cloud is the virtual machine — essentially through the hardware independence and portability that virtual machines offer.
2. Cost- Only pay for resources when you are using them
Pay-as-you-go
No capital expenses of : Buying hardware and software
Managing on-site infrastructure
In some cases,a non-premise solution might be more cost-efficient.The best solution depends on the use case.
3. Reliability- Building reliability into your environment can be very costly. It usually involves having multiple systems or even multiple datacenter locations. You have to do disaster recovery (DR) and continuity planning and simulations. Many cloud providers already have multiple locations set up, so if you use their services, you can instantly add reliability to your environment. You may have to request to have your service use multiple locations, but at least it’s an option.
4. Speed- Immediate access to ready-to-go cloud resources
On-demand resourcing
Fast set-up time
Deploy services in a matter of minutes
5. Performance- Performance in cloud systems is constantly being measured and monitored. If performance falls below a certain level, the systems can automatically adjust to provide more capacity, if that is what’s needed. The presence of a service-level agreement (SLA) is also a benefit. An SLA guarantees a certain level of performance. If that level is not met, the service provider must generally meet some level of restitution. This restitution is often in the form of a chargeback or a fee reduction. So, although performance itself is not assured, there can be an assurance that the cost of a lack of performance can be mitigated.
6. Scalability- Easily add and remove resources as you need them
Example:e-commerce site
Needs more resources during peak times
Scale resources as necessary
7. Agility- Cloud environments can offer great agility. You can easily re appropriate resources when needed. This allows you to add resources to systems that need them and take them away from systems that don’t. You can also easily add systems to expand your capacity. Internal cloud environments allow you to make better use of your internal infrastructure resources. A cloud infrastructure that uses virtualization can help you increase your density and the percentage of utilization from your infrastructure. As a result, you will be less likely to have systems sitting idle.
8.Security-Secure storage and management of your data
External party responsible for security
Particularly risky for businesses in highly regulated sectors
Cloud is becoming more and more secure
In some cases,a non-premise solution might be preferred.The best solution depends on the use case.
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— Happy Learning
— Thank You | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/an-intro-to-cloud-computing-for-data-scientists-and-data-engineers-96d85b4852de | ['Nishant Shah'] | 2020-11-22 15:54:52.031000+00:00 | ['Cloud Computing', 'Cloud Services', 'Data Engineering', 'Data Science', 'Cloud'] |
Has the progression of Covid-19 exposed the flaws in our criminal justice system, and if so, can they be fixed? | The plight of the UK criminal justice system, which seems to have passed many by over the years, has garnered more attention recently thanks to the coronavirus pandemic which has led to difficult situations like further trial and hearing delays, and rethinking some of the ways it operates.
Those who work in the profession, from the solicitors to the clerks, and the judges to the barristers, might say it’s time to take stock of what’s working and not working in the justice system, and can only hope that the government in charge will listen to their concerns.
Will the criminal justice system have to contend with a bigger financial crisis than ever before?
The most pressing crisis that the UK criminal justice system could be facing right now is a financial one in the face of Covid-19.
But after a decade of austerity, anyone in the legal sector will tell you it was already facing one even before Covid arrived.
“Everything was staggering by before Covid and now things have just gone badly wrong” according to Alistair Webster QC.
Mr Webster, from Lincoln House Chambers, thinks the government is to blame for the situation the legal system was in when Covid landed and only exacerbated a lot of problems.
“It can’t go on without substantial money being injected in to it. It simply was working, reliant upon the good will of lots of people in the profession… who’s good will was being abused by the government.
“The fact is that lots of criminal solicitors have been going out of business over the last five years and those who are in a critical state are going to be pushed further to the wall. So they’ll be less people doing it, there’s not a sufficiently robust system to withstand these shocks and unless they put significant investment in, it’s [going to] get significantly worse.”
It was reported in April 2020 that the Bar Council was calling for an urgent rescue package after having to cut its budget and furlough 20% of its staff, though some in the profession were sceptical of seeing any kind of help.
“The government never sees votes in lawyers” Mr Webster said, admitting he doesn’t think it’s very likely the government will extend any help to solicitors or the Bar, and that both less successful chambers and those with a higher profile will struggle quite badly.
Mr Webster also predicted a collapse in morale, less incentive and perhaps even less opportunity, for those in the profession reliant on publicly funded work.
When it was also reported that 53% self-employed barristers believed they may not survive 6 months out of work Mr Webster thought it was very plausible, when they still have the running expense and professional subscriptions to pay for.
Andrew Thomas QC, also from Lincoln House Chambers, hoped the government would help but recognised there were a lot of competing demands and also believed that looming financial difficulties posed the risk of many losses to the profession, which would only make the backlog of cases and delays to the system worse than they are now.
Mr Thomas pointed out that barristers earning less than before can only manage for so long in that situation.
“The effect of austerity has got two major effects,” he said.
“The first one is that we came in to this crisis already with a huge backlog of cases, so the growing backlog…. is piling on to a backlog that was already there so it’s made a really bad situation a whole lot worse.
“Also, there’s no slack at all in the court system. There’s been a huge cut in the number of personnel working in the courts, and once this crisis is over and once we get back to normal working and we’re faced with that backlog, we simply don’t have the manpower there to gear up and start tackling that backlog.
“We’re not [going to] be able to work at a faster rate than we were before because we haven’t got the staff to do it, and it would take a very long time to train the staff to do it.”
In 2018 it was reported that 6,500 courthouse jobs were due to be cut by 2022 in a plan to help with savings to the justice system, while in 2019 it was revealed the number of agency workers in Britain’s courts had risen by two thirds over three years to offset the loss of permanent staff.
Huw Edwards, from Exchange Street Chambers, compared the plight of the criminal justice system to the NHS, that if it isn’t funded properly and people are overworked then it can’t be expected to work as it should.
He said despite the government’s promise in the 2019 General Election to put 20,000 new police officers on the street, when pointing out that up to 20,000 officers were cut over the past 10 years, it won’t help the rest of the legal system if there aren’t enough people to try, prosecute or defend, or enough of an infrastructure to accommodate the entire process.
“There is no point in arresting a burglar if you can’t prosecute them.”
“It would be like funding a triage nurse and not the rest of the NHS. So you can diagnose someone but you wouldn’t be able to have the x-ray, the operation [or] the recovery.”
Mr Edwards was sceptical of the idea of any help coming from the government, whether that be funding for new facilities or help for furloughed barristers, while also citing lack of public awareness for the legal systems troubles.
“I don’t think there’s the political will to support [it]. I don’t think the general public understand what we do.”
The sentiment was shared by Anna Chestnutt, another barrister from Lincoln House Chambers, who also believed the legal sector needed serious investment to get it back on track, not just to a pre-Covid level but a pre-austerity one starting with reopening courthouses that had been closed even before the pandemic just to save money, and by opening more alternative court centres.
But the pandemic is likely to have a detrimental effect on recruitment within the legal sector in the foreseeable future.
Ms Chestnutt revealed that thanks to the pandemic Lincoln House Chambers won’t be offering any pupillages next year, thereby closing their doors to any new recruits in that time.
For the moment Exchange Chambers still have a pupillage scheme in place to fund the first six months, and will try to guarantee an income for the following six months despite admitting it may be difficult to do due to a shortage of work under the current circumstances.
Gordon Cole QC from Exchange Chambers said barristers’ chambers will have to manage a lower turnover than they’d like, and since barristers from his chambers are self-employed it will be necessary to rethink their budgetary requirements.
“I think in the future there’s massive problems with recruitment to the legal profession” said Alex Preston, a solicitor from Olliers.
The average age of a duty (defence) solicitor is 49, and according to Ms Preston fewer people may go into criminal or legal aid defence work because it’s so poorly paid.
So with a system struggling financially, and the prospect of potentially dwindling staff numbers, what other options might there be to keep the criminal justice system afloat?
Will juries be reduced?
In April 2020 the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, said it might be necessary to look at more radical solutions to enable jury trials to continue, like reducing the number of jurors from twelve to seven as was done in the Second World War.
While Geoffrey Robertson QC suggested giving the defendants the option to dispense with a jury altogetherand opt for being tried by just a judge and two magistrates instead.
The former idea would seem to be the most divisive among barristers, and according to Mr Thomas most of the legal profession opposes the latter.
“[T]he concern is that won’t have public confidence in the way that jury trials do.
“A jury made up of members of the public generally has the confidence of the participants that they’re coming to the right conclusion.”
Mr Thomas had practiced in civil claims cases against the police involving smaller juries of seven and said it didn’t affect the outcome.
However, he didn’t think it would necessarily accelerate the speed in which cases are dealt with, but could result in more courts sitting.
Mr Webster was also in favour of reducing the number of jurors to seven as a strictly time-limited measure, and thought it could possibly accelerate the speed in which cases are dealt with since it wouldn’t require as much staff in the courthouse, but didn’t think it would ultimately make that much of a difference.
He was also suspicious that if implemented the government might be keen to retain the idea if it meant keeping costs down.
“The difficulty is that we all know what the government’s like and if they see they can save costs by trying to make that permanent they’ll seek to do so.
“It’s very much a second-best thing but to try and help out in the current circumstances I can see that it could be acceptable.”
While Ms Chestnutt on the other hand was very much against the idea of a reduced jury, but thinks they may reach a point where the backlog of cases is so great that a decision might have to be made.
She very much believed it would be more viable to hold court hearings in bigger spaces and apply further safety measures like Perspex screens in courts.
Mr Edwards believed reducing the number on a jury would be ‘significantly better’ than getting rid of them saying it should only be a last resort, and was completely against the idea of dispensing with them altogether, saying they bring a range of variety and opinion.
“The reason juries exist rather than just having a judge convict is because they’re real people.
“You want to have a diverse enough sense of background and of opinions that all bring something to deliberations.
“We shouldn’t just get rid of that because it’s expedient or financially beneficial. That would be a real shame.”
However, at the time of writing seven months after lockdown neither idea has come to fruition and talk of either seems to have gone quiet so any further development might remain to be seen.
Will targets be an issue?
But might an ever-growing backlog of cases raise the question of the courts being asked to meet certain targets in order to quash it? Or look at different ways of trial and punishment?
Mr Thomas didn’t think so, only that there would be a pressure to resume the work they do as soon as possible, while Mr Webster disagreed slightly, believing there may be pressure placed on those administering the courts to push as much work through as quickly as possible, and emphasised that the judiciary can’t be subject to targets in order to retain their independence.
“I think that what will change, or what has been changing, is that the CPS will be looking very carefully about whether to accept pleas to lesser offences… in the hope of getting more cases through the courts and reducing delays for the defendants, and victims of course” Mr Webster said.
Yet he stated the justice system ultimately cannot operate just to meet targets and has to be driven by providing the means to get the results.
“The extent of active case management that I’m seeing suggests to me there is pressure being put on the court system and the judges to get rid of the backlog without the need for jury trials,” Ms Chestnutt claimed, believing that courts might be encouraged to resolve cases for lesser offences without the need for a trial, so by calling barristers into court for a resolution hearing where the judge and barristers can negotiate what the defendant might be charged with, how they might wish to plea in order to avoid a trial, and perhaps avoid a hard sentence at the end.
Mr Webster shared the belief that prosecutors could look at pleas to lesser offences.
“Some prosecutors have always been rather anxious to do that, rather than get involved in having to prosecute a trial to be frank.”
Prison capacity may also prove to be a major issue so courts may have to take in to account less prison space might be available with more people being held on remand, so more people could be released on bail.
“The practical realities are that prison places are going to be under genuine threat,” Mr Webster stated.
The Ministry of Justice announced plans in September to extend the time limit defendants can be held in custody from 182 days to 238, stating the measure would be in place for nine months to address the number of delayed jury trial caused by the pandemic.
Under current law, a defendant can only be held in custody for up to 182 days after their first appearance in court, after which an application must be made to a judge for an extension to keep them in longer.
The Lord Chancellor, Robert Buckland, stated: “Throughout the pandemic this government has taken the necessary steps to protect the public while ensuring that justice continues to be delivered.
“This temporary extension to custody time limits will keep victims and the public safe, and we should not apologise for making that our priority.
[T]he measures I have announced today will get the criminal courts system back to where it needs to be — reducing delays and delivering speedier justice for all.”
Yet the extension was not met favourably with James Mulholland QC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association, saying “The answer to the justice crisis is not to extend the period of pre-trial detention for all in custody arbitrarily by a third where you penalise the innocent as well as the guilty.
“To do so invites delay rather than expedition, increases the numbers in prison and places far greater pressures upon those who work there.
“The extra millions this will cost should be invested in getting other trial centres up and running.”
Amanda Pinto QC, chair of the Bar Council, also said: “We understand the current issue about ensuring that potentially dangerous criminals are not released because their trial has been very delayed due to the existing backlog of trials exacerbated by Covid-19.
“However, we are very concerned that this 25% increase in the lawful detention of a potentially innocent person because there aren’t enough courts available to hear their trial does not become a license to push off cases for longer than absolutely necessary.”
But the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, The Lord Burnett of Maldon, was more welcoming of the idea.
“The pandemic has had an adverse impact on the timeliness of the criminal justice system, with many trials necessarily delayed.
“This plan is an important document which gives a clear path towards recovery as the judges and magistrates, in partnership with HM Courts Service, the Ministry of Justice and many others, strive to ensure that cases are heard as soon as possible in the public interest and the interests of all those involved in the criminal process.”
How will communication and technology have to adapt?
Many lawyers believe the legal system could have been better prepared by investment in new technology over the years.
In 2016 HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) launched a £1bn court reform programme which included a video-conferencing tool called the Cloud Video Platform (CVP) which allowed for a dedicated private conference area enabling lawyers to speak to clients without having to visit them in prison.
The technology was still in the process of being implemented when the pandemic struck, and the government had to ensure it was up and running as soon as possible. But this proved to be a challenge, with only a restricted number of physical video links made available.
According to the Ministry of Justice more than 400 CVP meeting rooms have been made available since the outbreak, while adding that it is working to increase the availability of video conferencing at some locations by extending operating hours and increase the number of video link outlets at critical sites.
One of the purposes of the Coronavirus Act 2020 was to expand the availability of video and audio links in criminal court proceedings allowing them to function without needing all participants to appear in person.
This was intended to become a prominent feature in Magistrates courts since they handle first appearances in court along with hearings for low level offences and don’t require a jury.
“All of the pre-trial work in the crown court can be done remotely in my view, or certainly a lot of it can be” Mr Webster said, referring to the kind of matters that only require judges and lawyers to correspond with each other.
“Those are definite steps forward, and they’re welcome.”
Yet the idea of hosting jury trials by video wasn’t so welcome, with many in the profession saying its hard both for juries to get a feel of the case when they’re in a different room to the defendant and witnesses, and there’s no assurance of jurors’ ability to concentrate either.
“I don’t think that it would be possible to reach safe verdicts by conducting trials where the jury were not present in the same room at the same time that the evidence was being given, Mr Thomas said.
While Mr Webster called them “completely unrealistic,” adding “it’s just not a practical way of doing it.”
Any talk of putting the method into practice has since gone very quiet.
Are alternative measures available?
A recurring frustration among many in the profession is the shortage of appropriate facilities to host important procedures like jury trials in the current climate.
At least 250 courthouses have closed in England and Wales over the past decade.
A solution proposed by the Ministry of Justice over the summer to deal with the huge backlog of cases involved the opening of temporary courthouses in alternative buildings, dubbed ‘Nightingale’ courts after the makeshift hospitals of the same name erected earlier in the year.
The Justice Secretary Robert Buckland was pushing for them to be called ‘Blackstone’ courts, after William Blackstone, the 18th century judge and legal commentator, though the name never caught on.
Up to 18 have been proposed so far and opened, based in hotels, town halls, theatres and even former magistrates’ courts, though only eight are currently dealing with criminal trials.
Mr Thomas was hopeful that they could help, though not without some caveats.
“I think [Nightingale courts] will work, [and] will be very helpful, but… it’s going to be a limited number of cases that can be dealt with that way because setting up a court in a new building will require a large number of staff and the court service don’t have an unlimited number of staff.
Yet one of the most adverse effects caused by the increasing problems facing the criminal justice system could be on those caught in the middle awaiting justice.
“It causes massive anxiety to suspects or defendants… because everything takes a lot longer to be resolved,” Ms Preston admitted.
The Covid-19 pandemic is sure to bring its challenges, and the criminal justice system looks set to be stretched further than ever before to its limits, and when it does perhaps the consequences of a creaking justice system could become clear for all to see.
It perhaps wouldn’t be presumptuous to state that many of the people who work in the profession, and are dedicated to ensuring it runs smoothly, hope that some form of change will come, and one for the better. | https://medium.com/@danmardle84/has-the-progression-of-covid-19-exposed-the-flaws-in-our-criminal-justice-system-and-if-so-can-8d36106f0817 | ['Daniel Mardle'] | 2020-11-13 17:51:42.262000+00:00 | ['Criminal Justice', 'Criminal Law', 'Legal System'] |
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EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the “.epub” file extension. The term is short for electronic publication and is sometimes styled ePub. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones, tablets, and computers. EPUB is a technical standard published by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).
An electronic book, also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text,images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices.[1] Although sometimes defined as “an electronic version of a printed book”,[2] some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, but also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. | https://medium.com/a-promised-land-pdf-books/recommended-book-of-history-and-knowledge-1-best-seller-pdf-a-promised-land-by-barack-obama-2149298b9ed5 | [] | 2020-12-27 18:59:38.781000+00:00 | ['Knowledge', 'Books', 'History', 'Corona', 'Obama'] |
Adult Census Income — Analysis. Prediction, machine learning and a… | In ancient times, the ability to predict the future was called precognition. Nowadays we call it machine learning. The rapid improvement in computer performance and an increase in storage abilities have allowed us to dabble in this art.
I recently stumbled across this dataset and thought of exercising my computational witchcraft abilities. This dataset intrigued me because of its diversity and richness — data from a person’s level of education to their spouse being in the Armed Forces.
However, there is one big issue; this dataset is fairly old. It was extracted from the 1994 Census bureau database. Although I might not be able to apply my conclusions here to the current generation, it would be a good exercise for my machine learning spells.
The dataset contains information about the annual incomes of people from 42 different countries, but the majority (90%) is dominated by the United States. The runner-up in this category is Mexico at 2%, leaving only 8% for the other 40 countries.
Therefore, I thought of fine-tuning my spells by filtering the dataset to only include the United States.
Now let’s begin our adventure.
Motivation:
The main objective behind our project is to predict if a said person, given his attributes, earns more than $50k per annum or not.
Simple, right?
So, let’s dig right in…
We begin by cleaning the data, and then move-on to exploratory data analysis of the dataset. Following that, we prepare the data for our machine learning model and then train the model using that data.
Sorry for the bombardment but let’s try and make it as simple as possible and break it down into parts.
1. The Dataset:
The dataset contains 32,561 entries with a total of 15 columns representing different attributes of the people. Here’s the list;
Age: Discrete (from 17 to 90) Work class (Private, Federal-Government, etc): Nominal (9 categories) Final Weight (the number of people the census believes the entry represents): Discrete Education (the highest level of education obtained): Ordinal (16 categories) Education Number (the number of years of education): Discrete (from 1 to 16) Marital Status: Nominal (7 categories) Occupation (Transport-Moving, Craft-Repair, etc): Nominal (15 categories) Relationship in family (unmarried, not in the family, etc): Nominal (6 categories) Race: Nominal (5 categories) Sex: Nominal (2 categories) Capital Gain: Continous Capital Loss: Continous Hours (worked) per week: Discrete (from 1 to 99) Native Country: Nominal (42 countries) Income (whether or not an individual makes more than $50,000 annually): Boolean (≤$50k, >$50k)
2. Data Cleaning:
To start off, the data seems to already be pre-processed, since missing values are consistently denoted by a question mark (i.e. “?”) and there are no null values in any of the columns.
Missing Values: Missing values are represented by “?” in this dataset. Let’s check how many of those question marks each column has.
Counting Missing Values
Okay, so we have our results. There are three columns with some missing values:
workclass = 1836 missing
occupation = 1843 missing
native.country = 583 missing
Hmm, the count of missing values in workclass and occupation column seem to be pretty close. That can’t be a coincidence, can it? Let’s put our detective hats on again:
Number of data points with missing occupation and workclass
Since the intersection of data points with missing occupation and missing workclass is the same as the number of data points with missing workclass, we know that where ever occupation is missing, workclass is too.
Now we need a strategy to deal with the missing values. (Note: We’ll only show the method for dealing with missing values in the workclass column. However, the same strategies will apply to the other two columns with missing values.)
Dealing with Missing Values:
Method 1: Boolean Column
Marking data points with missing workclass
We make a separate column for missing values in workclass (workclass.missing). We marked 1 (true) if workclass is missing and 0 if it is not. This method would allow the machine learning algorithm to learn when the value is missing and would lead it to assign lesser weight to the missing column when predicting (e.g. when there is a 1 in the “workclass.missing” column, the machine learning algorithm would give less weight to the corresponding workclass column).
Method 2: Machine Learning
Using machine learning to predict the missing values
We use machine learning to predict the missing values.
First, we separate the data points which have missing values for work class (“test_data”) and those which do not (“train_data”). We then use the “train_data” to calculate the parameters of machine learning and apply those parameters to “test_data” to predict the missing values for the workclass algorithm.
We will use different machine learning algorithms: Logistic Regression, Random Forest Classifier, KNeighbors Classifier, and Decision Tree Classifier. For now, we are using predictions made via Random Forest Classifier. However, we may change our choice of the algorithm depending on future results.
Random forest classifier
Decision Tree classifier
We haven’t calculated the accuracy of these algorithms yet. We will do that later on.
3. Exploratory Data Analysis:
So now we have the cleaned data. Let’s jump right into exploratory data analysis to observe the relationship between income and other variables.
Correlations: We start by computing the correlation of income with other numerical variables. Since the income column is not numerical, we use one-hot encoding for it using dummy variables.
Heatmap: Correlations between numerical columns
Interesting. Let’s analyze the correlations:
Hours per week has a weak uphill positive linear relationship with a correlation coefficient of 0.23
Education number has a weak uphill positive linear relationship with a correlation coefficient of 0.34
Age has a weak uphill positive linear relationship with a correlation coefficient of 0.23
This makes sense. A person working more hours per week would likely earn more. Similarly, a person with more education would earn more. Age could be a factor too since there won’t be many 17-year olds earning more than $50k a year.
Let’s further analyze these variables.
Age vs Income
We can observe that the median age for people earning more than $50k is significantly greater than the median age of people earning less than $50k. So, older people are more likely to earn more than $50k a year as compared to their younger counterparts.
Let’s move to the relationship of hours worked per week with income.
Hours worked per week vs Income
This plot shows that the people who put more time per week into their work, appear to earn more. Additionally, there are many outliers in both groups which represent high variations in both the groups (which makes sense, since there are some hectic jobs that pay less and other easy jobs that generally pay more). The interquartile range is also observed to be much smaller for those who earn less. That means that people who earn less than $50k per year have less spread in the hours they work per week.
Moving on, we observe the trend of income against the education level which gives us interesting results.
Education:
People with a college degree earn more than people without one
Rate of proportion earning >$50k increases after 12 years of education
We see two interesting things here:
Only a small proportion of people with less than 12 years of education earn more than $50k a year. This proportion increases almost linearly after 12 years of education. The intersection of the two lines indicates that after 14 years of education, more than 50% of the people earn >$50k a year.
So, apart from a college degree, what else can you do to increase your chances of earning >$50k?
Occupation and Workclass:
Almost 50% of Executive Managers and Professors earn >$50k
Start by going for an executive managerial position or becoming a professor (hopefully with a specialization).
We know what occupation to choose, now let’s see which workclass earns more.
Income vs work class
From the plot, a positive association can be drawn between the people who earn more and people who are self-employed with incorporated businesses or work in bureaucratic positions. Time to start your own business!
You are now the executive manager of your own company, should you also get married?
Marital Status:
From the graph above (income against marital status), we see that the people that are married to those in the armed forces are likely to have an income exceeding $50k. But only 47 people had a spouse in the armed forces, so the sample size is too sample to draw any conclusions.
So, us being the data scientists we are, decided to group the married and unmarried people, for more plausible associations.
(Keep in mind, we did not group the people married and not currently living with their spouse, into the married group.)
Only a small proportion of unmarried people earn >$50k a year
Add being married to the list of things that could possibly lead you to earn >$50k a year (happy wife, happy life?)
Moving on, we do the same for income vs race.
Race:
Income vs Race
White people are almost twice as likely to earn >$50k as compared to non-white people
Next, let’s compare the differences in income between genders.
Gender:
Men are thrice as likely to earn >$50k a year
Men are far more likely to earn more than $50k a year to their female counterparts. More work can be done using this data to analyze the reasons behind this income inequality, but we leave it for some other day.
We have seen the relation of different attributes with the income level. So what combinations of groups will allow you to buy that Lamborghini you’ve always wanted?
The holy-grail:
Above Bachelors and hard workers (working more than 40hrs per week)
White and male
White and self-employed male
So, boys and girls, make sure to be white and male, or white and male AND self-employed to drive that Lamborghini.
If that’s not possible, just get a Master’s degree or above, and work hard. Easy Peasy :)
And viola, this concludes our EDA segment. I hope you guys had fun. Bye. No, wait! Sorry for the bad humor. We’ve got a lot of stuff left, so hold on tight and let’s move onto the machine learning module.
3. Machine Learning:
We performed multiple iterations of machine learning on our data. We added extra columns for the new features (obtained from the combination of columns shown above) and tried dropping columns that seemed related (i.e. education number and education level). However, we did not see a significant difference in our results. Here we show our results on three types of cleaned version of the data: 1. Missing Values Dropped, 2. Identifier for missing values added, and 3. Missing Values Predicted.
We used multiple classifier algorithms for predicting the income level on all three versions of our cleaned data. Below we show the results from the best classifier for each.
Results with dropped missing values:
AdaBoost Classifier gave the best result for the the data with dropped rows for missing values. Note: In all classifier algorithms, dropping missing values gave the worst accuracy.
Prediction Using AdaBoost on data with dropped rows
2. With an extra column for missing values (Boolean column):
AdaBoost Classifier gave the best results for the the data in which we had added identifier columns for missing values.
Prediction Using AdaBoost on data with identifier columns
3. With predicted missing values (using Classifiers):
We started off with logistic regression, but did not get a decent result, so we had to employ other classifiers;
List of classifiers tested
Accuracy of individual classifiers
So from the plot above, it can be seen that the highest accuracy was obtained from the Gradient Boosting Classifier.
Gradient Boosting Classifier on data with predicted missing values
These results are pretty good as compared to older work done on the data set. The best accuracy that we could find on this data set was 86%. Our model gave a slightly better accuracy. Our precision and recall is not the best, and more work needs to be done to improve them further.
Moving on, it can be seen that on all classifiers, predicting the missing values gave us the best accuracy. However, when using gradient boosting classifier, almost all cleaning methods gave a similar accuracy.
Best accuracy obtained from different methods of dealing with missing values
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in, we hope you had a fun and learning experience. Until next time. Godspeed! | https://medium.com/data-warriors/eda-of-adult-census-income-dataset-cc9ac1a3d552 | ['Ali Asghar Aamir'] | 2019-12-06 13:12:49.952000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Data Cleaning', 'Data Analysis', 'Computer Science', 'Exploratory Data Analysis'] |
How I Deal With My Own Failure | How often do you talk about your own failure? If you’re like me, not often. I think it’s a universal thing that we often try to cover up our failures.
It’s not cool to say that you’ve failed. We prefer to talk about success. That’s also true for most books, articles, talks, etc.
Yup, everything is always great. Except, it isn’t always great.
But what’s wrong with failing? And what is failure? It’s so subjective. I think we’re often too quick to judge ourselves.
In the moment, failure is this ugly thing that you want to go away quickly. When I look back at my own failures it’s the same. There are things like failed jobs, business ventures, relationships, etc.
Here are a few examples:
When I was 18, I start a sales training business. I never made a sale. I also didn’t know what I was doing.
I tried to become a DJ. I bought equipment. Spent hours learning it. Played a few gigs. Until I discover that I hate nightlife.
I almost opened a coffee shop (not a Dutch coffee shop). With almost I mean literally almost. All the plans were there. I failed to get enough financing.
I started a men’s accessories label. I still have a bunch of ties and pocket squares in storage.
I wanted to write a novel. I failed to even write a single page.
A Dutch company asked me to do the marketing for their US subsidiary. It was a total disaster and I was out in six months.
Looking back, I think: Really? It’s not that bad. But when it happened, I thought it was the worst thing ever.
And that’s with most people. Last week I was talking to a friend. He felt that he was a failure because he’s 31, his relationship didn’t work out, doesn’t have a lot of savings, and that he hates his job.
To me, it’s not bad—you can change all of those things (except for your age). You can find new love, make money, and find a job that you do enjoy.
It took me years to shift my view from “judging” to “looking forward.”
The feeling of failure will never be pleasant.
I honestly don’t want to know how much time and money I’ve wasted on all the things that I’ve failed in the past. And every time, I felt like shit.
When people say, “fail fast,” it sounds nice, but the reality is that failure hurts.
It’s just not a good feeling to fail, especially not in front of the eyes of your family, friends, or other people.
Of course, you shouldn’t care about those things. But we’re still ONLY humans, right?
So when I talk about failure, I don’t mean that failing is easy or that it feels nice. If you enjoy failing, you’re probably an idiot. No, it’s hard. But that’s whole point.
For me, it goes like this:
You fail
You feel like shit
You absorb the damage
You process it
And you move on
It sounds easy, right? But it’s actually very hard to deal with. And at times, I’ve been seriously questioning my actions.
“What is all this leading to?” I would ask myself.
The answer is simple: Your destiny.
It’s corny, yeah, I know it. But that doesn’t make it less true. Plus, what is destiny? I like how Heraclitus defines it:
“Character is destiny.“
And what reveals your character more than dealing with failure?
It’s simple: Is failure your end, or your beginning?
If it’s the end, you start judging yourself. And before you know it, your self-esteem suffer from it. But if you see failure as a beginning, you keep going.
You’re not afraid to try new things or to experiment. If things don’t work out for you, what’s the big deal?
And every time you fail, you learn something new. And with every lesson you learn, you get closer to something that WILL work for you.
Things happen. You fail. You lose time, money, friends. But no matter what happens, you better love it. Because one day you’ll look back and everything in your life starts to make sense.
And that’s how it also went for me. When I look back now, I get it. I’m even happy I made those moves and failed miserably. It brought me to where I am now.
As Friedrich Nietzsche said:
“Amor Fati — “Love Your Fate,” which is in fact your life.”
“So, what now?”
Don’t look at me! Just do something. Maybe you’ll fail, maybe you’ll succeed.
One day you’ll thank yourself for trying. Because without the failure, you would never be you. | https://medium.com/the-mission/how-i-deal-with-my-own-failure-a235975aaddf | ['Darius Foroux'] | 2016-05-27 11:53:06.275000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Startup', 'Life'] |
The Night of the First Kiss | We talked all night,
walked by the river,
and held hands
as we went across the bridge
We knew darkness would soon
turn into sunrise,
and decided our words
should morph into actions
We sat by the fire,
under a lovely moon
whose fate was to be
our silent accomplice
I asked you,
“Will you be
my partner in crime?
Will you help me steal from life
moments of happiness
and warmth?”
You said yes
I kissed your face
and slowly made my way to your mouth,
grabbed you by the back of the neck
and pulled you into my life
I wanted to claim you,
to let the universe know
I had finally found you
No need to ask for permission,
and not a thing to be sorry about
I didn’t want to waste any more time,
we have things to do and places to be,
adventures to share and a home to build
That was our first kiss, dear,
and I think no one could blame us
for choosing to leave the talking
for another night. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/the-night-of-the-first-kiss-c85d7b251dc1 | ['Gb Rogut'] | 2020-12-13 13:02:35.073000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Poetry Sunday', 'Love', 'Life'] |
What Dreams May Come | What Dreams May Come
And what if they’re all we have?
Photo by Korney Violin on Unsplash
Unspoken words. Unexpressed apologies. Explanations, regrets, confessions, professions, accountability… so much of what needs to be said that remains conversations in our heads. What actually happens if and when that right moment comes along — when the right song is playing, when dispositions are suitably matched, when there is perfect alignment between our inner world and the one we express outwardly — is it only then that truth can be spoken between two people?
There is a lot of focus on “authenticity” these past years. I don’t get it. Isn’t that simply the original state of our being, before we learnt to wear layers and layers of armour? Pretences, masks, armour, shields, however we term these layers, they remain simply our only weapons for self-protection, maybe. Goodbye, authenticity.
And with that goodbye, it seems we bid farewell also to being able to utter heartfelt truths, exchange sincere sentiments, share deep-rooted vulnerabilities.
But every so often, the perfect opportunity does present itself — one can only hope that we can still recognise those for what they are.
Last night, I did.
I had found myself seated beside an old, old friend of mine — quite by chance and a strange twist of fate — and I finally got to say what I had yearned to say for so long.
A thousand apologies for having caused pain. A confession that I did my best with all that I had. Surprisingly, my friend remained seated, patient, kind, and gentle. Understanding dawned on him and in that manifested forgiveness and reconciliation.
Then, my alarm rang. And I woke up.
Brushed off the night.
Shook off the mix of relief and regret.
Breathed.
The right moment had presented itself, and I had seized it.
Perhaps someday soon, that episode could be re-enacted. If so, I hope to be able to be largely present, ready, conscious of the opportunity and just as aware of it as a meeting of time, space and hearts, to seize it when the day arrives.
We all should, really.
And if it should only happen in dreams — for what is life if not a series of one dream linking up to another — may we be able to speak truth too. A space for confessions of the heart is good enough space. Embrace it, facilitate it, dream it, if we must. | https://medium.com/an-idea/what-dreams-may-come-cf43e537b3ed | ['Jois G.'] | 2020-10-31 06:33:35.853000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Memories', 'Dreams', 'Heart', 'Love'] |
Pear Tart | Pear Tart
Recipe by Anders Vestergaard. Simple — 1h 15 min — dessert — makes 8 pieces
We absolutely love pear season. Pears are tangy, crunchy, sweet and perfect for cooking, both in sweet and savoury dishes. Because of the stone cells in the pear, they have a great texture, which remains even when cooked. That’s what makes pears perfect for tarts.
This tart is a little time consuming if you want to decorate it like in the picture, but you can make it however you want. Half the pears, cut them in chunks or thin slices, or whatever shape you so desire :) You can even boil them with a little bit of water and make a pear jam to put on the tart crust. The options are endless.
Let’s get to it? You’ll need
For the shortcrust pastry:
White flour 300 grams
Salted butter 150 grams
Sugar 50 grams
Egg 1
Cold water 1 tablespoon
For the filling:
Pears 4–5 medium
Butter 50 grams
Sugar 80 grams
Creme fraiche 200 grams
For the cream:
Mascarpone 200 grams
Buttermilk 1 dl
Vanilla sugar 1 tablespoon
Zest of one lemon
And here’s how to make the tart:
Mix together all the ingredients for the pastry dough, using a hand mixer. Make sure the water and butter is cold to not melt the dough too much (shortcrust pastries should always be mixed on high speed, as to not develop too much gluten and to remain flaky in your mouth). When the dough is finished, cover the bowl and put in the fridge for at least 30 min. Wash pears, cut them in half and then thinly slice them. Save all the small bits, chop them into small cubes and put in another bowl. Cover them with kitchen foil and put them in the fridge. Butter a medium sized tart pan and spread out the dough. Take a fork and prick holes in the dough to prevent it from puffing up in the oven. Bake for 15 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius. Cool the tart completely and spread out the creme fraiche in an even layer. Now add the pear scraps on the dough and start decorating the cake with your pear slices. Drizzle the cake with sugar and cut the butter into cubes. Spread the butter on the cake and bake for around 30 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius. While the cake is baking, mix the ingredients together for the mascarpone creme. The cake is done when the dough is golden brown and the pears are nice and caramelised. Serve either warm or cold with the mascarpone-vanilla cream on the side.
Enjoy :) | https://medium.com/eat-grim/pear-tart-6dfcef150500 | ['Eat Grim'] | 2019-04-29 09:02:22.318000+00:00 | ['Recipe', 'Cake', 'Baking'] |
Atomic Swaps — The Interoperability Revolution in Cryptos | The developers of the Cryptocurrencies have been working to introduce the revolutionary & much-needed feature of Atomic swaps for quite some time now. A broad-based implementation is still a little further down the road but the experimentation with the micro-level projects has shown the great potential of this feature. Atomic swaps can come in really handy if you are trying to move from one cryptocurrency to another.
The ability of individual blockchains to interact with each other — for example, cross-chain transactions between Bitcoin & Ethereum networks is extremely limited — mostly due to the fact that individual blockchains employ varying protocols, algorithms & security procedures to conduct transactions.
Most of the digital exchanges still expect you to convert to a base currency which is usually Bitcoin (being the most liquid & easily available) before converting to another digital asset. With the kind of volatility that we have in Cryptocurrencies, this means you might end up paying a higher amount for your choice of the digital asset. Don’t forget all the transaction fees that you would rack up in executing these back & forth transactions.
Atomic swaps are basically a smart contract enabled technology that gives you the ability to exchange digital assets on-chain or off-chain seamlessly & securely without the involvement of a third-party like the centralized exchanges.
You must be wondering what about decentralized exchanges then? Well, Atomic swaps differ from DEXs in the sense that they create an encrypted escrow account via a cryptographic protocol that guarantees instant refunds to the users if the transaction is not completed for some reason or aborted by one party or the other — literally reducing the default risk to zero.
Having decentralized peer-to-peer based digital currencies don’t make too much sense when you are going to trade them on centralized exchanges prone to security vulnerabilities, government regulations, mismanagement & liquidity concerns.
The theoretical work on Atomic swaps has existed since 2012 when Sergio Demian Lerner created the first trust-less exchange protocol, but it didn’t get much traction till May 2013 when Tier Nolan came out with details of how the technology works — and eventually got the recognition for being the creator of Atomic Swaps.
The practical implementation, however, came much later in Sep. 2017 between first Decred and Litecoin. The beauty of Atomic swaps is that they can be employed on two separate blockchains with two different native coins like Bitcoin & Ethereum or via off-chain secondary layer solutions like Bitcoin’s Lightning network.
Today, a bunch of decentralized exchanges including Lightning Labs, Altcoin.io, Komodo, & 0x offers the capability of Atomic swaps. We will be talking about Komodo in detail a little later since it offers the most extensive use of the technology.
Atomic swaps are executed via Hashed TimeLock Contracts (HTLC) — a special form of off-chain payment channels. This means no clogging of the main network & reducing the processing time significantly as well. HTLC is a special type of smart contract which enables time-bound transactions between the two parties. The transacting parties are required to complete the transaction in stipulated time by providing the cryptographic proof (private key) thus reducing the counterparty risk.
Atomic Swap Implementations
❶ DEx.top, a decentralized digital Exchange (DEX) & iBitcome, a mobile wallet provider collaborated to develop an Open Federated Gateway Protocol(OFGP) based on open-source technology. The protocol basically enables the cross-chain transactions between the Bitcoin & Ethereum blockchains.
The first version of this federated blockchain technology called Mallow was launched on Oct. 24 accompanied by a block explorer, which gives the users the ability to keep an eye on the flow of their digital assets & the transactions on the network as and when they please.
❷ Another solution for cross-chain transactions has been presented by Wanchain which wants to bridge the Ethereum & Bitcoin Blockchains — an interaction between the two networks. Similar to OFGP, an intermediary digital coin called WBTC (Wanchain’s Bitcoin cross-chain token) will be used to seamlessly conduct cross-chain transactions on the Wanchain network.
Wanchain’s partner, Kyber DEX (a decentralized exchange), will be offering BTC trading pairs based on the Wanchain’s BTC token allowing for drastic increases in trading volume & liquidity.
❸ Atomic provides is an infrastructure layer that provides Cross-Blockchain P2P Financial Services infrastructure which is both personal & secure. The service is available for all kinds of businesses including digital exchanges, lending, Credit lines, e-commerce & point-of-sale solutions
❹ One of the more popular companies which offer on-chain Atomic swaps is Bitcoin Atom (BCA). They are also working on the Lightning network implementation for off-chain Atomic swaps.
The BCA network is secured by employing the hybrid consensus of PoW & PoS which increases stability & reduces the probability of a 51% attack. The users can exchange Cryptocurrencies safely & without intermediaries with the use of BCA’s Hash Time-Locked Contracts & its own HTLC API.
❺ Most recently, Qtum — a blockchain platform that incorporates smart contracts & dApps has incorporated Atomic swaps to its main net using HTLCs. Qtum is similar to the Ethereum network in using smart contracts & dApps — the former however uses Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) which enables much faster & lighter transactions.
❻ And finally the contribution of the decentralized exchange Komodo to Atomic swap solutions can’t be emphasized enough — it presents an Open-Source Infrastructure for an Interoperable Blockchain Ecosystem. A year after Nolan presented the idea of Atomic swaps, the lead developer of the Komodo team, jl777, wrote the code which allowed some of the very first Atomic swaps to take place.
Initially, the code was restricted to the exchange NXT assets only, but gradually it was improved to include other digital assets also. Komodo receives the credit for bringing the technology to the mainstream — by developing the first GUI for an Atomic Swap crypto trading marketplace, called BarterDEX & then in Feb. 2018 conducted the first Atomic swap for Bitcoin & Ethereum based coins between DOGE and ETH.
The DEX has since then performed thousands of Atomic swaps & expanded on the ecosystem by including almost 95% of all available digital coins & tokens.
Benefits
⏭ Interoperability — Lack of an exchange mechanism between different Cryptocurrencies is one of the major problems plaguing the digital assets (after scalability) which Atomic swaps have set out to rectify. Free movement of digital currencies among each other would create the independence that is needed to mainstream adoption.
⏭ Cheaper & Faster — Skipping the registration (KYC), confirmation & validations makes the process much faster since you are not going through a third-party like a centralized exchange. A direct wallet to wallet transfer is possible, which saves you precious change since you are not charged any fees for the P2P exchange. Current procedures on most digital exchanges have a tedious & fee-intensive structure for exchanging different digital assets. For example, if you are planning to buy Litecoin, you first have to buy Bitcoin, then sell it to buy LTC paying fees twice. On top of that, if you are trying to transfer your digital tokens to a wallet, it incurs another fee.
⏭ Transparency & Security — It’s no secret that most of the current centralized digital exchanges are prone to security breaches & massive hacks causing a huge pain for the customers. Atomic swap, on the other hand, offers a secure channel between the two transacting parties where private keys are known only to them. The time-constrained transaction ensures the transparency of the transaction where a non-committal party or denial by both results in the refund of their money.
⏭ Diversification — Since Atomic swaps give you the ability to trade all the digital coins easily in a Peer to Peer exchange, it gives the investors the ability to diversify in different digital assets of their choice rather than getting stuck with the coins that are only offered by the exchange. Investors in traditional financial instruments like stocks, derivatives, mutual funds, etc. know the importance of diversification in any financial portfolio.
⏭ Better Privacy — Since the transactions in Atomic swaps are conducted in a completely trust-less manner — where there is no third party involved & you being in charge of your personal data like the private key etc. the information you exchange is not sitting on some third-party server, but in your hands gives you the peace of mind.
First Atomic Swap
Drawbacks
🞕 Technical specifications — Although Atomic swaps offer some enticing features, it still has some drawbacks to work out before becoming easier to implement. The following technical specs. unfortunately, greatly limit the Cryptos that can be exchanged using the Atomic swaps. However, considering Atomic swaps are still in a very early stage of implementation, better solutions should emerge to work around this limitation in the future.
Swapping cryptocurrencies must have the same hashing algorithm. Both the transacting Cryptos should be able to initiate the HTLCs. The digital assets in question should also have specialized programming functionalities. Atomic swaps don’t work with digital assets which don’t support smart contracts.
🞕 Transactional capacity — The speed of individual Atomic swaps is actually a plus point, but it becomes a drag when we talk about large volumes of data transactions. The scalability issue surrounding the swapping of large volumes of Crypto coins is something of a challenge that would need attention.
🞕 Wallet adoption — The last but not the least is the support by different digital wallets for Atomic swaps. Right now, the choice is pretty limited. This is something that would automatically get better as technology gets adopted.
It’s great to know that developers of the Cryptocurrencies & other digital assets have been working diligently to hammer out the solutions for major roadblocks like scalability & interoperability.
With the crash of the hype-induced rally & the exuberance behind us, the next revolution in Cryptos is going to be based on how we trade & use digital assets, based on the addition & implementation of these value-added features. Until then… don’t lose faith!
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Recent Articles: | https://medium.com/technicity/atomic-swaps-the-interoperability-revolution-in-cryptos-f7ddf1381d47 | ['Faisal Khan'] | 2020-03-25 01:54:12.468000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Finance', 'Future', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
Python: The Fastest Way to Find an Item in a List | Let’s go back to our “while loop” vs. “for loop” comparison. Does it matter if the element we are looking for is at the beginning or at the end of the list?
This time, we are looking for number 9702, which is at the very end of our list. Let’s measure the performance:
There is almost no difference. “While loop” is around 22% slower this time (710/578≈1.223). I performed a few more tests (up to a number close to 100 000 000), and the difference was always similar (in the range of 20–30% slower).
So far, the collection of items we wanted to iterate over was limited to the first 10 000 numbers. But what if we don’t know the upper limit? In this case, we can use the count function from the itertools library.
count(start=0, step=1) will start counting numbers from the start parameter, adding the step in each iteration. In my case, I need to change the start parameter to 1, so it works the same as the previous examples.
count works almost the same as the "while loop" that we made at the beginning. How about the speed?
It’s almost the same as the “for loop” version. So count is a good replacement if you need an infinite counter.
