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Do You Want To Predict Your Future? | Action
Take responsibility for your daily decisions and moments. They will define your past, present, and future.
You only can live in the moment. We can learn from our past.
Our future is in no small measure defined by what we decide to do and act on today.
Spend time reflecting on your life. What has it been? What can you learn from your past? What will you do with today? How will today create the future you want?
We are thinking about people. And, our actions, more than any words, will define what we are and what we are becoming.
Invest in your future daily by being your authentic self. This does take commitment, learning, and bold action.
However, if you do it well, you get to create the exciting future you want to have. Never underestimate the power of daily decisions and actions to create the future you always dreamed of. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/do-you-want-to-predict-your-future-43a3b5f99789 | ['Randy Wolken'] | 2020-12-27 15:12:22.954000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Self-awareness', 'Leadership', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons'] |
Smile more, worry less and get ready for Singapura ka Rahasya! | After the huge success of Chhota Bheem’s Himalayan Adventure, the kid’s beloved superhero is back with a bang with his latest adventurous movie Singapura Ka Rahasya. The premiere of the movie is all good and ready to capture your heart and attention on 5th January 2020 on Pogo TV. Our smart and brave superhero has hit the boat along with his friends to Singapura, where he will face an enigmatic situation to rescue the princess of the kingdom.
Chhota Bheem and gang have arrived in the beautiful yet mysterious kingdom of Singapura to gift a necklace to the princess, but this journey will lead him to a perilous path where he will learn the hidden secrets of Singapura and must fight an evil villain. Intense yet intriguing enough! Motivated by greed and wicked plans, the evil master will steal the necklace from the princess to cease the kingdom and spread evilness but Bheem and friends will take up the mission to protect the kingdom of Singapura from the ill-fortune.
What makes this movie interesting and engaging? A fascinating storyline with a lot of twists and turns or top-notch music? Or maybe the captivating visuals? Well, the answer is all of the above. Yes, this movie has got all the elements in it which together promises a great movie for kids.
It goes without saying that Chhota Bheem : Singapura Ka Rahasya will take you on a roller coaster ride of fun, friendship, and adventure. With friends like Chutki, Raju, Jaggu, Indumati, Kalia, and Dholu-Bholu, the fun will be double and truly epic. The journey of Chhota Bheem to Singapura will make you laugh, cry, scared…but above all, will surely leave you with a happy and warm feeling. Apart from a brilliant cinematic experience and power-packed actions, there are many other factors in the movie that will keep kids glued to the screen and impart genuine lessons to young and inquisitive minds.
The movie is not just a must-watch for kids but the parents can equally enjoy the movie which is backed by a good storyline and strong emotional content. The voyage to Singapura and its deep dark secrets reiterates the foundation of friendship, selflessness and courage that our hero sincerely lives upto.
Click here to watch the Online episodes of Super Bheem here: https://medium.com/@infodeepikasharma/enter-the-zone-of-adventure-with-online-episodes-of-super-bheem-9b0357823d40
What could be a better start for Bheem’s fans than watching him kick the guts out of a supremely dangerous villain?
Witness the heroic adventures of Chhota Bheem in this brand new movie.
For the daily dose of action and excitement, tune in to Pogo TV and watch the episodes of Chhota Bheem to make days merrier and worthwhile.
Happy Pogo-ing! | https://medium.com/@infodeepikasharma/smile-more-worry-less-and-get-ready-for-singapura-ka-rahasya-ebf96d5b4afa | ['Deepika Sharma'] | 2020-01-14 08:25:54.333000+00:00 | ['Cartoon', 'Kids', 'Entertainment', 'Chhota Bheem', 'Pogo'] |
The Studies of Heredity Started in Mental Asylums | The Studies of Heredity Started in Mental Asylums
The most important research to date
Patients from a mental asylum out for air in Victorian England. (Source: Painting by K H Merz 1843)
The science of heritage is quite a big scientific sector that actually focuses on many branches of human behavior and human evolution. Historians state that the research of heredity was started in the early centuries AD, but due to the lack of advanced knowledge or technological advancements, the field was in a slow evolution and obtaining only vague results based on many assumptions that would fill the many missing gaps.
Today we can read the DNA of a person to determine their heritage, but back in the day, before the knowledge of DNA, this science was based very much on registries and statistics. In other words, researchers would look in different archives for a person’s heredity and compose the data into statistics that would best represent the heritage of that person.
As I always say, the best way to understand a certain event or field is to look at where things started, or in this case where heredity science started to actually become interesting and more promising.
Mental asylums could be the answer
Theodore M. Porter, a historian and researcher in this field, has stated that the deteriorating mental health of King George III led to the study of heritage to be carried out in mental asylums during the beginning of the 18th century. This is because the registry system in mental asylums was the best at the time due to all the patients being registered with every piece of information available. This meant that mental asylums, prisons, or even correction schools had the largest archives which would have given contemporary researchers a better chance at actually making some connections.
King George III of England (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Due to the development of psychiatry, many criminals were actually ending up in mental asylums and not prisons as judges would define their crimes based on psychopathic behavior which needed to be treated, not confined. This meant that the registry would grow exponentially during the 18th century in West Europe. From this, researchers also discovered a reason for the increased number of patients that were suffering from mental illnesses: the increased complexities of ordinary life which also came with more stress.
However, at the time, many researchers believed that mental illnesses were actually hereditary and this is because they appeared when they made certain connections in the heritage of patients. Some of the patients were found because a previous generation in their heritage had also ended up in a mental asylum. Therefore, the directors of asylums within West Europe were told to modify their registry so that they would keep track of siblings of each patient that would become patients in the future.
This led to some drastic interventions within the families who seemed to have mental illnesses passed on from generation to generation. These families were discouraged from reproducing in order to stop the spread of mental illnesses. A drastic solution, but even they knew that their lack of scientific knowledge in correlation with the lack of technological advancement did not allow them to come up with better solutions towards stopping the spread of mental illnesses.
The evolution of hereditary studies
Another interesting fact from Porter’s latest book, Genetics in the Madhouse, is that at the beginning of the 19th-century scientists in this field had a burning desire to standardize the data gathered by mental asylums. Mainly to offer them a constant flow of information as well as to make data easier to analyze. This is where the information which was used in Ludvig Dahl’s Pedigrees of Mental Illnesses came from
Frederik Holst, M.D., Beretning, Betankning og Indstilling fra en til at undersøge de Sindsvages Kaar i Norge (1828), table of causes by disease form, from a census. (Source: Theodore M. Porter UCLA Department of History)
Such studies were seen as the pillars of statistics which were recognized by scholars such as Francis Galton who launched the eugenics paradigm in 1900. Another great scientist in the field by the name of Gregor Mendel tried to experiment with the transmission of hereditary characteristics within different plants. This study really showed potential as many people thought that this ideology could be applied to people with mental illnesses, however, this theory was rejected by many contemporary scientists on the basis that the theory was too simplistic.
What followed in the early 20th century, before molecular genetics, was Nazi scientists that really looked into the eugenics field to accomplish some tremendous research (although suspiciously unethical). Since the discovery of molecular genetics, most of the research done by these Nazi scientists was disregarded. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/the-studies-of-heredity-started-in-mental-asylums-e073d73f1c49 | ['Andrei Tapalaga'] | 2020-11-30 21:02:11.964000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Mental Illness', 'History', 'Mental Health', 'Health'] |
Scala Futures - Concurrency Interpreted! | if you are from Java background , you might be aware of java.util.concurrent.Future yes?
there are several challenges in using this,
1- threads are always blocked while retrieving values.
2- wait time for the completion of computation.
3- get method is the only way to retrieve values.
Weary and antagonistic way of writing concurrent code.
we have Future’s in Scala(Better one’s)-
scala.concurrent.Future
with Scala Futures we can achieve
1- real-time non-blocking computation.
2- callbacks for onComplete(Success/Failure) i,e- values in future are instances of Try clause,
3- map multiple future’s. futures are immutable by nature and are cached internally, once a value or exception is assigned, futures cannot be modified/overwritten(hard to achieve referential transparency) .
Simple example-
import scala.concurrent.{Future}
import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext.Implicits.global
import scala.util.{Failure, Success}
object ScalaFuture extends App {
def findingFrancis = {
println("where is your boss? you only got 1 second ,you are about to be killed by scala compiler")
Thread.sleep(1000)
println("Finding Francis...")
} // Add your logic
val whereIsFrancis = Future {
findingFrancis
// wait time until the login executes
}
}
ExecutionContext -
Think of ExecutionContext as administer who allocates new threads or use a pooled/current thread(not-recommended) to execute futures and its functions.
without importing Executioncontext into scope we cannot execute a future.
import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext.Implicits.global
global execution context is used in many situations dodging the need to create custom execution context.
default global execution context will set the parallelism level to the number of available processors(can be increased).
Callbacks -
Futures eventually return values, which needs to be handled by callbacks.
unhandled values/exceptions will be lost.
Futures have methods that you can use. Common callback methods are:
onComplete
callback values in future are instances of Try clause -
def onComplete[U](f: Try[T] => U)(implicit executor: ExecutionContext): Unit
onSuccess and onFailure are Deprecated.use
filter
foreach
map and many more… check this
whereIsFrancis.onComplete {
case Success(foundFrancis) => println(s"heads up dummy $foundFrancis")
case Failure(exception) => println(s"F***** unreal $exception")
}
Await-
this approach is used only in system where blocking a thread is necessary, not usually not-recommended because it impacts performance .
Await.result will block the main thread and waits until the specified duration for the result.
def result[T](awaitable: Awaitable[T], atMost: Duration): T
above code will only display -
whereIsFrancis.onComplete {
case Success(foundFrancis) => println(s" found you, heads up dummy $foundFrancis")
case Failure(exception) => println(s"F***** unreal $exception")
}
Await.result(whereIsFrancis,2.seconds)
requires Duration import for seconds-
for handling of time in concurrent applications scala have
import scala.concurrent.duration._
this support different time units -
toNanos , toMicros , toMillis , toSeconds , toMinutes , toHours , toDays and toUnit(unit: TimeUnit)
For-Comprehensions-
for bulky code, callbacks are not always the best approach, Scala futures can be used with for (enumerators) yield e , where enumerators refers to a semicolon-separated list . An enumerator is either a generator which introduces new variables, or it is a filter.
val result: Future[(String, String, String)] = for {
Cable <- fromFuture
DeadPool <- notFromFuture
Colossus <- notFromFuture
} yield (Cable, DeadPool, Colossus)
Good to know-
Exceptions- When asynchronous computations throws unhandled exceptions, futures associated with those computations fail.
Failed futures store an instance of Throwable instead of the result value. Future provide the failed projection method, which allows this Throwable to be treated as the success value of another Future. Projections- To enable for-comprehensions on a result returned as an exception, futures also have projections. If the original future fails, the failed projection returns a future containing a value of type Throwable . If the original future succeeds, the failed projection fails with a NoSuchElementException
Complete Code-
import scala.concurrent.{Future}
import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext.Implicits.global
import scala.util.{Failure, Success}
import scala.concurrent.duration._ object ScalaFuture extends App {
def findingFrancis = {
println("where is your boss? you only got 1 second ,you are about to be killed by scala compiler")
Thread.sleep(1000)
println("Finding Francis...")
} // Add your logic
val whereIsFrancis = Future {
findingFrancis
// wait time until the login executes
}
whereIsFrancis.onComplete {
case Success(foundFrancis) => println(s" found you, heads up dummy $foundFrancis")
case Failure(exception) => println(s"****** unreal $exception")
}
Await.result(whereIsFrancis, 2.seconds)
}
Output-
after making the main thread wait for 2 seconds, we get to see the output from the future thread as below,
Conclusion-
Futures are a great approach to run parallel programs in an efficient and non-blocking way.we have better ways to achieve this in more functional way using external libraries(scalaz, cats,etc).
Akka is an “actor model” library built on Scala, and provides a way to implement long-running parallel processes(to overcome limitations of Scala Futures), futures are used in other frameworks which are built using Scala like Play Framework, lagom, Apache Spark, etc.
checkout official-page for more.
Thanks for reading and the support.. | https://medium.com/@jay-reddy/scala-futures-concurrency-interpreted-920706dec4b9 | [] | 2020-12-20 16:16:07.100000+00:00 | ['Parallel Computing', 'Functional Programming', 'Distributed Systems', 'Scala', 'Concurrency'] |
The Less Romantic Side of Farm Life | A early season blizzard in South Dakota has killed between 10,000 and 20,000 cows. Some farmers are reporting a loss of 30% and even 50% of their herds. Al Jazeera has a really well-reported story about how farmers are coping (for now: on their own, since the government is shut). The line that explains the loss: “Those calves were this year’s paycheck. The cows were bred to produce next summer’s paycheck. Producers are really reeling from that.”
The cows were still in their summer pastures. It isn’t supposed to blizzard in October. | https://medium.com/the-billfold/the-less-romantic-side-of-farm-life-899480125f56 | ['Logan Sachon'] | 2015-12-09 18:58:38.970000+00:00 | ['Farmers', 'Endtimes', 'Farm Life'] |
Fire-Up Your Backend With FastApi Starlette And Uvicorn | Photo by Bill Jelen on Unsplash
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
very long pause….
“-Rails.”
Ever arrived at a web application only to navigate away because the content you were looking for didn’t load soon enough?
According to TechEmpower, a platform that compares the performance of a wide range of web application frameworks using community-contributed test implementations. Rails performance - making it to place 363rd on the list - is way behind other popular backend framework alternatives like Flask coming in at number 360th or Django at 345th.
But there is a new player in town called FastApi leaving them all in the dust.
FastApi is a relatively new Python framework that enables you to rapidly develop an API or backend for your web or mobile application.
This one Framework is gaining popularity among Python developers because of its speed and usability.
Surpassing both Flask and Django’s performance, FastApi makes it to the 228th spot on TechEmpower’s list.
So what is FastApi bringing to the table that makes it that much faster?
FastApi is built on a Python framework called Starlette which is a lightweight ASGI framework/toolkit, which is itself built on Uvicorn.
Ideal for building high performance asyncio services with seriously impressive performance.
But the key to performance here is ASGI.
ASGI or Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface is a standard interface between async-capable Python web servers, frameworks, and applications.
It is essentially an asynchronous model for Python server communication.
Providing Python users with a framework that actually supports async and await.
When Python was created in the early 90’s it wasn’t designed with async support in mind because we simply didn’t have the computing power for it.
Without going into too much technical details, Pythons async problem lies in its use of a Global Interpreter Lock.
The global interpreter lock, or GIL, is a mutex that protects access to Python objects, preventing multiple threads from executing Python bytecodes at once.
This lock is necessary mainly because CPython’s memory management is not thread-safe. -PythonWiki
Python executes multi-threads by context switching even for idle processes creating a massive computing overhead.
Adding async support for Python didn’t come until asyncio was introduced with the Python 3.4 release in March, 2019.
And while Django and Flask both have a large following and provide very useful database tools, they both suffer when it comes to async and await support.
With Django claiming ASGI support while not yet supporting the await feature. Basically allowing you to do some asynchronous task but not being able to wait for the task to be done. And it’s the same thing with Flask.
This is where FastApi takes the cake! With its use of Uvicorn’s lightning-fast ASGI server implementation. Providing support for HTTP/2 and WebSockets, which cannot be handled by WSGI. | https://medium.com/@ra-6446/fire-up-your-backend-with-fastapi-starlette-and-uvicorn-2a1861101d75 | ['Ronald Abreu'] | 2020-11-14 19:47:47.675000+00:00 | ['Asynchronous', 'Fastapi', 'Django', 'Asyncawait', 'Flask'] |
Previews for your Website | This article describes how to use the Open Graph Protocol and structured data (JSON-LD) to allow messengers, other websites and search-engines to preview elements of your website.
The Open Graph Protocol (OGP)
OGP is used for most small previews in many instant messengers like Telegram or Whatsapp, but also on Facebook and Twitter. It’s very easy to use and the official documentation actually tells you everything you need to know, but there are some potential pitfalls. Every page on your website must have a correct segment in it’s header. Here is the minimalist’s code for a basic web page:
<html lang="en-us" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#">
<head>
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Title" />
<meta property="og:description" content="A description" />
<meta property="og:url" content="url_of_current_page" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.de/preview_picture">
</head>
The prefix in the <html ..> definition is a RDFa extension, annotating the use of additional semantic vocabularies. Most applications will preview your web pages fine without this information. In my tests, only Telegram seems to actually require it.
definition is a RDFa extension, annotating the use of additional semantic vocabularies. Most applications will preview your web pages fine without this information. In my tests, only Telegram seems to actually require it. The usage of both og:title and og:description seems to be application dependent, some applications will prefer the normal meta-fields "title" or "description" if they exist. Most unfortunately, some will also show an empty description once you added a single og: tag but no og:description - even if <meta name=description ...> exists. Therefore I would suggest always using the same content in both <meta type=description ..> and the OGP-tag.
and seems to be application dependent, some applications will prefer the normal meta-fields "title" or "description" if they exist. Most unfortunately, some will also show an empty description once you added a single tag but no - even if exists. Therefore I would suggest always using the same content in both and the OGP-tag. Some applications require og:url to be set and will not display an image or expand the link if it isn't.
to be set and will not display an image or expand the link if it isn't. Concerning og:image : While most applications will accept both a relative link (if og:url was provided) and an absolute link (including protocol and domain), using a fully qualified absolute link, seems to be the universally accpeted format. You may define multiple pictures and resolutions here, but I found that most applications re-render the picture anyway so you will be fine with just one moderately sized picture (~1000-1600px). The extension of the picture doesn't matter and you don't have to give an image type, as long as your server sends the correct MIME-type. Some formats won't work with some applications, most notably webp and svg are not widely supported.
Note that some applications and websites may impose additional restrictions or requirements, for example LinkedIn requires pictures to be at least 1200x627px. The instant-messenger Telegram will display the above code structure like this:
Instead of posting your links into the application or website of your choice, you may also use opengraphcheck.com to check your OGP-tags.
Structured Data
Structured data in the form of JSON-LD is also used by some applications and websites to generate extended previews of web pages, most notably by Google for it’s Rich Cards.
Every page need’s it’s own structured data section in the HTML header in the form of a <script type=application/json+ld> tag. There are different types of so called "entities" which represent different constructs of structured data and require different information. There are many well known types, but applications can also define/expect their own types. You can find a list of interesting entity-types on the Google-Docs or schema.org.
In other words, write something like this into your <header> :
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://www.schema.org",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Your Name",
"url": "https://example.com",
"sameAs": [
"https://github.com/FAUSheppy_",
"https://twitter.com/its_a_sheppy",
"https://blog.atlantishq.de/"
]
}
</script>
The above specifically is the “social” Rich Card. You can have multiple entities after another i.e. like this:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://www.schema.org",
"@type": "Person",
...
}
</script>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://www.schema.org",
"@type": "CreativeWork",
"author: "Your Name",
"headline": "A title or headline",
"description": "A description",
"thumbnailUrl": "url_to_image",
"image": "url_to_image"
}
</script>
This second entity is documented on schema.org. The parameters used in the example are the ones most often required in my experience, but, like with the OGP, applications and websites will treat these information very differently — i.e. yet again failing to default to meta-fields or straight out ignoring either thumbnailUrl or image and using one of them regardless of the size of the respectively linked image. As unfortunate as it is, I found that using the same image resolution for thumbnailUrl and image produces way more consistent results, than using a lower resolution image for thumnailUrl.
A testing tool for structured data can be found here. | https://medium.com/anti-clickbait-coalition/previews-for-your-website-52606b93a904 | ['Yannik Schmidt'] | 2020-08-02 11:01:00.983000+00:00 | ['Rich Cards', 'Ogp', 'SEO', 'Web Development', 'Structured Data'] |
The Ride of My Life | It was such a beautiful day today, with the summer solstice only 30 hours away. The fading light laid low and soft on the horizon at 7 p.m., an hour or so of it left to go.
A typical night like tonight would have involved a lovely meal and a bottle of wine, or more. As of late, I’ve chosen not to drink for reasons too involved to elaborate upon here. It should suffice to say it’s been a good choice and one that I’m reveling in. I’m not hearing much in terms of protests from my inner circle either, which speaks volumes. This refreshing new direction has left me with the pesky problem of having a relative abundance of personal time in the evenings, combined with the energy of childhood I misplaced somewhere in my early 20s, and a clarity so clear that I can hear my soul speak, even at a whisper.
My father likes to quote a friend, who once wisely said, “Don’t fall in love; it sticks to your face.” Well, as many times as I’ve heard that humorous quip, I’ve fallen head first into it my own fair share of it, only to get up, hearing his words echo in my head. Naturally, he wants the best for me, but being on his fourth wife, he’s got his own rhythm with these things, and his advice is somewhat loaded with contradiction.
In fact, his explanation for the numerous wives is simple. He says he’s going to do it over and over until he gets it right. I think he’s finally done it this time, but not without some serious face washing done along the way. I hate to evoke the wisdom of Confucius, at the risk sounding like I’m quoting a fortune cookie, but he’s reputed to have said, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Well, I fell in love, again. This time with a high school sweetheart. After 21 years apart, our paths recently crossed. Love rekindled quickly, only to find that friendship is where the story ends, or perhaps begins anew. Needless to say, there is some face washing to do, and this time it’s mine.
With much on my mind, and steam begging to be blown, I saddled up for a ride. Now, I’m not a cyclist, nor have I ever played one on TV, but I did once ride from Vermont to New Jersey in a week, for a good cause, with a bunch of people who were, in fact, very much cyclists. They indoctrinated me into the culture of shrink wrap and clunky shoes. It’s not one that I embrace readily. In fact, I lament it. I don’t need any help looking like a sausage, but there is a method to the madness. Regardless, the road beckoned, and I answered the call.
Without a clear path in mind, I followed a quiet voice, which took me out past the high school where I first fell for a much younger version of the woman for whom I was now reconciling my feelings. It was also the school that I dropped out of (read: was kicked out of) in 11th grade, in part because of recalcitrance, and also due to sustained absences for reasons beyond my control. The truth is, I didn’t want to be there, and they didn’t want me there. It was a relief for all of us, with one glaring exception. When I left that school, I also left a broken heart behind, only to find myself with that person again two decades later. But this time it was my heart in tatters. I suppose many could find poetic justice in that. As for me, I’m not quite there yet.
I also passed the gas station where I began working full-time immediately after dropping out, and where I was rescued — and I mean rescued — by a man named Randy, who changed my life forever. God, I love that guy. Within a month of fixing his flat tire, I was working alongside of him on Wall Street, which led to me becoming the youngest licensed stockbroker in history at age 17, resulting in a Guinness World Record. It still blows me away to this day. This was not anything that anyone around me expected to happen, least of all me.
I then passed my grandparents’ house, where my mother and her siblings were raised. It’s where we spent every holiday, singing Christmas carols, feasting on unforgettable Thanksgiving spreads, enjoying Memorial Day and Fourth of July cookouts, surrounded by what seemed to me to be a never-ending parade of loved ones. There was even a Jell-O wrestling episode involving my uncle and his friends, which I can only recall vaguely now. Perhaps that’s a good thing, now that I think about it. Jell-O wrestling aside, that house, and the experiences there, were a huge and formative piece of my childhood. I can still smell the smells. I can still hear the grandfather clock’s hourly gong. It’s where our family was family when we were still a family. It was like a Norman Rockwell painting, but with a lot more scotch and vodka.
I then passed the church where I reluctantly joined my parents on Sunday for many of my early years, until that fizzled for reasons unknown. It’s the place of countless potluck dinners and Sunday school (which I hated with a passion). I can still hear the echoes in the hall, and the silence after everyone had gone home, and we were the last ones there, cleaning up. It’s the church my grandfather and uncle helped renovate and restore. It’s the church where my grandparents renewed their vows on their 40th anniversary in which my grandfather memorably replied to the pastor, “I will, I do, I did.” It’s also the church where my mother’s ashes lie under a plaque in the back, right on her Pappa’s lap, where she so much loved to be as a little girl.
My grade school, where I first turned on a Macintosh computer and became enamored with technology, is right down the road from the church. It’s where I discovered the magic of the opposite sex and the agony that often comes along for the ride. It’s also where I first met that adorable little girl. Yes, that little girl. It was fourth grade.
A few miles down the road, I passed the corner store where Mom and Dad would stop to get the basics when the cupboard was bare: butter, milk, eggs, and, of course, cigarettes. Always cigarettes. We often stopped there for a deliciously greasy pork roll, egg and cheese sandwich. They also made a killer BLT. There were, and still are, a vintage pair of gas pumps in front, right on the curb. I never saw them actually in operation, and always wished I had. That place is dripping with memories. It’s not the same now, but the recollections are indelible.
As I went further up the road, I passed the house where I was raised. It’s where I learned of the priceless gifts that come from caring for animals both large and small, especially those who were injured, or no longer wanted where they were before. It’s where I learned about life and death and love and loss. The fields next door, now filled with McMansions, are where I rode my horses, and dug holes all the way to China, looking for gems. The woods behind the house were my solace when the tensions in the house ran too high. My dogs — my pack — and I would disappear all day back there. It was a little boy’s paradise. This is the house my parents bought when they were first married. It’s the house I lived in when my parents divorced. It’s the house in which I was given the gift of life. It’s also the house in which my mother ultimately chose to take her own.
I continued down the road, reflecting on all of these things, with the cadence of my breath and pedals steady, powering into the wind. I began to think about how amazing this life has been. At 37 years old, I’m starting to see things in a much different way. My values have shifted remarkably. I realize now, in the most profound way, the incredible value of kindness, of gratitude, of time spent in quiet, with nothing but me and my own noisy thoughts.
With the wind pouring through my helmet, I couldn’t help but acknowledge the fact that I have lived what sometimes seems like 100 lifetimes in these 37 years. I’ve enjoyed fairy tale success, and devastating failure. I’ve traveled widely and wildly, to places I had never dreamed or even imagined as a child. I’ve enjoyed the deepest connections, and in some cases been glad to see them go. I’ve endured massive adversity, much of which was self-created, and all of which made me the man I am today. When I look in the mirror now, I like that guy. I like him a lot. And we’re getting to be better friends with every passing day. I wouldn’t change any of it. Not for the world.
As I headed back home, I almost passed by my father’s house, where he lives with the aforementioned fourth wife, whom I adore. I chose instead to swing through, and say hello. Truthfully, I stopped in for a hug. See, we never know when that last hug will be. I don’t remember the last one with Mom. That won’t happen again. So, after the hugs and “I love yous,” I pedaled home, with the sun setting and grateful tears streaming down my cheeks. As I pulled into my driveway, it was dark outside, but inside I was light. What an amazing night.
Yes, I’ve lived many lifetimes in my 37 years. And over the course of 18 miles today, I lived those 37 years all over again, in only an hour. It was, truly, the ride of my life.
[Originally published on Huffington Post on 6/21/13] | https://medium.com/@jasonearle/the-ride-of-my-life-e2b5eddbad86 | ['Jason Earle'] | 2019-04-12 03:09:28.120000+00:00 | ['Cycling', 'Childhood', 'Reflections', 'Short Story', 'Sobriety'] |
Effect Size | Unstandardized Effect Size
Looking at the raw differences between means is one simple, quick method of assessing the effect size, but often requires some previous knowledge or sense of the data if it’s not an intuitive measure like height or weight. For example, with a population of male and female weights, perhaps men weigh 15 kg more than women on average. That is much more intuitive than (drawing from my previous research) a 2x increase in Investigations per Entry between control and experimental groups of Diamondback terrapins.
Overlap
Building on just raw values, you can also calculate an overlap threshold where the respective population distributions cross each other.
Image by Author
Using the AUC (Area Under the Curve), you can then calculate the amount of overlap in the distributions and count the observations who are on the “wrong side”. This measure is also called the Misclassification Rate.
Superiority
Another unstandardized measure is the probability of Superiority. Basically, taken random samples from each group, what is the probability that one is larger than the other. It’s an easy method to calculate, but as a random measure it won’t be as precise as other methods.
As unstandardized measures of effect size, both overlap and superiority have the benefits of being comparable between studies because they are raw probabilities and they provide raw values to get an intuitive sense of the differences between the groups. | https://towardsdatascience.com/effect-size-d132b0cc8669 | ['Aren Carpenter'] | 2020-12-29 16:37:10.722000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Experimental Design', 'Effect Size', 'Statistics', 'Stats'] |
Anger: Self-Discovery Card | Anger highlights boundaries and betrayal, and it points you back to your own worth.
Anger is most powerful not when it is used to throw tantrums or burn others down, but when it is used to protect your worth and evolve your opinion of yourself.
The heat of your anger doesn’t have to burn others. Instead, channel it to set fierce boundaries around what you will and will not tolerate and implement effective action.
Let your anger fuel you to live in integrity with yourself and others. Let your anger remind you that you are not here to play small and let others shame you for being you, but to be yourself, fully alive.
Let your anger highlight the ways you have been under-living your life, and let it fuel you to live your life as fully as possible. | https://medium.com/just-jordin/anger-self-discovery-card-3a6c8d20f036 | ['Jordin James'] | 2020-08-24 17:51:05.829000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Mental Health', 'Spirituality', 'Psychology', 'Self Improvement'] |
Doing Business Globally: Unless You Know The Culture You Won’t Be Successful! | Imagine this: You walk into your local Wal-Mart and see a pool filled with live turtles, cages of live chickens, and an aquarium with live fish. Are you in the pet department? No, you’re in the grocery section these animals are for your dinner!
In Western culture, this would be shocking. You might even see protests, or consumer outrage. But in Eastern cultures, I’ve learned this is typical from an article in MindTools. Why? Wal-Mart conducted market research before expanding into China, and discovered that consumers there don’t like food wrapped in plastic. They think the food is old and they won’t buy it. So, Wal-Mart’s solution was the complete opposite of what they do in the West. They decided to sell live animals. As a result, the company has been very successful in Eastern markets.
This is one example from of just how different cultures can be. People often talk about how the world is getting “smaller,” thanks to travel and technology. But the reality is, even though we interact with different cultures more than ever, there are still major differences. People often think differently, conduct business differently, and have different expectations.
This makes living in a diverse world very interesting as I found living with my family in Scandinavia for five years. However, it’s challenging as well. I had to learn many new things from making toasts at formal dinners to cooking lasagna differently — not all packaged noodles are the same.
[su_box title=”SMART MOVES TIP” style=”glass” box_color=”#0d8fe5"]When coaching clients ask me about working or traveling internationally, my suggestion is this. Although you probably won’t have time to study every small cultural detail of the country you’re about to visit, it’s crucial that you at least become familiar with their social and business customs. Also learn a few words in the native language. That will go a long way in creating a good first impression with your customer and business partners[/su_box]
Are you planning or already doing business globally? Do you know the business etiquette and social customs in those countries? Are you aware of the dos and don’ts when communicating with and entertaining your international business associates? Listen to a recent Business Edge podcast Lost in Translation with my guest Pamela Eyring, the president of The Protocol School of Washington.
[su_button url=”http://bizcatalyst360.com/free-execubriefs/" target=”blank” style=”stroked” background=”#ff4e07" color=”#ffffff” size=”1" wide=”yes” center=”yes” radius=”5" icon_color=”#2d3fff”]CLICK HERE FOR FRESH INSIGHTS DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX [/su_button] | https://medium.com/bizcatalyst-360/doing-business-globally-unless-you-know-the-culture-you-wont-be-successful-f291616194d0 | [] | 2016-08-14 14:43:10.362000+00:00 | ['Alumina Limited', 'Nasdaq', 'Alibaba', 'Alcoa', 'Islam'] |
Quaran-teen | Here I am sharing my “quaran-teen” life
The ECQ does not seem to be near its end, so here I am sharing my “quaran-teen” life and how it will be for the rest of the ECQ, hoping that others will learn something from it. So what does a 19-year-old like me do to get by this time of quarantine? Well for me, I try to be as productive as possible while still having free time for myself.
How do I achieve this? I created a time plan for the school activities that I need to accomplish; the activity with a deadline that comes first will be the one to be done first. When I finish an activity, I now have time to do things that I want to do. I watch cooking shows. Being inside the house 24/7, the chance of me getting to eat in my favorite restaurants and fast-food places is not likely.
With that being said, I resorted to trying to imitate the foods that I crave and make them at home instead. The advantage of this? Well, it lessens the probability of me catching the virus by going out to eat at public places, while the disadvantage is that my cooking skills do not exactly meet restaurant standards (at least I tried). After cooking and eating, I try my best to stay fit (so I can eat more) so I created a fitness plan that I do every other day.
Having a workout routine helps my body maintain its healthy state especially at these times that I barely go outside the house. Advantages? Having a fit and healthy body helps to combat different diseases. Disadvantages? None. There are no disadvantages to having a healthy body. I surf the web from time to time just like most teens nowadays. While browsing the web, I tend to read relevant things that are beneficial to my well-being, like reading feel-good articles and contents so that I can learn something and this is where I get my inspiration to write articles myself.
Lastly, I take my time learning more about my photography passion. I watch the Youtube channels of well-known photographers, internationally and locally to try and gain more knowledge in the field. Also, I would ask my siblings to be a test “model” for me to try out my newly found image capturing skills. Doing my passion definitely helps me temporarily escape the harsh reality that we are facing right now.
As a teen myself, I hope other “quaran-teens” also make the most out of their time during this period and enjoy the company of being with their families and be the best version of ourselves. Don’t forget to pray and be as responsible as possible and this pandemic will all be over soon! | https://medium.com/@peraltallord/quaran-teen-9cde90804206 | ['Llord Christian Peralta'] | 2020-12-13 12:38:31.794000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Teens', 'Quarantinelife'] |
Do I need a Website for my Small Business? | ● The shift to online shopping.
2020 has experienced a transformation in the way people shop for items. From takeaway food to clothes, to gym equipment, nobody has to leave the house to go window shopping.
And just like every pandemic in history has led to a new culture, online shopping is no longer a trend but a fully established culture that will continue long after Covid-19 is no longer an emergency.
That said, potential and existing clients are very likely looking online to get information about your business; which brings us to the next point.
● Be Seen
If your business doesn’t have a website in 2020, how sure are you that people can find you? Are you still depending on walk-in clients? Broaden your reach by having a modern interactive website that has a listing on Google -My-Business. When customers search for businesses in their local set up, your business will come up.
And with S.E.O tools you will be found on online searches. The advantage of this is you acquire a competitive edge even against bigger businesses in terms of location.
If a client realizes they can shop for an item closer to home, the decision to support your business becomes a matter of convenience more than brand loyalty. When a new client is gained, it will now be up to you to maintain them which is undoubtedly easier than acquiring them.
● Be Trusted.
Any business that doesn’t have a website so far into the 21st Century will cause the least sceptical shopper to think you may not be all that you seem to be. Are you bankrupt? Are you simply just outdated? Many eyebrows will be raised.
A website is the new Yellow Pages or the former Business Directory before that. Many clients like to have a feel of what to expect before they decide to patronize an establishment, and getting basic information is one of the most direct ways to talk about your business.
They can view your catalogue and prices here without feeling coerced to buy.
You also gain trust by having testimonials from existing clients on your page as well as logos of affiliated ventures.
● Be Available
As the world gets smaller and smaller due to digitalization, many shoppers expect that services will be highly efficient and if possible, be delivered in an instant.
Patience levels have gone down to a minus and as a business, you need to consider how customer handling can match this global village pace.
A website takes care of half the problem by providing real-time access to products and customer care. Plug-ins enable live chat, instant payment and purchase at the click of a button.
Instant booking for services gives clients satisfaction as they feel they have the upper hand in their time management. Having an updated calendar enables them to book for services at their own convenient time. Can’t argue with a calendar now, can you?
● Be on the radar
At times, marketing campaigns based on generic data can seem like a blind dispersion of seeds on rocky ground. A business owner never knows exactly who is a potential client and so their marketing becomes broad, general and ends up costing a lot of money but bringing on negligible results.
Having a website caters for that.
Data collected through surveys, polls and forms can give you a clearer view of your market base, the demographics and buying trends. This will help you streamline your promotions to a specific market saving you both resources and time.
Data collected on a website will also help you know if you may need to expand to other locations.
Again, plug-ins added to the website play a crucial role in helping you measure results.
That way, you will know if Ads placed on the website are working or not before you spend money on paid Ads.
In conclusion, it is clear to see that a good website not only gives you visibility but also makes you credible and helps you handle customer care. It also gives you information to help you curate your marketing strategy accordingly.
It is good to mention that, as website construction goes, not every website will cut the mark. A website needs eye-catching graphics and photos, preferably your own, a Terms and Conditions page and vibrant up to date information.
That’s how we come in. At Zhen Limited our expert designers and content managers will craft a website capable of easily throwing off your competitors for design and user interface.
Contact us at [email protected] and let us see how to get you on the World Wide Web in no time.
Wishing all of you a joyous festive season! Let’s go to 2021 with a refreshed website. | https://medium.com/zhen-blog/do-i-need-a-website-for-my-small-businesses-af01107cfbc0 | ['Zhen Ltd.'] | 2020-12-23 07:50:07.678000+00:00 | ['Website', 'Small Business Marketing', 'Website Design', 'Website Development'] |
Who’s that girl? She’s a partisan | It’s one of the most iconic pictures of the Italian liberation day, the 25th of April 1945, and the protagonist is a not-so-well-known woman.
On the 25th of April Italy celebrates the liberation from fascism, operated by the Americans and the resistance groups of partisans. Little did I knew that one of the most iconic pictures of this rebellion has as a protagonist one of the few females partigiane (partisans).
The picture was taken when Milan was liberated on the 6th of May
and you can see three people marching down one of the main streets in the city. One of them is a woman and she’s holding an Italian flag. She’s smiling. They’ve won not only the war, but also their own freedom from the Duce, the dictator.
But who is she and why is she holding the flag?
Her name was Eva Colombo, born in Parabiagio on the 24th July 1916. She was one of the bravest female partisans in Italy. When her husband, Jonio Salerno, was called in the army in 1943, she went to live with her mother-in-law in Milan. Her house was the headquarters of the resistance, and she quickly got involved in the partisan movement. Her father, whom she described as an anti-feminist, was part of the resistance as well, and tried to tell her how dangerous it could be, but Eva wanted to be a “staffettina”, one of the girls delivering messages for the partisans.
“If you want to do it you have to keep in mind that if they get you, you must not talk. You could be shot or tortured. But you must not talk”. He warned me about all the possible dangers. “If your mind is set, do it. But be aware of the risks”. I accepted all the risks and I did it. He was proud of me. I think in that moment, in his eyes, I kind of redeemed myself from being born a woman.
And what a “redemption” she had. Her code name was Susi and she was delivering messages and information from Milan to the partisans group in Valtellina. She got arrested in 1944, but she was soon released and she joined the Oltrepo group. Eva quickly raised as a valuable member of the Italian resistance and she became the Head of the Police department in the short Partisan Republic of Ossola that lasted from the 10th of September to the 23rd of October 1944.
She was one of the few women who liberated Pavia on the 25th of April 1945.
In the picture shared from the Jonio Salerno archives, you can see two women sitting in the middle of a group of men. They are Eva Colombo and her friend Dina Croce, both partisan women who fought against fascists and nazis along with their male colleagues, to free one by one the Italian cities in Lombardia. On the 26th of April 1945 they arrived in Milan.
That’s when her husband Jonio, who was passing through Bologna with the Allies, heard her voice on the radio. Eva, along with other partisans, had occupied the EIAR studios in Milan and she sang “Fischia il vento”, the song of freedom and resistance.
Finally, she was chosen to represent the Oltrepo group as a flag holder at the liberation parade on the 6th of May. That’s when the famous picture was taken.
After the end of the war, she kept fighting for human rights.
She was an active member of the Italian Communist Party and she lead the laborers strikes in Novara. She finally retired in 1955 in Brianza with her husband, where she died peacefully in 2004. Today, her fight is still alive and well, printed black and white in that picture from 1945. Although not many people know her story, what she stood for lives on in Italy, thanks to all the people who keep celebrating the 25th of April. | https://medium.com/under-the-news/whos-that-girl-she-s-a-partisan-8ee120e35b81 | ['Francesca Casonato'] | 2021-04-25 23:30:57.468000+00:00 | ['Eva Colombo', 'Under The News', 'Italy', '25 Aprile 1945', 'Partigiani'] |
Mirror Protocol Integrates Band Protocol Oracles to Secure Over $50M in Synthetic Stocks and ETFs | Mirror Protocol, a decentralized finance protocol enabling synthetic assets (mAssets) that provide price exposure to real-world assets, has strategically partnered with Band Protocol and successfully implemented price feeds for an initial set of assets covering blue-chip stocks, commodities and ETFs. To ensure that the price of a mAsset is pegged to the real asset, the system has integrated low-latency and decentralized oracles from Band Protocol, which update every 15 seconds on the BandChain decentralized oracle network. Band Protocol oracles are currently securing over $54.47M in assets locked in Mirror.
Created by Terra, Mirror Protocol is designed to expand global accessibility to foreign markets, reducing the friction when switching between different assets and enabling speedy order execution. Combining the best that DeFi has to offer with real-world asset exposure built on both the Terra and Ethereum blockchains, Mirror utilizes a combination of liquidity pools for each asset and scalable, real-time decentralized oracles provided by Band Protocol among others to ensure that orders can be executed as fast as the blocktime of the network. Within a few days of launch, Band Protocol is securing $54.47M in total value locked in Mirror Protocol.
Securing the Gateway For The $89.5 Trillion Stock Market
Band Protocol is providing real-time prices for an array of initial Mirrored Assets based on popularity, provision of long and short positions, and broad coverage. The feeds which are live on the BandChain decentralized oracle network update every 15 seconds and are continuously optimized for additional redundancy and security guarantee through multiple institutional-grade and premium data providers.
Prices are only considered valid for 60 seconds. To protect users, if no new prices are published after the data has expired, Mirror will disable CDP operations (mint, burn, deposit, withdraw) until the price feed resumes.
Here is a list of the initial mAssets powered by Band Protocol:
Stocks
mAAPL — Mirrored Apple Inc. mAMZN — Mirrored Amazon.com, Inc. mBABA — Mirrored Alibaba Group Holding Limited mGOOGL — Mirrored Alphabet Inc. mMSFT — Mirrored Microsoft Corporation mNFLX — Mirrored Netflix, Inc. mTSLA — Mirrored Tesla, Inc. mTWTR — Mirrored Twitter Inc.
ETFs
mIAU — Mirrored iShares Gold Trust mQQQ — Mirrored Invesco QQQ Trust mSLV — Mirrored iShares Silver Trust mUSO — Mirrored United States Oil Fund, LP mVIXY — Mirrored ProShares VIX Short-Term Futures ETF
Looking Forward
Band Protocol is thrilled to work with Terra to be one of the first to market by bringing 24 hour trading to synthetic versions of stocks, ETFs and more. With security and usability as the top priority, both teams will continue to create and improve the Mirror Protocol infrastructure by onboarding more institutional data providers, optimize the oracle design to mitigate front-running and sandwich attacks, and expand product offerings for the next wave of DeFi and blockchain adoption. | https://medium.com/bandprotocol/mirror-protocol-integrates-band-protocol-oracles-to-secure-over-50m-in-synthetic-stocks-and-etfs-3a5b83ef77d5 | ['Kevin Lu'] | 2020-12-08 10:04:42.683000+00:00 | ['Decentralization', 'Blockchain Development', 'Defi', 'Partnerships'] |
I Started Medium Without a Focus and It Cost Me | Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
I stumbled on Medium by accident some years ago. My first impression of its concept was that it felt like some kind of blogging social network where anyone could write about anything. There is some truth in that, yet Medium is more than just a place to post some scribbles.
I created my account and read stories and articles for almost a week until I decided to give Medium ago. The concept was about me writing these soft horror stories ideas that would come up whilst suffering from a bad case of insomnia.
Suffice to say I had no strategy. I would just write whenever I had a random idea at night. There was no structure nor planning, and proofreading was definitely not a concept at the time. As soon as the article was finished I would just hit publish.
Of course, this chaotic strategy led me nowhere, so I gave up. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/i-started-medium-without-a-focus-and-it-cost-me-e4c73a6931f | ['Daniel Silva'] | 2020-12-22 15:06:19.657000+00:00 | ['Writers On Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Writers On Medium', 'Ｍedium', 'Writing'] |
The Return of the ‘Hamburgs’? White Vigilantes and Anti-Fascism in Chicago by Joe Allen | A younger Richard M. Daley, former mayor, marching with friends.
The Return of the ‘Hamburgs’? White Vigilantes, the Chicago Police, and Anti-Fascism in Chicago by Joe Allen
Chicago has seen some of the largest and most militant demonstrations in the United States during the two weeks that followed the murder of George Floyd. Thirty thousand people marched and rallied on June 6 in Union Park, for example. While demonstrators have suffered repeated acts of violence by the Chicago Police Department and seen their constitutional rights trampled on by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, others were menaced by self-appointed “neighborhood protectors.”
The most disturbing example of this was on the night of June 3, when a gang of mostly white men wielding baseball bats harassed African-Americans and anti-racist activists in the Southside neighborhood of Bridgeport. It appeared that white racist vigilantism had returned to the streets of Chicago. The Block Club Chicago, a very reliable local media site, reported:
On Wednesday night [June 3] in Bridgeport, while there were no reports of physical assaults by the self-appointed guardians at 31st Street and Princeton Avenue, but several people say they were illegally harassed and intimidated by men with weapons while the Chicago Police did nothing about it.
Earlier in the evening, Whitney Rosier, who lives in Bridgeport along with her husband, were walking east to a protest in Bronzeville, the historically Black neighborhood. Rosier told Block Club:
“Just so you know, my husband is Black and I am white. So, a car came up behind us but we kept walking and they stopped because it was on a street with a cul-de-sac. By the time we got to 31st and Princeton there was a massive crowd of white men, most of them had bats. Some had pipes. I’ve never seen anything like it. The police were there and wouldn’t let us cross and this was all to stop the quote-unquote “riots” but there was nothing going on.”
Later on Tanya Rosin, who was driving home through Bridgeport from the Bronzeville protest, with a Black Lives Matter sign on her car, was stop by car with flashing lights. It wasn’t a cop car. Rosin said,
“Two of them got out and blocked our path forward with their bodies. One stood only a few inches away from the front of my car while screaming at us to turn around and leave and the other one stood a couple of yards away from the driver side of the car.”
Rosin tried to turn her car around but was blocked by a white man in a pickup flying the Chicago flag. Chicago cops sitting nearby in a police SUV did nothing to help her. She was finally able to escape unharmed.
While no one was injured by these racist vigilantes, it was a frightening experience that could have easily led to something far more serious. Mayor Lori Lightfoot soon afterwards denounced vigilantism, along with Bridgeport alderman Patrick Daley Thompson, while the CPD denied it had cooperated with them. We should be skeptical of the CPD’s claim of innocence.
In response, a proposed demonstration against racist vigilantism was called in Bridgeport but quickly called off, after several organizations pulled out. I can’t speak to the merits of cancelling the demonstration, but it does appear to be a missed opportunity to confront racism in a neigborhood historically identified with violent racism. I think the appearance of racist vigilantism, however, should foster a deeper discussion of anti-Fascist campaigning in Chicago, where the police have historically cooperated with the far right.
Racism in the old neighborhood
Bridgeport looms large in the history of Chicago. This small, compact Southside neighborhood produced five mayors for the city, including the infamous Richard J. Daley, Sr, and his slightly less infamous son Richard M. Daley. It was notoriously racist throughout the 20th Century. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it was for the buckle of the racist belt of white neighborhoods in Chicago.
In 1919, Bridgeport gained infamy due to the role of the Hamburg Athletic Club. The “Hamburgs,” as they were known, were one of several racist Irish Catholic “athletic clubs” that carried out violent attacks on Blacks during the 1919 Race Riots in Chicago. The Hamburgs mixed anti-Black racism with political aspirations, and they might have disappeared down the memory hole, except that its most famous member was future Mayor and Democratic Party Boss Richard J. Daley.
Bridgeport was the heart of Richard J. Daley’s political machine. During the height of his rule in the mid-1960s, Daley had personal veto power over 2000 patronage jobs in a community of 38,000 people. He raised his family there, including his sons Richard M. Daley, who would become the longest serving mayor in Chicago history, as well as, Bill Daley, who would become President Barak Obama’s commerce secretary and chief of staff, and later in life a failed candidate for mayor.
Meanwhile, few Blacks lived in Bridgeport, despite the large Black community of Bronezville being a short walk away. Bronzeville and Bridgeport were separated by the mammoth Dan Ryan Expressway — part of federal interstate highway system — that was deliberately constructed to separate the neighborhoods. Bridgeport was considered a no-go zone for African-Americans, it was extremely dangerous to walk or drive into the neighborhood any time of day or night.
Richard J. Daley epitomized the worst instincts of the political establishment that reached deep into white, working class neighborhoods like Bridgeport. During the tumultuous year of 1968, Daley called on the police to “shoot looters” following the nationwide rebellion in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King. Daley’s cops mercilessly assaulted anti-war demonstrators during the Democratic convention. When Senator Abraham Ribicoff denounced the police for using “Gestapo” tactics, Daley called him an anti-Semitic slur from the convention floor.
In 1993, Richard M. Daley, Jr., then Mayor of Chicago, moved out of Bridgeport. It was the symbolic end to Bridgeport’s dominance in city politics, but the Daley family never really left the old neighborhood. Patrick Daley Thompson, the grandson of Richard J. and nephew of Richard M., is the current alderman for the 11th Ward that encompasses Bridgeport. The 11th Ward Democratic committee is chaired by John Daley, another son of Richard J., and brother of Richard M. One Daley or another has chaired the 11th Ward for sixty years.
During the decades following the departure of Richard M. Daley, Bridgeport went from being virtually all-white to a more diverse neighborhood. By the late 1990’s it was already forty percent Latino and Asian (mostly Chinese); but violent racism, however, persisted. Lenard Clark, an African-American teenager, who rode his bike into Bridgeport, was nearly was beaten to death by three white Bridgeport teenagers in March 1997. They bragged about keeping Blacks out of the neighborhood. One of Clark’s attackers was Frank Caruso, the son of a Bridgeport Mafioso.
Today, Bridgeport is considered one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. Many younger people, including many radical activists, have also moved into the neighborhood in search of cheaper rent. However, parts of the neighborhood still have a nasty edge to them. Cops and other city workers living in Bridgeport exude a hostility to ‘outsiders,’ even though if you walk down Halsted street on any given day, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a Chinese and Mexican neighborhood. But, a handful of bars also make it clear that they are for “locals only.”
Chicago Police and the Far Right
I’m sure that the vigilantes were drawn from those parts of Bridgeport and bars. I would further bet many of them are relatives or friends of Chicago cops. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Chicago Police Department has long been a hospitable home to all sorts of racists, anti-Communists, and far right political movements. In fact, throughout much of the 20th Century, it was difficult it figure out where the CPD ended and the far right began.
Not only has the CPD regularly provided protection for the far right. According to historian Frank Donner:
“At least since the post-World War I days of the Chicago-based American Vigilance Federation, Chicago’s political police have maintained important ties with the city’s ever-blooming far right groups. Beginning in the mid-sixties, a secret tie was gradually formed between various parts of the Chicago law enforcement structure — especially the red squad — and a group known as the Legion of Justice.”
The Legion of Justice (LoJ) was formed by an ex-liberal and corporate lawyer S. Thomas Sutton, who recruited young enthusiastic anti-Communists to his blossoming organization. The LoJ soon launched the campaign against the Chicago left in close cooperation with the Red Squad staff. According to Donner, these “terrorist style raids” included “burglaries, bugging, harassment, threats, disruption of meetings.” They physically attacked Vietnam Anti-War peace rallies, and assaulted its organizers. The LoJ also targeted the socialist activists and bookstores of the Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party.
This collaboration between the Chicago Red Squad and the Legion of Justice went on for many years. If there was any threat of exposure or arrest for the LoJ members, the Chicago police intervened to make sure they were protected. The CPD also protected Nazis when the marched in Marquette Park in 1978. Today, the CPD protects far right militia types when they menace anti-racists protesters recently in Chicago. President Donald Trump is popular with the cops judging from the wards that voted him in 2016. The head of the police union, John Cattanzara, is a Trump favorite.
If the recent events in Bridgeport tell anything, it is this collaboration between the CPD and the far right continues. If Black parents and their children can march against racism and police brutality in Mt. Greenwood, the most pro-cop neighborhood in Chicago, and the only ward that gave Trump a majority vote in 2016. We can march in Bridgeport. The ghosts of the Hamburgs need to be exercised from Bridgeport, once and for all.
—
Joe Allen is the author of The Package King: A Rank and File History of United Parcel Service, People Wasn’t Made to Burn: A True Story of Housing, Race, and Murder in Chicago, and Vietnam: The Last War the US Lost | https://joeallen-60224.medium.com/the-return-of-the-hamburgs-white-vigilantes-and-anti-fascism-in-chicago-by-joe-allen-c654f80bfae4 | ['Joe Allen'] | 2020-06-13 17:56:10.299000+00:00 | ['Antifascism', 'Bridgeport', 'George Floyd', 'Chicago'] |
Write for FanFare | Perhaps you’ve been there. You’ve written a great essay on Star Wars or Marvel or Fortnite. You’re anxious to share it with the world, but there’s a problem — no publications are interested. Leaving you to play the curation lottery; lose, and watch your work disappear into the void, largely unread.
I recognized the issue when one of my essays on writing had too much Star Wars. I could cut the Star Wars, but that was its raison d’être, its essential essence. If I can’t write about Star Wars… what am I even doing here?
There had to be another way.
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General reasons for rejection | https://medium.com/fan-fare/write-for-fanfare-3f1b4dade1bd | ['Eric Pierce'] | 2020-10-29 12:19:26.512000+00:00 | ['Pop Culture', 'Fanfare'] |
Alien Worlds Metaversal Survey | Alien Worlds Metaversal Survey
Metaversal Operations, the Federation and fellow community members want to know what you think!
Newly added to the Explorers’ Station are Metaversal Surveys. Surveys will be posted frequently.
Find the Metaversal surveys here.
During the first week, Players who complete a survey while it is still live will be chosen at random to win an NFT Game Card, or in some cases, the highly desired Alien Worlds NFT Game Card pack (one each).
Recent surveys include:
Thank you for your feedback!
Portal to Alien Worlds Mining
Using your WAX Cloud Wallet, login at http://play.alienworlds.io/
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Alien Worlds is the #1 Blockchain Game!
With more than 3,333,681 player accounts, and more than 273,038 active daily, Alien Worlds has quickly climbed the DappRadar ranking charts. Alien Worlds has become #1 Blockchain Game. The Federation would like to thank all Explorers for making this possible.
About the Alien Worlds Social Metaverse
What would you do, if you could create anything in the world? Join the Alien Worlds simulation of Earth’s economy using the Trilium (TLM) game token. Seek your fortune and thrive in the Trilium and NFT Social Metaverse. Get started by going through the Wormhole at alienworlds.io and start by Mining at https://play.alienworlds.io/ Welcome to Alien Worlds! #create #thrive #Metaverse #NFTs #TLM | https://medium.com/@alienworlds/alien-worlds-metaversal-survey-81a9af8c8a3d | ['Alien Worlds'] | 2021-09-09 14:25:15.588000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Surveys', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Game'] |
3 to read: ‘Deep fakes’ are coming | 2d & 3d subscriptions? | Behind the curtain: FB’s big fail | By Matt Carroll <@MattCData>
Nov. 20, 2018: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail. Originally published on 3toread.co
You thought fake news was bad? Deep fakes are where truth goes to die:Fake news is about to get a lot faker. Improving technology means it is getting more and more difficult to tell doctored videos from real life. Heck, even badly edited fake videos are taken for the truth — what happens when people can’t tell the difference? A chilling look a the future of fake news by Oscar Schwartz for The Guardian. Extra: World’s first AI TV news anchor unveiled in China.
How many people will pay for 2d or 3d news #subscription?:Quartz and New York mag just put up paywalls, joining a lengthening list of high-profile, quality news pubs that have done so, such as the NYT and WaPo. But how many people can afford to pay for two, three or more news sites?, asks Joshua Benton of NielamnLab. He’s pessimistic, citing research that says only 16% of Americans will pay for any news. (Myself, I’m more optimistic. As more paywalls go up, people will of necessity read fewer sites. But from the perspective of the newsrooms, they don’t care, as long as they have enough paying customers. We’ll see how it plays out.)
Delay, deny & deflect blame at others — How Facebook’s leaders handled crisis: This story will only reinforce your worst fears, if you’ve had doubts about Facebook’s ability to come up with a successful solution in the wake of the Russian election scandal and the company’s unscrupulous handling of data from millions of users. FB’s top leaders were slow to realize they had a problem, slow to realize the breadth and depth of the issues, including the anger of the public, and seemed mostly interested in wallpapering over concerns. The NYT story paints a picture of a dysfunctional platform. Not pretty, but a great read. | https://medium.com/3-to-read/3-to-read-deep-fakes-are-coming-2d-3d-subscriptions-behind-the-curtain-fb-s-big-fail-f2d2e3619217 | ['Matt Carroll'] | 2018-11-20 14:55:14.201000+00:00 | ['Media Criticism', 'Journalism', 'Journalism Ethics', 'Spotlight Movie', 'Journalism Innovation'] |
Is it a startup for You? | Do you really belong to the startup? Do you really want to solve the problem?
Don’t run behind success stories. You might don’t want to do a startup you may be thinking of it because of hype.
Ask these questions before jumping into it.
Do you really want to start a startup? or you just love to develop things or doing marketing but don’t like other stuff related to startup (It may include sales speech, stuffing, speaking in public, interaction with customers, research, team-building, product+brand development, and marketing) or do you need a clear job description. (In this case, you should find a developer’s job or marketing’s job or job you want and enjoy doing it. Developing some side projects startup is not for you). Do you want to earn a lot of money? Few people see startups as a world of fortune. They will come and strike at it and earn millions of dollars. It’s true people create fortunes via startup. But if you observe every single startup that is successful they have a mission. People who want to create value not for them but for the users. They had a vision of changing the world in a better way. If your aim is only to earn a fortune. A startup is not for you. You should have a mission to change the world not to fill your and investor’s pocket. founders who are in a startup just for the money, then you will have a lot more reasons and ways to quit before your startup hit a success. or you may sell the startup to big corporations. no company ever changed the world by selling it early. If google’s or facebook’s founder’s mission was to make a fortune they could have sold their company to yahoo.
Money is a by-product; if the business is successful and clients have faith in your offerings — success will follow. — Tanya Khanna, Epistle Communications “Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.” –Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO
In this case, I will strongly suggest you get your skills honed and be a rockstar (who can compete not just in his/her area but globally). You will earn a great amount of money. Microsoft created 12,000 Millionaires. It’s clear that by doing a job. you can be a millionaire. Earn, save, and invest.
Do you need someone who can tell you what to do? In this case, get a job for you. a startup is not for you. no one will tell you what to do. not even an investor (if they do every time probably they are a bad investor). This may sound silly but I have seen many people who can’t work by themself and are aiming for starting a startup.
Still, you want to start a startup. I will advise you to find an early edge entrepreneur. work for him/her learns how they are taking an action. Try to discipline yourself to take action without external force. then you will be startup ready.
Don’t work well in stress. can’t handle stress. Just don’t do it. You will have a lot more stress than you may think of. You have to smile and have to give effective pitches at any time. If you believe in you, your solution and people that can help you than they will help you reducing the stress.
https://yourstory.com/2018/03/anxiety-stress-depression-startups
‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’
If you fear to be accountable. No matter how good of a business you can create but many people get nervous and edgy when things start to be measured and quantified. As a leader, you will be accountable. for any failure as well as any success related to your startup and obviously, it is not a one-time thing. you can not slide it to other people.
“Leaders inspire accountability through their ability to accept responsibility before they place blame.” ― Courtney Lynch
You don’t feel comfortable around strong opinions (maybe against you). You may have to work with the same people who have strong opinions on something that you may don’t like. In the early founder’s dictionary, you will not be able to find the word ‘work-life balance’. because they don’t believe in this. You will have to work every waking hour no matter how efficient you are. You just want to work on interesting things But in statup you may have to clean the office by yourself. you may have to work on excel or you have to handle customers on call. you must have to do it when needed. You need stability. The startup is a roller coaster ride or box of chocolate you will never know what comes next. In my personal opinion, a lot of luck is involved in it. If you need stability join Samsung or maybe Facebook You are not getting any job, you have some idea, you think is worth billion-dollar, and people are suggesting you should start a startup but you don’t feel the startup is for you. In this case, if you will do it. It will be a big blunder. You don’t understand what a startup actually is? Do you think it is the easiest way to get fame? Do you want to be a scientist kind of yourself (I will do Asteroid mining without having any knowledge related to rocket science and physics)? Your idea does not have growth or just trying to copy-paste without creating any values or USP for business. Recently, I did research related to new startups. I found out that more than 50 startups are creating a chain of local mom and pop grocery stores. In this case, you might get lucky but most probably original will show up and your startup will fade away. You fear to work hard. This place is definitely not for you. Based on some stats you will work very hard and most probably getting failed. You are not good at making decisions. You must be extremely good at making decisions. startup = growth. to grow faster you must have to make lots of decisions each and every day.
“In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying so get in motion and grow.”
— Lou Holtz
Do you want to make a contribution to the economy? Based on data you will more likely to drain the economy rather than contributing to the economy. You want to be your own boss. In a startup, you will have thousands or millions of bosses.
“CUSTOMER IS THE KING AND I AM HIS SERVANT.” “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000” — Jeff Bezos (Founder and CEO, Amazon). | https://medium.com/@vinayprajapati-44828/is-it-a-startup-for-you-39316ec9fec7 | ['Vinay Prajapati'] | 2020-12-23 07:52:35.462000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Money', 'Wisdom', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business'] |
You Can’t Die Yet, It’s Not in the Budget | I feel like very few people in their forties have budgeted for death. It probably hasn’t even crossed their minds, never mind entered their monthly financial spreadsheet. Least of all during a pandemic when you may have been laid off from the same job twice in the one year. *Raises hand*
Nobody in the prime of their life has a jar full of change under their bed labeled, “In case someone dies, use this.”
It’s kind of sick to even touch on this subject but having very recently been on the butt end of ‘the cost of death’, it has blown my mind how expensive it is. It’s almost insulting.
Some days I have my wits about me enough to stop crying and consciously take stock of what’s actually happened in the days, weeks, and months following the death of my loved one. Not just any loved one, but someone I was solely responsible for, aka my child.
When you don’t have much for extended family to fall back on, the burden is yours alone. The duty falls squarely on your financially unprepared shoulders.
Nobody should have to trade in precious grieving time for trying to figure out how to finance some dignity for your departed loved one.
Basic Death Costs
This applies if your lost loved one conveniently lived next door, or up the street, or in the same city.
A basic death will run you at least three grand. This price tag applies when there are no complications, no special circumstances, you choose cremation, and you purchase your urn on Amazon.
Pro Tip: Amazon sells beautifully crafted urns. Don’t knock it until you check it out.
Although coroners are free (bless their hearts), once your loved one is released the sands in the hourglass start dripping and each grain of sand costs you another dollar.
Getting your loved one out of the coroner’s office is like posting bail. Pull out your checkbook because they don’t just lift a body into the back of Hearse for free. The lifting costs money and so does the turn of the key in the ignition.
The ride to a funeral home alone is enough to buy an airline ticket. True story, it’s in black and white on the invoice.
Once your loved one resides at a funeral home it’s like a vehicle impound. Taking up space in a refrigerator costs money. They call it “sheltering remains.”
If you’d like to see your loved one, one last time, that too will cost you. For around five hundred bucks you can get thirty minutes of alone time in a private room to view your unembalmed loved one. I wouldn’t know how much embalming costs, it wasn’t in my budget.
A funeral home will graciously do the nitty-gritty work of registering the deceased and obtaining death certificates for you — for a price of course. A price I was willing to pay because who wants to do paperwork?
And finally, if you choose cremation, firing up those jets only amounts to a small fraction of the grand total of three thousand dollars. I guess fire is cheaper than refrigeration.
I can’t imagine how much more it would have cost to purchase a casket, a plot, and bury my son.
Add-ons: Did you know that for an extra cost you can request your person’s fingerprints and DNA? I didn’t know until it was offered. Yes, I opted for his fingerprints for eighty dollars. I’d heard from another mother that she did the same and the entire family got matching fingerprint tattoos. I want that.
Costs of a Complicated Death
This includes but is not limited to if your loved one lived in another province and you want to bring him home where he belongs.
Checklist of costs for an out of town death:
Airline tickets (plural because you can’t emotionally do this alone).
Hotel rooms.
Rental car.
Meals while away.
Doggy daycare while you’re away.
Add shipping of remains unless you decide to stay in the other province for the amount of time it takes to wait for cremation. It’s cheaper to have the urn shipped than wait, believe me. Funeral homes don’t work on your schedule.
If you choose to ship a whole body that’s roughly another three thousand dollars. I can’t fathom it.
Other mandatory expenses: The future cost of shipping your loved one’s vehicle home. You can’t begin the process of taking ownership until it’s in your possession. In the meantime, you’ll need to insure it while it sits.
Total price tag? Several thousand dollars more. I lost count. | https://medium.com/rogues-gallery/you-cant-die-yet-it-s-not-in-the-budget-168ddad30ad2 | ['Kristi Keller'] | 2020-12-19 03:02:33.756000+00:00 | ['Financial Planning', 'Funerals', 'Death', 'Generosity', 'Helping Others'] |
Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen has been killed near Tehran | https://theinstantnews.com
Fakhrizadeh died at the hospital after being attacked in Dambhand County.
Western intelligence agencies see him as the mastermind behind Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program.
Diplomats have described him as the “father of the Iranian bomb.”
The news comes amid concerns over Iran’s growing uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium is an important component for both civilian nuclear power generation and military nuclear weapons.
Iran has insisted that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.
Four Iranian nuclear scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012, and Iran has accused Israel of involvement in the killings.
Fakhrizadeh’s name was specifically mentioned in a May 2018 presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran’s nuclear programme.
There was no word on whether the attackers had fled.
The bomber struck shortly afternoon in the small town of Absarde, just east of the capital, Tehran. Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both close to security sources, said “terrorists carried out a car bombing before firing on Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s car.” The injured, including Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguard, were taken to a local hospital, Fars said.
State television later posted a picture of security forces blocking a road on its website. Photos and videos shared online showed a Nissan sedan with a windshield and bullet holes with blood holes in the street.
Hussein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, appeared in Fakhrizadeh to acknowledge the attack.
Salami tweeted, “Killing nuclear scientists to prevent us from reaching modern science is the most violent fight conf
Hussein Dehgan, Iran’s supreme leader and adviser to Iran’s 2021 presidential candidate, issued a warning on Twitter.
Referring to President Donald Trump, Dehghan wrote, “In the last days of the political life of the gamblers, the Zionists wanted to intensify and put pressure on Iran to wage a full-fledged war.” “We will descend like lightning on these oppressed martyr killers and we will regret them for their actions!”
The area around Absard is full of leisure villas for Iranian elites, including a visit to Mount Dambhand, the country’s highest peak. Roads in Iran during the weekend were closed less than usual due to the coronavirus epidemic and its attackers allowed fewer people in the vicinity to attack.
Fakhrizadeh was named by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2011 as the director of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
Netanyahu then revealed that Israel had removed Iran’s own huge archives from a warehouse in Tehran with details of its nuclear weapons program, saying: “Fakhrizadeh will remember that name.”
Nearly a decade ago, Iranian nuclear scientists were suspected of carrying out a number of targeted killings in a bid to reduce Iran’s long-running nuclear program. Friday did not comment on the matter.
In a video uploaded to Twitter on Friday alleging murder, Netanyahu counted the various achievements of the week, saying it was “a partial list because I can’t tell you everything.” He is thought to have survived an earlier attempt to oust him following Mr. Jiang’s intervention in Saudi Arabia.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. However, the Iranian media all mentioned the interest shown by Netanyahu in Fakhrizadeh.
Fakhrizadeh led Iran’s so-called “Amad” or “Hope” program. Israel and the West have accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons in a military operation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says the “Amad” program ended in the early 2000s. Its inspectors have now observed the Iranian nuclear site.
However, Netanyahu said in his 2013 remarks that Fakhrizadeh was secretly pursuing such efforts under the SPND, “an internal body of Iran’s defense ministry.”
He was often compared to Robert Oppenheimer, director of the American Atomic Development Program in the 1940s.
A report from Axios on Wednesday claimed that US President Donald Trump was preparing for the possibility of ordering a strike on Iran before the Israeli army leaves office in January.
Citing senior Israeli officials, Axios said there was no specific information on whether such an attack was imminent, but Israeli leaders believed the last week of the US president’s term would be a “very sensitive time”.
Officials say Washington will probably update Israel before taking military action against the Islamic Republic.
In January, the United States killed Qasim Solaimani, the powerful head of Iran’s Quds Force, in an airstrike at Baghdad International Airport, sparking an almost larger conflict between the two countries.
As Fakhrizadeh is still alive, Bergman said at the time, “Anyone can say that the assassination was planned.” And, obviously, the issue was rejected when Ehud Olmert was prime minister, Bergman added, adding that he chose his word considering the limitations of military censorship when it comes to national security.
“Obviously, Olmert came there and said, listen, this campaign is in danger of failing; There are fears that troops could be found on the ground. “
Clearly, Olmert addressed these concerns and said that Bergman, a well-connected journalist on Israeli intelligence and security, would not approve of such a campaign. “
Until 2009, Netanyahu was Prime Minister under Olmert. | https://medium.com/@theinstantnews013/irans-top-nuclear-scientist-mohsen-has-been-killed-near-tehran-d1810f07737 | [] | 2020-11-27 17:14:14.870000+00:00 | ['News', 'Iran', 'BBC', 'Blog', 'War'] |
I’m not your Billboard | I’m not your Billboard
Years ago, I was folding clean laundry when I made a startling realization. I had a pile of T-shirts, which is primarily what I wear, and I realized I hadn’t paid for any of them. They were many different colors and all had garish logos or pithy sayings on the front or the back. All of them were shirts I had gotten from either my employer or product vendors for free. As an outdoor educator this is one of the “perks.” The unwritten understanding is this. You will give me a shirt to wear for free, and I will wear it. In doing so I am subtly implying an endorsement for your product. Over the years I have received many items for free from vendors. The company I work for has a policy that I can’t receive a gift greater than $50. I have received a lifetime supply of stickers, key chains, beer cozies (and I don’t drink beer!) and more bottle openers than I will ever need in a lifetime. (Seriously, the outdoor companies need to think outside the box. Bottle openers? Really? Yakima puts them on their car rack accessories. What does that say about the outdoor industry?) These days after a conversation with a vendor rep, when they dump out their bag of free goodies, I generally just walk away. There is rarely anything I would like in that bag. There is almost certainly nothing I need.
The agreement we are all making, is that you will give me a shirt (or some other giveaway) and I will be excited to use this free item. I will like it, because it makes me part of an exclusive club. But in reality I am unpaid marketing for you. I am a walking billboard, and I don’t want to be a walking billboard. Particularly for free. In essence though, I am not doing it for free. I am getting paid, in the form of the free stuff I am receiving. The schwag is my payment. If you ask me, that is a lousy deal.
This was a big part of the reason I developed a “uniform” of a grey T-shirt and blue jeans for everyday wear. I started by recycling all those T-shirts. Some became rags, some went to good will. The old ones went right in the garbage. I simply don’t want to be a billboard for your outdoor company. I wanted to get away from what I think of as an implied or “soft” product endorsement.
A big part of my job is recommending gear to people, and I am absolutely fine with that. I have no problem telling you what piece of gear works well and what piece of gear is a waste of time and money. It is one of the reasons I started doing product reviews on my website. None of those are sponsored by the manufacturer. If they were my sponsor, I would be beholden to them. Gear Junkie used to give real reviews listing what worked outdoor gear worked and what didn’t. Then they got popular and got a ton of sponsors and they could no longer be honest about products. I’m sorry Gear junkie but my dream truck isn’t a diesel chevy pick up truck. Just because you got paid this month by chevy doesn’t mean that is a piece of outdoor gear. That said I still read GJ and understand what they do, and have to do. Business is business.
I understand how this happens in the outdoor industry, most of us who work in the outdoors don’t make a lot of money and free clothes are awesome. What really upsets me is when I see this outside of the outdoor industry. I see yeti stickers on the back of cars and trucks. This makes my brain ache. You just spent $30 on a coffee mug, and want to tell the world by putting the sticker on the back of your car? Or you decide to wear a Yeti hat? So after that purchase you feel you owe the company so you will wear their brand name? No coffee mug is that good. But that isn’t actually what is happening though, is it? People put a yeti sticker on the back of their truck because it gets them entrance to a club. The cool outdoor club. I feel bad for these people because they desperately want entrance to a club that really isn’t that cool. You want to join a cool club? Go climb El Capitain. That’s a cool club, and those people know how to party.
Here is another example. You spend $40K on a new car. On the back of that car is a sticker with the name of the dealer, and maybe even a license plate frame with the name of the dealer. So I spend all this money and I have to advertise for you? I just gave you $40K you should be advertising for me! I can also tell you from experience the stickers are supremely difficult to get off, without ruining the paint on your car.
To be honest though, I have to come clean. I have been sponsored in the past by gear companies. I was never asked to say anything specific about a product, but I have been given products for particular projects with the manufacturer fully aware that 10,000 people would see their product in a picture or a video. That I consider a fair trade. I am getting something I need — an actual piece of gear as opposed to a key chain or a T-shirt. They are getting something they need, exposure.
I also make exceptions regarding logos if the product is the best option. I recently had to replace the long sleeve, sun protective shirt that I wear when I teach paddling. I grabbed every piece of clothing I could find that met my criteria and took them to a fitting room. I tried on 12 shirts from 5 brands, and was upset that the best option was actually made by Patagonia. Now, there is nothing wrong with Patagonia, they are a great company that make great products but the shirt that met my needs the best had a large Patagonia logo on the back. I would have rather a shirt without a big logo. The shirt is amazing though!
I have been saying for close to a decade, if you want to market a product, give it to the people who use it. If it is any good people will tell their friends. If you think outdoor instructors and guides don’t sit around a campfire talking about products that work and products that don’t you are crazy. GoPro exploded in 2008 because they offered a really good prodeal to outdoor professionals. They made a good product, everyone saw us using them, and we talked about how great the product was. I consider that a fair trade, and GoPro became a billion dollar company. Now that I think about it, they got the better end of the deal.
I still see a lot of people in my industry who will take anything if it is free. “if it’s free, it’s for me!” is a phrase I have heard in the past. By all means, go for it. But if you want me to represent your product, and tell people how great it is, You’re going to have to give me more than a beer cozy. | https://medium.com/@paddlingotaku/im-not-your-billboard-40657da96403 | [] | 2020-05-20 23:24:38.495000+00:00 | ['Gear', 'Capitalism', 'Minimalism', 'Outdoors', 'Socialism'] |
From Afterthought to Everyone’s Business: Diversity Matters Now | I’m passionate about talent management and culture. My objective is to make Osedea the best workplace for our team.
Follow | https://medium.com/osedea/from-afterthought-to-everyones-business-diversity-matters-now-3a30b1f5ae71 | ['Ivana Markovic'] | 2020-09-09 14:55:04.941000+00:00 | ['Company Culture', 'Diversity', 'Inclusion', 'Team Building'] |
How Multimedia Artist Amy Yoshitsu Plays with Our Perception of Scale | Amy Yoshitsu describes herself as the “only child of big-dreaming Asian-American artists.” Her meticulous paper installations of urban environments look monumental in scale, but are smaller than they appear. Turning her camera on buildings, windows, sidewalks, and street signs, she weaves together elements of the world around her and repurposes them for her own ends.
Yoshitsu started out studying math and psychology, but shifted to sculpture and critical studies. Inspired by her mother who is a painter, her father who is a musician, and her seamstress grandmother, she learned to weld and stitch and created her own “psycho-geographic map.” In her recent “20XX” series, Yoshitsu photographs ‘office buildings, factories, and mom-and-pop storefronts’ from a wide range of locations. She prints the images on paper, constructs fictionalized 3-D worlds, and rephotographs them in San Francisco Bay-area environments.
Yoshitsu combines sculpture, photography, assemblage, and collage to explore issues of identity, memory, and cultural expectations. She uses a low camera angle to toy with the viewer’s perception of scale. Her architectural facades and trompe l’oeil installations address her own experiences of displacement within public and private spaces.
I photograph every image and, when on foot, I am conscious of my body’s vulnerability, given its size and perceived gender, in public space. As someone whose experience is that of an outsider to the perceived normal and default identity, but also not an insider to my prescribed racial demographic, I feel ambivalent in many locations, especially those outside of the US. My own losses and my own imperialism, by virtue of my ethnicity and nationality, are always on my mind.
After earning her Bachelor’s degree at Harvard, Yoshitsu spent a semester in an MFA program at the California Institute of the Arts, but had to drop out because of family obligations. She recently formed the digital design cooperative, Converge Collaborative, and was an Artist in Residence at Esalen in spring of 2021. While juggling the demands of being an artist, with family and professional concerns, Yoshitsu weaves experiences from growing up in an assimilated Japanese-American culture into her work. Her ephemeral mixed-media constructions explore how moments of connection and displacement shape the way she perceives and navigates the world.
Table of Contents
Amy Yoshitsu — Artist Statement
Amy Yoshitsu
As a sculptor, I locate my practice in relation to the world of object-making. Infrastructure encompasses public creations that affect the private and psychic spheres at grand scales but are often overlooked or hidden. Electrical pylons, utility cover, traffic signs, are site-specific objects with aesthetics primarily influenced by technology, time period and ownership, instead of the visual zeitgeist. They are built in response to a subset of human needs but are simultaneously physical markers of systems that facilitate social divides. In featuring temporarily visible infrastructure (e.g. the frame of a building) only seen during the creation and deterioration/deconstruction phases, I highlight the value of process, which is too often subordinate to “finished” products and facades.
20XX are a series of sculptures (and their resulting images) that contort and amalgamate our shared, built environments, which are embedded with histories of society-building through physical interventions. These 3D collages visualize the the variances in the materials, aesthetics and definitions of shelter; corrosion and states of disrepair; acts of self-expression through graffiti; displays of wealth through orderliness; and office buildings, factories and mom-and-pop storefronts as markers of personal means of survival and the shells of capitalism’s many engines/victims. My advantages and ambivalences within global, public spaces are visually synthesized, and literally located, in my hometown area, the East Bay.
I photograph every image and, when on foot, I am conscious of my body’s vulnerability, given its size and perceived gender, in public space. As someone whose experience is that of an outsider to the perceived normal and default identity, but also not an insider to my prescribed racial demographic, I feel ambivalent in many locations, especially those outside of the US. My own losses and my own imperialism, by virtue of my ethnicity and nationality, are always on my mind.
While acknowledging my own viewpoint, I focus on what connects and affects us all: what we visibly — but not necessarily physically or culturally — have access to, and the material language, lifespan and histories of cement, steel and wood. I imagine the thoughts and feelings of the humans whose labor went into constructing a retaining wall, repairing sidewalks and installing the sheetrock in the building. I pull back and see the social and commodification webs in which all of us work and struggle to survive and thrive. We must all grapple with the lineages and systems of our landscapes: generations of housing segregation, the shifting of the attention economy from the road to the phone, and the privatization of utilities.
I meditate on each image as I prepare it for printing, and while meticulously cutting out skylines and separating sidewalks from structures. I choose to include indicators of time and place and discard imagery that I view as perpetuating toxic power. The collaging process is like creating my own psycho-geographic map — I sew together pieces of way finding in Philadelphia, scaffolds for buildings in Jodhpur, and window frames of Oakland apartments, and am able to remember the physicality and emotions of being in those specific places and moments. Numerous seams eventually create micro-conversations between aesthetics and neighborhoods to form a freestanding assemblage.
Adding another layer of place and scale, I photograph each sculpture in various Bay Area locations. While the massive heights of some built environments displayed in the sculptures are rooted in capitalist and patriarchal domination, my work seeks to offer a more humble perspective. Images of the sculptures are captured from three inches to three feet off the ground, thus allowing skyscrapers to be dwarfed by fire hydrants. The ultimate views of the composite cities are from the level where everyone must step. The images of the sculptures are printed in calendars which I gift to more than 200 people in my community. In bringing public landscape into one’s private timeline, I hope to spark thoughts about the complexity and interconnectedness of each person’s existence in our collective environments.
My community of friends and mentors, collected from multiple periods in my life, may spot their neighborhood freeways or historic buildings interwoven into the many layers. This practice of yearly and mass gift-giving, like many aspects of my assimilation culture, follows a family tradition rooted in Japanese practices of appreciation and reshaped by experiences of both traumas and achievement in the US.
Amy Yoshitsu — Grant Submission Works
Untitled (03/12 2020), 2019
Paper, thread
33 x 21 x 17 inches
Untitled (05/12 2021), 2020
Paper, thread
30 x 20 x 23 inches
Untitled (04/12 2020), 2019
Paper, thread
41 x 25 x 20 inches
Untitled (08/12 2019), 2018
Paper, thread
25 x 22 x 21 inches
Interstices, 2010
Multimedia
Installation space approx.: 50 x 80 x 14 feet
I have included this as an example of the type of multi-sculptural installations I would like to create again.
Amy Yoshitsu — Artist Bio
I am a sculptor and multidisciplinary designer focused on the relationship between the individual and systems. Driven by identity and heritage, I explore how interpersonal relationships and schemas are defined by and impact cultural, political and economic structures.
The only child of big-dreaming, Asian-American artists, I am shaped by multigenerational trauma and isolation incurred from ambitious striving within gas-lighting white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. I contend with the morality and meaning of being an artist, especially following the financial and emotional challenges — and privileges — within my family. Having been born into expectations of responsibility and care giving, while also raised to learn mentalities in service to individual achievements at all costs, I am currently focusing my creative queries around the myths of individual responsibility in relationship with systemic oppression.
My painter mother, musician father who worked as a contractor to make ends meet, and seamstress grandmother were the initial inspirations for me to create from industrial, environmentally-conscious, and textile materials and imagery. I have learned to construct their narratives into my own heritage identity — textured by variants rewoven with each new understanding of pre-Communist China, the experiences of fleeing war and revolution, Japanese-American Internment — and connect to those whose lineages are also defined by human-made power structures of assimilation, imperialism and colonialism.
Raised in Berkeley, CA, I experienced culture shock as an undergraduate at Harvard University, which was an eye-opener to the spigots of power and wealth. I focused on sculpture and critical studies — after initially exploring math and psychology — as they synthesized and produced from the practices and research of disparate fields. I learned to weld large-scale installations; studied philosophy and theory in relationship to aesthetics, film, and the urban environment; and was a zine librarian in the punk and DIY community of Boston. I also gained a sustaining love and connection to the abstraction and materiality of artists such as Eva Hesse, John Chamberlain andRichard Tuttle. My work strives to manipulate physical media to create new perspectives on our culture and mental maps.
After graduation, I enrolled in the Studio Art MFA program at California Institute of the Arts where I met many wonderful colleagues but resigned from the program after one semester in response to financial and family responsibilities. Thus, for the past decade, I have been a digital designer separately committed to sculpture. I am now reframing art, job, and personal life into interconnected nodes of a greater practice. Along with allies, I am building a creative worker’s cooperative, Converge Collaborative, which operates as a digital agency.
As creators of color, we are assembling social and economic infrastructures committed to deep trust and boundary-affirming, mutual support. The process of trying to establish a new model for work based on equity, solidarity and inclusion of cultural and emotional contexts has provided me and other member-workers with the psychological and logistical resources to pursue personal and/or artistic ambitions while responding to financial responsibilities. We want to continue to grow, proliferate this model, and help others achieve this difficult balance as well.
Amy on the Web And Social Media
Here is where to find out more about Amy Yoshitsu on the web and social media:
About the Artist of the Day Series
All artworks have been published with permission of the artist. Our “Artist of the Day” series is a regular feature highlighting artworks from the 100’s of grant applications we receive. The “Not Real Art Grant” is an annual award designed to empower the careers of contemporary artists, and this is one way we honor all entries we receive. Find out more about the grant program here. | https://medium.com/@sourdough/how-multimedia-artist-amy-yoshitsu-plays-with-our-perception-of-scale-3bdd59ddae5a | ['Scott', 'Sourdough'] | 2021-08-23 15:00:25.445000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Installation Art', 'Architecture', 'Sculpture', 'Japanese'] |
What is a VPN and What Does it Actually Provide?! | So What Does a VPN Service ACTUALLY Offer Consumers?
I’m so glad you asked. Especially since I’d just mentioned that we’d be talking about this only a few sentences ago. Reputable VPN services can and do offer solid protections for consumers who wish to take advantage of any of the benefits below…
Benefit #1: Protecting your ISP from having access to see the websites where you surf. Right now, your Internet Service Prover (or ISP) has the ability — if they wish — to track where you go online. That includes documenting every website you visit while connected to the Internet via their network. Yeh, I know: it’s totally creepy. That information can be sold for advertising purposes and it can also be provided to the authorities (courts, cops, and more) for certain legal purposes. Who’s interested in giving away their browsing habits to ANY third party?!? Not me, buster.
So, if you’d like to hide your browsing habits from companies like Comcast, Cox, and AT&T in the US; Orange S.A., Telefonica, and Sky in the EU; and Vodaphone or Airtel in India… then, yes: browsing while using a VPN will definitely prevent your ISP from having access to this information. Instead, your ISP will only be able to see that you’re logging in to a VPN but… nothing else. Pretty nice, feature, I’d say. For those of you who are visual learners, here’s a graphic of what implementing a VPN looks like:
Just remember, even though your ISP won’t be able to see your browsing information, the VPN service you decide to trust most certainly WILL be able to see it. Therefore, it’s important to choose a VPN service that protects your safety, security, and privacy. I covered my tips on how to pick a reputable VPN in this episode of my newsletter, so give that read.
Benefit #2: Bypassing your ISP’s efforts to prioritize or restrict certain content. In some countries, certain ISPs prioritize or restrict certain websites or content. T-Mobile, for example, slows down Internet speeds for users who wish to stream video. In the US, Comcast decided to intentionally slow down Netflix for all of its users, a super shitty move. Netflix bowed to the pressure and paid Comcast extra money to end the practice.
However, if you’re using a VPN service, then guess what? Your ISP can’t see which websites you’re visiting online and, therefore, can’t decrease your speed because you’ve chosen to visit a particular website that they don’t like. Thanks, VPN!
Benefit #3: Bypassing the blocks that your ISP or country uses to prevent access to certain websites. Let’s say you live in a repressive country that doesn’t allow access to things like, I don’t know: a free press, women’s rights, LGBTQIA rights, or even pornography. Using a VPN can, in some cases, allow you to bypass those restrictions and surf more comfortably to any website that you might choose for yourself as a free-thinking human. FREEEEEEDOM!!!!!
And, while it’s true that some countries (cough, cough, CHINA) can simply block access to known VPN providers, VPN providers constantly add new servers with new IP addresses, making this cat-and-mouse game forever playable. And endlessly fascinating.
Benefit #4: You can suddenly stream data from another country’s video-on-demand service. The BBC in the UK offers a ton of really cool programming that’s 100% free. So does the CBC in Canada. And if I were online in the UK or in Canada, I’d be able to stream that content freely and easily. However, because I’m geographically located in America, I can’t stream video from those websites to my computer. Ditto, if I’m a paying Netflix customer in the US but am traveling abroad and want access to Netflix’s sweet, sweet American show library. So, yeh, that’s a bummer.
However, if my VPN service offers me the ability to connect to one of their servers in, say, London or Toronto, well… guess what?! I’m now virtually in the UK or Canada and all of that free content is now available to me. Ditto, if I’m traveling abroad in the EU and want access to my paid Netflix account back in the States: I can just connect via my VPN to a US server and presto… I’ve suddenly gained access to the shows I’m already paying to view.
It’s worth noting: some video-on-demand services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and others block VPN services from accomplishing this. But, again, VPN servers are being added all the time, so just make sure you pick a VPN that offers a free trial. That way, you can test the access you need before you commit to a yearly purchase.
The Summary
Here’s a great video from Tom Scott (a lovely and funny YouTube personality) who digs into this topic with fun, clarity, and a wee bit of sass. That’s because he’s British and having sass is socially acceptable there. Enjoy:
And that’s a wrap for today, everyone. Thank you again, for reading and for being a subscriber/follower. Please: let me know your thoughts & questions in the comments section and
As always… surf safe. | https://medium.com/swlh/what-is-a-vpn-and-what-does-it-actually-provide-4bebaab3214b | ['David Koff'] | 2020-05-16 00:23:05.240000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Privacy', 'How To', 'Security', 'Technology'] |
If You Want To Create A Great Life, Learn These Skills Quickly | Are you completely satisfied with whatever you have? Do you think rich people are? Do you think acquiring objects, fame, comforts will ever make you a fulfilled human being? I don’t think so. If that was true there would have been no mental health counselors for the successful ones.
Money alone won’t fix our problems. We need to manage many other areas of our lives consciously. When it comes to the outside alone, other than the money we also need close relationships, friendships, purpose, quality, etc. Lockdown pushed us to take our inner wellbeing a little more seriously. Usually, under the noise of the outside world, our inner voice used to die off. However, these days for a lot of us, it is up, loud, and overly active. Hopefully, we can use this time a little more productively by enhancing ourselves and developing new skills. I am sure that we can get through this gracefully.
Here is the list of a few things that I feel are important when it comes to mastering our inner and outer wellbeing: | https://medium.com/@consciouschirag44/if-you-want-to-create-a-great-life-learn-these-skills-quickly-8a4fea5e8e0 | ['Chirag Garg'] | 2020-12-10 05:39:33.746000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Skills', 'Life Hacking'] |
The Cycle Of Life | Top Writer in Satire & Humor; Trying to Feel Okay, One Comic at a Time; IG: https://www.instagram.com/davidmilgrim; Contact me at [email protected] | https://medium.com/@davidmilgrim/the-cycle-of-life-ff0cccd4e2a3 | ['David Milgrim'] | 2020-12-24 21:13:50.788000+00:00 | ['Age', 'Humor', 'Life', 'Comics', 'Trees'] |
New National Space Policy Drives American Leadership in Space Commerce | New National Space Policy Drives American Leadership in Space Commerce
Originally published on Diaz Trade Law Blog
Co-Authored by Sharath Patil
National Space Policy Unveiled
On December 9, 2020, the White House released the National Space Policy of the United States of America. Among other objectives, the policy seeks to drive U.S. leadership in space commerce by encouraging the cultivation of U.S. industrial capacity in space innovation.
The new policy seeks to develop and protect the U.S. space industrial base by committing to:
Strengthen U.S. technological leadership in space-related technology
Enhance capabilities for assured access to space
Safeguard space components of critical infrastructure
Maintain and enhance space-based position, navigation, and timing systems
Develop and retain space professionals
Improve space system development and procurement
Strengthen interagency and commercial partnerships
Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross said, “This new National Space Policy reflects the emergence of space commerce as a driving force for positive change in our economic and national security, contributing to America’s leadership in commercial space. The policy sets the stage for American businesses to thrive domestically and compete internationally as the global space economy grows into a trillion dollar market over the next two decades.”
Speaking at the National Space Council in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Vice President Mike Pence discussed the threats posed by China and Russia to U.S. strategic interests in space:
“…China and Russia are continuing to develop space weaponry. Russia demonstrated a space-based anti-satellite weapon earlier this year. China is developing a new manned space station, and its robotic spacecraft will return samples from the Moon in just a matter of weeks. In fact, China is increasingly emerging as a serious competitor in space, just as they are in other areas of the global economy and to the strategic interest of the United States.”
Vice-President Pence’s announcement coincided with the U.S. Space Force (“USSF”) announcing on its one-year anniversary that it has decided a moniker for U.S. military service members serving in that new branch: guardians. In a press release, the USSF said: “The opportunity to name a force is a momentous responsibility. Guardians is a name with a long history in space operations, tracing back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, ‘Guardians of the High Frontier.’”
This space policy is part of a series of actions of by the Trump administration focused on developing and protecting key critical industries. In recent weeks, the administration has also released a national strategy for promoting and protecting critical technologies, and the U.S. Bureau of Industry & Security is currently seeking comments on strengthening the public health industrial base.
Export Opportunities Abound
Boundless opportunities exist for U.S. businesses when they export their products and services to foreign markets. In fact, over 95% of the world’s consumers are located outside of the United States. Opportunities are particularly plentiful in the space economy. As Secretary Ross identified — the global space economy will grow into a trillion dollar market over the next two decades. The aerospace, defense, and space industry is particularly impactful in Florida and the Washington, DC area economies. According to Enterprise Florida, Florida exports more than $7.2 billion in aviation and defense goods annually. Meanwhile, companies in the Washington, DC / Northern Virginia (many of which are in the defense and aerospace industry) received $80 billion in federal procurement awards in FY 2019.
Export Compliance
Although export opportunities abound, U.S. companies in the space industry should have a process in place to ensure they diligently and effectively comply with U.S. export control laws under the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) and the U.S. State Department’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”). A foundation of export compliance is developing an effective export compliance plan and holding regular export compliance training opportunities for your employees.
Contact Us
Diaz Trade Law has extensive experience in export compliance. We can help you develop or improve your export compliance plan, regularly train your employees, vet proposed transactions to ensure they do not violate U.S. export control laws, and develop a personalized export report card from your Automated Commercial Environment (“ACE”) data to ensure that you are proactive about your export and Customs compliance. Diaz Trade Law is also fully equipped during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide engaging online training. If you have questions about export compliance or any other trade or customs matter, reach out to us at [email protected] or call us at 305–456–3830. | https://medium.com/@info-56826/new-national-space-policy-drives-american-leadership-in-space-commerce-86315edf143a | ['Diaz Trade Law'] | 2020-12-30 19:06:41.018000+00:00 | ['Best Practices', 'Export', 'Trade', 'Import', 'International'] |
Exponentially Weighted Historical Volatility in Excel-Volatility Analysis in Excel | Historical volatility (HV) is a useful measure to gauge market uncertainty. Recall that,
In finance, volatility (usually denoted by σ) is the degree of variation of a trading price series over time, usually measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns. Historic volatility measures a time series of past market prices… Investors care about volatility for at least eight reasons:
The wider the swings in an investment’s price, the harder emotionally it is to not worry; Price volatility of a trading instrument can define position sizing in a portfolio; When certain cash flows from selling a security are needed at a specific future date, higher volatility means a greater chance of a shortfall; Higher volatility of returns while saving for retirement results in a wider distribution of possible final portfolio values; Higher volatility of return when retired gives withdrawals a larger permanent impact on the portfolio’s value; Price volatility presents opportunities to buy assets cheaply and sell when overpriced; Portfolio volatility has a negative impact on the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of that portfolio Volatility affects pricing of options, being a parameter of the Black–Scholes model. Read more
Historical volatility is usually calculated by using the simple moving average of the historical returns. This approach works well when the market is in a “normal” condition. However, when there is a shock in the market, volatility increases and the equally weighted HV starts revealing its drawbacks, i.e.
Historical volatility is not responsive enough to the increase in volatility; When the market stabilizes, the past volatile period still stays in the sample and is assigned an equal weight as the most recent period; When the volatile period goes out of sample in the calculation of historical volatility, we suddenly experience a drop in volatility that is not caused by changing market fundamentals.
The picture below illustrates the above points. The blue line depicts the 3-month equally weighted historical volatility of SPY. As we can observe from the figure, when the SP500 went down in early March of 2020, the implied volatility (not shown) went up, but the equally weighted volatility was lagging. It started going up only a week later. By mid-June, the market started stabilizing, but the equally weighted historical volatility still exhibited a high value. And finally, the equally weighted HV dropped abruptly at the beginning of July.
To remedy these problems, one can use the Exponential Weighted (EW) historical volatility that assigns bigger weights to the recent returns, and smaller weights to the past ones. The EW return variance is calculated as follows,
where λ is a weighting factor,
σt denotes volatility at time t,
m is the sample size, and
rt denotes the daily return at time t.
It is observed from the figure above that the EWHV (red line) is more responsive than the equally weighted historical volatility. Also, the decline of the EWHV from its peak is smoother than that of the equally weighted HV.
The equally and exponentially weighted historical volatilities were implemented in an Excel workbook.
Click on the link below to download the Excel workbook.
Article Source Here: Exponentially Weighted Historical Volatility in Excel-Volatility Analysis in Excel | https://medium.com/@derivvaluation/exponentially-weighted-historical-volatility-in-excel-volatility-analysis-in-excel-d0dc58ba2c6a | ['Harbourfront Technologies'] | 2021-02-22 20:30:56.796000+00:00 | ['Volatility Forecasting', 'Volatility', 'Trading', 'Risk', 'Investing'] |
How to encrypt with AES-256-GCM in Erlang | AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with Galois/Counter Mode (AES-GCM) is specified in NIST Special Publication 800–38D. To encrypt a string with AES-256-GCM algorithm you need a 256-bit key, an initialization vector (IV) (also called a nonce), as well as any additional authenticated data (AAD, or associated data). The outcome of the encryption includes an encrypted cipher text of the same length as the original string, as well as an authentication tag (the “tag”), also called message authentication code (MAC) or integrity check value (ICV) [1]. The tag is calculated during the AES encryption process [2], and ensures the integrity of both the encrypted cipher text and the plaintext additional authenticated data (AAD), and is a part of the input to the decryption process [3]. The additional authenticated data (AAD) is an unencrypted plain text and is also a part of the input to the decryption. When AES-GCM is only used to authenticate the AAD, the calculated tag (MAC) is called a Galois message authentication code (GMAC) [4].
Here we are making use of the Erlang functions crypto:crypto_one_time_aead/5 and crypto:crypto_one_time_aead/6 [5] for both encryption and decryption. AEAD stands for Authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD).