A typical solution for iterating over a list of items is to use a list comprehension. But we want to exit the iteration as soon as we find our number, and that’s not easy to do with a list comprehension. It’s a great tool to go over the whole collection, but not in this case.
Let’s see how bad it is:
That’s really bad — it’s a few times slower than other solutions! It takes the same amount of time, no matter if we search for the first or last element. And we can’t use count here.
But using a list comprehension points us in the right direction — we need something that returns the first element it finds and then stops iterating. And that thing is a generator! We can use a generator expression to grab the first element matching our criteria.
The whole code looks very similar to a list comprehension, but we can actually use count . Generator expression will execute only enough code to return the next element. Each time you call next() , it will resume work in the same place where it stopped the last time, grab the next item, return it, and stop again.
It takes almost the same amount of time as the best solution we have found so far. And I find this syntax much easier to read — as long as we don’t put too many if s there!
Generators have the additional benefit of being able to “suspend” and “resume” counting. We can call next() multiple times, and each time we get the next element matching our criteria. If we want to get the first three numbers that can be divided by 42 and 43 - here is how easily we can do this with a generator expression:
Compare it with the “for loop” version:
Let’s benchmark both versions:
Performance-wise, both functions are almost identical. So when would you use one over the other? “For loop” lets you write more complex code. You can’t put nested “if” statements or multiline code with side effects inside a generator expression. But if you only do simple filtering, generators can be much easier to read.
Generator expression combined with next() is a great way to grab one or more elements based on specific criteria. It's memory-efficient, fast, and easy to read - as long as you keep it simple. When the number of "if statements" in the generator expression grows, it becomes much harder to read (and write). | https://medium.com/swlh/python-the-fastest-way-to-find-an-item-in-a-list-19fd950664ec | ['Sebastian Witowski'] | 2020-09-25 08:06:39.373000+00:00 | ['Best Practices', 'Python', 'Performance', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Writing Faster Python'] |
Figure drawing every day of February | Figure drawing every day of February
Video accompaniment
This year I participated in an event called Figuary: figure drawing month, where you complete a figure drawing session every day of February. I used the Croquis Cafe video sessions on Vimeo, though I accidentally started with 2019’s sessions and followed it through for consistency. These are an excellent, free resource for figure drawing with that little extra nuance over simple images and with built-in timing, great to have available.
The YouTube channel Love Life Drawing is their partner during the event, providing daily educational material. They were really helpful for giving a focus and structure to the daily sessions instead of completing them blindly. Putting together all their tips sequentially resulted in a big improvement as well.
If you want to see all my final results, the best of them are up on my Instagram [a little way back now but pretty obvious] if you want to browse those. When you get back, here are my take-aways from the experience.
Tools matter
I chose a facsimile of a dry ink brush as my tool for the month. I figured sticking with one tool would let me focus on the figure drawing instead of getting caught up on technical things, and I was having fun using it at the time.
Brush showcase
I was right in some regards, however the particular tool I chose meant that some techniques were difficult or not available. It’s impossible to get a value range wider than just pure black with a brush that mimics ink, raw at least. I could use hatching or a lower opacity to simulate a wash, but the former looked very rough (as you can see in the bottom left of the showcase) and the latter broke flow messing with settings— not great for a timed exercise.
The brush had character, good at its own things like easily making dynamic lines and bold shadow shapes. However next time I would try and find a tool that acts closer to the charcoal Love Life Drawing use in demonstrations, to be able to practice techniques that require softness and get results closer to theirs.
Technique
The Pain of Outlining
The brush I was using was perfectly suited to a beginner pitfall approach — outlining what you see in full detail sequentially. This makes it very difficult to get proportions right as you focus on each part individually instead of seeing the whole.
It also isn’t very compatible with a time limit. If you start with a detail level too high for the given time, you end up with unfinished, disconnected pieces. An arm here, a head there. However if you get the major forms in first you can add detail for focus if you have time, and it feels complete.
There were a few things I did to combat this:
Just pause the pose to be able to complete it with my desired level of detail. Kind of defeats the purpose of having limited time, but the compulsion to finish was strong. I’d start with one line as a landmark, and try to get everything else accurate in angle and length relative to that mark. As accurate marks accumulate it becomes easier, but if you get them wrong it can easily spiral into a mess. Quickly lining only one side of a shape, leaving the rest to the viewer’s imagination. As long as there’s an indication to work with or you line the other side on the next part, like the top of a thigh and the back of a calf, there’s enough information there the that the viewer can fill in the blanks. Being fine with just doing a bad drawing, believing that the process was valuable even if the final product was substandard. Improving line quality, another tiny step towards accurately reproducing proportion, practice avoiding my usual anatomy pitfalls… I’m sure it was worth it.
Simplification
One of the most gratifying parts of this exercise was looking at a figure and simplifying it into basic, appealing lines and shapes, deciding what was important and what could be blended together or glossed over. Some of my favourite pieces are ones where I simply left lines out, as they were implied by what was already there.
I often fell into a trap of wanting to show everything, especially on longer time periods or when I paused to capture more. However the times I let go and accepted the “incomplete” felt powerful, like I had confidence in my decisions and in the audience to appreciate them.
Exaggeration
People have a tendency to flatten things out, make them closer to a front view, and lessen twists and angles. Possibly because it’s closer to the straight ahead Vitruvian man-style mental model of “what a figure should be”.
Though I did tend to want my figures to be realistic for fear of getting the proportions unappealingly wrong, I think I did do a good job of at least not going more boring than reality. There are some short timed figures where I highly exaggerated and those have some of the most life and energy to them.
Gesture
Appealing gesture is a combination of simplification and exaggeration, with a couple of other considerations like flow and balance. Many times I’d take a long time on a pose, and as I was slowing down to show too much they’d end up stiff. I’d then redo the same pose while trying to keep to the time limit, and while they weren’t as realistic or clean, they did have more energy to them and most of the time were more appealing. The first session probably helped a lot as by studying the figure in detail, so in the second I knew what was important to show and what could be left. They are both valuable, but the shorter rounds certainly have better gesture.
Shadows
Anatomy is just a small part of what you’re looking at. Almost equally important for showing the form is using the shadow shapes. If the shadows are strong enough, they can even eat and blend together parts of the anatomy as they are too dark to see. The heavy lifting they perform is adding information to the middle of an outlined shape, to break the field of flatness by showing it’s not.
With one figure, I tried to draw only the shadows. It was incredibly difficult to draw accurate shapes while leaving out a lot of information, especially anatomical landmarks. The proportions needed some tweaking, but the final results were quite cool. An exercise to revisit.
Anatomy
Drawing from life made me notice a few things about the body I was either simplifying or just getting wrong. I’ll go over them quickly now.
The shoulders and neck are not an L shape. They’re made of an appealing arrangement of the clavicles, trapezius and the muscles that go from the middle of the chest up to the sides of the head in a V shape, the sternocleidomastoids. (Say that five times fast.)
For the upper arm, the shoulder is a much bigger part of it and the bicep a lot smaller than I had in my head.
The calf muscles are heavily weighted towards the top of the leg then peter out, more like an S curve than a C. There’s very little going on in the bottom half of the leg.
Given time pressure my natural instinct was to draw the legs absolutely massive, probably from enthusiasm in drawing the big flowy lines they’re made of.
Posting
Collating and posting the results was almost as tall a mental hurdle as the drawing sessions themselves. I felt like I had to do even more work after I was “finished”, so collation was sporadic. I’d like to do better next time I try something similar by changing my thinking. Posting is just another part of the session I’ll factor into my mental model of what I need to do, and I’m not finished until I hit “Submit”.
Final Thoughts
I’m happy I did Figuary and a little proud I kept up with the whole thing. I was feeling a little fatigue towards the end but the fact the sessions were only supposed to be 15 minutes made it a lot easier to start, even if I ended up pausing poses and going over most of the time.
There are timelapses with chill music and commentary for all these sessions over on my YouTube if you want the full blow-by-blow, or just something to put on in the background.
Perhaps you’d like to participate this year? February is coming up again faster than I’m sure we all anticipated. | https://medium.com/@jonathancaridia/figure-drawing-every-day-of-february-904311c2b937 | ['Jonathan Caridia'] | 2020-12-05 00:15:22.599000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Artist', 'Art', 'Creative Process', 'Figure Drawing'] |
Recovering a dormant obsession | On March 2 of this year, the 36 days of type project started, and I took that as a final nudge to get this going. I began, of course, with that uppercase A. From the outset, I wanted to explore the typeface in a couple of different realms — in one, I stayed close to the original outlines and trimmed the contours; in another, I accentuated the stroke contrast. Lastly, I added a stencil on some studies that took even broader geometric liberties. Would the spirals taper or not? Would I keep the slabs? Would the quirky internal architecture of the original lettering hold up for legibility within an entire alphabet? Those are things I wanted to dig into as the project got off the ground.
Over time, the forms that were closer to the original began to lose their appeal, as it felt like an exercise in cleaning up vernacular type without adding anything else. A specter of pointlessness began to fall over those letters, particularly in the middle of the alphabet, where the task felt more like a production assignment, not a years-long What If project. I loved how the A and the B and the C turned out, and I continued drawing them to see what would happen once the R or the X or the Z came around, but I did so without the same interest.
Drawing tapering spirals also tested my patience a little too much, especially with the daily pace the project required. The high contrast version stayed around a little longer (in fact, it is still an intriguing idea to me and perhaps something I will revisit down the line). Still, by the end of the alphabet, I was most satisfied with stencil / geometric approach. I kept drawing high contrast versions until the end, but as the numerals started to count down, I knew the outcome would be a cleaned-up version of that stencil set.
Little rules emerged here & there. The original wordmark had no diagonals, so I stuck to that as much as possible, which made things like the N and the forward slash and the accents somewhat of a challenge, but I felt there had to be some idiosyncratic remnant to the alphabet to keep the spirit of the original letterforms. I had to sacrifice the original S as it just started to read like a 5 in most cases (I kept is as an alternate), and, though I’ve always loved the NE relationship, I removed the curved stem of the N to make it work better in the entire system. | https://uxdesign.cc/recovering-a-dormant-obsession-c76260324fc0 | ['Julio Martínez'] | 2020-09-03 22:58:42.200000+00:00 | ['Typography', 'Design Process', 'Visual Design', 'Design', 'UX'] |
A Pleasant Monday | Some days are just more pleasant than others.
So, I have not updated you yet that I resigned from this organization on 26 Nov 2020. I have been really at peace after that. This post is about the work Monday.
This morning I started by thinking about life in SF. Saw Akta’s FB and went down the SF memory lane. Thoughts then meandered to Monterrey where my cousin Jay stays. And all this has been bringing a smile to my face. Will I ever get to live for a month in an apartment in SF area, my musings continue.
I get to office and receive a ebook called Mantram Beach from Vani Kola. Immediately, I download it. A book of short poems, it’s a light read and one of the first few poems ends with Chidanand Roop Shivoham Shivoham. Thereeeee…. I am all ears and an instant fan of the author.
As I flip through a couple of more poems, I realize that this probably is the only year where I have not been on a pilgrimage. Little reminiscence.. and then I remember the Yogananda Ashram I visited in March 2020. Heart is filled with love for Shri Paramhans Yoganand and the beautiful morning spent at SRF headquarters in LA fills my mind. I am longing to go back to LA .. to be at the ashram… to pray, to meditate, to realize the true SELF.
Chidanand Roop Shivoham Shivoham! | https://medium.com/@basicallyisthebestword/a-pleasant-monday-4e5a66aae58f | ['Basically Is The Best Word'] | 2020-12-21 05:55:06.982000+00:00 | ['Los Angeles', 'New Year', 'Paramahansa Yogananda', 'Meditation'] |
The agony of being separated from your children is real. | With this experience in mind, when I first heard about immigrants being deported without their children, I was utterly horrified.
On June 20, my favorite news anchor, Rachel Maddow, received news that babies were being held in “tender age shelters.” The usually extraordinarily composed Ms. Maddow could barely get through the rest of her broadcast without exploding into tears.
Tender age shelters? What the hell does that mean?
It means little kids — babies, toddlers, and kindergartners — were being detained and kept in cells.
Oh. My. God.
Yesterday, Houston Public Media published an article stating that despite the court-mandated parent/child unifications, more than 5,000 children are still being held in shelters in Texas and throughout the United States.
Five thousand children.
Being held hostage.
Inside the United States.
Houston Public Media’s article summed it up:
Texas regulators do not differentiate between children who arrived at the border without adult supervision and those separated from their families under a new Trump administration policy of “zero tolerance.” Under that policy, parents and children were split up at the country’s southwest border, with kids sent to federally contracted shelters and their parents sent to jail on the criminal charge of illegal border entry.
My children were only separated for one month and ten days… and I knew where they were. I could call them anytime I needed to speak with them. I could see them in photos and on video calls. If I needed to, I could have driven to pick them up. These men and women — parents like myself — do not have those luxuries.
Imagine for one moment that your nine-month-old baby girl was forcibly taken from your arms. Or your two-year-old son.
Your children, removed from the safety of your arms.
Your parental rights, illegally revoked.
Because you came to the United States seeking asylum.
Some parents have not seen or heard from their children since the separation and have no way of reaching them. They have no way of knowing where their children have ended up.
As parents, we need to know our children are safe. We need to see our children, to hold them, feed them, clothe them. Our emotions, minds, and bodies are intertwined.
Separating a child from her mother or father is similar to trying to disentangle chewing gum from a carpet. You may be able to do it, but it won’t be neat, and neither the gum nor the carpet will come away unaffected.
“Mothers and children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.” — Gail Tsukiyama
Thank goodness for the media which uncovered the separation of children and their parents in the first place. Here, an article from PBS NewsHour tells the story of parents forcibly separated from their children and were only reunited because attorney generals filed legal motions on their behalf.
PBS NewsHour reporters culled through 99 declarations from parents who had been separated from their children due to Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. Of those, they published 12, the first of which is shown below.
“(My son) is not the same since we were reunited. I thought that, because he is so young he would not be traumatized by this experience, but he does not separate from me. He cries when he does not see me. That behavior is not normal. In El Salvador he would stay with his dad or my sister and not cry. Now he cries for fear of being alone.” — Olivia Caceres, separated from her one-year-old son for three months.
What unimaginable cruelty.
If this doesn’t break your heart, please feel free to read on. One of them certainly will.
Thank goodness the checks and balances of the federal government are still [somewhat] in place, because a month ago, a federal judge ordered the government to reunite kids with their parents. The federal government missed its deadline to reunite all of the kids, but they were able to confirm they had reunited nearly 900. Thursday, July 26 is their new deadline to finish reunited the rest of the kids with their parents. We’ll see how that goes.
And here’s a new wrinkle. Yesterday, CNN reported this:
In a status update on the ongoing court-ordered family reunifications filed Monday, the government said 463 parents of separated children aged five and older are indicated as no longer in the US, according to their files. Though the government says the number is “under review,” it implies that potentially that many parents were deported from the US without their child.
In other words, the kids are here and the parents are… well… elsewhere. How do you get in touch with a father in Guatemala to reunite him with his child? There aren’t even roads in some parts of that country. Forget about using the phone.
ThinkProgress.org has published an interactive guide to track the issue of family separations. Remember — not ever child is eligible for reunification. If the parent was arrested and charged with a criminal act, the kids are still on their own. ThinkProgress says this:
According to the most recent government figures, roughly one-third of separated kids have been reunited with their family. The administration said it isn’t obligated to reunite every family, citing that not every adult is fit to parent; the judge okayed this.
Of the 5,000 children being detained, only 2,654 of them are eligible for reunification. What will happen to the other 2,346 children?
God, what a mess.
I have read enough Holocaust accounts to know this is how ethnic cleansing begins.
The United States is a nation of immigrants. Many of our ancestors came to this country of their own accord, but others were collected up and summarily expelled by their native countries. (Read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.) The large majority were not the crème de la crème of contemporary society.
So who are we — children and grandchildren of unwanted immigrants — to judge other unwanted immigrants? Who are we to deny others the rights we enjoy simply because of our birthright?
This is not an innocuous series of actions that will be lost to history.
I will remember this moment forever:
It is the moment my beloved country snubbed its nose at its immigrant roots and thwarted its own deeply held values.
None of us will come out of this unscathed. | https://estherhofknechtcurtis.medium.com/the-agony-of-being-separated-from-your-children-is-real-e84fdc18844f | ['Esther Hofknecht Curtis'] | 2019-07-14 20:34:54.094000+00:00 | ['Immigration', 'United States', 'Deportations', 'Parents', 'Children'] |
Lessons From a Destroyer Captain to Startup Founders | Lessons From a Destroyer Captain to Startup Founders
And how to delegate better, faster, and with fewer mistakes.
Photo by Arron Choi on Unsplash
Most of my professional life I spent as an employee in multinational headquarters. Companies where you do not have much skin in the game, as Nassim Taleb explains.
All this changed in 2017 when I started my first business, in the tourism sector. Like any other first-time founder, there were difficulties with funding, planning targets, and establishing challenging-but-realistic goals. Problems that are already discussed in multiple places.
But once your business is up and running, there is a ghost that haunts entrepreneurs. An issue rarely approached, and with me, it was no different: the overwhelming amount of responsibilities, that often lead you to burnout.
When you invested your savings or investor’s money, it will be difficult to delegate responsibilities. Put together that in a new company you still didn’t build a trust relationship with your team, and the formula for hoarding multiple tasks is ready.
But this is not a problem only for business founders. Imagine the responsibility of the commander of an Arleigh Burke destroyer in the United States Navy. With a crew of near 300 people and responsible for a war-machine costing more than one-billion dollars, any captain should know more than one thing or two about delegation.
More than knowing, one of these captains even wrote a book about his experiences: “It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy.”
The author, Michael Abrashoff, is the former head of the USS Benfold. He received the ship command in a time where the crew was demotivated and below the ideal performance. In only 3 years, he turned the Benfold into one of the best ships in the entire US Navy. They even won the Spokane Trophy, given to the most proficient ship of the US Pacific Fleet
Differently than what someone may think. his book is not about war adventures (although it has some thrilling passages during his stay in the Middle East). It is a book about leadership, people management, and, more than anything, task delegation.
Here, a closer look at some of the insights from Abrashoff’s book.
Create a sense of ownership
It is your ship, it is your company, it is your shift.
If your firm is still small, this is one of the easiest points to apply. But if your company already has hundreds of collaborators with very specific roles, it is not that easy. While specialization has advantages like experts with better task knowledge from experts, it also reduces the feeling of responsibility for the entire process.
Captain Abrashoff had a challenging task. To convince specialized sailors, like the ones responsible for the ship boiler, kitchen, or weapons room, that not only their sectors but the entire ship where their responsibility was difficult.
Lacking a sense of ownership creates a lot of other problems, like the distasteful blame game when one department makes more effort to blame others than looking for joint-solutions.
How captain Abrashoff created a sense of ownership?
First, by rotating people across departments, and understanding better the entire vessel. You cannot have a sense of ownership over something that you do not understand, and rotating staff among different areas solved this question. It has the benefit of increase inter-departmental understanding, bonding the team, and reducing the blame game.
Together with job rotations, he started to praised entire teams, from top to bottom, when a good task is done. And, maybe the most important: give more independence by trusting his people to solve matters on the spot. As he once said to one of his subordinates:
I should be called only in situations that put lives at risk, could injure others, or resulted in significant expenditures.
A phrase like this one above brings the best in people. During the beginning of my business, I was tormented by calls, multiple times a day, even during holidays or medical leaves. It just felt like I was in some kind of prison that I could not escape no matter what.
Then I realized that one of the phrases that I said for everyone that I hired until them, on their first day, was If you have any problem or doubt, you can call me.
While this phrase apparently shows your support for new employees and makes them feel more secure, it is dangerous. Very dangerous. People should not call you if they have any problems. First, they should try to solve the problem! That is why you are hiring and training them in the first place. This does not apply to someone that still didn't go through full training and is not at his entire capabilities. Obviously, in this case, the new-joiner should still be able to call someone.
So now, instead of saying to my staff to call me if they have any problem, I tell them to try to solve the problem first, unless it is something absolutely out of their reach.
Just remember that when people try to solve a problem, they may make mistakes. Do not punish anyone for making mistakes while trying to solve a problem, otherwise, you will just destroy the initiative that you are building in your team.
Walk around, recognize the good stuff, and plan for ‘What if’ situations.
There are two ways to kill the proactivity of an organization. The first, as previously mentioned, is to punish people for mistakes made while trying to solve problems. The second is to not recognize spontaneous and positive initiatives.
Numerous managers and entrepreneurs don’t do positive recognition. I was not doing it. And this is not because we do not know how to do it, or we don’t recognize the positive impacts. It is just because we are frequently isolated inside our offices.
When you walk around your people, you see them working, taking positive action, the recognition of their good performance naturally will come from your mouth. Unless they are doing a bad job, but even in this case, to stroll around and see by yourself, helps to identify flaws and correct the process. This is the job of a leader, according to a legendary CEO.
Positive reinforcement builds self-esteem. A competent and self-confident squad will handle complexities better. Positive, personal reinforcement is the essence of effective leadership. In Captain Abrashoff words: Don’t be disconnected. Don’t be the type of leader that never leaves your office. A compliment online is not as good as a personal one.
If, while walking around, you realize that you have low-performers, design a plan for their improvement. Clarify what they need to correct and train them if needed. Give them improvement targets, with the expectations and consequences of reaching (or not) them. But be clear.
When your organization is already smooth in regular scenarios, start to work with multiple What-If situations. Prepare in advance for unexpected situations turn them, well—expected. This will reduce your time of response for emergencies and avoid situations where you are demanded while out of the country, just because any disruption occurred and nobody was trained for this scenario.
The delegating part
After building the sense of ownership of your team, recognizing their daily victories and results, walking around, and see how they can handle their own tasks, and building your confidence and their self-esteem, delegating tasks happens naturally. You will feel comfortable trusting them in your absence, and they will feel ready to assume new challenges.
They may even ask for new responsibilities. That will be a victory from both sides.
Once you reach this point, together with developing reliable processes to absorb the multiple What-If scenarios, you may even take some holidays knowing that your team will handle everything smoothly. | https://medium.com/swlh/and-how-to-delegate-better-faster-and-with-fewer-mistakes-f0af7e07e073 | ['Levi Borba'] | 2020-10-30 18:02:57.670000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Self Improvement', 'Startup', 'Life Lessons', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Chelsea Manning Smear Campaign Reveals Liberal Transphobia and Nationalism | Chelsea Manning Smear Campaign Reveals Liberal Transphobia and Nationalism
The left can embrace the very same transphobia and nationalism it denounces from the right.
On January 14, whistleblower Chelsea Manning officially announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. Manning, a transgender woman, is challenging incumbent Ben Cardin in the Democratic primary. She is running a proudly radical campaign rooted in her opposition to bigotry, corruption, and inaction.
Manning, who fearlessly leaked military documents revealing American war crimes and corruption only to face cruel and inhumane imprisonment in a men’s facility that drove her to attempt suicide twice, was always going to be a controversial candidate. An unabashed leftist opponent of the police state, advocate for queer liberation, and former prisoner, she is a Senate candidate like no other. Her candidacy is all the more divisive given that she is challenging a solidly liberal member of the Democratic establishment who has served in elected office for half a century.
While Manning’s campaign is just beginning, I am very excited to see where it goes and believe that she will bring a fresh perspective to what would otherwise be a stale race. The fact that we are seeing a formerly incarcerated transgender woman, a national hero who risked her life to reveal evils the government tried to hide from the American people, run for the U.S. Senate should be an inspiration to us all.
Unfortunately, that’s not how everyone sees it.
Conservatives, of course, were never going to like a Chelsea Manning Senate campaign. As nationalists, they have always hated her for exposing American war crimes and corruption, accusing her of being a traitor. As transphobes, they have always hated for being a transgender woman, referring to her as “mentally diseased,” misgendering her, and slurring her as an “it.” While this is disgusting and hateful, it’s par for the course for the right.
What I did not quite expect was the overwhelmingly transphobic and nationalistic response to Manning’s Senate campaign from liberals. The left has a long history of transphobia, one even more insidious than that of the right, but the Democratic Party has in recent years tried to characterize itself as pro-LGBTQ as support for LGBTQ equality has risen among the general American population. In November, we saw a Democratic wave usher in a slate of diverse candidates, many of them members of the LGBTQ community. The Democratic Party was quick to capitalize on their grassroots success, touting them as evidence of the party’s diverse coalition. But now, when it comes to actually supporting a high-profile transgender woman running for the upper chamber of Congress, Democrats have little more than scorn and bigotry.
Democrats: “ELECT LGBT WOMEN.” 🙋🏼♀️ Chelsea Manning: “Present.” Democrats: “NOT THAT ONE. VOTE FOR THE OLD WHITE GUY!” — safari disco cub (@disco_socialist) January 16, 2018
According to the very same Democrats who chastise the right for using anti-transgender sentiments for political capital, Chelsea Manning is an opportunist whose candidacy is based solely on her transgender identity. Some even argue that she’s a Russian plant, a stunning new peak for liberal paranoia that trivializes the gravity of Russian interference in our electoral system. It takes little more than a scroll through Twitter to reveal that the Democratic Party does not truly care about transgender Americans. Even the supposedly unbiased reporting on her reveals how liberals do not view her gender as valid, as The Washington Post and other transphobic liberal media outlets felt the need to use her deadname, a horrific act of disrespect and violence.
Additionally, Manning’s campaign has revealed the disturbing nationalism lurking on the left, with liberals joining the right in referring to Manning as a “traitor” and a “criminal.” Democrats may mock Republicans for their mindless admiration of the abusive military state, but it’s clear that Democrats will just as easily hop on the nationalist train when it’s convenient — i.e. when it can be used to tear down a transgender woman.
We should be honest about the reasons Democratc loyalists don’t like Chelsea Manning: she implicated them in the unsavory aspects of the American war machine they prefer to associate with Republicans. (Also, transphobia.) — Ben Geier (@ben_geier) January 16, 2018
Some argue that Manning is simply too divisive a figure for a Senate race, and that her candidacy will imperil a safe Democratic seat. This reflects the terrifying devotion some liberals have developed to the Democratic Party in the Trump era. These liberals seem to believe that the Democratic Party is our savior, and therefore any threat to Democratic power, such as challenges to incumbents, is a threat to democracy.
Nonsense. Primary battles are healthy for our democracy, and voters should have options. Ben Cardin has served in elected for office for 50 years, and has faced little scrutiny over his record in Congress. Though Cardin is a solidly liberal senator, he is also a foreign policy and national security hawk who has attempted to further criminalize whistleblowing and authored an anti-BDS bill that would have criminalized protests of the Israeli government, a clear violation of the First Amendment. His positions on these issues stand in stark contrast with those of Chelsea Manning, who bravely violated unjust laws to expose the very corruption and war crimes Cardin would apparently prefer kept secret. Manning also wants to “disarm, defund, dismantle, and abolish [ICE] and [CBP] as an unchecked national police force,” something unheard of for a high-profile Senate candidate.
I firmly believe that Chelsea Manning is an American hero. She risked everything to expose the crimes of the most powerful instrument of imperialism on earth, and nearly died for her bravery. As a transgender woman, I also consider her a personal hero, a shining symbol of perseverance and strength. She endured in her imprisonment the constant invalidation of her gender, pushing her to suicide, a phenomenon not uncommon in the transgender community. But she survived and is now thriving as a proud transgender woman, even as she faces invalidation left and right. Her Senate run only further demonstrates her fearlessness, and serves as a big middle finger to the Democratic establishment that cares for nothing but power.
As a radical transgender woman who supports police abolition and whistleblowing, I know that I have never fit in the Democratic Party and likely never will. To this day, the party refuses to steadfastly condemn anti-queerness, supporting anti-LGBTQ Democrats like Dan Lipinski and treating anti-queerness as just an opinion rather than an affront to the lives of the queer Americans who have little choice but to support Democrats over Republicans. But it is nonetheless deeply disheartening to see just how quickly liberals revealed their transphobia after Manning’s announcement. It is ignorant to use her deadname. It is hateful to reduce her to her gender and claim that she only has support because she is transgender. These are things I wish that Democrats were above.
But alas, liberals have yet again shown that their interest in our community begins and ends with our votes. | https://medium.com/the-intersectional-rainbow-room/chelsea-manning-smear-campaign-reveals-liberal-transphobia-and-nationalism-f007e302c586 | ['Jordan Valerie Allen'] | 2018-01-21 20:17:15.650000+00:00 | ['Chelsea Manning', 'Politics', 'Nationalism', 'Senate', 'Transgender'] |
I interviewed a dozen VCs on relationship building, core skills, and value add | a) How do you stay connected with and cultivate relationships with co-investors over time?
Focus on authentic relationships (quality over quantity and being open and transparent)
Regular connection
Have regular catch ups with other investors Organize a book club with people with shared experiences and interests
Knowledge sharing
Share interesting articles to spark great discussions Share deal flow and give feedback on their companies raising Becoming the go to person on a particular topic
Collaboration
Support companies together collaboratively Involve people in your work (panels, events, organizations)
b) How have the skills you developed in your pre-VC work played into your role now?
Operator & founder experience and empathy
Being open about weaknesses and areas you are less familiar with Asking better questions to get the core of a problem, product, or business Building an operating plan, especially to stretch out runway
Consulting & investment banking
Recognizing attributes that make a great leader Asking founders how they delegate or split up responsibility with concrete examples Using structured frameworks of thinking to work background from goals to steps Understanding a company’s core value proposition
Academia
Taking psychology classes to better understand people
c) How do you add value to portfolio companies in pre-GP capacities?
Ideation
Think through product launches Be a sounding board for product and strategy and other tough decisions Dive deep into and make yourself an expert in an area, like PPP (at the start of COVID)
Fundraising
Introductions to later stage investors Feedback on fundraising materials and decks
Hiring
Help make engineering hires or any other hires, especially from university networks
Growth | https://medium.com/@jessli/i-interviewed-a-dozen-vcs-on-relationship-building-core-skills-and-value-add-27ea9e7c7686 | ['Jess Li'] | 2020-08-20 17:31:05.234000+00:00 | ['Networking', 'Startup', 'VC'] |
Three Medium Writers who educate, entertain, and entice me to keep reading (and writing). | When I first joined the Medium Partner Program, there was an awesome criteria in place for you to earn money: You had to both contribute your writing and be an active reader. You had to be part of the community supporting fellow writers. This meant you had to spend time reading, highlighting, commenting, and sharing others’ posts. It was a wonderful thing and I’m sorry that it disappeared somewhere in the last two years.
What this guideline forced writers consumed with putting words down was what we could pick up from someone else and learn. This is a developed habit that I continue to use to meet new writers, discover a different point of view, and broaden what I read in a day.
Here are three writers I’ve met on Medium whose writing touches, educates, and connects. Enjoy:
Hair to Dye For has this 60 year-old laughing and nodding in agreement and understanding. I let my hair do its thing a few years ago. Marie describes a woman’s connection to her hair, “I had turned fifty years old that summer and no longer felt I could tolerate trying to make myself in an image that pleased others while leaving me miserable.”
I’ve exchanged many comments with Florian telling him: You made me laugh, cry, and learn all in the same article. He writes so much that touches me in one way or another, it was difficult to narrow my pick. I chose this article because we both lost our fathers to wasting diseases — his to cancer, mine to ALS. Even within the time of dying, humor can be found.
Agnes and I have bonded over shared family stories. But don’t stop your reading there. Agnes writes intimate poetry, yoga-focused health articles, and socially attuned stories. If you are new to Medium (or been here forever!), connect with Agnes. She shares her support like a godsend carrying an umbrella on a rainy day.
Three — it’s a good thing we are limited to three because I have many great writers bookmarked and could easy write about six, nine, twelve … you get the idea. Enjoy! | https://medium.com/top-3/three-medium-writers-who-educate-entertain-and-entice-me-to-keep-reading-and-writing-c7bcda68a43f | ['Rose Mary Griffith'] | 2019-12-12 17:25:42.569000+00:00 | ['Grief', 'Aging', 'Writing', 'Life', 'Top 3'] |
I Traveled to Cut and Shoot, Texas and a Big Ol’ Brawl Happened | I Traveled to Cut and Shoot, Texas and a Big Ol’ Brawl Happened
answerin’ another prompt
Image by Shutterbug75 from Pixabay
Now this happened some time ago, but it’s a good story.
I was on my way to Houston carrying a load of lumber when I stopped for lunch at the Texas Smoke Pit in Cut and Shoot, Texas. I had heard of the place from a buddy of mine named Red White. Ol’ Red said that I could fill my belly cheap at the Texas Smoke Pit.
Now you may think I’m makin’ the name of this town up, but I ain’t. It’s a for real place and that there’s the for real name. They’s different explanations for how the town got its name.
Accordin’ to one story about how the town came by this name it’s ’cause of some big row between different brands of Christians arguin’ over whether some preacher who had a bad reputation for visitin’ saloons and dancin’ had a right to preach in the town’s Community House.
Well, these peace-lovin’ Christians decided to bring their guns to this hoedown and stop the unsaintly reverend from preachin’ but the group with the preacher brought their guns also and they was some mouthin’ off and threats a takin’ place that nearly ended up in a gunfight, but it was solved peaceful like after all.
Some kid got scared and said he was gonna “cut around the corner and shoot through the bushes in a minute!”
The fussin’ and the fightin’ didn’t end there though. They all went to Conroe, the nearest city, and filed a case against each other. The story got told in court and after that the town got its name.
Well, folks, sometimes history nearly repeats itself.
After I ordered my brisket dinner, a waitress named Daisy poured me a giant glass of sweet tea and went back to a table with three local guys and started flirtin’ with them boys.
One of them goobers commenced to pattin’ Daisy’s derriere and Daisy hauled off and slapped him. That idiot stood up and started to slap her back.
This caused quite a commotion and everybody in the place got upset and started shoutin’. I ain’t one to ever watch a lady get hurt nor some fight go on without me so I joined the crowd around the table.
All the guys at the table got up and started yellin’ at the other fellas and then fists started flyin’ all over the place. I hit a few guys and then I walked over and whispered in Daisy’s ear that maybe she oughta go call the sherriff or somethin’ and she said, “Oh, this kind of thang happens all the time.”
My guess is these jokers were descendants of the numbnuts who was there at the beginnin’. They still a fightin’ and goin’ at each other just like their great grandpappies and grandmammies.
After a while, ever’body settled down and went back to eatin’.
The guy who started the whole thing got up and went outside. Not two minutes later, he come back in holdin’ a rifle and pointed it at some of the guys he’d been sluggin’ it out with.
It weren’t two seconds before half the people in the place had pulled out a gun and pointed it at this idiot with the rifle. He slowly backed out of the place and peeled outa the parkin’ lot like the devil was chasin’ him.
About this time, Daisy brought me my dinner and refilled my tea.
I figured since ain’t nobody else upset about all this, so I’d just eat my dinner and cut out of there before they was any more almost shootin’, but not before I had a slice of pecan pie. | https://medium.com/muddyum/i-traveled-to-cut-and-shoot-texas-and-a-big-ol-brawl-happened-55a68817dd9 | ['Jimmywayne Ford'] | 2019-11-25 15:06:50.810000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Texas', 'History', 'Tall Tales', 'Short Story'] |
Age Is The Weirdest Insult | A cucumber calling a pickle green.
Photo by Ben Neale on Unsplash
Age is weird. I have a theory it’s just one more thing we’ve been trained to care about so that we’ll spend money, either in celebration or in fear. Capitalism is very good at taking normal things that happen to everybody and turning them into reasons to either party or panic. Age is the perfect example of this structure on a continuum, and I write this for those of us in the space where the dial points to freaking out. There’s a change that happens, an uncomfortable switcheroo, when you move into a world where when people ask your age, it’s always followed by, “if you don’t mind me asking.” Why, bitch, would I mind?
We’ve been trained to “mind.” Trained to feel shame for the number of birthdays we’ve had, as if having fewer was an option. The balm against that shame is of course to “look” younger than whatever the person in front of you thinks your actual age should manifest as visually. We’ve been trained to use our outward appearance to defend our actual age, lest we become the subject of an awkward moment where someone doesn’t want to be overtly insulting by acknowledging that we look like the age we literally are. “Don’t worry, it’s fine that I’m 40, I look 31!” Whew, that was a close one, didn’t want to make someone uncomfortable, least of all me, the person who was just asked her age, a trait she’s been societally groomed to be ashamed of. We absorb the shame, and comfort the outside world, by trying to trick all parties involved. I am far more interested in the truth. It’s cheaper.
The insulting moments that surround age aren’t always person-to-person. (Thanksgiving dinner table notwithstanding.) The cues are more subtle, more passive, and they train us to accept that after a certain age, we are over. Not once or twice, but over decades. We absorb it like the porous little sponges we are. Remember to hide your pores, ladies, they’re unsightly. Who appears in the ads fed to us, who do marketers cast to be their “face?” Look a the stories we tell, the movies and television, the individuals we hold up and shine light on. Look at how we present women deemed a desirable focal point, versus how we present stories about women over a certain age and therefore have to make the story itself about her “certain” age.
I wont bore you with a deep dive into the beauty industry’s swindling of the female population as a collective into thinking age is a thing you can some how preserve or reverse, you can probably take a spin around your own medicine cabinets for that—I can certainly look in mine. What I’d rather talk about is shame. The assignation of shame to the most natural, passive thing we do: getting older. It’s these insults, both direct and passive, that impose that shame, and that imposition is absolutely baffling to me, because…you know, biology.
The shame itself comes from a permeating preference for youth, as if youth are prepared enough to know what to do with all that preference. After we pass the point of preference, we’re communicated to and observed as something less, something unwanted, something that is no longer worthy of the caveat-free attention, affection, and focus given to the young. There’s an invisibility to aging that feels particularly cold. We shouldn’t have to demand acknowledgment or attention, or justify the fact that we still exist. Those same societally bestowed feelings should just show up the way they did in our twenties, when we were just accepted as preferred. But for those of us past the preference point, our own age, rather suddenly, not only becomes something we have to justify, but also becomes something we can be insulted for. How…and I can’t stress this enough…the fuck?
If we’re going to make age something for women to worry about, can we at least build our case on solid arguments? We don’t. We built it on the weirdest things possible, when you really think about it. We use the most senseless foundations to squeeze a square life into a round hole, and then we remark at the discomfort we feel in constantly trying to fit. I take three main issues with the logic applied:
The window is tiny. The time in between “too young” and “too old” is quite narrow, when you get down to brass tacks and marketing slideshow presentations. It’s basically between the ages of legal adult and 29. Eleven years. You have eleven years where the world won’t give you shit about how old you are, but on the whole you’re gonna live for about 49 more years after that. So we get to spend 18 years wishing we were older, 11 years not giving our age a second thought because the world is showering us with acceptance and preference, and 49 more trying to preserve and tuck and reformat ourselves into an age that’s less than what we actually are. I’m sorry but that’s far too much of my life to spend fighting nature, who as we know, always wins. We are not rare flowers who only bloom for 20 minutes on the second equinox of a leap year, our beauteous petals unfolding for but a moment. We are the constant, the vines, the wisteria dripping from a house whose market value has increased as a result. If I have to live a human earth life for roughly 80 years you bet your ass I’m going to feel like a valid member of society for far more than fucking 11 of them. Like we have a choice? I love it when age is communicated to women like it’s our fault. Like we’ve somehow done something wrong by not dying at the stroke of midnight on our 30th birthday, sparing the world the inevitability of our decay. We know we’re an imposition, we’ll just leave. My age is not an accident, I’m not going to apologize for it like I’ve spilled a coffee. It’s a thing that I do not control and not for nothing, do not mind. There’s nothing weirder than being insulted for something you yourself don’t see as a flaw. “Ew, gross, you’re…your age.” Yes I am, Stacy, thank you for demonstrating your grasp of the very basic facts at hand. By the way, that sour face you’re making will give you wrinkles, which brings me to my last point… It’s coming for you, too. The only other option is death, so absent an early exit, all the fears and disgust and dread assigned to getting older, whatever “older” happens to mean to each individual, it’s all coming for you, baby. So why not just get rid of the fear and disgust and dread instead? “Ugh, look at that old person, I’m so glad I’m not that old person.” Dude, yet. Maybe if we improved our opinions and feelings around age, we’d both make ourselves less afraid to age, and improve the societal messaging those who don’t have a “2” in front of their age receive. You know, two birds.
I think we should stop trying to fit into a world that celebrates youth no matter what age we happen to be (via creams potions and wardrobes and mortgages and behavior deemed appropriate), and start trying to build a world that celebrates and values every age for the inherent value in each age that exists, and in the fact that there’s no actual prescribed “way to be” regardless of the number of times we’ve been around the sun. Basically, I think we can all do whatever the fuck we want.
In my world, “you look good for your age” becomes “you look good.” “You look so young” isn’t uttered, because it isn’t seen as the ultimate praise any longer. “You look old” said in a negative tone merits you a kick in the teeth. We stop the valuation of human beings by how much they resemble a version of themselves that only existed for a decade or so, and start celebrating all of their decades as being a collection of valuable, celebratable life experiences. You think you know how to celebrate a birthday? Pshhttt….you’ve only had 22 of them. That’s not nearly enough practice.
I think at least part of the way we get to a world where no one feels societally shamed by their age is by acknowledging for ourselves that our own ages are not only valid, but good. And I’m not going to list all the good things we acquire with age, I’m not going to defend something we are as if it needs defending. Accept it or not, age is true. You can waste time and energy trying to beat it if you want, but I’d rather do something that has a point. I think if we can silence the illogical, weird insults of a culture that only thinks you’re likable or attractive when you’re 25, and stop defending ourselves for the crime of living past that age, we might be able to affect some real change.
Have you ever caught yourself defending your own youthfulness to someone? Or at least defending it to them in your head while you’re in the shower? Have you ever felt the need to stand up for yourself when the only topic on the table is your age? I bet you have. If you’ve ever responded, “how old do you think I am?” you have. That’s a defense. A real answer is…42. That’s it. No further window dressing of the response required in order to put all parties present at ease even though they’re the ones who asked the fucking question. No comforting response complimenting your appearance is necessary from them either. This dance can end, the strange tango between how old you are and how old people think you are and how old people think you’re allowed to be before you diminish in value.
It’ll feel weird at first, encouraging this change down it’s wobbly baby bird path, but we’ll get there. Here’s a quick reference, if you feel yourself confused or shy about refuting any shame the world is trying to impose upon you just because you’ve existed for three decades or more:
You don’t have to let someone else make you feel worse about your age while at THE SAME TIME trying to make THEM feel better about your age. You’re 47, and they’re a dick. There’s a difference.
Don’t make them feel better by trying to appear younger or reiterating how young you feel, force them to make you feel right on time. Because you are, because there’s literally no other way you can be. We can’t go back, we can’t skip ahead, so why do we assign shameful traits to something that has only one way to exist? Like we don’t have enough other shit to worry about? In this economy?
Your age isn’t happening to anyone else. Your age is also a natural thing that’s happening. Those are two logical sentences in a row. They have nothing to do with fear-monger marketing or the corporate drive to acquire 50-year lifelong customers by telling them their gray hair is ugly so you’d better buy our hair dye. The logical qualities of age far outweigh the illogical ideas of why we should feel bad about it. And maybe I’m finally old enough to know the difference.
____________
Shani Silver is a humor essayist and podcaster based in Brooklyn who writes on Medium, frequently. | https://medium.com/atta-girl/age-is-the-weirdest-insult-a534f05a6d46 | ['Shani Silver'] | 2020-10-25 13:47:20.762000+00:00 | ['Age', 'Self', 'Advice', 'Culture', 'Women'] |
Around the IFA19 and the late hangover | Around the IFA19 and the late hangover
8K will be the final station of screen resolutions. Up to 50 million pixels working better than your eyes. — Photo: TEAMS Design
For us, the unmissable highlights of the IFA were everything to do with screen technologies. First and foremost, the Big Players like Samsung, LG, or Panasonic. The bendable OLED screens feature is used for generating meaningful use of products at home, for example, saving space despite their larger size. Foldable smartphones are an upcoming product generation. Tablets, laptops, and smartwatches will certainly also become foldable.
Massive LG Installation at the IFA 2019 — Photo: TEAMS Design
Long announced and with a few bug fixes, the Samsung Galaxy Fold, first foldable smartphone screen, still looks a bit rudimentary… but somehow and someone had to start it once. — Photo: TEAMS Design
In the case of televisions, the bendable function is already questionable. You can pave your walls entirely with OLED foil, of course, but now the idea of integrating the TV into the living room is emerging strongly. Simple frames made of real wood or warm colors, reminiscent of decorative picture frames or even furniture look like a trend.
Another Future TV results in collaboration with Vitra. Real wooden materials and invisible screens perfectly integrated OLED technology into any contemporary home environment. — Photo: TEAMS Design
Samsung’s colorful frames make the tv look like a framed picture hanging on the wall or standing on a tripod. — Photo: TEAMS Design
Refrigerators can no longer be described as „white goods“. They will be colorful and individual, just as a wardrobe for your bedroom. — Photo: TEAMS Design
Integration into the living room also plays a vital role together with other large appliances. We saw personalized refrigerators extremely colorful or with street art graphics that increase the individualization of spaces.
Somehow this makes sense if you consider that the living space is getting smaller. The kitchen and the living room are blending, the appliances look like colorful wardrobes and certainly appeal to a younger target group.
In the case of small appliances, you have to take a close look and see which functional innovations they hide. Devices are now partly minimalist and partly sculptural objects. Here, new product solutions for the Home Automation and Healthy Living sectors are rapidly emerging. Everything is monitored, even the weather, and voice assistants everywhere give you the feeling of being “the master of disaster”.