Encrypt:
1> Key = <<1:256>>. % Key length 32 bytes
<<0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
0,...>> 2> IV = <<0:128>>. % IV length ≥ 1 byte
<<0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0>> 3> Text = <<"Hello">>. % Any length
<<"Hello">> 4> AAD = <<>>. % AAD any length, here 0 byte
<<>> 5> {CipherText, Tag} = crypto:crypto_one_time_aead(aes_256_gcm, Key, IV, Text, AAD, true). % Tag length 1-16, here using default 16
{<<254,190,31,199,21>>,
<<26,210,128,46,78,47,171,160,82,197,153,57,151,240,254,
209>>} 6> {CipherText, Tag1} = crypto:crypto_one_time_aead(aes_256_gcm, Key, IV, Text, AAD, 12, true). % Use 12 byte tag
{<<254,190,31,199,21>>,
<<26,210,128,46,78,47,171,160,82,197,153,57>>}
Decrypt:
1> Key = <<1:256>>.
<<0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
0,...>> 2> IV = <<0:128>>.
<<0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0>> 3> CipherText = <<254,190,31,199,21>>.
<<254,190,31,199,21>> 4> Tag = <<26,210,128,46,78,47,171,160,82,197,153,57,151,240,254,209>>.
<<26,210,128,46,78,47,171,160,82,197,153,57,151,240,254,209>> 5> AAD = <<>>.
<<>> 6> crypto:crypto_one_time_aead(aes_256_gcm, Key, IV, CipherText, AAD, Tag, false).
<<"Hello">>
The Erlang crypto:crypto_one_time_aead functions also support other AEAD ciphers ( gcm and ccm ) of different key, IV, and tag lengths, such as aes_128_gcm , aes_192_gcm , aes_256_gcm , aes_128_ccm , aes_192_ccm , aes_256_ccm , and chacha20_poly1305 [6].
From OTP 22.0, the new crypto API crypto:crypto_one_time_aead replaces the obsolete crypto:block_encrypt and crypto:block_decrypt [7].
Read more:
[1] AES-GCM authenticated encryption https://www.cryptosys.net/pki/manpki/pki_aesgcmauthencryption.html
[2] https://cryptobook.nakov.com/symmetric-key-ciphers/aes-cipher-concepts
[3] https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/17999/aes256-gcm-can-someone-explain-how-to-use-it-securely-ruby
[4] Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2TlG3JbGp0
[5] https://erlang.org/doc/man/crypto.html#crypto_one_time_aead-6
[6] https://erlang.org/doc/apps/crypto/algorithm_details.html#ciphers
[7] https://erlang.org/doc/apps/crypto/new_api.html#the-new-api
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galois/Counter_Mode
[9] https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-38d/final
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticated_encryption#Authenticated_encryption_with_associated_data_(AEAD)
[11] What is GCM? Galois Counter Mode (of operation) (usually seen as AES-GCM) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_eY7JXOc8U | https://medium.com/@brucifi/how-to-encrypt-with-aes-256-gcm-with-erlang-2a2aec13598d | ['Bruce Yinhe'] | 2021-03-30 08:35:55.097000+00:00 | ['Encryption', 'Aes Gcm', 'Erlang', 'Aes256', 'Crypto'] |
@princesspollyboutique Best Practices | Princess Polly is a purely online retailer that sells the latest trends in fashion. The brand was created in 2010 in Burleigh Heads, Queensland, Australia and later expanded to a second office in West Hollywood, California. The brand’s target audiences are Millennial and Generation Z women—which is a huge factor that should be taken into consideration when creating content for Instagram.
Posting Schedules
Since the handle @princesspollyboutique on Instagram serves both Australian and United States customers, the account must post regularly for both time zones. The account posts about eight to ten times a day, typically split between the Australia social media team and the United States social media team.
Tone and Voice
As noted earlier, Princess Polly’s target audiences are Millennial and Generation Z women, which greatly affects the tone and voice of posts.
Examples of Princess Polly’s tone and voice in captions.
Captions typically consist of the main copy, the product descriptions, and a currency disclaimer. Copy should be a fairly short, trendy, and simple phrase that compliments the outfit or accessory shown in the image. Character count typically stays under 15, not including the product descriptors. The products shown in the image are then clearly listed out, followed by a currency disclaimer since Princess Polly is a global brand with followers from all over the world.
Captions are written with the target audience in mind—most Millennial and Generation Z women write short captions (or use no captions at all) for their own personal Instagram posts and are more focused on the fashion in the post, rather than the copy itself. | https://medium.com/@madelinepotter/princesspollyboutique-best-practices-3b3fab48ef9 | ['Madeline Potter'] | 2020-10-10 01:17:08.040000+00:00 | ['Style', 'Instagram', 'Princess Polly', 'Best Practices', 'Ufcjonline'] |
Lockdown lessons, nature, and our responsibility | The Nationwide lockdown has degraded our economy, but it has done well to nature. Our mother nature is healing from the sufferings we have imposed on her. As we follow up on the bad news about deaths and loss to the economy amid this coronavirus pandemic, we also look for optimism that this lockdown has brought with it, along with nature and our responsibilities.
Climate activists claim that staying at home and reducing travel plans cannot be an alternative for a cleaner environment that we all are praying for. They are of the view that our sustainability goals to reduce emission by 2030 must stand still. Otherwise, we will face another crisis soon. And I certainly agree with them, but I wonder why there are no plans to keep the improvements that we have achieved from this lockdown as an agenda? Though our agenda has shifted to this pandemic, which has created havoc among humanity, we cannot neglect the benefits which we have achieved from it. Memes of visibility of mountains are trending now, but post lockdown all these visions will shed away. As nature is healing itself, we are happy to rise with a new sunrise every dawn. Unfortunately, this love and care for mother nature is all a matter of time, and it will vanish. We can contribute towards it, our accountability to keep our climate clean can be an added incentive to the plans that the government has put forward. We criticize the government at times for not understanding the gaps in pollution and climate change. But we often forget the nature and our responsibility.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2030) is an agenda comprising 17 goals for a better and more sustainable future. A few of the goals which have improved amid this lockdown is clean water and sanitation; and climate action. Another goal that is being met indirectly is to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all that is by reducing consumption. While we appreciate clean air and return of the humming of birds and bees even in cities like Delhi, there is also a need to understand how much loss we have done to nature. There are a few things that I have realized that we can do as a preparedness activity. We can maintain these sustainable development goals, once life turns back into the track.
We all have realized that it is not necessary to go to the office daily because all those big fat meetings can be done from home as well. A practical application of work from home can not only reduce the burden over us, but it can be utilized as a defense mechanism to curb the atrocities that we do to nature.
Delhi’s odd-even formula was an effective measure, but isn’t it time for the government to realize that instead of restricting movement, a better plan is to make a policy of work from home mandatory in private firms and wherever possible. This will not only reduce pollution, but it will also save energy and fuel. To boost the success of the SDGs in India, there is a strong need for continuing work from home as a cost-effective and attractive method as a sustainable strategy for survival, existence, and excellence in various sectors of the economy. Though I understand the potential problem of work from home because it can reduce the efficiency with regards to the pace of work, I trust that this can be solved by a proper interaction with stakeholders to reach out to a conclusion in consensus. The development of an eventual habit of work from home in people can be utilized in building and developing better cities with cleaner air to breathe. Stakeholders can be convinced because they will be paying less for energy consumption and resources in their office buildings as more and more people will work from home.
Source: Wikimedia
Many of us are joyful at the return of spring to our windows and balconies; we are waking up every day with the beautiful chirping of birds. Lost sparrows are making their way back, and pigeons are making nests again in these busy, dusty cities. Though we all are enjoying this vision, it can be kept intact even after things get back to normal. And it is our responsibility to maintain the nature this way. What we have to do is blend with the uprooting nature by filling our window panes with flowers, feeding birds, and setting up bug hotels. We can nourish our balconies and windows with plantations to keep them coming in our life with their peeping.
Another step that can be taken to sustain the achievements of lockdown is reducing the footfall and curbing the waste discharge in rivers. I understand that Ganga is a sacred river in India, but it would look more sacred and delightful when it is clean. This lockdown has saved the money which was allocated for the Ganga action plan because a lack of human activity in river banks has reduced the pollution level of not only Ganga but also of river Yamuna.
It is time for the government to realize that these rivers are getting polluted through the industries which claim to discharge zero waste. The government should amend strict rules now itself so that post lockdown surge of discharge of waste from these industries and small scale factories can be checked. Also, reducing and restricting footfall in these river banks can actually help in attaining better goals. Strict rules in such places should be implemented now itself, so that followed up actions can be taken later.
I have put forward some suggestions which we can achieve by joining hands with the government and supporting them. Right now, it’s important that we act fast — together. Because if proposed actions are not taken now, then maybe it will be too late. Of course, I am not saying to put forward harsh rules for the benefit of nature. But now it is also an ideal time to embrace living a slower lifestyle that is kind to people and the planet. Our mother earth has been serving us for ages. It is time that we show our responsibility towards nature which blossoms every day to make our lives a little more colorful. | https://medium.com/@TheArmChairJournal/lockdown-lessons-nature-and-our-responsibility-5586dd9daa09 | ['The Armchair Journal'] | 2020-06-03 23:31:00.837000+00:00 | ['Lessons Learned', 'Sdgs', 'Earth', 'Lockdown', 'Life'] |
A snapshot biography of Ann Preston | When Ann Preston needed to raise funds to open a hospital for women, she went door to door, riding on a borrowed horse and buggy. She raised the funds and the Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia opened in 1862.
This was Ann, determined to achieve her goals. She began working life as teacher and author of stories for children before transitioning to a career in medicine. The transition was challenging. Rejected at first from every medical school to which she applied because of her gender, she gained admission to the first class of students at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania and at the age of 38 she graduated in 1851.
She would go on to practice medicine, teach physiology and hygiene, become a dean of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, lead the opening of a school of nursing, and lead the opening of the Women’s Hospital.
Sources: http://www.womeninmedicinemagazine.com/profile-of-women-in-medicine/ann-preston-pioneer-woman-doctor / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Preston | https://medium.com/a-moment-in-history/a-snapshot-biography-of-ann-preston-c84767dd120b | ['Roman Mikhail'] | 2020-12-21 22:46:43.530000+00:00 | ['Biography', 'Medicine', 'History', 'Feminism', 'Nonfiction'] |
Duino Coin Mining on a Raspberry Pi | What is Duino Coin?
Duino Coin (DUCO) is a centralised based cryptocoin that has been designed to be easily mined on small IOT type devices like Raspberry Pi and Arduino (hence Duino Coin). It’s still in the early stages of its life (compared to other giants like Bitcoin and Etherium) but by allowing users to mine for the coin on small, low cost devices, it paves the way for a different generation of miners to get involved in crypto.
Why mine on a Raspberry Pi?
Good question. Simple answer. Because you can.
I’m a keen Raspberry Pi hobbyist and have been for many years. I currently have 3 Raspberry Pi devices in my house doing various things, and some sat here collecting dust so why not use them for something that will earn me some £££ in the background?
How do you mine on a Raspberry Pi?
First of all, go and register yourself an account on the Duino Coin Wallet page. Remember your username, you’ll need it for mining!
get your Raspberry Pi installed with the latest Raspbian OS (I’d recommend the lite version as you won’t need a desktop for this) and make sure you can SSH into it. If you need a guide to do that, checkout this one over on the Raspberry Pi website.
Once you’ve SSHd into your Pi, run the following commands in the terminal;
Once the Pi has updated, upgraded, installed and cloned the above, we need to start a screen session to run the miner in so we can exit out of the SSH session without stopping the miner. I won’t go into too much detail on how to use screen, but if you want to know more about it check out this article.
To start the screen session, type screen bash . This will create you a brand new screen session using bash as the shell. Now to start mining;
If this is the first run, you’ll be asked some simple questions to help configure your miner. If you ever need to edit these settings later, you can do so by typing nano PCMiner_2.4_resources/Miner_config.cfg and editing them accordingly.
To detach from this screen session (so that you can close the SSH session) simply press ctrl + a and then d . To go back into your session, type screen -r .
That’s it! You’re now mining crypto on a Raspberry Pi!
Extra
If you want your Pi to start mining as soon as it’s powered on type crontab -e (if it’s your first time editing your crontab, you’ll be prompted for your preferred editor. I assume you’ve chosen nano ). At the very bottom on this file, add
@reboot screen -dm bash -c "cd ~/duino-coin; python3 PC_Miner.py"
Then press ctrl + o , ctrl + x and your cron job will be saved. To give it a try, simply reboot your Pi ( sudo reboot ) and type screen -r to see your mining progress.
Conclusion
The guys over at Duino Coin have made it super simple to mine on small, inexpensive devices, and are constantly improving everything (so don’t be surprised if you see a few errors pop up in your console). If you get too worried and need to ask some questions, check out the Duino Coin website for the best way to do it. | https://medium.com/@dansinclair25/duino-coin-mining-on-a-raspberry-pi-180bad964b1b | ['Dan Sinclair'] | 2021-04-20 13:57:50.362000+00:00 | ['Mining', 'Duino Coin', 'Arduino', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Raspberry Pi'] |
How to Tell the Truth (in a not-so-truthful world) | Photo by Sushil Nash on Unsplash
How to Tell the Truth (in a not-so-truthful world)
Truth and justice are inextricably linked in Islam
Ibn Masud (RA) once said: “You are living in a time where truth controls the desires but there will come a time where the desires will control the truth. We seek refuge in Allah from such a time.”
Quite a profound statement — and one very much we’re currently living the reality of in today’s fake-news, deceptive age.
As George Orwell once wrote,
“in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
So, how do we control our desires, so we can hold on to the truth, and be a modern-day revolutionary?
It’s the wrong question, in my opinion. Why?
First of all, it is subjective. So what might be controlling desires for one person might not be as relevant for another. And secondly because people can manipulate emotionally and justify their reasons for what they believe ‘truth’ to be. And it can become a grey area.
It’s hard to get to the bottom of it, using abstract concepts.
Central to truth is the concept of justice. That’s the root.
Truth cannot exist without justice being done, as justice maintains the order and integrity. Without it, you descend into zulm, chaos and oppression. That’s the impact that lies and falsehood can have on families, on communities, on societies at large.
Justice is also objective. It’s clear given the frameworks in Islam, what classifies as justice if applied properly.
Justice in Arabic is translated as ‘adl which literally means “placing things in their rightful place” and also “affording equal treatment to others”. So it is not just putting things right, it is doing so in a way that is fair and equitable. And it means that EVERYONE has the right to it, just as everyone has the right to the truth. Not just to those in high positions.
It is said in the Quran:
“And when you speak, be just, even if it should be to a near kinsman.” [6:152]
Justice is required of anyone who is called upon to lead a people whether he is a ruler or otherwise. God said in the Qu’ran:
“Surely God enjoins justice and the doing of good.” [16:90]
The Prophet Muhammad (SAW) also said:
“One hour of justice outweighs sixty years of worship.”
So the right question is, how can we do justice?
Justice in Islam entails the following:
Doing justice is easy to say and hard to do.
Justice in Islam is such, that you must stand firm for justice over your kin, siblings or parents, or even the leader or governor. It’s a huge undertaking, if you’re truly committed to it.
To quote George Orwell again —
“the further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”
Be prepared for being unpopular.
2. You must hear both sides of the story unreservedly, without judgement, bias or duress.
3. Witnesses must be called where relevant and available. And the witnesses MUST be of sound mind, credible and of good character so that the integrity of the testimony cannot be questioned.
4. The evidence is to be presented in clear manner. No legalese, or befuddling, confusing language designed to sway you emotionally or influence you to believe against what the truth actually is.
5. To verify ALL the evidence and statements made. This is EXTREMELY important.
“O you who believe! If a Faasiq (liar — evil person) comes to you with any news, verify it, lest you should harm people in ignorance, and afterwards you become regretful for what you have done” [49:6]
What is meant by verifying is making the effort to find out the truth of the matter, and the circumstances around it, so as to establish whether this can be proven or not, with certainty. This is the key.
Often not verifying is where our desires take control, as we are not willing to take the effort needed to verify either because it’s difficult or time-consuming. So we pass on unverified information without justice being done.
6. We must at all times contain our own anger or feelings and act calm throughout the proceedings, no matter how the situation makes us feel.
A cool head is able to administer justice, correctly — and that same logic applies to truth, too. Often those who are emotionally driven or impacted may jump to conclusions that support their world view.
7. To reserve your own judgement until it has been proven, until the very end.
Al-Hasan al-Basri said: “The believer reserves judgement until the matter is proven.”
Even if it is crystal clear and a no-brainer, and all the evidence is suggesting something strongly — you still have to commit to the possibility of evidence coming in last minute which could proven everything to the contrary.
8. Once the evidence is in and the case has been made, we should then take time to deliberate the decision — as haste is from the devil.
The Prophet (SAW) said: “Deliberation is from Allah and haste is from the Shaytan.”.
The one who deliberates may meet all the needs required whilst the one who is hasty may slip up and miss something important.
9. We have to take full context into account, including past reputation, character, motives and previous history. This is also important. Nothing is black and white. You have to consider all aspects to come to a satisfactory conclusion that does justice to all parties.
10. Ask questions until you are satisfied. Do not fear questioning. Do not feel shy that you have asked too many. Justice is a matter of yaqeen, conviction and certainty in the heart — but be sincere to the truth in doing so — not to use questioning as a means to intimidate or oppress.
11. To never ever give false speech, allegations or witness. For it has been mentioned in a hadith alongside shirk and disobedience to parents.
12. It is not something only reserved for rulers or leaders. Everyone must administer justice. The Prophet (SAW) said:
“You are all shepherds and you are all responsible for your flocks. The ruler is the shepherd of his people and he is responsible for them. The man is the shepherd of his family and he is responsible for them. The woman is the shepherdess of her husbands house and children and she is responsible for them. And the slave is the shepherd of his master’s property and is responsible for it. So, you are all shepherds and you are all responsible for your flocks.”
13. It’s not something you can pick and choose on a case by case basis. You are either someone who tells the truth always or not. Which means you are either just and just always, or not. It’s a binary decision. And your reputation will be formed accordingly. There’s a reason why the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was known by the name ‘Al-Amin’ ‘the truthful / trustworthy’ in his youth.
14. Truth and justice work hand in hand and it is the key to a functioning, thriving society.
It was said by Sa’id ibn Suwayd:
“O People, Islam has an unassailable wall and a sturdy gate. The wall of Islam is truth and its gate is justice. As long as the ruler is strong, Islam will remain unassailable; but the strength of the ruler lies not in the sword or the whip, but in ruling on the basis of truth and justice.”
15. In fact, it was always considered by far THE most important quality of any leader.
The ruler must spread out a carpet of justice for his people, erect a tent of security and fly the banners of forbearance with their fluttering tassels. He must pour out rivers of charity for them, restraining the hands of iniquity reaching them, whilst showering them with the rain clouds of noble deeds. The most important of all the aforementioned qualities is justice.
[The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, Shihab al Din Al Nuwayri]
16. Ibn Khaldun wrote in his Muqaddimah, his concepts of statecraft and how a leader can run a successful nation. Justice, of course, is at the heart of it. His key points can be summarised, below:
a. The strength of the sovereign does not materialise except through the implementation of the Shariah.
b. The Shariah cannot be implemented except by the sovereign.
c. The sovereign cannot gain strength except through the people.
d. The people cannot be sustained except by wealth.
e. Wealth cannot be acquired except through development.
f. Development cannot be attained except through justice.
g. Justice is the criterion by which God will evaluate mankind.
h. The sovereign is charged with the responsibility of actualising justice.
In a nutshell — you can see the burden required on being of those of justice in Islam. It’s no small thing. But it is the bedrock and foundation of goodness in society as we know it.
So, if you want to tell the truth, be just. If you hold yourself accountable for delivering justice in the right way, you will stand out and shine as someone who speaks sheer truth even more especially in a world which is notoriously becoming the opposite. | https://medium.com/kn-ow/how-to-tell-the-truth-in-a-not-so-truthful-world-a68e49c72be4 | ['Faisal Amjad'] | 2020-12-01 19:03:35.102000+00:00 | ['Fake News', 'Justice', 'Truth', 'Islam', 'Knowledge'] |
Q&A: Austin Rief, Co-founder & COO @ The Morning Brew | Q&A: Austin Rief, Co-founder & COO @ The Morning Brew
This week, The Idea caught up with Austin Rief, co-founder and COO of Morning Brew, a business newsletter targeted at millennials with more than 1 million subscribers. We talked the value of one-to-one relationships, the power of a good referral program, and whether the Brew will expand beyond newsletters.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and how you got started with Morning Brew?
I went to the University of Michigan’s business school, and like most people in the business school, I was just gearing up for a career in finance, more specifically investment banking. Then, my sophomore year, I started reading this newsletter, which was really a pdf attachment that was sent out by another Michigan student. I didn’t know who he was, but I thought there was something interesting there, and it started to really grow at Michigan.
Then he sent out an email saying, “Hey, I’m looking to grow this thing a little bit more and looking to bring on someone to help me out, who’s interested?” I responded — I didn’t even know who the person was sending out. It happened to be my now co-founder, Alex Lieberman. We just took a look at what was going on and why, why it had been growing. And what it was, was it was just basic, the left side of the Wall Street Journal, so to speak, the most important stories in the business world, but written in a really conversational witty tone.
Some legacy publications create really great content, but it’s not the most engaging, and a lot of people don’t have time to read the full Journal. We wanted to give people the value of the journal in five minutes. We started writing at Michigan, and when I graduated, I went full time. Now, we have a six day a week newsletter, and then recently we’ve launched two other verticals.
I want to focus on your first development or when you first were developing the newsletter. I know you mentioned that Alex had just sent out a pdf at the beginning, but how did you decide on newsletters as the primary format? We’re in sort of “peak newsletter” right now — everyone has a newsletter — but it seems like Morning Brew started before that.
It’s funny how everyone loves newsletters, and when we started they were the least sexy thing. We talked to some really big people in media, some people you would know by name very, very well who raised hundreds of million dollars in funding and they all told the same thing: email is not sexy, create video content, create viral videos, run videos that will go crazy on Facebook and expand.
For many reasons, we decided not to do that. One, we didn’t have the time or money to create videos, and we decided to go for a quality over quantity approach, which just meant that we wanted to give you news, not we want to be the first, we don’t want to be the one that gives the most news; we’re going to give you the highest quality news.
We thought email is a great platform for that. Now, looking back, I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve been so successful, because email is such a great platform. As I think about the media industry as a whole and who is succeeding, I think the publishers who are succeeding are the ones that are creating need-based content, content you really need and come back to everyday.
I love one-to-one connections; I love the one-to-one connection that we create in the newsletter, I love the one-to-one connections where you can create through podcasts just from hearing someone’s voice. We kind of stumbled upon it because it was cheap, but there’s a reason we stuck to it, and we’re doubling down, because I think it’s an effective means of communication. You really own the relationship, there is no Facebook algorithm, there’s no Google SEO optimization. It’s simply having people opt in and giving them content they want. If they enjoy the content, they’ll keep reading it, if not they’ll opt out, so you have a relationship with the people who actually want to get your content.
On that note, are you guys considering developing non-newsletter content?
Yeah, absolutely. That’s in the product roadmap to create non-newsletter content. We think about that roadmap by thinking, what are other forms of communication that we can continue to create this intimate one-to-one experience. I don’t see us ever creating a ton of content on the website just for the sake of doing reporting and page views. I don’t think it’s a great user experience, and I don’t think that’s a great business model for a lot of publishers and especially ourselves.
What interests us are those one-to-one connections, like newsletters, podcasts, communities. So being able to connect people, whether it be physical or digital, those are all things that I find really compelling and things that now that we’ve really grown the team, we’re going to start testing and exploring. We’ve started running some small events and testing how things are going, and those are the types of things we’re going to focus on, and just go from there.
What do you see as your key success metrics?
We’re tracking opens. What we look for every day is how many people open the newsletter, and how many people are opening multiple times a week. What we really care about is retention of people. Whereas a lot of different publishers or email people quote subscribers, we certainly quote subscribers because that gets headlines, but internally, all we care about is opens. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 million subscribers opening at a really low percent, or a million opening at a really high percent. It’s all about how many opens, and what we really care about on a daily basis is just people opening and interacting with the newsletter.
Can you tell us about your target audience?
We like to use the framing of, it’s your friend telling you the news in a very conversational way, as if you’re at a bar after work with your feet up on the bar, having a conversation. It’s not your boss telling you the news in a suit in the office, it’s after work over a drink, having a conversation.
We like to write in a very conversational tone, and definitely the person who was behind telling you the news is the type of person who likes to go out and interact with their friends and be social, but is also insanely intellectually curious. Everyone who works at the Brew has to be intellectually curious, and that’s the voice we want to give off — the type of person who would give up a night going out to the bars to go watch a Ted Talk or watch a YouTube video and learn something new.
Whenever we think about would our persona say this phrase, or write in this tone, do this, we always go back to with that person sitting at the bar with their feet up, discussing the news, arguing over a fundraising round, would that person say this and would that person do this?
Can you tell me a bit about your growth strategy? I know you’re pretty focused on referrals, so how did you settle on that?
We grew a lot of different ways, but referrals are really important to us because it’s virtually free — we do give out swag for referring. It’s really important for us to get people talking about our product and getting that top-of-mind awareness that it’s okay to talk about our products and tell other people.
It’s a really great way for us to experiment with other paid acquisition methods and know that we still had this word of mouth thing growing really quickly and it helps with the community aspect. We encourage you to tell your friends, so you can be reading the same things as your friends and you can discuss it. It really gives them that community feel when, when 25% of our subscribers come from people telling other people.
Can you tell us about the different referral tiers?
The way the referral program works is that we incentivize you with Morning Brew swag. I think referral programs in general are common right now, but for me it’s important to make the incentive align with what we want. What do we want you to do by becoming a referrer? We want you to become more and more engaged with the product by doing so, and so we reward you with Morning Brew Swag.
When you get three referrals, we give you our exclusive Sunday edition of Morning Brew called Light Roast. The reason we do that is because the type of person who’s referring, the person who’s so passionate about the product, that they want more of it and they’re upset that they don’t get it on Sunday. As a result, they’re going to share it with three friends, so they can get it on Sunday. That’s the type of referral we want, people who are striving for that.
After five referrals, we send you Morning Brew stickers. Why do we do that? It’s simple. If you’re the type of person who’s going to share our newsletter five times or with five people, you’re probably the type of person that wants to represent our brand, and we want you representing our brand, so we send you stickers, and hopefully you put it on your laptop, your fridge, or whatever. Then we’re top of mind again for someone who has already passed out the product.
At ten referrals, you get access to the Morning Brew’s exclusive Facebook group, which has high single-digit thousands of people, and it’s a bunch of like-minded people who are all talking about companies, stocks, jobs, books they’re reading — really intellectually curious, hungry people who all interact. Then as you go up the chart, 25 referrals gets you T-shirts, so on and so forth, up to the Morning Brew mug. That’s the way we think about things, incentivizing people with the right incentives.
How many subscribers reach each tier?
The Light Roast has over 50,000, so over 50,000 people have gotten three referrals. The Facebook group is, about 7,500, so 7,500 people have gotten ten referrals at least, because not everyone has a Facebook.
How did you guys decide on the topics to spin off for the new verticals?
I’m a big proponent of the ‘verticalization’ of the world and content in general, and I think it’s really important to give people the opportunity to go deeper in areas that they either work in or are interested in. Whereas a lot of other companies who maybe started newsletters had been trying to become anything but a newsletter company, we are, at least for the short term, really embracing that.
We decided to double down in our core competency, of email, our tone, our design, our format, our knowledge of deliverability, our knowledge of email ad sales, and take everything we do really well for the core general business news, and translate that into a few other areas that we find really interesting that we think we can educate people.
Our emerging technology newsletter is educating people on emerging technologies, including AI, machine learning, Bitcoin, the blockchain, et cetera. Ryan Duffy does an excellent job of educating people on that and we’re going to just need to build that out and increase frequency and products for that vertical. Similarly, with our retail vertical, we want to be a resource for retail professionals to come to us just now for news, but eventually many other things. People in the retail industry can wake up in the morning, read their Morning Brews, and be able to walk into work and be really knowledgeable about the day and what happened the previous day in the business world. And then by 10:00 or 11:00, you get your retail newsletter and you feel like you’re learning more about your job. We’re looking to assist more people and enhance more people’s lives, and just help them become smarter in a more efficient and more fun way.
Do you have any other topics in the pipeline for new verticals?
Yeah, we definitely have verticals that we’re interested in. We are right now very focused on these two verticals and we think it’s really important to go deep rather than wide. We certainly have some down the road, but right now we’re thinking about how can we better cover these verticals and how can we provide more value to our readers. So nothing specific is in the pipeline, we have some ideas, but right now it’s all about more products and more frequency around these current verticals.
Do you ever see the business moving outside of just specifically business related news or is that the line that you guys wouldn’t cross?
I would say never say never. I mean certainly with the elections coming up, we’re certainly going to cover politics. We’re going to do it from a business lens, so we’re going to talk about these candidates — just from Democratic Party there’s so many of them. What are their policies and how would that affect the economy, the business world, trade, et cetera. That’s what we’re focused on now. That’s not to say we wouldn’t cover other things in the future, but right now just the business side of everything.
What is the most interesting thing in media that you’ve seen from organization other than your own?
A theme I’ve seen that really interests me, is companies launching products or services outside of ad-based products or services, that instead of thinking about themselves as a news company or even a media company, you think about the demographic and the audience you’re hitting, and what other products and services can I create to enhance their lives, or what does that psychographic of people, what does that grouping of people that I’m hitting? What do they need?
There are a range of media companies doing this. Take a look at Tasty launching the hardware they launched, or even someone, albeit they’re controversial, but FuckJerry launching a board game.
There are a large grouping of media companies who are really doing a good job of thinking of themselves as really well rounded media companies. I think in the future, media companies are going to certainly have to be beyond ad-based, even beyond subscription.
I think that the period of the subscription is really overblown, and I think in two or three years, other companies are gonna realize, “our content is not that differentiated, we cannot have subscriptions, what else can we sell?” And I think that’s the trend that I am looking at, is media companies who are looking at selling [ consumer goods].
Another one is Betches that just partnered with Bumble and created a dating app. Those are the trends I’m looking at, media companies who are out there, getting out of news, or diversifying, in addition to news, their content and creating other products or services. And so that’s what interests me most, is media companies creating non-media products or services, diversifying revenue and leveraging the insights they’ve gained in their audience to sell other things to them. | https://medium.com/the-idea/q-a-austin-rief-co-founder-coo-the-morning-brew-3895f31f58d7 | ['Mollie Leavitt'] | 2019-07-22 20:29:56.274000+00:00 | ['Media Jobs', 'Newsletters', 'Subscriber Spotlight', 'Morning Brew', 'Business New'] |
Blackness and Whiteness | Growing up, I was unaccustomed to discussions about race. For most of my life, the color of my skin was something simple, a fact that became more or less apparent alongside the changing seasons. When it started to become impossible to ignore, as a young child, I pushed to downplay my color difference. I sat in the shade with my white cousins at the beach to prevent the sun from reaching me, complained with a gentle fierceness each time my mother took me to get my hair braided, said quiet “thank-yous” with no further explanation to people who gleefully oohed and ahhed at my beautiful tan.
As a teenager, I embraced wholeheartedly the idea of tan equaling beautiful, at least so far as in the context of tan being simply a new shade of whiteness, rather than brownness. I was a tan white person. At least, that is what everyone in my town assumed me to be, and rather than fight the simplicity of that label, I allowed it to begin defining me.
My mom, a white woman and single mother, was quiet during these years. If I had questions, she would answer them willingly, but quite honestly, I rarely ever asked her anything. Sometimes, when she took me to Baltimore, we drove home the long way, observing dilapidated neighborhoods and houses with wooden boards with holes in them where windows should’ve been. The sidewalks and the weeds in the place of gardens made these communities look tired, winded. It was clear that places like this were worlds away from where my mom and I lived; yet we were both keen outsiders, desperate for a deeper understanding. There’s something funny about an obviously white woman and an obviously brown child alone together, trying to find a community. On those trips to Baltimore, my mother and I had not quite identified our community yet.
As a teenager, my mother moved from the integrated and very black city of Baltimore, to attend high school in a very segregated, very white suburban town in northeastern Maryland. I don’t know many stories of the difficulties she faced by leaving her friends and her community behind, I know only that my mother adapted, and as soon as high school was over, she moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, for college. Upon graduating, she moved further south, to another historically black city — Atlanta. When my mom talks of Virginia and Atlanta, she speaks with fondness, the protective kindness reserved for the first city one chooses after moving away from home. She speaks of tiny networks designed to fill the gaps left behind for people without grand wealth and inherited Southern royalty. She tells stories of inclusion, and sweet tea, and the famous Southern hospitality.
My mother moved back to Maryland for two reasons: she had enrolled in graduate school there, and she had become pregnant with me. I began the first months of my life wrapped warm and tiny beneath her shirt in speech pathology lectures; we created an existence together in a tiny apartment in the town my mom had left after high school. Her main reasons for the impossible choice of moving seemingly backwards to a life left in Maryland: it was safer than the neighborhoods she could afford in Baltimore, it was close to her family, and to my father and his family.
As I got older, my mom set down more permanent structures in our tiny town. She bought a house, took a job as a speech therapist at a local public school, enrolled me in private school after observing the inadequate education of our town’s public school system. I grew quickly, like a small green weed, and I adopted the mannerisms of a girl growing up in the white section of a small, segregated, suburban town outside of Baltimore, Maryland.
In college I started to understand the depth of my identity, and the sacrifices my mom had made as she tried to help me understand it. In a private university, I witnessed the inherent cruelty in a world where a kitchen full of black men and women serving young, majority white students seemed normal. It dawned on me that my place was not so clearly defined by my ability to pass as white; I could no longer sit quietly on such an unequal playing field and neglect a large percentage of myself and of my family history.
My awakening was slow; it came from reconnecting with my father’s family in adulthood, discussions about race in classes, watching documentaries, observing race while studying abroad, and seeking to understand the breadth of black Baltimore’s anger at what happened to Freddie Gray. Most of all, it came from confusion — a sudden feeling of discomfort at the way I had grown accustomed to living and the sudden truth that whiteness no longer defined me.
After graduating, I moved to northern California. The prospect of spending time with family I wanted to know better and living in the center of a well-known big city where things were happening thrilled me. I came to California and felt accepted immediately. It felt like home in a different way than Maryland defined home for me for so many years. Somewhat naively, I thought I had come to a place where racism was gone and people could be acknowledged on their merit first.
I met and began dating a San Francisco native. He told me stories about the first time he had been arrested while he was a college student in Arizona, and how in San Francisco he would have received a slap on the wrist for the same offense. I rejoiced at the idea that he didn’t need to talk about the relationship between the police and black people in the United States, but the bliss of ignorance didn’t last long. I moved to Oakland, learned about the Black Panther Party, watched Fruitvale Station, and observed the way racism had cloaked itself in clothes different from the ones I had grown up with in the Mid-Atlantic.
Upon this realization, I threw myself headfirst into black culture and its influence. I wanted to know intimately all that I had missed while growing up and insisting that I was white. And it was in this seeking that I started to recognize the complications in being a person of mixed-race descent. As badly as I wanted it to, black culture was not defining me entirely; not the way that I wanted it to swallow me whole. It wasn’t replacing the parts of me defined by whiteness, and sometimes I felt like an imposter when I tried to pretend otherwise. It felt a little like trying to replace one side of my family with the other, and that mutual exclusivity felt sad, and a little unfair.
It didn’t take long for me to recognize the individuality of my experience as a mixed-race person, and so I sought mixed-race materials. When I couldn’t find much, I tried creating them for myself. I interviewed people in order to derive a more whole understanding of what it means to disrupt the system by either creating or being someone of mixed-race descent. I started with my mom.
In the absence of asking her questions in my youth, I learned that I missed many of the things she had done for me. I was unaware of the ways she felt confusion and isolation, and the ways she fought for me while I had railed against anything that might mark my difference in the small, limited world that I knew at the time. I asked her when she first recognized that her experience raising me would be different than what she’d been exposed to because I was biracial. She told me stories of overt disapproval from the doctors who treated her during her pregnancy. She told me of being tested for far more diseases and birth defects than if my father had been white, and of her primary obstetrician asking, not unkindly, whether she was sure this was a pregnancy she wanted to see through to the end, as my race would make things much more difficult than necessary for her. She described the faces of white people, aghast, who would see us in a grocery store and chastise my mother for not keeping me out of the sun, for tanning an infant with no sunscreen in some vain attempt at achieving beauty. She described the faces of black people, confused, who asked if she was sure, really sure, that I was mixed with black.
I asked her what was the most difficult thing about being a white parent raising a biracial child, and she said feeling so helpless in trying to expose me to black culture. As a newborn, she took me to my grandmother, my father’s mother, and immediately my grandmother lathered my hair and my skin with coconut oil and cocoa butter. My mother felt a sense of relief and desire to be further educated; she had known that the needs of a black baby would not be the same as a white one — from the beginning, my skin cried out for different care than the babies she had known — but she had never been told what exactly to do. Everywhere she looked, she was judged for doing the wrong things, but she was never offered help or correction.
I mentioned how long it had taken me to recognize my blackness as a part of myself, and her relief at my recognition spilled out of her — it had been so frustrating to see me be so uninterested in the part of me that was so clearly there, and so visibly different from my whiteness. She had expected there to be natural reinforcers that pushed me toward black culture, but each time she tried to find them, it felt like I pushed back harder, and with more resentment. She wondered at her failures. Was I angry at her for having not exposed me enough to black culture, for not having tried hard enough to find it in order to give it to me? Had I ever felt a distinct loss, and did I blame her for it?
The vulnerability and guilt she expressed shocked me. My mother had been my hero, the one who had always been there to recognize me as distinctly myself, to answer questions as I was ready to ask them, to take me through Baltimore and tell stories about her experience fitting so well into black culture, when it was willing to open its arms and accept a white woman. Of course I wasn’t angry at her for not taking me to see my father’s siblings in another state, for living in a community she could afford to live in — albeit a rather unfriendly one, for keeping me safe and giving me the best education she could find.
If there is anyone I blame for the longevity of my denial at blackness, it is my father. Being biracial as well, he is the person who could offer the most understanding and support for my experience. But this is not a story about him. The breadth of what is relevant here is that he kept me from his family, he prioritized his whiteness, and he chased the American Dream as if it were real, had always been real, and was tangible if only he tried hard enough to succeed in convincing everyone of his commitment to white culture. He never taught me about my skin, never opened himself up to my questions, never helped me to understand that I, like him, was different, and that difference was not something to hide, but something to celebrate. Lost in his own identity, he had no room for mine. Sometimes I understand how difficult it must have been for him to simply exist, and I feel empathy. Sometimes I feel angry at what I missed, what he missed, what we both missed, together.
It is not difficult to have brown skin that people call exotic, to have features that people call beautiful, to have the opportunity to fit in, in different ways, to multiple systems of culture. I live an experience different from white people, and different from black people, and I make sure to emphasize that I do not know what it feels like to live the unique and sometimes corrosive experience of a black person in a segregated and racism-centric society. That is a level of difficulty that I do not expect to ever truly understand nor do I pretend to, but I do respect this difference.
But here is what is difficult: feeling defined by everything and nothing all at the same time. Feeling part of two cultures that are pitted against each other, that present extreme differences from each other, that consider themselves mutually exclusive from each other. Having a white mother who wants desperately to be part of a community that only accepts her sometimes, and understanding, intimately, what that feels like. To be minimized to the point that I am not really considered part of the conversation — to be forced to choose one culture or the other. My answers that I am not just black and that I am not just white are not accepted, at least not willingly, and not without endless explanation. Where do I fit in? Where does my mother fit in? We are still, together, as a white woman and a brown child, trying to identify our community.
I watched a few videos on YouTube recently about mixed-race children, and the immorality of creating them. Most notably, a clip from Muhammad Ali talking about the natural instinct to want one’s children to look like oneself. Why, he exclaims, would he want to dilute the beauty of his culture, a culture that fought and clawed its way to survival amongst multiple attempts to destroy it, by procreating with someone of a different race? I understand this sentiment. I understand the strength of blackness and its ability to survive, and not wanting to lose that. But I am already here, and I did not choose for my parents to have different, opposing races. So instead of talking about whether it is right to create people like me, let’s move forward with the fact that people like me already exist.
I’ve found to be mixed-race is not to be one of my races at the exclusion of the other, although the cultures in which I was raised might suggest this. The best thing a mixed-race child can do for her- or himself is to be honest about their difference, and to insist on their right to be different. Parents of a mixed-race child will be judged as creating difference, whether that is in a celebratory end-of-racism way, or a derogatory dilution-of-individual-cultures way. It is important that they not get hung up on these explanations.
What they have done in fact is created a human being.
Raising one has never been easy.
Under any circumstances. | https://medium.com/our-human-family/blackness-and-whiteness-7e5f479d799 | ['Emily Cashour'] | 2019-05-07 16:55:26.034000+00:00 | ['Mothers', 'Race', 'Equality', 'Family', 'Mixed Race'] |
8 Secrets, Digital Marketers should know | Did you ever felt, “I know digital marketing why should I care about the basics of marketing anyway”?
Are you one of those people who learned digital marketing and not implementing it or not getting any better results? do you know why there are no results?
Everybody can learn digital marketing, but only a few people excel in it. Do you know why?
This article will answer all the questions above.
we are gonna see some very important secrets most digital marketers fail to know.
1. Marketing Fundamentals
Do you know there is a law of marketing?
Yes, there are, actually many laws.
Sadly, most digital marketers don't know this. They don't even know there is “The Law of Marketing”.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer- so your product fits them and sells itself... the ultimate aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous — Peter Drucker.
Do you know when the actual marketing process starts? If you say “after the product/service launch”.
No, it is not, it actually starts way before creating a product, it starts when you understand your customer’s need, produce that product/service, and fulfilling his need with your product/service.
Marketing is all about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. Many people think that marketing means just selling the product, but deep down, it is how you make your customers happy by solving their problems and retains them for your next product/service.
This can be achieved only by constant value addition to the customer, and build trust, then what, they will start to transact with you. sales done.
So, focus more on your product than your marketing strategy, more the value your product delivers, less the effort you needed for marketing.
let us take the Google search engine as an example. It solves almost any problem, it provides so many values that's why we can't see any ads for the google search engine. It doesn't need any marketing till they stop providing value.
The next secret may be controversial. A fight between Digital vs traditional marketing.
2. Is Traditional Marketing still alive?
I always felt that traditional marketing has lost its shine? but still, we can see TV ads, banners, radio ads so on right? That means it is still alive, right?
It is still doing a great job for some of the products.
If you are choosing a product with a generic wide targeting audience like Apple iPhone, you can use TV ads because its cost-per-reach ratio is low.
let's do the quick math, the total number of TVs in India is = 197 million out of 298 million households.
Total people watching TV (4–5 persons per household) = 800–1000 million
Just imagine the amount you should spend on digital marketing to have this 800 million reach. It will be a Nightmare, right?
So Traditional marketing is still there and important, you can reach 65% of the Indian population with Radio and have 450+ million reaches with the newspaper.
Digital vs Traditional Marketing
Still, Digital marketing has its own advantages like more engagement, high ROI, measurable insights, etc. And as a digital marketer, you may know a lot more about digital marketing.
But traditional marketing also has its own strength with its respective audience.
Simply saying, you can use traditional marketing for generic products and low-end B2C products, and you can use digital marketing for high-end B2C and complex products.
Whether you are doing digital or traditional marketing, for both marketing communication is very important, let me tell you why?
3. Importance of communication
According to studies, 85% of your success is attributed to communication skills, and 15% to mastery of your work skills.
A good marketing is all about good communication — Digital Deepak
importance of communication
Communication is not about your grammar skills, or your English, or your vocabulary, instead, communication is all about how effectively you deliver your thoughts into the message.
There are some techniques to improve your communication skills:
Join the conversation that already running in people’s minds. For example, you might have wondered about digital marketing secrets that most people hide, what I did was I just joined that conversation running in your mind about revealing the secrets.
Start thinking in English than your mother tongue.
watch English series or standup comedies like Friends, The Office, etc. I am watching them till now to develop my communication.
For blogging- Write at least 500 words a day, don’t worry about the structure and all now, just keep that flow going, and edit it later. this is what I learned from my mentor Divya Kothari, it has changed my writing skills way better.
Having said that, are you a fan of economics and number? if you are not, at least try to understand these facts below. Because it is very crucial.
4. Understanding of Global Economics in Marketing
Don't panic!! when you hear this term.
The economy in layman's terms means money circulation among the people. More the money circulation in your country, the stronger is the economy of your country.
That's why developed countries have a high standard of living, and developing countries have relatively less standard, due to more money circulation in former than later.
Every entrepreneur should learn about some basics of global economics, and make decisions accordingly — digital deepak
Do you know that if the average age of the country increases, the economy of the country will also increase? it is.
the average age of India
Because people will start spending more. for example, take India, the average age of India is 26.8 years now, and it will reach up to 38.1 years in 2020. And we know that India is a developing country with constant growth in economics. So you can focus on developing countries.
source: Sajith Pai — India 1,2,3
Just look at this table above. 88% of the workforce is from India 3. Our economy will grow by shifting people from India 3 to India 2 then to India 1.
If you are reading this article with a laptop and with a wifi connection, you are definitely under the India 1 section. with that, you can relate to who all are in India 2 and 3.
Most entrepreneurs start their businesses by providing their products/services to people in the first section and they will gain some revenue from them. with that income, they serve section 2 people and go on with section 3.
So, you can start serving people from India 1, and then continue to India 2, India 3.
for example, Tesla started producing high-end model Tesla Roadster a sports car for section 1 people, then Model S for next-class people, and then Model 3 for average citizens.
So, understanding the basics of economics will help your business. Even when you want to choose a niche, you should know about the market trends. You will see how the market influences niche selection.
5. How to choose your Niche
Deciding where to compete is half success.
Many people think selecting a niche is just selecting a topic, but is way more than that.
Selecting a niche is not only the topic you chose but also how you going to deliver it and engage with it.
For selecting a niche you should consider these things:
niche selection Venn diagram
Passion: whether you will be interested in this topic for at least 10 years? Market: know, where your niche will be in the market in the next 5 years. (apply all you learned in the economics section above) Talent: you should have skills related to this niche, if not yet, no problem start learning today.
Note: I recommend you always start with the micro-niche first and then expand it over a period of time.
Don't stick with a single niche, you have the freedom to change or expand your niche. let's take Deepak Kanakaraju, he started blogging about motorcycles first, then he changed his niche into digital marketing.
And remember you should shine in your niche, you should be the number 1, for that you have to spend some time and effort building a personal brand in your niche. but how?
6. Brand building and Power of personal brand
Your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in the room — Jeff Bezos
Power of personal brand
Building brand is the number one objective for most of the organization.
People always remember only number 1.
If you can’t able to become number 1 in your Niche, be the only one in your micro-niche.
For example, take Volvo, it may not be a number 1 brand in the automobile section, but it is definitely a number 1 brand like Safest Automobiles.
Develop a personal brand that is so strong so that it can give rise to many new brands of your own. And once your personal brand is popular, you will be an influencer or a brand ambassador. for example, Elon Musk is a personal brand, and he uses his brand to influence the market of Dogecoin market.
But you can’t develop your brand overnight, it will take some time and effort to have a strong personal brand, it includes a framework too- the MassTrust blueprint. It consists 6 stages of brand-building:
Mass trust blueprint from Digital Deepak
Learn- learning is always important, you can't excel unless you learn, but learning is not just reading or memorizing. It includes 3 types
Remembering the facts,
Understanding the concept,
Practice the procedure.
2. Work- once you learned, start implementing what you have learned in the real world. Only if you put what you learned into action, you will remember it better. Gain experience from your work.
3. Blog- start writing about what you have learned and experienced from work. You can understand better once you start writing about your niche and your experience in it. It is the first stage of Trust Building.
4. Consult- after blogging itself, you would have gained some authority among the audience in your niche. It is time to stop working, start consulting. Listening to their problems and needs can make you guide them for better steps in the future.
5. Mentor- teach what you have learned and experienced to the people who want to become like you. Teaching will make you an expert in your niche.
6. Startup- after mentoring, it is the time to build your startup. Apply all knowledge you gained from the above steps to build a startup. And the cycle repeats.
After you have done all these 6 steps. you will have a strong personal brand in your hand. yeah! Brand in a hand.
And remember this “The best known will always beat the best”.
And it is time for sales now, as a digital marketer you might have known marketing funnels, but the upcoming one is way better.
7. CATT Marketing Funnel
Imagine What happens when you ask your audience for a sale in their first interaction itself? Do you think they will purchase from you, most probably they will avoid you.
They don’t know who you are, what you offer, why they should care about you.
For a sale to occur, they should know you and trust you to transact with you. For that, we need this CATT funnel.
A marketing funnel is a process of converting those recent audience members who visited your website or social media, into customers by making them purchase your products.
You might hear about the AIDA(Attention-Interest-Desire-Action) funnel in your digital marketing course. But this CATT funnel is somewhat different, effective, and unique.
Lead generation formulan from Digital Deepak: Wealth = n^CATT -where ‘n’ stand for Niche, -’CATT’ stand for Content > Attention > Trust > Transact.
Lead generation formula from Digital Deepak
CATT funnel involves 4 stages, and each stage is very important, any mistake in any stage you might miss a sale. But perfectly prepared CATT funnel will drive more sales than your expectation. The four stages are:
Content: It can be your blog post, your social media post, your podcast, video to capture your audience's attention. It can be your lead magnet also. (like free ebooks, webinars, etc. to get their email id or phone number). the main purpose of the content is to provide value. Attention: After the lead magnet, you need to get their attention, and you need to drive your audience's attention to your lead magnet. You can do this in many ways including organic search traffic, paid traffic, referral traffic, etc. Trust: It is the most important phase in your funnel. You can build trust through email sequences by providing value-filled content to them. And remember, once the trust breaks, it is hard to fix that. Transact: Understand whether your leads have reached the stage where they are ready to transact. You can do it with lead profiling and lead scoring. These methods can tell you the right time to make the right offer for the right audience.
And the sale happens.
This framework is not known by many digital marketers out there, that's why it is like a secret, you should know this and implement this in your business. we will see CATT funnel in depth in upcoming articles.
And finally,
8. Integrated Digital Marketing
Integrated digital marketing is the trending, and most effective marketing method now.
You might have used digital marketing modules like content marketing, social media marketing, SEO, email marketing, paid ads, etc. But you might had used them separately. But, have you ever tried to integrate them?
The result from integrating them will be a snowball effect, you can’t imagine how effective it is.
Every module in digital marketing has its own advantage let's say content marketing, it is the heart piece of the marketing, no other module can build as much trust as it does, but it can’t be effective without the help of other marketing modules. Similarly, other modules will be more effective in conjunction with others modules.
let me explain each connection here:
Integrated Digital Marketing is content marketing on steroids- Digital Deepak
Content + Social Media: Say you have written an article and published it in the blog. The article will be in peace. Is that what you want? we want traffic, right? This will be done by social media sharing. It is advantageous for both of you (you and your audience).
Your good quality content is getting shared, Those you are sharing your high-value content will get good karma points
That's why people call this integrated digital marketing process content marketing 2.0.
Content + Social Media + SEO: if your content is filled with high value, it will get its maximum share in social media(off-page SEO). If people sharing your content on social media it will get a lot of quality backlinks. which is a good signal for search engines. It makes search engines happy, which in turn will help your content to rank higher in SERP.
if your content is filled with high value, it will get its maximum share in social media(off-page SEO). If people sharing your content on social media it will get a lot of quality backlinks. which is a good signal for search engines. It makes search engines happy, which in turn will help your content to rank higher in SERP. Email + content : instead of writing content in email, you can publish it to your blog and email them your blog link. The number of people visiting your blog from email will be higher than any other media, if your subscribers like your content they will share it on social media, this, in turn, signals search engines to rank your content well, and by the result, you will attract new people and you can also convert them into subscribers.
: instead of writing content in email, you can publish it to your blog and email them your blog link. The number of people visiting your blog from email will be higher than any other media, if your subscribers like your content they will share it on social media, this, in turn, signals search engines to rank your content well, and by the result, you will attract new people and you can also convert them into subscribers. Paid ads : instead of using ads for sales, you can promote your content through paid ads, so, people after consuming your content will gain trust, and they will share it in social media, which increases the activity of social shares, search engines, email subscribers list (as I said above). Paid ads and social-search-content trio, when combined, your results going to boom
: instead of using ads for sales, you can promote your content through paid ads, so, people after consuming your content will gain trust, and they will share it in social media, which increases the activity of social shares, search engines, email subscribers list (as I said above). Paid ads and social-search-content trio, when combined, your results going to boom Sales: Nobody will buy from you at the first instant itself. Studies say that it takes at least 7 contact points with your prospects to make a sale. Your blog content and automated email sequence are the best way to follow up your leads and gain their trust to transact.
Did you see that how powerful is your marketing when you integrate all these different modules? but most of the marketers are not aware of these, that's why it is secret.
Conclusion
I hope you understood all the 8 secrets that I’ve told you about Marketing and Economics, etc. which most of the digital marketers out there don't know.
Make use of all these in your digital marketing journey, once you start implementing all these in your marketing journey, you will see yourself way ahead of the other digital marketers out there.
If you want to know more about each secret in-depth, let me know in the comments below. I will read all the comments.
Thanks,
Sasi10x. | https://medium.com/@sasiramkanna46/8-digital-marketing-secrets-5e739e05673c | ['Sasi Ram'] | 2021-07-27 06:51:50.115000+00:00 | ['Catt Marketing Funnel', 'Law Of Marketing', 'The Global Economics', 'Digital Marketing Secrets', 'Personal Branding'] |
Hello amazing people, there's only one reason why you're here, and that is to find out this simple… | Hello amazing people, there's only one reason why you're here, and that is to find out this simple method to make money. It's just this simple that a baby could do it, if it had the ability to. My name is Mr. Know it All for a reason. With this method I got rich literally in one day maybe in like twenty three hours to be exact. So in order for this strategy to work, you have to believe in yourself, take your time at all times, and just stay patient. This method has only been around for maybe two weeks or so now. I just wanted to make a blog about it to get everyone who wants to be rich a chance at what they want. So like I told you guys, I got rich with this in twenty three hours, and when I say rich, I made around thirty thousand dollars that day. I was in shock for about two days seeing that something that only took me twenty minutes to do make so much money. So I tried giving this opportunity to a couple of my family members, and even better results I get from them. But enough of my story. Im here to help you guys. So here's what I'm going to do. Just to see how many of you guys want to make some money. Because this method is most definitely not going to be out there no time at all. Unless I put it out. So here's what's going to happen. All you guys have to do is simply send Twenty dollars Via Cashapp $MRKNOWITALL4 With your emails attached to the payments. This is no scam I repeat this is no scam. To the people who want to become rich overnight should understand. Twenty dollars is nothing if you really look at it. This method is most definitely a thousand dollar method, I just want to see how many people is going to see this blog. Now that I'm rich I can blog all day an night. I'm an official blogger now. As you can see no PPC(pay per click) links. I'm just a normal guy who really wants to blog for fun trying to get the people who want to be rich a chance. I just like to help people honestly. So to the people that's going to purchase this method GOD bless you, But yeah you guys if you want this Sweet Money Making Method CASHAPP $MRKNOWITALL4 Leaving your email so I can send you the method and how it works. THANKS YOU GUYS I'LL BE BLOGGING FROM HERE ON OUT. PEACE. LOVE. | https://medium.com/@getmoneyaffiliate4l/hello-amazing-people-theres-only-one-reason-why-you-re-here-and-that-is-to-find-out-this-simple-26a8dfb42348 | ['Mr. Know It All'] | 2020-12-24 09:05:39.245000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Wealth', 'Money', 'Family'] |
Work your Habits and they will work for you. | I have seen people struggling with their habits for years now; they would want to get rid of some and adapt a few new ones too. It is not as easy as it sounds, however, it cannot be considered impossible at the same time if one plans their work and works their plan. I have been there myself several times when it seems almost impossible to overcome any habit.
Some researchers believe it takes approximately 30 days to break a habit and it takes around 90 days to build a new one. However, I believe that the time frame of building a new habit or breaking an old one is totally different from one person to another. Such numbers depend on your personality, dedication, commitment, perseverance, etc. which cannot be rightly measured. The year 2020 has been rough globally but it has taught us so many things. New Year is around the corner so let us sit back and try to take control of our life again. Let us all try to make the coming New Year a beautiful one. Most of us were deviated from our goals due to a multitude of external factors. One of the most important ways of getting back on track is to work on our habits, be it personal or professional and that is what I am going to talk about today.
Let me start with a thumb rule while adapting to any of the following new habits with the help of an example. Eat as much food as you can chew, or it will cost you indigestion or stomach-ache. You are free to pick any of the following habits or forget about them if your current situation in life does not permit you. It is totally your choice!
Having said that, let us now go through those habits. Please note there is no recommended order to follow them.
1. Create a morning routine
I cannot reiterate how important this is. Having a morning routine eventually trains your brain to function in a particular direction. Every successful person I have known or read about has a morning routine. They do so because when you perform any task repetitively, it will get cemented in your mind and will soon turn into the habit you want. Remember that some people are habituated to be successful at whatever they do because back in the day they created some routine which led them to success.
2. DO NOT delve deep into your Smart Phones immediately after you wake up
To some people, this might sound weird and to others, it might sound impossible, but most of us have built a habit of scrolling through our smartphones in the morning when we wake up. I used to be the same but soon I realised it was doing no benefit to me. Usually, when we wake up in the morning, we are quite fresh and motivated in most cases. By any chance, if we read or see something that we do not like or something that triggers our negative emotions, we are likely to start our day with such a tone. Life is tough, I understand and most of us have a lot of challenging situations to deal with, but does that really mean we should begin our day with a negative emotion?
3. Meditation
No way, right? I am not going that road. This is an answer I get most of the times when I recommend anyone to get into some serious meditation. People are ready to pay anything for medication, but never meditation. It not only has spiritual but also has biological and psychological benefits. Honestly, I am not a spiritual person, nor am I interested in being one, but meditation has improved my focus and has helped me calm down. I believe one cannot think in the right direction with an unstable mindset and meditation has helped me overcome that to a greater extend. It is highly recommended that people with clinical or non-clinical psychological and psychiatric challenges or problems meditate.
Our lives today are busy more than ever. Living a busy life makes our mind rush from one state to another leaving no space for it to rest so while we meditate our brain rejuvenates itself. If your mind is calm, it will produce better results. Some researchers also believe that meditation improves your immunity as well, so I guess it is high time you give it a shot.
4. Sleep for 7 to 8 hours daily
I have seen people compromising their sleep due to their heavy workloads, which in turn damages their profession and personal lives. To be able to work efficiently we need to give our mind the rest it needs. For instance, I do not compromise on my sleep schedule for anything and neither should you. Medically, lack of good sleep might trigger chances of heart disease and stroke, besides several other mental conditions. Lack of sleep affects the glucose metabolism which also increases the chances of diabetes type 2. I hope I was able to convince you to at least consider sleeping 7 to 8 hours a day.
5. Exercise daily
I have developed a habit of doing yoga every day for 30 minutes in the morning. That not only benefits me physically but also it helps my body run perfectly fine. Doing physical exercise is a must for your mind and body. Do cultivate a habit of dancing, yoga, gymnastics, zumba, aerobics, or anything that you like. Or just hit a gym and work out for at least 20 to 30 minutes a day and soon you will start feeling your Self-Confidence climbing up.
6. Make bed straight away after you wake up
I know a lot of people have this habit of staying in bed even after waking up and wasting their time on social media to ensure that they have received maximum attention on their last post. Later, these people realizes that they are already running late for work and will certainly leave their bed as it is. I know most of you are nodding at this but trust me, it is not a good habit to entertain.
Ever since I have picked up bed making habit, I can see a behavioural difference in my attitude. I have stopped procrastinating for quite sometime now. Now, many of you might be wondering, “how is making my bed correlated with my behaviour, I have servants doing that for me all the time”. This is a legit question but, in his book, “The Power of Habits”, author Charles Duhigg explains the importance of bed making and its impact on your productivity.
Basically, when you kickstart your day with bed making it gives you a feel of taking charge. When you leave your lethargic behaviour behind and make your bed it gives you a sense of achievement right when you wake up.
7. Drink enough water
Our body is 60% water, and our blood is 90% water, so it is critical for us to maintain our levels accordingly. Dehydration may cause skin problems, kidney problems, indigestion and what not. Drinking adequate water also maintains your body temperature, lubricates joints, glows your skin and cleans kidneys so that they work better and help reduce weight. There are no fixed parameters to how many litres of water one must drink in a day so you can judge based on your capacity. People do not take this habit seriously, so if you were to pick any of these I would suggest pick this one first.
Feel free to pick any of these habits now and thank me later. Do not forget to be consistent and patient with yourself because reading about them in my article will hardly take a few minutes but getting into them will take time. | https://medium.com/@devanshijoshivankani/work-your-habits-and-they-will-work-for-you-7ad6b37280ae | ['Devanshi Joshi'] | 2021-01-06 03:48:36.456000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Health', 'Habits', 'Mental Health', 'Productivity'] |
Rationale Behind This Blog. I spend a lot of time thinking about… | I spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. I also spend quite a bit of time reading, learning new information, and trying to logically integrate this new data into my worldview.
I like to come up with theories on how things work and refine my theories over time until I have one that makes consistent and logical sense to me — I love theorizing and synthesizing information across a variety of domains and piecing an idea together until I’m satisfied with it, a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t necessarily need to look like anything in specific, or even be complete, but just refined enough to see that there is clearly some kind of picture.
The problem with this is I’m not exposing my ideas to other people to get criticism and it’s curtailing my ability to be confident in my ideas. I have no idea if I’m actually coming up with stuff that makes sense or if I’m just another example of the Dunning-Krueger effect at work.
So I need to share my ideas with others and have them critiqued, as that’s the only way I’ll improve my thinking and philosophy, isn’t it?
I want to be smarter, and the only way for me to do that is to learn from people more intelligent than me, even if they are shitting all over my precious golden calves.
This blog won’t be updated on any kind of real schedule, but I will try to make at least a post a month. The target audience in my mind is slatestarcodex readers, because I want to throw myself to the piranhas and get told I’m a retard, but constructively, by people who are either complete idiots or bondafide galaxy brained rationalists. I’ll be posting pet theories, book reviews/analysis and a bunch of random thoughts on disparate topics. | https://medium.com/synthesize-d/the-rationale-behind-this-blog-c254bb489d84 | ['J.M. Zorn'] | 2021-01-21 20:40:05.126000+00:00 | ['Rationality', 'Critical Thinking', 'Thinking', 'Improvement', 'Life'] |
The Disturbing Movie That’s Taken Tik Tok By Storm | There is no denying that the popular video app TikTok has taken the world by storm. Almost every Gen Z that owns a smart phone probably has the app downloaded and use it frequently. From the way the app is formatted, certain messages can spread really, really fast. And that includes movie and show recommendations.
One of these recent movie recommendations that has taken over TikTok is a low budget independent thriller called Meghan is Missing. This film was made in the style where all of the scenes are “found footage” and consist of video chat calls, media reports, and other digital recordings. The film was directed, written, and edited all by Michael Goi, and although was made in 2007, it wasn’t distributed until 2011 when Anchor Bay Films picked it up.
The film centers around a 14-year-old girl named Meghan Stewart, a popular teenager and honor student and the days leading up to her inevitable disappearance. The film starts on January 2, 2007 and the footage continues until February 6, 2007.
In the days before her disappearance, Megan starts talking to a guy online through video chat named “Josh” who she is flirting with. The audience never sees what Josh looks like when Megan and her best friend Amy to talk because he makes the claim that is webcam is “broken”. The film is directed to be a warning to minors to watch out for internet predators.
Around mid-November, the film started getting more attention on TikTok where many users shared their own thoughts and experiences watching it. Many people talked about being disturbed, traumatized, and anxious. Despite the film’s budget of less than $35,000, it still paints a raw and accurate depiction of child abduction. But not before doing this, the script is filled to the brim with raunchy and uncomfortably sexual dialogue for 14-year-old actors. | https://nicolekenney.medium.com/the-disturbing-movie-thats-taken-tik-tok-by-storm-a05805ca8c5d | ['Nicole Kenney'] | 2020-12-27 23:07:16.423000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Mental Health', 'Self', 'Social Media', 'Film'] |
¿Qué es Kaggle y cómo puedes entrar en esta comunidad? | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://planetachatbot.com/que-es-kaggle-y-como-puedes-entrar-871459da7752 | ['Planeta Chatbot'] | 2021-01-27 09:27:32.126000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Kaggle', 'Español', 'Inteligencia Artificial', 'Podcast'] |
Custom Libraries in Databricks: a SparkR Example with LightGBM | A problem and workaround for a custom solution
We were prompted to write this essay after working through an issue that was part of a larger project involving a custom-built machine-learning application for a Concurrency client. Specifically, the issue relates to leveraging custom libraries or packages in a way that conforms to a specific machine-learning design.
The Machine-learning Algorithm and Basic Design
This particular machine-learning application was required to identify and describe anomalous customer behavior throughout each day. Given that the transactions occur B2B and 100s of customers are invoking 100s of transactions per day, the results of our preliminary analysis suggested that the best approach was to model the behavior of each customer and flag behavior that deviates in a significant way. The implication is that each customer requires its own mathematical model. The machine-learning design is beyond the scope of this essay, but a component to the solution involved the use of R for statistical modeling and Microsoft’s LightGBM library (see https://lightgbm.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).
A small (but important) distinction
So far, this article may have raised an eyebrow given that Microsoft has built a custom gradient-boosting algorithm for Spark (https://github.com/Azure/mmlspark). Libraries like mmlspark are designed for distributed modeltrainingwhereas our architecture requires multiple model training across a distributed dataset fragmented by customer. This architecture is well suited for Spark since the feature-space is fairly large and customer behavior histories are considerably long. As a result, our grid-search cross-validation algorithm takes many minutes for each customer on a single virtual machine (3200% CPU utilization; 32 core, 128 GB RAM; Standard_D32s_v3 in Azure), and this duration was prohibitively long for 100s of customers. With Databricks, we can easily spin-up and spin-down a Spark cluster for highly parallelized model training, while dramatically reducing model training time.
Loading a custom library (like lightgbm) onto all compute nodes
There are two primary ways to accomplish this: 1) build an “init script” (Figure 1), which can automate downloading and installing of many packages on each node at cluster start-up and 2) compiling the package remotely and storing it within the distributed file system (Databricks proprietary filesystem is appropriately named dbfs; Figure 2). If it wasn’t obvious already, we don’t recommend the first approach simply because packages (and github repos) can (and will) change and init scripts will eventually fail given that they are written for a specific OS and package availability. The second approach protects you from most pitfalls, and the package will always be the same.
Figure 1 Location for viewing init scripts within the “clusters” Databricks interface. Init scripts are commonly written in bash.
Figure 2 Data viewer displaying the compressed folder containing the R package for lightgbm. Navigate here via Data (left pane) >> Add Data >> DBFS.
An aside on init scripts
An “init script” is a shell script that runs during startup for each cluster node before the Spark driver or JVM starts. You can use this shell script to carry out all the necessary steps to get the package to load on all the components of the cluster. Ensure all dependencies required to run the R package are installed in case they are not included in the standard build of R. Init scripts are loaded on the databricks page by accessing the ‘Clusters’ icon on the left panel and selecting your cluster in use. Under the ‘Configurations’ tab, click on ‘Advanced Options’, where you will find the tab init scripts. For linking the path to your shell script here follow the instructions given on this page — https://docs.azuredatabricks.net/user-guide/clusters/init-scripts.html#cluster-scoped-init-scripts. Anecdotally, we tested this approach; we wrote init script given that Spark is essentially managing a bunch of linux VMs, and the final shell script was about 20 lines of tech debt just to ensure that lightgbm would work. We abruptly abandoned this approach.
Compiling
However, if you want to use a package isn’t on CRAN (and not built for a distributed system), here’s how you can do it. Remember, the package that we want to load into the cluster needs to be distributed across the master and worker nodes, to enable independent processing on each shard.
To cover your bases, we recommend compiling the package on a linux OS since all databricks worker nodes are running linux (see https://github.com/Microsoft/LightGBM/tree/master/R-packagefor installation details). Once you’ve installed the package, navigate to the directory in which the package resides, which can be accessed via:
~$ R -e ‘.libPaths()’ [1] “/usr/local/lib/R/site-library” ~$ cd /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
You can check that the library is indeed present using something like
~$ ls -lrt | grep lightgbm
Then, compress the folder using tar
~$ tar -zcvf ~/lightgbm.tar.gz ./lightgbm
Now that we have the compressed archive file, we need to move it to our specific dbfs (see https://docs.databricks.com/user-guide/dbfs-databricks-file-system.html#access-dbfs-with-the-databricks-clifor details on installing the Databricks CLI for transferring data). With the Databricks CLI, we can use the following command to move data from the local file system to the remote dbfs (assuming that the folder, “r-packages,” has already been created).
~$ dbfs cp ~/lightgbm.tar.gz dbfs:/r-packages/
Test the package in a Databricks R notebook
First, test that the package installs and loads successfully on the head node.
Figure 3 Example showing that the lightgbm package was successfully installed and loaded on the head node of the cluster.
SparkR relies on its own user-defined function (UDF — more on this in a future essay) mechanism to run a more sophisticated function on a large dataset. In this case, a cross-validation function on a lightgbm model is to be run for data describing the behavior of a single customer. Worker nodes cannot make use of custom packages (and lightgbm) unless its installed and loaded within the UDF (Figure 4).
Figure 4 Sample UDF wherein lightgbm is installed and loaded. The “key, x” syntax conforms to SparkR requisites.
Finally, we can test this by calling the UDF through gapplyCollect() and handing it a bogus dataframe with a column named “a” (Figure 5).
Figure 5 Successful run of the testlibrary() UDF within the gapplyCollect() function, which distributes its input data frame across all worker nodes and processes each shard using the input function.
Now, the subsequent code we write within the UDF can leverage all capabilities of the lightgbm R-package.
Things to come
Given that you would invest tens of thousands of dollars on a distributed file system, you would better compression of the data so that more data can be stored in less space. Traditional data storage in raw human-readable file formats like CSV or JSON formats are inefficient and cannot be stored in a parallel manner, which makes processing this data very hard. The parquet file format — for Hadoop and other distributed file systems uses a flat columnar format. This make data storage and performance more efficient. Keep an eye on this blogspace for more blogs on how to build framework for forecasting supply stocking during a promotion period using Databricks! | https://medium.com/data-ml-engineering-with-databricks/custom-libraries-in-databricks-a-sparkr-example-with-lightgbm-2f70bfeeddd8 | ['Brian D Goodwin'] | 2019-04-25 21:26:52.817000+00:00 | ['Databricks', 'R', 'Spark', 'Lightgbm', 'Data Science'] |
What kinds of data work well with blockchain? | This was a question asked by the audience during one of our meetups.
Preamble
Blockchain technology is often touted to guarantee the veracity, provenance, and immutability of data in a wide variety of applications. But is this true? Or more precisely, is this true for all kinds of data? A similar question was posed at one of Taraxa’s meetups, and here we elaborate our thoughts on the subject.
What does “work well” mean?
While many metrics of excellence exist when it comes to handling or processing data, blockchain’s first application, bitcoin, has cemented a few interesting characteristics within the popular psyche — we describe a few here that are particularly relevant to the discussion.
Veracity is the truthfulness of the data, or how accurately it portrays the objective reality.
is the truthfulness of the data, or how accurately it portrays the objective reality. Provenance is the source and history of a piece of data, it tells you where / what / who generated the data and how it had been handled since generation.
is the source and history of a piece of data, it tells you where / what / who generated the data and how it had been handled since generation. Immutability is the un-changeability of the data, or that the data cannot be tampered with once generated.
Can blockchain technology guarantee these properties for all kinds of data? | https://medium.com/taraxa-project/what-kinds-of-data-work-well-with-blockchain-6e1d81c2782e | ['Steven Pu'] | 2019-12-18 01:48:10.150000+00:00 | ['IoT', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain 101', 'Taraxa', 'Oracle'] |
Learn react in 5 minutes…more or less | 🗣React 🗣React🗣 React , you’re probably hearing it everywhere and if you’ve wondered what it is and decided to put off learning it for whatever reason or just want an overview of what it is, how it functions you’ve come to the right place. React is simply a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is an open sourced JavaScript library created in Facebook which has now expanded its ability to build mobile apps(react native). Its used in almost every company this days both small and big including Facebook itself, Netflix, Microsoft and more
Your first react app
since this tutorial is about learning react and not about installation mumbo jumbo I’ll leave that up to you and focus on getting you your first app as fast as possible thus go to codesandbox and create a free account. start a new sandbox and select the react template.
and there you have it your first react app!
ReactDOM.render
Navigate to your index.js file inside the src directory. There you can find the ReactDOM.render method which is where the magic happens as this is where the element we want to render is shown.(we’ll be discussing elements shortly) The ReactDOM.render method takes two arguments: The element that we want and where we would like to display it. So lets remove the App element and add our own element. replace the ReactDOM.render method with the snippet below.
ReactDOM.render(React.createElement('h2',null,'Baba'), rootElement);
what this does is remove the previous app element you have and only display an h2 with a text of ‘Baba’. If you are wondering what that root element is go to index.html inside the public directory and find an element with an id of root.
React elements
Elements are the smallest building blocks of React apps. An element describes what you want to see on the screen:
const element = <h2>Hello, world</h2>;
Unlike browser DOM elements, React elements are plain objects, and are cheap to create. React DOM takes care of updating the DOM to match the React elements. so what we did above was just simply create an h2 element inside of the ReactDOM.render method.
JSX
consider the variable declaration
const element = <h1>Hello, world!</h1>;
This is neither a JavaScript string text or an html element. It’s JSX. In the above example we created an element using the React.createElement method but that was just one element if we wanted to create another element we would have to use another React.createElement. Now imagine if we have hundreds of elements we had to create and some where nested within each other. we would have tons of createElement calls and spaghetti code we would never want to see again. And that’s where JSX comes in. JSX in simple terms allows us to write html in our JavaScript code.
let name = 'Abel'
ReactDOM.render(
<h1>Baba</h1>
<h2 className="header__two">{name}</h2>
<p>This is simply a paragraph placeholder which has a <b>bold</b> element in it to show power of JSX </p>, rootElement);
Replacing the ReactDOM.render method with our above code shows the power of JSX and if you take a look at header 2 you can see that you can you JavaScript variables inside of your html by simply wrapping them with curly braces. Another thing to keep in mind is when we give classes instead of using class we use the className attribute because class is a keyword in JavaScript.
React components
Components are the core of your react application. They let you split the UI into independent, reusable pieces, and think about each piece in isolation. Conceptually, components are like JavaScript functions. They accept arbitrary inputs (called “props”) and return React elements describing what should appear on the screen.
function Welcome(props) {
return <h1>Hello, {props.name}</h1>;
}
React state with hooks
If there’s any sort of change in our code our react components will be rerendered whether a change of properties or a change of state. A stateful app in react is one which tracks your changes and a stateless one simply displays the UI. To add state to our app we add the {useState} hook
import React, {useState} from "react"
const [status, setStatus] = useState("open")
return (<h1>Hello, {props.name}
we are {status}
<button onClick={()=> setStatus('closed')}>button</button>
useState is a built in hook used to handle state changes in our application. Hook is a function that allows you to add some functionality to a component. The useState value returns two arguments, the first value that is returned is the state value and the second value is a function we use to change the state value.
There’s definitely way more to react than what you’ve read in the past five minutes and this was just an overview of what react’s about. If you are interested in finding out more I highly recommend going through the react docs or going through the free lessons on freecodecamp. | https://azariagebremichael.medium.com/learn-react-in-5-minutes-more-or-less-19e99481388f | [] | 2020-11-01 10:04:27.252000+00:00 | ['React In 5 Minutes', 'React', '5 Minutes', 'Reactjs'] |
LESSON I LEARNT FROM TWO BASTARDS | A LESSON I LEARNT FROM TWO BASTARDS
— — — — — — — — — — — — — This evening I was sitting under the pavilion with two guys beside me. And there was a lady standing right in front of me waiting patiently for some one.
As I was sitting, I was also observing every move of the two guys sitting beside me towards the girl. Those two guys keep disturbing this girl, asking her series of ridiculous questions but the girl did not reply them. Questions like; Where are you going, Who are you waiting for, Are you waiting for your boyfriend, Do you want to call your boyfriend, you can take my phone and call your boyfriend.....etc. Hope you understand when guys are like this, but I found it disgusting with their lack of mannerism.
After few minutes later,her boyfriend arrived and apologize to her for his lateness. then instead of keeping quiet, the guys continue to embarrass the girl in the presence of her boyfriend and this nearly cause a big fight.
THIS IS WHAT I LEARNT FROM THE TWO BASTARDS.
QUOTE...." Sometimes we human are the cause to the problems of our life, simply because of our STUPIDITY AND ARROGANCE.
https://www.facebook.com/100014572420492/posts/1035843333578071/?app=fbl | https://medium.com/@historyguardian/lesson-i-learnt-from-two-bastards-b8b21e160360 | ['The History Guardian'] | 2020-12-19 21:10:23.779000+00:00 | ['Brutalism', 'Relationships', 'Quotes', 'Life Lessons', 'Love'] |
MapTiler Desktop Next Generation | We designed the MapTiler Desktop to be the most user-friendly geodata processing tool. For the upcoming version, we are asking you, the community of users, to give us your feedback.
The vision
Since the very beginning, MapTiler Desktop was created to help turn files into zoomable maps. The simple user interface allows everyone, even creative people with no technical background, to process anything you drop into it — and create map layers and overlays on existing world maps.
Being the most user-friendly geodata processing tool for converting maps-data into a web and mobile-ready form.
Assigning location information to images or plans was always easy — with visual georeferencing — or powerful with other methods available for power users.
Raster tiles were recently complemented with vector tiles rendering functionality.
This all is the “good old stuff” we want to keep and improve. But what should be added next?
Make MapTiler Desktop more visual & interactive
One of the biggest news will be an ability to preview geodata files on your computer before you start to render.
Any kind of data can be viewed, including raster TIFF/GeoTIFF, MrSID, ECW, JPEG2000/GeoJP2, Erdas HFA, NOAA BSB/KAP, Ozi Explorer OZF2/OZFx3, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF with RGB color model, or vector GeoPDF, ESRI Shapefile, GeoJSON, GeoPackage, KML, and GPX.
The new version of MapTiler Desktop will also allow preview input files before rendering.
Interaction redesigned from the ground-up
The most visible improvement will be the brand new UI. The idea is to keep the simplicity and preserve workflows you are used to. We welcome your feedback on the functionality you are using the most — to make it even more visible.
All design elements, including icons, will be unified to respect the look&feel of our website and other products.
Brand new UX for vector tiles rendering
Rendering of vector tiles, which was added quite recently, will get a brand new well-thought-out interface. This UX will be started from scratch and allow much more functionality.
New dialogs for the main functionality
The navigation will be more clear because each step of the rendering wizard will have its name displayed in the top right corner.
Together with the navigation, the terminology will be adjusted, e.g. input files vs output files, input coordinate system vs output coordinate system, …
Powered by new components
The upcoming version of MapTiler Desktop will use the latest system components.
The graphical user interface will be written in Qt5, which uses a faster WebKit rendering engine. The newest WebKit also allows visual georeferencing using any modern web map service, including Google Maps.
Qt5 adds new possibilities and is available on all modern systems, including Windows 10, macOS 10.15, and Ubuntu 20.04.
Help us improve — give your feedback
To build the “most user-friendly geodata processing tool for converting data”, we need your feedback!
Check the roadmap, decide what to build next, and vote on submitted ideas! | https://medium.com/maptiler/maptiler-desktop-next-generation-ab84f50865b3 | [] | 2020-09-07 11:32:59.352000+00:00 | ['Maptiler', 'Maps', 'Georeference', 'Gdal', 'Qt'] |
How Writers Can Stop Being Consumed by the Fear of Not Being Good Enough | Although I have always considered myself a writer, I have also spent many years not writing. In fact, for most of high school, college, and my 20s, I didn’t write at all. Not one story, not one poem. During that period, I was mostly entangled in living the life of a depressed alcoholic, while trying to keep my shit somewhat together in the meantime. So, you could say I didn’t have time to write, but the truth was that I was really in no place to write.
I didn’t start writing seriously — and by seriously I mean that I committed to sitting down and doing it at least once a week — until 2006, one year after I got sober. Two things happened when I committed to the practice of writing. Number one, I found that it was hard. It challenged me on nearly every level and forced me to look honestly at my addictions, my demons, my self-loathing, and my depression. Number two, it felt better than anything I had ever done before. It felt like a huge relief to open doors within myself that had been closed for years and let all those long-buried thoughts and feelings pour out of me onto the page.
I spent 2006 until 2008 writing a huge sprawling mess of a memoir about my drinking days. I wasn’t thinking about revisions. I wasn’t thinking about publishing. I wasn’t even thinking about showing it to anyone, ever. It was just for me. My manuscript was this totally private place that I went to record the things I had seen and felt and lived through. It was a special, intimate refuge where I could be completely myself, drop out of daily life for a little while, and slow down enough to sift through my feelings and make sense of my past.
Then, I finished it. And then, I started another manuscript. Then I started a writing group. I got more and more dedicated to writing until I decided I wanted to try writing fiction, and I loved it. Then I started a blog and then I started coaching other writers. Things just sort of snowballed until I was at this point where I was waking up every day with multiple writing tasks already on my plate. This was a very good thing. I loved writing and I had always wanted to be a writer, so I was extremely grateful that I was living a life that included writing in so many different ways.
But something else happened, something not so good.
The more experienced I got with writing, especially after I published and started having to approach it from the business and publication side of things, the more I realized I was losing touch with that quiet, special, safe sanctuary that writing had always been for me. Much of the time, when I wrote anything now, I knew I was writing for an audience and so I always had the reader’s potential reaction in my mind. Sometimes the reader was an agent, or the judges of a writing contest, and sometimes they were the consumers on Amazon, browsing around looking for their next great story. But almost always, there was this someone who I was already picturing reading my stuff, and on some level, I was already worried about pleasing them.
I was already afraid that I wasn’t good enough.
When I stopped and searched around inside myself about how this made me feel as a writer, I saw that I had gone from feeling nourished and inspired about the practice of writing to worried and doubtful about my abilities as a writer. And as long as the focus stayed on this self-doubt about my abilities, my experience of writing was way less fun than it had been before.
I think this is an easy trap for any of us writers to fall into. We start out doing it because we love it, and because we need to do it. It’s essential for the health of our mind and heart and soul. Writing is the way we make sense of the world, and the way we make sense of ourselves. But somewhere along the way we get caught up in looking around at what everyone else is doing and if we should be doing it that way and if other people like our writing and if we’ll ever get their approval, or more sales, or some sort of award, or on the bestseller list, or whatever it is that our mind has grasped onto as our version of “winning the game.”
We get caught up, and then finally consumed, by the fear of not being good enough.
But the thing is, no matter what “winning the game” means to us, it is, at the core, all the same thing. It is an illusion. There is no winning the game. There are only events that happen, and then they pass. We get the approval, for a little while. We get the agent or the spike in sales or the award — or we get the rejection, the disappointment, or the lack of interest — and then it’s over, and we’re left again where we were before, alone with ourselves and our writing.
It can feel very disappointing and disheartening, if we have lost touch with the real reasons behind our commitment to the practice of writing.
No matter how lost we get in the comparison and achievement game that is so prevalent in our society, the truth is that writing is a sacred act that is a gift to each of us from the Universe. It is a safe place we can always go to soothe our troubled hearts and minds. It is a source of energy that feeds our imagination and creative spirit. And it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing or how they’re doing it. The practice of writing fits each of us, uniquely, like a glove, no matter who we are or what our experiences in life have been. And when we are able to pause from the frantic busyness of our lives and really see that, the fear of not being good enough gently falls away. It becomes obvious that there is no “good enough.” There is only whatever you are right now, in this moment, and whatever that is, it’s okay.
This is the important truth we must always come back to as writers. Writing is a practice that is a gift given to us. It is a refuge and a place of nourishment. It is a home where we are always welcome, and where it is always acceptable to be totally ourselves, no matter what that looks like to the rest of the world.
There is no “good enough.” There is only you, right now, and whatever that is, it’s enough.
Lauren Sapala is the author of Firefly Magic: Heart Powered Marketing for Highly Sensitive Writers, a guide to help any HSP, INFJ, INFP, or introvert writer move past resistance to selling and marketing their work. She is also the author of The INFJ Writer, a writing guide made specifically for sensitive intuitive writers. | https://losapala.medium.com/how-writers-can-stop-being-consumed-by-the-fear-of-not-being-good-enough-4f8d06c91945 | ['Lauren Sapala'] | 2019-09-06 15:50:14.784000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Writers On Writing', 'Inner Critic', 'Writers Life', 'Perfectionism'] |
What is Bitcoin Cash? | Hold up. Aren’t Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash the same thing, like Ethereum and Ether? Well, that depends on when a person first bought their Bitcoin. Anyone who held Bitcoin before Bitcoin Cash split from Bitcoin on August 1st, 2017 now has an equal amount of Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash. That’s because on that date, a decision was made to fork, or split the project because a general consensus about the modifications to the system couldn’t be reached. The folks that thought it should continue unaltered just kept truckin’, and the folks that thought it should alter in specific ways to address certain issues essentially made an exact copy of Bitcoin and then made their changes. Don’t worry — it was all above board and legal. It was democratization in progress! The good news is that people holding Bitcoin at that time now have both! If you held 50 Bitcoin, after August 1st you then held 50 Bitcoin plus 50 Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin cash took what was working well and improved on it, with some important changes that were stalling the original Bitcoin system. The increased block size creates faster transactions, faster confirmations and better long-term scaling without sacrificing reliability or stability. The changes also allow for lower transaction fees, making it easier to use for daily, small purchases. It is a popular cryptocurrency with active trading across many major exchanges. And of course, it continues the decentralized nature of the original framework. | https://medium.com/acreapp/what-is-bitcoin-cash-2ca1b8205895 | ['Meredith Davis'] | 2018-06-28 00:51:57.667000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoincash', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
Why You Should Read Ethan Strauss’s “The Victory Machine” | Why You Should Read Ethan Strauss’s “The Victory Machine”
This book tells a captivating story, satisfied basketball nostalgia, and says a lot about the state of the NBA
From the book’s cover
The absolute best sportswriting transcends its genre, telling human stories of success and failure that captivate nearly any audience. Reaching that level of storytelling is incredibly difficult, something that only a few writers can do. Today, I want to take a few minutes to talk about a book that does reach that rarefied status — The Victory Machine — by Ethan Sherwood Strauss.
In a little over 200 pages, Strauss tells the story of Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors in the 2018–2019 NBA season. That season ended in disaster for the team and the player, leaving Durant with a torn Achilles tendon and the Warriors in a battered ruin of their former glory. On its own, the book is a fascinating read. It’s also a great way to pass the time for anyone who misses basketball and, I think, a story with a lot to say about the current state of the NBA.
The Story Itself
The Victory Machine is a complex, well-written deep dive into one of the most captivating stories around professional sports over the last few years. That story, of course, is the tale of how one of the best players in the history of basketball (Kevin Durant) joined one of the best teams in the history of basketball (The Golden State Warriors) and created a once-in-a-lifetime juggernaut that terrified the entire league.
But nothing lasts forever and the Warriors dynasty fell apart after a few short years. It collapsed under the weight of egos and expectations. Now, the Warriors have the worst record in the NBA, while Durant rehabs from his injury on the Brooklyn Nets.
Most basketball fans already know the story beats of Durant’s exit from the Warriors. There was his injury in the NBA Finals, the Warriors’ defeat at the hands of the Toronto Raptors, and Durant’s subsequent exit in free agency, all events that have been picked over many times already. Strauss adds a level of detail and nuance missing from most accounts, though, drawing on his time spent around the team and intimate knowledge of its biggest personalities. I doubt there’s any reporter that knows the Warriors better than he does, and that level of insight is clear from the first few pages.
Strauss combines that deep knowledge of the Warriors with some of the best writing I’ve read in a basketball story. There are many great examples, but here’s my favorite (on Durant’s season-ending injury in the Finals):
“This was the night of Kevin Durant’s redemption and also the consummation of his Faustian bargain. For years, he’d wanted love and recognition from a fan base that wanted Steph to be the hero. On June 10, 2019, Kevin Durant was finally their hero. It just so happened to cost him his Achilles tendon.”
Here’s another memorable line, this time from the end of the book:
“He had left the greatest team ever, but the sun’s glow remained on Kevin Durant’s attenuated frame, just never offering enough warmth to make a man comfortable.”
To me, this is the most interesting part of the book. Durant as a figure seems constantly unhappy, looking for fulfillment that constantly seems to elude him. He clearly couldn’t find it in Oklahoma City, or Oakland, despite finding levels of success that most athletes can only dream of.
Strauss writes at one point, “The Warriors had the most talent for KD to play alongside and some good years remaining. Still, he had a foot out the door because that setup wasn’t satiating emotionally.” Whatever Durant’s looking for, I sincerely hope he does in Brooklyn.
Whether it’s on sneakers, basketball games, or the comments of the athletes themselves, Strauss’s writing never fails to draw the reader in. It surely helps that the subject matter is one that already captivates millions, but Strauss knows how to emphasize what’s important and how to show the complicated natures of both Durant and the Warriors. This is, ultimately, a tale of humans looking for happiness. With Strauss at the helm, nothing important is left out.
Why It’s Worth Reading Now
In 2020, as we all know, the NBA season was cut off with no return date. Right now, reading this book is the closest one can get to real basketball. For no other reason than that, it’s worth picking up a copy. Personally, flipping through these pages takes me back to the summer of last year.
I remember exactly how it felt to see the Warriors fall and realize that this could be the end of one of the greatest dynasties sports has ever seen. We can’t watch live basketball right now, but Strauss’s book is a good reminder of what it felt like just a year ago.
But what I love the most about this book — even more than the writing and the nostalgia — is that it highlights exactly what so many people love about the NBA. Perhaps more than any other book I’ve read, The Victory Machine shows the tensions between players and teams, between superstars and owners, that make the league so interesting. In no other sport could a player of Durant’s caliber command so much attention, but the NBA is uniquely set up to give its best players an incredible amount of control over both their own futures and the futures of teams.
The influence and notoriety of superstar NBA players is a blessing and a curse for the league. The blessing is a near-infinite amount of buzz and attention on social media. The curse is that this buzz and attention doesn’t always translate to revenue and tv ratings.
In one of his podcast episodes last year, NBA writer Zach Lowe commented on the relatively small amount of attention the Toronto Raptors got after winning the Finals. Instead, as he pointed out, most fans just wanted to talk about the advent of free agency. Those two things seem pretty closely linked to me.
Even before COVID-19 shut basketball down, the NBA was thinking about how to drive higher tv ratings. The league’s financial footing was already a little unsure, and now the immediate future looks bleak from a revenue perspective. The NBA will be fine in the long term, but it’s at least plausible that fans are so interested in the lives and attitudes of the game’s biggest personalities that they don’t care about the games themselves. That’s something the league needs to figure out.
It’s fine for people to care more about players than teams, and it’s fine for people to care more about teams than players. I think it’s great that the NBA can mean so many different things to so many different people. Personally, I think that players like Durant are so interesting because their decisions directly affect which franchises succeed or fail. I’m more interested in the story of the collective Warriors than on any one of the franchise’s individual players, but what I love the most is that all of these stories are intertwined together. | https://medium.com/the-coastline-is-quiet/why-you-should-read-ethan-strausss-the-victory-machine-4772760fbc42 | ['Thomas Jenkins'] | 2020-05-10 14:22:02.737000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'Writing', 'NBA', 'Reading', 'Books'] |
Github lanza el Modo Oscuro | GitHub: Where the world builds software
GitHub is where over 56 million developers shape the future of software, together. Contribute to the open source… | https://medium.com/zurvin/github-lanza-el-modo-oscuro-4b80c529a755 | ['Kike Sanchez'] | 2020-12-09 22:04:45.829000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Dark', 'Github', 'Repositories', 'Dark Mode'] |
ARYZE: Remittances 2.0. This week we are welcoming Carl Jenster… | Please describe briefly, what problem ARYZE is trying to solve?
The way that money is moved today is a complex, expensive and unnecessarily “heavy” process. Intermediaries that have to verify transactions are numerous, and all require a small fee and time to process a payment. It all comes down to the fundamental problem that money, in its current form, is still quite analog. Traditional banking relies on fractional reserve in order to work, in the sense that a bank issues digital IOUs, whereupon they can lend out a large portion of consumer deposits in order to fund their business models.
Furthermore, the innovations that we see in cryptocurrency are largely incompatible with the traditional financial system. Volatility in cryptocurrencies is an element of risk that regular businesses will never accept, and the credit risk of cryptos is something that corporations have decidedly distanced themselves from. However, programmable money is a benefit of crypto that businesses really need — so how do we find the middle-ground? ARYZE creates Digital Cash, which is a digital representation of fiat currencies that is stable, pegged 1-to-1, programmable and redeemable through a full-reserve banking model. We utilize central bank issued bonds as the majority of our collateralization, and in that way achieve a high credit-rating for our digital cash, which in turn mimics the value and behavior of actual cash.
Furthermore, this programmable money that we issue is transactable in our system at zero transaction cost to the business or consumer that chooses to use it.
On top of this engine room, we build several products. The flagship product is called MAMA, which stands for Multi-Asset Modular Application. This is the payment app that will not only function as the digital wallet, but will also allow businesses and developers to build “modules” on top of the Digital Cash ecosystem. Besides that, we also address the needs of businesses and corporations seeking to optimize their own supply-chain and cash management, by providing a Business version of the product, which essentially is an overview dashboard with additional analytical tool for managing treasury and other recurring transactions.
How does a typical “traditional” journey of a person who wants to transfer money from the United States to South Africa looks like today? What are the major obstacles people are facing?
Today, someone seeking to transfer $200 from the United States to South Africa has a few options to transfer money. The most obvious (and perhaps the cheapest way) is to use Western Union to transfer. The process has the cost of approximately 5%, as South Africa is still heavily reliant upon cash, and bank transfers will be even more expensive. Western Union has a monopoly on these kinds of remittance corridors, as they have a network of physical kiosks in many different countries. However, South Africa is also a country where crime, robbery and armored cash-transport heists are rampant, and cash appears to be at the root of this issue.
The major obstacle is how to onboard users of a cash-reliant economy into a digital payments ecosystem, which we feel starts with the employers. By providing a payments ecosystem and Digital Cash, where transaction fees are reduced to zero, businesses are incentivized to encourage employees and customers to use ARYZE. The true barrier though lies in a gradual adaptation to a new way of transacting currencies. By enabling businesses to build solutions on top of an improved currency vehicle, Digital Cash, we provide the fundamental platform on which the next age of innovation can flourish.
How can blockchain technology improve the process?
Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology can significantly reduce the cost in the transfer of monetary value in the global market. We intend to bring such technologies to market by delivering a custodial service that is secure, from a technological standpoint, and has a sound and transparent value proposition behind it — namely, digital fiat currency.
By providing our custodial service of the underlying funds and continuously verifying and auditing the deployed ledger against current holdings, we ensure that our platform can be a trusted building block that enables the technological pivot in today’s financial operations.
We use blockchains and distributed ledgers for a multitude of services and microservices, including the transaction ledger, identity and security and risk management/business intelligence. Using DLT as a mitigator of transparency, there is a total oversight of internal holdings that can give signals to our internal trading floor. The internal trading floor ensures that current holdings are always 1 to 1 with issued digital cash, and are readable with users with the appropriate access.
Furthermore, it’s our ambition that we integrate with existing exchanges and decentralized exchanges as long as they fulfill our requirements for AML compliance. At this time, we cannot comment on which blockchain services we are using.
4. Please walk us through an example that illustrates the cost saving and other specific advantages by comparing a “traditional” and “new” process of a remittance transfer done by a worker in Denmark sending money to his family in Africa. What happens behind the scenes?
Western Union
John, in Denmark, has money in a bank account and wishes to send 100 Danish kroner (DKK) to Bill, in South Africa. Bill wishes to receive South African rand (ZAR). John goes to a Western Union kiosk, located at the local train station. He specifies the recipient’s name, phone number, email, and informs the teller that his friend Bill wishes to receive rand. The teller informs John of the currency exchange rate that he will be given, as well as the service charge that Western Union places on the exchange. (for a 100 DKK to ZAR transfer, the fee is roughly 50% of the transaction!) Western Union does not utilize SWIFT network for validating and instead uses an internal network of operators with their own supply of cash-on-hand to facilitate withdrawals. When John informs of the desired destination for the money to be sent, Bill can pick it up as long as he has the proper identification to verify. In reality, Bill could pick it up from any Western Union agent in any location in the world. Despite the process being relatively quick, the fees are high and the identification that is needed for the transaction can be counterfeited. Bill receives his transaction in local currency upon providing his ID, and has essentially received half of what John originally sent.
ARYZE
John, in Denmark, has money in a bank account and wishes to send 100 Danish kroner (DKK) to Bill, in South Africa. Bill wishes to receive South African rand (ZAR). John and Bill both sign up for an ARYZE account, and complete the necessary KYC/AML validations. John deposits money into the ARYZE ecosystem at no charge. John specifies which account he wishes to send money from, and types in Bill’s username/email address, as well as the currency format output desired. Through ARYZE, John transfers 100 DKK to Bill, on the other end, instantly. ARYZE handles the foreign exchange to ZAR at no additional charge. Bill, on the receiving end, can receive the desired currency in their ARYZE account in Digital Cash format, or choose to withdraw to their bank in a traditional currency format, without having lost more than 1–2% of the currency’s value on the exchange spread.
What role does your Security Token play within the ecosystem you are building?
The RYZE token is the asset sold during the STO and will be used to pay fees in the ecosystem and to pay dividends to shareholders. The backing of Digital Cash comes from actual deposits of fiat money. The government bonds will be held by an intermediary capital markets bank, off balance sheet.