Intelligent solutions in simple shapes more or less decorate the home. Such as your own weather station or burglar protection from Netatmo. — Photo: TEAMS Design
Sound devices at the IFA 2019 — Photo: TEAMS Design
Still to mention the fact that there were suddenly quite a few models within the In-Ear sector, some with some weird neck bars. Moreover, the noise-canceling feature applied to all headphones displayed at the fair. And the old MP3 player, displayed as a stand-alone product, with hi-fi sound quality. This time, of course, the MP3 could not come back… or we will see. | https://medium.com/insights-by-teams-design/around-the-ifa19-and-the-late-hangover-1d2813956b3b | ['Teams Design'] | 2019-09-20 14:48:49.236000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Home Appliances', 'Consumer Electronics', 'Ifa', 'Technology Trends'] |
Trinitario, Criollo or Forastero? A Data Analyst’s way of discovering the Best Chocolate Bar | Trinitario, Criollo or Forastero? A Data Analyst’s way of discovering the Best Chocolate Bar
Photo by Egor Lyfar on Unsplash
Can’t decide on which chocolate bar to eat? Tempted to try every chocolate bar like there is no tomorrow? Well, today is your lucky day! We’ll help you with making that very important decision. But first —
Happy World Chocolate Day!!
Commemorated on 7th of July, World Chocolate Day is about celebrating self-indulgence and learning more about the cacao beans that go into making the best chocolate bars around the world. Let us help you make that choice!
World Chocolate Day is said to celebrate the introduction of chocolate in Europe in 1550. Once cacao beans made their way over to Europe they were still used as a drink flavored with sugar and cinnamon.
The very first solid chocolate bar, known as “Dutch cocoa” was created in 1847 in Britain by Joseph Fry. This magical treat came into existence by pressing a mixture of melted cacao butter and sugar into a solid shape.
Are you too confused about cacao and cocoa? The word ‘cocoa’ is adapted from the word ‘cacao’. Cacao beans refer to those which are not roasted or raw beans while cocoa beans are processed or roasted ones.
It wasn’t until 1875 that the world was introduced to the milk chocolate bar by a Swiss chocolatier called Daniel Peter who invented milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk developed by Henri Nestlé with the liquor.This partnership became the basis of the Nestlé Company.
So are you ready for some serious chocolaty bar-charts and box-plots? | https://medium.com/womeninai/trinitario-criollo-or-forastero-a-data-analysts-way-of-discovering-the-best-chocolate-bar-96d131fe5375 | ['Iva Simon Bubalo'] | 2020-07-07 11:45:45.526000+00:00 | ['World Chocolate Day', 'Matplotlib', 'Python', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Women In Ai'] |
I Burned My Journals & Dumped the Ashes in the River. | I Burned My Journals & Dumped the Ashes in the River.
Here’s Why…
Over the years…
I’ve adopted the daily practice of expressing myself.
It simply sustains. It sustains me and therefore sustains as a prominent place in my daily life.
It started as innocently as my 13-year-old self, with a daily “Dear Diary.”
As a teen, I tore through blank notebooks and journals like a famished omnivore at a Korean BBQ restaurant.
Alongside this teenage daily writing, I also practiced music daily. When my proficiency began to allow it, this musical and written expression became the outlet for that which I was not allowed to say out loud.
There were opinions, stories, desires, lightness and darkness on the pages and hidden between the musical notes. I wrote words and played music because I soon discovered that if I stopped the expression, I stopped living.
This daily practice of self-expression staved off a full-on crisis of mental illness. I know I’m not the only one for whom this is true.
Expression saved my life.
By the time I was 25,
I had collected a huge box of journals filled with memories, traumas, joys, inside jokes, first dates, first kisses, frivolities, camping trips and growing up.
The box of journals I had collected was impressive, but heavy.
I couldn’t continue carrying this box around for forever. Lugging that thing around from house to house in my twenties was getting really old. So, per the suggestion of a friend, I began to transfer ‘the important stuff’ into an electronic archive.
I picked a journal at random.
FIVE hours later, I had the first journal ‘archived’ but had acquired a brain-splitting headache. It was exhausting to be reminded of things people had said, feelings I had purged, and days of my life I had long forgotten. Some memories were fun to recall.
I had forgotten most of these on purpose. I had worked very hard to whitewash them from my mind.
I knew I couldn’t make it through 20+ more journals just like it. The archiving unearthed it all and I was no better for it.
What I realized: the journals had already served their purpose.
They had given me a forum. They gave me the place to lay out my insides and start the day from a safer place.
The blank pages were the lenses which had allowed me to truly see myself in the present moment. I didn’t need to be reminded of the bits and pieces of the stories that didn’t matter in the long run.
So I burned them all.
It took several hours of poking at the fire. Every once in awhile, I could see a word on a burning page. Through the bonfire, those flashes of memory were enough of an archive for me. I threw the ashes into the nearby river.
It was time for those words to move on. It was time to collect new words. It was time to express new life.
I still write everyday.
Usually first thing in the morning. Usually for 15 minutes, but sometimes a lot longer.
I write on anything: my smartphone’s note application, a blank text document, a plain piece of paper, the back of an old bill.
When the writing comes to a close, I throw it away, immediately.
I delete, rip up, and shred it because I need to.
Trashing my daily writing lets me say my peace and then get on with life
& frees me from the fear that someone might discover…
what I really think about so’n’so how much of an imposter I truly am what a whiney bitch I am about everything. how lazy I really am [fill in the blank]
You see…
The blank page is the kindest permission and deepest forgiveness I have to offer myself, and in turn the world.
Not only that, but…
The Added Bonus of Daily Expression?
When I sit down to write or stand up to perform music, I have a clear and smooth channel to the unfettered parts of me.
Those are the parts I wish to reveal to my audiences. | https://medium.com/bare-naked-bravery/i-burned-my-journals-13b0407325db | ['Emily Ann Peterson'] | 2017-12-02 05:15:30.773000+00:00 | ['Journaling', 'Productivity', 'Community', 'Writing', 'Writing Life'] |
Why Invest in a 360 Feedback Tool? | Wondering if a 360 feedback tool is a good investment for your HR department? As you may know, a 360 feedback review collects input on an employee’s performance from a broad range of people. It gives you a well-rounded view of how an employee is performing based on responses from superiors, subordinates, and coworkers.
A 360-degree feedback tool provides an easy way to gain a wealth of knowledge on employee performance. With minimal effort on your part, you’ll give your employees the vital feedback they need to improve. That way, you can focus on coaching them to success as they make use of these insights.
Still thinking it over? Here are the main reasons to invest in a 360 feedback tool this year.
Promoting honest feedback
Often direct reports and peers have incredibly valuable feedback about their boss or coworker, since they work together so closely. However, because they’re not that person’s manager, they may not feel it’s their place to speak up. They may feel anxious about the idea of doing so.
That’s where a 360 feedback tool comes in. You-and, more importantly, the participants-can rest assured that a good 360 feedback platform keeps responses fully anonymous. That means employees won’t feel nervous about being completely honest about sharing constructive criticism about a superior. As a result, you and all your employees will get better, more accurate insights.
Keeping remote teams in sync
Most teams are currently working across a geographical distance, so you need to go the extra mile to help them stay in sync. When working together in person, employees gain a variety of feedback from one another on a daily basis. This knowledge promotes self-awareness and allows them to address issues as they arise. A 360 feedback tool serves as a valuable channel of information that helps remote teams reach that level of understanding and synchronicity. By helping you spot and address areas where employees need to work together more effectively, gaining 360 feedback will help you to build more cohesive teams.
Allowing you to easily understand results
A good 360-degree feedback tool can find patterns in your data for you. It produces reports that reveal these patterns. By synthesizing the results, it helps you draw your own well-founded conclusions.
Plus, a great 360 feedback platform provides clear visuals and graphs that help you understand the results. At a glance, you can see exactly how an employee is performing. This also helps you explain the findings to your employee more clearly.
Additionally, a 360 feedback tool can compare the rating styles of different managers. This can help you understand whether particular managers tend to rank employees higher or lower.
Measuring progress over time
With a 360 feedback tool, you can easily monitor employees’ progress over time. It helps you track patterns from one review cycle to the next. Thus, it gives you a better big-picture understanding of employees’ long-term performance and the effort they’ve put in toward improvement.
Having this level of knowledge will greatly improve employees’ self-awareness. Likewise, it will enhance performance management by giving managers a richer understanding of employees’ strengths and weaknesses.
What components of a 360-degree feedback tool should you be searching for? In our article “ What to Look for in a 360-Degree Feedback Tool,” we outline the key features of a great tool so you can make an informed decision.
With a quality tool, you won’t have to keep track of who still needs to complete their review. Instead, the software will send them automatic reminders. Your 360 feedback tool will deliver all the feedback to your desk-no paper-pushing required. In light of the pandemic, this flexibility is absolutely essential.
Since this tool makes the process so simple, you can focus on using the results in performance management! | https://medium.com/@primalogik/why-invest-in-a-360-feedback-tool-10f74d7934c7 | [] | 2021-01-12 15:27:43.507000+00:00 | ['HR', '360 Feedback', 'Performance Management', '360 Degree Feedback'] |
How to be a daughter | Photo by Shanna Camilleri on Unsplash
From the edge of a patio where I sit across from my mother, we watch farmers from the Haute-Provence region setting up their weekly market. It’s the end of summer. She wears her signature sweater set, lightweight for the season, exposing her forearms in white, rolled up sleeves. When she brings the coffee cup to her mouth, the movement reveals just another sliver of her chest. My mother’s dark hair never launched fully into silver, like many of her friends’, but wrinkles in the face and neck announce her age. She has a habit of sitting with her shoulders hunched, headed in a direction I remember from her mother and recognize in myself. Ivy climbs the café’s walls; a local French couple under the awning shares a cigarette. The square is still quiet. An empty tote basket sits on the table between us, awaiting fresh produce.
“Tell me your strategy, mom!” I say putting my hands on hers. This is her favorite morning of the week.
My mother glances at the three market options that have lined up closest to us, from merchants whose stalls look identical to me. “We’ll need to start with the organic farmer. His stuff just tastes better.”
“Organic, got it.”
On the same day last week, my mother and the organic farmer had a conversation. She managed to explain that she’s looked all over for a fig tree, the kind she could drive back to the Netherlands. He motioned with his hands that you can’t take them like that, in pots.
“I was so disappointed,” she says now. “I had the perfect plan for our balcony.”
“Why couldn’t you put it in a pot?”
“It doesn’t like to be constrained.”
I wave down our waiter and we pay the check.
I’d left home almost a decade before. I picked a job in San Francisco, at least in part wanting to be nimble after the recession. I was a recent college grad. Naturally, I questioned my choice. “Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing,” wrote Cheryl Strayed in the essay that turned into Wild. “It’s doing what you have to do”.
These had been years of acceleration. I’d gained nieces and nephews. My parents had turned into retired people. Their bodies lost buoyancy. My mother fell down a few steps of stairs and had taken weeks to recover. This was the part in the movie where they hire another pair of actors to play the older version of the characters you know.
Our dynamic had also shifted. At the end of my first trips back to Europe, I watched a fading image of my mother waving goodbye and crying, as I walked through the line at customs. More often now, I was the one whose tears started streaming well before check-in. Any sense of obligation around our togetherness had dissolved. I joined my family on their vacations when I could. But we were only temporarily a family in one place; I missed them almost as much as when I was on my own in California.
“I think your life would be easier if you moved home,” my mother says during our drive back from the farmers market. I have heard her tell me this over the years; sometimes she phrased it as a question. The yearning underneath the phrase is a part of her. And with distance, it has become mine too. Fig tree, constrained life, the push and pull of being in relationship. Would life be easier?
Back at the summer house, I spend some time at the garden table paging through an early journal my mother brought for me. After reading Anne Frank’s diary, I believed journaling was what you did when you were young. What preteen reads exclusively Holocaust literature? She is making do with what’s around.
Yesterday after field hockey, there was red and white wine. Tried both. I’m pretty sure I was tipsy. Today, mom was asking if I had any alcohol at the club and I said no. I felt sooo bad. I don’t like lying to her. After she was kind of quiet… moms have a way of knowing everything!
One day in my early teens, my father is in a meeting during which he is to fire an employee. The door is open, somehow. My mother walks by his office to see a man pulling my dad’s tie. He could have choked him. She takes her full body weight and jumps in. My father is safe again, but there’s meaning in the stories we retell. Are we ever safe, really?
There are restaurants where my parents overorder — as if we won’t know where our next meal will come from — and my father ensures we’ve located the exit signs. They share their need for an escape route. I memorize this line by Maya Angelou: “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself”.
As a child, I accompany my mother at photography exhibits where signs advise against viewers of my age. We talk about the life-sized, black and white pictures and my mother proceeds to ask which classmates would save me if it came to that.
Also, this: moments when I’m in trouble for saying, “I didn’t know”. I could be talking about a curfew or homework.
My mother, “Don’t tell me ‘I didn’t know’. That’s what the Germans said.”
She once organized an event at my school with a survivor to speak about the war. The teacher who invited only the handful of Jewish students made her furious. “Why would he only invite them? They already know all of the stories.” She had a point.
Besides, in class one kid had asked, “Can’t we talk about the wars that are still happening?”
My mother, before the France era, lamented on summer trips to Italy and Spain. She had been a local staff member working at the Israeli embassy in the Netherlands, surrounded for thirty years by a rotating cast of diplomats speaking Hebrew. She scheduled visits for the country’s thinkers and artists. On days when school ended early, I’d walk through a metal detector and get frisked in order to meet her for lunch. “If we flew just another hour, we could have been in Israel.”
Now she reclines on a lawn chair, slicing a peach. When had her discontent morphed into this ease? Where was the mother from my memory? “Mmmm,” the sound escapes from her chewing lips. She holds a napkin that catches the juice. “I could eat these every day.”
My mother gave birth to me thirty-four years ago. She was forty then, six years older than I am. I became a human inside her body. There is a process for her readying. She had months to know how to mother me. But how do you learn to be a daughter? My parents had two children first, a son, a daughter, then me. My mother has called me every week since I left, often more than that. She has visited me once a year, nine times altogether.
She cradled my head in her lap, softly stroking my hair on schooldays when I felt “off” and I didn’t realize that “off” meant “puberty”.
“How can I feel lonely when I have friends?”
An explanation, from my mother: “You’re Jewish, you’ll always feel like an outsider.”
Two decades later, a lesson from a Buddhist podcast I listen to in the Bay Area: “Feeling separate is an existential trance in which we have forgotten the wholeness of our being.”
Before she met her Dutch husband, my mother grew up in the Midwest. When we visit my grandparents, we buy Oreo cookies and Tootsie rolls. From our family trip to Tel Aviv, we gain a pint of hummus and a watermelon that fills the carry-on. We were in Greece once, as yoghurt traffickers this time, learning upon our return that you can find the same brand at a local store. Someday, perhaps, we will see our individual hungers syncing up. I’m still learning that they don’t have to.
August marks a fragrant time for the area. The house is nestled in between patches of lavender that sprout up between country roads. One morning, I drive alone, headed south from our temporary address in no particular direction but to look for solid ground before reintegrating into collective space. The road winds into a landscape of medieval villages perched on hilltops and surrounded by greenery. I drive for several miles until a small sign urges me to stop, alluding to the location of a restaurant: La Presqu’il. In French, it means “peninsula” but also translates to “the almost island”. How had I never thought of that? Seemingly free, always tethered to her. My mother is the first place I call home. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/how-to-be-a-daughter-36a35e56875d | ['Babette Dunkelgrün'] | 2020-04-07 06:28:31.790000+00:00 | ['Nonfiction', 'Daughters', 'Essay', 'Mothers', 'Family'] |
Outdated Cannabis Laws are still Impacting Lives | Photo by Marco Jimenez on Unsplash
I was always entrepreneurially minded growing up
I worked random odd jobs from the early age of seven (yes, I volunteered to be a paperboy), and just never stopped. There was always some new endeavor to attempt, from selling CD’s and movies to kids my age to going door to door and shoveling snow in the winter.
As I grew up my interests changed, but my money making mindset never really left me. I just couldn’t quite shake the entrepreneurial bug! As shallow as it sounds, that mindset has always been the one constant in my life, it’s a big reason I’ve started blogging as much as I have.
By the time I’m a teenager though, I start to experiment with what I thought was the cool “teenager” things to be doing. I drink a little bit, I start sneaking out, and then I smoked weed for the first time.
This is where I start to get myself into trouble, rather than using my talents for a noble cause I got caught in the shallow pursuit of notoriety. I lost focus on school and sports, and decided high school would be a better time if I focused on partying.
How lame does that sound even reading as a sentence?
However, like I mentioned previously, I may have changed for the worse, but my business mindset never did. I was always that weird kid who’d read about investing and politics, while my peers were more interested in sports and other traditional interests.
S ide note! Being the “weird guy” who happens to read about investing and finance has massively paid off. Embrace your intellectual tendencies.
My first time smoking weed I asked my older friends how much they paid for the bag, calculated the margins, and it dawned on me that I could make some good money selling marijuana on the side.
Not once did I think it’d become a big deal to me!
But my high school experience quickly morphed into some sad cycle of making money to spend on marijuana. It was a lot of working, serving tables, and pursuing various hobbies while selling weed on the side. I never considered my life to be anything less than ordinary!
Fast forward to college.
My peers start handling more significant amounts of money as they start to work regularly. Those college bills will do that to you.
Photo by Charles DeLoye on Unsplash
Twenty something year olds in my college figured out they can make money by selling weed to their friends, and they looked to me as their source, I guess I was just the first person they considered approaching.
One thing leads to another, the snowball effect takes hold, and I’m handling larger and larger quantities of the product.
Eventually I have probably, ten to twenty pounds of weed on me at a time. In hindsight, the entire ordeal got rather out of hand.
Word got around in my town (a small city of 200k or so people) that I was “distributing large quantities of drugs” and the police secured a search warrant on my residence.
In early 2018, I was walking to my car outside my apartment, leaving for the gym, and was detained by undercover state police. They pulled their weapons, identified themselves as the drug task force, and before I fully understood what was going on they slammed me on the hood of my car.
In that moment I realized my life was set to change.
Instead of graduating college, I was now destined to serve some time in prison.
I ended up having to drop out and serve time in the state penitentiary, despite having a previously clean record.
Mandatory minimums were introduced during the drug war to deter drug dealers from selling narcotics on the street. After the laws were introduced judges had no option other than to send people to prison for any kind of distribution crime.
On the surface, that anti-drug, hard on crime stance sounds awesome.
Suddenly the laws sound a lot less great when you realize marijuana is still classified with heroin and methamphetamine in some states.
The judge handling my case clearly felt sorry for me, and even reduced the sentence I had previously accepted. There was simply no way for me to get any leniency, the system makes no exceptions with black and white mandatory minimum sentences. | https://aninjusticemag.com/outdated-marijuana-laws-are-still-impacting-lives-e6da46388616 | ['Luke Wiese'] | 2020-02-19 12:52:22.123000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Current Events', 'Marijuana', 'Self', 'Prison Reform'] |
Growing Your Own Food Is A Revolutionary Act | Growing Your Own Food Is A Revolutionary Act
My Iceberg Lettuce in all its beauty.
A few weeks ago I was attempting to prepare some special dish for lunch, and the recipe included spring onions. I had never heard of them, never tried them, and didn’t even know what they tasted like. But oh well, the recipe needed them, so on April 17th I decided to get my very own spring onions.
While cooking my meal, I noticed that every spring onion had a lot of roots. Wait. What if I planted them? What if I started a tiny garden on my windowsill? After all having my own garden had always been a dream of mine.
And so it began.
I promptly chopped off the white base of each spring onion (the one with the roots), planted it into a small vase, and just let it do its thing. To my surprise, after only a few hours, the plants were already growing. I was honestly shocked. By the end of the day they were almost 1cm longer. No joke.
A few online searches helped me figured out that it’s totally normal, and — most importantly — that it doesn’t work exclusively for spring onions, but you can actually regrow the great majority of vegetables from scraps!
My small garden
I am by no means an expert. I’m pretty good at taking care of succulents and bonsai trees, but I had never planted veggies before, so this is all still new to me and I have a lot to learn.
At this very moment I’m growing:
3 spring onions.
2 salads.
A carrot.
A tomato plant.
A leek.
They’re all growing on my 1.5m x 15cm windowsill, and only require a little bit of water every few days. Pretty mind-blowing.
Only take what you need
One of the first lessons that growing your own food teaches you is that you absolutely don’t have to take more than what you need.
As long as you keep them alive with some water (and, of course, sunlight), your plants will keep growing and thriving. They will be available for you pretty much 24/7, so there is just no need to cut off more than what you will actually use in your meals. If you do, you will only risk throwing away nourishing food that could have been used another day, and the plant will take a longer time to recover.
At first, it might not be easy. In fact, our current economic system teaches us the opposite: that we need to get, earn, take, exploit as much as possible. As quickly as possible. We want it all, and we want it now… Just look at the consequences this behaviour is having on our planet.
But there is a way out.
Connection with nature
Another benefit of having a mini-garden is the fact that it strengthens our connection with nature and its cycles.
After waking up, one of the first things I like to do is to check up on my plants. Watching them grow, little by little, is tremendously thrilling, and makes me think of how much we take for granted.
Nowadays most of us buy our food from supermarkets. We pick up the best-looking (prepackaged) fruits and veggies, go home, store them in the refrigerator, and then forget about them until we either 1. end up eating them or 2. wait too long to the point they have to be thrown away. Point is, even though we come into contact with our food at least 3 times a day, we are totally disconnected from it.
Who grew our food? Where did they grow it? Who picked it up? How did it reach the shop we found it in?
Now, let’s dig a little bit deeper.
How many times have you actually thought about where the food you eat comes from? How many times have you thought of the connection between us and plants, between plants and insects, between the soil those plants grew in and the microorganisms living in it? I never gave it too much thought before starting this project.
Growing your food as a revolutionary act
The society we live in is highly obsessed with concepts such as productivity and efficiency. Many of us easily know how to turn on a PC, how to use programs like Microsoft Word, how to invest money. And yet, virtually none of us have the basic skills to sustain ourselves by growing and/or gathering food from nature.
Is this what we call “progress”? What’s the point in sending rockets to Mars if we can’t even keep ourselves alive down here?
Reconnecting with our roots and learning how to live in harmony with nature once again, then, becomes a moral duty.
Resources to start your own garden | https://medium.com/@chloroplastic/growing-your-own-food-is-a-revolutionary-act-2d0f7411042c | [] | 2020-07-04 12:59:50.425000+00:00 | ['Gardening', 'Plants', 'Garden', 'Zero Waste', 'Food'] |
Does Prison Rehabilitate? | “Noone truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.” Nelson Mandela
When we were children, our parents and teachers talked to us about that place where ‘bad people’ spend part of their lives — their whole lives even.
Those people have broken the law by doing something illegal. So they’re kept in prison, which will hopefully make them regret their previous actions and prepare them to go back to society.
This sounds good, right? A place where people who have broken the law will get all kinds of support to find the root cause of their problems. A place which will try to understand what’s really wrong behind their behavior; which cares about them and will support them even after their release. Incarceration as a way to reform.
If only it worked like that.
Prison is indeed considered to be a correctional facility but some questions torment my mind.
Can prison really rehabilitate offenders?
After years of imprisonment, do they go back to society ready to reintegrate?
In a few words, is it doing any good?
Pros and Cons of Imprisonment
Reading this article, you might be confused. Is prison the right place for offenders or not?
“Bad people are meant to go to prison; how else are they going to learn their lesson?” someone might wonder.
Well, there is not just one answer. Let’s talk about it.
Imprisonment shows the offender that breaking the law has serious consequences. It’s pretty straightforward. If we break the law, we’re going to be punished.
Just take a minute and think: “What would happen if people broke the law and got away with it?” I bet you know the answer to that.
To the rest of us, the possibility of imprisonment acts as a deterrent. When society punishes unlawful behavior, it makes clear what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t. Without punishment, many more of us would break the law. If we don’t want to go to prison, we should stay away from any kind of crime. The fear of imprisonment works like crime prevention.
Imprisonment satisfies society’s and the victim’s desire for retribution. Do you remember that Black Mirror episode (called ‘White Bear’), where people had taken the law in their hands and punished a criminal over and over again? Probably not, if you haven’t watched it.
Without state punishment, what would happen is precisely what you can witness in the episode: we would take the law in our hands and things would run wild. (If you haven’t seen that episode, you should. It’s intense, to say the least.)
However, in many cases, prison works negatively or even not at all.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the U.S. 68% of prisoners were arrested within three years after their release, 79% within six years, and 83% within nine years. This shows in numbers that prison didn’t play its part as a rehabilitation facility for those offenders.
If we now take into consideration that the prisoner might leave a family behind, we will find out that things are not so simple. When children are involved and the parent is away in prison, they grow up without him, which is a considerable trauma to them. In many cases, children learn that it’s okay to go to prison because their parents went and this can have a significant effect on future generations. | https://medium.com/@saratsompanidi/does-prison-rehabilitate-545c94e4d5c2 | ['Sara Tsompanidi'] | 2020-01-24 18:04:04.801000+00:00 | ['Prison Reform', 'Reintegration', 'Rehabilitation'] |
Tripp Lite AVR900U UPS review: This uninterruptible power supply has the wrong set of features | Tripp Lite AVR900U UPS review: This uninterruptible power supply has the wrong set of features Laurie Dec 17, 2020·4 min read
The 12-outlet Tripp Lite AVR900U is the wrong intersection of perfectly fine separate features in an otherwise well-made model. Its reasonable battery size could support a tricked-out computer system with multiple displays and peripherals for a few to several minutes during a power outage. The line-interactive approach incorporated in its design provides fast power switch over (as quick as a few milliseconds) along with constant power conditioning to correct for minor fluctuations without wearing out the internal battery.
Mentioned in this article CyberPower PFC Sinewave CP1000PFCLCD (1000VA, 600W, 10 outlets) Read TechHive's reviewSee it On the other hand, the AVR900U relies on simulated power switching instead of a “pure” sine wave. That means it’s not the right choice for computers with active power factor correction (PFC). A simulated, or stepped, sine wave fed into an active PFC power supply can cause a high-pitched whine and prematurely wear its components or even cause it to fail.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best uninterruptible power supplies, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.Active PFC power supplies are more efficient than previous designs, and also allow voltage adaptative for worldwide sales. But they’re finicky about the smoothness of the alternating current fed into them, and it’s not worth the price of repairing your computer rather than buying a better-suited UPS with a pure sinewave output that’s as smooth as utility power.
For about $40 more, you can purchase instead the CyberPower CP850PFCLCD, a line-interactive UPS that also has a pure sinewave output and similar power capacity. (We reviewed the slightly higher-capacity CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD, which is in same series of UPS models.)
Tripp Lite The Tripp Lite AVR900U has a generous number of outlets: Six that provide both battery backup and surge protection, and six that provide surge protection only.
The AVR900U might be right to power home-networking gear in the event of power outages, as its battery could support about a combined 20W of equipment power draw for up to two hours and 100W for up to 30 minutes. (Check your broadband modem, Wi-Fi gateway, and other solid-state communications gear power specs to figure total power required.) Its generous 12 outlets are split into one set of six backed by surge protection only and another six that are additionally shored up by line conditioning and the battery. Two outlets on either side are 1.75 inches apart from four grouped tightly in the center, the better to add DC-adapter “wall warts.”
[ Further reading: The best surge protectors for your costly electronics ]But for the AVR900U’s price, the line-interactive power conditioning that comes at a premium isn’t worth it. Instead, consider a UPS with a standby design, which is perfectly fine for networking gear that doesn’t have spinning drives or picky power supplies. A standby UPS might tap its battery more frequently if local power is routinely erratic, dipping below or above standard voltage. If you have those issues in your area and want to use a UPS to solve them while backing up network hardware, the price premium is worthwhile.
I don’t recommend the AVR900U in any use case, not because of any flaw in the product itself, but because it doesn’t scratch the right itch. Other products from Tripp Lite and other UPS makers have a better mix of features that intersect usefully. For instance, we like the Tripp Lite SmartPro SMC1000T, a 600W unit ideal for computer-system power conditioning and support.
The AVR900U has a variety of other minor flaws. It lacks a fairly standard multi-purpose electrical fault detector for grounds, shorts, and other issues that indicate an electrical wiring problem that should have you on the phone to an electrician immediately. It’s a good feature for installing a new UPS or noticing if there’s a problem over time.
It lacks programmable features via buttons. You must use downloadable software when connected to a computer by USB with an included cable. The software is mentioned in the manual, and you have to hunt the site to find it—only to discover the control software only works under Windows and requires Java. You can, however, use automatic restart, scheduled, and other built-in UPS features found in Windows and macOS without installing the software.
Tripp Lite The Tripp Lite AVR900U produces a simulated, or stepped, sine wave, which isn’t a good choice of backup power for sensitive electronics.
Tripp Lite doesn’t include warranty information in the box, but the packaging says a $100,000 and 3-year warranty is included. The manual has a link to product registration and generic warranty details; you apparently don’t get the specifics of the warranty for your unit until you register.
Only the original purchaser is covered, and claims must be filed with 30 days of an incident. Tripp Lite’s insurance notes that it could offer to repair up to $100,000 of damaged equipment, but it might replace it on a “pro rata” basis, which I interpret to mean its depreciated current value, instead of its actual replacement cost.
Bottom lineTripp Lite turned the dials on its product matrix incorrectly to come up with the AVR900U, but don’t let that discourage you from examining the company’s other products. The care of manufacture and quality of design aren’t at issue, only its suitability to purpose and cost per watt for potential appropriate uses.
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/@laurie43175427/tripp-lite-avr900u-ups-review-this-uninterruptible-power-supply-has-the-wrong-set-of-features-abc7999cb0a1 | [] | 2020-12-17 03:42:08.928000+00:00 | ['Cutting', 'Music', 'Services', 'Lighting'] |
File Optimization | Files are constantly transferring hands. Whether a designer is sending something off to a stakeholder or a developer to implement into a final product, you need to be able to transfer it more efficiently than handing over a physical hard drive.
I took a class dedicated on getting me to understand the differences between file types, their compression, and efficiently reducing file size without compromising quality.
By learning about file types, their history and creation, I was able to understand each type’s use case. This image explains the differences between some common audio filetypes.
To test the information I learned looking into these files, I put these filetypes into an audio editor and tested them out on multiple devices (my phone and laptop), and on different headphones (ear buds, over the ear, and on the ear).
Here you can see each file and type, I talked about the differences in each one and what I noticed between all the files I heard.
In this documentation, I also talked about video and image filetypes and their differences, such as vector vs raster, aliasing, and bit depth.
Raster versus Vector images
Aliasing and the effects of antialiasing
Color bit depth, and noticeable effects of different depths
This project was tedious but important. If I took nothing else from this project other than reducing file size and noticing some different use cases for each type, I consider it a success. I had a great time listening to my music in different ways and seeing what I got out of each song on different lessons. Overall I think this project really helped me grow my technical understanding of my profession. | https://medium.com/trevors-portfolio-review/file-optimization-c35958aa5e71 | ['Crab T'] | 2020-12-23 20:54:55.024000+00:00 | ['Portfolio', 'Uvu', 'File Sharing'] |
What I Wish I Knew in High School | Now that my time in high school is coming to an end, I find myself looking back at the beginning of my high school career. I’ve learned so much these past four years and now that i’m a senior I feel that I at least have a little knowledge about high school.
First things first, I was NEVER popular in school. Like ever. I was very shy and reserved for most of high school and that’s okay! You don’t need a billion friends. Sure it’s good to be well acquainted with the people in your classes, you won’t be buddy-buddy with everyone. Try to at least know one person or talk to one person in your classes. This can be helpful for partner projects and questions you have on homework or anything. If you don’t know anyone in your class that’s okay, meet someone! I know it sounds scary but I promise they won’t eat you (and if they try to i’m pretty sure that’s illegal). High school isn’t forever, these people you see everyday now probably wont remember you in 10 years.
A good thing about talking to your classmates is that you might make a few friends. Friends are great. They are someone you can go to if you’re feeling down and they can always make you laugh. In my freshman and sophomore years I didn’t have the greatest friends. There was a group of 6 of us going into high school. We would hang out, text, face time, everything. Pretty soon I realized the horrible and toxic ways of some of the other girls in the group. We always had terrible fights and I even got accused of things I didn’t do trying to steal someones boyfriend or of things I never said. Things got pretty bad so two other girls and I decided they weren’t worth it and left the other three.
To this day that was one of the best and hardest decisions of my life. The lesson I learned will stick with me forever: make friends who bring you up instead of putting you down. Your high school friends most likely won’t stick with you forever. You will loose and gain people but in the end you’ll be able to sift out the good ones from the bad ones.
I could go on and on about friends and friendships but that would take forever to read. Let me know if there are any topics you’d like me to talk about or any questions. I’d love to make this into a series. :) | https://medium.com/@anthealind/what-i-wish-i-knew-in-high-school-38d596cb4278 | [] | 2020-12-24 01:50:36.706000+00:00 | ['What I Wish Id Known', 'Advice', 'High School Life', 'High School', 'Teens'] |
How SIH improves students knowledge | A country with 1.3 billion population and in that more than 50 per cent of the population were young minds, such a county is called INDIA. Even though we have 600 million young people, our country is not good at innovation. When compared to countries Japan and South Korea these are smaller than our country but their pattern of innovation per year is in lakhs whereas in India it was only thousands. To make equality in technology our honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi has introduced an innovative idea called “Smart India Hackathon”. After starting this initial idea in 2017, a revolution is begun in Indian technology. This hackathon has become the world’s biggest hackathon in 2019. In the year 2019, only many private organizations and NGO's have shared their problems for finding a solution to it. As the hackathon changes many one’s life it also changed my life. In the year 2020 SIH decide to change its way of participating in “SIH2020” that is planned to conduct an internal hackathon in every institution and the best of the internal hackathon’s is to participate. This idea is a fantastic one that abolishes the fake only a quality person as allow to participate. This idea also makes newcomers participate in internal hackathons, so that the student community may be getting stronger. Let take an example of our college internal hackathon, where many have participated in that event and some of them were selected. I too participated in that event. For participating in that event I first saw what are the problems are listed in the SIH portal, so I regularly visited the page before this internal hackathon held. After seeing the problems I prepared a mini list in what field that I good, who are my teammates, what type of problems should I take, which will be easier or though one. When I make this list I feel that my planning skills regarding make projects are increased and also doing projects in SIH is equal to learning a lot. The SIH makes the student community always engage with technology. They provide many standard technologies related videos on their YouTube channel. So I subscribe to their channel, from them only I learned python even though I have python in semester 1. My teachers taught as book-oriented were as SIH teach me differently. From SIH my programming skills also increased a lot. They also make many useful webinars to the student community. In that one, I watched a webinar called Building IoT Apps for Cisco Access Points. It was presented by Rafael Vicente, product manager by Cisco. It was useful to me for designing an IoT app and I have an idea to build an app for a problem in SIH2020. I also organize a team by full filling all criteria by SIH. We also got selected by our college internal hackathon so, with more curiosity, we upload our idea in the SIH portal and waited for shortlisting. We started a little bit work on in that time itself but a person can’t succeed in all-time at any time he may be loose, thus way my team is also didn’t shortlisted in SIH2020. It made me sad when I realized that life is like a mountain it has both slopes and height so I keep on trying on the upcoming hackathon. Many things I learned in the period of submitting my idea in the SIH portal. Some of them are leadership quality, Presentation techniques, Product building techniques, and many more. The leadership talent is increased by forming and running of a successful team and successfully guide my teammates. In sih2020 they made presentation slide only with 3 slides it is hugely difficult for students for making a ppt with all details include of it and also by shortlisting through internal hackathons the students get loose their fear on presenting their ideas to juries and they build confidence for presenting in the final round.
SIH indirectly guides the students to fulfil market needily. It is helpful for the company too. Before SIH companies require students based on their marks in the semester and other criteria. An interesting incident has happened company’s like Wipro TCS CTS select who does not have current arrears but for the first time in our college, a person is selected with more than 5 arrears. This is because of SIH the guy who participated and won SIH in some ministry. The company noticed him that he have the skill and got selected him that’s the power of SIH. It telecasting the talent of the young minds to the world. It just an example in our college the same way it may occur in different colleges. Every year student participation in SIH is increased, the following graph tells how students’ community is engaged in participating in the world’s biggest hackathon.
The SIH is not the only event it is a life-changing point to many youngsters in our nation. The thought of making innovation makes a country become a developed nation. APJ Abdul Kalam on the vision of 2020 maybe succeeds with Smart India Hackathon. | https://medium.com/@varshathgupta/how-sih-improves-students-knowledge-6fc499d9c0f1 | ['Varshath Gupta S'] | 2020-12-15 17:52:30.014000+00:00 | ['Hackathons', 'Sih', 'Digital India'] |
Cómo ser más resiliente cuando las cosas se ponen difíciles | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/espanol/c%C3%B3mo-ser-m%C3%A1s-resiliente-cuando-las-cosas-se-ponen-dif%C3%ADciles-22f4fd46bea9 | ['Evelyn Wittig'] | 2016-11-22 14:08:51.400000+00:00 | ['Liderazgo', 'Negocios', 'Traducciones', 'Emprendimiento', 'Español'] |
James Souza- Morning Star Promotions’ Top Professional of 2021 | Morning Star Promotions is pleased to name Mr. James Souza a top professional of 2022. As a prominent attorney, Mr. Souza has devoted over twenty years to his field. His academic journey began at the San Diego State University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Accounting in 1992. Subsequently, he matriculated at the California Western School of Law and graduated in 1995. In 2007, Mr. Souza became the co-founder and shareholder of Kennedy & Souza APC. He continues to focus on construction law, personal injury, product liability, business litigation, and arbitration. Throughout his successful career, Mr. Souza has maintained affiliations with many organizations such as the San Diego Defense Lawyers Association, the California Professional Association of Specialty Contractors, the California Bar Association, and the Worldwide Registry. Mr. Souza was also a finalist for the best construction litigation attorney by the San Diego Daily Transcript. Due to his exemplary contributions to litigation, Morning Star Promotions is honored to announce Mr. James Souza as a top professional of 2022.
Contact Morning Star Promotions’ today to see if you qualify as a Top Professional of 2021.
(631)676–7754 (P)
[email protected] | https://medium.com/@Morningstarpromotions/james-souza-morning-star-promotions-top-professional-of-2021-eba05bd97370 | ['Morning Star Promotions'] | 2021-12-30 21:56:35.622000+00:00 | ['Accounting', 'Litigation', 'Attorney', 'Promotion', 'Professional'] |
Check if a variable is a JavaScript object | Check if a variable is a JavaScript object
And nothing else (not an Array, Set, etc.)
I’m currently working on a project where we store certain values as either a string or an object. Depending on the type of the value, we will handle it in a different way. Even though here we expect to only work with a string or an object, I want to write a robust and general function that will determine explicitly if a value is a plain JavaScript object. I want to handle edge cases where other data structures based on JavaScript objects (such as arrays, sets, null, etc) will return false since they are not just a plain object.
After some digging, I found multiple possible answers and did some TDD to pick the right one because I wanted to be sure all the cases I could think of were covered. I will write and test an isObject function.
Project setup
We don’t need crazy fancy stuff here. A folder with two files is enough:
isObject.js
isObject.test.js
mkdir isObject && cd isObject
touch isObject.js && touch isObject.test.js
We’ll also need a testing library (and the Babel support to write modern JS).
I’ll be using Jest as it’s easy to set up and use.
yarn init
yarn add jest -D
yarn add --dev babel-jest @babel/core @babel/preset-env
Finally a babel.config.js file.
module.exports = {
presets: [
[
'@babel/preset-env',
{
targets: {
node: 'current',
},
},
],
],
};
You can find all of this Jest setup in the Jest official documentation.
TDD Basics
Let’s write a dummy function for now
Now the test. We want our function to be able to test any value without performing any pre-checks.
We are a testing for string and object types which are the cases we will definitely encounter the most but also for others to make sure our function is working with edge cases.
Run the test suite:
jest isObject.test.js
It should fail.
Solutions
Let’s implement our isObject function now.
typeof
The first solution I thought of was to use typeof
Run the test.
jest isObject.test.js
It fails.
FAIL ./isObject.test.js
isObject
✓ String (3ms)
✓ Object (1ms)
✕ Array (6ms)
✕ Set
✕ Date (1ms)
✓ Undefined
✕ Null
The problem with typeof is that typeof [] === 'object' is actually true . Why? Because in Javascript arrays are actually objects. The same goes for Set, Date, etc.
Interesting things to notice:
typeof undefined is not object . It’s undefined .
is not . It’s . typeof null is an object though.
instanceof
and the results:
FAIL ./isObject.test.js
isObject
✓ String (3ms)
✓ Object (1ms)
✕ Array (2ms)
✕ Set
✕ Date (1ms)
✓ Undefined
✓ Null
This is a little bit better ( null and undefied are treated the same way) but still fails for some of our cases. Why ? Because instanceof checks if the specified prototype (here Object ) appears anywhere in the prototype chain.
As said above array are actually object in JavaScript so:
[] instanceof Array // true
[] instanceof Object // true
Interesting thing to notice:
null is an object type but not an instance of object
constructor
It fails. Again.
FAIL ./isObject.test.js
isObject
✓ String (3ms)
✓ Object (1ms)
✓ Array
✓ Set
✓ Date
✕ Undefined (1ms)
✕ Null
Almost there! This time it’s because undefined and null don’t have a constructor property but it works for all the other types. We could thus think of something like:
This does the job but it forces us to check for particular values which is something I wanted avoid. I didn’t want to guess the type of a variable by eliminating all the other possibilities.
After some research, I found what I needed.
Object.prototype.toString.call()
PASS ./isObject.test.js
isObject
✓ String (3ms)
✓ Object
✓ Array (1ms)
✓ Set
✓ Date
✓ Undefined
✓ Null
Exactly what I needed.
The toString() method returns a string representing the object. For example here what it returns for an array :
Object.prototype.toString.call([]) // [object Array]
This way I’m sure I’m dealing with an object and nothing else!
A note from JavaScript In Plain English
We have launched three new publications! Show some love for our new publications by following them: AI in Plain English, UX in Plain English, Python in Plain English — thank you and keep learning!
We are also always interested in helping to promote quality content. If you have an article that you would like to submit to any of our publications, send us an email at [email protected] with your Medium username and we will get you added as a writer. Also let us know which publication/s you want to be added to. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/javascript-check-if-a-variable-is-an-object-and-nothing-else-not-an-array-a-set-etc-a3987ea08fd7 | ['Olivier Picault'] | 2020-04-24 20:44:45.676000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Coding', 'JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
Top 5 email management softwares to look out for in 2021 | Top 5 email management softwares to look out for in 2021 Mailman Hq Apr 13·4 min read
The professional world, corporate or otherwise, functions in and around emails. But the continuous stream of emails can only be productive if we handle it properly. For efficient email management and more, we have chosen an assortment of 5 email management softwares.
Top 5 email management softwares to look out for 2021
Here are 5 email management softwares that will help you manage your emails. These will definitely form a strong base for your email management strategy. Read on to get your Inbox to zero!
Mailman
The Do Not Disturb mode lets you schedule time periods in which you would prefer to not receive any email notifications. In these time windows, you can concentrate better on the task at hand, while achieving better productivity. This is the best email management tool and is an essential part of efficient email management. Mailman allows you to decide delivery slots for your emails. This means that you can schedule certain time slots wherein you would like to receive your emails. These time slots could recur hourly throughout the day, as per your convenience. Mailman also stringently filters and blocks emails that contain newsletters and similar spam. It also blocks emails from senders that you haven’t interacted with before. It then provides you a digest of these blocked emails once a day. This makes sure that the email management software does not mistakenly lock any important emails. Active Inbox
Emails are but tasks assigned to us. What makes them troubling is that the important ones are lost beneath the pile of other emails. To avoid this, ActiveInbox converts your emails into tasks. These tasks are also underlined with important details like the due date to ensure that you forget nothing. For efficient email management, ActiveInbox further divides these tasks into projects. The amount of time spent writing emails is seldom useful. A primary reason for this is also the lack of a reply to one’s emails. And these expected replies could concern absolutely anything but the apprehension of being left on reading can be exhausting. Active Inbox solves this by keeping close track of your emails activity. It also ensures a reply by delivering the email at a time it will be read. This will thus form a major base of your email management strategy. BatchedInbox
Filters are the selling point in this email management software. These filters sort through the various incoming emails. The emails are thus directed to separate folders for efficient email management. These diverted emails then can be scheduled to move back into the inbox. This means that this app for email management allows you to specify time intervals during which you can see these emails from your main inbox.
You can also always disable this function of receiving your emails in batches. The batches thus allow you to check your emails productively. Hiver
A major chunk of our inboxes consists only of forwards and replies to emails that you are perhaps not a part of. One gets entangled in this mass chain of emails because one is mentioned in the CC. CCs are generally used to make sure the concerned people are ‘in the know’ but results in way too many emails. Hiver helps you achieve that purpose, minus the clutter. It allows you to write simple notes that exist parallel to emails and provide context. Hiver also strives to automate repetitive tasks by auto-assigning emails based on predefined rules, distribute workload with round-robinsignment, and focus on what’s truly important. Hiver also builds custom reports to measure metrics specific to your business. FollowUpThen
Never forget to follow up on your emails ever again. This email management softwares help you set a reminder of when you want to follow up on any sent email. All you have to do, for example, is to tag [email protected] in the ‘bcc’ field and the app will follow up exactly 3 days later.
This email management software also serves as an effective reminder for efficient time management. All you need to do is forward your pending emails to [email protected], for example. You could set that time as you see fit to be able to check your emails at ease. For the rest of the time, be productive leading your Inbox to zero. It also lets you send important notes or documents to yourself, at a time scheduled by you.
Choose from the best email management softwares
These 5 email management softwares will help you optimize and manage your emails for better productivity. The incoming collection of emails can only be handled well with the help of email management softwares and extensions. Using these will not only help you with better email management but also help you achieve better productivity.
FAQs
How do I clean out thousands of emails?
1. Filter your emails to easily delete the unimportant ones.
2. Delete old emails.
3. Unsubscribe from all subscriptions.
4. Select emails as conversations or subjects.
How do I stop email overload?