So, the RYZE token is the fuel of the ecosystem. This is a hybrid utility/security token that is used to pay any fee or subscription in the platform. This could be a business subscription for the platform, or a developer account, for example. The RYZE token is part of a burn mechanism, where 50% of the gross profits of ARYZE are used to buy-back the token from the open market and are subsequently destroyed, on a regular basis. Holding RYZE gives holders right to dividend payments through token burn. No dilution of supporting business, and no additional RYZE will be created. There are no voting rights associated with holding RYZE.
Which are the biggest upcoming challenges for ARYZE to become a successful business long-term?
Finding the right strategic partnerships and first initial clients, in order for us to swiftly gain traction with our product will be the primary goal. Right now, we are in dialog with some key players that will allow our road to market to be very efficient, as we are not focused on serving a retail customer market, but rather a business-to-business-to-consumer strategic model that incentivizes businesses to onboard their own customers/employees.
That being said, raising funds through an STO from Denmark presents a challenge in and of itself in the sense that regulations surrounding the method are still fresh. We have a strong understanding of what is required, through cooperation with our valued partnerships and advisors, yet also realizing that such regulations are subject to constant scrutiny, review and change is something that we are aware of and ready to adapt.
Thank you for the Interview!
If you like what you read, please clap (max. is 50x)
To see all new Security Token Offerings (STOs) on STOcheck, click here
To follow us on Twitter & Telegram, just follow us ;)
To get our Monthly Report on the Security Token Market click here | https://medium.com/stocheck/aryze-overtaking-swift-7ed97dd45042 | ['Stefan Perlebach'] | 2019-05-20 13:08:40.474000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Company', 'Security Token'] |
Visualising temperatures in Amsterdam as a heatmap in R — Part I | I was recently playing with heatmaps and decided to use one to visualise temperature data for Amsterdam.
Obtaining the data:
The Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (Koninklijk Nedarlands Meteorologisch Instituut in Dutch, or KNMI for short) provides historical weather data going back to 1950s for free. You can get the data for a weather station of your choice from their measurements and observations page (in Dutch). They give both hourly and daily readings. I got hold of the daily data for Schiphol (weather station no. 240) from this page.
Reading and understanding the data:
The data is formatted as a CSV file. The first few lines have explanations in Dutch and English describing each field. These lines have not been prefixed with any comment character (typically #), so we’ll skip them when we read the file. The content we are interested in begins at row 48 — the header row.
t <- read.csv('~/Downloads/etmgeg_240.txt', skip=47)
str(t) 'data.frame': 24311 obs. of 41 variables:
$ X..STN : int 240 240 240 240 240 240 240 240 240 240 ...
$ YYYYMMDD: int 19510101 19510102 19510103 19510104 19510105 19510106 19510107 19510108 19510109 19510110 ...
$ DDVEC : int 188 153 203 193 207 185 240 203 246 176 ...
$ FHVEC : int 77 41 15 77 82 57 134 77 67 51 ...
$ FG : int 87 41 21 77 87 62 144 82 72 62 ...
$ FHX : int 195 82 51 103 144 123 180 103 129 103 ...
$ FHXH : int 18 4 24 15 21 22 13 20 12 21 ...
$ FHN : int 41 10 0 51 36 0 62 51 21 26 ...
$ FHNH : int 24 21 3 1 24 3 24 1 24 3 ...
$ FXX : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ FXXH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ TG : int 12 13 3 12 48 64 67 61 41 26 ...
$ TN : int -13 7 -20 -7 18 46 58 36 6 -8 ...
$ TNH : int 1 4 9 6 1 4 24 2 24 5 ...
$ TX : int 26 18 16 19 84 86 86 70 63 61 ...
$ TXH : int 20 19 23 16 21 24 1 14 1 24 ...
$ T10N : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ T10NH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ SQ : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ SP : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ Q : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ DR : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ RH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ RHX : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ RHXH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ PG : int 9891 9876 10019 10098 10059 10043 10026 10084 10089 10090 ...
$ PX : int 9957 9923 10097 10114 10094 10087 10105 10115 10151 10148 ...
$ PXH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ PN : int 9837 9853 9931 10084 10030 9980 9957 10040 10034 10016 ...
$ PNH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ VVN : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ VVNH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ VVX : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ VVXH : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
$ NG : int 7 8 6 7 8 8 8 7 5 5 ...
$ UG : int 90 93 94 94 95 89 82 93 89 89 ...
$ UX : int 98 98 100 97 100 100 94 97 96 95 ...
$ UXH : int 6 9 21 12 5 3 4 8 1 2 ...
$ UN : int 73 88 83 89 89 72 76 88 76 78 ...
$ UNH : int 20 1 12 8 14 23 16 17 14 12 ...
$ EV24 : int NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA ...
So we have a wide variety of weather observations — although readings for some metrics are not available for every year. The farther you go in the past, the sketchier the data. For our exercise, let’s get started with just the daily temperature data for the year 2016. YYYYMMDD is the date colum, while TX and TN columns contain the maximum and minimum temperatures respectively. The temperatures are in 0.1ºC units (e.g. 10ºC appears as 100 in this file), so we’ll divide them by 10.
Filtering and modifying the data:
We’ll use the filter function from the dplyr package to filter the data for 2016. We’ll then use the select function to pick just the fields that we need and assign this subset to a new dataframe.
library(dplyr)
t %>% filter(YYYYMMDD >= 20160101 & YYYYMMDD <= 20161231) %>% select(YYYYMMDD, TN, TX) -> t.2016
Next, we’ll make some changes to this data. The date for each observation (the YYYYMMDD column) is stored as an integer. We’ll convert it to a proper date object and then break it into handy units — year, month, week, weekday and day — for later use. While we are at it, we’ll also divide the temperatures by 10. We’ll use the lubridate package for dealing with the dates.
library(lubridate)
t.2016 %>% mutate(
date = as.Date(as.character(YYYYMMDD), format="%Y%m%d"),
year = year(date),
month = month(date, label=T, abbr=T),
week = strftime(date,"%W"),
wday = substring(wday(date, label=T, abbr=T),1,2),
day = day(date),
TN = TN / 10,
TX = TX / 10
) -> t.2016
head(t.2016) YYYYMMDD TN TX date year month week wday day
1 20160101 1.1 8.0 2016-01-01 2016 Jan 00 Fr 1
2 20160102 4.6 6.5 2016-01-02 2016 Jan 00 Sa 2
3 20160103 5.3 8.5 2016-01-03 2016 Jan 00 Su 3
4 20160104 4.3 7.2 2016-01-04 2016 Jan 01 Mo 4
5 20160105 4.4 7.7 2016-01-05 2016 Jan 01 Tu 5
6 20160106 1.8 4.4 2016-01-06 2016 Jan 01 We 6
Visualising the data:
Let’s take a first stab a visualising the maximum temperatures as a heatmap. We’ll use the viridis colour palette for our heatmap.
library(ggplot2)
library(viridis)
ggplot(data = t.2016, aes(x=day,y=month)) + geom_tile(aes(fill=TX)) + scale_fill_viridis()
We can clearly see the spread of summer in Amsterdam from May-Sep, the warmest day of the year in July and patches of very cold days in Jan and Dec.
We’ll now make a few more minor tweaks:
We’ll label all the days on x-axis rather than have ggplot pick something for us. After all, we know that a month doesn’t have more than 31 days. While we are at it, we’ll make sure that the days (x-axis) start from 1 and not from 0. We’ll also nudge the y-axis a little closer to the heatmap. Since these are maximum temperatures, I’d like to pick a colour palette that evokes warmth. Viridis comes with 3 more colour palettes — magma, plasma and inferno and we’ll pick the magma theme to do the job. In the screenshot above, the tiles look pretty nice but depending on the size of your plot window, they might come out looking squished. We’ll lock the tiles to always be in a 1:1 ratio — irrespective of the width and height of the plot window. As a final touch, we’ll hide the grey grid in the background by using a different theme. I am fan of the tufte theme from the ggthemes package.
library(ggthemes)
ggplot(data = t.2016, aes(x = day,y = month)) +
geom_tile(aes(fill = TX)) +
scale_x_continuous(breaks=c(1:31), expand=c(0,0)) + coord_equal(ratio = 1) +
scale_fill_viridis(option="magma") + theme_tufte(base_family="Helvetica")
I personally find that the summer months stand out even better with the magma theme.
Links:
If you like the viridis library, do read the vignette. I also found the SciPy2015 video mentioned in the vignette very educational. I learned a lot of the techniques I used here from this post by Bob Rudis.
Up Next:
While I am quite pleased with how far we got here, there is a lot more that we can do with a year worth of temperature data. In the next post, I will share an approach to make the heatmap look like an actual calendar.
Update: Part II is now up as is the source code for both parts. | https://towardsdatascience.com/visualising-temperatures-in-amsterdam-as-a-heatmap-in-r-part-i-7e1be1e251c0 | ['Deepak Gulati'] | 2018-02-19 08:29:53.909000+00:00 | ['Heatmap', 'Data Science', 'R', 'Ggplot2'] |
Demand for Data Skills has Skyrocketed | Demand for Data Skills has Skyrocketed
Top data skills you need in today’s data-driven world and how to acquire them
Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash
I. Introduction
In the past decade, the demand for individuals with data skills has skyrocketed. A recent study using data collected from LinkedIn shows that most of the top tech jobs in the United States and worldwide are related to data, as shown in the figures below:
Image by Benjamin O. Tayo
Image by Benjamin O. Tayo
The figures above show that most of the top tech jobs today’s world are related to data. As more and more companies are becoming data-driven, it is no surprise that there is a high demand for workers with data-related skills (data mining, data storage, data retrieval, data transformation and cleaning, and data analysis). We also notice that infrastructures such as Linux, Azure, and AWS that are used for large scale data science projects also feature among the top tech skills. This is because more and more companies are using cloud computing for data science and machine learning projects.
The growth in the demand for skilled workers with advanced data skills can be attributed to 3 factors:
The world is producing data at an unprecedented rate; as a result, data has become a new commodity with extremely high value. There is, therefore, a need for highly skilled individuals to mine, transform, and analyze the data. More and more companies are becoming data-driven. These companies are now creating teams of skilled workers that can work together to leverage the power of data for improving daily business operations or increasing sales and profits. Global competition in the leveraging of tech skills for optimizing business operations and for decision making is increasing. As a result, many companies are putting more resources into recruiting, hiring, and nurturing the right talent to remain in the global competition.
If you are considering joining the data workforce, you may be wondering about what data skills you need and how to acquire them.
II. Data Job Titles
Some of the top data job titles that are in high demand include the following:
a) Data Scientist
b) Data Analyst
c) Business Intelligence Analyst
d) Database Developer
e) Database Administrator
f) Data Engineer
g) Data Analytics Manager
h) Big Data Software Developer
i) Cloud Developer
j) Cloud Software Engineer
III. How to acquire data skills?
1. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
The rising demand for data science practitioners has given rise to a proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOC). The most popular providers of MOOC include the following:
a) edx: https://www.edx.org/
b) Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/
c) DataCamp: https://www.datacamp.com/
d) Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/
e) Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/
f) Lynda: https://www.lynda.com/
If you are going to be taking one of these courses, keep in mind that some MOOCs are 100% free, while some do require you to pay a subscription fee (it could range anywhere from $50 to $200 per course or more, varies from platforms to platforms). Keep in mind that gaining expertise in any discipline requires an enormous amount of time and energy. So do not be in a rush. Make sure that if you decide to enroll in a course, you should be ready to complete the entire course, including all assignments and homework. Some of the quizzes and homework assignments will be quite challenging. However, keep in mind that if you don’t challenge yourself, you wouldn’t be able to grow in your knowledge and skills.
Having completed so many data science MOOCs myself, find below are 3 of my favorite data science specializations.
(i) Professional Certificate in Data Science (HarvardX, through edX)
Includes the following courses, all taught using R (you can audit courses for free or purchase a verified certificate):
Data Science: R Basics; Data Science: Visualization; Data Science: Probability; Data Science: Inference and Modeling; Data Science: Productivity Tools; Data Science: Wrangling; Data Science: Linear Regression; Data Science: Machine Learning; Data Science: Capstone
(ii) Analytics: Essential Tools and Methods (Georgia TechX, through edX)
Includes the following courses, all taught using R, Python, and SQL (you can audit for free or purchase a verified certificate):
Introduction to Analytics Modeling; Introduction to Computing for Data Analysis; Data Analytics for Business.
(iii) Applied Data Science with Python Specialization (the University of Michigan, through Coursera)
Includes the following courses, all taught using python (you can audit most courses for free, some require the purchase of a verified certificate):
Introduction to Data Science in Python; Applied Plotting, Charting & Data Representation in Python; Applied Machine Learning in Python; Applied Text Mining in Python; Applied Social Network Analysis in Python.
2. Learning from a Textbook
Learning from a textbook provides a more refined and in-depth knowledge beyond what you get from online courses. This book provides a great introduction to data science and machine learning, with code included: “Python Machine Learning”, by Sebastian Raschka. https://github.com/rasbt/python-machine-learning-book-3rd-edition
The author explains fundamental concepts in machine learning in a way that is very easy to follow. Also, the code is included, so you can actually use the code provided to practice and build your own models. I have personally found this book to be very useful in my journey as a data scientist. I would recommend this book to any data science aspirant. All that you need is basic linear algebra and programming skills to be able to understand the book.
There are lots of other excellent data science textbooks out there such as “Python for Data Analysis” by Wes McKinney, “Applied Predictive Modeling” by Kuhn & Johnson, “Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques” by Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank & Mark A. Hall, and so on.
3. Medium
Medium is now considered one of the fastest-growing platforms for learning about data science. If you are interested in using this platform for data science self-study, the first step would be to create a medium account. You can create a free account or a member account. With a free account, there are limitations on the number of member articles that you can access per month. A member account requires a monthly subscription fee of $5 or $50/year. Find out more about becoming a medium member from here: https://medium.com/membership. With a member account, you will have unlimited access to medium articles and publications.
The 2 top data science publications on the medium are Towards Data Science and Towards AI. Every day, new articles are published on medium covering topics such as data science, machine learning, data visualization, programming, artificial intelligence, etc. Using the search tool on the medium website, you can have access to so many articles and tutorials covering a wide variety of topics in data science from basic to advanced concepts.
4. KDnuggets Website
KDnuggets is a leading site on AI, Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, Data Science, and Machine Learning. On the website, you can find important educational tools and resources in data science as well as tools for professional development:
5. GitHub
GitHub contains several tutorials and projects on data science and machine learning. Besides being an excellent resource for data science education, GitHub is also an excellent platform for portfolio building. For more information on creating a data science portfolio on GitHub, please see the following article: A Data Science Portfolio is More Valuable than a Resume.
6. LinkedIn
As data science is a field that is ever-evolving due to technological innovations and the development of new algorithms, one way to stay current is to join a network of data science professionals. LinkedIn is an excellent platform for networking. There are several data science groups and organizations on LinkedIn that one can join such as Towards AI, DataScienceHub, Towards data science, KDnuggets, etc. You can also follow top leaders in the field on this platform.
7. YouTube
YouTube contains several educational videos and tutorials that can teach you the essential math and programming skills required in data science, as well as several data science tutorials for beginners. A simple search would generate several video tutorials and lectures.
8. Khan Academy
Khan academy is also a great website for learning basic math, statistics, calculus, and linear algebra skills required in data science.
IV. Summary
In summary, we’ve discussed some of the top data skills that are currently in high demand. As more and more companies are becoming data-driven, the demand for workers with advanced data-related skills will continue to increase. The skills to focus on in today's demand will depend on what tech sector one is interested in. For data analysts/data scientists’ job roles, it is essential to master skills such as SQL, Python, Machine Learning, and AWS. | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/demand-for-data-skills-has-skyrocketed-27dbff5058f2 | ['Benjamin Obi Tayo Ph.D.'] | 2020-11-23 17:06:58.745000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Data Driven', 'Data', 'Machine Learning', 'Technology Skills'] |
AYS Daily Digest 01/06/20: 11,000 people in Greece at risk to lose their shelter | AYS Daily Digest 01/06/20: 11,000 people in Greece at risk to lose their shelter
Greece start largest equipment purchase for riot police since 2004 // Solidarity from Syria // Cyprus launches SMS campaign // French Activist Cedric Herrou faces another court case and more… Are You Syrious? Follow Jun 2, 2020 · 4 min read
Protests against the eviction. Photo: Twitter/@Refugees_Gr
Greece
As more than 11,000 people are at risk of losing their shelter in Greece, protests are organized from Tuesday on as the process of moving them out of state facilities began. According to Efsyn, even pro-government press started to criticize a lack of planning and financial mismanagement. Ekathimerini adds that it was unclear how long this will take and how many of these people received asylum or have been rejected and therefore may face deportation. “Those who have been granted asylum will be able to join job training programs and claim social benefits”, the Migration Ministry said. However it is not clear whether the people will receive cash assistance.
The Khora Asylum Support Team reminds us that all white cards which have expired between 13 March and 31 May are automatically extended for six months. Hence, it is not necessary for now to renew this document until the new deadline. It may be helpful to take a copy of this decision to show to police in case of a control.
After more than one week of quarantine in a bus, 16 people on Lesvos were transferred to the camp of Kara Tepe. A new site for quarantine was opened there , writes Ekathimerini. Additionally, 213 new arrivals from May on the island were quarantined in Megala Therma in the north of Lesvos.
On 29 and 30 May, 99 people were prevented from crossing the Mediterranean and pushed back to the mainland by the Turkish Coast Guard.
Meanwhile, Greece introduced the highest equipment purchase for its riot police since the Olympic Games in 2004. As the country intends to prepare for another attempt by Turkey to open its border towards the EU, “shields, helmets, uniforms, bullet-proof vests and other supplies, including large quantities of tear gas” worth 20–34 million euros were bought, Ekathimerini reports. The EU Commission promised 700 million euros to the country to secure its border. | https://medium.com/are-you-syrious/ays-daily-digest-01-06-20-11-000-people-in-greece-at-risk-to-lose-their-shelter-ab2a9ee0d95f | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2020-06-02 13:01:03.581000+00:00 | ['Syria', 'Digest', 'Refugee', 'Greece', 'France'] |
The audit of AUDITCHAIN by Dpad | With due respect to the founders and board members of this project, it’s a bit tough to interpret the concept of this project and write a review. I’ll try my best to interpret the project idea correctly.
Key Points of IDO
IDO launching on Trustpad Process Control NFT A different project, focusing on a core sector like accounting. The team members are senior and experienced in different domains
Let’s explore the project in 9 parameters as we do always.
Idea
The idea is a long awaited concept bound to happen sometime, the accounting ledgers and data handling will eventually shift to Blockchain and the world of decentralized database shall exist. But that imaginative project shall have to be very dynamic to find it’s path through the hierarchical structure of the corporates. As a crypto believer we respect to the Auditchain team for leading a project in such an uncomfortable domain.
Website
Honestly speaking about the website, it is extremely boring and outdated. It lacks in almost every aspect of web designing, specially in comparison to the crypto industry projects. The colors are not appealing, web design is boring, illustrations are very simple and boring, no trace of animations available anywhere on any page. Also it’s not that the team doesn’t care about the cosmetics, on Twitter there are many posters with motion graphic animations. Thus, by checking the website we can simply conclude that the team has web developers those are not in sync with current market trends. And believe me, it’s going to be real tough journey if the team can’t catch up with the current market trends.
Professionalism
The team members are senior guys from corporates, and they know their work well. We can expect their behavior to be professional most of the time. The team definitely needs addition of young people to make the project more lively.
Token Feasibility
It’s hard to analyze the feasibility of AUDT tokens at this stage, as an spectator. The token utility is not much clear from the website or Whitepaper.
Market Fit
On the market fit front, I think there will be high friction in onboarding clients targeting to update their accounting processes. Most of the account managers in the corporate are Boomers, and they won’t find it comfortable to update their accounting ledgers.
Team
The team members are senior corporate people having worked in different domains. They need young people in the team. The founder is a veteran in business and technology. According to the project concept, they need to have access to the corporate client’s board room. So the experience of team members will be the reason that they will have access to corporate clients.
Partners
There are few partners related to accounting, crypto community, conferences, etc. It doesn’t seem they have put much efforts or budget in partnerships.
Whitepaper
While treading through the whitepaper of this project, a sudden nostalgic feeling touched me, like the Whitepaper was transported directly from the ICO craze of 2017 crypto bull market. The 9 page document tries to resemble with the great original Bitcoin whitepaper. Since the document puts it straight that this is a fork of Ethereum and references the tech to the main Ethereum code, so they didn’t need to explain any of the tech behind the project.
Marketing
The marketing effort is definitely visible on the social media, mainly Twitter from the past few months. Although the rigorous marketing campaign is lacking, maybe due to the limited budget. They have collaborated with whoever they could. As compared to other IDO projects, the marketing strength is quite low of this project.
Conclusion
After reviewing this project, the vibes are not much exciting. It’s a core infrastructural work to be done for a long term. The team can work on the core tasks, but keeping up with the fast running crypto industry shall be uncomfortable for the current team, unless they hire and accommodate new young talents from the crypto industry. The token utility can be good but the adoption of the chain by the target market seems rough.
Any suggestions are welcome on this review.
DPAD is building a decentralized protocol for crypto launchpad where anyone can raise funds for their business idea. The whole process on DPAD is decentralized and user controlled. DPAD supports the decentralization of crypto, true ownership of crypto assets. Learn more about DPAD on the following links: | https://medium.com/@dpadofficial/the-audit-of-auditchain-by-dpad-493ae516fb75 | [] | 2021-12-14 11:43:22.419000+00:00 | ['Auditchain', 'Accounting', 'Dpad Finance', 'Trustpad'] |
Pibble Sponsors the Hangang 42K Nightwalk in Seoul | At the foundation of Pibble is People.
We want everyone to live their best life, engage with each other, and act as a support structure for each other across the globe, regardless of where they are living. You can see this within the main functions of the Pibble app, we provide a way for individual users to raise money for charities and crowdfund their own dreams. But, beyond that, we are looking for traditional partners that can help us spread awareness for blockchain and cryptocurrency while providing a positive message of the impact that it can have.
With this in mind, Pibble is proud to sponsor the Hangang Nightwalk 42K.
What is the Hangang Nightwalk?
The ‘Hangang Night Walk 42K’ is a walking marathon program held at the Han River in Seoul (gang=river in Korean). This marathon has been held for 4 years and almost 10,000 participants join each year to walk along Hangang from night until the next morning. The event offers 3 courses for participants: a 15km, 25km, and 42km routes that they can walk through the night. Before the start of the walk, everyone will gather for a concert and do some group stretching.
However, the event is more about camaraderie and creating a shared experience, as it is a non-competitive walking marathon. It is about challenging your limits, focusing on your inner self, and honestly a great excuse to spend the night out with your friends and loved ones while enjoying the beauty of the Han River. With this in mind, Pibble jumped at the opportunity to sponsor an event about community building that also promotes both physical and mental health.
More information soon about what Pibble will be doing as part of our sponsorship. If you are attending, come check us out at the Pibble booth!
Early nightwalk from 2018
Event Details
Where: Starting from the Yeouido Park at the Han River in Seoul
When? 5pm July 27th 2019 (Saturday)— 8am July 28th 2019 (Sunday)
*Unfortunately, all the tickets have already been sold out**
If you cannot attend the Nightwalk but would still like to show your support, please check out their social media links or support us or any of the other sponsors.
We hope to see anyone who has already registered at the event!
As always, follow us on our other social media:
Homepage: https://www.pibble.io/
Medium: https://medium.com/pibbleio
Telegram: https://t.me/pibbleio_eng
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pibbleio/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pibbleio
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkMYrB69xASlhSW3DcYsPsA
Need to ask a question? Contact me directly on Telegram
https://t.me/bryanhigh | https://medium.com/pibbleio/pibble-to-sponsor-the-hangang-42k-nightwalk-in-seoul-1c410ac58f2 | ['Bryan High'] | 2019-07-15 09:39:52.995000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Blockchain', 'Charity', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Social Media'] |
Healing From My Miscarriage in a Year That Took So Much | I knew something was wrong before my doctor confirmed that I had miscarried my first pregnancy.
For years, I imagined being a mother in a country where caring for Black children often meant increased vulnerability and violence. I spent many moments being anxious about Black maternal mortality rates, thinking through my options for support and care. I did not know then that this year would bring a global pandemic, uprisings, and suffering under the heels of murderous political leadership.
What I knew for sure was that I wanted to parent and that doing so as a single, queer, Black woman was a challenge I was willing to pursue. One evening, about a week before I met the in-demand Black woman doctor I’d held out for, I had felt a heavy presence sitting at the end of my bed. I remember fighting to wake up and regain control over my arms. I clutched my abdomen with my hands and declared “No, you won’t!” to whatever had welcomed itself to my bedroom. I had already encountered so many challenges while trying to conceive and did not want to think about having to go through it all again.
Even with my own personal experiences of sleep paralysis and the work of haints at night, I could not determine whether who or what had shown up was there to hurt or warn me. Impatience, anxiety, and fear compelled me to visit a private ultrasound technician the next day. The technician, unable to confirm if my pregnancy was progressing, added to my belief that my first pregnancy would end at 10 weeks. Later that week, my doctor told me what my spirit and body already knew.
Ten days into 2020, I chose to fully end the pregnancy at home on my own using medication prescribed by my doctor. My body still holds remnants of the physical and mental pain brought forth through that experience. I knew that miscarriage was possible and common — between 10% and 20% of all pregnancies end through miscarriage — and still, I was not prepared for how it would actually feel. I felt and at times still feel ashamed, inadequate, angry, and sad.
This loss is now a part of how I process the other losses happening around me.
There is rarely a day that goes by where I do not feel that loss or wade through that grief. I spoke with a therapist who works with people who have lost pregnancies. I was supported by my parents and some of my friends. Outside of my immediate circle of support, I remained silent as the year continued. Each celebration of birth and observance of death in my family and community brought me back to that moment in January.
In February, I sobbed at my aunt’s funeral for the loss of a woman who helped raise me. She had mothered her children and her siblings’ children too. I wondered if I would ever be able to do the same. My uncle died of Covid-19 complications nearly three months later. I left my home during the city-mandated quarantine in order to attend his wake.
The year did not let up. I learned more and more about my own limitations. I found myself unable to write more than a few sentences, so I turned to writing poetry, finding the economy of words much more fit for the times. I was a Black woman living in one of the neighborhoods with the highest Covid-19 infection rates in Chicago. I began to feel afraid of what my hands could do. Would I touch something or someone and bring sickness into my body? Would I get my parents sick? People my age and of generally good health were dying too. I had already lost so much from within my body; would the same vessel die from a virus ravaging my family and community?
As the seasons began to turn and summer teased the Midwest, the world opened up and ignited into uprisings against the very systems that had consistently left many of us to suffer and die.
I had two choices: I could either stay at home and continue to grieve alone, or I could l hit the streets and join others who held their own grief too. I chose the latter.
I joined millions of other people in bearing witness to the killings of Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and many others. Pop’s death shook me and reminded me of how even in the midst of global pandemic, anti-Blackness, misogynoir, and transphobia were still taking away Black lives.
I had two choices: I could either stay at home and continue to grieve alone, or I could l hit the streets and join others who held their own grief too. I chose the latter and rejoined the Movement for Black Lives organizing team in order to support base-building organizations across the country developing strategy to divest from policing and invest in our communities in real time. This included traveling back and forth to Minneapolis to support Black organizers there advancing efforts to transform their city in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Working alongside community organizers as they contended with the internal and external pressures of the moment reified what I knew and understood about movement-building. First, all that sits underneath the surface — things rooted in conflict and love — shows itself during an uprising. Second, anything that has not been healed will beckon those within its path to tend to whatever caused the pain — doing so with or without grace. Third, whoever answers a call into leadership, particularly in these moments, will have to hold things well beyond their control — and they will be tested beyond what feels fair in the process.
Taking that time to really be with my grief allowed me to show up in my full dignity in a moment and contribute to the struggle for my people’s liberation.
I tried to shake the feeling that I was only able to show up on the ground because I was not in my third trimester. I had to accept that reality over and over again. Nearly a year later, I continue to have to accept it on a daily basis. This loss is now a part of how I process the other losses happening around me.
The early months of quarantine gave me room to grieve the loss of my loved ones alone and sit with my feelings. Those moments allowed me to be imperfect in ways that I still do not feel I can be out in the world. Taking that time to really be with my grief allowed me to show up in my full dignity in a moment and contribute to the struggle for my people’s liberation. If caring for myself is, as Audre Lorde says, an act of political warfare, then allowing myself to name my loss and move through grief is central to the fortification I need for any battle that I face. | https://zora.medium.com/healing-from-my-miscarriage-in-a-year-that-took-so-much-aadf6c6d8f4e | ['Charlene Carruthers'] | 2020-12-17 06:32:26.457000+00:00 | ['Loss', 'Healing', 'Grief', '2020', 'Pandemic'] |
Application of Gradient Boosting in Order Book Modeling | What is an Order Book?
An order book is an electronic list of buy and sell orders for a specific security or financial instrument organized by price level. An order book lists the number of shares being bid or offered at each price point, or market depth. Market depth data helps traders determine where the price of a particular security could be heading. For example, a trader may use market depth data to understand the bid-ask spread for a security, along with the volume accumulating above both figures. Securities with strong market depth will usually have strong volume and be quite liquid, allowing traders to place large orders without significantly affecting market price. More information is here.
Pricing scheme
Market depth looks like this, visualization could be different and it depends on software
BTC market depth on GDAX
Another way to visualize order books is a list with bids and offers
Order book list
Mid-price is the price between the best price of the sellers of the stock or commodity offer price or ask price and the best price of the buyers of the stock or commodity bid price. It can simply be defined as the average of the current bid and ask prices being quoted.
Our goal is to create a model that forecasts the mid-price. | https://towardsdatascience.com/application-of-gradient-boosting-in-order-book-modeling-3cd5f71575a7 | ['Sergey Malchevskiy'] | 2020-04-01 16:08:43.337000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Towards Data Science', 'Stock Market', 'Trading'] |
Use the 10 C’s of Business Writing to Produce Better Articles | The 10 Cs to Improve Your Writing
Writing is a form of communication. Being a writer, you are trying to communicate with your readers. Maybe you are informing them about something or just expressing your thoughts or feelings through your articles.
Now, if you want to make the communication a great one, you must tell your information in a lovely way that engages readers and keep them interested to learn more from you. Here come the 10 C’s.
If you know the 10 C’s of business communication beforehand, you can make your writings (business & creative) better than anyone else, creating a strong connection to your readers.
In the following, I am describing the 10 C’s briefly and telling you how to improve your writing with this. | https://medium.com/@meetmamun/use-the-10-cs-of-business-writing-to-produce-better-articles-2ab07fbebe83 | ['S M Mamunur Rahman'] | 2020-12-08 17:43:24.158000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Reading', 'Editing', 'Business Writing Skills', 'Productivity'] |
Ledger — Because the physical world needs to trust the Blockchain | writer : Cyril Bertrand
Today, Ledger announces a €7M series A. We are delighted to renew our trust after a first seed investment of 1M$ in 2015 and to invest more than prorata to double our investment. We warmly welcome MAIF on board as one of the most active insurance players in the French startup ecosystem and are also thrilled to have business leaders like Pascal Gauthier (ex Criteo COO) and Fred Potter (CEO Netatmo) on board with us.
Let’s go back a bit. Ledger is born from the merger of Epic Dream, BTChip and RadioceRos Ledger more than two years ago. This birth in itself is noteworthy: it is not so frequent to see four entrepreneurs from three different startups accept that they will need to join forces and share their capital. This level of maturity was certainly a major part of our initial investment decision back in 2015.
Ledger’s competitive edge is its technology: a small-footprint crypto-embedded operating system which enables full orchestration of kernel and apps directly from the physical layer. This allows them to be sold all around the world — particularly in Silicon Valley and China.
Ledger offers a line of security products, all of them based on the same core system of software and hardware: Personal Security Devices for B2C end users, Hardware Security Modules for B2B servers and Hardware Oracles for connected objects, machines and IoT. That’s a broad range of use cases, so how can the same technology be so versatile?
Making Bitcoin accessible to non tech-savvy people.
We have all wanted to try Bitcoin but whoever has tried will probably remember the first obstacle: this universe was created by software rebels for themselves. For the non expert the first few steps can be a little rough. Then comes security worries: where to store my personal private keys, how to keep them secure. To solve these issues, Ledger has developed Nano: a bitcoin wallet on a smartcard device. Put simply, this device is the merger of a USB drive with a credit card: it keeps the private keys far from hackers and ensures the physical presence of the user. It goes without saying: the hardware is small (it fits in your hand), very light and connects directly to a USB or Bluetooth port — such as your computer or your smartphone. Beyond making safe payments, this trust layer between the IT system and the physical world can be backed up and restored if your Nano is lost or stolen.
In contrast to re-centralized Bitcoin storage and exchanges, which recreated something very close to a bank, Ledger’s mission is to make the initial spirit of Bitcoin come true: provide users with a secure control over their monies and carry their bitcoins in their pocket.
Individually measuring your renewable energy
Beyond Bitcoin, Ledger leverages its technology to tackle industrial markets, particularly the cleantech production units, which are increasingly decentralized: this is a natural fit for the equally decentralized DNA of the Blockchain model. Ledger brings a secure key management to any business implementing a blockchain-based solution for its back office and wishing to delegate key management to a server. For example, a photovoltaic production unit can individually measure how much renewable energy was generated before it is put on the grid via a fully decentralized, unbreakable and authenticated sensor that measures in kilowatts the amount of renewable energy produced.
This solution can also be applied to any cryptocurrency exchanges, digital identity and settlement custodians.
Ledger is one of the (very) few profitable blockchain companies in the world. The €7M raised today will go towards building a bizdev team as well as a product management team and continuing investing in R&D.
Ledger have 30 employees with offices in Paris, Vierzon and San Francisco. They have developed a unique expertise in embedded OS, secure hardware, cryptography and blockchain. So ready for the next generation of secure embedded devices? | https://medium.com/xangevc/ledger-because-the-physical-world-needs-to-trust-the-blockchain-81874f7fe94c | [] | 2017-03-30 16:14:18.311000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Startup', 'Fintech', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
Can you find your true love on dating apps? | Can you find your true love on dating apps?
Have you ever downloaded a dating app and then deleted it right away? Have you ever met someone on a dating app and wondered if he or she could be your true love?
Dating apps — Looking for love online
Nowadays, dating is more accessible thanks to the increasing number of dating apps. Dating apps provide users a stack of picture-based profiles to choose from. The user swipes right to like and swipes left to dislike and move on. When both users swipe right on each other’s image, “they are matched!” and begin their conversation. Your lover is just a swipe away!
Online dating allows users to meet a wide range of potential partners within their social network circle, so they will have more opportunities to find their better matches. However, dating apps give people the chance to find their true love as well as old and new anxieties about risk, self-image, and love.
It is impossible to find true love on dating apps?
Source: Giphy.com
University of Wisconsin Researchers found that daters who chose from fewer options were happier with their match than those who had more options because people who chose from a large pool of choices were more likely to “reverse their choice” and look for a new match instead. Choosing your partner from dating apps can be like go shopping. You have so many choices and can try on everything but you end up buying nothing. This feeling can be described as The Paradox of Choice which is people get overwhelmed and run away with nothing when you give them too much choice.
Moreover, dating apps emphasize looks. We attract others based on the first impression that we show off on the profile. The first thing we notice is the profile picture and then dismiss people based on their appearances. Therefore, the appearances on the dating apps can put a lot of pressure on the users. They may feel self-conscious about their faces and their bodies.
The ugly truth about online dating is people can lie about their looks, career and relationship status on their profile. People tend to have a perfect profile on the app, so they feel like they need to lie about their online presences to be stand out in the dating pool. Moreover, users can lie about their relationship status to date multiple people at the same time which is common on dating sites.
Dating apps open the door to us meeting new people. However, if we spend too much time obsessing and building up our profiles, we will miss out on the main point of using these technologies, which is meeting people. The more energy you put into online dating apps, the less energy you will put into meeting people in the real world. A strong relationship should be built on face-to-face conversations, not through the screen because love happens in person not online.
Is there still hope for the success of dating apps?
However, we can still believe in dating online success. The research found that 20% of men and 13% of women said they had found a romantic partner online. I have two best friends and they both met their partners on dating apps. One found her love on Tinder and the other found it on Bumble. They and their partners are QUT students and have similar interests. Both couples have been together for more than one year. From my friends’ experience, I had decided to do the unthinkable on dating online. At least, we should give a try?
I think the journey of finding love’s result depends on people’s experience and their choices of partners. We cannot say it is possible or not to find love online but we can try. Then through our experience with dating apps, we can find out that we should find love online or in an old-fashioned way? It is our decision. | https://medium.com/the-public-ear/can-you-find-your-true-love-on-dating-apps-6f702210b02b | ['Cao Thao Uyen Nguyen'] | 2019-09-06 19:36:57.378000+00:00 | ['Finding Love', 'True Love', 'Online Dating', 'Dating App'] |
How Tesla’s Rising Power Will Win the Bitcoin Race | For Bitcoin and Tesla fans, it’s difficult to contain their bullishness right now.
Last week was probably a historic day for the stock markets. Tesla bought 1.5 billion dollars of Bitcoin. An S&P500 top 5 company did actually buy 10% of its cash into a cryptocurrency.
Now, you can be a hatter or bearish on this subject. But you must admit it was a surprisingly significant move. And it will have considerable repercussions in the world.
It’s fascinating when you have the wealthiest person in the world, who runs a monster tech firm that’s known for breaking all the precedents on technology, stack 1.5 billion dollars in BTC.
How many boarding rooms for top companies are now talking about this subject? How many of them want to call Michael Saylor to try to understand a little more about Bitcoin?
The pandora box was opened this week, rather you like it or not. The world will change, and the monetary system will adapt. Also, people and companies will, at least, be able to protect themselves against debase of currencies around the world.
Some people think Bitcoin is an emotional thing and that the rising chart is entirely nuts. But if you can zoom out and look at the numbers, it’s just a supply and demand issue.
The Fed can’t print more Bitcoins, so the price is rising because more people are buying them. And BTC is a scarce and finite asset, unlike the dollar or the euro.
Money is a protocol between two parts. If both agree to the protocol, the transaction is made. It’s simple.
Bitcoin was a technological break-through. It turns out that many people are adopting it. At first, BTC was experienced as money. And in some countries is a tool for some transactions. But the majority are adopting Bitcoin as a hard asset against money printing.
Those who say Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme or a bubble are the people who still don’t believe and don’t accept BTC as an asset. But that’s irrelevant if the majority agrees with the protocol and transacts between several parties. If the protocol is accepted between two parties and between thousands or millions of people, it becomes money. Because money is nothing more than a protocol between the parties.
Elon Musk understood it. And more than that, Elon saw BTC as a safe haven. He didn’t see BTC as a currency. Buying BTC to his balance sheet made him another believer that this cryptocurrency will not be a tool to buy and sell things. On the contrary, like gold, BTC will be a store of value.
Musk’s company will receive future profits in FIAT money, and 10 to 15% will automatically be transferred to Bitcoin. That’s how the company’s accounting department will work.
Being an early adopter, Tesla bought Bitcoin at a sheep price.
How will Tesla behave in the future, as an early buyer of the most valuable asset in the future? | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-teslas-rising-power-will-win-the-bitcoin-race-8ed695ddef50 | ['Nuno Fabiao'] | 2021-02-14 14:21:27.490000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Disruption', 'Bitcoin', 'Tesla', 'Technology'] |
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES - THE FUTURE | There are thousands of programming languages in existence with more languages created every year. Among these incredible number of programing language, only a small fraction are the most popular in use today.
Wikipedia has listed about 700 programming languages known in existence. Other sources even estimated a total of up to 25,000 with more being developed. Given the vast number of programming languages and how quickly new languages are being developed, it is a complex and herculean task to compare programming languages.
Nevertheless, a source listed 50 programming languages as the most popular programming languages in use today and I will be working with only the top 10 languages including the c, Java, Python, c++, c#, Visual Basic, JavaScript, PHP, R, SQL. This article is going to present the trends of top Programming Languages which will continue, even in the coming years.
To predict the trend of the programming language in 2020, this article uses charts from authentic surveys and various collected statistics. This article will help the new programming learners, to make a choice on the programming language to learn and likewise, help experts decide on either to switch to another language or to continue with their expertise language.
LET’S GO DOWN MEMORY LANE…
To see the bigger picture, it is important to go back in history lane and see how far these languages have come and their positions in previous years in terms of in-demand, popularity, most loved, and salary. Below, I have presented two tables that summarize the top 10 Programming Languages in the last decade. The data used in the chart are taken from StackOverflow survey and TIOBE Index:
Chart 2 Source: www.Tiobe.com
Observations:
Chart 1 shows a decrease in the popularity of all languages for the last five years (that is, 2015 to 2019) except Python.
Chart 2 indicates that the leading language is the c language and followed by Java. It is also observed that python has come a long way in the last two decades (from being 23rd in 2000 to 3rd in 2020) maintaining an increase in trend.
In terms of In-Demand
Among the programming language that is most sought-after, is the Python language. StackOverflow reveals in 2019, that Python is the most wanted in Jobs searches. In the same vein, In 2017, Forbes released an article highlighting the five most sought-after languages in America including Python, Java, JavaScript, C+, PHP; with Python being the most sought-after. The same year in December, TIOBE Index released a chart showing the most demanded programming language with Java topping the list and c following. Python took the 4th position.
In Terms of Popularity
In 2019, the PYPL Index and TIOBE Index placed Python as one of the most popular programming languages. While the PYPL Index placed Python in the first position, the TIOBE index has placed c/c++ in the first position, following Java and Python as the 2nd and 3rd respectively. In the survey by Stack Overflow, JavaScript is regarded as the most commonly used programming language in seven rows. But Python has also risen, edging out Java, c#, and PHP, and has a claim to being the fastest-growing major programming language.
Source: Most popular Programming Language
In Terms of Most Loved
According to the StackOverflow survey, Python has consistently risen in the last five years (that is, from being the 10th most loved languages in 2015 to being the second most loved programming language (after Rust) in 2019).
Source: Most Loved Programming Language (StackOverflow Survey 2019)
In Terms of Top Paying Salary
StackOverflow in 2019, released the highest paying programming to be Clojure, F#, Elixir, and Rust. However, among the popular programming only R and Python is seen to have made it to the first twelve. More so, Python has gradually increased from not being on the list of the highest paying language in 2015 to being included in 2019 and still maintaining its position.
THE TREND NOW…
Popularity in 2020
Most Loved in 2020
Highest Paying in 2020
Observation:
As can be seen in the TIOBE and PYPL graph above, the Python program shows a remarkable rise by an average of 10percent between 2010 and 2020. Just recently, TIOBE announced that Python is probably going to win the title ‘language of the year’ for the fourth time in 2020, which is a record in the history of the TIOBE index. Similarly, in the IEEE chart, Python has risen and maintained the top position compared to other languages.
Likewise, based on StackOverflow survery on the highest paid, python has risen from being the 12th position in 2019 to being the 10th position in 2020, edging out other popular programming languages.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS…
Based on the chart data in the previous section, we can predict what the future holds for programming languages. Moreover, StackOverflow which is known to be the most popular question and answer platform can be a source for future predictions. In 2017, StackOverflow released an article based on the traffic question asked on its platform. In the article, it was predicted that by 2020, Python would be at the top of the list (see graph below).
In another article, the future trend of programming languages' popularity was predicted. The prediction is based on the fraction of the total questions asked on StackOverflow which concern each language for the last 10 years. It was predicted that by 2023, Python will be leading as the most popular programming language.
CONCLUSION
Based on the data and survey results from reliable sources, based on past, present, and future analysis; we can tell the future of the popular programming languages. While C, c#, Java, and JavaScript has been considered the most popular and the “Lingua franca” of the internet for many years, Python could outstrip them of this title in the coming years. This is because Python has come a long way in the last two decades and has maintained a reasonable increase in trend. Other reasons include:
cost-effectiveness,
easiness to use, read, and maintain
Compatibility with major platforms … and so on
Overall, Python will continue to increase in popularity while JavaScript and c maintain their popularity trend. On the other hand, Java, c#, c++ could lose in popularity significantly, while PHP, R, SQL, and Visual Basic may become obsolete.
So I would like to get your opinion on this. Which programming language do think will continue in the future? | https://medium.com/debonaire-home/designing-the-general-mainwindow-framework-d1db1bf0ae4 | ['Edsp Re'] | 2020-12-19 09:59:37.079000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Python', 'Programming Languages', 'R', 'C Language'] |
Confronting Portugal’s racist past | The Age of Discoveries is perhaps Portugal’s greatest point of pride. If on one hand we admire the journey through the unknown and the conquest of new lands, on the other we ignore or romanticize the dark side of colonialism. In the 15th century, Portugal initiated the transatlantic slave trade, and in a period of 400 years, kidnapped, expatriated and enslaved about 5.8 million people from Africa and Asia to Brazil.
The idea of race was created to establish a hierarchy and to legitimize treating select groups as inferiors. Gomes de Zurara (a Portuguese chronicler from the Age of Discovery) created the concept of sorting people into groups — not yet referred to as races — while writing Prince Henry the Navigator’s biography. Some consider that Zurara invented the “African race” when he described the people being sold at a slave auction in Lagos, Portugal. Despite varying in language, ethnicity and skin colour, he combined all of them into a single group who needed to be saved by the “civilized Europeans.”
This concept of race led to the justification of transatlantic slavery — not only was it an opportunity to cement the country’s status as a global power and increase its wealth, but it was a moral obligation needed to spread Christianity and modernization through the world.
Over the years, Portuguese leaders have tried to preserve this air of superiority. Under the dictatorship of Salazar (1932 to 1968), prevailed the theory that the Portuguese colonialism was exceptional and more humane than that of other countries. When the Portuguese World Exhibition was held in Lisbon in 1940, Salazar used the opportunity as a pretentious act of propaganda. Lusotropicalism promoted the idea that the Portuguese empire was a single political unit that was spread across multiple continents, was multi-racial, and where reigned a peaceful co-existence between different people and cultures. The way Portugal recalls historic facts refers to the impression that the country had a crucial role in civilization, fighting primitivism and contributing to the development of those communities. Here lays the idea they have been perpetuating — a benign colonialism where Portugal was the good guy.
However, a different reality was on display in the colonies. Indigenous subjects of Portuguese rule had an inferior status and were considered less civilized. The only way for non-whites to gain access to education and other privileges in the colonies would be through renouncing their own culture, assuming Catholicism, learning the Portuguese language and customs, to reach the status of “assimilated”. Exploitation and forced labour were a daily and normalized reality in the colonies.
Portugal was one of the first countries to implement slavery and one of the last to continue reaping its fruits. While the world was acknowledging the dark reality and the pain they had been inflicting, Portugal was holding tight to its colonies. In 1960, during the independence movements, Salazar ordered the construction of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument of the Discoveries) to keep the ideals of that time alive. Located on the Tagus River in Lisbon, the monument sits in front of Rosa-dos-Ventos — a massive compass rose — a gift from the apartheid regime of South Africa to the Portuguese dictatorship.
Just over 40 years ago, Portugal was at war trying to repress the independence movements of African colonies. Leaving Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau in a state of devastation after almost 20 years of war, massacres and subjugation, followed by the repatriation of the Portuguese who lived in these countries. Labeled as retornados (those who have returned), they too were subjected to discriminatory acts.
Despite proclamations that Portugal is not racist, but simply has racism in it — can a country that for centuries viewed certain races as inferiors, manage to have a new vision today?
In Portugal’s legislation, in its courts, in its healthcare and education systems, there is no racist content — even the Constitution prohibits manifestations of racism — this is where those who do not want to consider their country bigoted support their theory. However, the legislation also bans gender discrimination, but Portugal remains a sexist country, where women struggle against economical and social subordination, and where domestic violence continues to be one of the country’s prevalent social issues. Therefore, it is not enough to look at legislation to understand what a society really experiences. In spite of right-wing politics considering this issue to be a sensationalist coup from the left, the discussion has been intensified with the rise of the far right and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Portugal is a country bathed by the Atlantic, with a great climate, a rich history, incredible cuisine and hardworking and respectable people — some would call this paradise, but it’s not… yet. The periphery of large cities continues to show their evident poverty, where minorities are marginalized and where contact with the police often goes wrong. This is where people are often placed in the same bag, if one steals, they are all thieves, at least in the view of André Ventura, the leader of the far-right party Chega. His rise in popularity is proof that racism is alive and well in Portugal, that intolerance is settling in and that today, the values of democracy are falling.
According to a study by European Social Survey, more than 60% of Portuguese people express racist beliefs. However, from 2009 to 2018, the Minister of Justice did not register any condemnation for discrimination. Racism is even present in the Portuguese language. Expressions that are often used without being totally aware of their connotation — phrases like “am I black?” when we feel ignored or neglected. So, what can we say about a country that criminalizes racism, but does not condemn it?
In the case of Cape Verdean student Luís Giovani who was killed in late 2019, beaten violently by a group of young people, the prosecutor’s office accused the seven suspects of qualified homicide but concluded that the crime was not racially motivated. In 2020, an Angolan-Portuguese woman was beaten by a police after an argument that stemmed when she forgot her daughter’s bus pass. The following month, two Brazilian women were attacked by the police outside of a nightclub. It’s true that it can be debatable whether these cases had racist motivations, however, in that same month, Moussa Marega, a footballer with FC Porto, walked off the pitch in the middle of a game with Vitória de Guimarães after their fans shouted racist insults against the athlete.
A few months after that, came another case that became the ultimate tipping point in this series of conflict and indignation; the murder of black actor Bruno Candé. The actor was shot four times at point-blank range, in broad daylight, on a busy street in the outskirts of Lisbon. Witnesses stated that three days earlier, he had been threatened by the aggressor, who reportedly uttered several racist insults. “Go back to your land! You have your whole family in the senzala and you should also be there!” — a reference to the colonial era slave quarters. The murderer was Evaristo Marinho, 76 years old, who had completed military service in Angola between 1966 and 1968. In prison, he has reporedly bragged that, “In Angola, I killed several like this [referring to Candé]”
These are some of the many examples. Whether Portugal is a racist country or not is a topic open for discussion, but one thing is certain, Portugal has been a country tolerant of racism.
Until recently, Portugal has failed to present an objective view of historic events. There has never been an explicit reference, memorial or monument recognizing the millions of lives that were impacted by slavery. On the contrary, there are numerous monuments and statues dedicated to navigators and missionary priests responsible for the conversion of Africans and Indigenous peoples to Catholicism, or the soldiers who fought in the colony wars. Finally, in 2017, the Djass Afro-descendent Association (NGO) won a popular vote for public funds, giving the opportunity for black people to tell their story — what they lived and resisted.
The funds were used to design “Plantation — Prosperity and Nightmare” a monument by the Angolan artist Kiluanji Kia Henda. It intends to raise people’s awareness, empathy and reflection on questions of slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism. As Kiluanji Kia Henda highlights “The modern world would not exist if it was not for enslavement. The modernity you see here was built on the backs of black people. It’s important that there is awareness about that.” The memorial is installed in Campo das Cebolas, Lisbon and will be officially unveiled this year. Composed with rows of black aluminium sugar cane, each three meters high, this piece symbolizes a tragic past but, hopefully, a prosperous future.
History has been partially presented and taught in schools through a Eurocentric vision. Portugal has been ignoring part of the story because it goes against their national identity. It’s fundamental for all Portuguese people to amplify and empower the voices of the past so we can learn from them. It is not about imposing guilt, but about reflecting on our past and creating the road we want to take into the future. | https://medium.com/@lusolifemag/confronting-portugals-racist-past-bfd8dfe45e5 | ['Luso Life'] | 2021-07-06 03:23:11.706000+00:00 | ['Portugal', 'Slavery', 'History', 'Racism', 'Politics'] |
Things About Leadership Value | “Someone could have a leadership position but not the quality of leadership.”
Someone said this several days ago and it hit me. I know, no one is perfect, I couldn’t agree more about it. However, the way business run these days has been changing, and with the development of technology, business is not only about profit but it has a larger meaning than it. The impact on society and the environment must be considered. We might find several insights about what is leadership, how to lead, and why we need to lead? After listening to several podcasts, reading some articles, joining several webinars, here are things about leadership values that I guess people nowadays must know and implement in their life.
There is a lot of definition about leadership. Some say leadership is about managing people how to achieve organization’s goals. I consider leadership itself is one ability to manage yourself first before trying to manage others. In term of managing yourself, we often hear about self-improvement, self-discipline, self-reflection, these are several forms of leadership. Everyday we make a decision to defeat ourselves in order to achieve our personal goals.
In term of professionalism, leadership is one ability to do your duty with full responsibility. I also believe leadership is also about adding value into someone’s life, doing the extra miles, and being a problem solver instead of pointing out someone’s mistake. Leadership is also giving a space for mistake. Last year, when I was given an opportunity to lead a project, I won’t hesitate to accept any ideas and if someone made a mistake, i won’t blame the person. I think people who never make mistakes or perfectionists would never really learn. Failure is important to bring us to another level of life and to strengthen our leadership character.
In a nutshell, one should not have a leader position to have leadership value. Each of us, whatever our position, could give an impact on others, no matter how small it is. Leadership value is about being a problem solver, transferring good value to other people, and even make them have a better life. If someday you get an opportunity to lead, as long as you stick with leadership values, you will make an impactful legacy to leave behind. | https://medium.com/@sucimarina/things-about-leadership-value-cbf3a3ed6724 | ['Suci Marina'] | 2021-08-09 15:45:46.619000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Legacy', 'Life', 'Values'] |
The 5 best resources to learn Tensorflow in 2021 | Even though the war is still in progress, TensorFlow remains the dominant Deep Learning modeling framework. Indeed, the 2020 O’Reilly survey on AI adoption in the enterprise revealed that more than half of data scientists have TensorFlow as their primary tool in AI-related work. Moreover, according to Hacker News Who’s Hiring Trends, TensorFlow outperforms Pytorch in numbers of job postings by a factor of three.
TensorFlow is the most used framework in DL
However, for many years TensorFlow was considered a perfect example of what is a steep learning curve. It was enough to write a few lines of TensorFlow code to discourage many from learning it. As stated by Rachel Thomas from fast.ai: “Using TensorFlow makes me feel like I’m not smart enough to use TensorFlow”. Nevertheless, after 2019 everything changed. TensorFlow 2.0 was released with the inclusion of Keras as its high-level API. This decision flattened the learning curve and opened access for many to take advantage of TensorFlow and join the Deep Learning revolution.
Then, learning TensorFlow in 2021 is not only an excellent investment for your career (you can even obtain an official certification), but it’s also easier than ever!. So, in this post, I will show you the best resources to acquire one of the most wanted Machine Learning skills: mastering TensorFlow!
1. Tensorflow and Keras Oficial Tutorials
Getting Started tutorial, and work though all the examples, are the best way to learn from the official source. These tutorials have been written and documented by Google Engineers and experts. In particular, a big part of Keras documentation has been written by François Cholet, its creator.
2. Tensorflow Developer Prossional Certificate by Coursera
In this four-course Specialization, you’ll explore exciting opportunities for AI applications. Begin by developing an understanding of how to build and train neural networks. Improve a network’s performance using convolutions as you train it to identify real-world images. You’ll teach machines to understand, analyze, and respond to human speech with natural language processing systems. Learn to process text, represent sentences as vectors, and input data to a neural network. You’ll even train an AI to create original poetry!
With over 9000 reviews giving this specialization the note of 4.7, this is one of the most popular and best valuable courses in Coursera. Offered by deeplearning.ai from the famous Andrew Ng and Laurence Moroney from Google Brain. Moreover, this is the official resource to be prepared for the TensorFlow Certification.
Finally, you can continue deepen your knowledge with the TensorFlow: Advanced Techniques Specialization that teach you how to customize and build powerful real-world models for complex scenarios using advanced TensorFlow, and the TensorFlow: Data and Deployment Specialization that teach you how to deploy models inthe real world.
3. Video Tutorials on Youtube Channels
3.1. DeepLizard
As stated in the article Top 5 Free Resources to learn Deep Learning with PyTorch, DeepLizard is a criminally underated channel that has a lot to offer.
3.2. FreeCodeCamp.org
According to its website, Freecodecamp is “a nonprofit community that helps you learn to code by building projects”. During the last few months, its curriculum has incorporated many new courses. In particular, you can take the “Machine Learning with Python Certification” that uses TensorFlow 2.0, takes approximately 300 hours to complete and offers a free certificate.
Additionaly, in its YouTbe Channel, you will find several resources to sharpen your programming skills and improve your career prospects. For example, SQL Tutorial — Full Database Course for Beginners, Docker Tutorial for Beginners — A Full DevOps Course on How to Run Applications in Containers or even How to Find Freelance Jobs. Without a doubt, FreeCodeCamp makes the world a better place :).
4. Introduction to Deep Learning from MIT
MIT Introduction to Deep Learning lectures and labs are open-source and free for everyone!
The course consists of a series of lectures on the fundamentals of neural networks and their applications to sequence modeling, computer vision, generative models, and reinforcement learning.
According to its authors: “MIT’s official motto is “Mens et Manus” — Mind and Hand — so it’s no coincidence that we, too, are big believers in this philosophy. As the organizers and lecturers for MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning, we wanted to develop a course that focused on both the conceptual foundation and the practical skills it takes to understand and implement deep learning algorithms.”
Fortunately for us, all the practical skills are developed using TensorFlow, including three interactives software labs that cover the basics of the framework, recurrent neural network models for music generation, computer vision, debiasing facial recognition systems, and deep reinforcement learning.
Indeed :)
5. Book: Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow.
A Best Seller and currently #1 on amazon for Data Processing with 4.7 stars. It’s an expanded version of the first Edition and incorporated TensorFlow 2.0. By reading this book, you will understand the theory and the practice of Machine Learning using TensorFlow.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1492032646/
Thanks for reading this article. If you like these TensorFlow and Machine Learning resources, then please share with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a comment.
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 ! | https://medium.com/@roberto-terceros/the-5-best-resources-to-learn-tensorflow-in-2020-65b764a5fb8c | ['Roberto Terceros'] | 2021-02-05 08:15:02.939000+00:00 | ['TensorFlow', 'Keras', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Deep Learning'] |
Quality Gates — A must have thing for the code analysis process | Overview
Before we introduce Quality Gates, let’s understand the code analysis process code analysis is an important and necessary item in the agile product development cycle. It should be used to detect any possible failures and defects arising out of the continuous changes in the source codes.
There are a few good reasons why this should be included in the development lifecycle.
It helps in detecting areas in the code that needs refactoring or simplification.
It can help to find the bug early in the development cycle, which means less cost to fix them.
Overall improvement in the quality of the code.
We can define project specific rules which will then be implemented without manual intervention.
More importantly, you can include this within the build process once and use it always without doing anything manually.
Problem Statement
Now let’s talk about the actual problem. sonarqube which is a code analysis tool, helps us gain visibility into our code base. Soon at MIQ, we realized that having visibility into code was not enough and in order to address the issues flagged by code analysis, we had to make use of different data insights that we were getting from sonarqube.
At this point, we realized that we have to uphold certain guidelines and regulate them across all teams within the organization.
Quality Gates was exactly what we needed and this turned out to be the best way to ensure that standards are met and regulated across all the projects in our organization. Quality Gates can be defined as a set of threshold measures set on your project. Few conditions that can be in included are listed below.
Code Coverage > certain value
Number of Blocker issues >certain value
Security Rating / Unit Test Pass Rate etc..
How — Enforce Quality Gates?
In this article, we will show you how to set up Quality Gates in sonarqube and then configure Jenkins job to enforce Quality Gates.
To manage Quality Gates, go to Quality Gates (top menu bar) in sonarqube.
Each Quality Gate condition is a combination of:
measure
period: Value (to date) or New Code (differential value over the New Code period)
comparison operator
warning value (optional)
error value (optional)
For instance, a condition might be:
measure: Blocker issue
period: Value
comparison operator: >
error value: 0
Which can be stated as No blocker issues.
In the example given below, we have configured a quality gate only for the metric called “code coverage” for demo purpose. However, based on your project requirement, you can set up the metrics in your quality gate. For example, the following snapshot shows a few standard metrics that can be configured.
An example — Quality Gates metrics
Jenkins Job setup
At MIQ, we use Jenkins as our CI and sonarqube as a code inspection tool. Therefore, we wanted to force Jenkins’s build job to fail if the code doesn’t meet the specified Quality Gates.
Sample quality gate metrics setup in sonarqube. Configure Jenkins job to fail the build when not meeting Quality Gates.
Prerequisites — Install Jenkins plugin “sonar-quality-gates-plugin” if not already present. Email-ext plugin for Jenkins to be able to send emails. We also need Jenkins job which is already configured with sonar analysis and build for it passing successfully.
For example, here is the snapshot of the Jenkins build job that is currently passing Jenkins build job before Quality Gates setup.
Let’s setup Quality Gates metrics in Sonar. We are going to create a quality gate only for the metric called Code Coverage for demo purpose. But there are more metrics available that you should be selecting while creating quality gates.
Login to sonar > got Quality Gates as shown in the screen below.
Quality Gate — screen shot in sonarqube
Click on create > Add Condition > Choose metrics (In this example, we selected Code Coverage) > select operator along with warning and error threshold.
Create: Quality Gate
Select the project to add Quality Gates. We have selected a sample miqp project. In your case, project name would be different so please change it accordingly.
Add project to Quality Gate
Now go to the Jenkins job and configure the Quality Gate validation.
Click on the job and go to Post-build Actions and provide the project details you have associated with Quality Gate created in the earlier steps.
Post-build action — Enforce Quality Gates
We have configured the project key of miqp sample project along with Job status when sonar analysis fails.
Verify if our build fails after the quality check was enabled.
Post-build notification alert
You can verify the same in the sonarqube server.
Project status on Quality Gate
In the above screenshot, you can verify that the project miqp is reporting WARNING as the code failed to meet the code coverage metric (i.e we set in one of the earlier steps).
Conclusion
In this article, we have shown how you can take your code analysis benefits to the next level using Quality Gates. We also walked you through the process of setting up Quality Gates at build level, using sonarqube and Jenkins.
This definitely helped the teams at MiQ by being on top of our quality control check and that too in automated fashion. We are sure that this process can help you in your development process as well. | https://medium.com/@tarunprakash/quality-gates-a-must-have-thing-for-the-code-analysis-process-75b33d6b49dc | ['Tarun Prakash'] | 2019-03-26 05:09:39.342000+00:00 | ['Jenkins', 'How To', 'Sonarqube', 'Quality Assurance', 'Code Analysis'] |
Deck the Halls and Come Inside Holly. | Older woman Erotica / Impregnation / Second Chance Romance.
Living in a high-rise condo was always my dream, but it cost me everything, I had forgot to live. Alone on Christmas Day, I was about to get a second chance.
Photo by Freepik.com Premium
I was a top executive. A cast iron bitch. But that’s all done, and not a moment too soon. Us girls don’t age well in the office scene. I’m still hot, nice tits, I go to the gym, so I’m fit. In fact, I used to be a fitness model in college. But I’m 50 this year and as a woman in the marketing racket, I’m past my expiration date. It’s just how it is. Guys aren’t doing much better against young men willing to work for half that know all the latest shit.
I love the city this time of year. A blanket of snow makes it all look clean. In years past I would have dreaded it but with no place to go, siting by my gas fireplace, in my robe, and sipping wine, I loved it. But I was lonely, I had missed my window. I thought back to my life and …. *slam* *crash* “Fuck you.”
What the hell was that, it came from the hallway. I got up to see through my peephole.
“Open the fucking door,” the man said. It was my neighbor, Phil, screaming at the door.
“Go fuck yourself, Pig,” came through the door. Phil’s wife, Tina, was on a tear again, I wondered if she was drunk as she tends to be. Normally I would have ignored it all, but Phil was standing in the hallway naked. And I liked the view of that sexy little bottom.
He was having no luck getting her to open up and was getting more angry. I sighed and thought about it for a moment. Phil was a nice guy, 40 I think, we frequently did laundry together and talked about things.
He was an artist, a good one. He’s had things in the Times and the New Yorker. He had sexy eyes and could make me laugh. But until now, I didn’t know he could get my pussy wet. Mmmm, fuck, he was ripped. He said he worked out and ran, but fuck.
So I opened the door and was about to say something, but what I saw made me laugh my ass off. I had to cover my mouth. Phil wasn’t just naked in the hallway, he had on a festive candy cane cock sock. His balls neatly tucked in the bag that looked like Santa’s sack and all tied with a bow.
“Sorry, Phil. You caught me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting,” I said and pointed at his groin. He wasn’t happy about it and picked up some clothes from the ground. “What’s all this?”
“Well, it’s embarrassing. That’s what it is,” he said.
“Well, from where I am standing you have nothing to be ashamed of,” I said and could not keep my eyes off his cock sock.
“Thanks, Holly. I had hoped that would be how Tina saw it. I just came by to drop of a gift,” he said. “We separated around October and I was trying to, well, fuck it, you don’t want to hear all this.”
“So that’s why you haven’t been around? That’s too bad. For Tina.”
“Thanks, but…” On an impulse, I walked right up to him and kissed him. He was a little bit hairy, not bad, but I don’t usually go for that. But it was sexy on him, and I just had to feel his chest. “Wow. Holly. I don’t know what to say. but…” I had to seal the deal fast.
We kissed for a minute and I thought he was into it when he jumped back fast. “Holly, look,” He said. He’s not letting me down, was my thought as he tried to get away, “Holly!” *SLAM* I looked behind me, then he said, “Your door is closing,” He finished saying. | https://medium.com/bella-cooper-books/deck-the-halls-and-come-inside-holly-f9e7c078a98d | ['Bella Cooper'] | 2021-02-06 00:48:11.458000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Erotica', 'Romance', 'Relationships', 'Love'] |
How to use Mongoose with Apollo Graphql | Presently use of Graphql Apis in increasing day by day. One day I got the same task at my company for creating api on Apollo Graphql. I went through too many articles but I didn’t got any exact article for using mongoose ORM for connecting Mongodb Atlus with Apollo Graphql application. That’ s why this Idea come into my mind to write a block on “How to use Mongoose with Apollo Graphql”.
Let’s go through step by step.
Create a new folder where you want to keep your code. For example here I have created new folder “apollo-graphql-mongoose " Now run npm init and keep the default package configuration. Now run “ npm install apollo-server graphql mongoose" Now create a new file named “index.js” and paste the following code.
const { ApolloServer, gql } = require('apollo-server'); const resolverss = require("./resolvers") const mutations = require("./mutations"); const mongoose = require("mongoose"); // A schema is a collection of type definitions (hence "typeDefs") // that together define the "shape" of queries that are executed against // your data. mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost:27017/covertree_life', {useNewUrlParser: true, useUnifiedTopology: true}) .then(()=>console.log('mongoose up')) .catch(error=>console.log(error.message)); mongoose.Promise = global.Promise; const typeDefs = gql` type Book { title: String author: String } type Customer { _id:ID! firstName:String lastName:String address:String unit:String } type Query { books: [Book] customers:[Customer] } type Mutation { createCustomer(firstName:String!, lastName:String!, address:String!, unit:String): Customer! } `; // Resolvers define the technique for fetching the types defined in the // schema. This resolver retrieves books from the "books" array above. const resolvers = { Query: {...resolverss}, Mutation:{...mutations} }; // The ApolloServer constructor requires two parameters: your schema // definition and your set of resolvers. const server = new ApolloServer({ typeDefs, resolvers }); // The `listen` method launches a web server. server.listen().then(({ url }) => { console.log(`🚀 Server ready at ${url}`); });
Now create a new folder named “models” inside root directory. Inside this create new folder Customer.js.
const mongoose = require('mongoose'); const Schema = mongoose.Schema; const customerSchema = new Schema({ _id: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, firstName: {type:String}, lastName: {type:String}, address: {type:String}, unit:{type:String} }, {timestamps:true}) module.exports = mongoose.model('Customer', customerSchema)
Now create new folder named as “mutations” in the root directory. Inside this create two new files. “customer .js” and “index.js”. Now paste the following inside customer.js.
const Customer = require("../models/Customer"); const mongoose = require("mongoose"); module.exports = { createCustomer: async(_, { firstName, lastName, address, unit }, req) => { // console.log(args); console.log(firstName, lastName, address, unit); try{ let customer = new Customer({ _id: new mongoose.Types.ObjectId, firstName:firstName, lastName:lastName, address:address, unit:unit }); let result = await customer.save(); return result; } catch (error) { throw new Error (error.message); } } }
Paste the following code inside index.js file
const customerMutation = require("./customer"); const rootResolver = { ...customerMutation }; module.exports = rootResolver;
Now create new folder named “resolvers” inside root directory. Now create three new files named “book.js”, “customer.js” and “index.js” inside resolvers.
Now paste the following code inside “book.js”.
const Customer = require("../models/Customer"); const books = [ { title: 'The Awakening', author: 'Kate Chopin', }, { title: 'City of Glass', author: 'Paul Auster', }, ]; module.exports = { books: async () => { // let result = await Customer.insertMany([ // { // name:"Abhishek", // email:"[email protected]" // } // ]) // console.log(result); return books } }
Paste the following code inside “customer.js”.
const Customer = require("../models/Customer"); const mongoose = require("mongoose"); module.exports = { customers: async() => { try{ let result = await Customer.find({}); return result; } catch (error) { throw new Error (error.message); }
}
}
Now paste the following code inside “index.js”
const bookResolver = require("./book"); const customerResolver = require("./customer"); const rootResolver = { ...bookResolver, ...customerResolver }; module.exports = rootResolver;
Now your Apollo graphql api is ready. Now run nodemon and enjoy coding. If you are curious to learn new things please like and subscribe my YouTube channel. Also like my facebook page for new notifications. | https://medium.com/@abhi-fullstackdeveloper/how-to-use-mongoose-with-apollo-graphql-4d7cf57fb20c | ['Abhishek Kumar Gupta'] | 2020-12-27 15:11:53.943000+00:00 | ['Node Js Tutorial', 'GraphQL', 'Mongoose', 'Apollo Server', 'Mongodb'] |
The Best Collaboration Tools For Your Team | When you’re working with a team, communication needs to be transparent. If you’re not clear about directives or what someone wants for the scope of a project, that could be a recipe for a failed project or a lot of extra work.
Collaboration tools are the best way to avoid those lengthy email threads and combat your company silos. Here are a few tools we recommend giving a try to ensure your projects don’t go astray and your teams feel confident about their respective roles:
Trello
Technology teams everywhere have adopted the agile methodology. This method encourages open communication, enabling teams to work in sprints and adapt to change quickly.
One of the best tools to work within the agile framework is Trello, a project board where teammates can see the progress of a job through a series of “cards” which can be moved into channels of To do, In progress, Done, and On Hold.
Slack
What team doesn’t rely on Slack? Slack is the best platform out there for people to talk and connect on projects. Within your workspace, you create private or open channels, and video call or instant message. Whatever the team needs, Slack can make it happen. Share files, gifs, or make individual channels for what’s for lunch. Slack has everything and more. Plus, just about every tool integrates with it.
Google Docs
Seems obvious, but Google Docs is a super easy way for teams to collaborate on documents. Teams can edit files at the same time, or just leave inline comments to make sure everyone knows what needs to be changed.
GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is video conferencing software that lets you schedule meetings ahead of time and also share screens. This is helpful for remote employees and expansive teams that live all across the world.
Asana
Asana is another project management tool similar to Trello. Users can assign tasks, add followers to projects, and keep an eye on deadlines. Asana is perfect for strategic planning and cross-functional collaboration.
Canva
If you’re not the best at designing, but need to make something pretty, Canva can help. You can invite your team to collaborate on one design or share a folder with key templates for your team to use. While Photoshop is still industry standard for deep level graphic design, Canva is great because it’s all drag and drop and simple to use.
Box
Box is the perfect way for teams to share data or files. Teams get file sharing, a content management system, and a centralized dashboard, all in one place.
BitBucket
The main rival to GitHub, BitBucket is a software repository platform. BitBucket has a big advantage over GitHub, and that is unlimited private repositories. If you’re writing and pushing code, BitBucket is a great collaboration tool.
Zeplin
Zeplin is a platform for web tool designers and developers. Zeplin enables team members to comment on current designs in real time. The tool also logs updates and changes while documenting brand assets. This is super helpful when looking back at different design versions to compare and contrast updates.
DAB
DAB is a startup — a new direction for communication of entrepreneurs and customers. DAB provides safe and quick money transfers, using wireless methods. It is an unique eco-system for small private business in the world, using crypto security and instant payment. DAB’s mission — provide a place where self-employer could place business and get minimum taxes.
What’s your team using? We love collaboration and believe in the agile methodology, so if you have any tools that can help us tighten up our processes, we’re all ears. As always, be sure to check out the StartLightSoft for more small business tips and tricks. | https://medium.com/@startlightsoft/the-best-collaboration-tools-for-your-team-554fc5bff05c | [] | 2020-12-25 14:22:06.149000+00:00 | ['Collaboration', 'Startup', 'Programm', 'Tools', 'Business'] |
Time Series Modeling using Scikit, Pandas, and Numpy | Time Series Modeling using Scikit, Pandas, and Numpy
Intuitive use of seasonality to improve model accuracy
Image by Author
Welcome to Part 2 of Time Series Analysis! In this post, we will be working our way through modeling time series data. This is a continuation of my previous post on Time Series Data.
In our previous blog post, we talked about what time series data is, how to format such data to maximize its utility, and how to handle missing data. We also learned how to resample time series data by the month, week, year, etc, and calculate rolling means. We dived into concepts such as trends, seasonality, first-order differencing, and autocorrelation. If you are familiar with most of the stuff, you are good to go. In case you need a refresher, you can do a quick google search for these topics or read my previous post here.
Few words before we begin:
There are other, undoubtedly better, packages available for time series forecastings, such as ARIMA or Facebook’s proprietory software Prophet. However, this article was inspired by a friend’s take-home assignment that required her to use only Scikit, Numpy, and Pandas (or face instant disqualification!).
Let’s dive into our dataset
We will be working with the publicly available dataset Open Power System Data. You can download the data here. It contains electricity consumption, wind power production, and solar power production for 2006–2017.
After setting the Date column as the index, this is how our dataset looks like:
# to explicitly convert the date column to type DATETIME
data['Date'] = pd.to_datetime(data['Date'])
data = data.set_index('Date')
Defining the Modeling task
Goals of Prediction
Our aim is to predict Consumption (ideally for future unseen dates) from this time series dataset.
Training and Test set
We will be using 10 years of data for training i.e. 2006–2016 and last year’s data for testing i.e. 2017.
Performance Measure
In order to evaluate how good our model is, we would be using R-squared and Root Mean Squared Error (but will be printing all relevant metrics for you to take the final call).
Helper Functions
In order to print all performance metrics relevant to a regression task (such as MAE and R-square), we will be defining the regression_results function.
import sklearn.metrics as metrics
def regression_results(y_true, y_pred): # Regression metrics
explained_variance=metrics.explained_variance_score(y_true, y_pred)
mean_absolute_error=metrics.mean_absolute_error(y_true, y_pred)
mse=metrics.mean_squared_error(y_true, y_pred)
mean_squared_log_error=metrics.mean_squared_log_error(y_true, y_pred)
median_absolute_error=metrics.median_absolute_error(y_true, y_pred)
r2=metrics.r2_score(y_true, y_pred) print('explained_variance: ', round(explained_variance,4))
print('mean_squared_log_error: ', round(mean_squared_log_error,4))
print('r2: ', round(r2,4))
print('MAE: ', round(mean_absolute_error,4))
print('MSE: ', round(mse,4))
print('RMSE: ', round(np.sqrt(mse),4))
Feature Engineering
As a baseline, we choose a simplistic model, one that predicts today’s consumption value based on
yesterday’s consumption value and;
difference between yesterday and the day before yesterday’s consumption value.
# creating new dataframe from consumption column
data_consumption = data[['Consumption']] # inserting new column with yesterday's consumption values
data_consumption.loc[:,'Yesterday'] =
data_consumption.loc[:,'Consumption'].shift() # inserting another column with difference between yesterday and day before yesterday's consumption values.
data_consumption.loc[:,'Yesterday_Diff'] = data_consumption.loc[:,'Yesterday'].diff() # dropping NAs
data_consumption = data_consumption.dropna()
Defining training and test sets
X_train = data_consumption[:'2016'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_train = data_consumption.loc[:'2016', 'Consumption'] X_test = data_consumption['2017'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_test = data_consumption.loc['2017', 'Consumption']
Cross-Validation on Time-Series data
A question that often comes up during data science interviews is: Which cross-validation technique would you use on time-series data?
You may be tempted to gravitate towards the all-time-favorite K-Fold Cross-Validation (believe me, up until recently — don’t ask how recently! — I did not know there exist CV techniques other than K-fold). Unfortunately, that would not be the correct answer. The reason being, it does not take into account that time-series data has some natural ordering to it and the randomization in standard k-fold cross-validation does not preserve that ordering.
A better alternative for cross validation on time series data (than K-fold CV) is Forward Chaining strategy.
In forward chaining, say with 3 folds, the train and validation sets look like:
fold 1: training [1], validation [2]
fold 2: training [1 2], validation [3]
fold 3: training [1 2 3], validation [4]
where 1, 2, 3, 4 represent the year. This way successive training sets are supersets of those that come before them.
Luckily for us, sklearn has a provision for implementing such train test split using TimeSeriesSplit .
from sklearn.model_selection import TimeSeriesSplit
The TimeSerieSplit function takes as input the number of splits. Since our training data has 11 unique years (2006 -2016), we would be setting n_splits = 10 . This way we have neat training and validation sets:
fold 1: training [2006], validation [2007]
fold 2: training [2006 2007], validation [2008]
fold 3: training [2006 2007 2008], validation [2009]
fold 4: training [2006 2007 2008 2009], validation [2010]
fold 5: training [2006 2007 2008 2009 2010], validation [2011]
fold 6: training [2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011], validation [2012]
fold 7: training [2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012], validation [2013]
fold 8: training [2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013], validation [2014]
fold 9: training [2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014], validation [2015]
fold 10: training [2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015], validation [2016]
Spot check Algorithms
# Spot Check Algorithms models = []
models.append(('LR', LinearRegression()))
models.append(('NN', MLPRegressor(solver = 'lbfgs'))) #neural network
models.append(('KNN', KNeighborsRegressor()))
models.append(('RF', RandomForestRegressor(n_estimators = 10))) # Ensemble method - collection of many decision trees
models.append(('SVR', SVR(gamma='auto'))) # kernel = linear # Evaluate each model in turn
results = []
names = []
for name, model in models:
# TimeSeries Cross validation
tscv = TimeSeriesSplit(n_splits=10)
cv_results = cross_val_score(model, X_train, y_train, cv=tscv, scoring='r2')
results.append(cv_results)
names.append(name)
print('%s: %f (%f)' % (name, cv_results.mean(), cv_results.std()))
# Compare Algorithms
plt.boxplot(results, labels=names)
plt.title('Algorithm Comparison')
plt.show()
Both KNN and RF perform equally well. But I personally prefer RF since this ensemble model (combine multiple ‘individual’ (diverse) models together and deliver superior prediction power.) can almost work out of the box and that is one reason why they are very popular.
Grid Searching Hyperparameters
I discussed the need for grid searching hyperparameters in one of my previous articles.
An optimal combination of hyperparameters maximizes a model’s performance without leading to a high variance problem (overfitting).
The Python code for performing grid-search is as follows:
from sklearn.model_selection import GridSearchCV model = RandomForestRegressor()
param_search = {
'n_estimators': [20, 50, 100],
'max_features': ['auto', 'sqrt', 'log2'],
'max_depth' : [i for i in range(5,15)]
} tscv = TimeSeriesSplit(n_splits=10)
gsearch = GridSearchCV(estimator=model, cv=tscv, param_grid=param_search, scoring = rmse_score) gsearch.fit(X_train, y_train)
best_score = gsearch.best_score_
best_model = gsearch.best_estimator_
If you notice the code above, we have defined a custom scorer by setting scoring = rmse_score instead of using one of the common scoring metrics defined in sklearn. We define our custom scorer as follows:
from sklearn.metrics import make_scorer def rmse(actual, predict): predict = np.array(predict)
actual = np.array(actual) distance = predict - actual square_distance = distance ** 2 mean_square_distance = square_distance.mean() score = np.sqrt(mean_square_distance) return score rmse_score = make_scorer(rmse, greater_is_better = False)
Checking best model performance on test data
y_true = y_test.values
y_pred = best_model.predict(X_test) regression_results(y_true, y_pred)
This is not bad for starters. Let’s see if we can further improve our model.
Feature Engineering Returns
Up until now, we have been using values at (t-1)th day to predict values on t date. Now, let us also use values from (t-2) days to predict consumption:
# creating copy of original dataframe
data_consumption_2o = data_consumption.copy() # inserting column with yesterday-1 values
data_consumption_2o['Yesterday-1'] = data_consumption_2o['Yesterday'].shift() # inserting column with difference in yesterday-1 and yesterday-2 values.
data_consumption_2o['Yesterday-1_Diff'] = data_consumption_2o['Yesterday-1'].diff() # dropping NAs
data_consumption_2o = data_consumption_2o.dropna()
Resetting the train and test set
X_train_2o = data_consumption_2o[:'2016'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_train_2o = data_consumption_2o.loc[:'2016', 'Consumption'] X_test = data_consumption_2o['2017'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_test = data_consumption_2o.loc['2017', 'Consumption']
Checking to see if the ‘best’ random forest using ‘new’ predictors performs better
model = RandomForestRegressor()
param_search = {
'n_estimators': [20, 50, 100],
'max_features': ['auto', 'sqrt', 'log2'],
'max_depth' : [i for i in range(5,15)]
} tscv = TimeSeriesSplit(n_splits=10)
gsearch = GridSearchCV(estimator=model, cv=tscv, param_grid=param_search, scoring = rmse_score) gsearch.fit(X_train_2o, y_train_2o)
best_score = gsearch.best_score_
best_model = gsearch.best_estimator_ y_true = y_test.values
y_pred = best_model.predict(X_test) regression_results(y_true, y_pred)
Great news!! We have significantly brought down the RMSE and MAE values, whereas the R-squared value has also gone up.
Feature Engineering strikes back
Let us see if adding the value of solar production is beneficial in some way to predicting electricity consumption.
data_consumption_2o_solar = data_consumption_2o.join(data[['Solar']]) data_consumption_2o_solar = data_consumption_2o_solar.dropna()
Resetting Train/Test + GridSearch + Checking performance
X_train_2o_solar = data_consumption_2o_solar[:'2016'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_train_2o_solar = data_consumption_2o_solar.loc[:'2016', 'Consumption'] X_test = data_consumption_2o_solar['2017'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_test = data_consumption_2o_solar.loc['2017', 'Consumption'] model = RandomForestRegressor()
param_search = {
'n_estimators': [20, 50, 100],
'max_features': ['auto', 'sqrt', 'log2'],
'max_depth' : [i for i in range(5,15)]
} tscv = TimeSeriesSplit(n_splits=5)
gsearch = GridSearchCV(estimator=model, cv=tscv, param_grid=param_search, scoring = rmse_score) gsearch.fit(X_train_2o_solar, y_train_2o_solar)
best_score = gsearch.best_score_
best_model = gsearch.best_estimator_ y_true = y_test.values
y_pred = best_model.predict(X_test) regression_results(y_true, y_pred)
Voila, the model’s performance is even better now.
Variable Importance Plot
imp = best_model.feature_importances_
features = X_train_2o_solar.columns
indices = np.argsort(imp) plt.title('Feature Importances')
plt.barh(range(len(indices)), imp[indices], color='b', align='center')
plt.yticks(range(len(indices)), [features[i] for i in indices])
plt.xlabel('Relative Importance')
plt.show()
As we can see, the amount of solar production is not as strong a predictor of power consumption as other time-based predictors.
Feature Engineering Endgame
If you followed the narrative in Part 1 of my previous blog post, you would remember that our dataset has some seasonal element to it, weekly seasonality to be more precise. Thus, it would make more sense to feed as input to the model, consumption value in the week prior to the given date. That means, if the model is trying to predict the consumption value on Jan 8, it must be fed information about the consumption on Jan 1.
data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift = data_consumption_2o_solar.copy() data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift['Last_Week'] = data_consumption_2o_solar['Consumption'].shift(7) data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift = data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift.dropna()
Resetting Train/Test + GridSearch + Checking performance
X_train_2o_solar_weeklyShift = data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift[:'2016'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_train_2o_solar_weeklyShift = data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift.loc[:'2016', 'Consumption'] X_test = data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift['2017'].drop(['Consumption'], axis = 1)
y_test = data_consumption_2o_solar_weeklyShift.loc['2017', 'Consumption'] model = RandomForestRegressor()
param_search = {
'n_estimators': [20, 50, 100],
'max_features': ['auto', 'sqrt', 'log2'],
'max_depth' : [i for i in range(5,15)]
} tscv = TimeSeriesSplit(n_splits=10)
gsearch = GridSearchCV(estimator=model, cv=tscv, param_grid=param_search, scoring = rmse_score) gsearch.fit(X_train_2o_solar_weeklyShift, y_train_2o_solar_weeklyShift)
best_score = gsearch.best_score_
best_model = gsearch.best_estimator_ y_true = y_test.values
y_pred = best_model.predict(X_test) regression_results(y_true, y_pred)
And we did it again.. The errors have been reduced further and r-square increased. We could keep on adding more relevant features but I guess you get the idea now!
Feature Importance Plot | https://towardsdatascience.com/time-series-modeling-using-scikit-pandas-and-numpy-682e3b8db8d1 | ['Varshita Sher'] | 2020-07-18 09:34:23.947000+00:00 | ['Timeseries Forecasting', 'Timeseries', 'Data Science', 'Predictive Analytics', 'Machine Learning'] |
US: Non-farm payrolls better than expected | This is weekly market wrap from analyst Jason Ren
The closely-watched jobs report published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday showed that nonfarm employment in April increased by 263,000 to beat the market expectation of 185,000 by a wide margin. With the initial market reaction, the US Dollar Index advanced to its highest level of the week at 98.10. Underlying details of the publication revealed that the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6% from 3.8%, average hourly earnings came in at 3.2% annually to match March’s reading, and the labour force participation rate edged down to 62.8% from 63%.
The Chinese government may turn tough on unplanned stimulus, such as property policy easing and credit growth, which has tangibly surpassed nominal GDP growth. A dial-back of stimulus is likely if Q2 data confirms a recovery and US-China trade talks conclude positively. Recent statements by China’s leaders suggest the government is prepared to implement market opening measures, which bodes well for a trade deal by June. Spending on infrastructure may be scaled back to save fiscal firepower, but the room for higher interest rates is limited. This also means the potential for Yuan to gain value is limited over the coming future.
Real wage growth in UK has begun to rise, while a reduction in dramatic Brexit headlines may help lift confidence a little. This may give the economy a little support over coming months, but overall we expect growth to remain fairly sluggish. This will cause GBP to struggle to gain value over the future weeks.
The Euro traded with small losses as the week closed. Despite the uptick in Eurozone inflation, which saw the core rate jump to a 6-month high driven mainly from seasonal factors stemming from Easter. The markets believe the ECB need to see more persistent data to change their stance.
With the poor 15.5% drop in Australian building approvals data overnight. The Reserve Bank of Australia is definitely sitting up and taking notice of this rolling flow of negative data but whether they will feel compelled to cut their base rate is not clear. The Australian Dollar is a tad weaker this morning on that news and on a profit warning from MacQuarie Bank. | https://medium.com/@cptmarketsofficial/us-non-farm-payrolls-better-than-expected-d60e02f9b2f4 | ['Cpt Markets'] | 2019-05-06 04:22:51.943000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Cpt Markets', 'Economics', 'Money', 'Forex'] |
It’s Time for Kevin Hart to Decide What He Wants His Legacy to Be | This is where the “relative” in Hart’s “relatively unanimous approval rating” comes in. That’s because from the very beginning, a vocal LGBT population rang the alarm about Hart’s earlier stand-up material and tweets. Hart had done routines about beating up his son for having his first “gay moment.” He’d tweeted jokes about AIDS and used the “F” word. As often is the case, LGBT communities trying to hold Hart accountable were drowned out by the rest of us who laughed over their anguish. All that changed when Hart was picked to host the 2019 Oscars and those communities resurfaced those old clips and tweets all over again. This time, it caused a firestorm — the first mainstream scandal of Hart’s career. He’d had relationship scandals before but those were mostly confined to Black gossip circles. The Oscars controversy was on the morning talk shows.
Still, it could have all been a blip on the radar if Hart had simply apologized. Instead, he went on Instagram and said “I passed on the apology… I’ve addressed this several times. This is not the first time this has come up. I’ve addressed it. I’ve spoken on it. I’ve said where the rights and wrongs were.” The insinuation here was that Hart had already apologized for his comments, something he and his fans ran with. But in actuality, there’s no record of him ever previously apologizing. In 2015, for instance, when asked about his old jokes, he wrote it off as political correctness. “I wouldn’t tell that joke today, because when I said it, the times weren’t as sensitive as they are now,” he told Rolling Stone. “I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren’t necessarily big deals, because we can. These things become public spectacles.” Not quite the act of contrition anyone was looking for.
Ultimately, Hart posted a series of tweets about how he was stepping down from the Oscars while then apologizing for his old jokes. He even went on Ellen to continue his apology tour, which he could have just done in the beginning. But it was too late. Hart had become the face of a battle over “cancel culture,” using the example of his having to answer for years-old offenses as a symptom of a society that’s too sensitive to allow artists to express themselves. Hart was the symbol of a belief that free speech and comedy were under attack by a population of snowflakes hell-bent on ruining artistry. Whenever “cancel culture” arguments emerge, Hart’s name is sure to follow — as are the ahistorical claims that he was “kicked off” the Oscars. Dave Chappelle, another warrior on the front lines of a fictional war against “cancellation,” even did a whole bit on Hart as the victim.
He’s reminding us that accountability and understanding are concepts he simply refuses to demonstrate. And he’s providing more than enough justification for every fed-up fan who decides to walk away.
Hart, for his part, embraced the victim role, ignoring the fact that complaints about “cancel culture” only serve to silence legitimate movements and people who simply want a reckoning for the harm done to them. By doing so, Hart had to speak to a larger cultural battle — something he’s gravely unqualified to do. Every time he was called on to be an ambassador for a cultural reset, he fumbled.
Take his appearance on The Shop: Uninterrupted in 2019. When Lil Nas X spoke about homophobia and why he decided to come out, Hart spoke over him — “He said he was gay, so what?!” — feigning incredulity over why it would be a big deal for a Black queer man in hip-hop to come out. Hart gaslit X, using the same logic a White person uses when they say they don’t see color. It’s an act of silencing someone’s experience and struggle. I don’t know Hart’s intentions, but it certainly seemed like he was trying to use the conversation to show allyship with a community he hadn’t taken the time to make peace with — without even doing the work to understand what allyship looks like.
Hart sought out to regain control of the narrative at the beginning of 2020 with his Netflix documentary Don’t F**k This Up. The idea was that he would be able to explain everything in his own words, including the previously-revealed sex tape that showed he had cheated on his wife, Eniko, while she was eight months pregnant. (It bears mentioning that he confessed in part in order to get ahead of an alleged extortion attempt in 2017.)
The reality, again, did more harm than good. The doc showed a defiant, ill-informed man who cared more about his own ego than who he’s harming — even when that person is a gay creative executive trying to get him to understand why he’s so harmful. The one thing that seems to motivate Hart is the quest to become a billionaire, a desire he expressed many times in the doc.
Additionally, the way the documentary handled the Oscars fiasco was far outdone by its approach to the cheating scandal: a bizarre montage in which his close friends lined up to take blame for his cheating because they weren’t there to stop him. There’s no bigger sign than this that Hart is a man who doesn’t live by the same rules of accountability as the rest of us. Later in the doc, Hart handles an argument with his trainer (and Plastic Cup Boyz inner circle member), “Boss,” by holding wealth over the man’s head, insinuating that his money funds Boss’ lifestyle.
By the time the credits rolled, any scrappy underdog appeal Hart still had was gone. What we saw instead were private jets, ego, waving money in people’s faces, and a refusal to truly reckon with his wrongs. Hart was a brand, all right — a brand that was hurting people and had little interest in doing better.
It didn’t help that the string of PR debacles was happening just as Hart was at a creative nadir. His Netflix comedy specials What Now? and Irresponsible lacked the shimmering genius of his earlier works, instead relying on the same vocal inflections and a string of tepid catchphrases that had grown stale. Meanwhile, his movies, while still commercial hits, had been feeling just as warmed over.
Still, Hart could have released Zero F**ks Given and lived up to its name. People were always going to watch; all he needed to do was drop the special and keep it pushing. Instead, he’s reminding us how much he doesn’t give a fuck about bad reviews. He’s releasing videos explaining the nuances of whether or not he called his daughter a ho with zero self-awareness to realize that even having to make such a video means that you did something wrong along the way. And finally, he’s hopping in Clubhouse, trying to defend himself when people wonder if he’s funny.
Before Hart joined that Clubhouse conversation, I had already checked out the room, and found a lively discussion going on about freshness, creativity, and the nature of comedy. When I came back and Hart was on, he was doing what he’s become known for in these more serious exchanges of ideas: word vomit, circular logic, and empty-calorie gaslighting, all proof that he’s not doing the reading or considering anyone else’s thoughts. Hart swore that he was enjoying the discourse — all while kicking a Black woman out of the conversation. He was reminding us through his actions that accountability and understanding are concepts he simply refuses to demonstrate. And he’s providing more than enough justification for every fed-up fan who decides to walk away.
Hart is so fully established as a one-man entertainment conglomerate that quality can be an afterthought for the rest of his career. There’s no situation in which he’ll cease being a money-making commodity, and might even get to that three-comma end zone. He’ll still have Netflix specials. He’ll still have movies with The Rock. He’ll still be on every talk show and have any show he wants greenlit at any network he wants. There’s no stopping the gravy train any time soon.
All of which makes the appeal for him to do better even more important. Does he care about his work, or is he happy as long as his pockets get fatter? Does he care about being better or being richer? Does he want his audiences to laugh, or is he just happy they bought tickets? Hart can exist as a brand that loses his longtime supporters — or he can change, listen, and become someone we root for again. It’s all about if he’d rather be in a room full of strangers or be surrounded by the fans who made him who he is in the first place.
We know Hart gives a fuck about criticism. He just has to show that he gives a fuck about changing. | https://level.medium.com/its-time-for-kevin-hart-to-decide-what-he-wants-his-legacy-to-be-b73689206b8c | ['David Dennis'] | 2020-12-04 16:01:19.195000+00:00 | ['Comedy', 'Society', 'Culture', 'Kevin Hart', 'Race'] |
Announcing WidgetStack — A new kind of plugin studio | Hey, We, @savydv and @kantbtrue, are makers. We make stuff online like QDONOW, Themes For App, Engigogo, Eposo, DesignThingy, send out a weekly newsletter called Initiator Creator.
We are building WidgetStack for a simple reason; we have some ideas that we like to develop and share with others. But these project ideas are too small to launch as an independent project and too good to ignore. We decided to launch all these small project ideas that we had throughout these years and would like to launch under a single platform called WidgetStack.
We have imagined WidgetStack as a studio to create unique widgets and plugins for WordPress (primarily) websites. If you’re wondering, “There are already thousands of studios who are making plugins then what is new with WidgetStack.” The simple reason is these plugins are the result of our struggle to find a plugin that we’re looking for for our other projects. The plugins at WidgetStack have little or no other alternative.
The primary goal of this project is to make:
provide unique features to your current WordPress stack through plugins and widgets to add some awesome functionality that you otherwise need to hire someone to develop for you. Long terms of active support. We’re building all the plugins as micro-SaaS as we want to create the platform sustainable to provide long-term updates and support. ( We never use the term lifetime, as we all know nothing is a lifetime in tech ) powerful yet easy to use and implement.
We are launching the first two plugins with the WidgetStack meta launch: the Etta list and the Nulog WordPress plugin.
Etta List
Etta list is a content curation WordPress plugin to add a list creation feature on your website. You can create an individual item card with features like upvotes etc., or you can create a library of items to create a blog post like “X+ Best Tools For Something.”
You can create an alternative to WPbegineer, WPkube, Techmeme, zapier blog-like posts using the Etta list.
The main feature which makes it stand out from the crowd is the upvote feature. Through this feature, your visitors can upvote for the item/products that they use the most.
Nulog
Nulog plugin is a changelog WordPress plugin. You can use this plugin to create a changelog section on your website. You can also use it for various other purposes as we created it for flexible use. You can use it to create info cards, timeline, review section, news bulletin carousel slider, etc.
In case you are wondering why WordPress, then I would say because WordPress is the most popular, and most people know how to use it at the base level. Also, it is easy to deploy.
After release, our next goal is to make a chrome extension to collect the links and automate the entire process.
Also, we will keep releasing the new plugins, features, and updates as they are ready. Let me know what you think, and I would love to hear your thoughts or suggestions!
Check out WidgetStack! | https://medium.com/widgetstack/announcing-widgetstack-a-new-kind-of-plugin-studio-81dbbfcde5cf | ['Saurabh Y'] | 2020-12-18 10:26:30.646000+00:00 | ['Changelog', 'Curated Lists', 'WordPress', 'Wordpress Plugins'] |
The Denon Home series of wireless speakers will soon answer to Alexa | The Denon Home series of wireless speakers will soon answer to Alexa Amy Jan 31·3 min read
Denon Home wireless speakers are about to get smart, with an upcoming firmware update that will add Alexa to support. The Home series is part of Denon’s HEOS multi-room audio ecosystem. Alongside the Alexa news, Denon is unveiling the Home Sound Bar 550, an all-in-one Dolby Atmos soundbar that’s also in the HEOS family.