1. Delete emails mercilessly.
2. Avoid CC and BCC-ing people in your emails.
3. Set an email processing schedule.
4. Use email management tools like Mailman.
How do I start writing an email?
Start an email with a concise subject line and begin the email body with an appropriate salutation like ‘Madam/Sir’, or ‘Hello’.
How do you write an official email?
1. Begin with a greeting
2. State the purpose of the email
3. Add your closing remarks
4. End with a thank you note | https://medium.com/@mailmanhq/top-5-email-management-softwares-to-look-out-for-in-2021-3e86ef8d0f6a | ['Mailman Hq'] | 2021-09-01 12:39:15.439000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Efficiency', 'Email', 'Email Management', 'Inbox Zero'] |
A Largely Forgotten Band that is Great — Interpol | (Pintrest)
Few bands have the ability to insidiously suck you in like taking a drink of water when you didn’t even realize you were thirsty. Take a small sip and before you know it you’re on your seventh gulp and you’ve guzzled half the bottle. You listen to a bit of one song and have the sneaking suspicion there is something more to explore. You listen to a few more. Soon after, you’re Googling lyrics and looking up old interviews. Few musical acts retain this aura.
Many 90’s kids will remember the early 2000’s music scene quite well. The days when you would come home from school, grab a Capri-sun and mindlessly have TRL on in the background as you calculated the area of a triangle for math homework. Kanye’s early stuff, Lil Jon’s “Get Low”, and “Yeah” by Usher were completely unavoidable, even if pop music wasn’t your bag. Alt rock kids might have been more into Coldplay or the Killers. Take a stroll down the narrow indie music alley, and you’d find emo kids listening to The Strokes or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. However, a band lies lurking below the public’s memory of this time period in music, only truly appreciated by a lucky few. This band is Interpol. Unfortunately many failed to discover their haunting genius. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with shallow pop music, but for those who yearn for something deeper, feel free to swan dive into Interpol’s glorious abyss.
First off, the vocals and lyrics: Paul Banks’ baritone snarl will not immediately enthrall you, but behind his monotone façade, there might as well be a ransom note cut out of a bunch of different magazines. Ph.D. students could write dissertations on their interpretations of these songs. Banks’ was clearly influenced by Kurt Cobain and Black Francis writing songs that can’t be picked apart too easily. His lyrics are laced with clues stretching from obscure novels to serial killers. Some samples from his rap sheet:
“Stella Was a Diver and She was Always Down” — Could be about a prostitute, mental illness, an addict overdosing or Bank’s favorite beer, Stella Artois. There is evidence to all four, however the jury is still out.
“Leif Erikson” — In one of Banks favorite novels from college, the The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a character takes a girl down into a submarine to have sex. The name of the girl: Stella. The name of the submarine: Leif Erikson. Add lines “her rapid glow was like braille to the night”, “my sentimental side should be held with kids gloves” and “I left my urge in the icebox”. Intimacy is the obvious theme, but what this all means exactly is up for interpretation.
“Evil” — Banks was curious about serial killers and this song is inspired by the Rosemary West killings with “shards under the belly” and “grease inside my hand”. It’s written from the perspective of Fred West attempting to commutate with Rosemary’s spirit, from his jail cell (“it took a lifetime with no cellmate”), while awaiting trial and meditating on the ‘evil’ he has done before taking his own life. However, this is all an educated guess pieced together from fan forums.
(Radio X)
Now for the wall of sound behind Banks’ words: Place Daniel Kessler’s guitar melodies and Carlos Dengler’s bass lines in a dryer, put in your quarters and let them tumble and turn. The guitars and bass constantly flip-flop in prominence on most songs, creating a sort of double-helix effect, a staple of Interpol’s sound. Look up the isolated bass tracks to “Obstacle 1” or “PDA” on YouTube to hear Dengler’s genius. Then place all this on top of drumming so steady the Taj Mahal could be built upon it.
Their first album, Turn on the Bright Lights, is a collage of the dark and moody. It sounds like they hired Duran Duran to do the synthesizers, but only after they’d been bitten and turned into a vampires. The Killer’s Brandon Flowers claims he listened to the Turn on the Bright Lights on repeat while they were recording their first album and even the most casual listener can detect Interpol’s synth influence on Hot Fuss. The opener “Untitled” sets the mood like no other. “PDA” might have the most beautiful outro of any song ever. “Obstacle 1” is sharp and lingers in your subconscious. “NYC” speaks to self actualization after disappointment and contains the album’s title, “it’s up to me, now turn on the bright lights”. “Say Hello to the Angels” builds like an approaching freight train only to arrive as a magic carpet woven with intricate guitars. “The New”- throw standard verse-chorus-verse song structure down the garbage disposal.
Their second album, Antics, is more commercial, for lack of a better term. A concertgoer compared the experience of singing the opener “Next Exit” with the crowd, to being in a cult. “Slow hands” is a marauding track with a chugging bass line. Poppy rockers “Public Pervert” and “C’mere” are a delight. “Not Even Jail” provides another stunning outro. “Narc” alludes to deception in a relationship, “its just, you, me, and this wire”. After the release of Antics, in 2004, they separated themselves from The Strokes’ shadow, appeared at prominent European music festivals and toured with The Cure.
(WordPress)
Their stage presence was nothing to scoff at. They often dressed in tailored suits, were clean-shaven, wore primarily black and perfected the balance of confidence yet aloof. Dengler would often wear an empty gun hostler, which he deemed stylish. Search “Interpol Live Eurokennes” on YouTube to witness them at the height of their powers.
Dengler left the band after their fourth album and their music became more experimental, leaving only true fans to enjoy their art as their commercial success dwindled. Meet Me in the Bathroom, by Lizzy Goodman offers an epic oral history of their rise in the New York City music scene, but as time passes, Interpol’s legend remains tucked away only to be found by those willing to search through musical history or are given the odd Spotify recommendation. They are one of the last bands to hold an element of mystery in their art. Amazing how something so unique and decadent can be easily forgotten. | https://medium.com/@drewdaugherty/a-largely-forgotten-band-that-is-great-interpol-b263a13db2eb | ['Drew Daugherty'] | 2020-11-26 00:29:56.214000+00:00 | ['New York City', 'Interpol', 'Music', 'The Strokes', '2000s Music'] |
#WhatIWantedToWear: The Skin I’m In | RuPaul once said “we all come into the world naked and the rest is drag.” In thinking about what I wanted to wear, I found that what resonated most deeply wasn’t how I dressed my body up in drag, but how I felt about my body itself. As a survivor of body terrorism, I often think about whose bodies are devalued, criminalized and ultimately destroyed.
While I have learned to celebrate my body, the journey to radical self love wasn’t easy. In fact for the majority of my life I internalized the shame of being too fat, too black and too intersex for mainstream America. Everyday in ways big and small I was told that my body didn’t belong in their bathrooms, on their airplanes and especially not on their runways. However since relocating to NYC earlier this summer I’ve become one of the first plus size trans models of color.
I believe that when we show up whole and authentically we allow others to do the same. That’s why I’ve decided to unapologetically display my dark skin, my stretch marks and all my lovely lady lumps. This nude self portrait has become one of my favorite pictures because it signifies the moment when I learned to love my body in all of it’s melanated glory. So if anyone else asks me WIWTW, my answer will definitively be #TheSkinImIn. | https://medium.com/gender-2-0/whatiwantedtowear-the-skin-i-m-in-f113d44eb818 | [] | 2015-09-17 14:31:47.530000+00:00 | ['WhatIWantedToWear', 'Body Image', 'Transgender'] |
ONO AMA Telegram w/ Ke Xu: DAY 1 RECAP | Every day AMA in ONO English Telegram
Every day in the ONO English Telegram there’s an AMA with CEO and founder Ke Xu of ONO at 2 PM GMT.
This is the recap from the first day of questions, and Steemit user, @vasil-danev was kind enough to allow us to use the post he wrote, so check out his original article: https://steemit.com/onosocial/@vasil-danev/daily-ama-with-ke-xu-or-ono-or-day-1-recap
Join the Telegram group: https://t.me/ONOUS
Please submit your question to the host in the ONO English Telegram channel instead of putting it directly into the chat.
DAY ONE:
It’s been a few weeks, what’s going on with registration for the English Ono?
Ke’Xu @ONO: We will launch our English version on the 15th of July, so its like 10 days later… This will be the first test version of the App so the people can test it. This version will be available only with invitation codes.
2. Will ONO be like Steemit, in that the people with the most SteemPower have more clout? clout = power/influence
Ke’Xu @ONO: ONO has its own reputation mechanism. After a period of testing. We decide to make the reputation mechanism to OP+KYC+ your activity. The influence of user activity is the biggest.
3.When will ONO be ready for a first test, and what are the advantages of becoming a Super Partner — like to these people get certain advantages later when the platform is available?
Ke’Xu @ONO: According to the ONO whitepaper you will know that the Super Partner is a one of the special ONO TIC, its a very special one so it has a right to execute the bad content and have the right to make the ecosystem go to the right way. A Super partner can build a social network by executing the content and get 2% of the daily ONOTs. And in the future all the content of the referendum will be decided by the super partner round table, whether you can be put down into the referendum list, so it will have the power and the reward and also the contribution for the ecosystem.
4. What is the mainnet launch date?
How does the token swap work from erc-20 to real tokens?
Ke’Xu @ONO: For the forth question, we will launch our test net on the end of July and we are going to announce that on the ONO conference. The mainnet launch will be next year, so we will have more than 8 months to develop it and to make the mechanism run better. It will be very similar to swap from ERC-20 to real tokens. You can exchange the ERC-20 tokens in the exchange after we launch our token in the exchanges and later we are going to migrate it and move your ERC-20 token to the real mainnet one so it will be similar as EOS did.
5. Why not have the the token on eos from the start?
Ke’Xu @ONO: Because of the exchange problems. Lots of exchange haven’t support the EOS one yet. For the people can better trade.
6. Can we have an update about maintenance and governance of the sidechain?
Ke’Xu @ONO: Yes. We are still working on the whitepaper of ONO mainnet. I’m sure it will follow ONO’s core philosophy. We will publish the ONO mainnet whitepaper ASAP.
7. There seems to be some confusion, about the mainnet launch, interesting I thought the mainnet would launch with the app?
Ke’Xu @ONO: I’d like to give a formal answer to Julia’s question. I need to explain why and how ONO mainnet work. Let me Quote John Milburn’s coversation from Telegram group first.
‘EOS BlockPros”:
jem, [05.07.18 17:30]
[In reply to Tracer]
They have been running a dapp with more than 200,000 users, built on an earlier pre-launch version of EOSIO, for a couple of months. The onboarding cost of the Mainnet now makes it entirely non-viable for their app.
jem, [05.07.18 17:35]
[In reply to Mr. Hobbes]
This is a massive distortion of reality.
EOS is intended as a platform upon which to build dapps. Ono has been engaged and using the platform earlier than most others. The Mainnet has some constraints which make it untenable now for the ONO dapp. Onboarding costs are absurdly high. There is no paralley chain capability, as EOS IBC is not implemented.
Ono now has more than 200,000 users. To onboard them to the EOS Mainnet, at $20/account, would cost $4M minimum. The dapp smart contract cost would at least double this. It makes absolute sense for ONO to build their own separate net on which to run.
In fact, the huge data
That’s why, we need to launch ONO mainnet to package our users’ activity into hash, and launch them on chain. So that’s why we can’t put all the users data on any of the blockchain now. We have to make ONO blockchain to satisfy Huge ONO users activity.
8. Will the people using ONO International be rewarded in ERC20 tokens?
Ke’Xu @ONO: Yes. They will. ONOT is now an ERC-20 token. And for anyone from all around the world will be rewarded by it. For the equality, since Chinese users tested ONO for months and they gained 0.2billion ONOTs already (locked in their ONO account), we will increase the rewards of global users(except Chinese users) in the next few months till they get token as much as Chinese users.
9. Will you explain how you will rectify the imbalance of token for users who are only now gaining access?
Ke’Xu @ONO: As I said, I will let global users get as much as Chinese users already got. (0.2billion+)
10. Are all the user who signup the invite url will be given an invitation code?
Ke’Xu @ONO: Yes. We will send invite code to everyone who sign up before we launch ONO on 15–17th
11. Many friends are asking me when they will receive the invitation code (answered already) and how to verify an account. Will they need a document like passport or facial recognition?
Ke’Xu @ONO: When they verify, they can use their email. They dont have to do KYC( passport). But we have the function to do KYC. If you did KYC your contents will have higher reputation and you can unlock the function of long articles.
12. Are user required to post original content or is sharing others content allowed?
Ke’Xu @ONO: Yes sure! Sharing is allowed! It’s like Facebook. And if the comment is good, people who write comments will be rewarded also.( you can like and comment a comment) Sharing=reposts. You can’t copy paste.And sharing will increase the rewards of original content writer. For example , Trump repost your ONO . He brought thousands followers for this ONO, you will be rewarded by the reads, likes, and comments. He will get reward from only the reads likes and comments on his page
13. Which exchanges Ono will be listed on first?
Ke’Xu @ONO: We are considering Binance, huobi, bittrex, upbit.. it’s not decided yet. Still processing.
14. Any plan to support other languages like French, Arabic …?
Ke’Xu @ONO: Yes. We are planning to do next.
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Become an early adopter in the ONO social network by signing up to receive your invitation code for the international version: https://www.joinono.com/en/invite/
Join ONO: | https://medium.com/ono-social-network/ono-ama-telegram-w-ke-xu-day-1-recap-2a70f99b1475 | [] | 2018-07-16 17:41:24.723000+00:00 | ['FAQ', 'Blockchain', 'Social Media', 'Decentralization', 'Dapps'] |
Marketing in 2017: Axe Looks to Instagram Influencers to Target Young Men | For more information about Julius or our blog, please contact Russell Wilde Jr.
By: Anton Capria
Axe wants to show young men that their hairstyling product can be beneficial to their style and overall look. In order to showcase their brand, Axe is working with thirty social media influencers for a huge Instagram push. In each post, the influencers express how their hair gives them confidence and how simple it can be to style by using Axe’s product.
Each influencer posted a humorous video that provided their audience with an authentic entertainment experience. Rudy Mancuso (or his character Alejandro Gomez) is just one of the influencers who participated in this campaign. His humor and stylish hair along with his 4.2 million followers makes him an attractive candidate for Axe’s campaign. Rudy posted a video for Axe where he explains how simple it can be to style his hair with their product. He makes it humorous and entertaining for his audience, almost to the point that it does not even seem like it is an ad.
Rudy Mancuso’s influener collaboration with Axe
Anthony Padilla was another influencer who participated in this campaign. Like Rudy, his humor shined through in his video where he explains how the product helped him to embrace his curls. The video received over 220K views on Instagram, giving Axe great exposure to his followers.
Anthony Padilla influencer collaboration with Axe
Although it can be difficult sometimes to reach a male consumer base for fashion and/or hairstyle products, Axe found a successful way to do so. By using male influencers, the company was able to place their product into the influencer’s content, creating an authentic and relatable experience for male viewers. Some men may find the hairstyling process to be long and unnecessary, but Axe uses these influencers to show how it is a very simple process and can make a difference in their overall style. This Axe campaign seems to have found much success through their viewership numbers, which should encourage brands with a similar problem to find their solution through influencers.
Check out some more of our favorite posts of the campaign below!
Dan Nampaikid trying a bunch of new styles:
Dan Nampaikid’s influencer post for Axe
David Lopez forgetting his pants:
Axe influencer collaboration with David Lopez
Vincent Marcus answers the question all his followers are asking: | https://medium.com/juliusworks/marketing-in-2017-axe-looks-to-instagram-influencers-to-target-young-men-8d17ac82046 | [] | 2017-04-19 14:52:19.958000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Influencer Marketing', 'Advertising', 'Influencer Campaigns', 'Instagram'] |
Best Gallery Or Museum In West Virginia: Parkersburg Art Center / 2020 American Art Awards | The five gallery areas can be used singly or in tandem, offering a 12-month schedule of national and international traveling exhibits, as well as regional solo, group and student exhibitions. The Art Center is the host gallery for annual and biennial juried exhibitions by state arts organizations including the West Virginia Watercolor Society (WVWS) and West Virginia Allied Artists. The West Virginia Art Educators Association (WVAEA) holds its annual convocation and best-of-the-state K-12 exhibition at the Art Center. “The River,” a juried show for professional artists in Ohio and West Virginia, has its home base in Parkersburg at the Art Center.
Eight dedicated classrooms include two state-of-the-art clay zones as well as “Melissa’s Garden,” an innovative outdoor Learn/Play space for children. Classes and workshops run year-round for all ages, beginning with toddlers. PAC’s pre-school program, “ArtStart,” is nationally recognized for excellence, and offers a developmentally-appropriate, arts-based curriculum with the goal of enhancing the students’ creative, social, and intellectual development. Summer “Camp Creativity” brings ten weeks of age-appropriate art training and fun for young people aged from 4 to teen. Educational programs for home-schooled students and individuals with physical and/or developmental disabilities are available.
The Art Center is very much a part of the Mid-Ohio Valley community, and is in constant use as a select venue for wedding receptions, corporate annual meetings and social gatherings of all sizes. PAC is one of the originating partners of ArtOberfest, an annual street fair with live music, sales booths for artists, chalk artists and locally produced food and craft beers. They also play host to the annual “Black Saturday Artists’ Market”, free community “Arty Parties” during the winter months and a wonderful masquerade party in October.
The Parkersburg Art Center (PAC) is a nonprofit, non-government entity, and is supported with financial assistance from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, the National Endowment for the Arts (with approval from the WV Commission on the Arts) and also by the Wood County WV Commission, memberships, sponsorships, business and private contributions.
The Parkersburg Art Center is located at 725 Market Street in downtown Parkersburg at the corner of Market and Eighth Streets.
Hours are 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Cost is $2 for non-members but always free for Art Center members and children 12 and under. Wednesdays are free days.
Find out more about the Art Center on Facebook or their website www.parkersburgartcenter.org.
AWARD VIDEO OF PAC HERE:
www.AmericanArtAwards.com annually awards 25 museums and galleries in spring, and with their critique in autumn, awards 300 artists (painters, photographers, sculptors and digital artists).
SEE ALL 25 BEST GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS HERE: https://www.americanartawards.com/the-25-best-galleries-museums-2020/ | https://medium.com/@thombierd/best-gallery-or-museum-in-west-virginia-parkersburg-art-center-2020-american-art-awards-73ceaa82eeb5 | ['Thom Bierdz'] | 2020-06-15 21:21:47.117000+00:00 | ['Artist', 'Awards', 'Best', 'Museums', 'Art'] |
7 of The Best Tools for Blockchain Development | In this article, we will discuss the top 7 best tools that will helpful in blockchain development. Nowadays blockchain technology is now running in trending. This technology used in every sector like Banking and Finance, Real Estate, Automobile and Transportation, Government, E-learning, Trading, Online shopping, Insurance, Warehouse etc.
Many blockchain development companies work on these blockchain development tools.
The Best Tools for Blockchain Development
1. Geth
This is an important tool in blockchain development. Getty tool works in Go Programming language. Geth is a program or code that works as a node of the ethereum blockchain. A user can work on the following like:
My Ether tokens
Transfer Tokens between address
Create smart contracts and run on the EVM machine.
2. Mist
This is another tool in blockchain development. Mist is the official ethereum Wallet that is developed by the Ethereum team. Mist is specially working for smart contract deployment. It is a full node wallet i.e. you can full download ethereum blockchain data for the help of this tool.
3. Solc
This is number 3rd tool in blockchain development. Solidity is pretty much developing on ethereum is concerned. This tool works in typed language with syntax. It is similar to ECMAScript (javascript) that is used for the creation of smart contracts on the ethereum blockchain.
This tool of programme or Code executes on the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).
4. Remix
Remix is a great compiler. It uses for small contracts. This tool is written in javascript. It supports both usages in the browser or locally. Remix also supports testing, debugging and deploying of smart contracts and much more.
5. Blockchain Testnet
If you run a program in EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) there two things you will need, first is Gas Usage cost that is a very huge issue in Ethereum. You will pay so much money on the project.
Second is the untested program. And remember that Ethereum blockchain is immutable.
There are 3 types of testnets.
Public Test
Private Test
testrpc
6. GanacheCLI
GanacheCLI is working on NodeJS package, It is a fast and customizable blockchain emulator. It is parallel the ethereum network on a single computer that allows you to make calls to the blockchain.
Features of the Tools:
Instant Mining of Transactions
0 Transaction Fees.
All account can be reset with a fixed amount of Ether.
Gas price & mining price can be changed.
7. EhterScripter
Ether scripting for newbie developers. It can be a challenging task. The interface of etherscripter is very simply in easy to use. You can use to start coding basic contracts. It can only be used with the Serpent programming language.
Final Words:
I hope these tools are very helpful in blockchain development. If you are thinking to make software or an application in blockchain technology, BR Softech is leading Blockchain Development Company that provide all kind of services & solutions of blockchain technology. | https://medium.com/all-about-crypto/7-of-the-best-tools-for-blockchain-development-3bd7bf5a269 | ['Manish Sharma'] | 2020-11-02 06:43:43.275000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Application', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Development'] |
What is a Local Authority’s duty towards homeless 16 and 17 year olds? | What is a Local Authority’s duty towards homeless 16 and 17 year olds?
A long form article exploring the parallel duties of both a housing authority and children’s social care owed to homeless 16 and 17 year olds, and what this means in practice for advisers. Vicky Allen Follow Oct 17, 2019 · 11 min read
16 and 17 years olds represent a highly vulnerable group of young people, on the cusp of adulthood, but still rightfully recognised in law as children. Over 2,300 16 and 17 year olds have approached the Citizens Advice local network over the last 18 months with housing and welfare benefit questions. It’s important therefore that advisers understand the housing options available to homeless children who are 16 or 17 years old.
If you’re advising a 16 or 17 year old you should think about whether there are any safeguarding issues. Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Make sure you’re familiar with your local policy and get help from a manager if you’re not sure.
The support available to homeless young people will depend on whether or not they’re considered to be a “Child in Need” in line with the Children Act 1989. If so they should be accommodated and supported as a ‘child looked after’. If a homeless young person is not considered to be a Child in Need they would be eligible for support with accommodation only. This article explores the different duties for children in need as opposed to children considered to have a need for accommodation only. We also look at why in most cases homeless young people should be advised to pursue support via children’s social care rather than the housing department.
The Relevant Legislation
The Children Act 1989 sets out when a young person should be considered a “child in need” s17(10) states:
(10) For the purposes of this Part a child shall be taken to be in need if —
(a)he is unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him of services by a local authority under this Part;
(b)his health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for him of such services; or
(c ) he is disabled
s20(1) sets out when the children’s social care department is responsible for accommodating young people:
Provision of accommodation for children: general.
(1)Every local authority shall provide accommodation for any child in need within their area who appears to them to require accommodation as a result of —
(a)there being no person who has parental responsibility for him;
(b)his being lost or having been abandoned; or
(c )the person who has been caring for him being prevented (whether or not permanently, and for whatever reason) from providing him with suitable accommodation or care.
….
(3)Every local authority shall provide accommodation for any child in need within their area who has reached the age of sixteen and whose welfare the authority consider is likely to be seriously prejudiced if they do not provide him with accommodation.
You can find more information about the overall duties Children’s Social Care have towards children in need on AdviserNet pages 8.30.62.3
If a young person is accommodated by Children’s Social Care they will be considered to be a child “Looked After” and are eligible for the same support available to all other children looked after. This includes support with education, training and employment and financial support. If a young person is looked after for a certain period of time they will also be eligible for support up to age 25 as a care leaver. This support will include access to a Personal Advisor and a Pathway Plan. You can find more information about this on AdviserNet pages 8.30.62.20.
The Housing Act 1996 as amended by Homeless Reduction Act 2017 outlines the duties on Housing Authorities in relation to homelessness. s188 Housing Act 1996 states:
188 Interim duty to accommodate in case of apparent priority need.
(1)If the local housing authority have reason to believe that an applicant may be homeless, eligible for assistance and have a priority need, they must secure that accommodation is available for the applicant’s occupation.
You can find more information on making a homeless application on AdviserNet.
Case Law
R (on the application of G) v Southwark London Borough Council — [2009] 3 All ER 189
In May 2009 the House of Lords decided the case of R (G) v London Borough of Southwark. This was a landmark judgement that provided clarity on the responsibilities for not just local authority housing departments but also children’s social care departments.
The case outlines what both departments must consider when a young person approaches either department for homelessness assistance as well as what policies and processes should be in place in preparation for any such approach. The main points are:
Every local authority should have a joint protocol in place between the housing and children’s social care department to outline how they support homeless young people.
The primary duty to homeless 16 and 17 year olds lies with children’s social care in line with s.20 Children Act 1989
children’s social care departments cannot fulfil their duties to homeless 16 and 17 year olds by supporting them to make a homeless application to the housing department.
16 and 17 year olds who approach a local authority housing department as homeless should be accommodated in line with their interim duties under s188 (1) Part 7 Housing Act 1996 (as amended). A formal referral to Children’s Social Care should then be made in order for an assessment of the young person’s needs to be undertaken.[1]
The young person should be supported to make an informed choice about which route of support they want to pursue. The young person’s wishes and feelings should always be considered as part of any decision made in respect of their accommodation.
More recently Essex County Council were challenged over the way they handle homeless applications from 16 and 17 year olds. You can read more about that case in The Expert Advice Team’s October monthly newsletter.
You can read more about using case law to support your clients’ cases in Amy Hughes’ article on Adviser Online.
How should it work in practice
If a young person under 18 is homeless the primary duty to accommodate and support the young person lies with the children’s social care department rather than the housing department. Nevertheless, when a young person is homeless in an emergency, and requires accommodation the same day, local policy may mean that the housing department will provide emergency accommodation while children’s social care carry out an assessment to determine if the young person is in need. This would be lawful as long as accommodation provided by The Housing Department was considered suitable (B&B and nightly rate accommodation is never considered suitable for 16 and 17 year olds). You can find more information on suitability of accommodation following a homeless application on AdviserNet.
Children’s social care will need to complete a needs assessment within 45 days of the young person becoming known to them by either an approach directly from the young person or a referral from another agency (including the housing department). The needs assessment should cover all aspects of the young person’s needs. This should include;
rebuilding and supporting relationships with their family
housing
income and financial stability
physical health, mental health and emotional wellbeing
safety
education, training and employment
The young person’s wishes and feelings should be considered at all times.
If a young person has approached the housing department and made a homeless application they should also carry out their enquiries to determine if a housing duty is owed. In practice they can make a “not homeless” decision following the young person being accommodated by children’s social care.
Both the housing and children’s social care departments should work on the assumption that in most cases, young people are better off remaining in the family home. Nevertheless, this assumption should not cloud their judgement when deciding if a child is “in need”. The result of their assessment may mean that the long term aim is to support a young person to return to the family home if it is safe to do so. However, the young person will have to agree to this plan.
Young people should always be referred for support so that they can make an informed choice when they have the option of accepting accommodation via homelessness duties or becoming a child looked after. This can be offered by an independent adviser or an advocate. An advocate or adviser should explain the difference in the levels of support and aftercare for each option.
A referral for an advocate is usually made by the local authority — many have contracts with Coram’s Advocacy Service or National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS). However, as an adviser you can also make a referral for the young person to be allocated an advocate. There are many different agencies offering advocacy services and you should be able to find an organisation offering this service in your area by doing a simple search or by contacting Coram or NYAS who offer national services.
Young people should be encouraged not to make a decision on which route to follow until they are aware of all the options and implications of both routes.
Becoming a child looked after vs being accommodated following a homeless application
Tactics for Advisors
Although the legislation and case law is clear young people can still face problems when asking for help around housing and homelessness. Some of the common issues young people face include gatekeeping and being “pushed from pillar to post” when requesting help. (This is explored further on in challenging decisions).
Given the different levels of support available, in the majority of cases it will be in the client’s best interests to follow the children’s social care route to accommodation rather than completing a homeless application. The client can choose to decide to be accommodated via the homelessness route but this is not advisable. As an adviser you will need to advise your client on both options. You will need to be sure that your client understands the pros and cons of each option and is able to make an informed choice.
Useful information to gather from your client
It is always useful to have a broad understanding of a young person’s background and needs before advising them on their options or advocating on their behalf to either children’s social care or the housing department. Useful information includes:
Basic details i.e. age, immigration status, employment or education status
Why has the young person’s relationship with their parents or carers broken down? Are they at risk of harm at home?
Has your client been living independently for some time or are they currently sofa surfing?
Have they ever been looked after by the local authority or is there any existing involvement with the children’s social care department, do they have an allocated social worker. If the young person is known to children’s social care already it may be easier to get them support with their housing situation.
Are they at risk of any immediate harm, are there concerns around criminal or sexual child exploitation or child trafficking? If there are, you should make this clear in all communications with the local authority and ask that they also consider the National Referral Mechanism. You can find more information on modern day slavery and The National Referral Mechanism.
Do they have any additional needs or disabilities?
Some young people may have tried to get help many times before accessing advice. To help support the young person to get the help they need, advisers can:
Make contact with children’s social care and let them know of your client’s situation. Ask that a child in need assessment is carried out or their current Child in Need or Child Protection Plan is updated if they’re already known to services.
Telephone contact should be followed up by a written referral — local authorities should publish a Multi Agency Referral Form often referred to as a MARF on their website or The Local Children’s Safeguarding Board’s website. There should also be a secure email address available to send the referral. Your referral should include why you believe your client should be considered a child in need. You can refer to the legislation and case law above and outline how this relates to your client.
If your client is homeless on the day they approach your service you should initially ask that children’s social care department accommodates them. However, if they refuse, the young person should be supported to make a homeless application to the housing department and ask that emergency accommodation is provided.
If the client doesn’t have anyone to go with them to the council offices, consider if you can support the client in person to make a homeless application or provide a letter outlining how they meet the criteria for emergency accommodation and ask that they are provided with accommodation that day. You can read more about homeless applications and sample letters on AdviserNet.
If emergency accommodation is offered and accepted by the client, children’s social care are still required to carry out their assessment and determine if the young person is in need.
If emergency accommodation is refused or there is a delay that indicates emergency accommodation from the housing department or children’s social care is not going to be provided on the day you should consider referring your client to a solicitor or if your local office has a legal aid contract consider sending a letter before action.
How to Challenge Decisions
If your client has been refused accommodation or support you should consider challenging the local authority. However, this is a complex area of law. Decisions not to provide interim accommodation (in response to a homeless application) or support for a child in need do not attract the right of internal review. Although, the client would have the option to make a complaint, due to the time sensitive nature (i.e. a homeless child) the only realistic remedy is likely to be a judicial review, starting with a letter before action. If your local office has a solicitor and legal aid contract this may be something that can be done in house. However, it is likely that you may need to refer your client to a solicitor specialising in this type of work. You can read more about challenging homelessness decisions and the Judicial Review process on AdvisorNet.
Finding Legal Representation
If the young person you are supporting is homeless or threatened with homelessness, they might be able to get legal aid funding. These types of issues can be covered by a housing, public or family law specialist. You can find out if your client is eligible for legal aid or legal help on GOV.UK website . You can find local solicitors with legal aid contracts on the Law Society website.
Summary
If your service is approached by a homeless 16 or 17 year old they can be supported to contact children’s social care who have a legal duty to carry out a child in need assessment, they have the ability to accommodate a young person while they are conducting their assessment. However, if your client is homeless already or has nowhere to stay while the assessment is being carried out the local authority housing department have a parallel duty to provide emergency accommodation and make enquiries as to what, if any housing duty is owed to the young person.
Local authority children’s social care and housing departments should have a joint protocol and framework which outlines how they will work together to support homeless young people. You can ask your local authority for a copy of this so you are familiar with the process.
Footnotes;
[1] para 4.4 Provision of accommodation for 16 and 17 year old young people who may be homeless and/or require accommodation, MHCLG/DfE, April 2018
Housing needs of vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds: Keeping homeless older teenagers safe
More Than a Number — The Scale of Youth Homelessness
National Youth Advocacy Service
Coram Children’s Legal Centre
Become Charity
Vicky Allen is a member of the Housing Expert Advice Team at Citizens Advice.
Please tell us what you think of this page. | https://medium.com/adviser/what-is-a-local-authoritys-duty-towards-homeless-16-and-17-year-olds-5f6915f2dc76 | ['Vicky Allen'] | 2020-02-28 10:07:54.324000+00:00 | ['Housing Online', 'Mental Health', 'Housing And Family Online', 'Homelessness'] |
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On Openness, Science and Scientific Learning. | On Openness, Science and Scientific Learning.
To paraphrase the man of the moment: “Some are born open, some achieve openness, and some have openness thrust upon them” (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night). As a practising scientist (and now academic lecturer) of the “old school”, I grew up with a closed educational system in which we paid to access the lofty levels of tertiary education (or were paid by our government); access being permitted by virtue of the rigours of, in my case, the terrifying but enlightened Scottish Ordinary and Higher level examinations. We bought the recommended textbooks, listened to the obligatory lectures, practiced the scientific art in the labs and quietly accepted our lot after each set of examinations. Later, I published my scientific findings in journals which charged our institution(s) for access (and me for copies!). In turn, then, I taught and examined later generations under the universally accepted idiom of “if it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them”. Until, one day, grainy black and white TV images were broadcast in the early hours of the morning, espousing odd mathematical theorems and governed by odd-looking men in beards… the Open University was born — followed, a little later, by the web; and then Twitter, Facebook and all the other instruments of the devil (which I continue to eschew). I think that puts me firmly in the “openness thrust upon them” category.
Compare and contrast — today, anyone with the ability to access the web can “freely” obtain information on some of the most up-to-date scientific subjects simply by adding “wiki” to the end of every question they might choose to ask — and they can do this almost anywhere, at any time. But, from the point of view of a University educator should I not be made happy by these significant, free for all, advances? Well, yes and no. That information should be so freely available cannot be a bad thing, but the quality of that information must be assured and so “quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (“Who guards the guards?” My Ordinary Level Latin was worth something!). Our role as educators then becomes less of an expounder (and interpreter) of scientific information and more of a reviewer and proof-reader (though perhaps I exaggerate a little).
Nevertheless, if University students have near limitless access to information, from multiple, acceptable sources, then surely this must be a good thing. All else being equal, I believe it would be a very good thing, but we need to put this into some perspective. Like all good scientists I keep up to date by reading the current (peer-reviewed!) scientific papers — not so long ago that meant a photocopy or reprint which I could read in my “spare time” — and so the photocopy grew to be something I could find later when I needed to, without the inconvenience of a trip to the library (and with the paper copies now replaced by the omni-present pdf I can now even carry them around with me). However, to be able to find the appropriate reference, I had to recall at least some of the contents of the paper. The advent of Google (as an entity and a verb) has begun to replace this — I can now find the work I am looking for simply by searching the web (Medline/Pubmed, not Wikipedia, of course) with the question or keywords that led me to the paper in the first place, de novo, each time I want find the same paper — and am instantly carried to the paper, and given list of others who have cited it, or others which may be similar. Herein lies the problem — I will now recall less of the original data and more on the strategy to locate the paper (eg “I recall that I Googled with “neuroscience” and “visual” and “thalamus”, and it was the third hit”). Is this a small price to pay? Less so, perhaps, when I have ~30+ years of background material (my personal, some-what shaky “backup”) stored in my (still active!) brain — but perhaps more of a problem for the new generation, for whom this will be a principle (if not sole, and certainly un-backed-up!) resource. Thus one of the most common questions I receive from undergraduates in the run up to exam time is “do I have to remember all the drug/brain/technical words?” and I think you can guess my (ever unpopular) answer.
But am I/we being fair?
For the vast majority of our Life Science undergraduates, the basic scientific “facts” we teach are actually unlikely to be of much use in their future careers in industry, banking, computing and so on. And for the few who continue in science? Ideas change and can change very rapidly, so surely teaching them to source the most up to date information will be more useful than cramming them full of soon-to-be-out-dated “facts” — and teaching them to interpret and integrate ideas should be the main goal. However, we are then left with a real dilemma (possibly the major dilemma in tertiary education at the moment) — how to test and measure their abilities, so that we can reward and rank them appropriately. Can we “open” examinations? To some extend we do now, with more course work given and open book tests offered — but these are double-edged swords, because we cannot be sure that the result we get is truly the work of the student we are testing (sad times, indeed!). So, can we invent a new examination; a test with free access to all of the required material, but one which tests the ability of the student to reason; to adapt the material to correctly answer the question as stated? It would be possible, indeed simple, to setup a computer cluster, open under exam conditions, and provide students with questions to answer — whereby their answers, containing a log of sources utilised, would reflect their ability not just to navigate the web (under 5’s and the silver haired can do that!) but combine and reflect upon ideas — to make judgement and reach conclusions. Too far-fetched? Perhaps — particularly when we consider how we would mark/evaluate the output! And so, for the time being, I think we will have to continue the status quo, despite the fact that the Pandoras box of information is well and truly open. | https://medium.com/open-knowledge-in-he/on-openness-science-and-scientific-learning-cf183989412a | ['Kenneth Grieve'] | 2016-05-25 18:53:44.207000+00:00 | ['Teaching', 'Okhe1', 'Education'] |
Kubernetes Tutorial: Part 2 — Streamlit based object detection application | Putting them together
Since the primary goal of this tutorial is to understand how one can deploy a machine learning model using K8S, we will restrict ourselves to building a simple application which enables users to select the algorithm they want to run, SSD or YOLO, upload an image for which they want to run the inference and see the predictions of the chosen algorithm.
This is how the welcome page looks like:
Streamlit application welcome page
And this is how it looks when a user runs inference on an image:
Streamlit application after running inference
As of now, this is directly run on my machine, and that’s evident from the localhost:8501 appearing at the top of the web page. Also, when building such an application, we need to take care that the model weights are persisted in memory as soon as the web page loads; this is essential as it prevents the model from loading into memory every time the user uploads an image for inference, this greatly enhances the user experience. We achieve this using the Streamlit’s inbuilt caching mechanism, the @st.cache decorator.
Now we are all set to take this application that is running in a sandbox environment and deploy the same in Minikube after containerization.
Part 3: Familiarizing the environment | https://medium.com/@parthasarathysubburaj/kubernetes-tutorial-part-2-streamlit-based-object-detection-application-79ebaefa37f7 | ['Parthasarathy Subburaj'] | 2020-11-07 10:41:45.192000+00:00 | ['Docker', 'Streamlit', 'Kubernetes', 'Object Detection', 'Deployment'] |
Learning to See: Visual Inspirations and Data Visualization | Only apparently unrelated, abstract art and data visualization actually have a lot more in common than what one would expect, and can be considered by some means two very close disciplines.
A study on “Early Abstract Art and Experimental Gestalt Psychology” by Crétien van Campen of MIT draws the conclusion that the same theories that are universally recognized as a basis for perception studies to support effective data visualization, have actually also deeply influenced the work of abstract artists such as Kandinsky or Mondrian.
This common root that we can trace back to German psychologists of the early 20th century reveals how, while clearly pursuing different goals, abstract artists and data visualization designers both draw on common perception principles and apply them to simple shapes and a definite range of colors to create basic visual compositions that please the eye and, hopefully, deliver a message. | https://medium.com/accurat-studio/learning-to-see-visual-inspirations-and-data-visualization-ce9107349a | ['Giorgia Lupi'] | 2016-01-27 16:27:25.618000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Design', 'Data Visualization'] |
La reconnaissance d’image pour tous (les développeurs) ? | We explore promising technologies and exciting business opportunities to uncover new ideas and give them attention, work, and ressources
Follow | https://medium.com/prototypers/la-reconnaissance-dimage-pour-tous-les-d%C3%A9veloppeurs-112a730890c5 | ['Patrice Bonfy'] | 2017-02-28 16:26:36.378000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Inspiration', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'F8', 'Computer Vision'] |
Our Time Has Come | Photo by icon0.com from Pexels
It’s run its course
this love of ours
The final go around
is what this is
The hugs are scarce
Kisses rare
You barely look me in the eye
I won’t redecorate
after you take your half
This will remain a partial dwelling
because there’s no rearranging
what we started
into something whole again
Forward is the only way
even if I can barely hobble
in that direction
My mind yearns to go back
to a place that no longer exists
The place that was full of talk
and your warm embrace
Our time has come…
I thought maybe we were
an exception to the rule
that all things come to an end
But I was wrong
You proved it
Our time has come | https://medium.com/scuzzbucket/our-time-has-come-9d9478c3e78c | ['Franco Amati'] | 2020-12-20 00:08:51.048000+00:00 | ['Prose', 'Love', 'Loss', 'Poetry', 'Scuzzbucket'] |
All About Gold Nugget Ghee | All About Gold Nugget Ghee
Interview with Founder Daniel Draskinis
This week we had the opportunity to interview Daniel Draskinis, Founder of Gold Nugget Ghee. Here’s what Daniel had to say about running his business, his secret recipe for ghee coffee, the ultra-marathon that transitioned him into eating paleo. | https://medium.com/the-paleo-post/paleo-epic-brands-q-a-profile-09-gold-nugget-ghee-53bbeceb5e57 | [] | 2017-01-11 08:29:59.293000+00:00 | ['Health Foods', 'Food', 'Interview', 'Paleo'] |
8 Bitcoin Casino Features You Should Definitely Check Before Signing Up | 8 Bitcoin Casino Features You Should Definitely Check Before Signing Up
BestBitcoinCasino.com
Finding the right Bitcoin casino for you saves you a headache caused by issues such as unfair game results or — worse — non-payments. Check the following features of an online casino to help you narrow down your choices:
#1 Player Restrictions
Before you check whether a casino is worthy of your membership, you must find out if you can access the site or create an account in the first place. Some online casinos restrict players in certain countries from signing up, and some software providers do not allow their games to be accessed in certain locations. Meanwhile, certain casinos do not explicitly say you cannot create an account. This means you have the responsibility to check if your country allows you to play online casino games with real money.
#2 Background Information
Doing a background check of an online casino may be a dull process, but doing so saves you from frustration if the casino does not meet your expectations. Look for the history of the casino as a credible operator is a sign of a reliable casino.
Very useful: other players comments on websites like BestBitcoinCasino.com These are really helpful since they are first-hand experiences of gamers who created an account in the online casino. If you find that most of the comments are negative, that is a sign that the casino is most likely one you should avoid or at least be very careful with.
#3 Online Gaming License
A casino license may not be required, but it is necessary for your peace of mind. This is because it allows an online casino to operate legally. Casinos with this minimum amount of protection are for example those licensed by Curacao and Costa Rica.
But if you want extra protection, look for online casinos licensed by trusted jurisdictions like Malta, UK, and Isle of Man, among others. These regulatory bodies subject casinos to strict requirements, thus making your personal and financial information safe. Plus, in case you have disputes, you can take up your concerns to these third parties.
#4 Security Measures
Simply put, a casino has to ensure that third parties, especially those who plan to steal your data and your funds, cannot access your info. The most secure online casinos usually have SSL encryptions in place. Other casinos make an extra effort to add two-factor authentication and firewalls to make sure you will play with peace of mind.
#5 Bonuses and Promotions
Obviously, one of the biggest factors for choosing a casino is the available bonuses and promotions. After all, these promos help you kick-start your gaming sessions with free cash. But while the offers might look tempting, make it a point to read the fine print before claiming the bonus deal. Look for the bonus’ terms and conditions and check the bonus amount, the wagering requirements, and deposit limits. The last thing you want to happen is using the bonus, only to find out later on that you cannot cash out all your winnings.
#6 Games and Software
Ideally, a casino should offer a decent game library, meaning there should be a variety of player-favorite games. Besides slots, the game collection should have popular table games like blackjack, roulette, and poker. If you are looking for high-quality gaming sessions, look for casinos with games powered by leading software providers such as NetEnt, Microgaming, and Play’n GO.
Another important factor you should look for is the fairness of the games. After all, you want to make sure you will get your money’s worth from a winning spin or a winning hand. Usually, casinos will give information about its random name generator, which ensures that a spin of a slot or the deal of a card is random. Meanwhile, blockchain-based games have provably fair systems that allow you to check yourself whether the game results are fair.
And if you really want to make sure the casino promotes fair gaming, look for certifications by third parties like iTech Labs, eCOGRA, and Technical Systems Testing. If an online casino is certified by these agencies, this means it went through meticulous testing to ensure you get to experience fair gaming.
#7 Banking Options
You will know that an online casino has your convenience in mind if it offers a variety of options, including cards like Visa and Mastercard as well as e-wallets like Skrill and Neteller. Even better, a casino should allow you to choose what currency you should use. Some of the most popular currencies are USD, EUR, and BTC, but many online casinos offer payments in other currencies so that you do not have to pay conversion fees.
Besides banking methods and supported currencies, you should also look at the timeframe in which the casino processes transactions. You would want to start playing and to cash out your money right away, so choose online casinos with shorter processing times. For Bitcoin payments and withdrawals, transactions should be instant. Credit card and e-wallet transactions should take 48 hours or less. And if you chose to pay or cash out using check or bank transfer, timeframes range from three to 10 days.
#8 Support
There might come a time when you run into issues while playing. In that case, you should be able to get in touch with the casino right away. An ideal online casino should have many communication channels, the most common ones being live chat, email, and phone support. Besides numerous options, customer support should also be easily available. It would be better if casino support is available 24/7 so that you can reach a support staff at any time during the day.