Related products Denon DHT-S216H Read TechHive's reviewSee it Denon says that a firmware update coming this spring will add Alexa support for its wireless Home speakers, including the 150, 250, 350, and new 550 models. Each of those speakers and soundbars already come equipped with built-in microphones, which have been dormant up to this point.
After installing the update, users will have the option to enable Alexa, and once they do, their Home speakers will act just like standard Echo speakers, complete with the ability to play music, adjust the speaker volume, answer questions, and control smart home devices, all via voice command.
[ Further reading: The best soundbars ]The built-in microphones in Denon’s Home speakers won’t be activated unless they’re manually enabled, and users can choose not to enable Alexa if they wish, Denon said.
The firmware update will essentially turn Denon’s Home speakers, which are capable of decoding high-resolution audio—including DSD files—into full-on smart speakers, making them poised to compete with the likes of the Amazon Echo, the Google Nest Audio, and the Sonos One (which comes with both Alexa and Google Assistant on board, although only one can be active at a time).
Meanwhile, Denon has just unveiled the Home Sound Bar 550, an all-in-one soundbar that supports immersive Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio. You can read more about those home theater audio formats in this story.
Slated to ship in February for $599, the Home Sound Bar 550 will come equipped with a fabric-covered front panel, complete with controls that light when built-in proximity sensors detect an approaching hand.
The Sound Bar 550’s six-driver array includes four two-inch full-range drivers and two 0.19-inch tweeters, while two passive radiators provide low-frequency effects.
You can upgrade the HEOS-enabled Sound Bar 550 by adding a pair of smaller Home speakers as surrounds and Denon’s wireless DSW-1H subwoofer, although doing so would push the overall price well north of $1,000.
Denon You can upgrade the sound of the all-in-one Denon Home Sound Bar 550 by adding a pair of smaller Home speakers as surrounds and Denon’s DSW-1H subwoofer.
While the Home Sound Bar 550 supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, it lacks upfiring drivers that bounce the required height cues off the ceiling. Instead, the Sound Bar 550 uses virtualization to achieve its height effects, an increasingly common (and often effective) solution to delivering 3D audio without upfiring drivers or in-ceiling speakers.
As for inputs and outputs, the Sound Bar 550 comes with two HDMI ports: an HDMI-ARC port that supports eARC, an “enhanced” version of ARC that can handle lossless audio, and a standard HDMI input with 4K video passthrough. There’s also an optical (Toslink) port, a 3.5mm jack, a USB port that supports music playback on a thumbdrive (including FLAC, WAV, ALAC, and DSD files up to 24-bit/192kHz), and an ethernet port.
Besides its upcoming Alexa support, the Home Sound Bar 550 is a Roku TV Ready soundbar, which means users will get on-screen setup instructions and settings when using the soundbar with a Roku TV.
The Sound Bar 550 also supports Apple’s AirPlay 2, as well as direct streaming from subscription music services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music HD, and Tidal. Even better, smart home enthusiasts will be able to take advantage of the soundbar’s included software drivers for Control4, Crestron, URC, and Elan smart platforms.
We’ll have a full review of the Home Sound Bar 550 once we spend some time with a sample unit.
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/@amy64733422/the-denon-home-series-of-wireless-speakers-will-soon-answer-to-alexa-d01044e87fcd | [] | 2021-01-31 19:09:03.756000+00:00 | ['Electronics', 'Consumer', 'Cord', 'Home Theater'] |
2020’s Top Ten Stories: Poseidon protects UK waters against Russian warship | 2020’s Top Ten Stories: Poseidon protects UK waters against Russian warship
In at number 4, the RAF’s Poseidon shadows a Russian warship. As we countdown to 2021, we are taking a look at some of our most-read stories from the last year. Ministry of Defence Follow Dec 22, 2020 · 3 min read
Each day in the run-up to New Year’s Day we will be reposting our most-read stories from 2020.
So far we’ve had;
10–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Inside Strategic Command
9–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Airborne soldiers make history
8–2020’s Top Ten Stories: What kit does an Apache Pilot carry?
7–2020’s Top Ten Stories: 5 things to know about the Poseidon
6–2020’s Top Ten Stories: a couple on the frontline
5–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Military Aid to Civil Authorities (MACA)
Poseidon protects UK waters against Russian warship
The new RAF submarine-hunting aircraft completed its first mission shadowing a Russian warship in the North Sea in August.
RAF P-8A Poseidon flies over Vasily Bykov over the North Sea.
The Royal Air Force once again intercepted Russian activity. But this was a first for the RAF’s new P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft. The sub-hunting aircraft completed its first operational mission, shadowing a Russian warship in the North Sea near UK waters.
Monitoring and tracking activity in the airspace and seas around the UK is paramount to our security. It keeps us safe.
Aircraft from the RAF and vessels from the Royal Navy ensure our seas and skies are defended at all times.
Oblique and overviews of the Vasily Bykov transiting through the North Sea on 3 August 2020 as captured by the P-8A Poseidon.
As the Poseidon aircraft kept watch of the Russian vessel it was supported by Typhoon fighter jets and the Voyager refuelling aircraft.
This mission shows that together, both the RAF, Royal Navy and our NATO allies will secure the seas and skies to keep us safe. | https://medium.com/voices-of-the-armed-forces/2020s-top-ten-stories-poseidon-protects-uk-waters-against-russian-warship-c1efc0301db2 | ['Ministry Of Defence'] | 2020-12-22 13:37:58.290000+00:00 | ['Aviation', 'Military', 'Borders', 'Russia', 'UK'] |
Bad Habits Keep Us Warm | (Ghassan Abdel Nour. Photo Courtesy Ester Key)
The most difficult thing for a music artist to do is to manifest the actual songs and sounds they hear inside their head onto the actual recordings. To avoid this for his album “Bad Habits Keep Us Warm”, Ghassan Abdel Nour simply did nearly everything himself. From writing and recording the songs to producing and engineering the record, Nour possesses the talent to accurately transfer his musical vision to a format that he can share with the world. Enlisting producer/sound engineer Adam Moseley (U2, Beck, The White Stripes, The Cure, KISS, Tina Turner) to assist on the sessions, the resulting recordings are a blend of musical styles which emphasize the song rather than one particular genre. Nour spends the most of his time as a music producer and sound engineer but as an accomplished musician himself, he undertook this project to exercise and test his abilities on both sides of the equation.
In the creative vein of T Bone Burnett or Peter Gabriel, Ghassan wanted to be innovative but not directly influenced by these sonically innovative artists. His goal was to write and record songs that would modernize roots/folk music. To take elements of blues, folk, country, and rock and roll and make the sound truly contemporary, it would be optimal for the artist and engineer to share the exact same vision. From inception to manifestation, Ghassan designed the sounds himself. For example, rather than utilizing a real drumkit or the popular samples so prevalent in current music, he constructed his own. Nour describes, “I decided that I would not utilize traditional drums or bass and that they would be replaced by sounds that mimic the frequency spectrum of those instruments. By doing this, you create something interesting while keeping the drive of a song intact, and at times it still even felt like there was a drum set playing. Each drum-like element (kick, snare, high hat, etc.) was built from scratch instead of using musical pre-sets. In terms of emotion, it was my intention that the whole work would have a warm and vibrant tone, as well as a theatrical or cinematic substance as opposed to ‘radio style’ music. I wanted each song to fit a certain scene, and in some cases I internally visualized the theatrical scenes first and later adapted music to fit the image I had conjured up.” The result is something that most recordings are in direct opposition to; a completely unique sound and energy. The natural cycle of music is innovation, imitation, immense popularity, over-saturation, and new innovation. Upon this course, Bad Habits Keep Us Warm seeks to set the tone for the next generation of musical artists. This all sounds grandiose for Ghassan who admits, “As a sound designer/engineer I was interested in working on an album that focused on creating and finding the most interesting and unique sounds while still maintaining the format of a coherent song. Usually one has certain guidelines to stick to when being hired for projects, I felt that only way to come up with something sonically challenging and unique was to write an entire album inspired by the idea that each element of the album has to match the standard I created for myself internally.”
Even though Ghassan was focused on discovering a new sound, he was mindful of the talents of those who have been a part of successes which preceded his work. As both a sound engineer and an artist, Nour credits acclaimed engineer and producer Adam Moseley with playing a huge role in the realization of “Bad Habits Keep Us Warm.” He refers to Moseley as a renaissance painter layering sounds in a three-dimensional manner that transports one to a different world. When describing the final forms of the project, Ghassan proclaims, “I feel it’s very important to strive to create something personal rather than just recreating what others have done. You should take pride in your own originality and strive for the best you can achieve. Accomplishing this goal was incredibly satisfying, as well as the recognition. This record was my mind in digital form. It is always amazing to have one’s vision become reality.”
https://soundcloud.com/user-597736058-520777825/keep-on-dancing
https://soundcloud.com/user-597736058-520777825/break-some-shit
https://soundcloud.com/user-597736058-520777825/home-again
https://soundcloud.com/user-597736058-520777825/high-five-to-the-wind | https://medium.com/@kkingme2003-99752/bad-habits-keep-us-warm-d95475282dc2 | ['Kelly King'] | 2019-06-18 19:16:05.511000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Sound Engineer', 'International', 'Artist'] |
The Great Conjunction AKA the Christmas Star Is Coming | The Great Conjunction AKA the Christmas Star Is Coming
What is this astrological alignment and why does it matter?
Photo by Alessandro Viaro on Unsplash
It’s a legendary time to be alive, and like true legends, it’s not a smooth path. 2020 has had some rugged terrain. This year has uprooted many and shaken us to our core. We’ve had to face the unknown and let go of control. We have had to surrender. We are looking at the systems and just how broken they are. It’s easy to feel despair.
Like any good story, there will be drama. The plot thickens before it gets better. As we look forward to the end of the year, there is hope. The planets are coming together for “The Great Conjunction,” which is when Saturn and Jupiter join forces.
It is the start of something new, and we’ve invited to see it with our own eyes.
A rare “close encounter” of the solar system’s two largest planets Dec. 21 will be a chance to see one of the theories to explain the biblical “Christmas Star.”- al.com Jupiter and Saturn will come so close together — visually — in the western sky that they will be basically one bright point of light.
Saturn + Jupiter Conjunction
It’s a meeting of the minds. When thought leaders come together, change happens. When creatives join forces, solutions come to life. Saturn and Jupiter o are having a team meeting, and there’s a lot to brainstorm for planet Earth.
Now it’s not that these celestial bodies are some all-mighty force above us controlling and dictating our lives. However, there is something to be said for their presence in our solar system.
Mythology, folklore, ancient religions, and history convey the power of the Moon, the Sun, and various aspects of space because these celestial bodies were like the first versions of Gods known to humans. Do we believe that their powers are diminished, deeming them no longer relevant to humans, or have any discussion around them been diminished from the status quo? -Analogies, Energies & Celestial Bodies
Let’s open this cosmic discussion. We are not saying that astrology is science or exact fact; it’s an artistic lens to peer through and gain an alternative view. Saturn and Jupiter, along with the other celestial characters, are archetypes playing out within us.
There is a natural intelligence acting both within and upon us at all times, and it follows certain cycles, seasons, and unspoken (but infinitely malleable) reasons. The more we talk about the governance of the world above us, the more we can learn about the world below that world. -Analogies, Energies & Celestial Bodies
So, let’s talk about this epic transit that has not occurred since the early 1400s.
We’ll begin by getting to know the players and the setting of the game.
Saturn
Saturn’s energy is about commitment, responsibility, and how we invest our energy, which leads to the other sign of Saturn’s coin: success, rewards, and achievement. Often this energy physically takes shape, for this planet rules over the physical realm and delivers its lesson through tangible “real life” examples. Saturn is about reality. -Analogies, Energies & Celestial Bodies
What this means is that we are going to see tangible, physical and real world manifestations. This isn’t a time of abstract concepts or ideals; it’s a period of working hard and building a new version of reality.
Jupiter
Jupiter is the energy of luck, good fortune, and things working out in a seemingly miraculous way. It is grace, synchronicity, and can blow our minds. Jupiter is the biggest planet in the solar system, and its energy works in a larger-than-life kind of way. It’s jaw-dropping and serendipitous, making for a particularly fun ride to wave- if we can allow our logical minds and our higher selves to share the stage. -Analogies, Energies & Celestial Bodies
It’s good news Jupiter is around, because it’s symbolism opens doors and brings possibility. Although we are facing some dead ends, these two planets coming together create a physical manifestation of new potentials.
This conjunction is occurring the the sign of Aquarius
Aquarius
In this sign we can reason, taking a step back from our emotions to see what makes sense. It’s about rekindling a connection in the mind that values and respects the heart. This intelligence can lead us forward- to infinity and beyond. Aquarius’s energy is connected with innovation, invention, and far out solutions rooted in place of kindness and compassion. -Analogies, Energies & Celestial Bodies
Aquarius energy brings solutions and now is the time for it.
We know there are options beyond what we have access to. We know that answers are being hidden behind closed doors. I had a fantastic conversation with my 9-year-old cousin recently about Area 51. He brought it up and had some valid points. He could not understand why the government would have such intense security there if there weren’t something going on. “They know something they aren’t telling us,” he said “otherwise, why would they be defending it?”
It’s time for the bigger picture to come into view. Aquarius energy is far out and offers unexpected answers. Including, but not limited to UFOs. The solutions are out there, and as Saturn and Jupiter come together, we will start to see them delivered.
Renaissance means re-birth
The Last time this energy occurred was in the early 1400s. This was the start of the renaissance.
Judging by the current state of affairs on planet earth, it’s fair to want a do-over. The renaissance was a time of fresh ideas, art, and creative outlooks the world had never seen. It’s through creativity that solutions emerge, and the Great Conjunction has creation written all over it.
What led to the renaissance?
The Black Death, 1338–1353
What the Black Death really did was shake up the social structures of Europe. And, even more vitally, the working class of Europe started to gain a new power. -welltrainedmin.com
Power to the People
A contemporary chronicler writes, “He publicly asserted…that the church of Rome is not the head of all the churches . . . that the pope at Rome does not have greater power than any other ordained priest . . . [and] that the Gospel is sufficient guide in this life for any Christian.” These were messages that took power from the hands of the privileged and handed it over to the men and women in the pews. -welltrainedmin.com
As we lead up to this conjunction, do we see parallels between then and now? We’re in the midst of a pandemic and there are worldwide movements of people coming together in the name of justice.
Humanism
Humanism is the term generally applied to the predominant social philosophy and intellectual and literary currents of the period from 1400 to 1650. Indeed, it was during the humanist era that the freedom of individual expression and opposition to authority was first brought to the surface and became an integral part of the western intellectual tradition. -historyguide.com
The renaissance was a time of humans finding meaning in their lives. It was the belief that humans didn’t merely exist without a purpose but instead had contributions to the world. It was a time of appreciating that each human has value and worth.
Today we are on the brink of finding new meaning in our lives. We see that all life deserves a chance. Phrases like Black Lives Matter indicate that we can no longer live in a world where some lives are worth more than others.
Indigenous Land Defenders are standing up for their territories. People everywhere are saying enough is enough. We can no longer allow life to be traded for money and industry. We can no longer rape the Earth and take it without her consent.
We can no longer live as if our lives lack meaning. The Great Conjunction is a turning point in the history of humanity. We have a chance to fully realize our potential. Like the times of the renaissance, we are emerging from a dark period. Through creativity, innovation, collaboration and right action we will be reborn. | https://medium.com/making-sense-of-the-universe/the-great-conjunction-aka-the-christmas-star-is-coming-d35cd9bc39ec | ['Shannon Hugman'] | 2020-12-09 01:47:08.219000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Spirituality', 'Society', 'History', 'Astrology'] |
Guide To Hemp-Powered Self Care During Isolation | Guide To Hemp-Powered Self Care During Isolation
We’ve all had some hard days recently. Whether you’re in isolation or have to work out in the world, we wanted to offer some self-care tips to help you feel a little better about everything.
For most of us, our daily routines and regular passions have been disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. Even if you are fortunate enough to be relatively untouched by this pandemic, we’re all at least shaken by this change to our way of life. Self-care can be challenging right now, especially if you were used to engaging with the world in ways that simply aren’t possible anymore.
Whatever your situation during this pandemic, we hope you’re able to take a little time each week when you can focus on caring for yourself. That’s where this isolation self-care guide comes in. We’ve included a delicious healthy recipe and some self-care tips we’re using to maintain a healthy outlook. We also selected a few of our favorite hemp and CBD products which you might find nourishing, soothing or relaxing to try.
While we don’t know what you’re going through right now, we hope the best for you and your family, and hope these tips can give you a little more relaxation.
Table of Contents
Check out our list of CBD assistance programs if you’re having trouble affording CBD during this time.
We’ve all had some hard days recently. Whether you’re in isolation or have to work out in the world, we wanted to offer some self-care tips to help you feel a little better about everything.
For most of us, our daily routines and regular passions have been disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. Even if you are fortunate enough to be relatively untouched by this pandemic, we’re all at least shaken by this change to our way of life. Self-care can be challenging right now, especially if you were used to engaging with the world in ways that simply aren’t possible anymore.
Whatever your situation during this pandemic, we hope you’re able to take a little time each week when you can focus on caring for yourself. That’s where this isolation self-care guide comes in. We’ve included a delicious healthy recipe and some self-care tips we’re using to maintain a healthy outlook. We also selected a few of our favorite hemp and CBD products which you might find nourishing, soothing or relaxing to try.
While we don’t know what you’re going through right now, we hope the best for you and your family, and hope these tips can give you a little more relaxation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Check out our list of CBD assistance programs if you’re having trouble affording CBD during this time.
We’ve all had some hard days recently. Whether you’re in isolation or have to work out in the world, we wanted to offer some self-care tips to help you feel a little better about everything.
For most of us, our daily routines and regular passions have been disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. Even if you are fortunate enough to be relatively untouched by this pandemic, we’re all at least shaken by this change to our way of life. Self-care can be challenging right now, especially if you were used to engaging with the world in ways that simply aren’t possible anymore.
Whatever your situation during this pandemic, we hope you’re able to take a little time each week when you can focus on caring for yourself. That’s where this isolation self-care guide comes in. We’ve included a delicious healthy recipe and some self-care tips we’re using to maintain a healthy outlook. We also selected a few of our favorite hemp and CBD products which you might find nourishing, soothing or relaxing to try.
While we don’t know what you’re going through right now, we hope the best for you and your family, and hope these tips can give you a little more relaxation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Check out our list of CBD assistance programs if you’re having trouble affording CBD during this time.
Isolation self-care tips from the Ministry of Hemp
Many of us at Ministry of Hemp are used to working from home. But this pandemic is stressful even for those of us with years of experience working this way.
There’s no longer any way to escape the same four walls for long, whether it’s to a café or a coworking space. All our routines are being disrupted, not to mention facing the stress and anxiety of this uncertain, scary and dangerous time.
Sometimes self-care is caring for others. Is there a vulnerable neighbor you can help during isolation? Photo: A hand, leaning out of an open door and wearing a disposable glove, picks up a mesh bag of groceries from a back porch.
At the time we’re writing this, some states are beginning to open up again. But medical experts are cautioning it will be a long time, from months to years, before things go back to anything approaching normal. And, sadly, we may see several waves of the virus, forcing us to stay home again. Making the most out of our home life is going to be important for a long time to come.
We polled everyone in our virtual office, to find out how they’re coping. Here’s some of our favorite isolation self-care tips:
Separate work & home
If you’ve got the space to do so, create a separate space for work and living. Having a home office, and a clear end time to your work every day, will help you maintain a work/life balance.
That means both physically separating your work from the rest of your home, to the extent it’s possible to do so, but also deliberate scheduling. Especially if you’re not used to working from home, it’s easy to turn a normal workday into an all nighter, or find yourself answering emails at all hours, even when you’re trying to get some sleep or visit with your family or partner. Try to create a concrete start, and end, to every workday.
Practice self-care every day
Our video producer Desiree says she spends 20 minutes every morning, drinking coffee while laying in the sun on her deck. Drew, our sales & sponsorship assistant, loves to listen to sound meditations and garden. Of course, taking CBD might be part of your self-care routine too. Some studies and numerous anecdotal reports suggest CBD can reduce symptoms of anxiety.
Maintaining our connections with others is vital too, however we’re able. If you’re living in isolation with someone, make sure to make time for each other. Many of us are participating in video chats and regular phone calls with friends and family that we can’t be near.
Don’t spend all your time online
Have you found yourself awake at some weird hour, staring into your social media feed as you watch the world seemingly fall apart? We’ve been there and it sucks. Set limits for yourself. That might be a maximum amount of time you spend on social media per day, or you might decide not to check your phone for a certain amount of time before sleeping or after waking up. Consider keeping your phone out of the bedroom, and maybe switch to a book before bed.
Keep to a routine …
What day is it again? If you’ve been stuck at home, and all your routines are a mess, it can make it harder to cope. If you can, stick to a regular routine as much as you can. Make sure to get sleep. Get up around the same time. Make sure you eat regular meals.
… But love yourself when things go wrong
At the same time, make allowances for the hard days, when you just aren’t able to do as much. You might need to sleep more, or have trouble sleeping. Things might feel a bit hopeless. That’s OK, so let yourself feel it too.
If you do feel out of control or overwhelmed by your feelings regularly, considering reaching out to your doctor, a therapist or other medical professional. Most therapists are offering video chats now, and it’s hard to overstate how valuable these conversations can be.
Help your neighbors
We’re all feeling a little disconnected right now. Look for ways to support people close to you, even if you didn’t know them before the pandemic. Maybe there’s an older or immunocompromised neighbor that needs someone to bring over some groceries. If you have money, consider donating part of your stimulus check to someone who has less. Leave notes on doors, or find people to help on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and NextDoor. There may even be an organized volunteer or mutual aid network in your community that you can tap into to help even more.
Helping others can be a valuable form of self-care, because it turns self-care into community care. And it helps us all feel less isolated, even while maintaining isolation for safety. You might make new friends that last long after this crisis passes.
Eating well is great self care
Eating nutritious foods is one of the best forms of self-care during isolation. Taking time to cook with or for your partner, or even just yourself, can feel extremely nurturing. And that’s even before you dig into your freshly made food. There’s lots of ways to safely get fresh food in many communities, whether it’s through grocery pickup, or joining a local farm share. Here in Austin where many of us work, some local restaurant distributors are even now selling their produce to the public.
Of course, we’re big fans of hemp seeds. Hemp seeds and hemp seed oil are nutritional powerhouses, full of amino acids, omega3s and other nourishment. We also think they taste good too. But whether or not you’re eating our favorite plant, we encourage you to pick meals that are both good for you but also nourish your spirit. And if that means indulging in some ice cream after a rough day, we say go for it.
Recipe: Cookie Dough Smoothie
This cookie-dough smoothie makes for decadent, but nutritious self-care during isolation. (Photo: Chris Thomas)
Who hasn’t taken a bite of cookie dough out of the bowl? This delicious CBD smoothie offers you a healthier version of an old favorite.
Salty and sweet, this cookie in a cup has a frosty, blended-ice texture with chocolate chips (or cacao nibs if you want something less sweet). This smoothie is filling with a secret fiber- and protein-rich ingredient … chickpeas! You’ll never know they’re in there, but once you try this, you won’t be able to stop using them in your own smoothie blends.
Excerpted from CBD Drinks for Health by Carlene Thomas. Copyright © 2020 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Servings: 1 (2-CUP) SERVING
Per Serving
Calories: 242 — Fat: 7g — Protein: 6g — Sodium: 777mg Fiber: 5g — Carbohydrates: 41g — Sugar: 20g
Ingredients
1 cup sweetened vanilla oat milk
1⁄4 cup canned, drained, and rinsed chickpeas
1⁄4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon chocolate chips
1⁄2 small peeled frozen banana, cut into chunks
1 cup ice cubes
15 milligrams CBD isolate oil
Directions
Add oat milk, chickpeas, salt, chocolate chips, banana, and ice cubes to a small blender.
Start blender on low and increase to high for 1 minute and 30 seconds until smooth.
Add in CBD oil and blend on low for 10 seconds.
Serve immediately.
Nourish yourself inside & out: Hemp & CBD products for isolation self-care
To close out our isolation self-care guide, we thought we’d select some of our favorite hemp and CBD products. All of these are products we’ve enjoyed during our time working from home. They have helped us feel more relaxed, more nourished, moisturized, and less anxious.
We’ve broken down our selections into categories. Click the product below to go directly to the listing, or keep reading to see them all.
Beauty & Skin Care
Health
Fashion
Food
Ministry of Hemp received free samples of these products for evaluation. We receive a percentage of sales if you buy products using the links or coupons below. We only selected products that we genuinely enjoy, and that meet our high standards, for inclusion in this article.
Engerotics Soaking Sands Bath Salts
What is it? EngErotics Soaking Sands Bath Shots are single-serving bath salts that combine moisturizing oils, delightful scents and the soothing effects of CBD.
Why did we select this product? A relaxing bath can be the perfect way to ground yourself in your body and focus on self-care rather than the stressful news of the day. And you know you’re supporting a great small, black-owned business with your dollars.
What’s it cost? $7.50 each
Special Offer: Use coupon STAYHEALTHY_2020 for 15% off your entire order!
Kino Whole Plant Hemp CBD Body Lotion
What is it? Kino’s CBD Body Lotion, enhanced with kukui nut and hemp and rich with vitamin E will moisturize, heal cracked skin, and ease painfully dry hands.
Why did we select this product? We’re all washing our hands over and over and over again! A soothing, moisturizing lotion is some of the best self-care right now. The White Gardenia scent helped mentally transport us to another place, too, far from isolation.
What’s it cost? $58 for an 8oz bottle
Prima Night Magic Facial Oil
What is it? Prima Night Magic is a face and skin oil designed with a targeted blend of vitamins and nourishing oils, plus the power of hemp.
Why did we select this product? A mindful skin care routine can become a kind of meditation, and there’s something intensely relaxing about this facial oil, with its warm earthy undertones and soothing feel. We’ve applied it to our face and neck, dry hands, even elbows. A little goes a long way!
What’s it cost? $88 for a 1oz bottle
Special Offer: Use coupon MINISTRY20 for 20% off your entire order!
Populum Full-Spectrum Hemp CBD Oil
What is it? A top-quality, full-spectrum product, Populum CBD Oil rich is with terpenes and cannabinoids, but blended with a fresh orange flavor that makes it easy to take. Available in 250mg, 500mg and 1000mg bottles.
Why did we select this product? CBD oil can offer stress relief, pain relief, and often helps relieve anxiety. There’s so many little ways CBD can help during isolation, so we make sure to take some every day. The great flavor of Populum’s CBD means there’s no hempy taste to contend with either.
What’s it cost? $59 — $179.00 depending on strength
Special Offer: Subscribe to monthly deliveries for 20% off
Joy Organics CBD Softgels
What is it? Broad-spectrum, THC-free Joy Organics CBD Softgels made with nanoemulsion technology to ensure fast absorption and high levels of bioavailability. Available in 10mg and 25mg strengths.
Why did we select this product? If you’re already taking other supplements or medications, a softgel can be an easy way to add CBD to your everyday self-care routine during isolation. Softgels also make it easy to take the same dose every time.
What’s it cost? 44.95–74.95 depending on strength
Vitagenne Pure Sleep Hemp CBD Capsules
What is it? Vitagenne’s Pure Sleep Hemp Capsules combine 25mg of CBD isolate with 5mg of melatonin and 180mg of valerian extra in every softgel.
Why did we select this product? You’re not alone if you’ve been having trouble sleeping during the pandemic. Combining CBD with other natural sleep aids like valerian and melatonin, these capsules could help you drift off and sleep deeper.
What’s it cost? $49.99 for 30 capsules
Special Offer: Use coupon MOH20 for 20% off your entire order!
WAMA Hemp Underwear
What is it? WAMA Underwear is super soft, super comfortable, super durable underwear made from hemp! Available in 8 styles for men and women.
Why did we select this product? Hemp underwear is some of the softest underwear you can imagine and, like all hemp fabrics, it just gets softer as you wash it more. Plus, hemp is naturally antibacterial, meaning you’ll stink less around anyone you do get close too during isolation.
What’s it cost? $24 each for men’s underwear styles, $20 each for women’s underwear styles, discounted multi-packs available
Hemp Zoo Hemp Socks
What is it? Ultra comfortable Hemp Zoo Hemp Socks available in basic black or cute hemp leaf print. These come in a crew style.
Why did we select this product? A warm, soft pair of socks just relaxes our feet, making great self-care when we’re isolating inside in the air conditioning all day. Hemp Zoo also has a wide selection of hemp clothes that are great for lounging indoors, helping you stay a little stylish while still very comfortable. Plus that whole anti-stink feature we mentioned above applies here too.
What’s it cost? $14.99 per pair
Hemp Seeds & Bars From Humming Hemp
What is it? Humming Hemp sells U.S. grown hemp hearts (hulled hemp seeds) that are easy to add to almost any dish. For quick snacking, we love their delicious hemp-based Hummingbars. Try several of their products in their special Stay Home Humming Kit.
Why did we select this product? Hemp seeds are very balanced nutrition, offering a complete protein along with other vital nutrients. Good nutrition is essential self-care, especially during the stress of isolation.
What’s it cost? Various. Hemp hearts start at $9.99.
Neurogan Hemp Tea
What is it? Each bag of Neurogan Hemp Tea contains only caffeine-free hemp leaves and a small amount of CBD (10mg). Hemp has a natural earthy flavor that many tea lovers will adore.
Why did we select this product? Neurogan is a CBD and hemp brand with Scandinavian roots. Neurogan seeks to promote the art of “hygge,” which means enjoying the simple things in life. A warm cup of hemp tea is the perfect simple self-care we need during isolation.
What’s it cost? $15.95 for 20 tea bags | https://medium.com/@ministryofhemp/guide-to-hemp-powered-self-care-during-isolation-1912e42b9a73 | ['Ministry Of Hemp'] | 2020-05-05 21:39:04.882000+00:00 | ['Hemp', 'Covid 19', 'Isolation', 'Self Care', 'Cbd'] |
The mother of all biases | Confirmation bias. The mother of all misconceptions. It’s the tendency to interpret new information so that it becomes comparable with our existing beliefs and convictions. In other words, we filter out any new information that contradicts our existing views.
“What the human being is best at doing, is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact” — Warren Buffet.
You would have come across this bias commonly in your corporate life. For example, senior leadership decides on a new strategy. Then the team enthusiastically celebrates any sign that is a success. Everywhere they look, they see plenty of confirming evidence, while indications to the contrary remain unseen or quickly dismissed as ‘exceptions’.
What can you do? If the word exception crops up, prick up your ears. Often it hides the presence of disconfirming evidence. There is a famous story about how Charles Darwin tackled this bias. Whenever observations contradicted his theory, he took them seriously and noted them down immediately. He knew the brain actively forgets disconfirming evidence after a short time. The more correct he judged his theory to be, the more actively he looked for contradictions.
Nowadays, social media is a breeding ground for confirmation bias. Information we are presented on media is not only reflective of what the users want to see but also of the designers’ beliefs and values. Today, people are exposed to an overwhelming number of news sources, each varying in their credibility. To form conclusions, people tend to read the news that aligns with their perspectives. For instance, new channels provide information (even the same news) differently from each other on complex issues (i.e. religious issues, political parties, etc.), with some using sensational headlines/pictures and one-sided information.
Due to the biased coverage of topics, people only utilize certain channels/sites/tweets to obtain their information to make biased conclusions.
People are susceptible to confirmation bias to protect their self-esteem (to know that their beliefs are accurate). To make themselves feel confident, they tend to look for information that supports their existing beliefs
Cognitive dissonance also explains why confirmation bias is adaptive. Cognitive dissonance is a mental conflict that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs and causes psychological stress/unease in a person.
To minimize this dissonance, people adapt to confirmation bias by avoiding information that is contradictory to their views and seeking evidence confirming their beliefs.
To avoid being susceptible to confirmation bias, start questioning your research methods and sources used to obtain their information.
Confirmation bias occurs when people tend to look for information that is confirming their beliefs/hypothesis, but this bias can be reduced by taking into alternative hypotheses and their consequences. Considering the possibility of beliefs/hypotheses other than one’s own could help you gather information in a more dynamic manner (rather than one-sided way).
To fight against confirmation bias, try writing down your beliefs — whether in terms of worldview, investments, marriage, healthcare, diet, career strategies — and set out to find disconfirming evidence(easier said than done :) ). Axing beliefs that feel like old friends is hard work, but imperative. | https://medium.com/@vivekshan/the-mother-of-all-biases-2e572405f46d | ['Vivek Shanmugasundaram'] | 2020-12-07 16:11:11.301000+00:00 | ['Cognitive Bias', 'Bias', 'Confirmation Bias', 'Cognitive Dissonance', 'Psychology'] |
Changes | many years ago
poetry fell from my fingertips
and out of my mouth
when the moment dug
her elbows into my stomach
I breathed you and released you
scent from the garland dancing in raven hair
the unusual witch walking her song amid
caustic spit
a cotton kameez swaying to wind
needle words bouncing off a steel heart
back when
memories were not so sticky
and belligerent and unkind
now, do not leave me alone
with either of them
neither my heart nor my mind. | https://medium.com/meri-shayari/changes-3f29e456e943 | ['Rebeca Ansar'] | 2020-12-16 02:40:12.566000+00:00 | ['Creative Writing', 'Poetry', 'Poet', 'Poem', 'Emotions'] |
A Masterpiece in Two Songs | A Masterpiece in Two Songs
Reflections on Les Misérables’ “Turning” and “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”
An illustration of the 1832 June Rebellion, drawn in 1870
A little over six years ago, I saw the Les Misérables movie. It sparked my first special interest in a musical, though I didn’t know I was Autistic at the time. I saw a stage production a few months later, and it blew me away. I was 15 at the time, and the events seemed removed from anything that could happen in modern times. And after a while, my intense interest in the musical faded, replaced over the years by special interests in Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, Fun Home, Hamilton, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, among others.
So, when my mom asked me a few months ago if I wanted to see a local high school production starring a few family friends, I tentatively agreed. She put it on my calendar, and I worked it into my schedule for the week, so the change in my routine wouldn’t throw me off as much. I was excited to see how differently I would feel about it now that I’m 21, diagnosed Autistic and with other chronic illnesses, and openly queer and nonbinary. My time at Berkeley also shifted my view on the sorts of injustices that still exist. Beyond that, I have studied both history and sociology in some depth recently.
I had no idea what I was in for.
The stagecraft itself was stunning, especially by high school standards, but the content hit me in unexpected ways. I was right to assume that I would feel differently about it now than I did six years ago. I did not expect to cry in the first two scenes, especially now that I’m on testosterone and often don’t cry as much. A few scenes here and there brought me to tears, while others gave me aesthetic chills. Two back-to-back scenes near the end of the show — “Turning” and “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” wrecked me. When I started crying before the end of “Turning”, I had almost forgotten that “Empty Chairs” was next, and I found myself with an even deeper respect for the team that adapted Les Mis from the Victor Hugo novel to the stage.
“Turning” features around a dozen working-class Parisian women cleaning the streets the day after a battle between the French army and national guard on one side and rebel students and workers on the other (in history, they were joined by Polish, Italian, and German refugees). It brings into sharp focus the small impact of the rebellion Hugo based Les Mis on — the Paris Uprising of 1832, also known as the June Rebellion. It lasted only two days, killing 93 insurgents and wounding 291 more. This was the end of uprisings against the disappointing outcome of the 1830 July Revolution. The women featured in the scene lament how nothing seems to change and question the purpose of the fighting when the world just stays the same. They are weary after decades of rebellions, after all of France’s attempts to overthrow their monarchy brought them almost nowhere. Given the time, few women could be on the frontlines of such battles, and they instead had to watch their loved ones die again and again.
Even exclusively in the context of 1832 France, “Turning” is chilling. With knowledge of the 187 years since then, in France and elsewhere, it is downright haunting. In the last moments of this song, I began to cry in earnest. As much as I believe that a better world is possible, I also know how many have died fighting for that belief. My brain brought me slowly backwards in time, first to the Stonewall uprising and the fact that its legacy 50 years later is the heavily policed and commercialized Pride movement while key figures like Marsha P. Johnson died in near-obscurity, then to the African-Americans who joined the United States Army in war after war, hoping that they would be able to earn white Americans’ respect, back to the slave uprisings that ended in nearly every person involved being executed or re-enslaved. The broader tragedy, the loss of revolutionary spirit and ideas, hit me harder than any individual death ever has.
Then the scene turned to “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.”
In this song, Marius, a surviving rebel student, mourns his friends who were killed in battle. The creative decision to put this song right after “Turning” was a stroke of genius. For rebel-minded folks like myself, the pair is gut-wrenching. While “Turning” reminds us of how rebellions and revolutions echo and repeat throughout history with little success, “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” speaks to the individual cost of each rebellion. Here, Hugo’s focus on the June Rebellion shows that, even when such events do not make it into history books, even when they’re mere blips on the timeline, they have intense and life-changing consequences for those involved. Whether this was an artistic choice by Hugo or mere chance, given that he was nearby during the real-life events of the rebellion, Marius’s unspeakable grief is felt by every survivor of such events regardless of time or location.
In the stage production of Les Mis, those who died in the battle usually come back onstage as ghosts (in this case, expressionless and holding candles). By the time Marius, played by one of my friends, sang the last stanza while surrounded by the ghosts of his classmates, my face and neck were both tear-stained, yet I felt a twinge of hope. I recalled the last words one of the insurgent leaders sang before he was killed in the final battle, in which he called on others to take his place in the fight for freedom.
Yes, Les Mis is a downer. Yes, many insurgencies fail, often with much bloodshed. But some succeed, and even those that don’t — like the July Revolution and the June Rebellion — can have lasting effects. The world does change. It just may not happen in any individual’s lifetime, and that’s exactly why art like Les Misérables is so important. It serves a purpose…beyond bringing just about anyone who sees the stage adaptation to tears. | https://ryanthea.medium.com/a-masterpiece-in-two-songs-15f2b7366af0 | ['Ryan Theodosia'] | 2019-03-25 00:40:05.132000+00:00 | ['Revolution', 'Les Misérables', 'History', 'Les Miserables', 'Musicals'] |
Wrong Move | Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash
I know, I used to fight for my place
never gave you the crown to my kingdom
I swear then, I didn’t mean to spoil our game
but
in the hazy hours of the dark
deep in the frozen sea
of a treacherous subconscious
my instincts have rearranged
bent out of shape
creating wrong moves
so when your fingers found my throat
breath released its hold on life
how can you stop the will of breath?
the hands, too, betrayed
stretched above
reaching for nothing less
than infinite joy
then we knew
somewhere between our first and our last
I have crowned you queen and king
master, savior, mistress, goddess
accepted your reign
bowed to your needs
before facing the truth of dawn
wrong move
we were lost for a moment
no war to fight
no starvation or disease
there is nothing to conquer
in someone who has surrendered | https://medium.com/the-rebel-poets-society/wrong-move-de29b323c0bb | ['Tima Loku'] | 2020-12-06 15:34:18.885000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'LGBTQ', 'Sex', 'BDSM', 'Poetry'] |
Who’s who in Packaging in India and Who’s missing | Value Chain for Packaging
Competitive landscape for the packaging industry needs to be looked from a value chain perspective i.e. Technology solution providers, manufacturers of packaging boxes, platforms cutting across value chain areas of machines and raw materials and end customers.
Details of the competitive landscape in each of the subsegments of value chain are as follows:
Technology Providers
The global MNC players typically play with organized players and are beyond the reach of the Indian SMEs from a small plant cost economics standpoint. (Branded Product can be at a price premium of 40%-200% over a similar counterpart manufactured by SME Manufacturer in India or Abroad). Lack of distribution capabilities and after sales service for branded players in machinery further strengthens the hand of regional machinery manufacturers.
An exception to this rule is Printing, Label and Print Finishing machinery that is dominated by trusted brands.
The Indian players typically specialize in very niche specific kind of packaging machines which are then to be integrated with other machinery sourced from other regional machine manufacturers in India or abroad.
The market is highly fragmented and information asymmetry reigns supreme. There are close to 700 good machine manufacturers in India and at least 4,000 in China. Packaging Machinery is manufactured in other countries like South Korea, Japan, Germany and Taiwan. As such for 22,000 packaging manufacturers in India there are almost as many technology providers to chose from.
Technology Manufacturers for Packaging
Overall for the packaging manufacturer there is no single reliable complete solution provider in the machine space to help them identify the right machinery for their manufacturing line and ensure a consistent spare supply for its lifetime of operation. We at Endurance Solutions are the first complete packaging machinery and technology provider for manufacturers in India. We have put together a carefully curated comprehensive portfolio of packaging machinery that has stood the test of time and offers the best there is in technological developments of the world.
Packaging Manufacturers
The Indian packaging industry is largely controlled by domestic manufacturers, although some leading global packaging companies have also established a strong presence in India. The presence of global players is more pronounced in the flexible packaging segment which has witnessed some degree of consolidation (by way of acquisitions). The other main segments of the packaging industry (folding cartons, corrugated cartons, rigid packaging) continue to be dominated by domestic players who have built leadership positions in respective sub-segments (in terms of products or end markets served). Despite limited activity in the packaging space historically, many leading global players have identified India as a highly attractive investment avenue.
Packaging Manufacturers in India
Despite presence of Indian companies with annual turnover greater than INR 100cr there is still enough demand for MSMEs to improve their toplines by targeting upcoming startups for corrugated boxes through their cost competitiveness.
An interesting segment that has recently come up in the last 4 years in the packaging industry are the platforms which cut across the packaging value chain. These platforms play in different areas of the packaging value chain by connecting box manufacturers to box suppliers, linking machine suppliers to box manufacturers or providing an online market place for connecting the suppliers and customers of packaging based on the different types of packaging offerings. Key list of companies operating in the space along with their core offering is as follows:
Top Packaging Manufacturers in India
Platforms cutting across value chain
Online marketplace for specific packaging products (corrugated boxes, courier bags, adhesive tapes etc.) supported through inhouse manufacturing
No machine infrastructure, spares, financing. Due to own manufacturing set up they are volume constrained.
Online marketplace for corrugated boxes, courier bags, bubble mailer bags, bubble wrap rolls, Gift Boxes and Adhesive Tapes.
Packaging Platforms or Marketplace
Despite the presence of new age tech platforms in the packaging Industry, there is still absence of an e commerce player cutting across all the elements of the packaging value chain and providing a complete ecosystem solution for the customers.
Indian Platforms for packaging
End Players of packaging value chain
These are essentially the end retailers who capture the end customer experience of the packaging value chain. They directly deal with the end user unboxing experience with respect to all the packaging be it secondary, tertiary and even primary in certain cases for their own products. These include large B2C giants such as Amazon, Flipkart and upcoming Reliance Jio which exercise enormous pricing power over the packaging suppliers due to the sheer packaging volume available with them.
Amazons and Flipkarts of the world
However despite the fact that there is risk of forward integration into the packaging industry by End players, the likelihood of the same happening is very low specifically for the fact that box manufacturing is a labor intensive, low margin industry with its challenges of dealing with labor laws in India. E commerce giants are most likely remain away from dealing with labor and expected to focus more of their efforts more in terms of developing a holistic shopping experience for the end customers. | https://medium.com/@endurancesolutions/players-in-packaging-value-chain-in-india-59f3e6a12b1d | [] | 2021-02-19 06:21:32.423000+00:00 | ['Packaging Boxes', 'Marketplaces', 'Make In India', 'Value Chain', 'Packaging'] |
Finding Optimal Number Of Clusters for Clustering Algorithm — With python code | WHAT IS CLUSTERING?
It is basically a type of unsupervised learning method. An unsupervised learning method is a method in which we draw references from datasets consisting of input data without labeled responses. Generally, it is used as a process to find meaningful structure, explanatory underlying processes, generative features, and groupings inherent in a set of examples.
Clustering is the task of dividing the population or data points into a number of groups such that data points in the same groups are more similar to other data points in the same group and dissimilar to the data points in other groups. It is basically a collection of objects on the basis of similarity and dissimilarity between them.
There are multiple methods you can use in order to determine what is the optimal number of clusters for your data and that is what will see in detail below.
DETERMINING THE OPTIMAL NUMBER OF CLUSTERS
1. ELBOW METHOD
The Elbow method is a heuristic method of interpretation and validation of consistency within-cluster analysis designed to help to find the appropriate number of clusters in a dataset.
Elbow method example
The example code below creates finds the optimal value for k.
# clustering dataset
# determine k using elbow method
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
from sklearn import metrics
from scipy.spatial.distance import cdist
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x1 = np.array([3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 8, 9, 9, 8])
x2 = np.array([5, 4, 5, 6, 5, 8, 6, 7, 6, 7, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3])
plt.plot()
plt.xlim([0, 10])
plt.ylim([0, 10])
plt.title(‘Dataset’)
plt.scatter(x1, x2)
plt.show()
# create new plot and data
plt.plot()
X = np.array(list(zip(x1, x2))).reshape(len(x1), 2)
colors = [‘b’, ‘g’, ‘r’]
markers = [‘o’, ‘v’, ‘s’]
# k means determine k
distortions = []
K = range(1,10)
for k in K:
kmeanModel = KMeans(n_clusters=k).fit(X)
kmeanModel.fit(X)
distortions.append(sum(np.min(cdist(X, kmeanModel.cluster_centers_, ‘euclidean’), axis=1)) / X.shape[0])
# Plot the elbow
plt.plot(K, distortions, ‘bx-’)
plt.xlabel(‘k’)
plt.ylabel(‘Distortion’)
plt.title(‘The Elbow Method showing the optimal k’)
plt.show()
2. SILHOUETTE ANALYSIS
Silhouette analysis can be used to study the separation distance between the resulting clusters. The silhouette plot displays a measure of how close each point in one cluster is to points in the neighboring clusters and thus provides a way to assess parameters like number of clusters visually. This measure has a range of [-1, 1].
Where 1 means that points are very close to their own cluster and far from other clusters, whereas -1 indicates that points are close to the neighboring clusters.
Scikit learn link — Python code can be found in this sci-kit learn.
3. GAP STATISTICS
Gap statistic is a goodness of clustering measure, where for each hypothetical number of clusters k, it compares two functions: log of within-cluster sum of squares (wss) with its expectation under the null reference distribution of the data.
# compute gap statistic
set.seed(123)
gap_stat <- clusGap(df, FUN = kmeans, nstart = 25,
K.max = 10, B = 50)
# Print the result
print(gap_stat, method = "firstmax")
## Clustering Gap statistic ["clusGap"] from call:
## clusGap(x = df, FUNcluster = kmeans, K.max = 10, B = 50, nstart = 25)
## B=50 simulated reference sets, k = 1..10; spaceH0="scaledPCA"
## --> Number of clusters (method 'firstmax'): 4
## logW E.logW gap SE.sim
## [1,] 3.458369 3.638250 0.1798804 0.03653200
## [2,] 3.135112 3.371452 0.2363409 0.03394132
## [3,] 2.977727 3.235385 0.2576588 0.03635372
## [4,] 2.826221 3.120441 0.2942199 0.03615597
## [5,] 2.738868 3.020288 0.2814197 0.03950085
## [6,] 2.669860 2.933533 0.2636730 0.03957994
## [7,] 2.598748 2.855759 0.2570109 0.03809451
## [8,] 2.531626 2.784000 0.2523744 0.03869283
## [9,] 2.468162 2.716498 0.2483355 0.03971815
## [10,] 2.394884 2.652241 0.2573567 0.04104674
We can visualize the results with fviz_gap_stat which suggests four clusters as the optimal number of clusters.
fviz_gap_stat(gap_stat)
4. HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING- Dendrogram
A dendrogram is a tree-like diagram that records the sequences of merges or splits.
Hierarchical clustering is usually used to better understand the structure and relationships in your data and based on them you decide what number of clusters seems appropriate for your purpose
How to choose the optimal number of clusters based on the output of this analysis, the dendogram? As a rule of thumb, look for the clusters with the longest ‘branches’, the shorter they are, the more similar they are to following ‘twigs’ and ‘leaves’. But keep in mind that, as always, the optimal number will also depend on the context, expert knowledge, application, etc.
>>> from scipy.cluster import hierarchy
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> ytdist = np.array([662., 877., 255., 412., 996., 295., 468., 268.,
... 400., 754., 564., 138., 219., 869., 669.])
>>> Z = hierarchy.linkage(ytdist, 'single')
>>> plt.figure()
>>> dn = hierarchy.dendrogram(Z)
>>> hierarchy.set_link_color_palette(['m', 'c', 'y', 'k'])
>>> fig, axes = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(8, 3))
>>> dn1 = hierarchy.dendrogram(Z, ax=axes[0], above_threshold_color='y',
... orientation='top')
>>> dn2 = hierarchy.dendrogram(Z, ax=axes[1],
... above_threshold_color='#bcbddc',
... orientation='right')
>>> hierarchy.set_link_color_palette(None) # reset to default after use
>>> plt.show()
Dendrogram
How to choose the optimal number of clusters based on the output of this analysis, the dendrogram? As a rule of thumb, look for the clusters with the longest ‘branches’, the shorter they are, the more similar they are to following ‘twigs’ and ‘leaves’. But keep in mind that, as always, the optimal number will also depend on the context, expert knowledge, application, etc.