* * * *
Just like the easy and convenient nature of using Bitcoin, choosing an online casino should be fuss-free. Simply keep in mind the factors you should look for to help narrow down your choices. And when you find your perfect Bitcoin casino, your gaming sessions should be smooth sailing. If you have already found yours — leave us your comment on https://www.bestbitcoincasino.com/ | https://medium.com/@bestbitcoincasino/8-bitcoin-casino-features-you-should-definitely-check-before-signing-up-ee8a78b9fedb | ['Best Bitcoin Casino'] | 2021-12-26 10:54:25.120000+00:00 | ['How To', 'Gambling', 'Online Casino', 'Bitcoin'] |
Day 429 — Being of one accord unto creation… | Day 429 — Being of one accord unto creation…Imagine if innovation and creation were conceived out of a pure desire to “love one’s neighbour” and care for the planet instead of profit, competition, comparison, and personal accomplishment. Technological advancement would look so different…
WHAT DO YOU THINK? COMMENT BELOW. I’D LOVE TO DISCUSS! | https://medium.com/@stephenlesliefrance/day-429-being-of-one-accord-unto-creation-64042106483c | ['Stephen Leslie France'] | 2020-12-16 09:04:01.060000+00:00 | ['Christian', 'Christianity', 'Bible'] |
What’s in a reflection? The good, the bad, the ugly. | This article first appeared on Creative Women’s Circle.
My foray into the practice of self-reflection was during my first year of teaching. As a central activity in a novice teacher’s professional process — and one that I initially met with great resistance — after habitual practice, I began to see tangible benefits. I quickly discovered that self-reflection is a powerful tool and one that should be part of the arsenal of any creative professional women. And what better time to look back on oneself than on the dawning of a new year.
Self-reflection is a process where you look back on yourself and the world from the point of introspection — observing your ideas, thoughts, actions and aspirations. Not only does the practice enrich your personal life, but it can deepen your awareness around how you wish for your life to evolve.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards” — Steve Jobs.
Failures are our biggest teachers.
It can be easy to label 2020 as a failure in its entirety. Many of us were forced to pivot and change the way we conducted business. At Creative Women’s Circle — an organisation dedicated to supporting, championing and connecting women in creative industries — we had to find a way to bring all our planned in-person events to a virtual setting, whilst still creating engaging experiences for our members. With forced change, also comes great learnings. For CWC, we discovered that virtual events opened up our message to those outside of the Melbourne area, allowing women world-wide to join in on the conversation; adding a richer dimension to our connection and community values.
The magic lies in self-awareness.
Dr Tasha Eurich, an organisational psychologist and Keynote speaker, explains that self-awareness results in being able to see ourselves more clearly, be more confident and creative. Eurich also argues that introspection (i.e. the practice of self-reflection) does not make someone self-aware. So how do self-awareness and self-reflection come together?
“The problem with introspection isn’t that it is ineffective — it’s that most people are doing it incorrectly.” — Dr Tasha Eurich.
The reason for this is because many begin the practice of reflection with the question “why?”. “Why did I not perform well at my last interview?” “Why did my product not take off as planned?”, “Why do I always experience writer’s block when I have an impending deadline?” “Why can I never stay on top of my content planning?” (These last two I am particularly familiar.)
When we ask “why” we are providing the ideal breeding conditions for negative thoughts, full of fears, insecurities and shortcomings. Instead, we must approach self-reflection through an activity of self-assessment; analysing one’s strengths and weaknesses. As Eurich puts it, we should be asking “what” instead of “why”. With “what” questions helping us to stay future-focussed, objective and more empowered to take action on our new insights.
Self-reflection how-to:
As you begin the practice of self-reflection this year, try asking yourself:
“What are some of my successes from the last 12 months?”
“What were some areas that I fell short?
“What has been my strengths/where have I grown?”
“What are my goals for the upcoming year?”
“What has been my biggest lesson in life or business?”
Your self-reflective practice can be as informal or formal as you like. You can journal or complete a writing exercise, meditate or take a contemplative walk amongst nature.
Insight into Action:
“The key to success is to start before you’re ready.” — Marie Forleo.
Any self-reflective exercise is the ideal primer for goal-setting. After all, you’re in the perfect mindset to create intentional goals! Ask yourself where you want to be in the next 3, 6, 12 months and beyond? Can you identify any values present in your goals? Then use these values to steer your goals, objectives and decision making in the future. | https://medium.com/@teodora-robinson/whats-in-a-reflection-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-2d3c53113b21 | ['Teodora Robinson'] | 2020-12-16 04:38:09.495000+00:00 | ['Advice', 'Creative Process', 'Personal Development'] |
I Hope You Never Stop Believing In Magic | I Hope You Never Stop Believing In Magic
A poem.
Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash
I hope you never stop believing in magic.
Not the kind that speaks of spells and witches,
but the kind of everyday magic that’s found in the
pockets of everyday life.
Moments like when the sun streams through your
windows in the morning, illuminating a twinkle in your
beloveds eyes so beautiful it takes your breath away.
Moments like when you’re having a bad day, and
somehow, someway, your best friend senses that
through the universe and calls you to check-in.
Moments like when you lose yourself in art — like
the pages of a new book, or the notes of a new song,
or the scenes of a new movie.The story that you’re
watching or reading or listening to speaks
to the very core of your being, and the light you hold
within your soul.
Magic was never just about witches and warlocks
and potions and spells. It’s about the untapped joy,
and power, and beauty that exists within every moment
of this precious life, and every molecule that is
the miracle, and wonder, that is you.
I hope you never stop believing in magic.
I hope you never stop believing in you. | https://medium.com/assemblage/i-hope-you-never-stop-believing-in-magic-866e457bb3f | ['Megan Minutillo'] | 2020-11-18 12:10:30.208000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Moments', 'Self-awareness', 'Magic', 'Poem'] |
What You Can Do When You Want To Fly But You’re Grounded | What You Can Do When You Want To Fly But You’re Grounded Tammy Guest Jun 17·3 min read
What do you do when you’re all keyed up to start a new adventure, but then … you get grounded? Whether we’re talking about a metaphor for business or an actual adventure, the answer is the same: focus on what you CAN do, not what you can’t.
You may or may not know that I’m a trained helicopter pilot, and recently, I’ve just started training as a fixed-wing pilot as well.
I was so excited to finally have my trial fixed-wing flight. That morning, I had my coffee nice and quick. Took my dog for a walk. Went to get in my car to drive out to the airfield and… Oh, no. Turbulence! Can’t fly today.
Womp, womp, womp…
Of course, I was disappointed. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t do something else amazing instead.
See, when I am told that I “can’t” do something, my fave go-to move is to find something I CAN do!
Focus On What You Can Do
So, there I was. Raring to go but no destination. So, what could I do?
Maybe…
… Eat choc mint ice cream?
… Do that workout I was putting off?
… Study for the theory exam?
… Sign up for another adventure???
Actually, I did all of the above!
Look, if you have been following me for a while, you know I am passionate about freedom and the freedom that helicopters bring. They can fly anywhere, land mostly anywhere, and help out anywhere.
The Westpac Rescue Helicopter does exactly that:
arriving in places that regular vehicles can’t go
to help out in medical emergencies that regular medics can’t
and transfer from hospital to hospital that slower vehicles can’t
They CAN.
The Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service is a flying intensive care unit. The AW139 Helicopter has a Pilot with a minimum of 15 years of flying experience, a Crewman, a SCAT trained Paramedic, and a Doctor on base and on-call 24 hours a day.
Surgeries can be performed from the helicopter as well as blood transfusions. It has the capacity to carry 2 patients or 2 Neonatal Cots. Not only does the Rescue Helicopter attend accidents it also transfers critical patients to larger hospitals for specialist treatment plus conducts Search and Rescue missions.
The AW139s cost $1,000 per hour in fuel, $1,000 per hour to run the engine, $1,500 for the airframe, and $500 for avionics, which is a total of $4,000 per hour.
That means it costs about $40 million a year to keep the helicopters and crews ready to respond when needed.
And there I was, all revved up to do something with nothing to do.
So I decided to go on an ADVENTURE to raise money for this vital service ( follow along on Instagram here).
I hope you’ll consider giving generously and share my fundraising page with your friends, family and colleagues. https://events.rescuehelicopter.com.au/fundraisers/tammyguest
Thank you for your considering support of the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service.
What CAN You Do Today?
So what does this have to do with business?
As usual, it’s all about mindset.
I know many practitioners and business owners have felt this kind of disappointment over and over again this past year. All set, ready to get back into the flow and then… boom… change of plans with a lockdown.
It’s easy to let setbacks like that stop us in our tracks, but today I’m challenging you to change that mindset.
Instead of focusing on what you CAN’T do, focus on asking yourself what amazing thing CAN you do today?
Think outside the box and find something to move you forward whether it’s personally or professionally. And then do it.
Because when we focus on what we can do instead of what we can’t — the sky is the limit! | https://medium.com/@tammyguest/what-you-can-do-when-you-want-to-fly-but-youre-grounded-ab84ea13678e | ['Tammy Guest'] | 2021-07-01 08:02:18.623000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Adventure', 'Helicopter', 'Fundraising', 'Donations'] |
Food Deserts: Asha Walker of Health in the Hood On How They Are Helping To Address The Problem of People Having Limited Access to Healthy & Affordable Food Options | Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I am a Miami native with a fierce love for my city and deeply believe that eating nutritious food is a basic human right. Wellness has always been a part of my life, and its truly dictated my life trajectory. It’s both my personal and professional mission to connect communities to wellness.
After college, I followed in my family’s footsteps and worked in public service and community development. I worked closely with communities while working with the AmeriCorps service program in Miami. Throughout my 10 years working with the AmeriCorps, I saw an intense need for a systemic change at the local level. On my three-mile drive home, I drove through communities that had access to fresh food and ones that had little to no access to healthy options. This disparity was too glaring to ignore, and I knew urban farming could provide a simple solution to a huge problem. This was the impetus to start Health in the Hood back in 2013.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Community work is filled with interesting experiences! From being surprised with the gift of a beautiful mobile farmer’s market on a television show with millions of viewers, to watching a child harvest their first green beans — the privilege of working in communities comes with life changing experiences almost daily. I’ve had the opportunity to teach hundreds of children the power in growing their own food. One of my greatest joys comes from knowing that kids who’ve grown up with a Health in the Hood garden wellness program in their backyard have a connection to their food sources and understand the benefits of eating fresh, local produce.
Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?
Our model is so simple yet so powerful. We’ve truly found success from the installation of our first urban farm and have extrapolated impact benchmarks that we’ve applied to our strategic growth over the last few years. One of our most poignant organizational values is community engagement. It’s at the core of everything we do. Without building strong community roots, it can be difficult to create trust and have a lasting impact. It’s this commitment to working with communities instead of “for them” that we do differently.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My husband! This man has been my biggest cheerleader and mentor since Health in the Hood’s conceptualization to implementation and now its evolution. From endless strategizing, brainstorming and logistics, he is always there with an idea, or other way to approach a situation. I mean, he watched me rehearse my TEDx Talk no less than 30 times, giving helpful feedback with each iteration. If that’s not dedication to success I don’t know what is. ☺ He’s my best friend and biggest advocate for my mission to connect communities to wellness.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Empathy: Being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and find compassion, even if you don’t have a first hand experience of their situation is the most powerful tool one can use to lead.
Organization: Some would definitely argue that I can take this one a bit too far sometimes! But I THRIVE in an organized environment. Color coding, prioritized to-do lists, committing to a routine that serves me — I’m here for it all!
Humility: Leading humbly doesn’t equate to weakness. We have this bizarre obsession with perfection (myself included!) and see vulnerability as a negative attribute. It’s so important to stay open and honest about areas of challenge and growth opportunities.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Everything in moderation.” My great grandmother instilled this lesson in my mom and it’s shaped just about everything I do. Now that’s not to say that I never indulge! Whether its that last glass of wine I didn’t need, the large fries on cheat day, or on the other end of the spectrum, over training my body, when I don’t practice moderation, its always a great reminder moderation is the baseline for a balanced, happy life.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about Food Deserts. I know this is intuitive to you, but it will be helpful to expressly articulate this for our readers. Can you please tell us what exactly a food desert is? Does it mean there are places in the US where you can’t buy food?
Food deserts are geographic areas where access to affordable, healthy food options, including fresh fruits and vegetables, is limited or nonexistent because grocery stores are too far away. In low-income neighborhoods where transportation is limited the problem can be even more challenging. In South Florida, where Health in the Hood operates, there are 326 different food desert neighborhoods alone!
There is a common misconception that hunger and food insecurity are one in the same. This is false. If you are hungry, you do not have access to any food. If you’re food insecure, you are unable to access nutritious food, and instead consume processed food linked to disease and shorter lifespan.
Can you help explain a few of the social consequences that arise from food deserts? What are the secondary and tertiary problems that are created by a food desert?
Without access to nearby grocery stores that provide fresh produce, people in food desert communities often turn to unhealthy, processed foods that contribute to food-related health conditions like obesity, diabetes, hypertension and more.
The families we serve in the Greater Miami area live in neighborhoods without grocery stores, subjecting them to consume processed, unhealthy foods that lead to diet related diseases. Many of the individuals served by Health in the Hood programs do not have transportation to get to a grocery store outside of their neighborhood. Participants in our programs have limited to no understanding of nutrition and exercise as a lifestyle practice. Many families we serve utilize government assistance programs including SNAP and WIC benefits. All Health in the Hood program participants live at or below the poverty line.
Where did this crisis come from? Can you briefly explain to our readers what brought us to this place?
There are a host of factors that caused food deserts and barriers to food access. Economic flux and gentrification often times alienate low-income neighborhoods. This leaves people in these communities with limited financial and/or transportation resources, disconnected from grocery stores with fresh food.
In fact, there is also a lack of information across the board (in low income and affluent communities) about healthy, clean eating.
Can you describe to our readers how your work is making an impact to address this crisis? Can you share some of the initiatives you are leading to help correct this issue?
Health in the Hood works to create equitable food access for all though urban farming and wellness. We transform vacant areas in underserved communities into vibrant edible gardens. Health in the Hood works to eliminate food insecurity in low-income neighborhoods that lack access to fresh food by building urban vegetable farms, distributing free healthy food, teaching nutrition, gardening and wellness, and creating sustainable local food ecosystems. All of the produce grown in Health in the Hood gardens is distributed for free to children and families, local food pantries, churches and community centers in food desert neighborhoods.
I am also proud to have been named one of the first changemakers as part of The Missing Ingredients Project by Triscuit, the brand’s purpose-driven effort to provide access to fresh fruits and veggies in food deserts. Through a $50,000 grant from TRISCUIT, we are piloting a new “Garden to Grocer” model that will expand access to fresh produce in more neighborhoods across south Florida.
Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?
There is absolutely nothing better than seeing our families empowered to take ownership of their own health. The gardens instill pride by beautifying and producing valuable product. Seeing the outcomes of this work for our families makes our work not even seem like work.
In your opinion, what should other business and civic leaders do to further address these problems? Can you please share your “5 Things That Need To Be Done To Address The Problem of People Having Limited Access to Healthy & Affordable Food Options”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
Access: Access is likely the most obvious barrier facing food deserts. If we can change access, we can transform lives. Price: Price is huge barrier for families living in food desert neighborhoods. Even if they can access a grocery store, they are unlikely to be able to afford the premium priced fresh fruits and veggies. Knowledge: Even if consumers living in food deserts can access and afford fresh food, there is often a barrier of how to use and prepare these fresh ingredients. If these ingredients have not been a part of individuals’ lives growing up, how can they be expected to know how to prepare and enjoy these foods? This is why at Health in the Good we host Healthy Living Workshops where we use our gardens as living classrooms. Change the narrative: We’ve got to start a new conversation around food access and sourcing. We have become so disconnected from where our food comes from. Once we start thinking of vacant land and vertical space, even counter tops, as places to grow our own food, we are literally planting the seeds of change. Grow Your Own: Be the change you want to see. Lead by example and grow some delicious food in the process.
Are there other leaders or organizations who have done good work to address food deserts? Can you tell us what they have done? What specifically impresses you about their work? Perhaps we can reach out to them to include them in this series.
I’m so impressed by Teens for Food Justice, an awesome advocacy and food justice program, and we love the nutrition education programs at Flippany. We also recently discovered a super cool app called Tangelo that connects people to real food.
If you had the power to influence legislation, are there laws that you would like to see introduced that might help you in your work?
To truly move the needle, we must make changes on the policy level. One starting point would be making the urban farming zoning process user friendly for community members.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I believe food justice is social justice, and food is the great equalizer. This is what the entire ideation, creation and service of Health in the Hood hinges on. Every Health in the Hood team member is deeply passionate about food justice and the role we personally play in connecting people to real food.
I would like to lead a movement to bring Health in the Hood vegetable gardens to every food desert in the country. It is overwhelmingly rewarding to empower people to grow their own food. When we hand a child a tomato seedling for the first time and teach them how to plant it, they are immediately enamored by the process. This moment of connection is what drives us.
Our passion is driven by the simplicity and effectiveness of the mission. By making healthy eating a reality for families in food deserts, we are lifting the veil on the hidden hungry, shining a light on food insecurity, and creating environments that support healthy choices.
One day, I hope this mission will be much larger than myself and Health in the Hood.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
I’d love to have lunch with Oprah! The depths of her wisdom and authenticity alone would be a life changing experience!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Our website and social media are great ways to stay in touch with us!
@healthinthehood
@the__fit__farmer
www.healthinthehood.org
My personal wellness platform www.ashawalker.com is a bridge between Health in the Hood and sharing wellness practices with a broader audience. Here you’ll find wellness tips from mediation to plant-based recipes, gardening tips and even a healthy cocktail recipe or two.
We are very active on social media — please follow us on Instagram and Twitter @HealthInTheHood. You can also learn how to get involved by checking out our website — https://www.healthinthehood.org/.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success. | https://medium.com/authority-magazine/food-deserts-asha-walker-of-health-in-the-hood-on-how-they-are-helping-to-address-the-problem-of-48cafec61686 | ['Martita Mestey'] | 2021-07-23 16:33:23.085000+00:00 | ['Social Impact'] |
How to deal with Underperformers | How to deal with Underperformers
Why your leadership skills determine people’s success
Setting goals is not uncommon in our working world. No matter if you drive a business or an organisation in the charity sector, goals are a common ground to develop your organisation in the right direction.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
When you set goals, of course, targets can be missed. This aspect of the working world is where the problems begin. Often, after the leadership team and one of their staff members talked about what to do to become better in the future, the relationship between employee and leadership person is far worse than it has been before. This result is not because you pointed out to a missed goal, but it is due to the way how you communicated with your team members.
The question is: how can we do better? | https://medium.com/leadership-magazine-by-niels-brabandt-nb-networks/how-to-deal-with-underperformers-2bb9f6980eda | ['Niels Brabandt'] | 2020-07-14 19:36:23.054000+00:00 | ['Appraisal', 'Goal Setting', 'Performance', 'Goals', 'Leadership'] |
Building Data Wrangling Zone using ksqlDB, kTable, kStream, and Kafka Connect | What is Data Wrangling?
Data Wrangling is the task of taking and standardizing disorganized or incomplete raw data so that it can be obtained, consolidated and analyzed easily. It also requires mapping from source to destination data fields. For example, data wrangling could target a sector, row, or column in a dataset and execute an action to generate the necessary performance, such as joining, parsing, cleaning, consolidating or filtering.
It helps improve data accessibility by converting it to make it consistent with the end system, as complex and intricate databases can obstruct data analysis and business processes. It has to be transformed and structured according to the specifications of the target system to make data available for the end-processes.
Data Wrangling Use-Cases
Real-time monitoring and real-time analytics
Online Data Integration
Materialized Cache
Streaming ETL pipeline
Event-Driven Microservices
Introducing ksqlDB as a platform component for handling Data Wrangling
KsqlDB is an event streaming database constructed for applications that deal with stream processing.
Events can be transformed in the form of tables (kTable) and streams (kStream).
On these tables/streams, SQL operations are applied to transform or aggregate information and push it into another Kafka topic.
KSQL operates on continuous transformations of queries that run continuously as new data passes through them in Kafka topics with data streams.
For each topic partition processed by a given ksqlDB server, Kafka Streams generate one RocksDB state store instance for aggregates and joins. Each instance of the RocksDB state store has a 50 MB memory overhead for its cache plus the data actually stored.
To prevent I/O operations, Kafka Streams/RocksDB attempts to hold the working set of a state store in memory for aggregates and joins. This takes more memory if there are several keys.
Setup
Zookeeper
bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh config/zookeeper.properties >> /dev/null &
Kafka
bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties >> /dev/null &
ksqlDB Server:
ksql_server.list
KSQL_LISTENERS=http://0.0.0.0:8088
KSQL_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=KAFKA_BROKER_IP:9092
KSQL_KSQL_LOGGING_PROCESSING_STREAM_AUTO_CREATE=true
KSQL_KSQL_LOGGING_PROCESSING_TOPIC_AUTO_CREATE=true
KSQL_KSQL_CONNECT_WORKER_CONFIG=/connect/connect.properties
KSQL_CONNECT_REST_ADVERTISED_HOST_NAME=PUBLIC_IP_KAFKA_INSTANCE
KSQL_CONNECT_GROUP_ID=ksql-connect-cluster
KSQL_CONNECT_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=KAFKA_BROKER_IP:9092
KSQL_CONNECT_KEY_CONVERTER=org.apache.kafka.connect.storage.StringConverter
KSQL_CONNECT_VALUE_CONVERTER=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter
KSQL_CONNECT_VALUE_CONVERTER_SCHEMAS_ENABLE=false
KSQL_CONNECT_CONFIG_STORAGE_TOPIC=ksql-connect-configs
KSQL_CONNECT_OFFSET_STORAGE_TOPIC=ksql-connect-offsets
KSQL_CONNECT_STATUS_STORAGE_TOPIC=ksql-connect-statuses
KSQL_CONNECT_CONFIG_STORAGE_REPLICATION_FACTOR=1
KSQL_CONNECT_OFFSET_STORAGE_REPLICATION_FACTOR=1
KSQL_CONNECT_STATUS_STORAGE_REPLICATION_FACTOR=1
KSQL_CONNECT_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/share/kafka/plugins
Server
docker run -it -p 8088:8088 --env-file ./ksql_server.list confluentinc/ksqldb-server:0.13.0
ksql CLI: This is a command-line utility that acts as an interface for the ksqlDB server and allows SQL operations to be executed interactively.
docker run -it confluentinc/ksqldb-cli:0.13.0 ksql http://KSQLDB_SERVER_IP.18:8088
What are kStream and kTable?
kStream
It is a structured but infinite series of events emitting out of a topic.
It is immutable and can be created by specifying the format of incoming events like DELIMITED (CSV), JSON, AVRO, etc.
Create Stream
create stream users_stream (name VARCHAR, countryCode VARCHAR) WITH (KAFKA_TOPIC='USERS', VALUE_FORMAT='JSON');
Select from Stream
select rowtime,* from user_stream emit changes;
kTable
The primary key is mandatory in kTable.
The events in kTable are updatable and can be deleted.
Create Table
create table countrytable (countrycode VARCHAR PRIMARY KEY, countryname VARCHAR) WITH (KAFKA_TOPIC='COUNTRY-CSV',VALUE_FORMAT='DELIMITED');
Select from Table
select * from countrytable where countrycode='GB' emit changes limit 1;
Type of Joins
Stream to Stream
CREATE STREAM s3 AS SELECT s1.c1, s2.c2 FROM s1 JOIN s2 WITHIN 5 MINUTES ON s1.c1 = s2.c1 EMIT CHANGES;
Stream to Table
CREATE STREAM s3 AS SELECT my_stream.c1, my_table.c2 FROM my_stream JOIN my_table ON s1.c1 = s2.c1 EMIT CHANGES;
Table to Table
SELECT M.ID, M.TITLE, M.RELEASE_YEAR, L.ACTOR_NAME FROM MOVIES M INNER JOIN LEAD_ACTOR L ON M.TITLE = L.TITLE EMIT CHANGES LIMIT 3;
Supported Join Combinations
|Name |Type |INNER |LEFT OUTER|FULL OUTER |
|-------------|------------|---------|----------|-------------|
|Stream-Stream|Windowed |Supported|Supported |Supported |
|Table-Table |Non-windowed|Supported|Supported |Supported |
|Stream-Table |Non-windowed|Supported|Supported |Not Supported|
Add-on features
Embedded Kafka connect
ksqlDB connects management takes the responsibility to read from and write to between topic and external data source.
This functionality is very helpful if you don’t want to write glue code to do it.
Download the preferred sink/source connector jar from Connectors.
Copy/Mount the connector jar in docker volume ‘/usr/share/kafka/plugins’, like ‘-v ./confluent-hub-components/debezium-debezium-connector-postgres:/usr/share/kafka/plugins/debezium-postgres’
Embedded connect has pre-installed plugins for Postgres.
CREATE SOURCE/SINK CONNECTOR `jdbc-connector` WITH(
"connector.class"='io.confluent.connect.jdbc.JdbcSourceConnector',
"connection.url"='jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/my.db',
"mode"='bulk',
"topic.prefix"='jdbc-',
"table.whitelist"='users',
"key"='username');
UDF (User Defined Functions) and UDAF (User Defined Aggregated Functions)
UDF
Extending ksql using its programming interface and create scalar functions.
For an input parameter return one output.
UDAF
For many inputs, rows return one output.
The state of input rows is preserved and aggregated output is returned.
UDF & UDAF are implemented as custom jars.
Jars copied to ‘ext’ directory of the KSQL server.
@UdfDescription(name = "SIMPLE_INTEREST", description = "Return simple interest calculated")
public class SimpleInterest {
@Udf(description = "Given principal, rate of interest and time return simple interest")
public double simple_interest(final double principal, final double rate, final int time){
...
...
}
}
KSQL Vs SparkSQL
A quick comparison between SparkSQL and KSQL
Final Words
Why did I choose ksqlDB for data wrangling when there are other tools like Spark already present?
Spark has been a battle-tested tool for many years in the field of Data Streaming, especially working with Kafka. But there is a cost associated with it, which has been observed to be bear by every project.
As Spark is natively written in scala, all its latest releases and bug fixes first appear in scala because of Spark being its first-class citizen.
The learning curve of scala is considered high as compared to other supported languages.
Teams may opt for other supported languages like Python, Java, R for Spark development. That will not only implicitly bring trans-compilation delays in building and deploying Spark jobs, but also may experience delays in the release of new features and bug fixes.
Going cloud-native for setting up spark cluster over managed services like Gluu, EMR (Elastic Map Reduce) can be super expensive as they only allow sequential execution of Spark jobs. Parallel execution expects a completely new cluster to be provisioned.
Dependency resolution is one of the other challenges, where teams spend a good amount of time. It gets even more difficult where the dependency management repository is outside the firewall periphery of the organization.
Developers need to focus not only on the core data streaming logic, but also on clean coding practices, unit tests, code coverage, CI/CD, etc.
KSQL (once deployed), only expects developers to understand SQL.
It exposes the RESTful interface to accept updates in streaming queries in SQL format.
Can be deployed on any container orchestration platform with horizontally scaled instances.
Natively supports Kafka, and provides embedded Kafka connect to ship data from/to multiple data sources.
Extensions to UDF (User Defined Functions), to implement complicated transformation logic.
Visit the link to get access to full scripts | https://medium.com/engineered-publicis-sapient/building-data-wrangling-zone-using-ksqldb-ktable-kstream-and-kafka-connect-646b6ef2371c | ['Rajat Nigam'] | 2021-02-19 11:20:29.402000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Technology', 'Cloud', 'Data', 'Kafka'] |
Quitting Colour Photography | Quitting Colour Photography
Back when I was a wedding photographer, I would sit editing images for hours and hours. Eventually, I would entice my girlfriend into my office with a cup of tea so she could cast her eye over my edits as a final check before they were uploaded to a gallery and fired across to the happy couple. Without fail the most common feedback I received (apart from horizons not being quite straight!) was that there were just too many black and white images. Next came the inevitable debate where I fought for the black and white pictures, and she explained that, though I may love black and white, my clients may not want so many of their memories in mono. Now, of course, there are wedding photographers out there who do shoot entirely in black and white but, wanting to appeal to a broader market, this was not me.
But now I am no longer a wedding photographer.
And I love black and white photography.
So that’s what I’ve been shooting in 2020.
(please note these are my personal experiences working with black and white, your mileage may vary, other colours are available.)
By removing the distraction of colour, I can focus on other more interesting (for me) factors such as texture, tone and contrast. Sure these things matter when shooting colour photography but often I find that colour trumps all and the other factors become secondary components of a colour image.
Even when I was a wedding photographer and I knew that eventually my images would be converted to colour I would always shoot RAW with the Fujifilm ACROS preview on in the EVF because it made me think more about light which is, after all, the absolute keystone of photography! You just can’t get away with a flat image in black and white as much as you might be able to with a colour image because light and tone is all you have to distinguish parts of a photograph. No longer could I rely on a pop of colour to save an image which wasn’t that interesting. I also found that seeing the scene in black and white before I even placed my finger on the shutter button forced me to think more about the composition. Now I feel that by removing the distraction of colour I can focus on other more interesting (for me) factors such as texture, tone and contrast. Now, of course, these things matter when shooting colour photography but often I find that colour trumps all and the other factors become secondary components of a colour image.
In general, I found that when you have fewer tools in your belt, you make sure that you use the ones you do have more effectively!
I also believe that forcing limitations on yourself can lead to better work. There is such a thing as the “paralysis of choice” wherein there are so many possibilities, and options that we struggle to create at all or what we do create does not live up to our true capabilities. Taking away some of those options often leads to a more freeing experience. In this example, by taking away colour, I feel a bit freer to explore different light and composition.
As a side note to the black and white love — limitation doesn’t just end there! You can try limiting yourself to a set focal length. Start a project with a niche subject. Shoot only in your house. By taking away the possibilities, we are forced to get more creative!
Finally, and maybe this really is down to what I’m going to call “The 2020 Experience”, I love the fact that black and white photography gives me a way to look at the world as nobody sees it, it’s a step away from reality (and who wouldn’t want to take a few steps away from reality in 2020). For many, photography is a way to document reality as it was in the moment they squeezed the shutter button, but over the years I have become less interested in documentary photography, and I am more interested in trying to create beautiful images with beautiful light. (Maybe one day I’ll come close to this goal!)
So that’s why I have quit colour photography. That’s not to say I won’t have a photo fling with colour again in the future, but for now black and white is the way! | https://medium.com/photo-dojo/quitting-colour-photography-ca20683e6810 | ['Bradley Allen'] | 2020-12-18 10:56:47.241000+00:00 | ['Photos', 'Art', 'Creative Process', 'Creativity', 'Photography'] |
Lorde’s Artistry is Not Defined By Her Sadness | In early 2013, I received a Facebook message from my friend that said “you might like this song” and a YouTube link. We were both fifteen year olds who thought ourselves as fans of “indie music”, which just meant we knew who Lana Del Rey and MGMT were. It wasn’t unusual for her to give me music suggestions, stuff I could download via youtube-mp3.com and transfer to my iPod classic. Neither the title track or the artist name were familiar to me, so I had no idea what to expect.
The song was Royals by Lorde.
I instantly fell in love, and quickly located the rest of The Love Club EP to add to my library. Her music became the soundtrack to my tenth grade, and she was virtually all I listened to for the next few months. As an awkward teenager living in Australia (and not one of the glamorous parts either), I connected with her music in a way I never had before. Lorde’s experiences and feelings felt so similar to my own, and it felt like she was a friend.
This feeling was strengthened when I was lucky enough to see her live shortly after the release of Pure Heroine — one of her first Australian shows, on a $35 ticket I got for my 16th birthday, at a venue that could only fit about two thousand people. She had yet to find her bravado, so to speak, and was a quiet girl who hid behind her long hair and the long black sleeves that defined her style in the beginning. And yet, she warmed up to us as the night went on, laughing and talking with the crowd (a friend I’d made on the night yelled to “Drink that water, Lorde!” during a break, to which she giggled and replied “I will.”) She knew that her audience was filled with people around her own age, going through the same things, who could probably understand her disillusionment with the grandiose ideas of wealth and America better than most — Australia and New Zealand are neighbours, after all. It wasn’t the most exciting or theatrical concert I’d ever been to, but there was something special about spending that night with her before her career reached unimaginable heights.
Flash forward a little bit. It is now 2017. I am nineteen and in my first year of university. The past few years have not been kind to me, and I was now living in an unfamiliar city, completely alone for the first time in my life (three older brothers makes for a…loud childhood.) I was recently coming to terms with the realisation that young adulthood isn’t all I made it out to be, the kind of thing you can’t process until you reach it. I don’t miss high school by any means, but my early twenties have been lonely and confusing in their own kind of way, something I was beginning to see in my final year of being a teenager.
As if by some greater power or a contractually obligated release, 2017 was also the year that Lorde came out with Melodrama. It was a departure from the slow, gentle thump of Pure Heroine, which had been a snapshot of being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen; an expression of desire to be invited to the party but turning your nose up at it in faux distaste, because you’re meant to be so much cooler than that. Melodrama was louder and more vibrant, a diary of finally getting invited to the party right after your heart breaks in two, and losing yourself to the sound and the lights so you don’t have to think about your failed relationship or what tomorrow will bring. In short, it was the album that I so desperately needed for that stage of my life, and I welcomed it with open arms.
Once again, Lorde’s music defined my experiences for the next few years. I had my heart broken and I broke some myself, I laughed loudly while drunk at parties and reeked of vomit the next day when cleaning up plastic cups, I fell in love with strangers and out of love with friends, I replayed my past over and over again but looked away from my future, I found myself getting lost in the bright lights in my head and in the world around me, so they could temporarily blind me from all the things that I didn’t want to see. Melodrama was the friend that lit your cigarettes and encouraged you to do tequila shots but held your hair back and comforted you when you were throwing up in the bathroom later, crying about how unloveable you were.
Lorde performing at the Sydney Opera House for Melodrama Dance
After finishing the tour for her sophomore album, Lorde disappeared from the public eye. She wiped her social media accounts, her website no longer updated, and she retreated to New Zealand, where she would be far less likely to be photographed on the street. The party was over, and it was time for everyone to go home until our hostess welcomed us back.
That invitation came a week ago, in the form of an email (her preferred method of communication with fans) which announced her upcoming album, Solar Power, and the lead single of the same name.
In her two year absence from our lives, there was a lot of talk about what Lorde would give us when she came back. Another collection of songs about the trials and tribulations of youth? Another album about crying in the taxi and blowing all our friendships to sit in hell with that one special someone? People wanted Lorde to give us another set of songs to cry to, to reach through the speakers and hold our hand as we navigated adulthood.
Solar Power was not that. It was a departure from her usual melancholy music, a song that sounded more like Loaded by Primal Scream than anything Joni Mitchell or Lana Del Rey ever put out. Solar Power is about leaving the sadness behind, turning away from the digital world, and embracing the simple pleasures of surf, sand, and sun.
Lorde in the music video for Solar Power
As I write this, I’m sitting on my bed in a sweater and coat, buried underneath an electric blanket. My cat, a grumpy old woman that is 80% fur, is cuddled under the quilt with me. My constant companions are my annual winter cough and the candles I have lit at all times. I’m very much caught up in the kind of winter that Lorde declares that she “can’t stand,” the kind of winter that I personally love. I’ve never enjoyed summer, so it’s hard for me to understand the passion Lorde has for the season in Solar Power. But every time I listen to the song, I’m filled with a desire to run to the beach and wait for the UV rays to burn through the clouds and redden my cheeks. It was different from what we were used to, but I loved it all the same, as I had done with every other Lorde release since I first discovered her, eight years ago.
So it was surprising to me that a lot of people didn’t feel the same way about it. It wasn’t what people were expecting, but more importantly, it wasn’t what they had wanted. Wasn’t Lorde supposed to give us our sad girl anthems? Wasn’t she supposed to give us music to cry to? Wasn’t she supposed to tell us how to deal with the messiness of your early to mid twenties? This isn’t what we spent years waiting for! Doesn’t Lorde know that we can’t enjoy the warmth of the sun because we’re too sad and confused to do anything except cry?
I could argue that it’s just the first song from the album, and that we have no idea what lies ahead. I could argue that Lorde’s previous emails to us have spoken about grief and her time in Antarctica, and that the rest of the album might reflect those better. I could argue that she’s still working with Jack Antonoff, who produced all the heart-wrenching tracks on Melodrama that people love so much.
Except…it doesn’t matter if all those things are true or not. Because Lorde’s talent is not determined by the mood of her music. The entire Solar Power album could feel exactly like the titular track, and it wouldn’t make Lorde any less talented or any less connected with her fans than she was when she released Melodrama.
And the expectation that she’s supposed to release sad music for twenty-somethings to cry to is an incredibly bizarre one.
Artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski have spoken about their frustration with this idea of the “sad indie girl persona.” This myth that because their songs are personal, they should be about the more upsetting and difficult times in their lives. Because feelings of grief and anger and heartbreak are easier to relate to than songs of hope and joy and love, and that’s what we want from female singer-songwriters. If they’re going to show us their diaries, then it needs to be the juiciest parts, the ones that speak the most to our experiences.
It’s a reflection of an unfortunately popular mindset that I see a lot in online spaces now, that healing and growing is unfair, that only negative emotions are valid, that we’re all supposed to wallow in our misery together because if one person can’t be happy, then no one can. If artists want us to connect to their work, then they either need to be sad or they need to fake being sad, because that’s their appeal. Your personal experiences only matter if they’re similar to our personal experiences.
And I have to wonder if these people actually enjoy the artist as a person and a creator, or if they enjoy them because they’re an extension of themselves. Because if you only see their value when they’re creating stuff that reflects you…then maybe it’s time to throw in the towel, instead of expecting the artist to either continue to suffer or warp their story for your sake.
I don’t relate to Solar Power the way I did with Royals or Green Light, but I certainly don’t feel any less connected to Lorde because of it. The song is hopeful and honest and human in a way I know Lorde to be, and it doesn’t devalue her past work. Maybe it even strengthens it.
Maybe it’s a continuation of the narrative of Pure Heroine and Melodrama, about where you go the morning after the party you used to long to be invited to. When you’re left with your mistakes and your regrets, and you can so clearly see the hearts you’ve broken and the scars of your unhealthy coping mechanisms. And you know that you can either continue down that path of sadness, let it swallow you whole and overtake you. Or you can dust yourself off, grab the hands of the friends you still have, and dance around in the sun as you finally begin to think that maybe, just maybe, your future can be bright and happy, as long as you let it.
Or maybe Lorde didn’t mean any of that, and Solar Power has no deeper meaning, and it really is just a fun song about getting high on the beach with your friends. As someone who spent their New Year’s Eve doing exactly that, she has my full support. And even if I’d spent NYE curled up in my bed, alone and sober and asleep by 8pm, she’d still have my full support. Because I fell in love with her music all those years ago because there was something so human about it, and there still is. That hasn’t gone away because the sadness has.
Artists want to connect with audiences, want to release something that other people can relate to, want to make their fans feel seen and heard. But this expectation that this connection should come at the expense of their own well-being and desires is a selfish one. Lorde does not exist to create songs for young adults to feel depressed over. She is simply an artist who wants to create stories inspired by what she’s been through, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, and take her fans on a journey. And if that journey is taking her up towards the sun, to something more happy and freeing, then all the more power to her.
I know that I won’t be getting off this ride. | https://medium.com/@locallesbian/lordes-artistry-is-not-defined-by-her-sadness-938e21a062d3 | [] | 2021-06-18 03:52:46.227000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Lorde', 'Solar Power'] |
Astounding Camping Trips by Gateway Global | Pack your travel bags to wander to the unknown places without much ado. Follow the callings of the forests, lakes, mountains, or just the long-stretched road. Refresh and re-embark upon the journey to re-connect with yourself. Let the wind sweep the hair and loosen those unknown taut knots while cosying up in the camps.
Visit Gateway Global website for best flight tickets for Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. The reserve offers a variety of opportunities for outback camping experiences. Wander amongst 570 species of birds and become the shutterbug. Witness the great migration of animals and birds ranging from zebras, gazelle, and wild beasts. Sprawl amid vast landscapes while enjoying the chirping of birds and cawing of animals. Stroll in the grasslands, acacia trees and wake up to the stunning sunrise. Enjoy the stay while glamping or in a budget-friendly tent, the wonders of nature will leave you mesmerized and feeling special.
Set a camp in the Kipahulu rainforest or next to Ohe’s Pools in Haleakala National Park, Hawaii. Gaze at the twinkling stars and clear skies away from the city life and dip in the pool as per heart’s desire. The choices are endless to explore. Hiking lovers can embark upon Haleakala Volcano to witness the striking and fresh sunrise and feel the warmth of the rays. Trek to the Waimoku Falls and feel the incredible splatter of water. Also, dipping in the waterfall is as refreshing as it gets.
Peg the camp in the lush forest in Southern Brittany, France, into the bend in the River L’Elle. Water enthusiasts can go canoeing and kayaking, feel close to the water and water world, and catch their dinner, i.e., salmon fish or a trout. Adventure enthusiasts can gallop on a horse, zip-line, paintball, or mountain bike. The possibilities are infinite and are calling just like Gateway Global’s affordable hotel and flight offers available.
Sleep with the wilderness in the scenic landscape in The Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica. This biologically diverse national park has numerous things to offer. Get a perfect suntan on deserted beaches, bathe in idyllic waterfalls and gaze at the ocean views from the safety of the tent. Gape in awe at howler monkeys, pumas, sloths, and even tiger herons. Witness your safari from the tent and enjoy being a part of the magical experience.
Filled with the desire to unplug from the world, camping is satisfying and worth every moment. Gateway Global fathoms the requirements and stitches the travel plans as per your needs. Not leaving anything to chance, pack your travel essential to ensure smooth and effortless trip. Why look further when Gateway Global is here! | https://medium.com/@gatewayglobaluk/astounding-camping-trips-by-gateway-global-39b65c9e4238 | ['Gateway Global'] | 2021-12-16 05:50:08.623000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Hotel', 'Flight'] |
Blood Drinker | Another glass of wine. Scratch that. Make it blood. Another glass overflowing with blood. Though pain needs to be pulsating through it as if it were its own wrathful taskmaster, churning into oblivion. It needs to be alive you see. I don’t want dead blood that has been reduced to a mere chemical composition of random chance. No. It has to be alive. It has to be evolving. It has to still be in the game.
Well, now that we have that squared away, let me explain to you what else I am doing. Drinking blood by itself during the late hours of the night is by no means a waste of time, but there is so much more to couple the act with in order to arrive at an even more meaningful destination. Like matching a fine wine with the perfect morsel of cheese or chocolate. This too has its companions that elevate its essence. The irony of life and death has plenty of nose, though my sense of smell has grown dull with age.
So, what can one do whilst enjoying a nice glass of freshly squeezed blood, still teeming with life? Well, write of course! Not just any train of gibberish, though there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. I find it to be a lot more enjoyable to write down a very particular order of words. Their structure gives them so much power in fact, that you could use the scroll to delegate actions to be carried out here in the real world. Yes, now we’re talking! I’m referring to Demonology if you haven’t caught on by now. But be careful! This is not something you want to fuck around with. One wrong turn and you’ll be the one taking the orders, and I’m not talking about some kinky bondage crap either. You’ll be taking real orders. The kind that will make your skin shiver off of your body, leaving behind a glistening pulp (that I would not mind drinking, as a side note). It takes talent and experience to write these words in the order in which they were meant to be. Without order, there’s chaos. Chaos is the hot glue that’s needed as the raw material, the heart of the matter. Think of the application of chaos like the opening at the tip of a volcano. Make the tip too small and it’ll clog the essential flow. Make it too wide, and you’ve now destroyed the landscape, at least for now. It needs to be the perfect size, a perfect spout, to permit its vehemence to be flung out into the world like molten excrement.
Language matters too. It needs to be a language which the demons are familiar with. You wouldn’t go to Mumbai and start speaking Korean to everyone, expecting them to understand you, would you? Same principle applies here. Demons don’t put in a lot of effort into learning new languages. If there’s ever a language you’d think worthy of picking up, it is ancient Sumerian my friend. The language of commands. Wouldn’t you like to command a cute little demon from the shimmering depth of the underworld? Well, you won’t. Not without a few things anyway. First, you need to be appetizing to those you’d call upon. Relax, I’m not saying that you should preheat the oven to 375, lather yourself in some unsalted butter, and season yourself freely with various herbs (don’t forget thyme)! I’m saying that you need to possess something, an aura that would be appealing to these ancient creatures. Creatures that have walked the earth many times longer than your pathetically short lifespan, I might add! There’s this misconception that demons are ugly, evil creatures that want nothing but suffering. Wrong again, I’m afraid. Demons thrive off of the light, of pure energy, like how a moth is drawn to an electric spark. They don’t want desolation. They don’t willfully seek out dead ends which won’t keep their interest. Imagine being alive for millennia. Since the beginning of time itself. Think of how difficult it would be to keep your interest in anything anymore. Things you loved a hundred, thousand, million years ago, no longer entertain you simply because of time’s unrelenting tick forward into yet another year. So, rule number one, demons absolutely loathe dullness.
Second rule is all about confidence. You must carry yourself like a leader, even if you have no clue what the fuck you are talking about. Confidence sparks interest and interest sparks control through a following.
Third rule is unrelenting dominion. You are the master! Don’t forget it, or they’ll remind you painfully by flipping the table on you so fast, your head will spin. This isn’t like the blue genie from Aladdin. There are no “rules” that tie the demons down. The spell is not a leash. The spell is an invocation, that’s it. Once your guest shows up, it’s your job to be a good host. It’s not enough to only be a good host, you need to be the right host. Do a good job and you’ll have damnation twisting and turning at your fingertips like the most gorgeous belly dancer you’ve ever seen.
Fourth rule is about demonic etiquette. Always, and I mean always, provide your demonic guest with a fresh, warm pitcher of untainted blood. Untainted, meaning it has not touched another’s lips. Give them the courtesy and pure taste of what our middle plane has to offer. Your guest will have walked the earth before, but the joys and sensory stimulation that make up our windy world may not be so easy to recollect after all these years. If the blood came from a fearful individual, that is always a bonus. I know it sounds vulgar and brutal, but as I already stated, these creatures need as much stimulation as possible to get even the slightest reaction; like visiting your elderly grandma at the nursing home, moments before she’s about to expire.
I think it’s time for a disclaimer, what do you think? A wise man named Åkerfeldt once urged me to never forget the advice for soul sacrifice. Don’t place your soul amongst the bargaining chips for the deal you are about to make, even if you know what you’re doing and you’re a veteran like me. It can all go south very quickly like any form of gambling can, and it won’t be under your control. Demons know how to play you, and they will. They’ll hustle you ’til you’re on your knees begging for them to leave. If you’re in this situation, then you’ve disregarded the disclaimer and are now their property. Always remember, that they’ve walked this earth before your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-so on and so forth-great grandpa emerged crying from the unpleasant, tubular ride out of his mother’s vagina. What are we talking about again? Wine? Blood? What’re we drinking? I guess they are both blood in a way, right?
The fifth rule, we have now completed the pentagram, is all about relaxation and inquiry. Keep calm, know what you’re asking for, simple right? No, it ain’t. Do not call on a demon without knowing exactly what you are asking for. Here’s an example: A man, let’s call him Johnny, recently went through a terrible breakup with his girlfriend. He was sure that she was the one, yet she slipped through his fingers like too much lotion during…never mind. Now Johnny here, somehow knows how to summon demons (maybe he read this story through a random click). He follows the rules I laid out earlier, and his demon appears at the dinner table like the protagonist of an Elizabethan film, after the men went hunting for a stag and the women talked about how to curl their hideous hair; no one mentions how the stag was cooked or who cooked it. Those fuckin’ servants deserve a raise in those films in my opinion, but I digress. Johnny is a leader, he’s domineering and has his jug of blood, warm and fresh from the still throbbing aorta. He commands the demon to kill his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s new boyfriend, whom he understandably loathes, and it’s happily ever after right? Wrong. The demon crawls across the dinner table and bites Johnny’s head off with one, perfected through the centuries, bite. What did Johnny do wrong? He followed my rules. He played the part, perfectly. He added passion to the encounter and made sure that his guest was well fed.
See, it wasn’t so much the act of doing what he did. It was what he asked for. Why should the demon care about killing two people it’s never met before? Jonny presented the deal from Johnny’s perspective. What he needed to do was present it from the demon’s perspective. I can’t repeat myself enough on this one crucial fucking point. Pay attention. Why would an entity that is millennia upon millennia old give a shit about two measly humans? It wouldn’t. If you’re gonna invite the hungriest of bloodsucking, used car salesmen to your table, you better make it worth their while. How can you do that? You can’t. Goodbye. Just kidding come back!
Give them something in return. No, not your soul! Hint, you’re already givin’ it. Sign over the judgement. The judgement now. The nine to five judgment of pretension, every day, every year. Again, just kidding, the demon doesn’t want that bullshit, lingering on its palate like a gobstopper that won’t stop! Nah man, think of the best time in your life. Like the happiest moment you can think of. You got it? What is it? Prom? First blowjob? First time you were noticed by the many? Okay hold that idea…Get the pitcher…Get the sword. And now, the realization. You my friend are it. C’mon, you think I’d write a manual like this? You are the final ingredient: a hopeful woman or man, ready to enter the world of controlling the most disgusting creatures we can think of. The fear is now settling into your eyes like an unwanted tenant, always late with the rent. You realize that you’re strapped to the chair and that the paralytic I injected you with is now slowly wearing off, though not enough for you to do something. And with each cyclical increase of your heart rate, your aorta shows itself more easily through your paper-thin skin. What’s wrong with this you may ask? Why did I do this to you? Well, the education system already taught you how to think: something is right and something is wrong. They just didn’t teach you this shit. Shit it is. Just fucking please, do not gamble your soul…No one wants that appendage…Now, hold that fear. You may feel a slight pinch. Who knows, if you keep coughing and pushing the oxygen to your dying brain, you may yet be able to meet the demon before the darkness takes you to the Jackal, who’ll weigh your heart. Don’t worry, I won’t cut it up ’til after your judgment. How’re you feeling? Lighter than a feather I hope… | https://medium.com/@denizcan-onen/blood-drinker-c54287dd12f1 | ['Denizcan Onen'] | 2020-12-13 09:16:01.449000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Thriller', 'Stephen King', 'Scary', 'Horror'] |
Focal Arche headphone DAC/amp review: It doesn’t get much better than this | Focal Arche headphone DAC/amp review: It doesn’t get much better than this Amanda Jan 10·10 min read
It’s been less than 10 years since Focal entered the headphone market, but in that short time, the company has established itself as one of the preeminent makers of ultra-high-fidelity cans. TechHive has reviewed four models so far—the Clear, Elegia, Radiance, and Stellia—and all were judged to be excellent, though they will set you back quite a pretty penny.
To round out its headphone-related portfolio, Focal recently introduced the Arche DAC/headphone amp. Does it occupy the same rarefied heights of performance as the company’s cans? Is it a match for the glorious Stellia (which I had on hand for this review)? The answer is a resounding yes!
Mentioned in this article Focal Clear Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $1,499.00See it If you can pull the trigger before the end of 2020, and you already own a Focal Clear, Stellia, or Utopia headphone, Focal will give you a $1,000 voucher that you can apply to your Arche purchase. You’ll find more details on that at the end of this review.
[ Further reading: The best headphones you can buy ]FeaturesThe Arche is a solid brick measuring 7.8 x 2.5 x 11.4 inches (WxHxD) and weighing a hefty 10.25 pounds—the build quality is obviously of the highest order. Inside, the electronics are no less impressive. The DAC (digital-to-analog converter) is an AK4490 from Asahi Kasei Microdevices that provides two channels of conversion for PCM up to 768kHz at 32 bits and DSD up to 11.2MHz (aka DSD256). The Arche’s inputs, however, have somewhat lower limits, which I’ll discuss shortly.
Focal The Focal Arche is a solid brick of high-end electronics.
One feature that’s missing is the ability to decode MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) files. MQA is a lossless encoding scheme developed by Meridian that reduces the size and bandwidth requirements of high-resolution audio files. MQA titles from a provider such as Tidal must be decoded before being sent to the Arche.
True to its audiophile aspirations, the amplifier section is a completely dual-mono, pure Class A, fully balanced design that provides up to 1 watt/channel at 1 kHz for headphones with an input impedance of less than 32 ohms. The amp can drive impedances from 16 to 600 ohms with a frequency response from 10Hz to 100kHz, THD less than 0.001%, and signal-to-noise ratio greater than 116dB at 32 ohms. Those are some seriously impressive specs!
Interestingly, the Arche offers several presets that tailor the amp in various ways. For example, there are presets that match the impedance of the amp to the impedance of five Focal high-end headphones—Clear, Elear, Elegia, Stellia, and Utopia. In addition, there are two additional presets: Voltage and Hybrid. As you might expect, the Voltage setting puts the amp in voltage mode, while the Hybrid setting is a combination of voltage- and current-mode amplification. According to the company, the Voltage setting is designed to sound tube-like, while Hybrid is supposed to provide more of a solid-state sound.
On the back panel are three digital-audio inputs—coax and optical Toslink S/PDIF and a USB-B port—along with a pair of unbalanced RCA analog-audio inputs. Also on the back are a pair of balanced XLR outputs and a pair of unbalanced RCA outputs, which let you use the Arche as a standalone DAC in a 2-channel audio system. Rounding out the back panel is a USB-A connector that is used to update the firmware, a power on/off switch, and an AC power-cord receptacle.
Focal The front panel (top) includes a balanced 4-pin headphone output and unbalanced 1/4-inch headphone out, display, and a multifunction knob for volume control and menu selection. The back panel holds (L-R): USB-A port for firmware updates, USB-B input for digital audio, coax and optical digital-audio inputs, RCA stereo analog-audio input, stereo XLR balanced outputs, and stereo unbalanced RCA outputs.
The coax and optical inputs are limited to PCM digital-audio resolutions up to 192kHz at 24 bits. I tried to find out the maximum PCM resolution of the USB input, but Focal did not respond to this question by the time this review was due. DSD can be accepted only by the USB input. In all cases, the digital-audio signal is converted to 384kHz/32-bit PCM internally.
Mentioned in this article Focal Elegia Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $899.00See it The front panel has a center-mounted electroluminescent (EL) display with a large multifunction knob to its right and two headphone outputs to its left. In its default mode, the display shows the volume setting and selected input, while the knob adjusts the volume. When you adjust the volume, the display also reveals the gain setting (low or high) and the PCM sample rate of the incoming signal. Press the knob twice to display the main menu, turn the knob to select the parameter you want to tweak, and press the knob to select that parameter.
Actually, there are two pages of parameters. The first page includes input selection, gain (low/high), phase (normal/reverse), and amplifier (which lets you select an amplifier preset). The second menu page lets you control the brightness of the display, enable or disable sleep mode after a period of inactivity, reset the unit to factory condition, and display the firmware version and serial number of the unit.
The two headphone outputs include a standard 1/4-inch unbalanced output and a 4-pin balanced XLR output to use with the corresponding cable included with Focal’s headphones. When I reviewed the Stellia, I assumed the connection to each earcup was not balanced because the connector to the earcup has only two conductors, which my contact confirmed. At that time, it didn’t really matter, since I was using the unbalanced cable anyway.
Focal The Arche comes with a solid-aluminum headphone stand that lets you hang your cans with the amp (the Stellia are featured here).
With the Arche, however, I would use the 4-pin balanced cable, so I wanted to verify that the headphone itself does not have balanced internal wiring. This time, the company said the internal wiring is, in fact, balanced. Wait, what? I finally got the story straight after talking with the Focal product manager.
With that 4-pin cable, two of the pins carry the positive and negative signals for the left channel and the other two pins carry the positive and negative signals for the right channel. The two conductors on the connectors for each earcup convey the positive and negative signals for that channel to opposite ends of the voice coil, which is the definition of a balanced configuration. By contrast, in an unbalanced connection, the voice coil is driven only by the positive signal; the negative ends of both voice coils are tied together and to a common ground.
One nice touch is the solid-aluminum headphone stand that comes with the Arche. You insert it into one of the slots on the top of the unit, and you can hang your headphones on it so they don’t get lost.
Connection, Settings, CablesI started by connecting the Stellia headphone to the Arche using the 4-pin XLR cable. Next, I connected my iPhone XS to the Arche’s USB input using a Lightning-to-USB camera adaptor and a USB-A-to-USB-B cable. When I turned on the Arche, the phone reported that the device requires too much power and wouldn’t connect. Why would the Arche require any power at all? It’s plugged into an AC wall socket.
When I asked Focal about this, they said this is a known issue with some DAC/amps, though they are not sure why it happens. They recommend using the Apple Lightning-to-USB 3 camera adaptor, which has a separate Lightning port that you can connect to power. This is pretty kludgy, and I doubt that many people will use the Arche with their iPhone anyway.
Mentioned in this article Focal Radiance Read TechHive's review$1,290.00MSRP $1,290.00See iton Headphones.com So, I connected the Arche to my iMac via USB and played tracks from the Tidal Master library using the Tidal app, which worked fine. During my initial listening, I tried different amp presets, but I heard virtually no difference at all. The Clear preset might have been just a tad brighter than the others, but the difference was so tiny that it could easily be dismissed. I suspect it would make a bigger difference with headphones that have a much higher impedance.
I also tried the Voltage and Hybrid settings. The Voltage setting was a bit louder and richer, and the sound was slightly more present. I ended up sticking with the Stellia preset for most of my listening, but I could definitely recognize how the Voltage setting might be appealing.
In addition, I tried the low and high gain settings. As expected, they sounded the same except for level; I could easily match the perceived level at both settings with the volume knob. I was happy to discover that the Arche comes out of sleep mode with the volume set to 20, no matter what the level was when it went to sleep, which is great to avoid unpleasant surprises.
My last comparison was between the balanced and unbalanced cables. Again, the difference was very minor. The balanced connection sounded a bit more open and present, but not by much. Still, I recommend using it with the Arche.
Focal The Focal Arche DAC/amp is an elegant bit of kit.
Music timeIt’s December as I write this, so I started with Jacob Collier’s new single, “The Christmas Song.” This is a rich, dense, a cappella arrangement that’s classic Collier with just a bit of synth bells and a melodica solo. It exhibits a wide pitch and dynamic range, and the Arche rendered everything beautifully. The lead vocal was entirely natural, and the backing vocals were perfectly balanced in a clear, open presentation.
I’m a big fan of Donald Fagen, co-founder of Steely Dan, so I cued up the title track from his 2006 solo album Morph the Cat. It starts with a low bass line, which sounded deep and rich from the Arche. The vocals, horns, guitar, electric piano, and drums were similarly exquisite—well-balanced with superb imaging.
Mentioned in this article Focal Stellia Read TechHive's reviewSee it For some relatively out-there jazz, I listened to “Autumn Pleiades” from Dimensional Stardust by Rob Mazurek and Exploding Star Orchestra. This piece is in the musical form of a canon played by a large jazz orchestra, slowly building by adding instruments and melodic variations over a repeating bass line and harmonic progression. All instruments were clearly delineated, yet they formed a cohesive whole in a clean, open sound stage.
Solo piano is always a challenge for any audio system, so I listened to “Over the Rainbow” from Dave Brubeck’s album Lullabies. The sound of the piano was rich, well-balanced, and open with no hint of congestion.
One of my favorite discoveries this year is “Lonely Alone” from the album Threads by Sheryl Crow. On many of the tracks, she’s joined by famous singers—in this case, Willie Nelson. It’s an amazing mix, deep and immersive, almost as if it’s in surround. The vocals by Crow and Nelson were entirely natural and right up front, while the rest of the instruments, including deep bass, guitar, brush drums, organ, and harmonica, were clearly delineated within a wonderfully cohesive whole. This is how to mix a country song!
Focal You can dock the included headphone rest to the top of the Focal Arche AC/amplifier.
And now for something completely different: “Scuba Scuba” from Underwater Sunlight by Tangerine Dream. This rhythmic ambient track is almost entirely electronic with a wide frequency range and lots of stereo effects. The Arche rendered it all beautifully: clean, clear, and open.
For some classical music, I listened to the first movement of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Mandolins in G Major as performed by Avi Avital, Alon Sariel, and the Venice Baroque Orchestra on Art of the Mandolin. As I had come to expect, the sound was clean and open; I could hear each mandolin clearly along with each section of the orchestra. Even the super-low notes from the theorbo came through beautifully.
Finally, I cued up “The Great Gate of Kiev” from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as orchestrated by Ravel and performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Simon Rattle. This piece has wide dynamic range from super-quiet passages to a crashing finale, and I could hear each section and solo instrument clearly. I was surprised, however, that the overall sound was a bit restrained—not veiled or congested, just not as present as I had heard on other tracks.
I wondered if it was the recording, so I played another big orchestral favorite, “Pines of the Appian Way” from Respighi’s Pines of Rome as performed by Filharmonica della Scala under Riccardo Chailly. Much better! The overall sound was more present and unrestrained, and the almost subterranean bass drum came through beautifully.
Bottom lineThe Arche is a worthy companion for any of Focal’s high-end headphones as well as just about any headphones you care to use with it. Its sound quality is impeccable: clean, clear, open, and utterly neutral. Every track I played sounded completely natural with no congestion, wide dynamic range, and effortless reproduction throughout the entire audible frequency spectrum.
The feature set is equally impressive. It offers impedance-matching presets for Focal’s headphones along with other settings to optimize the output for a wide range of cans and a variety of inputs and outputs. It can even act as a standalone, fully balanced DAC for speaker-based 2-channel audio systems. The only thing missing is MQA decoding.
As you might expect, all that capability and performance doesn’t come cheap: The Arche’s list price is a whopping $2,490. But if you’re thinking about investing in one of Focal’s high-end headphones and a comparable headphone amp, the company is offering some great package deals on Amazon through the end of the year. You can get the Arche and Clear for $3000 (a savings of $980 off the separate prices), the Arche and Stellia for $4,000 (a savings of $1,480), or the Arche and Utopia for $5,000 (a savings of $1,480).
And if you already own one of those headphones, Focal is offering a $1,000 voucher toward the purchase of an Arche through the end of 2020; click here for details.
If you’re a headphone enthusiast with very deep pockets, the Focal Arche is a worthwhile investment in your listening pleasure. And if you also have a high-end 2-channel audio rig, the Arche can serve double duty as an outstanding DAC with a fully balanced output. That’s two components for the price of one, which makes it a smart investment in my book.
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/@amanda97945983/focal-arche-headphone-dac-amp-review-it-doesnt-get-much-better-than-this-7815f62abbbe | [] | 2021-01-10 08:49:14.583000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Connected Home', 'Electronics', 'Security Cameras'] |
Using nginx to Customize Control of Your Hosted App | Middle-Tier Dynamic Port Binding
First, let’s look at dynamic port binding. To serve traffic to Heroku’s web dynos, you need access to an environment variable called PORT . This variable changes with each deployment and is not advertised before application start. This is a clear blocker for any service that does not have a way of binding to such a dynamic port.
Heroku does offer buildpacks that can automate the deployment and configuration of such a middle tier, but the solution for dynamic variables may not always be this easy. There are times when we might need to solve this or similar problems without the vendor’s help. So let’s look at how we might manually build a solution that can transform a statically configured application into a dynamically configured one, using BookStack.
BookStack is a self-proclaimed opinionated wiki system built in Laravel with a MySQL back end. BookStack has taken several design considerations out of the application deployer’s hands to simplify both its overall support architecture and to prevent the rabbit hole of wiki pages that are never found when they’re most needed.
To prep, we’ll need a few snippets gathered from BookStack and nginx’s official documentation to put together a Dockerfile and some basic scaffolding files. You can see the whole project here: https://github.com/Tokugero/bookstack-demo.
Let’s look at the Dockerfile:
Dockerfile
FROM debian:stable-slim
ENV PORT="80"
ENV APP_URL="http://localhost/"
ADD https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/archive/release.zip /bookstack/
ADD https://getcomposer.org/installer /root/composer-setup.php
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get install -y \
unzip \
php-cli \
php-mbstring \
php7.3-curl \
php7.3-dom \
php7.3-gd \
php7.3-mysql \
php7.3-tidy \
php7.3-xml \
php-fpm \
nginx && \
apt-get clean && \
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
RUN unzip /bookstack/release.zip -d / && \
rm /bookstack/release.zip && \
php /root/composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin -- filename=composer && \
mkdir -p /var/lib/nginx && \
touch /run/nginx.pid && \
touch /var/log/php7.3-fpm.log
COPY config/bookstack.env /BookStack-release/.env
COPY config/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
COPY scripts/run.sh /BookStack-release/run.sh
COPY config/nginx.htpasswd /BookStack-release/.htpasswd
RUN cd /BookStack-release && \
composer install --no-dev && \
chown -R www-data:www-data /BookStack-release/ && \
chown -R www-data:www-data /etc/nginx/ && \
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/nginx/ && \
chown -R www-data:www-data /etc/php/7.3/fpm/ && \
chown www-data:www-data /run/nginx.pid && \
chown www-data:www-data /var/log/php7.3-fpm.log && \
chmod 600 .htpasswd
USER www-data
WORKDIR /BookStack-release/
ENTRYPOINT ["./run.sh"]
scripts/run.sh
#!/bin/bash
sed -i -e 's/$PORT/'"$PORT"'/g' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
sed -i -e 's,APPURL,'${APP_URL}',g' /BookStack-release/.env
sed -i -e 's,listen = /run/php/php7.3-fpm.sock,listen = 127.0.0.1:9000,g' /etc/php/7.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
sed -i -e 's,pid = /run/php/php7.3-fpm.pid,pid = php7.3-fpm.pid,g' /etc/php/7.3/fpm/php-fpm.conf
cd /BookStack-release/ && \
echo yes | php artisan key:generate && \
echo yes | php artisan migrate
php-fpm7.3 & \
nginx -g 'daemon off;'
config/nginx.conf
worker_processes 4;
error_log /dev/stderr;
user www-data;
include /etc/nginx/modules/*.conf;
events {
worker_connections 4096; ## Default: 1024
} http {
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
index index.html index.htm index.php;
default_type application/octet-stream;
access_log /dev/stdout;
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
server {
#This is updated via sed in ./scripts/run.sh at runtimelisten $PORT;
server_name _;
root /BookStack-release/public;
client_max_body_size 0;
location / {
index index.php;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
if (!-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name) {
return 404;
}
# Mitigate https://httpoxy.org/ vulnerabilities
fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
# include the fastcgi_param setting
include fastcgi_params;
# SCRIPT_FILENAME parameter is used for PHP FPM determining
# the script name. If it is not set in fastcgi_params file,
# i.e. /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params or in the parent contexts,
# please comment off following line:
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}
}
config/bookstack.env
APP_KEY=replaceme
APP_URL=APPURL
Now this seems like a lot, but let’s break down some of the more important bits that make up the core functionality.
The Dockerfile has many lines that are primarily for installing the application itself. These were found on the official BookStack documentation and are used to manually install their service along with a few extra packages. The goal is to make the environment fit their application. To help make the service more dynamic, there are three specific lines included:
ENV PORT="80"
ENV APP_URL="
... ...ENV PORT="80"ENV APP_URL=" http://localhost/ ... ENTRYPOINT ["./run.sh"]
This sets up a default environment variable and calls an arbitrary shell script to replace the nginx configuration file values with environment values at runtime. With this, we can customize this application however we like. Instead of hard-coded variables to run this service, we can now instantiate the service locally:
docker run -it -d -e APP_URL=http://localhost:9876 -e PORT=8080 -p 9876:8080 bookstack-demo
Notice how we can now declare the port at runtime without any special configuration of the application itself — the core requirement to exposing a service on Heroku’s web dynos. To pass these in, we simply utilized sed to substitute the environment variables with the hardcoded values at run time.
sed -i -e 's/$PORT/'"$PORT"'/g' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf;
sed -i -e 's,APPURL,'${APP_URL}',g' /BookStack-release/.env;
In our run.sh script that initiates the container primary command, we can use our stream editor/sed to replace the predefined variables in nginx’s configuration file as well as in the application’s dedicated environment file. When we do this before our nginx initialization, we guarantee that the application is starting with the port that Heroku is defining after the container has been brought to life.
And one final deployment command: | https://medium.com/better-programming/using-nginx-to-customize-control-of-your-hosted-app-a51ead874f22 | ['Michael Bogan'] | 2020-10-14 14:36:12.972000+00:00 | ['Cloud Architecture', 'DevOps', 'Heroku', 'Programming', 'Nginx'] |
Houston’s Hot Girls Having 2019’s Best Songs Is Both Trill & Important | Swishahouse Records was founded as an independent label in 1997 that initially specialized in releasing mixtapes made by DJs who slowed down, scratched over, and remixed top-40 songs. From there, they released albums by artists including Mike Jones, Paul Wall, Chamillionaire, and Slim Thug. Much like Beyoncé releasing her single in a way that asserted her excellence at a time when people maybe weren’t necessarily even contemplating how great she truly was, and sounding so unassailably good that if you think otherwise you could be a hater, Swishahouse’s strategy of unifying Houston’s streets behind singles before rap and pop’s mainstream could do anything other than accept their excellence, one-time Aftermath Records A&R Angelo Sanders noted, “[Swishahouse are] able to get their product out on the streets to specific regions at a greater speed than a major … They’re able to flood that whole Texas market with a product before the majors are able to notice what is going on out there.”
At present, “Big Ole Freak” has been named as one of Billboard’s 50 best songs and videos of 2019. As for “Before I Let Go?” You’ve probably eaten a spare rib or hot dog to it or two so far this summer. As for the legacy of Houston’s big year? Beyoncé’s “Before I Let Go” is played at the close of the Netflix release of her iconic 2018 Coachella performance. This two-plus hour greatest hits performance was also released as a full album, which for the purposes of the streaming-happy and commercially resurgent music industry likely feels akin to discovering a one-stop pill that heals all of the industry’s remaining financial ailments. Ideally, the likes of Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Tierra Whack, Rapsody, and numerous others are allowed the longest tail journey to chase massive success. At present, mainstream pop culture’s attention span for artistic excellence in hip-hop is short. But, given what Megan Thee Stallion has accomplished so far with a single from out of relative “left field” and other releases that deserve so much more acclaim, one can only believe that this portends well for the future.
For the past four decades, Houston’s defined itself as an essential player in the present and future of hip-hop and pop culture. In exceeding the existing standards in this regard set by the likes of the Geto Boys and Swishahouse Records, what Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion are accomplishing for the future of music and popular culture in 2019 is significant and worthy of praise.
Or, I could just close this like chopped and screwed ‘Yoncé does on Netflix album closer and originally 2013-released single “I Been On.”
Rolling high, leather and wood
Keep it trill, that’s what good | https://marcuskdowling.medium.com/houstons-hot-girls-having-2019-s-best-songs-is-both-trill-important-8a385f738e35 | ['Marcus K. Dowling'] | 2019-07-01 23:07:57.071000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Rap', 'Pop Culture', 'Houston', 'Feminism'] |
Easily Build a Dashboard with R 🖥️ | The flexdashboard package allows R programmers to easily develop interactive dashboards. The package is used with R markdown. Dashboards can be static via a HTML webpage or dynamic via a R Shiny document. These are great for storytelling or metrics tracking. There are numerous custom layouts and components that can be added to your dashboard. It can also be used with R Shiny.
Here are flexdashboard examples (with accessible source code) that are provided by RStudio. Use cases include narrative visualizations, metrics tracking, disease tracking dashboards, and many more.
🚦Can you think of your own ways to use the package?
Get started
To install the Flexdashboard package in RStudio use the following:
install.packages(“flexdashboard”)
The following R markdown code can be used for a simple stacked layout for your content (copy and paste into an R markdown file then Knit the code to see the webpage that gets produced):
---
title: "Stacked Layout Example"
output: flexdashboard::flex_dashboard
---
### First chart
```{r} ```
### Second chart ```{r} ```
Next steps
⌛This is meant to be a quick introduction to the package. If you want an easy to develop and deploy dashboard in R, then you should definitely check out the Flexdashboard package. They have more complex layout options that you can choose and build from. Visit the official Flexdashboard website for more information. | https://medium.com/@parmsam/easily-build-a-dashboard-with-r-89b574f31f2a | [] | 2020-12-06 02:01:48.790000+00:00 | ['Introduction', 'R Markdown', 'Flexdashboard', 'R Programming', 'Dashboard'] |
Summer Is Here, What Are Your Plans? | White Water River Rafting
Summer is one such time where people have their vacations set for a cold region or at any resort that has a pool. Summer vacation is all about your journey in the mini-van, drive-thru windows for nights. But, things have changed pretty fast now, trips are all becoming more on the adventurous side. The trips mostly include wondrous wildlife encounters with exciting outdoor activities and cultural outbreaks. We see trip providers offering a variety of exciting trips and summer is one of the most sweaty yet fun seasons to enjoy trips. Today’s blog will provide you with exciting trips you can enjoy this summer.
White Water River Rafting:
Rafting is one of the most exciting and intriguing adventures with a thrilling goal to explore downstream on stream rapids with the help of your rafting tools. It is considered an extraordinary adventure that is exceptionally testing and dangerous and requires a lot of cooperation. Rafting is likewise a very mainstream recreational movement experienced in many nations around the globe. River Rafting is without a doubt one of the most enchanting and genuinely requesting experience sports on the planet. The adrenaline surge and the fervor experienced while riding down the white waters of quick streaming waterways across stone-strewn beds is basically unparalleled by all other adventure sports.
2. Clear Creek Rafting
Clear Creek Rafting is one of the most astounding adventures that involve rapids in closeness. This is truly something that makes Clear Creek Rafting different from all other waterways in Colorado. Most waterways in Colorado have extraordinary rapids, however, there can be miles of flatwater in the middle of the rapids. The experience can be reduced when times of exceptional enjoyment by significant amounts of level water. On Clear Creek, the rapids are different with just little short segments of more settled water isolating them. The outcome is excellent giving energy, excellence, and the perfect measure of personal time to rest, absorb the view, and prepare for an adventurous trip.
3. Off-Road Adventures
The landscape that you will experience will be capricious and unquestionably, and on the off chance that it is your first time, it might be excessively exciting for you. Subsequently, making it extremely significant for you to have the best possible gear for your rough terrain driving. While really you can go Off-Roading in any vehicle, trucks, SUVs and other high-riding vehicles are generally fitting to manage the thumps and wounds found in a surprising way. You may need to use four-wheelers, dirt bicycles, or rough terrain vehicles (ATVs), which are created for harsh landscape driving. On the off chance that you’re taking up going Off-Roading as an intrigue, a low-riding diminished vehicle in all likelihood won’t cut it. Dependent on what kind of experience you’re into, the sort of vehicle and vehicle changes will be needful and can differ.
Trips can be fun and exciting, only when the one providing you with its best assistance would likewise have the required guidelines. Your wellbeing is first, while the enjoyment part follows. Off-road Adventure in Colorado with its 2021 boating season is practically around the bend. Their representatives take a shot at furnishing you with their best services so you can have memories to reclaim home with you. Mad Adventures will assist you with all the needed responses with the outings, rides, the machines they use, and the excursions with the days. Visit their site today! | https://medium.com/@madadventures84/summer-is-here-what-are-your-plans-364c708298f | ['Mad Adventures'] | 2021-04-13 10:28:51.316000+00:00 | ['Rafting', 'Summer', 'Mad Adventure', 'Whitewater'] |
5 people you need on your team to climb a high mountain | Mountain climber on his way to a hgh summit — Credit: Pexels
Next to Geneva in Switzerland, there are two mountains, the Salève and the Mont-Blanc.
Easy or impossible mountain?
The Salève is a cosy mountain. You can drive to the top of it by car. This is a usual walk for locals. As it is so close to the city that it almost gives the impression that you can touch it.
However, it might be relatively boring; after a while it is not a challenge anymore.
On the other hand, the Mont-Blanc is further away, scary and pretty much impossible to climb without extensive training and the help of a guide. But just imagine the view up there. There are reasons why it is called “the roof of Europe”, as it is the highest mountain of the “old continent”.
Which mountain are you considering climbing? The easy one, where you know all the turns and the places or the scary, impossible one.
This is an important question for your life, as what you will able to achieve depends on the mountain you are considering climbing, and of course, I don’t mean a mountain literally, I mean the goals of your life.
Go for an impossible goal
Do you have a dream, a goal, a purpose that is too big for you, that is impossible and even scary. Good! Welcome to the club!
What is your goal, your dream, your call, your purpose? Mine is to transform the culture of leadership, not only in one company, not only in companies, but worldwide, and beyond companies, in entire countries. This is definitively a too big purpose, and some think that I have “too big dream”. As a matter of fact, I take it as a compliment, and I would love to also make this compliment to you for your impossible, too big dream.
As I was thinking of this ambitious goal, I was wondering “How I am going to do it?” and realised that it was the wrong question. Who said that you and I should do it on our own. So, the very first step of this journey to impossible dreams is to form a team of like-minded but complimentary people who can take this goal to “high places”
This is how Swiss Leaders Group was created, not using my own name, but a worldwide group, hence the label “group”. I even wanted to find people better than I and I am now extremely proud of the exceptional team of professional on 5continents who have joined my vision.
5 people you need on your team to climb a high mountain
I think you can follow my thoughts here and you guessed what I am going t say now: if you want to do it on your own, you are not going to it make it to the Mont-Blanc. You need to following people on your team:
A mountain guide : a mentor who has been there before and can support you in your journey.
: a mentor who has been there before and can support you in your journey. Sherpas : people who help you carrying your luggage: carrying a wide vision is a lot to carry on one’s shoulder. You can empower people to carry some part of the vision and do it even better than do.
: people who help you carrying your luggage: carrying a wide vision is a lot to carry on one’s shoulder. You can empower people to carry some part of the vision and do it even better than do. A physical trainer : to prepare for your mountain, you need preparation and to be challenge. Allow one person to stretch you beyond your current limits pushing your comfort zone away. This is a coach, able to question your thinking and challenging you in the direction you would like to go.
: to prepare for your mountain, you need preparation and to be challenge. Allow one person to stretch you beyond your current limits pushing your comfort zone away. This is a coach, able to question your thinking and challenging you in the direction you would like to go. A driver : somebody who is getting you to the starting point of the climb. I have many precious people who understand and share my vision and open amazing doors of opportunity to “higher places” and without them I would get even to the starting point of some of the amazing projects that I am working on.
: somebody who is getting you to the starting point of the climb. I have many precious people who understand and share my vision and open amazing doors of opportunity to “higher places” and without them I would get even to the starting point of some of the amazing projects that I am working on. A junior climber: you climb is more than about yourself. As you climb, and learn to climb better and better, take with you at least one person who has similar goals, but it further down the level of experience that you have. As you learn and grow, pass on what you are learning and be a mentor. Give what you wish to receive, would it be encouragement, support or even somebody to believe in you. There is more joy to give as to receive.
First steps to climb a high mountain
If you still wondering which mountain to climb, here is an answer for you: both! The smaller one, the Salève, is there for training, for you to gain confidence and master the first step. But the real goal is not the Salève, but the Mont-Blanc.
Would like to see your life used to be used for an amazing purpose and exciting journey? Don’t focus on people who tell you that it is impossible, but turn this impossible destination into possibly through taking the first steps of training and building a team that can climb the highest mountains.
See you at the top of the Mont-Blanc. I am looking forward to celebrating you on and the high, impossible and “too big” goals you reached! | https://medium.com/@joelvchan/5-people-you-need-on-your-team-to-climb-a-high-mountain-b8d3b3e2accc | ['Joel Vuadens-Chan'] | 2020-11-20 16:18:25.830000+00:00 | ['Team Building', 'Teamwork', 'Climbing', 'Mountains', 'Goals'] |
42 Tips and Tricks to Write Faster, Better-Optimized JavaScript Code | 42 Tips and Tricks to Write Faster, Better-Optimized JavaScript Code
Optimize your JavaScript code using modern techniques, tips, and tricks
I always used to prefer something like a newspaper which give enough information in a shorter span of time. Here, I create tips for day to day Frontend development.
You might be doing angular development for a long time but sometimes you might be not updated with the newest features which can solve your issues without doing or writing some extra codes. This can cover some frequently asked Angular topics in interviews 2021. This can cover some frequently asked TypeScript interview topics in 2021. Moreover, these topics can help you to prepare yourself for JavaScript interviews in 2021.
Here I am coming with a new series to cover some tips which helped me in my day-to-day coding.
1. Sort an array of objects by string property value
It can be done in different ways.
1. Using Underscore
_.sortBy(collection, [iteratees=[_.identity]])
Creates an array of elements, sorted in ascending order by the results of running each element in a collection thru each iteratee. This method performs a stable sort, that is, it preserves the original sort order of equal elements. The iteratees are invoked with one argument: (value).
var objs = [
{ val1: 'abc',val2: 'a' },
{ val1: 'cde', val2: 'b' },
{ val1: 'fgh', val2: 'c' }
]; var sortedObjs = _.sortBy( objs, 'val1' );
2. Using ES6 sort function
var data = [
{ name: 'abc', value: 21 },
{ name: 'cde', value: 37 },
{ name: 'ee', value: 45 },
{ name: 'ff', value: -12 },
{ name: 'ab', value: 13 },
{ name: 'cs', value: 37 }
]; // sort by value
data.sort(function (a, b) {
return a.value - b.value;
});
3. Using Lodash
const sortedObjs = _.sortBy(data, 'string');
2. How to Round to at most 2 decimal places (only if necessary)
There are 3 different ways we can achieve this function.
Let’s understand some definitions before jumping to the solutions.
The parseFloat() function parses an argument (converting it to a string first if needed) and returns a floating point number. The toFixed() method formats a number using fixed-point notation.
Using ParseFloat
parseFloat("123.456").toFixed(2);
The Math.round() function returns the value of a number rounded to the nearest integer.
2. Using MathRound
Math.round( num * 100 + Number.EPSILON ) / 100
Number() Creates a new Number value.
3. Convert string to decimal
var str = 10.234.toFixed(2); // => '10.23'
var number = Number(str); // => 10.23
3. How do I loop through or enumerate a JavaScript Object?
Each ECMAScript version comp up with a different way to enumerate the Objects. Let’s check this out.
The Object.keys() method returns an array of a given object's own enumerable property names, iterated in the same order that a normal loop would. The forEach() method executes a provided function once for each array element.
Under ES5, you can combine Object.keys() and Array.prototype.forEach() :
var data = { val1: "abc", val2: "cde" }; Object.keys(data).forEach(function(key) {
console.log(key, obj[key]);
});
ES6 adds for...of :
The for...of statement creates a loop iterating over iterable objects, including: built-in String , Array , array-like objects (e.g., arguments or NodeList ), TypedArray , Map , Set , and user-defined iterables. It invokes a custom iteration hook with statements to be executed for the value of each distinct property of the object.
for (const key of Object.keys(data)) {
console.log(key, obj[key]);
}
ES8 adds Object.entries() which avoids having to look up each value in the original object:
The Object.entries() method returns an array of a given object's own enumerable string-keyed property [key, value] pairs, in the same order as that provided by a for...in loop.
Object.entries(data).forEach(
([key, value]) => console.log(key, value)
);
We can combine for...of , destructuring, and Object.entries :
for (const [key, value] of Object.entries(data)) {
console.log(key, value);
}
4. What is the difference between event.preventDefault() and return false
with return false, there is a chance that other functions are getting executed which is specifically written inside the click while preventDefault won’t allow executing anything.
$('a').click(function (e) {
// custom handling here // oops...runtime error...where oh where will the href take me? return false;
});
Example of preventDefault()
$('a').click(function (e) {
e.preventDefault(); // custom handling here // oops...runtime error, but at least the user isn't navigated away.
});
5. How can I check for an empty/undefined/null string in JavaScript?
if (!!data) {
// Some code here
}
Or use type casting:
if (Boolean(data)) {
// Code here
}
Both do the same function. Typecast the variable to Boolean, where str is a variable.
It returns false for null , undefined , 0 , 000 , "" , false .
It returns true for string "0" and whitespace " " .
6. How to insert an item into an array at a specific index (JavaScript)?
Append Single Element at a specific index
//Append at specific position(here at index 1)
array.splice(1, 0,'newData'); //Append at specific position (here at index 3)
array[3] = 'newData';
Append Multiple Element at a specific index
//Append from index number 1
array.splice(1, 0,'data1', 'data2', 'data3');
7. How to Get the current URL with JavaScript?
Use windows function: window.location.href
8. Checking if a key exists in a JavaScript object?
Using in operator
var data = "abc" in array;
Using hasOwnProperty
var result = data.hasOwnProperty("abc")
Accessing elements directly (brackets style)
var result = data["abc"] === undefined
Accessing elements directly (object style)
var result = array.abc === undefined;
9. How to merge two arrays in JavaScript and remove duplicate items?
We do play with arrays in day to day life and there are a lot of requirements where we need to combine arrays as well as need to remove duplicates.
Below are some approaches to achieve this.
1. Using Lodash
console.log(_.union([1, 2, 3], [101, 2, 1, 10], [2, 1]));
2. Using Filter and Concat
var a = [1, 2, 3], b = [101, 2, 1, 10]
var c = a.concat(b)
var d = c.filter((item, pos) => c.indexOf(item) === pos)
3. Using Set
[...new Set([...array1 ,...array2])]; // => remove duplication
10. How to check whether a string contains a substring in JavaScript?
We can use the following two methods to achieve this function.
1. includes
The includes() method determines whether an array includes a certain value among its entries, returning true or false as appropriate.
const val1 = "abcoo";
const val2 = "oo"; console.log(string.includes(val2));
2. index of
The indexOf() the method returns the first index at which a given element can be found in the array, or -1 if it is not present.
var string = "foo";
var substring = "oo"; console.log(string.indexOf(substring) !== -1);
If you are looking for array and object-related tips please check out this article.
11. How to replace all occurrences of a string?
We can use ES6 to handle this.
str = str.replace(/abc/g, '');
2. We can use Regex.
var find = 'abc';
var re = new RegExp(find, 'g'); str = str.replace(re, '');
we could simplify it even more:
function replaceAll(str, find, replace) {
return str.replace(new RegExp(find, 'g'), replace);
} function escapeRegExp(string) {
return string.replace(/[.*+\-?^${}()|[\]\\]/g, '\\$&'); // $& means the whole matched string
}
Which can be narrowed down to like this:
function replaceAll(str, find, replace) {
return str.replace(new RegExp(escapeRegExp(find), 'g'), replace);
}
12. How to correctly clone a JavaScript object?
Using ES6
var val1 = {data: "value"};
var val2= Object.assign({}, val1);
2. If you want a shallow copy
Object.assign({}, data)
3. For “deep” copy, use
JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(data))
13. What is the !! (not not) an operator in JavaScript?
!! converts the value to the right of it to its equivalent boolean value.
!!false === false
!!true === true !!0 === false
!!parseInt("foo") === false // NaN is falsy
!!1 === true
!!-1 === true // -1 is truthy
!!(1/0) === true // Infinity is truthy !!"" === false // empty string is falsy
!!"foo" === true // non-empty string is truthy
!!"false" === true // ...even if it contains a falsy value !!window.foo === false // undefined is falsy
!!null === false // null is falsy !!{} === true // an (empty) object is truthy
!![] === true // an (empty) array is truthy; PHP programmers beware!
14. How to Loop through an array in JavaScript
we have several options:
1. Sequential for loop:
var array = ["a","b"];
var arrayLength = array.length;
for (var i = 0; i < arrayLength; i++) {
console.log(array[i]);
//Do something
}
2. Array.prototype.forEach
The ES5 specification introduced a lot of beneficial array methods. One of them, the Array.prototype.forEach , gave us a concise way to iterate over an array:
const data = ["a", "b", "c"]
data.forEach(function (item, index) {
console.log(item, index);
});
3. Use of reduce:
const numbers = [1,2,3,4,5];
const sum = numbers.reduce((total, n) => total + n, 0); console.log(sum);
4. ES6 for-of statement
let data = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
for (const a of data){
console.log(a);
}
15. How do I copy to the clipboard in JavaScript?
We can prompt the user to click and enter by doing this:
function copy(text) {
window.prompt("Copy to clipboard: Ctrl+C, Enter", text);
}
Now the clipboard copy operation is SAFE because a user has clicked on the prompt.
<button id="data" onclick="copy(document.getElementById('data').innerHTML)">Copy here</button> <script>
function copyToClipboard(text) {
window.prompt("Copy to clipboard: Ctrl+C, Enter", text);
}
</script>
Recently, I was trying to prepare myself for the upcoming interviews and it was a bit tough to search in google and open link and see same questions each and every time so I thought of sharing what I have found and what is most common questions someone should know if they are preparing for an interview.
Below are the most common interview questions asked in Latest Angular Developer Interviews. These Angular Interview questions and answers help to prepare for Angular developer interviews from junior to senior levels. Moreover, this article covers the basics to advance angular interview questions which you must prepare in 2021.
16. How do I test for an empty JavaScript object?
There are several ways to achieve this function.
jQuery.isEmptyObject({}); // true
_.isEmpty({}); // true
_.isEmpty({}); // true
17. How do I make the first letter of a string uppercase in JavaScript?
We can either update the CSS which has text-transform property.
In CSS:
p:first-letter {
text-transform:capitalize;
}
2. Using function we can call toUpperCase() method.
function makeCapital(s)
{
return s && s[0].toUpperCase() + s.slice(1);
}
18. How can I change an element’s class with JavaScript?
There are lot of requirements where we need to change some color or css based on conditions.
How it can be done in the JavaScript?
To change all classes for an element:
To replace all existing classes with one or more new classes, set the className attribute:
document.getElementById("test").className = "newclass";
(We can use a space-delimited list to apply multiple classes.)
To add an additional class to an element:
To add a class to an element, without removing/affecting existing values, append a space and the new class name, like so:
document.getElementById("test").className += " newClass";
To remove a class from an element:
To remove a single class to an element, without affecting other potential classes, a simple regex replace is required:
document.getElementById("test").className =
document.getElementById("test").className.replace
( /(?:^|\s)newClass(?!\S)/g , '' )
19. Is it possible to apply CSS to half of a character?
We do see some fancy word art where the half of the character have different color while other half have different color. How we can achieve something like this in CSS?
Below is the example to make apply CSS for half character.
h1 {
display: inline-block;
margin: 0; /* for demo snippet */
line-height: 1em; /* for demo snippet */
font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 300px;
background: linear-gradient(to right, #7db9e8 50%,#1e5799 50%);
-webkit-background-clip: text;
-webkit-text-fill-color: transparent;
} <h1>X</h1>
20. How to append something to an array?
In older JavaScript version it was done by using the apply method.
The apply() method calls a function with a given this value, and arguments provided as an array (or an array-like object).
var array1 = [33, 45, 5];
var array2 = [100, 2]; Array.prototype.push.apply(array2, array1); console.log(array2); // [100, 2, 33, 45, 5]
With ES6 it can be done using the spread operator.
"use strict";
let array1 = [11, 42, 53];
let array2 = [1, 2]; array2.push(...array1); console.log(array2); // [11, 2, 3, 42, 53]
21. How to check if an object is an array?
When we would like to check that if the object is array or not we can follow below options.
var arr = [10,20,30,40,50];
Javascript (new and older browsers):
function isArray(arr) {
return arr.constructor.toString().indexOf("Array") > -1;
}
function isArray(arr) {
return arr instanceof Array;
}
function isArray(arr) {
return Object.prototype.toString.call(arr) === '[object Array]';
}
then call it like this:
isArray(arr);
JavaScript (IE9+, Ch5+, FF4+, Saf5+, Opera10.5+)
Array.isArray(arr);
Underscore and Lodash:
_.isArray(arr);
22. How to detect an undefined object property?
When we would like to check the specific property of object is undefined we can directly check using the if condition with === operator.
if(data.prop === undefined) {
alert("prop value is the special value `undefined`");
}
To check if an object does not actually have such a property, and will therefore return undefined by default when you try and access it:
if(!o.hasOwnProperty('prop')) {
alert("prop does not exist");
}
To check if the value associated with an identifier is the special value undefined , or if that identifier has not been declared. Note: this method is the only way of referring to an undeclared (note: different from having a value of undefined ) identifier without an early error:
if(typeof variable === 'undefined') {
alert('variable is either the special value `undefined`, or it has not been declared');
}
23. How can I convert a string to a boolean in JavaScript?
There are several methods to convert a string to a boolean in JavaScript.
Using the test method
var stringValue = "true";
var boolValue = (/true/i).test(stringValue) //returns true
Using comparison operator
var val = "true";
var boolValue = (val =="true"); //returns true
Using JSON.parse
var val = "true";
var boolValue = JSON.parse(val); //returns true
Using ternary operator
var val = “true”;
var boolValue = val.toLowerCase() == ‘true’ ? true : false; //returns true
Using switch-case
var val = "true";
var boolValue = getBoolean(val); //returns true
function getBoolean(value){
switch(value){
case true:
case "true":
case 1:
case "1":
case "on":
case "yes":
return true;
default:
return false;
}
}
24. How can I get query string values in JavaScript?
This is the most common usage when we deal with the URL parameters and want to extract the information from the URL.
Below are some methods from which we can get the string values.
ES2015 (ES6) : creating method to achieve this function
getQueryStringParams = query => {
return query
? (/^[?#]/.test(query) ? query.slice(1) : query)
.split('&')
.reduce((params, param) => {
let [key, value] = param.split('=');
params[key] = value ? decodeURIComponent(value.replace(/\+/g, ' ')) : '';
return params;
}, {}
)
: {}
};
URLSearchParams use inbuit method from location
You can use it on location :
let params = new URLSearchParams(location.search); let params = (new URL(location)).searchParams;
let url = new URL('https://abc.com?val1=1&val2=2');
let params = new URLSearchParams(url.search);
we can get params also using a shorthand .searchParams property on the URL object, like this:
let params = new URL('https://abc.com?val1=1&val2=2').searchParams;
params.get('val1'); // "1"
params.get('val2'); // "2"
25. How to get the length of a JavaScript object?
In most of the cases we do check the length of the array but what if want to check the length of objects? The following two methods are the best approaches to get the length of the Object.
1. Using Es6 feature
var size = Object.keys(data).length;
2. Using underscore
_.size({val1 : 1, val2 : 2, val3 : 3});
26. How to reverse a string that contains complicated emojis?
When we do more coding or attend some coding challenges, this is the most common question among them.
We can use lodash feature to achieve this challenge.
function reverse(txt) { return _.split(txt, '').reverse().join(''); } const data = 'abc abc👩🦰👩👩👦👦';
console.log(reverse(data));
27. How can I convert a string to an array of objects in JavaScript?
This type of scenario comes when we get some data from third-party APIs where we don’t have control. How we can convert a string to an array of objects to use in our application? Below is the easiest approach to achieve this result.
const
str = 'Option 1|false|Option 2|false|Option 3|false|Option 4|true',
data = []; for (let i = 0, a= str.split('|'); i < a.length; i += 2) {
const
option = a[i],
value = JSON.parse(a[i + 1]);
data.push({ option, value });
} console.log(data);
28. How to detect if the user changes tab in JavaScript?
This can be achieved by the latest event listener feature supported by JavaScript.
Below is the solution to handle the state of the tab.
document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", event => {
if (document.visibilityState == "visible") {
console.log("activated")
} else {
console.log("inactivated")
}
})
29. How to sum a property value from an array of objects?
When we have an array of objects which contain some number which we want to get sum below is the solution with reduce.
const data = [
{ val1: 'abc', val2: 50 },
{ val1: 'abc', val2: 50 },
{ val1: 'cde', val2: 75 },
{ val1: 'hji', val2: 35 },
{ val1: 'bbc', val2: 25 },
]; console.log(data.reduce((n, {val2}) => n + val2, 0))
30. How to Format JavaScript date?
When we come to formatting the date, it’s more headache as we do have different requirements according to the needs. How we can achieve everyone’s needs? Below are the most common methods used widely to format date in JavaScript.
1. You can use the native .toLocaleDateString()
Examples:
new Date().toLocaleDateString() // 8/19/2020 new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-US', {year: 'numeric', month: '2-digit', day: '2-digit'}); // 10/25/2020 (month and day with two digits) new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-ZA'); // 2020/10/25(year/month/day) notice the different locale new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-CA'); // 2020-10-25 (year-month-day) notice the different locale new Date().toLocaleString("en-US", {timeZone: "America/New_York"}); // 10/125/2020, 7:29:51 PM. (date and time in a specific timezone) new Date().toLocaleString("en-US", {hour: '2-digit', hour12: false, timeZone: "America/New_York"}); // 07 (just the hour)
2. We can use the moment.js
var now = new Date();
var dateString = moment(now).format('YYYY-MM-DD'); var dateStringWithTime = moment(now).format('YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss'); <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.18.1/moment.min.js"
31. How to Generate random string/characters in JavaScript?
There are a lot of times we need to send some random unique IDs to the backend. There are thousands of solutions to achieve this function but the following one I loved the most.
Generate a secure random alphanumeric Base-62 string:
function generateUID(length)
{
return window.btoa(Array.from(window.crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(length * 2))).map((b) => String.fromCharCode(b)).join("")).replace(/[+/]/g, "").substring(0, length);
} console.log(generateUID(22)); // "cFg3Upv2cE8cK8Xd7hHwWp"
console.log(generateUID(5)); // "CQGkP"
32. How to execute API calls after entering 3 characters in the field?
This is most commonly used when we want to search for a username or some value that already exists but to avoid call all the time we want to wait for the user to type certain characters before calling API.
This can be achieved using distinctUntilChanged And you can use the filter in the pipe
this.service.getData(data)
.pipe(
filter(_ => data.length === 3),
distinctUntilChanged()
).subscribe(rs => console.log(rs));
33. How to rename object keys inside an array?
Sometimes we need to change the keys to manipulate data. This is one of the efficient ways to rename the object keys inside an array.
You can use Object.values() to retrieve values and then array.reduce() to compose a new object:
prop_name: 'Negan',
prop_age: 45,
prop_weapon: 'Bat',
prop_email: '
prop_city: 'Washington'
},
{
prop_name: 'Daryl',
prop_age: 41,
prop_weapon: 'Crossbow',
prop_email: '
prop_city: 'Atlanta'
},
{
prop_name: 'Rick',
prop_age: 45,
prop_weapon: 'Magnum 357',
prop_email: '
prop_city: 'King County'
},
];
const newKeys = [
'firstname',
'age',
'weapon',
'email',
'city'
];
let result = customers.map(obj =>
Object.values(obj).reduce((acc, cur, i) => {
acc[newKeys[i]] = cur;
return acc;
}, {}));
console.log(result); const customers = [{prop_name: 'Negan',prop_age: 45,prop_weapon: 'Bat',prop_email: ' [email protected] ',prop_city: 'Washington'},prop_name: 'Daryl',prop_age: 41,prop_weapon: 'Crossbow',prop_email: ' [email protected] ',prop_city: 'Atlanta'},prop_name: 'Rick',prop_age: 45,prop_weapon: 'Magnum 357',prop_email: ' [email protected] ',prop_city: 'King County'},];const newKeys = ['firstname','age','weapon','email','city'];let result = customers.map(obj =>Object.values(obj).reduce((acc, cur, i) => {acc[newKeys[i]] = cur;return acc;}, {}));console.log(result);
34. How do you clear the focus in javascript?
Focus… Focus… Yeah, this time we want to clear the focus from the specific element in the HTML. This can be achieved by the blur method.
if (document.activeElement instanceof HTMLElement)
document.activeElement.blur();
35. Binary to String in JavaScript
What if we have some binary code and we want to convert it into a string before using it in our code? It can be achieved using the fromCharCode method.
et binary = `1010011 1110100 1100001 1100011 1101011
1001111 1110110 1100101 1110010 1100110
1101100 1101111 1110111`; let outputStr = binary.split(' ') //Split string in array of binary chars
.map(bin => String.fromCharCode(parseInt(bin, 2))) //Map every binary char to real char
.join(''); //Join the array back to a string console.log(outputStr);
36. Shift strings Circular left and right in JavaScript
When we start practicing for the bigger companies this kind of javascript coding questions are common. Here is an example of shifting the string based on given values. It can be achieved using array slice methods.
function getShiftedString(s, leftShifts, rightShifts) {
// using `split('')` will result in certain unicode characters being separated incorrectly
// use Array.from instead:
const arr = Array.from(s);
const netLeftShifts = (leftShifts - rightShifts) % arr.length;
return [...arr.slice(netLeftShifts), ...arr.slice(0, netLeftShifts)]
.join('');
} console.log([
getShiftedString('abc', 0, 0),
getShiftedString('abc', 1, 0),
getShiftedString('abc', 0, 1),
getShiftedString('abc', 1, 1),
getShiftedString('123456789', 0, 0),
getShiftedString('123456789', 1, 5),
getShiftedString('123456789', 5, 1),
'----',
getShiftedString('123456789', 9, 0),
getShiftedString('123456789', 10, 0),
getShiftedString('123456789', 0, 9),
getShiftedString('123456789', 0, 10),
getShiftedString("🐎👱❤", 0, 0),
getShiftedString("🐎👱❤", 1, 0),
]);
37. Regular expression to check for IP addresses JavaScript
Regex help us to check any specific string and validate for us? What if we want regex for the IP address.
Here is the cleanest way to validate an IP Address, Let’s break it down:
Fact: a valid IP Address is has 4 octets , each octet can be a number between 0 - 255
Breakdown of Regex that matches any value between 0 - 255
25[0-5] matches 250 - 255
matches 2[0-4][0-9] matches 200 - 249
matches 1[0-9][0-9] matches 100 - 199
matches [1-9][0-9]? matches 1 - 99
matches 0 matches 0
const octet = '(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9]?|0)';
Notes: When using new RegExp you should use \\. instead of \. since string will get escaped twice.
function isValidIP(str) {
const octet = '(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9]?|0)';
const regex = new RegExp(`^${octet}\\.${octet}\\.${octet}\\.${octet}$`);
return regex.test(str);
}
38. How to JSON stringify a JavaScript Date and preserve timezone
When we want to store any specific date formatted value to the JSON. It can be achieved using this function.
var replacer = function(key, value) { if (this[key] instanceof Date) {
return this[key].toUTCString();
}
return value;
} console.log(JSON.stringify(new Date(), replacer));
console.log(JSON.stringify({ myProperty: new Date()}, replacer));
39. JavaScript to check if a string is a valid number
We have seen a lot of solution to check the number is valid or not but What if want to check if a string is a valid number or not?
Here is the best approach.
function isNumeric(n) {
return !isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n);
}
Below are some good test cases:
console.log(isNumeric(12345678912345678912)); // true
console.log(isNumeric('2 ')); // true
console.log(isNumeric('-32.2 ')); // true
console.log(isNumeric(-32.2)); // true
console.log(isNumeric(undefined)); // false // the accepted answer fails at these tests:
console.log(isNumeric('')); // false
console.log(isNumeric(null)); // false
console.log(isNumeric([])); // false
40. Export a JSON Object to a text file
When we want to export the JSON Object to a text file, below is the cleanest approach I found till this date.
const filename = 'data.json';
const jsonStr = JSON.stringify(JsonExport); let element = document.createElement('a');
element.setAttribute('href', 'data:text/plain;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURIComponent(jsonStr));
element.setAttribute('download', filename); element.style.display = 'none';
document.body.appendChild(element); element.click(); document.body.removeChild(element);
41. Wrap long template literal line to multiline without creating a new line in the string
If you introduce a line continuation ( \ ) at the point of the new line in the literal, it won't create a new line on output:
const text = `a very long string that just continues\
and continues and continues`;
console.log(text);
42. How to copy text from a div to clipboard
When we want to copy text from a div to clipboard below is the simplest approach I found during my development.
function CopyToClipboard(containerid) {
if (window.getSelection) {
if (window.getSelection().empty) { // Chrome
window.getSelection().empty();
} else if (window.getSelection().removeAllRanges) { // Firefox
window.getSelection().removeAllRanges();
}
} else if (document.selection) { // IE?
document.selection.empty();
} if (document.selection) {
var range = document.body.createTextRange();
range.moveToElementText(document.getElementById(containerid));
range.select().createTextRange();
document.execCommand("copy");
} else if (window.getSelection) {
var range = document.createRange();
range.selectNode(document.getElementById(containerid));
window.getSelection().addRange(range);
document.execCommand("copy");
}
}
References:
Are you preparing for interviews? Here are frequently asked interview questions in Angular. It covers the Latest interview questions for Angular and Frontend development. Let’s check how many of these questions you can answer? | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/42-tips-and-tricks-to-write-faster-better-optimized-javascript-code-3a82c53d051e | [] | 2020-12-29 01:36:09.636000+00:00 | ['Front End Development', 'Web Development', 'Typescript', 'Programming', 'JavaScript'] |
4 New GitHub Products That Will Change How You Code | 4 New GitHub Products That Will Change How You Code
Exciting announcements from the first virtual GitHub Satellite event
Photo by Caleb White on Unsplash.
Just recently, GitHub ran its first-ever virtual GitHub Satellite event. Thousands of people tuned in for the day of live-streaming that featured a keynote, live-coded music, and more.
At the start of the day, GitHub announced a few new features coming soon to the platform, including a live web-based development environment. These new features are sure to change the way we make open-source happen in the future. | https://medium.com/better-programming/4-new-github-products-that-will-change-how-you-code-27933401faa0 | ['Ben Soyka'] | 2020-05-07 13:54:05.160000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Github', 'Open Source', 'Coding', 'Security'] |
7 Qualities That Make for a Great Villain | Seven simple ingredients
All of us are capable of recognizing a good villain when we see one, but what is the secret to creating such a compelling figure?
As different as the above-mentioned characters appear on the surface, all great villains share a few qualities in common. Once you understand what they are, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how to create such a character and be in a better position to diagnose what isn’t working about your villain and how to fix it.
#1 An obsession:
This is perhaps the most obvious characteristic of every villain. Typically, villains are obsessed with a handful of things: 1) power, 2) wealth, 3) sex, 4) revenge. Many times, these obsessions intersect. A villain may want money, so he or she can gain power.
The desire to gain power may be motivated by revenge and/or perhaps a desire to humiliate or destroy a romantic rival or a lover who spurned them. The key point is that the villain will stop at nothing to reach his or her goal. The villain’s obsession is usually what sets the story in motion, requiring a hero to rise up and try to stop things before it’s too late.
#2 A secret:
The best villains harbor a deep, dark secret that they have spent their entire lives trying to hide, possibly even from themselves. Secrets build intrigue. That’s why keeping your villain’s backstory a secret for most of the story is paramount. That’s why the Star Wars prequel films drove me crazy. Darth Vader worked best when he arrived on the screen fully formed with no explanation about who he was or how he got that way.
As a kid, I was obsessed with knowing those details and getting a peek at what he looked like under that suit, but I was 100% fine with not knowing because it was far more fun to imagine than to actually see it, as we did in Return of the Jedi. Top spend three entire films showing us how Darth Vader came to be seems like a systematic undoing of everything George Lucas got right in the original trilogy.
It’s OK to hint at the villain’s secret, but never pull back the veil completely. Sometimes the villain may use his or her secret to gain sympathy from the hero, perhaps in an attempt to recruit the hero to the dark side. But when that invitation is rejected, the door of vulnerability is slammed shut.
#3 A wound:
This is the source of the villain’s secrecy and his or her obsession. This can be a physical wound or an emotional wound, but often it’s both. This is why villains are so often disfigured or scarred in some way. Darth Vader arrives on the scene in a life-support suit. Lord Voldemort’s skin is white and his face horribly distorted.
Even the mask that Hannibal Lecter wears when he first appears in The Silence of the Lambs fulfills this function. Dramatically, the wound, scar, or distorted appearance makes the villain more intriguing. Frequently, the physical wound occurred in the midst of a damaging emotional experience. For instance, Darth Vader was nearly killed when his mentor betrayed him — at least that’s how Vader saw it.
Voldemort was disfigured when he delved too deep into the dark arts in an effort to stop a prophecy about his defeat from coming true. In each case, the wound occurred in a moment of weakness, so the villain becomes obsessed with keeping that moment a secret.
Their quest for power, wealth, revenge, and so forth is a way of overcompensating in their attempt to ensure such a moment never happens again.
#4 A personal connection to the hero:
At the start of a story, it may seem as if the villain’s appearance on the scene is completely random and that the hero’s call to defeat the villain is just as spurious. But as the story progresses, we come to see that nothing could be further from the truth.
While Luke Skywalker may seem like nothing but a simple farm boy from an out-of-the way desert planet, eventually, we come to see this conflict is really more of a family squabble. That’s because (spoiler alert), Luke is Darth Vader’s son. Randomness is every author’s enemy.
The growing awareness of this personal connection gives the story another layer of depth. In many cases, the villain used to be just like the hero, but then something went wrong. This raises the stakes of the story by suggesting that if the hero fails to complete the journey, he or she risks becoming just like the villain, or worse.
#5 A worthy match for the hero:
At the beginning of the story, the mere idea of the hero going up against the antagonist should seem foolish. What hope does a whiny farm boy from Tatooine have of defeating the Empire’s greatest weapon? The villain should seem so overwhelming that all hope is lost even before the quest begins. This creates emotional and dramatic tension in readers and viewers.
It also forces the hero to dig deep, risking everything to achieve victory. One thing that makes villains so powerful is their refusal to abide by societal norms. The rules of decency that constrain the hero, thus limiting his or her options, mean nothing to the villain. Therefore, villains are able to risk huge amounts of collateral damage and sacrifice everything — including the people closest to them — in pursuit of their goals.
Villains often taunt heroes with this knowledge, lording it over them each time the hero fails. This forces heroes to ponder what makes them different from the villain. Why do they practice such restraint? Why don’t they just do what the villain does? It’s this soul searching that eventually allows the hero to arrive at a completely different solution.
In the end, the hero’s adherence to a set of values proves to be a strength rather than a weakness because they are able to bring a force against the villain that he or she never could have anticipated because the villain was looking at the world in a completely different way.
#6 The villain thinks he or she is the hero:
Villains rarely see themselves as villainous. Instead, they see themselves as heroes. Thanos doesn’t want to wipe out half the living beings in the universe because he enjoys killing people.
He sees it as a necessary evil to save the universe from itself. He regards his role as a burden that he selflessly carries out for the good of all. In his mind, he is the universe’s greatest savior, not its greatest threat. This characteristic makes villains three-dimensional. It also makes them just like the hero — just like us. We all see ourselves as the hero of our own story.
According to our lights, we see our behavior as virtuous, even though some people may have to pay the price for us to achieve our goals. The only difference between the hero and the villain in this regard is the value structure by which they have decided to live.
The question is, is the villain seeing something the hero is missing? Does the villain’s value system allow him or her to be more honest about some aspect of life that the hero can’t face? Perhaps that’s why the hero and villain need to be brought into conflict.
After all, no villain is completely wrong about everything. In many stories, one of the key roles a villain plays is that of teacher. The problem is, just as the hero is missing a key aspect of the truth, so is the villain. The difference between them is that, eventually, the hero reaches a point where he or she becomes teachable. Villains rarely reach this stage.
#7 An Achilles heel:
This is some sort of weakness that isn’t apparent at first to the hero or to the reader or viewer but which eventually becomes the last hope of defeating the villain. Think of the exhaust port on the Death Star, for example. Sometimes villains are aware of their Achilles heel, and sometimes they are not.
From a narrative point of view, readers and viewers shouldn’t figure out what this weakness is until fairly deep into the story, ideally at the end of act two. Once the hero realizes what this is, act three becomes a matter of whether or not the hero can exploit the Achilles heel before it’s too late. | https://medium.com/the-brave-writer/7-qualities-that-make-for-a-great-villain-f6d4a509bd10 | ['Kevin Miller'] | 2020-12-21 23:03:20.169000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Storytelling', 'Novel Writing', 'Screenwriting'] |
Turning household waste into sustainable designs for interiors | When speaking about sustainable designs, a lot has to do with materials.
Less harmful materials are created.
By-products are given a purpose.
Waste is upcycled.
Looking at materials impartially is a skill to be learnt though, as our preconceptions over materials can hinder their potential!
Today, we’re focusing on materials that are commonly thrown into household recycling bins. Even though this action marks the end of one of their lives, this doesn’t mean they can’t have more…
Paper
Letters, newspapers, leaflets…everyday life is full of paper. But when wet, paper trash takes on a paste-like consistency that can easily be moulded into décor pieces and furniture.
The end products retain an interesting crumpled look that adds plenty of texture.
Some recycled paper interior products from SforSustainable:
Glass
Glass bottles and jars are a common packaging material for household goods. Glass is also a great material when it comes to recycling, as it can be reused over and over without any quality loss.
Trashed glass can be melted and re-shaped into attractive forms that are worth displaying. Alternatively, glass bottles can be cut and painted. This turns them into a décor piece while keeping them mainly as-is, in a somehow provocative act of upcycling.
Some recycled glass interior products from SforSustainable:
Credit: Urban Nature Culture — Photo by Studio Bino
Cans & tins
Cans and tins are another common packaging material for food & beverages. And aluminium is another ideal candidate for recycling, being one of the few materials that don’t degrade in quality when reused.
In an Ugly Duckling-like transformation, uninteresting cans & tins have the potential to become design pieces — from chairs to coat hooks.
Some recycled aluminium interior products from SforSustainable:
Plastic bottles
Despite being one of the most blamed materials, plastic can be reused in several different ways.
Either in the form of solid surface or yarn, recycled plastic can be turned into all sorts of interior pieces.
Some recycled plastic interior products from SforSustainable:
Organic waste
Even what commonly ends up in the compost can have a second life as a design piece!
Peels and leaves can become dyes to give a natural tint to textiles. Alternatively, vegetable pulps of all sorts can be moulded in the shape of furniture tops and accessories, preserving their naturally vibrant colour.
Some organic waste interior products from SforSustainable:
When speaking about sustainable designs, a lot has to do with materials…
And if we let go of common preconceptions, accepting that all materials have the same potential, then we’ll be able to witness some incredible transformations — like household trash to sustainable design! | https://medium.com/@dfordesign/turning-household-waste-into-sustainable-designs-for-interiors-145cd8e92e10 | [] | 2021-01-22 07:51:17.728000+00:00 | ['Interior Design', 'Sustainable Design', 'Circulareconomy', 'Sustainable Development', 'Circular Design'] |
Write characters with disabilities who don’t suck | Who Cares about Writers with Disabilities? (Not many people, apparently.)
For those of you who don’t follow the creative-writing-conference world closely, the AWP Conference is the largest creative writing conference in the U.S. (the world?) and is one of the largest (quasi-)academic conferences, period. The AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Conference, held annually, is attended by more than 10,000 people. That’s a ton of writers, publishers, editors, professors, and more crammed into a conference center, all there to talk about creative writing. It happens every spring.
Months before the conference, writers submit panel proposals on a variety of topics. This past year, just like every year, writers with disabilities submitted panels on disability topics. Then, in the fall of 2015, when the acceptances were going out for #AWP2016, it became apparent that every single disability-focused panel had been rejected.
Karrie Higgins, award-winning essayist, blogger, and more, took AWP to task on her blog:
Sure, they gave us a “disability caucus,” which translates to a “networking event” where we hang out with our own kind and don’t make problems for all the able people … but not a panel. NOT ONE. We were not worthy of even ONE panel.
And it’s not just the lack of representation on the panels where AWP falls short. Their accommodations for writers of disabilities who attend their conferences is pathetic. You can read about author Stephen Kuusisto’s experience’s with AWP. His experiences have not been awesome:
In sum, the AWP is a largely progressive and affirming outfit. Except where disability is concerned. I must say that after a decade attending their conferences I’ve found the cumulative experience so demoralizing I’ve decided both to speak out about the matter and to skip the affair. The former is appropriate. The latter is sad.
He then lists each sort of normal accommdation that conference-goers should expect, and how each of these accommodations seems wildly beyond the capability of the AWP conference and its attendees to manage. You want a handout for a panel? No. You want wheelchair accessibility? Hahaha. No.
And then, to make sure everyone really felt included this year, a representative of AWP published a diatribe about our complaints in the Huffington Post, and then quickly took it down. (Thank you, Wayback Machine, for insuring her insults live on for us to mock.)
Although Karrie Higgins raked her deservedly over the coals, I think the word we’re looking for here is “clusterf@ck.”
So I’m not attending AWP this year (even though I was accepted to present as part of a non-disability-focused panel), nor is Karrie Higgins, nor is Stephen Kuusisto. It’s just too much trouble to fight through their “accessibility services” when those services should be standard practices, not special requests that may or may not be granted.
(I know you’re on the edge of your seat, so I’ll give away the spoiler. We’ll be examining AWP’s accessibility services in greater detail in a future issue of this newsletter: “Don’t expect help! Help yourself!”)
The Consequences of AWP’s Disability Incompetence
There are consequences to AWP’s rejection of all disability-focused panels, their barely accessible conference, and their doubling-down when a representative was horribly, publicly offensive to people with disabilities.
There will be fewer writers with disabilities at AWP this year. There will be, apparently, zero panels on writing with disabilities, writing about disabilities, or anything having to do with writing+disabilities.
Now, the largest organization of creative writing people in the U.S. (the 10,000 people at AWP) has even less access to the knowledge and experience of writers with disabilities.
Now, writers who do not have disabilities have fewer opportunities to learn about how to effectively represent characters with disabilities in their writing without relying on obnoxious stereotypes.
#ThanksAWP
Don’t Worry! We’ve hired an expert to help you out.
Meet Tipsy Tullivan.
In a mere two minute video, she will provide for you a ton of help on effectively using disabilities in your writing. This video is the first in Tipsy’s series on writing about disabilities. It’s really important to us that everyone out there have access to Tipsy’s wisdom.
In particular, this first video will teach you how to use disabilities to create three-dimensional characters. From eye-patches to missing limbs, to my personal favorite, psoriasis, a disability can really spice up a boring character.
“Psoriasis is really underrated in fiction.”
Let’s hear it from Tipsy herself:
Look for more Tipsy in the next issue of “Write characters with disabilities who don’t suck or we will make fun of you.”
Until then! | https://medium.com/disability-acts/write-characters-with-disabilities-who-don-t-suck-88333f6db243 | ['Katie Rose Guest Pryal'] | 2018-08-05 02:08:45.361000+00:00 | ['Criplit', 'Disability', 'Awp', 'Writing'] |
Minimalism: A Look Inside | People usually buy groceries so that they can prepare delicious home-cooked meals. I go grocery shopping once a week, and, on that day every week, I often end up eating either frozen or canned food even though I always prefer cooking and enjoying fresh food.
Why?
I live in a tiny home, and I have a tiny fridge, so after I get home with all the groceries I need for a week, it takes me a while to fit everything in my mini fridge.
When I buy vegetables like beets, lettuce, or a cabbage, for example, I can’t fit them into my fridge as they are. I need to clean, cut, wash, and package everything, and doing all that takes time, so I don’t have time to cook on that day.
You might think I could cook something while I’m putting everything in the fridge, but I can’t because in my tiny home, the key word being tiny, I don’t have enough counter space, so I lay the cutting board above the burner to get all the vegetables cut.
When I first started living in my tiny home, everything had its own place, and there was no extra space left for anything. The first time I went grocery shopping, it took me the whole day to figure out what to do with all the produce I’d brought home. I gradually got better at it, but it did take a considerable amount of practice.
During the summer, I can enjoy a salad or fruit and nuts, so things work out. During the winter, however, I’d like to have a warm meal, so I’ve learned to buy either canned food, like soup, or frozen food, like a pizza for my shopping day.
Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/@authornikaparadis/minimalism-a-look-inside-5315a7f23218 | ['Nika Paradis'] | 2020-12-22 16:01:23.972000+00:00 | ['Minimalism', 'Lifestyle', 'Eating', 'Perspective', 'Food'] |
We | Wanna stick into my vagina?
Wanna pry open my mouth with a tweezer for my secrets?
Wanna slit open an orifice on my cheek for a second mouth?
You don’t dare, do you?
There’re eyes.
There’s law.
So you come up with a plan
a legit plan without being asked questions
You approach me
play with alphabets like LEGO games
stack up compliments, assemble cajoleries,
fabricate promises until your masterpiece
fits the hole in my heart and clicks me open
Bricks collapse into plastic words
flooding into my head, releasing poisons
that numb my perceptions of myself
You feed my mouth with your words
You sculpt me into the shape you desire
You make me yours and claim its us
I’m raped.
Why a mind-fucker doesn’t bear the consequences? | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/we-f730430aae0a | ['Nicole Jiang'] | 2020-11-14 17:59:57.931000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Poetry', 'Love', 'Violence'] |
Remembering Nate Watters | In early 2020, shortly after stopping steroids and starting Lyme protocols, Nate got worse. His mobility deteriorated, he kept losing weight, and he developed such acute insomnia that he’d remain awake for days at a time. We suspected that the steroids suppressed his immune system, leaving the active Lyme infection unchecked and able to fully disseminate throughout his body.
In late 2020, a doctor recommended a mold test, and the results showed high exposure in 4 out of the 5 most toxic molds. Lyme and mold infections are often diagnosed in tandem, but in Nate’s case, it was uncertain if one condition or the other or both were causing his symptoms.
In January 2021 Nate’s pinky started to die, and yes, it was as awful as it sounds. When he went to the ER we learned he had air escaping from his lungs as well. The doctors diagnosed this as pneumomediastinum, however, they could not detect the source by means of an x-ray, cat scan, and ultrasound. So after three days and dozens of bewildered doctors insisting “this isn’t what Lyme does to people, but we don’t know what is wrong with you,” Nate was sent home. By this point, Nate was obviously and visibly ill. He had lost most of the hair on his body and his head, he was extremely frail, and was unable to walk any distance on his own. He wasn’t able to absorb a sufficient amount of oxygen at the hospital for those three days, and was suffering immensely as a result. Nate was instructed to rest his lungs and just let the finger die. This was honestly where things felt the worst; nothing would ease the pain in his finger and he just had to suffer through it. Meanwhile, I could feel the air bubbles in his neck creeping up into his vocal cords, causing him to lose his voice periodically for months. The hand specialist seemed unbothered by his finger and assured us that when he was healthy enough, they would amputate. However, that time never came, as he was unable to have surgery, and his lungs never resolved.
As he continued to get more serious unresolving symptoms, “herx’s” that lasted for over a week and came out worse than before, we desperately sought to get him into the Cleveland Clinic, The Mayo Clinic, and even John Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center. All of which refused to take him on. Citing they either don’t work with Lyme patients or that Nate’s condition wasn’t severe enough. I remember reading the letter from John Hopkins thinking if this isn’t enough what are other people with Lyme dealing with.
As 2021 went on, Nate got weaker and in almost every aspect of his being became unrecognizable, lost his long aggressive battle on June 5th. His initial cause of death was unclear however they revealed Nate was actually suffering from Pulmonary Fibrosis that wasn’t caught at his hospital. While I am not sure how we would have managed to know that Nate was in fact dealing with a fatal condition as a result of years with untreated Chronic Lyme. I do know he’d likely be alive today had he have been diagnosed properly in real-time, a common theme we experienced over the course of three long years.
In retrospect, I believe Nate was failed by the Lyme illiterate doctors who did not understand chronic Lyme and mold infections, and missed Nate’s diagnosis in the early days of his symptoms. He spent years fighting to simply be taken seriously, and prove he was sick, and lost years trying to find what was wrong while not getting the right treatment. In fact, his treatment exacerbated his condition. Looking back, Nate was infected by a tick bite in Moab, UT in 2014. Colorado and this region of the United States have little familiarity with Lyme, and next to no understanding of how to treat it, recognize it, and what it does when left untreated. To be honest, I didn’t know what Lyme disease was before this experience, nor did I know that the CDC doesn’t recognize it as a chronic condition. Now, due to that fact and the total lack of education around this disease, my 2-year-old son no longer has a father, I have lost the love of my life, and the world has lost an incredible and loving soul. He leaves behind a devastated family at the hands of a broken system.
My hope in sharing Nate’s story is to provide awareness in sharing some of these abnormal symptoms. To recap, his symptoms were extensive and included: Severe Raynaud’s (resulted in 50% of his left pinky finger necrotic), skin lesions on joints severe in hands, skin peeling on fingertips with inflammation, chronic fatigue, severe joint and muscle pain, severe inflammation in all joints and skin, depression, hair loss all over his body, flu-like symptoms, severe weight loss and muscle atrophy, pneumomediastinum.
These among many other symptoms can’t point to a Lyme-related infection. I urge anyone on the hunt for answers to really advocate for proper testing and doctors proficient with recognizing Lyme disease. The work on Nate’s behalf will not end until Chronic Lyme is a diagnosable disease, that doctors don’t push people like him off and that there is a clear path to recovery. | https://medium.com/@samantha.davis.11/remembering-nate-watters-941b3946b6fd | ['Sam Davis'] | 2021-09-08 17:00:33.252000+00:00 | ['Lyme', 'Lyme Disease Treatment', 'Grief And Loss', 'Lyme Disease'] |
The Science-Backed Ways Music Affects Your Brain and Productivity | The Science-Backed Ways Music Affects Your Brain and Productivity
Why tunes help you focus, tunes to help you focus, and news you’ll want to tune into.
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” ― Aldous Huxley
Dear Reader,
There you sit again: browser open in front of you, the hum of your office in the background, your to-do list sprawled out on your notepad.
And… you don’t feel like doing anything.
Faced with this lack of motivation, you start to experiment:
You try working offline. You try the pomodoro method. You take that walk around the block, as suggested by everyone. No major improvements. You’re not being as productive as you should, and you need to fix that… fast.
So you put on your headphones, pull up your favorite pop song or ambient rain mix and listen. Instantly, you can focus on those boring tasks on your to-do list (looking at you, email).
And now you got one of them done. Then another. Now you’re bobbing your head and in the zone.
When nothing else seems to help make us productive, the right music can supercharge us. But in terms of our brain and work, what does music do and why does it help us?
Over the next few newsletters, we will share why music affects our brains, explain how it boosts our thinking, and link up some of our favorite tunes that help us focus. We hope you enjoy!
(Continue the conversation. Share your favorite jams by replying to this email or hitting us up on social @TheMissionHQ.) 🎶🎶
Science, Music, and Your Brain
Studies about how music affects our brains and emotions have been ongoing since the 1950s, when physicians began to notice the benefits of music therapy in European and U.S. hospital patients. However, humans have been using music to communicate thoughts and feelings to one another for centuries.
Today, research suggests that music can help relieve negative emotions like stress, anxiety, and depression. It can even decrease instances of confusion and delirium in elderly medical patients recovering from surgery. Furthermore, research says that listening to happy or sad music can make us perceive others as being happy or sad, respectively. All of these findings make it clear that, for better or worse, music’s impact on our emotions is very real.
In terms of how music affects the brain, we can turn to a specific niche of research called neuromusicology, which explores how our nervous systems react to music. Basically, music enters the inner ear and engages many different areas of our brains, some of which are used for other cognitive functions, as well. (If you want to know the specifics of this detailed process, Dawn Kent explains it neatly in her thesis.)
Somewhat surprisingly, the number of brain areas activated by music varies from person to person, depending on your musical training and your personal experiences with music. Therefore, how music impacts your ability to concentrate or feel a certain emotion can be expected to vary from person to person, too.
However, there are some general brain and mood patterns that modern music research reveals, and these can help us decide what kinds of music to listen to at work. In tomorrow’s letter, we will explain exactly what those are and share more of the science behind music. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/the-mission/the-science-backed-ways-music-affects-your-brain-and-productivity-dfd8bfd7cf68 | [] | 2019-08-13 18:38:37.286000+00:00 | ['Podcast', 'News', 'Music', 'Storytelling', 'Science'] |
Surreal | Last night, I had a strange experience. I felt like I was in a movie.
At about 4:30am I woke up and my left arm was numb. I couldn’t feel my joints and my arm was just floppy.
I imagine the reason for this was me sleeping on my arm. For 30 seconds I was desperately trying to get blood flowing through my veins.
After a few clenching and unclenching exercises, I was back to normal.
It was super strange and I’ve had flashbacks of it today.
I hope in writing and sharing my fear, I can get past it.
It was weird and I’m sure I’ll take precautions to avoid it tonight.
Surreal | https://medium.com/@dnaqvi/surreal-f721ad0912eb | ['Danial Naqvi'] | 2020-12-22 22:01:25.782000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Fear', 'Surreal', 'Body', 'Experience'] |
Data analytics: employee empowerment or surveillance? | Data analytics: employee empowerment or surveillance?
Caroline Lewis, sales director at data analytics organization Tiger, explains how businesses have adapted to this new era.
With the arrival of the pandemic, the working world changed forever. In fact, it’s been purported that business technology evolved more in a year than in the previous decade, as employees were armed with laptops and the facility to work from anywhere, via almost any device.
As hybrid working continues to take precedence and staff strive to find their own balance, so too do the organizations that have equipped team members with a previously unparalleled degree of autonomy. And this takes trust.
Adopting technologies to accommodate fresh ways of working
As the events of the past 18 months unfolded, the majority of firms have kept in touch via unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) platforms such as Microsoft Teams. The speed at which this facility was rolled out and adopted among workers was nothing short of astounding. A completely new concept to many, which would previously have taken a period of bedding in, training courses, and feedback, was implemented and embraced within a matter of weeks.
And there is no doubt that this process was what kept thousands of businesses afloat, throughout the world, as entire workforces were given no choice but to work from home for prolonged periods. In fact, in many instances, workers were forced to take increased control and responsibility over their workloads and responsibilities. Meanwhile, leaders faced various operational challenges as they adapted to managing their teams from a distance.
Now, as many companies begin to adopt a hybrid working approach in light of new Covid-19 variants — leaders must take stock of how to move forward, with a host of fresh ways to keep in touch considered an essential component of a company’s armoury.
A delicate balance
Hybrid working will remain one of the top considerations for businesses — who must assess whether this approach will work in the long term, to analyze how it will be implemented and managed, and to decide what additional tools they need in place to make it work.
And as the line between the workplace and home becomes increasingly blurred, organizations must implement new processes to monitor this — to the benefit of businesses and colleagues — to pick up on any nuances and keep abreast of their team’s wellbeing.
It will, no doubt, prove to be a nerve-wracking time for many. Some leaders will feel overwhelmed and out of control, with staff operating from kitchen tables and home offices, and enjoying the new-found flexibility that the pandemic has invoked. Meanwhile, other team members may feel disengaged, unable to retain the focus — or to enjoy the camaraderie — that the workplace once offered.
And with ‘the great resignation’ now a nationally debated topic — and job vacancies in some industries at an all-time high — it’s time that firms prioritized understanding how the pandemic has affected their teams, as well as their levels of service, and begun unlocking insight that could prove vital to their future success.
Don’t operate in the dark
In their haste to keep afloat, many organizations didn’t look beyond the immediate need to keep their company running. And understandably so. But as disruption continues to impact operations, with remote and hybrid working continuing for many, leaders needn’t feel out of touch.
Now is the time to prioritize how these platforms can become a permanent and useful feature, which increases efficiency, insight, and outcomes — both for teams and amongst a company’s client base. ‘Plugging in’ intelligent analytics tools which increase and contextualize the data available is just one of the ways that organizations can keep abreast of any employee trends, or areas of engagement and disengagement, amongst their teams.
For example, businesses can gain an understanding of how well video calls are working as a meeting tool. If the connection is constantly dropping, this could impact upon productivity and client satisfaction — jeopardizing both colleague wellbeing and customer retention. But with the context provided by analytics tools, organizations can gain valuable oversight which will help to inform strategy moving forward.
Not only will this knowledge empower leaders to ensure they’re offering the correct training, investing in the right technologies, and spending their time and money where it matters, but it will also ensure that hard work is visible, progression is measurable, and that targets are considered and achievable. All of this will contribute to ensuring that team members feel happy and supported in their employment.
Encourage ‘buy in’ across the board
Historically, the perception of analytics has proved controversial. Employees may worry that their activities are being ‘spied on’ or that their privacy is being invaded. But while these tools do indeed unlock relevant data — their main aim is to identify patterns of engagement, establish what is and isn’t working, and improve efficiency all round. It’s about empowering employees, not making them feel as if ‘Big Brother’ is watching them.
And this is just as beneficial to colleagues as it is to companies. Those intermittent connectivity issues which cause frustrating delays and video calls to glitch will be picked up, removing some of the hurdles which make achieving an employee’s goals, and indeed their targets, more easily attainable, as a result.
Just as any struggles can be picked up and supported, progress and growth can be identified and celebrated — making for unbiased observations based on data, rather than simply relying upon opinions that can be heavily influenced by external factors. Staff can use this data to support their own progression, pinpointing strengths, along with any areas for development or training, in order to create a robust case for career advancement.
And where any hesitancy remains, a transparent approach will help to remedy this. Introducing intuitive dashboards, for example, will bring data to the forefront for everyone. Once team members can clearly see what the strategic goals are, and how their contributions are being measured, in many cases it will address any cynicism and, instead, motivate them to seek improvement.
READ MORE:
Data analytics tools are not designed to snoop but, rather, are a key component that enables businesses to remain informed regardless of the physical whereabouts of their team members. With the ability to look out for patterns, identify difficulties, and address what’s working well, teams can collectively strive for success.
For more news from Top Business Tech, don’t forget to subscribe to our daily bulletin!
Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter | https://medium.com/tbtech-news/data-analytics-employee-empowerment-or-surveillance-f1ff92912b5a | ['Top Business Tech'] | 2021-12-14 09:53:07.076000+00:00 | ['It', 'Technology', 'Security And Data', 'Business', 'Big Data'] |
jacket | jacket
my cold bruises bleed
sludge that drips in icicles down my sleeves
i brush them away
and they crackle into the floorboard
nestled in your camouflage jacket
you ask me if I’m cold
i say yes
you don’t offer your jacket | https://medium.com/@drew8/jacket-6b160343bc20 | [] | 2020-12-22 03:18:31.139000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Relationships', 'Heartbreak', 'Poetry', 'Love'] |
CCleaner Professional Key 5.68.7820 with Crack | CCleaner Professional key free download is the number one tool for cleaning Windows PCs. CCleaner pro key is a free system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool.
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All Edition: CCleaner Professional / Business / Technician / Slim License Key | https://medium.com/@abbaspc/ccleaner-professional-key-5-68-7820-with-crack-fc26e9caf6ef | [] | 2020-07-01 13:35:36.601000+00:00 | ['Windows'] |
Zinc is LIVE on Product Hunt | Zinc is LIVE on Product Hunt
Check us out at:https://www.producthunt.com/posts/zinc-4
We are so excited to be listed on Product Hunt today — the place to find the best new products in tech.
Each day Product Hunt user data (upvotes, comments) is used for ranking new products — the higher the rank, the better the exposure.
About Zinc
Zinc is democratizing the hiring process, with automated referencing, feedback and background checking tools that put the candidate in control of their data. For employers, a built-in incentive system makes sourcing references simple and straightforward, including gathering in-depth insights on candidate skills and work styles.
For job seekers, Zinc turns the data ownership model on its head, empowering candidates to own data they previously missed out on. Data such as references and other work proofs; interview feedback, courses, and hackathons. This data can be reused throughout the job seekers career to avoid repeating these processes over and over.
Check out Zinc on Product Hunt and show your support 🚀 | https://medium.com/zinc_work/zinc-is-live-on-product-hunt-a647ae259a09 | ['Charlotte Hall'] | 2018-12-11 09:23:33.851000+00:00 | ['Blockchain Startup', 'Hiring For Startup', 'Blockchain', 'Hiring', 'Product Hunt'] |
Essential Items to Carry for Short Weekend Bike Trips | One of my favorite quote of all time, I dont know who have written this, but when I saw it for the first time, it just stuck me.
All men are created equal, but only the Finest become Bikers.
Here’s a Complete Check list of items for a Bike Trip you are planning —
Protective Gears — Gloves, Elbow & Knee Guards 2 Water Bottles Waterproof backpack First aid kit box Knife & Blade Plastic polythene bag & old 2 Newspapers for wrapping purposes. Good Quality helmet Hand Sanitizer Lighter Oil Draining Pipe (optional) Power bank for mobile recharge. Bunjee Cord All Updated bike papers.
Be safe, & keep riding. | https://medium.com/@samrat007/essential-items-to-carry-for-short-weekend-bike-trips-b25e81919556 | ['Samrat Chakraborty'] | 2020-12-30 10:03:51.628000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Fun', 'Success', 'Biking', 'Motorcycle'] |
Voss Babe Female Entrepreneur Series — Anna Ruck, Owner Of STRUCKBLOG.Com — Blogger, Influencer, Stylist, & Digital Marketer | For many entrepreneurs and small businesses, social media can be an absolute game-changer! All it takes is one viral post BAM, you’re exposed to millions.
At Like A Voss Social Media, we’re highlighting local female entrepreneurs who are killing the online game. This week’s spotlight is on Anna Ruck, the mind behind the magic of STRUCKBLOG.com!
Anna started STRUCKBLOG.com just over 5 years ago on a complete whim. She was feeling uninspired, lost, and unsure of which direction to go in. But, instead of fixating on what was missing, she opted to direct her attention towards the things that inspired and struck her. By focusing on her passions and sharing them on the blog, she was able to infuse her life with the elements she felt were previously lacking while connecting with others she hoped would be able to relate to her journey in some way.
Now, she has built an online community with a reach of approximately 50 thousand with others who similarly endeavor to create fullness in their lives. She shares what strikes her, creating content on the topics of fashion, travel, beauty, food, and most recently, motherhood. Over the years she has worked with national and international brands including Procter & Gamble Canada, Reebok Canada, and McDonald’s Canada, to name a few.
Anna also worked to further develop her knowledge of marketing that she initially gained through post-secondary education. “I saw my blog as a space where I could test out creative ideas and digital marketing campaigns to further advance my skill set”. After working on her blog and in digital marketing for a few years, she began offering promotional, content photography, freelance writing, and social media/influencer consulting services to brands and business owners under the STRUCKBLOG brand. “Collaborating with business owners and other creatives is hands down the best part of my job”.
Our CEO Mandi interviewed Anna about her secret to success in business and in life. We also got some awesome insights into what she thinks makes social media such an effective tool in business.
A Little Bit About Being a Female Entrepreneur
1: How long have you been a FT blogger?
Not very long! I only started doing this full-time when I went off on maternity leave. I’m always working when I’m not changing diapers! Before that I worked in digital communications at Queen’s University where my job responsibilities included fulfilling communications plans, social media content creation and management, and the daily upkeep and maintenance of two university websites. I loved it because it required a similar skill set to work as a blogger and allowed me to continue to advance my digital marketing expertise.
2: What made you decide to start your blog?
I started the blog because I felt uninspired by the day-to-day grind. I was teaching at the time, and although I loved educating little ones I felt as though the only opportunity I had to be creative was at the craft table surrounded by 4 and 5-year olds. I randomly sat down one day and started to vent, via furious typing on the keyboard. I felt so much better throwing myself into writing. But it still wasn’t enough. I wondered if other 20-somethings felt similarly, lost and confused about their personal journey. I yearned for that human connectivity. So, I went on YouTube, figured out how to make a website, and published my writing in hopes that I would find them or that they would find me.
When I started, I was unsure of what to pursue, who I was, and what I was good at. But the more I shared, the more my blog became a space where I could just create and focus on the things that brought me joy and made me feel excited. It brought me focus, helped me to figure out my strengths and interests while developing my knowledge. Before I knew it, I had created a community. What’s truly amazing is that some of the same people who were the first to connect with me still follow me today. I feel like I have virtual friends all over the planet!
3: What do you love most about being a female entrepreneur?
I love that as a female entrepreneur I have a platform through which I can share voices and messages that I feel should be seen and heard. I mean, in real life I’m a pretty loud person. But I don’t just mean my own voice, I mean those of other female leaders and creatives.
Being a female entrepreneur can be tough because it’s so often trivialized. I hate labels such as #bossbabe and #girlboss because they don’t celebrate female business leaders for their accomplishments. Instead, they make them sound like cute t-shirt slogans. I feel it’s my responsibility as a female business owner with a platform to share the powerful messages. As female entrepreneurs, we have to make ripples that create waves. We have to live community vs. competition (not just say it or use the hashtag) and share those who inspire to amplify their voices. When that actually happens, when women actually practice this in an authentic way, we can make major changes and shifts in society. I’ve seen it happen. Social media is incredibly powerful that way.
4: What is the hardest thing you have had to overcome as a female entrepreneur? Something you did not foresee when you decided to start?
I never expected this blog to become a business. I feel as though that’s more popular nowadays, but back when I started professional influencers and bloggers were a totally novel thing. I didn’t set out to become an “influencer” and still feel weird using that term. I didn’t start a blog to make money, I worked hard to get here, and it took me years to make a single cent. I still have my first cheque mounted in my office!
What’s hard is that others don’t always see me as a small business (and I mean small, it’s just me wearing all the hats). They don’t understand what it is that I do and that I make a living doing it. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about bloggers and influencers. People perpetuate the idea that it’s just some creative hobby and make it sound frivolous, largely because they don’t know how much work goes into it or how to be successful at it.
Working as a blogger requires an expansive skillset. I’ve learned everything from web design to photography, to video editing, graphic design, to SEO, etc. The list goes on and on, and I’m always adding to it. Sometimes I feel as though I’m swimming upstream when I explain to others that I charge for my work and can’t buy groceries with a $15 necklace (regardless of how lovely it is). I’m no longer in a place where I’m working for exposure or experience alone. You’re paying for years of dedication, skills I’ve worked tirelessly to attain, and access to a community I’ve developed a trusted rapport with. It’s invaluable! If it were easy to get to where I am today, you’d do it yourself.
5: What is one thing about being a blogger/influencer that people would be surprised to learn?
I think people are very surprised to learn about the amount of dedication and time it takes to become a professional blogger and influencer; it’s so often just seen as just a hobby. And although it is for some, as a professional I didn’t follow a blog post I found on Pinterest about “how to make money blogging” and get here overnight. It’s taken years of consistent work, learning, and creativity to arrive here. Over the past 5 years, there hasn’t been more than a handful of days where I haven’t worked on something related to STRUCKBLOG.com. It’s a daily commitment, it’s always on my mind.
I also think there is a lack of knowledge about how influencer marketing works. How do brands find me? Collaborate with me? Compensate me? I try to be extremely transparent about these relationships because the trust I’ve worked so hard to develop with my community is paramount. This is also why I started to offer social media/influencer consulting services, because so many small businesses want to work with influencers like myself but have no idea where to start. Aside from what you see online, my work involves negotiating contracts with local and international brands, pitching collaborations, writing invoices, and analyzing analytics. It’s fun to use my knowledge and experience to help other small businesses (who may not be able to afford PR representation) dive into influencer marketing.
And Now Onto The Social Media Questions!
6: Do you have a favorite social media platform? Why?
I have a love-hate relationship with Instagram. I love it because it’s where I’ve been able to establish my largest engaged community. I’ve made friends in real life from the platform and have virtual relationships all over the world. My husband laughs because I’ll tell him about my mom friend in Florida or about the beautiful island my travel blogger friend visited. But Instagram is not what it used to be. When I first started posting it was a lot less algorithm and much simpler to grow and see the content you wanted to see. Now it can feel like a game, inauthentic and overly curated. Instagram has changed but it’s still my favourite platform. It’s a matter of learning to balance eye-catching content and raw authenticity. I of course also have Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, which serve their purpose, but posting on there can sometimes feel as though you’re standing on a soapbox shouting “engage with my content!” They just don’t elicit conversation and foster community in the same way as Instagram does. I love Instagram because the structure allows for meaningful connections between users.
7: What made you decide to start using social media as a way to promote your company?
Website traffic! Creating and managing a blog or website is arguably integral to running a business, but social media is a prime tool for directing people there. I started using social media for my blog so I could find my tribe. The people that I hoped could relate to my story or who had lived similar experiences. Without it, I wouldn’t have the community I do today. It’s what has connected me to my audience. Posting regularly to social media platforms and creating consistent content acts as a tether between you, your community, and your potential customers/clients.
8: How has social media impacted your business? Would you say that it’s an effective marketing tool?
I just chuckled a little when reading this question because I’m not sure my readership would exist if not for social media. No joke! Social media makes up for a third of my total website traffic. That’s huge! It’s extremely important and powerful, and that’s why I love talking about it in my social media/influencer consulting work. My reach and following are one of the first pieces of analytical information that prospective clients review when considering working with me. So, when I hear someone say that the numbers don’t matter, I know there is a lack of understanding there about how to effectively use social media as a marketing tool.
More than that, it’s where I’ve gotten to know my readers, and where they’ve gotten to know me. It’s helped me to learn what content they find interesting, what information they need, what struggles we share. You must understand who your target audience is and what is it that they’re looking for if you want to be successful.
9: What advice would you give to other budding entrepreneurs, bloggers, or influencers who want to use social media as a way to make a living?
I think if you desire to be any of those things, a blogger, influencer, or entrepreneur of any kind, it would be misguided to not use social media as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. It’s such a dynamic tool for connectivity and it allows you to get to know your potential clients better, and for them to know you. There’s no other marketing tool like it.
If you specifically want to become a blogger/influencer, I would caution you to take your time! I know it’s tempting to jump right in, slap the title on your social media profiles, and hope those brand deals come rolling in, but be careful! These days there are lots of shady brands out there taking advantage of those who are just starting out and will ask you to do more than your fair share. Don’t forget your value or why you started. Take time to find your niche, your audience, and build the necessary skill set to produce work you can be proud of. Becoming a successful blogger and influencer is a long-term commitment. Do your research (I have a few posts about blogging and social media on my website) and make sure it’s the right move for you before you start.
A Little More About Anna
Fun facts about me?
Well, I don’t drink coffee, I’m a tea drinker. If you see me drinking coffee, my one-year-old son must have kept me up that night.
I hate horror films and absolutely refuse to watch them. No thank you!
One time a pigeon pooped directly on my head as I walked down the sidewalk in Toronto. I was headed to a fancy event, it was great timing.
I spoke Polish before I learned English because I’m a first-generation Canadian.
I love to travel and have visited many countries, but one of the coolest things I’ve ever done was volunteer with Habitat for Humanity to build a house in Romania. That experience will stick with me forever.
I hate the word moist. Sounds so gross!
Connect with Anna
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
Know Any Voss Babes?
Do you know a female entrepreneur who loves social media as much as we do? Contact us today — we’d love to tell her story! | https://medium.com/like-a-voss-social-media/voss-babe-female-entrepreneur-series-anna-ruck-owner-of-struckblog-com-54084c00a4bf | ['Amanda Relyea-Voss'] | 2020-12-09 18:36:43.384000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Women Owned Business', 'Blogger', 'Influencers', 'Female Entrepreneurs'] |
#3: 19th December 2020 | Yesterday was probably the best day of my life. It was the day after my 18th birthday. My family, Madelaine, and I ate outside for the first time since the pandemic started 9 months ago.
Started off the day by picking Madelaine at 9 AM and ate leftover birthday cake for breakfast. Continued by quality time until lunch, where my family, Madelaine, and I ate homemade pasta. She continued to finish off her homework and submitted it. Then, we prepared for dinner. She helped me pick my clothes. Started dinner at sunset with a breathtaking view of Jakarta’s skyscrapers and glaring red sky. Ate a full course dinner, started with salmon nigiri and various sushi's, wagyu steak, and finished off with a fruit sorbet.
We took many pictures, even though my mum’s photography skills are questionable. Went home and had more quality time together. I haven’t felt this fulfilled and happy for a long time. I just felt the need to write when I’m overwhelmed — whether its happiness or sadness. I need a constant reminder that life is a wheel of ups and downs, consisting of good and bad days. On good days, I write. And on bad days, I write.
Definitely one of the best days of my life. Overwhelmed with love. | https://medium.com/@collinpinn/3-19th-december-2020-26ed6d5ddbb6 | ['Alexander Collin'] | 2020-12-20 13:08:17.860000+00:00 | ['Journal'] |
The Other Name For Christmas is Hope | The Other Name For Christmas is Hope
Christmas Prompt and Other Announcements
Photo by Hert Niks on Unsplash
Dear Family,
I hope you know that we changed the name of our publication previously from “This Shall be Our Story” to “Dreams and Stories”. But Our theme hasn’t changed, and we shall continue to publish personal stories about life and dreams.
Our home URL hasn’t changed either, and it shall be https://medium.com/this-shall-be-our-story. If you haven’t joined us as a writer, click here to see our submission guidelines.
A place I live in France had the first snowfall of the season on 4th December. Coincidentally, it was a day where I had hosted a dinner for my friend. In the Northern hemisphere, snowfall brings not only extreme coldness but lots of good news too. Yes, Snowfall is also about Christmas and a New year.
The Other Name For a Christmas is Hope.
Christmas is a celebration because we believe it is a day where God reconciles with humans. After sin separated Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, God wanted to make a new covenant with the people he loved. Christmas was a day when he sent his son “Jesus of Nazareth” to earth.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” — John 3:16, The Holy Bible (ESV),
Christmas is a special event because family meets and share the love on this day. I am sure you are too looking to celebrate that day with your family.
For me, a Christmas of 2020 will be a straight third Christmas out of the home. I have been in France since August 2018, and it is as if it ages since I last met my family. I know the pain and emptiness of being alone during Christmas. Still, I live with the hope that I will spend my next year with my family. Yes, I had this hope last year, but I am thankful that the internet connects us daily, and I carry this hope with me for next year.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, I hope you carry a hope this Christmas too.
A Christmas prompt
Do you have any stories to share about your family and Christmas? Maybe you have some unfulfilled dreams or unforgotten memory that can connect with your audience? If yes, we invite you to share your story (poem, essay, or fiction) about Christmas.
We are looking forward to your submission, and while you submit, let us know (through personal notes or on kicker), saying it is a Christmas prompt.
Hurry, the Christmas prompt shall run till 2nd January 2021. There is no restriction on the number of stories you submit (can be one or over one post), but it should be a fresh draft and never published stories.
We rarely ignore any articles, and for Christmas prompt too, we shall try our best to continue our tradition. However, to make sure your stories connect with our family, we may give feedbacks and request you to edit it again.
Yes, there can be a gift.
To motivate you on writing, we are searching for sponsors who can award a few stories with a surprise gift. We will announce the update in the coming days.
If you want to sponsor our prompt, please contact me at [email protected].
If you missed our few posts
Mary Hood's post about a prayer reminds me we still need to pray for each other. Gurpreet Dhariwal writes about lessons she learned from street vendors. Darshak Rana talks about being the lamp of love. Mari Moore talks good things about relationships when you are highly sensitive people. Binit Acharya writes a poem about forgotten memories.
I would recommend you to read The Three Most Difficult Words To Say Are Not I Love You.
There are many other stories that you can read in the latest section of the publication.
Follow on LinkedIn
We are going through a major change in the publication in 2021; we need to range a new audience range to share your stories. So we are on LinkedIn too. If you are on LinkedIn, we can’t wait to see you there.
We also promote our stories through multiple platforms, and I hope you use this to the fullest. Do not forget to promote yourself.
Facebook page This Shall Be Our Story
Facebook group Medium Story Writers
Quora Space
Relationship Diaries with 3.2k+ followers and
Our Dreams and Stories with 1.1K+ followers
See you soon. | https://medium.com/this-shall-be-our-story/the-other-name-for-christmas-is-hope-44da6b78890b | ['Suraj Ghimire'] | 2020-12-12 21:06:03.853000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'This Shall Be Our Story', 'Relationships', 'Family', 'Letters'] |
Bitcoin of America Launches Bitcoin Tablets for Merchants | As the Financial Technology Industry grows, industry players are having to think outside the box to entice clients who want to buy Bitcoin. This includes offering the most convenient modes of operation and user interphase. The key element has been eased automation of services on websites that sell one thing or the other.
Bitcoin of America has always kept up with market dynamics, thus outdoing its peers on so many fronts. To begin with, Bitcoin of America rolled off Bitcoin Teller Machines (BTMs) which dispense Bitcoins in the same fashion as ATMs do for fiat currency.
Bitcoin Teller Machines resemble everyday ATMs (Automated Teller Machines).However, they serve a very different purpose. Instead of providing you with access to your bank accounts, they are used to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital currencies. With these machines, buying and selling Bitcoin is easy and convenient for the end user. A potential buyer can use cash to buy Bitcoin without a bank account or debit/credit card.
Tablets rolled out to Complement BTMs
Having attained several milestones in terms of setting up Bitcoin ATMs in several cities across the country, Bitcoin of America is now looking to bring the convenience of buying Bitcoin to your fingertips. This has been done through Tabletsfor merchants.
The company has engaged agents all over the country who will be able to help anyone wishing to buy or sell Bitcoin but lack the know-how. This is a step in the right direction in a period where the crypto industry is awash with cybercrimes such as phishing and Identity theft aimed at stealing crypto from vulnerable internet users.
How Merchant Tablets Work
Anyone wishing to buy Bitcoin may use websites as well as an array of applications that pinpoint the exact location of a merchant just like they do with BTMs. Instead of a Graphical User Interphase that is pre-installed on the BTMs, persons wishing to use the merchant tablets will be guided by a human teller operating the tablet. A customer simply walks into a Tablet location, chooses the amount they wish to buy and gives the teller his phone number for customer look up. If this is a first time buyer they will need to create an account. The customer then buys the amount of Bitcoin they wish (up to $1999) and receives cash from the teller. The tablet prints out the same QR code for the customer which then they scan to a mobile wallet.
This is an improvement on the system such that you can get live assistance, feedback or guidance on a matter that you cannot clearly make out. Also, the human touch while trying to buy Bitcoin inspires confidence to traders. This is an improvement of the previous set up where one had to have some background information on the workings of cryptocurrency.
Phone Number and Working Mobile Wallet
Just like trading Bitcoin on a BTM, one will need to have a verifiable phone number in line with Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. Additionally, you will need a working crypto wallet, preferably secured with 2 Factor Authentication (2FA). This will ensure that once you have purchased your Bitcoins, they will be channeled to a secure holding place that only you can access. With the ever changing technology it is important to roll out new features to better service customers in terms of quality and service to aid in the buy Bitcoin process.
This disclaimer informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text/sponsored content belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to Bitcoin of America, organization, committee or other group or individual. All investments are at your own risk and should be done after careful research. | https://medium.com/@sales_88506/bitcoin-of-america-launches-bitcoin-tablets-for-merchants-753101a1fdae | ['Bitcoin Of America'] | 2019-03-18 16:11:16.857000+00:00 | ['Tablets', 'Bitcoin', 'Bitcoin Wallet', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Buy Bitcoins'] |
Log Book —Guide to Excel & Outlook email Delivery Automation via Python | Log Book —Guide to Excel & Outlook email Delivery Automation via Python
This article is divided into 2 parts, first part deals with the generation of image/PDF from an excel and next part attaching the same in an outlook email and sending it out. It also has an added bonus on macros and handling different mail boxes. Dip Ranjan Chatterjee Jun 30, 2019·6 min read
In our day to day activities we often come across tasks which involve sending out a huge volume of mailers, this project is an outcome of such an ask.
To begin with we will note the steps which are required for this automation process and then try to automate each of those steps. The steps required for this automation are as follows:
1. Generate image/pdf from an excel.
2. Create an email with the image/pdf as an attachment.
3. Send out the emails from outlook.
Well this looks simple enough, so lets start. Just try to focus on the code here as of now, I will attach a GitHub gist at the end.
Step 1 — image/PDF creation
We have an excel containing the data of all the battles of GOT and a simple graph showing the count of battles by region. In this step our goal is to create a PDF/image of the graph below from the excel. You can download the excel from here.
Graph which we will copy as image
First we will connect to the Excel application and load our worksheet, Python has many options for natively creating common Microsoft Office file types including Excel, Word and PowerPoint. In some cases, however, it may be too difficult to use the pure python approach to solve a problem. Fortunately, python has the “Python for Windows Extensions” package known as pywin32 that allows us to easily access Window’s Component Object Model (COM) and control Microsoft applications via python.
xlApp = win32.DispatchEx('Excel.Application')
wb = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(file_location + filename)
ws = wb.Worksheets('Graph') # name of the sheet in which graph is present.
Once that is done we will give the cell reference of the portion of the sheet which we want to convert to an image. The image capabilities are provided by the PIL package. The below code copies the cell reference as an image to clipboard and saves it. You can adjust the image quality using the ‘quality’ parameter and note than the image quality is only applicable for files of JPEG type. The default image quality is set at 75 and as you increase or decrease the value so will the size of the image change. You can refer to the official documentation of the PIL library for details.
win32c = win32.constants
ws.Range("B2:I16").CopyPicture(Format=win32c.xlBitmap) # give the cells for which you need the image
img = ImageGrab.grabclipboard()
img.save(file_location + 'Graph.jpeg',quality=55) # image quality and file size is directly linked
Till this we have saved our image. Now if you want to convert the image to a pdf you can use the img2pdf library. The below code reads the image which we have saved above and saves it as a PDF. You can skip this if all you need is an image.
#storing pdf path
pdf_path = file_location + "Graph.pdf" #opening image
image = Image.open(image_path) #converting into chunks using img2pdf
pdf_bytes = img2pdf.convert(image.filename) #opening or creating pdf file
file = open(pdf_path, "wb") #writing pdf files with chunks
file.write(pdf_bytes) #closing image file
image.close() #closing pdf file
file.close()
After completing this step we have an image and a PDF:
Image & PDF created
We are ideally done with our first step, but I would like to add a small bonus. Often instead of an regular excel we have a macro based one and the need is to run the macro to refresh the data before taking the image, that too is possible. All you need to know is the name of the macro to run. The below code will open the excel run the specified macro and save the excel.
xlApp = win32.DispatchEx('Excel.Application')
wb = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(file_location + filename) # Give the proper macro name
xlApp.Application.Run("Module.Macroname")
wb.Save()
wb.Close()
xlApp.Application.Quit()
Step 2— Create an email
We will use the same pywin32 package as excel to connect to Outlook.
outlook = win32.Dispatch('outlook.application')
H ere is another bonus. There is often a need to send the mail from a specific outlook mail box when there are multiple email ids configured, we will deal with that next. If you want to send your mail from the default mailbox you can skip this step. The below code will loop through all your configured accounts and when it finds ‘[email protected]’ it will send the mail from there. However note that if it does not get the specified mail id it will send the mail from the default id only.
sendfromAC = None
for oacc in outlook.Session.Accounts:
#give the mail id from which you want to send
if oacc.SmtpAddress == "[email protected]":
sendfromAC = oacc
break
##----------------------------------------------------------------
mail = outlook.CreateItem(0)
if sendfromAC:
mail._oleobj_.Invoke(*(64209, 0, 8, 0, sendfromAC))
##----------------------------------------------------------------
Our outlook object is created now we will add the To/CC/Subject and the attachments. For the attachment part I will show 2 things, attach the PDF in the mail as a file and embed the image in the mail body. This should cover 2 use cases.
mail.To = '[email protected]'
mail.Cc = '[email protected];[email protected]'
mail.Subject = 'Demo Outlook Automation mail'
Attach the PDF:
mail.Attachments.Add(file_location + "Graph.pdf")
Embed in mail body:
For embedding an image in the email body we first need to attach it as a normal attachment and then embed it as a part of the HTML mail body. The below part deals with attaching the image and setting the properties so that outlook can handle the image properly. We will come shortly to the embedding part.
attachment1 = mail.Attachments.Add(file_location + 'Graph.jpeg')
attachment1.PropertyAccessor.SetProperty("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x3712001F", "Graph")
mail.HTMLBody = "<HTML lang='en' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:o='urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office'> " \
+ "<head>" \
+ "<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> \
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings> \
<o:Allowjpeg/> \
<o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch> \
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings> \
</xml> \
<![endif]-->" \
+ "</head>" \
+ "<BODY>"
Next we have to create the email body. You can set the email body as normal text format or as an HTML format. I personally prefer the HTML body format as it gives me a lot of control as to how the email should be displayed instead of letting Outlook be the judge. The below code is pretty obvious, it will set the mail body and the last ‘cid:Graph’ part will embed the attached image in the mail body.
mail.HTMLBody = mail.HTMLBody + "<BR>Hello,<b> </b>" \
+ "<BR><BR> Refer to the image below: </b> ."\
+ "<html><body><img src='cid:Graph'></body></html>"
Step 3 — Send the mail
Now that we have the mail object ready all that remains is actually sending out the mail. This will be done using the simple command:
mail.Send()
And hurrah!!
Sent Mail
The full GitHub gist is added below:
Known Issues
Issue 1
Very rarely there will be a issue in which the the script will not be able to connect to excel. The error goes something like:
module 'win32com.gen_py.00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046x0x1x9' has no attribute 'CLSIDToClassMap'
The solution is derived from this StackOverflow URL
The steps are:
1. Delete the entire gen_py folder, in my case it was present in this path: C:\Users\'user_name'\AppData\Local\Temp\gen_py folder 2. Rerun the script, the above caches will be regenerated Resolving step 2 often results in Issue 2, which has to be resolved in turn.
Issue 2
This issue is more common than Issue 1, after running quite some days, the code will throw an error:
File "C:/Users/ 'user_name' /PycharmProjects/Mailer/mailDispatcher.py", line 64, in MailDispatcher ws.Range("A1:AF25").CopyPicture(Format=win32c.xlBitmap) File "C:\Users\ 'user_name' \PycharmProjects\mail\venv\lib\site-packages\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 178, in __getattr__ raise AttributeError(a)
in the xlApp = win32.DispatchEx('Excel.Application') line.
The solution was arrived at a sort of hit and try way. The steps are:
1. Replace xlApp = win32.DispatchEx('Excel.Application') with xlApp = win32.gencache.EnsureDispatch('Excel.Application') [This is already added in code.] 2. Run the code for once, this will result in a mail with corrupted attachments. 3. Undo changes of Step 1. 4. Run the code again, now everything should work.
I don't really know what causes these issues, extensive Googling has yielded nothing of value. It looks like some kind of cache corruption.
References:
· https://www.kaggle.com/mylesoneill/game-of-thrones#battles.csv
· https://pbpython.com/windows-com.html
· Too many Stack-overflow questions | https://towardsdatascience.com/log-book-guide-to-excel-outlook-email-delivery-automation-via-python-ca905cbf3f89 | ['Dip Ranjan Chatterjee'] | 2019-06-30 12:51:44.747000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Outlook', 'Automation', 'Excel', 'Python'] |
https://link.medium.com/nngyU6C0gcb I love your work, a rare find on here — thank you for being a voice for the unborn. | Mother of two with so many opinions, I can no longer contain them. Writing to sort the chaotic thoughts from life’s never ending challenges. | https://medium.com/@rjbella/i-love-your-work-a-rare-find-on-here-thank-you-for-being-a-voice-for-the-unborn-922a1f1e01ed | ['Rachel Rogers'] | 2020-12-16 21:32:42.736000+00:00 | ['Pro Choice', 'Pro Life', 'Abortion'] |
Time To Burst Tech’s Bubble: Systems Thinking In Tech | What is systems thinking?
Systems thinking is a discipline that looks at not just individual parts of a system, but how those parts are interconnected. Systems thinking understands that a solution that seems to work in one way in isolation will behave differently when used, adapted and transformed by different users in different contexts. There are a number of useful tools, such as system archetypes or causal loop diagrams, which can help thinkers map out these connections and paint a picture of the system in question. At the heart of it, systems thinking is about really understanding the root cause of a problem by examining it from various perspectives, understanding connections and detecting patterns.
With systems thinking tools, tech innovators can go from providing patches to known issues to truly solving problems in key areas of our lives, in ways that benefit all stakeholders.
Systems Thinking — Causal Loop Diagram
Imagine if Airbnb had taken a moment to step back and consider how their technology could affect rental markets in cities with a heavy tourism industry (spoiler: it doesn’t end well for residents). Where would emissions from the transportation sector be if the likes of Uber and Lyft had focused on true community ride-sharing and foreseen the risks of increased solo-passenger rides for traffic?
Adopting this kind of approach is not easy, but understanding the world you work in can provide a significant competitive edge, as you can then truly innovate with different users in mind. Just like Airbnb and Uber, once a technology scales, the effects in a complex societal system can often take us by surprise, posing significant risks for the company. These are elements that become more and more important for a company as their tech scales. Though startups often work with a laser-like focus on creating results measured in dollars and profits, at the end of the day the largest and most widespread effect of tech will be felt beyond the investors’ and founders’ bank accounts.
How can startups avoid the tunnel vision of merely creating “solutions”, and innovate with the systems thinking in mind?
Here are a few steps to get started:
Find diverse viewpoints: Whether it’s about recruiting, engaging with beta testers or scanning your industry for opportunities, expose yourself to different kinds of people and ways of thinking. Document these findings and see if you find patterns or connections emerging between different groups. Map out your ecosystem: No company works in a void. What larger systems are you a part of, and what are the flows of resources, thoughts, activities, emotions and/or people that you rely on to succeed? How do your own measures of success relate to this system? Predict and adapt: Understanding where you sit in the world will (hopefully) shed new light on your activities. Now, how can you use this knowledge to mitigate risks and increase your competitive edge? If the relationships in the system change, what happens to your company? Or what happens if certain connections or resource flows are strengthened or weakened? Educate yourself: Take a lunch break to read through an introduction to systems thinking (we recommend The Systems Thinker). You don’t have to dive into the deep end and start drawing causal loop diagrams for your organisation, but adopting some of the systems ways of thinking may lead you down surprising paths. If videos are your preferred style of learning, you can also check out Systems Academy.
Technology can transform our societies, disrupting how we live our lives and how our businesses function, but transformation doesn’t happen in isolated markets and industries. When ride-share drivers are purchasing cars and our democratic systems are broken by tech company algorithms, it’s time for tech to take a new approach. Call it sustainability, corporate responsibility, impact business, at the heart of it, it’s facing and understanding the full picture of the reality we live in.
If you’re in the Helsinki area, join Pure Growth and Maria 01 on 28th and 29th of May for Sustainability Week, where we will be taking a deep dive into what sustainability means for startups. | https://medium.com/maria-01/time-to-burst-techs-bubble-systems-thinking-in-tech-7e60855958a | [] | 2019-05-20 08:12:59.756000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Systems Thinking', 'Impact Investing', 'Sustainability', 'Sustainable Development'] |
Price of an orgasm | Photo by MAX LIBERTINE on Unsplash
How much is coming worth to you?
Her arms were sore. She had lost track of how much time had past since he ordered her to go to his bedchamber, blindfold herself and sit on hands and knees on his bed.
His footsteps and the door closing made her turn. “Don’t make a sound,” he ordered.
Her pussy clenched. The long wait and her tired limbs didn’t dampen her anticipation. The only thing damp were her panties. She almost giggled.
He pushed her thighs wider and something moved between her legs. “I can smell your arousal, my slut.” This time it was his hand against her mound. “I don’t think you can wear underwear for the rest of the week. All you do is wet yourself.”
He peeled the thin cotton down her legs. Two fingers plunged into her waiting pussy. She arched her back, wanting to ride her pussy.
“Careful little miss, you seem eager.”
Her inner walls clenched around him. She’d been a good girl all day in anticipation of this orgasm. His thumb moved over her clit and she bit back a moan.
“Every orgasm this week has a price. I might tell you. I might not.” She nodded as his thumb wound around her clit. “It’s up to you to decide if you want to pay the price.”
What was the price for this one? | https://medium.com/asrais-purple-prose/price-of-an-orgasm-dca8450c7522 | ['Asrai Devin'] | 2020-01-18 01:26:50.053000+00:00 | ['Sex', 'Erotica', 'Fiction', 'BDSM', 'Flash Fiction'] |
A casually racist Friday | Last Friday, thanks to my white privilege, I witnessed two acts of casual racism on the same day. Acts that, had a person of colour been there, probably would not have occurred.
I had breakfast with two friends who brought an acquaintance, L, whom I had heard them mention but had never met. When I ordered a shakshuka, one of my friends asked what it was, to which L responded, “It’s sand monkey food”. When I said, “uh… I don’t think you should say that”, and another friend asked what “sand monkey” meant, L said, “Oh, it means Arab food. I can say it, because I’m half Lebanese, but that’s actually the toned-down version. Normally you’d say sand n — food.” I voiced my disapproval again, but I had just met the guy and wasn’t prepared to make a big scene or take the conversation any further, so we left it there and changed the subject.
That evening, I had drinks at a friend’s house, with eight others who all knew each other. I’d met most of them for the first time that night. My friend was at a BLM protest that week and we’d all had a brief conversation about it earlier in the night. His friends supported the protest. Later, one of his friends was telling a story about buying drugs from a (black) bouncer in Prague. He said that the bouncer had told him to wait in the back alley and to take note of his face and make sure he buy from him and nobody else. The storyteller said that because the bouncer was a “black c — t¹ and, you know, they all look the same in the dark”, it was hard to be sure he was buying from the same guy. I was pretty uncomfortable, but didn’t say anything in this room full of people I’d just met, and nor did anyone else.
From what I know of these two people, I’d be surprised if either of them didn’t agree they wanted to see an end to racism and racial disparity — as most people seem to. Some readers may be horrified by the events that I’ve described, others might see what was said as harmless jokes.
I’m 28 years old, and I can’t remember any time in my life when public conversation has been more polarised and conflict-laden. As we come out of lockdown in Australia and our Fridays are filled with cafe breakfasts and evening drinks, it’s easy to forget that in the US the pandemic has created a much more macabre background for the current discussion of race sparked by George Floyd’s murder. The video and the subsequent protests, riots and self-perpetuating violence, and the continuing protests and public conversation on the topic, are taking place around the world — and especially on social media.
And it’s clear that private conversation, at least as I’m experiencing it as a middle-class white person with mostly left-wing, university-educated friends, has issues of a different kind, where people make comments that, to many, seem fairly benign.
So how do private and public conversation link up? In the public conversation right now, some people are presenting evidence — statistics, or anecdotes like police brutality videos — for the degree to which this brutality is racialised.
I started writing a different post yesterday which looked at some of the evidence on both sides of the argument, but it rapidly changed from a quick post into the makings of a book (which I’m deeply unqualified to write), as well as something that I think was (perhaps rightly²) likely to spark outrage on both sides, to no gain. So I will avoid talking about those statistics at all.
One thing I will look at, though, is a conversation about the video of Floyd’s murder. I’d managed to avoid watching it until yesterday. Having now done so, I am now even more disturbed by it than I had imagined, despite being mentally prepared, being fully aware of the content, and knowing how others have reacted to seeing it. The video clearly shows a police officer with no regard for the life of the man whose neck he is crushing, and a complete lack of regard for the prolonged suffering of another human being.
Almost everyone in the world has condemned this murder — even Donald Trump — but their reasons differ.
The reaction from the BLM movement and black community makes complete sense to me. Let’s imagine that you’re an average black person in an average part of America in late May of this year. If you’re right in the middle of the bell curve of personal economics, your household net worth is $17,150: just over one tenth of the 50th percentile white household, at $171,000. You may have just lost your job, which may well have been only paying $7.25 per hour to begin with. If you’re one of those who didn’t lodge a tax return last year, or if you are in debt to your bank, you may struggle to get your full $1,200 stimulus cheque, if you get one at all. Then, in late May, a video surfaces of yet another black person having their life unconscionably wasted at the hands of the very people who are supposedly there to “serve and protect” them.
Why would you not break social distancing laws to join the protests in the face of these circumstances? Why would you not join in rioting and destruction against a system that has totally and utterly failed you, your family, many of your friends, and your ancestors, who were likely enslaved? What incentive is there not to attempt to destroy society, when playing by the rules of the society has left you in such a dire position?
But, on the other hand, what or whom does this rioting really serve?³ Destroying the property, workplaces and businesses of complete strangers who have been equally damaged by the pandemic seems totally counterintuitive. And for the not-insignificant number of genuine racists in America and around the world, what better propaganda can you imagine than mountains of footage and imagery of black people stealing and destroying property? If you wanted to increase police violence against black people, what better way than to create violent confrontations between them and police?
And without wanting to go off on a tangent about coronavirus, what do these massive protests do to the credibility of demands for strict social distancing? We are going to be facing the coronavirus for many months or even years to come, and when we consider that the death toll from coronavirus in the US is 118,000 in four months versus 1,000 police killings of people of any ethnicity in all of 2019, we have to wonder which movement is going to save more innocent lives, as unpalatable as it is to think of the trade-off in these terms. But the protestors who burnt down Mineappolis’s 3rd precinct police station are not likely thinking about their actions in those terms. They have seen the social contract ripped up in front of their eyes. This is a last-ditch attempt to have their message heard.
I have seen arguments that the video of Floyd’s murder is not necessarily evidence that the police officer, Derek Chauvin, is racist. He has had 18 complaints made against him, and the only one I can identify comes from a white woman named Melissa Borton. He has been involved in shooting multiple suspects, one of whom was Native American, although investigations apparently showed that Chauvin “responded appropriately”. It’s been suggested that, especially given that Floyd’s murder took place in front of a crowd and was obviously being filmed, this was a murder of extreme negligence, but that Chauvin didn’t intend to kill Floyd.
In following this part of the conversation, I also watched footage of the murders of Daniel Shaver and Tony Timpa, both of whom are white. The videos, like the one of Floyd’s murder, are chilling, but for different reasons. Shaver is bewildered by confusing and seemingly unnecessary commands from his killer, then is shot after begging the police not to kill him and clearly trying to comply with their confusing commands. Timpa is slowly crushed to death by police kneeling on his back for 13 minutes, after he said, “you’re going to kill me”. The officers make jokes as they do so. These videos certainly show a disregard for human life similar in many ways to that shown for Floyd’s, and I’m not sure if we can tell how race motivates them.
But what I wonder is, if educated, middle-class, presumably anti-racist people are casually referring to “sand n — — ”s and “black c — t”s over brunches and drinks in conversation with their left-wing friends, what is happening in the minds of the police officers who, with adrenaline pumping, are restraining the likes of George Floyd or Eric Garner, and hear their cries that they can’t breathe? To what degree do our small conversations enable big inequalities?
While the percentage of people who are overtly racist is not insignificant, I think there may be a lot of damage done in the little moments of negligence in conversations like the ones I have witnessed. Most Black and Indigenous people the world over are massively disadvantaged, and have the odds absolutely stacked against them from birth. If there are any indisputable facts about race, this is one. As anti-BLM proponents will point out, there are plenty of people who manage to ascend from disadvantaged circumstances, regardless of their race. But it’s very hard. It takes a concerted effort on the part of both the society and the individual. If either side doesn’t make that effort, it’s unlikely to happen.
People are marching because they believe society is failing in its side of that bargain. Let’s do what we can to stamp out racism, casual or overt. Be more courageous than I was on Friday; call people out when they do things that perpetuate this cycle. Small conversations can be powerful. | https://medium.com/@hartman.phd/a-casually-racist-friday-ec3a8d53765a | ['Dan Hartman'] | 2020-06-15 08:05:32.927000+00:00 | ['White Privilege', 'Equality', 'Racism', 'Blm', 'Conversations'] |
Navigating the personalization gap: a field guide (updated: 2019) | What follows below are some provisional resources with that goal.
First, working definitions of personalization that accounts for the many different facets of personalized digital experience.
of personalization that accounts for the many different facets of personalized digital experience. Second, a list of software vendors actively touting personalization solutions.
actively touting personalization solutions. Third, a loose evolutionary framework for thinking about the level of impact (and investment) you may choose to make in a personalization effort. Again, this speaks to where you sit, within the have or have-less camps, but I think this framework accommodates both.
for thinking about the level of impact (and investment) you may choose to make in a personalization effort. Again, this speaks to where you sit, within the have or have-less camps, but I think this framework accommodates both. Fourth, a few companion models from secondary sources, also looking to frame differences in organizational maturity, complexity, or level of effort in personalization.
My hope in sharing this thinking and research is two-fold:
That folks can self-direct their personalization efforts with greater confidence, having looked at the landscape this way and through the lens of these materials. That others in turn will help deepen its value and utility over time by sharing their own contributions. By all means, send me the resources, insights and tools you’ve found valuable.
Ultimately, I’m hoping to see more learnings more widely, candidly and consistently circulated as a result of sharing mine. We’ll get a proper playbook yet.
1. What is personalization?
As a practitioner, you can infer a lot from how people define personalization.
At first blush, there’s a surprising, fairly dispiriting range of answers, which reveals the true breadth and reach of interest in the topic. Where they place the emphasis tends to carry a “tell,” in my experience: do they focus on rote mechanics, on technology, on sales settings, on content? Each of these belies a slight or considerable bias, perhaps a blind spot, and may be a view to the limits of their expertise or areas of focus in personalization work.
Here are a few definitions I do like:
Personalization manages an interactive conversation of optimized content relevant to the customer journey. —Zimm Zimmermann, Merkle Personalization technology enables the dynamic insertion,
customization or suggestion of content in any format that is relevant to
the individual user, based on the user’s implicit behaviour and
preferences, and explicitly given details. —James Doman Personalization, in the context of a relevance product, means adding user-specific signals on top of all the other signals to make your product much more relevant. —Nikhil Dandekar, Quora Personalization is the act of dynamically curating experiences to each individual and context in a seamless manner across channels. —Scott Tieman, Xavier Cimino, Irwin Lim, Jeriad Zoghby, Accenture
I don’t have mine today to offer up in part because I think this range does the job. Sure, I’d prefer something singular and pithy that also gives some explanatory depth on the range of emerging tech and channels that rely on, augment or are augmented by personalization, but maybe you might have an addition to suggest?
4 factors toward a richer definition of personalization
Until we have a definition of personalization that encompasses and fits for
customization; the distinct, standalone subject matter domain it supports (here I’m thinking of learning, commerce, and varied modes of content consumption—the lattermost inclusive of UX for skimming and diving, leaning in and leaning back); context (e.g., location and device usage); and especially the number of possible product or user interface endpoints (e.g., inclusive of notifications, bots, recommenders, voice, AR/VR, and AI)
…we will have ultimately underserved and -scoped the full reach and directional impact of personalization. These are some of the key factors to determining what I call (and will elaborate upon another time as) personalized product opportunity.
Sooner than later, we need to get to a holistic higher ground in our understanding of the technology and practice of personalized experience. Anecdotally, this issue presents as the key limiting effect on the way personalization programs are typically executed today—and probably responsible for many program failures.
2. Who is offering personalization products and services today?
(A preliminary list. Contribute to improve.)
This list began as a way for me to orient myself in research on recommenders and then personalized experiences for various clients and it has since grown organically through conversation, work experience and learning.
I welcome suggestions here and will probably consider eligible those organizations and brands doing work in adjacent spaces, like bots and notifications, and make no beef with point solutions versus platform-style ones.
Yusp
Cognik
Cxense
Dynamic Yield
Adobe — Target, AEM, etc.
Rich Relevance
EpiServer — Peerius
SiteCore
Evergage
Lean Plum
Optimizely
Marketo
Certona
Salesfore — Pardot
Kibo
Qubit
Idio
Perzonalization
IRIS
Granify
Omniconvert
Bunting
Oracle — Eloqua
Oracle — Maxymizer
Bright Idea
Monetate
Kentico
AppBoy
Urban Airship
Kahuna
Personyze
Apptus
ChoiceStream
Pureclarity
Barilliance
4-Tell
Rabt
3. How can I scope and size my personalization program?
There are two answers here. Consider the one I share here the succinct version of a longer and more comprehensive response. It’s a touch generalized, but again, think of it more as a compass (which way should I point myself?) than a map in its present form.
Ready? Good.
Assess the footprint for your personalization program
First, think of your personalization program as an ambition with clear immediate objectives, and maybe even some downstream ones for the future. Imagine 3 axes for locating the footprint of your program:
your organizational position (e.g., role) and setting (e.g., business unit)
your organizational digital maturity
your present stated focus and objective
The answers to this is a recipe for what form of personalization you should be prioritizing. To push the analogy, below is a cookbook of progressive forms of personalization. Your answers to the above bullets should be a fairly strong indication of what sort of dish you ought to be cooking.
Progressive personalization: A cookbook for your program
In a previous account, I discussed the following as a hierarchy but I want to credit Lou Rosenfeld for suggesting it may be more properly considered a user-facing progression. I think he’s right.
a. FUNCTION (e.g., A/B testing of marketing assets and messaging, or customizable user settings for a site or app)
(e.g., A/B testing of marketing assets and messaging, or customizable user settings for a site or app) b. FEATURE (e.g., a recommender module, an advanced search, or a behaviorally-triggered notification via app, email or SMS)
(e.g., a recommender module, an advanced search, or a behaviorally-triggered notification via app, email or SMS) c. EXPERIENCE (e.g., minimized friction and heightened KPI performance across key user flows through a personalized UX, such as the browse experience of Netflix)
(e.g., minimized friction and heightened KPI performance across key user flows through a personalized UX, such as the browse experience of Netflix) d. PRODUCT (e.g., branded, standalone-quality feature set that in itself is either (a) market-defining (b) brand-differentiating and/or (c) directly or indirectly monetized: i.e., Spotify dynamic playlists like Release Radar and Discover Weekly, or the entirety of StitchFix)
It’s imperfect; it’s a start.
To break the metaphor, this is a zoology of personalization that gets at a wide-angle view of how it is deployed and realized through many varied prospective digital (and non-digital) touchpoints. Some, for example, will suggest there’s an omnichannel nirvana at which fully orchestrated customer experience operates seamlessly, linking the CIO and CMO in harmonious progress. Higher rungs on the ladder will doubtless be climbed.
At a minimum, there are different levels of personalization pervasiveness in a given organization and that should be a useful lens for those with a customer-centered vision.
As importantly, we should not presume any certain, A-through-D destination is logical for every personalization program: putting the hype aside, personalization should not be about moonshots or pointlessly chasing the most visible innovators in sectors adjacent or distant from your own.
What’s the utility of this model? Near-future opportunities in AI
What this progression should reveal and measure is a growing level of sophistication, investment and reward.
But the utility of the model is not limited to a mental model that situates a program owner or product manager in a coherent decisionmaking framework, and to locate and size that personalization program.
Progressive personalization is going to be key to getting ready for what AI will be able to deliver in digital experiences, faster than most of us expect it. One of the biggest impediments to launching a personalization effort today is the pre-personalization lift of rich, well-structured, and authoritative data.
This model should be a way to consistently underpin all personalization efforts to remain orchestrated, incorporating a single abstraction layer and a single source of truth about its users. That discipline and focus should allow smart organizations to speed their way to personalized product opportunity faster than their competitors, and deliver experiences that are transformatively better than them, too.
4. What are some other ways of thinking about personalization?
I have collected a wide range of explanatory models for how other parties (software companies, consultancies, technologists, etc.) explain or illustrate the world of personalization: its value, its functional demands, how its algorithms can work, and so forth. I’m not extending any particular endorsement or expressing a vendor preference. Find them scattered throughout this post.
Below, I am sharing a subset of those resources I find distinctive, novel or useful—and that I think are already in the public domain. I’ve attempted to credit authors and source materials for all these secondary assets, but please reach out if I can supplement that information and provide further context or links. | https://uxdesign.cc/navigating-the-personalization-gap-a-2017-field-guide-8ce528b64c2d | ['Jeffrey Macintyre'] | 2019-03-03 12:45:59.466000+00:00 | ['Strategy', 'Personalization', 'Product Management', 'Recommender Systems', 'Bots'] |
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