Thanks for reading my first post in Medium. | https://medium.com/@masarudheena/4-best-ways-to-find-optimal-number-of-clusters-for-clustering-with-python-code-706199fa957c | ['Mohamed Asarudheen'] | 2019-09-09 03:58:51.010000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Pyhton', 'Statistics', 'Unsupervised Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Defining Oneself Shouldn’t Be That Hard | Defining Oneself Shouldn’t Be That Hard
Thanks, Moana for teaching us the way.
I have a clear memory in my head that’s particularly annoying. I remember being seated on an uncomfortable chair in a big room full of people listening to a random guy speak about personal development.
I must’ve been seriously uninterested because I cannot recall anything else about that day other than this particular moment. I don’t remember why I was there, whom I was there with, what time of the day it was, nor if it was a week day or a weekend. The whole thing is a complete blank in my mind.
Except for that little thing.
The speaker must have noticed my probably intended lack of attention because he decided to approach me. My bad for sitting in the front rows, I guess. He stared at me for a moment, and then asked: “Who are you?”
“Patricio Montalvo” I answered.
“I didn’t ask for your name. I asked: ‘Who are you?’”
I tried listing things about me like my physical appearance, like my height and the color of my eyes and hair. Apparently, that still wasn’t enough. I then described my skills and hobbies, my passions, and he just kept on asking. It was frustrating.
Sadly, that’s all I remember. I don’t know what the intentions behind these constant inquiries were. I’m not even sure what was the point of it all.
At that moment, I got nothing of value out of that talk. There was no big revelation, no life-changing epiphany. I walked out confused and annoyed. It was not until later that this interaction would have an impact on me.
The Big Question
Medium has shown me enough evidence of how common it is to suddenly go “Wait, what?” about some random aspect of your life. Many times, those moments trigger interesting articles and deep reflections.
Of course, this article is a product of one of those moments. I recently started questioning aspects of my personality and my beliefs. I started writing about all of these thoughts and, suddenly, the big question struck.
“Who am I? Do I really know myself?”
I started feeling like I knew other people close to me more than I know myself. I figured that, before defining what things about myself I would like to keep or change, I should probably know myself.
It’s been a couple of years now, but probably Mr. Pedantic Speaker is grinning without knowing why. I might finally succumb into the pressure of asking myself “who are you?” until I’m content with an answer.
Realistically though, what would be an efficient way to put into words who I am, using only self-perception?
I think there are two alternatives to answer the big question; and it depends on the interest of the person asking. Practically categorizing these interests, let us say one way to answer is when someone else is asking, and the other is when asking oneself.
For the first alternative, there’s a simple solution. Realistically speaking, most of the people are not like this know-it-all speaker, so answering with a name is usually fine. If the person asking is interested in knowing more about you, they’ll probably ask about it directly.
Now, when drifting into existential awareness and asking that question to myself in an attempt to define my own identity, I’ve developed a small exercise that has given me structure.
Of course, it involves writing, so it is important to be prepared with something to write on. I find it that when writing something instead of just thinking, it’s easier to stay on track. I decided to this the vintage way: pen/pencil and a paper sheet.
Once ready, I played the song.
Moana’s Style
In Disney’s 2016 movie “Moana”, there’s one song I am particularly fond of. I remember it lit something inside of me when I first heard it. A section of the lyrics go as follow:
“
…
Who am I?
I am a girl who loves my island
I’m the girl who loves the sea
It calls me
I am the daughter of the village chief
We are descended from voyagers
Who found their way across the world
They call me
I’ve delivered us to where we are
I have journeyed farther
I am everything I’ve learned and more
…
I am Moana!”
I like listening to this song in particular every now and then. Somehow it came to mind.
This is a unique way to introduce yourself, and I love it. I’ve decided to follow Moana’s example, and designed a guide based on this song.
The structure goes as follows:
1- I started by defining what I love. I wrote about my passions and my ikigai; my reason to wake up in the morning. I wrote about the things that excite me the most.
2- Then, I wrote about where I come from, my roots. Not only about location, but about your values. I included personal beliefs and the principles I value in life.
3- I went on and listed my accomplishments. I described what makes me proud of myself. I wrote about the achievements that came through hard work and dedication. I wrote about my education and my career.
4- Next, I tweaked Moana’s formula a bit, and decided to include a section about my weaknesses. Including both external and internal factors. I considered things that don’t depend on me that bring me uncertainty or insecurity, and the things about me that I would like to change.
5- Finally, I finished off by declaring where I’m going. I wrote about the person I would like to become. I listed my goals and dreams, and named people I admired.
I decided to go all the way, and signed-off with my name, just like Moana did.
Who We Are vs Who We Want to Be
This is not the first time that I question who I am and go through an exercise like this. But it is the first time I realized that sometimes I list traits that I don’t really possess, but instead is how I would like to visualize myself.
When defining ourselves, it’s not harmful if we fall into false self-perceptions. It is very likely that our description will be biased, but I believe that’s fine. I find it very interesting who things tend to shift between a “I am” section and a “I want to be” section.
It’s Easier to Think Negative
I also often find it hard to think of multiple good traits about myself without being out weighted by the bad, and I’ve heard that’s common. It is easier to think about our weaknesses than our strengths.
When struggling with listing my personal characteristics, a good support exercise is to think about the characteristics I quickly notice about other people. If there’s a person you admire, and you know specifically why, chances are that this person has either a trait you have or that you want to have. The same goes for people you hate and bad traits.
I do believe that it is important to have a balance. I would recommend to always list as many positive traits as the negatives you can think of.
Why All of This Matters
One cannot give a solution to a problem they don’t know. The reason I started this exercise is that I wanted to know what I really want to work on improving.
When you define yourself, your values become clear. Not only do you have a satisfying answer to who you are, but you also define who you want to or can be.
In the realm of my personal life and self-perception, I firmly believe that knowledge is power. Knowing what I am, and what I want to be, always helps to clear the way. It makes big life decisions a bit easier. It is the big answer. | https://medium.com/carre4/defining-oneself-shouldnt-be-that-hard-365104c43e98 | ['Pato Montalvo'] | 2020-09-26 03:31:07.350000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Philosophy', 'Personal Growth', 'Personal Development', 'Life'] |
How to Make Silver Jewelry from 3D Printed Molds | With the help of a multitool 3D printer and 3D printed molds, a talented designer was able to manufacture her own unique silver jewelry.
Desktop-size multitool 3D printers won’t replace professional jewelry and industrial 3D printers, but a machine like ZMorph 2.0 SX can be used to quicken the traditional manufacturing process while lowering its costs. Paula Szarejko, who designs and fabricates her own 3D printed jewelry, proved this recently with her collection of unique silver ornaments. Furthermore, her process can be applied to cast various types of metal objects.
The truth about printing silver and gold
It’s possible to 3D print with silver or gold, but it’s not easy and certainly not cheap. The technology is still experimental and requires a powder-based industrial 3D printer, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, and wastes a lot of expensive material in the process. This is why 3D printing is being used in jewelry mostly for creating plastic or metal prototypes, wax models, and 3D printed molds, which are later needed for actual metal casting. It makes the entire process faster and simpler, but still involve some of the traditional techniques.
Source: i.materialise
Even when you decide to outsource mold creations or the entire manufacturing process, it still can be quite expensive and take 8 to 12 days to ship them, especially when you want to make single items instead of buying one of the ready-to-order pieces. This is why Paula decided to recreate the process used by the outsourcing companies in her own workshop with a multitool 3D printer and a help from a local jeweler. Her goal was to create something unique relatively quick and at minimum costs. And she succeeded!
Check this unique silver #jewelry from #3Dprinted molds
CLICK TO TWEET
Paula Szarejko manufactured two pairs of silver earrings (geometric icicles and low poly wolf heads), three rings (with zirconia stones, with a silver bow, and with a geometrical shape), and a low poly wolf head pendant while spending no more than 150$!
Let’s have a closer look at how she manage to achieve that.
Preparing prototypes and 3D printed molds
She started with 3D printing all of her designs with ABS filament on ZMorph multitool 3D printer. The models were printed with layers set from 0.05 to 0.1 mm (depending on the object) to achieve the best possible level of detail. She then used some basic post-production techniques to clean them and polish their surfaces.
To create the mold, Paula 3D printed rectangular forms about 5 x 5 x 4 cm each. Her first design had a casket-like closing mechanism with a hinge on the side. She later modified it to enable compressing the lids with screws, so the liquid rubber won’t spill out of them.
Every 3D printed jewelry prototype was put in a form and flooded with two-component rubber. Paula used it instead of traditional vulcanization because the high temperature would deform the ABS material. Two-component rubber started to harden in the room temperature after mixing it in an exactly 1:1 proportion.
After about 20 hours, she opened the 3D printed molds, took the rubber mold out and carefully cut it in two to extract the plastic prototype. Rubber mold was ready for further work in a foundry.
Traditional metal casting
Until this point, Paula was able to utilize her multitool 3D printer during the design process and mold making. It allowed her to retain full control over the process, while saving time and money. Every artist and DIY maker can perform what she did in their own workshops.
Metal casting isn’t so easy to perform on your own, so Paula went to a professional jeweler. He took the rubber molds and injected them with wax. Wax models with sprues were then attached to a mandrel to form a jewelry casting tree and dipped in a liquid plaster.
Through a lost-wax processing, the plaster cast hardened and became a form. Jeweler poured hot silver into it in order to make the jewelry. About 45 grams of silver were used to cast the tree with all the pieces on it. After extracting it from the plaster and cutting the jewelry from the mantle, Paula could finalize her project.
Finishing touches
Objects cast in any kind of metal are always covered in various impurities that require further post-production, so Paula cleaned and polished them with tools she already had in her workshop. Regular files and sandpaper were enough to grind all bubbles and clean them. At this stage, makers and artists can give their works a unique feel. The geometrically shaped ring was polished until its surface was clean and bright, while the icicles earrings were left with visible 3D printing layers that made them really stand out.
At the end, jeweler riveted zirconia stones into one of the rings and added metal clips to the earrings. In the meantime, Paula once again used her 3D printer — this time to make custom boxes for her jewelry. It’s a perfect example of a wide range of manufacturing possibilities 3D printing gives to every maker and artist who are limited only by their own imagination.
Machinable Wax — alternative to consider
During her work on 3D printed molds and jewelry, Paula found a new Machinable Wax 3D printing filament. It can be used to shorten the manufacturing process as it enables 3D printing of wax models that can be attached directly to a casting mandrel. The filament can be easily reduced from a plastic cast with a traditional lost-wax method. It’s a good alternative to consider when thinking about making any kind of molds for casting.
Beyond traditional jewelry making
Paula Szarejko used her multitool 3D printer to manufacture jewelry prototypes, forms, and molds, which were later used by a professional jeweler to cast silver rings, earrings, and a pendant. Simple post-processing techniques were enough to clean, polish and finalize these unique pieces of jewelry.
The results are simply gorgeous! Packed in custom-made boxes the entire collection of jewelry have this unique feel and can make for a very chic and memorable gift, while the entire costs of materials and manufacturing closed at 150$.
Other uses of 3D printed molds
Desktop-size multitool 3D printers can be used as an alternative to more expensive tools and services, and still are able to boost the traditional jewelry making. It’s worth noting, that while providing significant time and cost savings, this process requires more work than ordering a mold or an existing piece of jewelry online. That’s why we recommend it to DIY makers and artists like Paula, who have passion and time, want to create things, and express themselves in their unique crafts.
Click to enlarge
It’s also worth to mention, that jewelry and silver casting is only one of many possibilities here. 3D printed molds and the entire process described in this article and the above infographics can be easily adapted to manufacture various objects from a variety of metals, rubber, ceramics, chocolate and other materials. | https://medium.com/@ZMorph/how-to-make-silver-jewelry-from-3d-printed-molds-b1c0e8de09ad | ['Zmorph Sa'] | 2016-06-21 12:19:41.756000+00:00 | ['Jewelry', '3D Printing', 'Product Design'] |
Campus Activism Before and During Election Day | Campus Activism Before and During Election Day
by Paul Craft
Campus political activism spiked with the coming of the national election. Despite some obvious pre-election fatigue in some quarters, many Stanford students were nonetheless energized by the California Propositions 4 and 8 and, of course, Barack Obama. The main pre-election event took place just before November 4 and was designed to encourage students to vote. Then, after the election, students staged impromptu celebrations for Obama and protests against Proposition 8.
On a windswept afternoon less than 12 hours before the 2008 state and national election began, hundreds of Stanford students rallied in White Plaza in support of Barack Obama, as well as opposition to California Proposition 4, an amendment requiring parental notification for a minor’s abortion, and Proposition 8, an initiative to ban gay marriage statewide. Sponsored by a coalition of liberal student groups, the event featured Stanford Law School Professor Larry Marshall, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, former California gubernatorial candidate Steve Wesley, and several student leaders.
First, Professor Larry Marshall of the Law School, who knows Barack Obama personally, spoke about the historical and political significance of electing America’s first African-American president. He also emphasized aspects of Obama’s character from a personal perspective, based on their friendship in Chicago several years ago.
Luukas Ilves, a former Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Review, also took the microphone to make “the conservative case for Barack Obama and against Proposition 8.” Striding to center stage in a pink Oxford shirt, Luukas first argued that gay marriage reflected the desire to participate in the conservative traditions of marriage–monogamy and long-term commitment. Then, turning to a group of “Yes on Proposition 8” demonstrators, Luukas declared “You are not real conservatives!” Moving to the issue of Barack Obama, Luukas argued that “Obama has a better understanding of the market and a more prudent foreign policy” than McCain. After Luukas, former Stanford student body President Steve Wesley spoke briefly about his time as a campus activist against South African apartheid, using it as a lens through which the history of race relations in general, and this election in particular, can be seen.
Finally, the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome, compared gay marriage to interracial marriage, stressing his view of their common status as “civil rights” issues. Although Mayor Newsom’s speech was received with great elation by the students in White Plaza, his very public consideration of a run for Governor of California caused other students to wonder if the speech was simply a voter- relations operation. Barack Obama’s dominate victory brought on a wave of euphoria among students on the evening November 4th. Clustered in dorms and row houses, most students watched with small groups of friends and housemates. Stanford-in-Government, meanwhile, hosted a larger event in the CoHo that drew a large crowd.
After the completion of Obama’s victory speech at around 9:30 PM, students began streaming out of their residences to meet in the Main Quad. Between 10 and 11, as many as 100 students sang songs including “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and danced around a spontaneous bonfire in the Main Quad. The atmosphere, generally upbeat, was tempered by the anticlimactic nature of Obama’s victory and the success of Proposition 8. | https://medium.com/stanfordreview/campus-activism-before-and-during-election-day-80e0e29429b5 | [] | 2016-12-09 03:40:09.097000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Hillary Clinton'] |
11 Ways to Help Kids with Special Needs or Autism Wear Masks | 11 Ways to Help Kids with Special Needs or Autism Wear Masks
A school principal shares her secrets.
Even sensitive kids can get comfortable with masks, with a little help. Photo by Alirezza Attari on Unsplash.
Parents of kids with special needs are worried about their kids ability to keep masks on at school this year. Kids with sensory processing or autism can really struggle to tolerate something on their face. The good news is that there are ways to help them do it.
Jen Jimenez, a former school principal who currently works with kids with autism, has some great advice:
Getting used to the mask.
1. Try to find the softest mask possible. Mrs. Jimenez suggests the masks offered by strongselfie.com. (Dr. Escalante advice: I have found a nice assortment of soft adjustable masks instore at The Learning Express, an Illinois toy store chain. Also, sockfancy.com offers some very well designed masks with soft cotton.) None of these are affiliate links, they are just places to find good masks.
2. Start by having your child hold the mask in her hand during a preferred activity. Set a timer, show an end reward, gradually increase time.
3. Once she is comfortable holding it, have her wear it on her hand wrapping the ear loops on pinky and thumb placing mouthpiece on back of the hand. Use the same drill of preferred activity, timer, reward, and gradually increase the time.
4. If she’s comfortable with it on the back of her hand try to get her to brush her own cheeks with it. Once she’s comfortable, move to the face. I’d start by using the mask to brush her cheeks and again timer, reward, slowly increase the time.
5. Next move to placing the ear loop on one ear while you hold the rest of the mask. Then move to the other ear. Eventually moving to wearing the mask.
Supportive tools for kids in masks.
6. For autistic children with ABA therapists: your ABA team can create visual picture cues for each of these steps.
7. Dealing with mouth odor: when you move to wearing the mask you can give your child gum or hard candy in her mouth to help with odor. ( Strongselfie.com does actually sell a mask refresher scented spray however I haven’t smelled it.) If your child has a preferred odor I’d rub the mask with it!
8. Once your child is built up to five minutes of mask-wearing I’d try small outdoor mask-wearing preferred activities, “First mask, Then sidewalk chalk” etc.
9. Try putting masks on all of her favorite toys for visual cues. There are a bunch of great social stories for children about mask-wearing on the internet that can be read to your child before each step. (Check out these free printable stories about Covid-19 for kids with autism that look good for other kids too.
10. You can also use a mirror so she can watch how she looks during each step. If your child has a preferred fabric try lining a mask with it….for example several of my students like the bumpy yet soft fur of teddy bears and often bury their faces in that.
11. My kids often complain the mask is hot so I’ve started keeping them in the freezer and putting it on them cold. My other thought is trying a face shield or experimenting with a bandana or even the neck wrap type mask that pulls up over the nose.
Mrs. Jimenez wants to help kids with masks. She wraps us this way, “I hope this helps you some. Mask wearing is hard for a lot of children.”
For some help with life as a parent, grab a copy of The Ultimate Parenting Checklist. These five bits of uncommon wisdom will make your life as a parent much easier. | https://medium.com/family-matters-2/11-ways-to-help-kids-with-special-needs-or-autism-wear-masks-e8748d254d70 | ['Alison Escalante Md'] | 2020-08-14 12:39:22.585000+00:00 | ['Masks', 'Special Needs', 'Autism', 'Parenting', 'Coronavirus'] |
Top Reasons Map Listings for Local Businesses Won’t Appear in Search Results | Top Reasons Map Listings for Local Businesses Won’t Appear in Search Results T Guard May 20·3 min read
It’s inevitable that business owners will search for their business and the second a business owner does not show up in maps for a local search, they’ll ask…
“Why won’t my map listing rank for my keywords?”
Top Reasons Why Your Business Does Not Show up in Google Maps.
You’re a greedy bastard. — Yep I said it. When you set up your Google My Business profile you probably added all kinds of categories based on your services and then some. You might have made your service area cover an entire state or more than two hours of driving distance away.
The mindset of more is better does not equate well with Google. Google is smart. If you can see it, so can Google.
For example, if you are Cleaning products supplier that should be your category, period. Category is what the business IS, not necessarily what it does. What is your business known for?
The greedy bastard mindset will add all kinds of categories to their GMB profile. Uninformed business owners would probably add some of the following categories and then wonder why they are getting calls for laundry pick up and maid service.
· House cleaning service
· Window cleaning service
· Commercial cleaning service
· Carpet cleaning service
· Janitorial service
· Cleaning service
· Upholstery cleaning service
· Dry Cleaners
Want a better calls and customers looking to pay for your services? Use Specific Categories Based on the Category of your business.
Your GMB service area says, “I’m not a local business.”
The ranking for business on Google is based on the physical location of your business — the address that you used to verify your listing.
Rankings have nothing to do with the service areas you select. The areas provide a visual for the user by generating a shaded area over the map (if the address is hidden) and can also be seen by the user on App.
If you are not showing up in maps for a city you service, it could be because you verified your GMB profile using an address too far away from your target or “money” location.
The service area locations you add in your GMB profile should be congruent with the areas on your website, social networks and directories.
What does Google Say About Service Areas?
You can’t set your service-area as a distance around your business. If you previously set up your service area in this way, you can’t edit it. Instead, you must specify your service -area by city, postal code, or another type of area. Keep in mind: You can have up to 20 service areas. The boundaries of your overall area should not extend farther than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based. Source: GMB Guidelines
Google’s Local Map Secret Algorithm Revealed
Google’s search engine algorithms factors are kept secret although they do provide guidelines that will help your business rank. However, Google gives straight up tells you how to get your business to get better placement in local searches.
The biggest Google maps SEO tip in the world.
How Google determines local ranking
Local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. A combination of these factors helps us find the best match for your search. For example, our algorithms might decide that a business that’s farther away from your location is more likely to have what you’re looking for than a business that’s closer, and therefore rank it higher in local results.
Google Maps Rankings Factors are based on:
Relevance: Categories, Services, Name (Brand)
Distance: Proximity to verification address
Prominence: Citations, Review count, Sentiment, Updates, Engagement, Organic position
In summary practice the following.
Don’t be greedy.
Determine the best category for your business
Keep your service area local.
Provide information your customers need or are looking for and they will find you.
Happy Map Rankings
Tom Guard
My craft is the practice of optimization.
I optimize platforms like websites, social networks, maps, and so on. Some call it SEO but that’s an outdated term. | https://medium.com/@tomguard/top-reasons-map-listings-for-local-businesses-wont-appear-in-search-results-6a5d04027a6 | ['T Guard'] | 2021-05-20 13:13:32.392000+00:00 | ['Local Seo', 'Internet Marketing', 'Google', 'Maps', 'SEO'] |
The economics of incubators and accelerators | Accelerators and incubators are business support programmes that provide co-working-based packages of support to young firms to help them grow. Widely used in the tech sector, they are now increasingly applied in other industries — including retail, fashion and design and household goods — even in the Bank of England.
Why should we look at these interventions? In a nutshell, they’re now a very visible part of the UK urban landscape. As of April last year, there were 771 incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces in Britain. NESTA have done some great work mapping their spread (see image).
In particular, there’s been an explosion of co-working, incubator and accelerator provision in London: in 2014 there were at least 132 programmes, 50% of which had arrived since 2012, and in 2017 the capital had 171, more than the next ten cities combined. Together with pop-ups, co-working and evolving high streets, these flexible spaces and practices are — arguably — starting to change the wider urban fabric.
It’s also important to look at these co-working models because of what they might achieve. In theory, incubators/accelerators can make entrepreneurs more effective, and help firms/founders to innovate. That feeds into long-term economic growth. In cities, they could also deepen clusters. They may also help groups — like some BME or female founders — facing structural barriers in ‘regular’ economic space.
Given that over half of UK providers now have some public funding behind them, it’s particularly important to understand whether these programmes actually work. For the more selective business models, like accelerators, providers might just be picking founders and firms who would do well anyway — what economists call a selection problem. | https://maxnathan.medium.com/the-economics-of-co-working-incubators-and-accelerators-b15bb5e5e0ab | ['Max Nathan'] | 2018-10-02 13:37:58.442000+00:00 | ['Coworking', 'Incubator', 'Urban Planning', 'Accelerator', 'Economics'] |
Budget Vacation? Try Language School | Aqui was mi problema: “Quiero apprender mas espanol porque hablo solamente un little y solamante en el presente.” I was tense challenged.
Think very bad Spanglish.
No matter. I wanted to upgrade my Spanish, to see if the old brain could still learn to conjugate. And with only a week for this experiment, I needed a flexible, individualized curriculum, not a ‘canned’ course structure.
Another priority: I wanted to be able to feel safe, as a woman, walking alone, at night, in Mexico.
And I wanted all of the above really, really cheap.
Clearly it was time to google.
Language schools abound in Mexico. First to pop up was IMAC, an international program that operates in Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Spain and Ecuador. It has a more set curriculum, classes starting every Monday, with both group classes ($220 a week for 5 hours a day) and tutoring ($100 a week for 1 hour a day, 4 hours daily for $368). There is a registration fee and book fee. Lodging costs vary, with the traditional “homestay” (live with local family, private room but often shared bath, includes meals) at $98 a week (hard to believe, but true.) You can also rent private rooms in posadas (inns) or hotels with rates from $160 — $328 a weeks (if you share a bath, cost drops.)
I looked at 3–4 schools, comparing costs, class size and flexibility of instruction. I preferred to start in the middle of the week, not a Monday, due to a conference I was going to attend a week later. And I needed to be in or by Guadalajara (the 2nd largest city in Mexico, capital of the state of Jalisco.) I looked at student reviews, and tracked a sequence on Trip Advisor.
I ended up choosing a school in Tlaquepaque (pronounced T-la-kay-pa-kay). Just outside of Guadalajara, Tlaquepaque has a classic town jardin (central square) with gardens and a rotunda, galleries, artisan shops, churches, decent restaurants, festivals and mariachi bands. For big city museums and night life, you hop a quick bus ride into downtown Guadalajara (6 pesos for the regular bus or splurge on the air-conditioned ‘special’ bus for 10 pesos… at about 12 pesos to the dollar).
The Guadalajara Language Center (www.glc.com.mx) is a small, independent language school in a reconverted house. I’d decided on 4 hours daily of one-on-one to maximize any hope of making progress, at $268 (compared to IMAC’s $368). I had two tutors, for two-hours each, with a break in the middle to allow my fried brain to rest. The learning/teaching was the most personalized, engaging-yet-challenging, I’ve ever had… an intuitive process vs. a curriculum.
GLC also provides group classes: a two-hour class for $118 a week, four-hours for $208. Prices per hour drop with every added week. Owner Wouter Stut (a Dutchman who went to Mexico to travel in 2003, fell in love, and now has three kids and a language school) does whatever it takes to make it work for each student. It was off-season, and so classes were just a few students, mostly European.
But lodging costs are what make language school the best bargain vacation ever. I opted for a “home-stay” (private room, bath and meals) for $23 per day. (Yes, you read right: a room and three meals for $23 a day.) You can also stay in hotels or inns. But, when I return with my husband, or a friend, I’m doing a private apartment. GLC has some private apartments (you can peruse them on-line), including all utilities, for about $175 a week for 1 BR and $250-$350 for 2–3 BR (all with fully equipped kitchens, TV, DVD players, patio or garden, with monthly rates lower). Apartment costs are not per person, so couples or families score big-time. The ‘secret’ is that you can keep the housing even when not taking a class: take one week of class, and stay another week to play. Alternate school weeks with ‘practice’ weeks.
A month in a furnished, all utilities included, apartment for $550 a month?
That is way cheaper than home.
The school also offers shared apartments, which I don’t recommend. You have no idea who will be sharing your kitchen, shower and living space and it could get ugly (literally.)
There are language schools, some more corporate, some privately owned, in every region of Mexico. Costs vary, as do housing options. But, especially for those with flexible schedules or who desire a longer term adventure, language schools provide a quality experience at bargain cost.
My week in Tlaquepaque was exactly what I needed. I discovered that my menopausal brain can still learn to conjugate. I immersed myself in village life. I felt safe walking alone, even at night. Families gather in the jardin in the evenings to stroll or sit, listen to mariachi, maybe dance. Walking to school each morning, I passed women scrubbing their front steps and sidewalks, children giggling in their uniforms on the way to school. Rush hour was at 1–2 p.m. as everyone raced home for lunch.
I loved how Tlaquepaque sounds so different: the Peruvian flute that means the knife sharpener is on the corner; the train-whistle woo-woo for fried bananas; cowbells for “basura,” trash pick-up; the water man bellowing “Agua-a-a-a, Agua-a-a-a”; church bells on the hour; echoes of “Zeta, Zeta, Zeta gas” as the truck, loaded precariously with cylanders of gas for stoves and boilers, inches up and down ever back street and alley.
Tlaquepaque smells different too: street vendors hawking ‘fast-food’; roasting meat emanating from cafes; the damp mustiness of hosed streets; the roses of the jardin, the fumes of the buses and junker cars.
For many here, life is poor as far as certain possessions. But life is also rich. I felt my anxiety levels drop. Every day there was time: to eat slowly, to read, to walk, to think, to nap. I stopped making ‘to do’ lists in my head.
On day 7, I was in a café. The waitress asked if I would like the pork special. I asked if the spices were very hot. We discussed the benefits of different sauces, moles to verdes. We spoke in Spanish, and I even used the past tense.
Next trip I’m gearing up for the subjunctive. I really think I can do it.
This article was originally published in the Huffington Post in 2013. | https://medium.com/wabi-sabi-journeys/budget-vacation-try-language-school-9f00330a55f4 | ['Susan Kraus'] | 2021-06-08 17:04:33.378000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Language Learning', 'Latin America', 'Mexico', 'Travel'] |
Surviving rape, the Aftermath. The call for help | Part I: The call for help
Author’s Note: The chronology of this article has been altered for consistency in the narration.
London, February 2020
Back from running some errands, I was now heading to my East Londonian cozy crib, removing myself in the meantime from this dreadful greyness that nothing seemed to be driving away.As I came back to my room I fell face to face to a surprisingly bright place as if every single light from the city had chosen to reunite there. Baffled, I got closer to the large window which was facing me, the eyes trained toward the horizon.
At the corner of the road, we could see some kids pranking each other. Even from this distance the group dynamic was still veryclear which enabled me to identify quickly the group leader. Taken away by this candid scenery , I stayed there quiet,in full contemplation before being immersed abruptly a flow of contradictory emotions all leading to the same conclusion. It was time. It was time and I was not ready. Yet, I really tried to reach this point but nothing and nobody could have really prepared me for this moment where I will have to reveal to a complete stranger that I have been raped, no matter the level of warmth between us. But I needed responses and most importantly to speak.
Slightly lost, I dialled the 11 figures of the East London rape crisis helpline but no one took my call.
I repeated the operation over and over, leaving a 5 minutes break between each attempt, with little success. The line was saturated. As time was passing by, my tenacity at the beginning started to decrease, compressed by fear and resignation.
Suddenly, a BBC alert appeared on my screen. The headline was concerning. I was on the verge of clicking when a distant voice came to my ear. I put the speaker on just on time to capture the end of her sentence, my efforts had finally paid off.
« How can I help you » asked the volunteer, her voice was soft and settled. Suddenly overwhelmed, I mumbled a confused « hello », an uncomfortable silence settled. After a few seconds, I finally started to give an element of context « something happened to me »
At first, she didn’t say anything , I knew she was waiting for more details to be able to react but facing this avenue of choice and possibility, I found myself silent. « When do the facts go back to? she finally asked, a question which was received with a lot of relief.
— At the end of 2018 » I responded. « I placed a complaint but my aggressor has not been brought to court, they finally convoked him last December but we are on the second adjournment, he says that he is busy and the police concedes as if it was an option… »
« I feel some anger in your voice » the volunteer noted, interrupting in the meantime my little monologue. The sole evocation of my anger woke up a good lot of repressed emotions. — I am mostly drained » I confided to her « I don’t sleep anymore, I have permanent headaches, my back aches. Sometimes when I take the subway, I feel like the ground falling “from under my feet, I feel so heavy, it’s unbelievable and then it’s a disaster, everything become so intense, the light …the voices… it’s almost unbearable, and quite often I feel like I am running out of air. »
« You have episodes of anxiety (…) » she responded before to observe a silence, — yes and there have been many of those lately » I answered « (…) I am calling because I don’t know anything anymore, I see that I am changing, that my state is worsening, I feel like I am surviving and I don’t know anymore what’s great to do or not, as I don’t know who I am anymore….
« These are very tough procedures, it’s never easy… » she finally said.
— I know or should I say I am getting to see it for myself (…) I thought that getting on the legal route would bring me closure but nothing is happening, I feel ignored. I have seen the data, it is not encouraging : only 11% of the victims actually file a claim against their aggressor , and only 1% of all these rape cases lead to charge »
« I don’t know for France, but we have the same figures here » the volunteer added.
As time was passing by, I started to relax with this weird sensation of speaking to a special friend who had the responses for anything. I asked her how things were doing for the other survivors she’s been dealing with, somehow I wanted to see where I stood exactly in this battlefield, whether or not my reactions and thoughts were the norms. The end of the call approaching, I confided in her my desire to surrender « — sometimes, I just dream about starting fresh, this legal process, those cancellations, these exchanges with my lawyer, it’s just a continuous reminder of what it has been (…) I feel like I have reached my breaking point…
Then stop it all ! » she replied. The tone of her voice had changed, it was more abrupt. Her response turned me upside down.
In a bid to clear up any more confusions, I asked her to repeat herself, my request leading to the same answer : I said that you can stop if you wish to » she repeated, this time with a softer voice « nobody would be mad at you, no one would thing that you are not strong, you can stop and focus on your healing, it’s just the next door… » Hearing these words, I stood there silent, speechless, taken away by antagonistic thoughts, a mixture of revolt, indignation and relief. After a few more exchanges, we finally parted . Although I was still shaken by her very disconcerting speech, my state of mind was unchanged. I will not surrender.
Remembering the BBC article, I opened again the App, this time with no interruption. A new disease called Covid-19 which could cause severe pneumonia was hitting the Diamond Princess, a cruiser circulating not too far from Japan. 3600 passengers have been forced to quarantine after a first case was detected. Sadly, this attempt to contain the contaminations ended up being unsuccessful as new cases were reported every other day, whilst the lack of diagnosis tools left many cases ignored. Reaching the end of the article, I sighed « if it reaches here, it will be chaos » I thought out loud.
A few weeks later, my fears came to life when the first covid cases were detected in Europe. The seeds of panic were now planted, ready to bloom at a speed never observed before.
Yet, though I was conscious of the severity of the situation, my daily life remained unchanged at first.
At night, when I couldn’t find sleep I explored the internet in a bid to find some responses there. Thought I was obviously not a law expert, I surprised myself more than once, trying to decrypt legal texts and press articles in the hope of having a better understanding of my case and its viability. But the lack of knowledge regarding my situation and the evidences made it difficult to achieve.
As the confrontation date approached, my research intensified, I spent hours flicking through pages, on every single platform you could think of, creating short-lived accounts to view access-limited contents. But the results revealed to be poor. Besides an ARTE documentary and a few videos from BRUT, nothing nor nobody could have truthfully prepared me for what was going to happen. Slightly disappointed but far from being defeatist, I continued the operation conscientiously.
One night, my efforts finally paid off when I came face to face with an article on Medium written by a woman called Sara Roebuck [1].
From what emerged at this point in time, Sara was a young Britton who came to Paris to study at Science Po. One night as she was heading to a night-club she was the victim of an attempted rape. Following this dark episode, she sued the man and won her case. She then wrote this eloquent essay which was then relayed by the press. Going on her social media, I saw very encouraging images of a young woman who seemed full of life. These images appeased me instantly. They gave hope, the Hope of an After…a softer place where I would be more at peace.
After a few seconds of hesitation, I wrote to this stranger to thank her for the hope she and her essay brought me, confiding her half-way about my confrontation to come. A few hours later, what was not my surprise to receive a long and warm message from her.
On that day, I went to bed appeased with the feeling of having been heard, the belief that I was not alone.
__________________________________________________________________
[1] https://medium.com/human-development-project/a-letter-to-the-man-who-tried-to-rape-me-3a18c17d8eb9 | https://medium.com/@FedoTalks/surviving-rape-the-aftermath-part-i-e96c5da18fcc | [] | 2021-07-19 17:21:33.625000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Violence Against Women', 'Feminism', 'Storytelling', 'Advocacy'] |
Magpul Daka Pouches | Last fall when Magpul realeased the DAKA pouches I immediately grabbed the medium and small sizes. I was getting ready to head to Canada for a month long trip for work and then I was off to the UK for vacation. The DAKA pouches proved to be excellent for organizing travel documents and other administrative items. The RF welded construction is durable and the material has a great non-slip texture and holds up well. Due to how the material is welded together, the pouches are best suited for more flat items, they don’t expand much and don’t pack well with bulky items. | https://medium.com/projectinkfish/magpul-daka-pouches-20d9c09ed981 | ['Curious Inkfish'] | 2018-03-13 00:10:37.062000+00:00 | ['Organizational Culture', 'Everyday Carry', 'Articles', 'Review', 'Edc'] |
2018: Moving Beyond Trump — Rebuilding Our Civilizations From Source | The year 2017 was strange. Full of surprises. Maybe the most significant and least noticed one came at the very end. Let me explain. On one level, 2017 was a roller coaster that I felt aged me by a decade or so in just under a year, starting with the inauguration speech in Washington, D.C. on January 20th. Ever since, we have been exposed to an onslaught of collective ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) resulting in an ever-accelerating cycle of systemic self-destruction. But at the end of the year something unexpected happened. Instead of feeling finished, fatigued, and worn out, I am feeling a sense of calm, presence, and confidence in our collective capacity.
Yes, the December polls and election results were heartening, but my current sentiments are, on a deeper level, co-shaped by the manifold moments of collective presence that I have felt with grassroots groups and networks around the world, including in our monthly u.lab global live sessions. In short, it feels as if 2017 ends with a nod to the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin:
But where the danger is, the saving power also grows.
Indeed, that saving power seems more present and available now than ever before. And yet often we do not notice it, which makes it what I call “the most significant, least noticed feature of our time.” What deserves our full attention now is the cognitive dissonance between our heart, which connects us with a felt sense of future possibility, and our head, which accurately mirrors the unnerving events of the past. For that divergence holds the seeds of a future that is growing among us.
But before we explore that divergence further, let’s take a moment to contemplate on 2017. What just happened? Here are three observations.
From a Western perspective at least, 1917 was momentous. As World War I was still raging through Europe, the United States entered the European theater of war from the West, while the October Revolution established what would become the communist Soviet Union in the East. In hindsight, we may say that the cold war — that is, the East-West conflict constellation that shaped the better part of the 20th century — was seeded by those two events.
Fast-forward 70-plus years. The Berlin Wall comes down in 1989, and with it the Eastern European regimes and the cold war system. The winds of change also led to the unwinding and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. While in the West we saw these events as the final nail in the coffin of socialism — an abstract ideology unfit to cope with the complexities of our age — today we realize that there might be yet another shoe to drop: capitalism, at least in its current form, seems almost equally unfit to meet the pressing challenges of our time: how to bridge the widening ecological divide, social divide, and cultural-spiritual divide.
If 1917 set the tone for the 20th century — that is, for the emerging clash between East and West, between the socialist and capitalist economic systems — what then did the year 2017 set the tone for?
Here is one way to lean into that question. While 1917 set up a “horizontal” conflict that eventually staged Eastern socialism vs. Western capitalism, 2017 might have established the climate for a different kind of tension and conflict. Now it’s no longer one ideology vs. another, System A vs. System B. Now the fault line of division goes right through our communities, our families, and ourselves. In other words, the main battleground of the 21st century is no longer one ideology marching against another, or one system competing against another; the new battleground is a lot more personal. It’s where I as an individual — and we as a community — show up and co-shape the fragile nature of our relationship to nature, to others, and to ourselves.
Figure 1 depicts a map of places that we can choose to operate from when engaging with our social and environmental context. Simply put, we can choose to operate from a closed mind, closed heart, and closed will, or we can choose to operate from an open mind, open heart, and open will. Accordingly, our actions give rise to a social field of self-destruction (absencing) or of collective creativity (presencing). In earlier blog entries, I have described at length the various manifestations of these social fields in the context of our global economic and political reality; today allow me to simply sum it up with that image.
By Kelvy Bird Figure 1: Two Social Fields: Absencing and Presencing
To a large degree, the 20th century encompassed conflicting ideologies and societal systems, but the emerging 21st-century situation seems to have added a new dimension to that configuration. It’s what we could call a “vertical developmental challenge”: the inner choices we make whenever we engage with another human being, with a system, or with ourselves. Those choices boil down to where you position yourself vertically (in terms of figure 1). That is, to what degree can you access the power of curiosity (open mind), compassion (open heart), and courage (open will) when you are dealing with the forces of disruption, both individually and collectively?
And just as the East-West conflict seeded in 1917 did not fade away in the 20th century, the vertical developmental challenges that we face today also won’t disappear anytime soon.
That’s the new challenge that 2017 has put front and center for all of us: When we face situations of disruption personally, organizationally, and in our larger systems, and when we try to bridge the three divides, i.e., realize the Sustainable Development Goals, in our respective communities, how do we make change happen? What is the inner core process that allows us to respond from the appropriate level of vertical positioning?
The second observation concerns the role of Big Tech in our lives. Here in the United States the popular view of technology has traditionally been very, very positive. As a non-American you might say that view has occasionally been “naively optimistic.” As an American, however, you would call it “powerfully optimistic,” because technology, so we believe, ought to be a force for good that makes the world a better place.
Well, that powerful belief just took another hit in 2017. Facebook sold our 2016 election to the Russian government and far-right U.S. billionaires, then went to D.C. and defended its undermining of our democracy with a straight face as “business as usual”; Apple slowed down its older iPhones and has apologized to its users since, but still faces a number of lawsuits for its lack of transparency over the issue; and the list goes on. We as the users of Big Tech certainly have realized this: we are not their customers, we are the product that they sell (without ever giving us any voice in co-shaping that transaction).
Many of us have been annoyed by Big Money, aka the Wall Street Big Six, ever since 2008. But in 2017 the Silicon Valley Big Tech execs managed to put themselves right next to that lineup of embarrassment and shame. As David Brooks pointed out in the NYT, there are three main criticisms of Big Tech. The first is that it ruins youth for the young. Eighth graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they are unhappy. Teens who spend three or more hours a day on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to be at risk of suicide. Girls have experienced a 50 percent rise in depressive symptoms. The second critique of Big Tech is that it is intentionally causing our addiction to these devices (by designing compulsion loops that generate dopamine surges and hijack users into addiction) to make money. The third critique is that Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook are near monopolies that use their power to impose unfair conditions on their users, on content creators, and on smaller competitors (and everyone knows the solution to that one: change voluntarily, or break ’em up).
Does that mean we stop using our devices? Of course not. But it puts their role in a new context, one that is maybe more intentional, more regulated, and more aware. And it raises the question: How can companies innovate in ways that enhance the well-being of users, instead of pushing them into addiction?
Big Tech is one force that, if designed and used without the right awareness and intention, replicates and amplifies the dynamics of absencing. But it is by no means the only one. The surge of fundamentalism, of propaganda machines such as the climate-denial industry, of homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic sentiments all are expressions of the same underlying phenomenon: the heightened volume of noise and absencing in societies today.
Yet that’s only part of the picture. The other part, probably much more important, has to do with the seeding of a powerful global movement that is beginning to take shape in many places today. As the U.S. government continues tumbling downward, who is going to pick up the slack? What new forces will move into the void of real global leadership?
So here are five forces, in no particular order, that I have seen over the past few months and that I think may be relevant:
U.S.: Cities, States, NGOs, Business . In the United States, we see a bottom-up movement around sustainability taking shape. It starts with communities and cities, and it already includes many states and brings together government, business, and civil society-related players while role modeling how development works in the West: from the bottom up.
. In the United States, we see a bottom-up movement around sustainability taking shape. It starts with communities and cities, and it already includes many states and brings together government, business, and civil society-related players while role modeling how development works in the West: from the bottom up. Indonesia: Inverting Politics by Civil Society . One of the most inspiring stories of political renewal that I have seen of late comes from Indonesia. As the world’s largest Muslim nation and third largest democracy, Indonesia has seen the rise of political outsiders on the national level (such as President Joko Widodo) and in Jakarta (at the governor level). Inspired by this, Grace Natalie, a young TV journalist, co-founded the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which is based on millennial engagement, pluralism, solidarity, and transparency. PSI uses technology to invert the old political model by crowdsourcing funds and crowdsourcing candidates, and by making candidate selection transparent, public, and merit based. For more detail watch a short interview with the party founders.
. One of the most inspiring stories of political renewal that I have seen of late comes from Indonesia. As the world’s largest Muslim nation and third largest democracy, Indonesia has seen the rise of political outsiders on the national level (such as President Joko Widodo) and in Jakarta (at the governor level). Inspired by this, Grace Natalie, a young TV journalist, co-founded the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which is based on millennial engagement, pluralism, solidarity, and transparency. PSI uses technology to invert the old political model by crowdsourcing funds and crowdsourcing candidates, and by making candidate selection transparent, public, and merit based. For more detail watch a short interview with the party founders. Chinese Climate Politics . China’s government, although it moved backward domestically, has been a positive force globally in keeping the Paris Climate Agreement alive despite Donald Trump. Go to Beijing, and you meet competent people who are working at the forefront of sustainability-related challenges. Go to D.C., and you find a political discourse that is stuck in denial and won’t even use words like climate change to describe the very problem we face. This century’s response to climate change is unworkable without the Chinese government. That’s one key factor. Another one is business.
. China’s government, although it moved backward domestically, has been a positive force globally in keeping the Paris Climate Agreement alive despite Donald Trump. Go to Beijing, and you meet competent people who are working at the forefront of sustainability-related challenges. Go to D.C., and you find a political discourse that is stuck in denial and won’t even use words like climate change to describe the very problem we face. This century’s response to climate change is unworkable without the Chinese government. That’s one key factor. Another one is business. Business as a Force for Good. Tech giants like Alibaba and Ant Financial demonstrate what “tech and biz for good” actually might look like: you create a platform that lifts hundreds of millions of users out of poverty, offer them a mechanism to put themselves on the map, and offer financial services to those who were “unbankable” before. The Ali Pay feature Ant Forrest has involved more than 200 million users in reforestation-related activities in China alone.
Tech giants like Alibaba and Ant Financial demonstrate what “tech and biz for good” actually might look like: you create a platform that lifts hundreds of millions of users out of poverty, offer them a mechanism to put themselves on the map, and offer financial services to those who were “unbankable” before. The Ali Pay feature Ant Forrest has involved more than 200 million users in reforestation-related activities in China alone. The Future of Cross-Sector Collaboration. This could be a real European moment. As the White House is doing everything to accelerate the decline of the United States, and as autocrats are on the rise around the world, where do we see the impulse for different developmental model that transcends the old-style empire building and that prototypes new approaches to the planet’s challenges? Europe could be a real driving force for more participatory forms of cross-sector innovation, in which the three sectors of society — business, government, and civil society — work in partnership rather than being dominated by just one of them. But Europe is not the only place. The Indonesian example of people using technology to enhance democracy, instead of undermining it, is another great example of citizen-driven development.
At the end of the day what gives me hope is something very simple. Although as a civilization we are still heading in the wrong direction on many counts, many innovative and eco-system-aware people are doing great work in numerous contexts. Seeing that is a huge source of inspiration and hope.
I see all these initiatives as part of an emerging movement that is working to regenerate the foundation of our civilization: how we work and live together. In the context of modern societies, this means rethinking and regenerating
our economies toward sustainability, inclusion and well-being for all, our democracies toward more direct, participatory forms of governance, and our educational systems toward activating the deeper sources of learning (head, heart, hand)
My source of confidence is that in all three areas the answers are right in front of us. I have seen them being prototyped in many different contexts. But they are not yet linked together and made visible to everyone. They have not yet transformed the old systems.
This bigger journey of transformation starts with how we think about the economy. Lucy Peng, the Executive Chair of Ant Financial, the world’s largest and most valuable fintech, pointed out to me that “altruism is the original intention of how business and finance was created. Altruism and optimism” she says, “are the two main forces that propel our civilization forward.” That idea, that altruism is at the source of all real economic activity, in my view holds the seeds for rethinking economics and regenerating the global economy. How to rethink and reshape our economy is being discussed in many circles right now, including an emerging global alliance of various major new economy initiatives that we will be partnering with starting next year (via our joint u.lab/HuffPost multimedia hub coming in March 2018).
With regard to the second topic, regenerating our democracies, the story of Indonesia’s new PSI Party is a great example of inverting old-style party politics to create a new model that is more direct, distributed, and dialogic. We can use these initiatives in so many places right now.
Concerning the third topic, how to regenerate our systems of learning: If Trump is only the symptom, what is the real problem? The real problem is that we lack an educational or learning system that activates our deeper capacities for vertical development. That new core process of learning, I believe, starts with cultivating the self, with activating our deeper creative capacities.
The only way that I know to build that capacity is by cultivating the deeper levels of self-knowing. “Know thyself” appears in all great wisdom traditions. It was inscribed at the entrance to the ancient Greek temple in Delphi. I remember it from studying the teachings of Gandhi in India. I remember it when Nan Huai-Chin introduced me to Confucius’s essay “The Great Learning,” which says that to become a great leader “you have to first cultivate your own opening process.” And I remember it from my work with many leadership teams in different sectors, systems, and places. Whether you are working with global tech or car companies, with medium-sized sustainable banks, with small mission-driven enterprises, or with teams from local or national government, at the end of the day their challenges all boil down to the same thing. In order to respond to their disruptive situations, they need to learn how to co-sense and co-shape the future as it emerges — and for that you need to increase your vertical literacy that is called for by the challenges and the spirit of our time.
Years ago, I realized that we lacked a word for this deeper capacity of self-knowing, which is why I introduced the blended word presencing. Presencing combines “sensing” (of an emerging future) with “presence” (actualizing that future in the now). The root of the word “presencing” means “to be.” The words essence, presence, and the old Indian sat, which means “truth” and “goodness,” all share the same Indo-European word root. An Old German derivative of the same root, sun, means “those who are surrounding us” or “the beings who surround us.” The deeper developmental capacity at issue here — which you see leadership teams around the globe wrestling with these days — is precisely that: how to connect to the intelligence of those [eco-systems] who surround us? How?
Answering that How question will be the focus of my next column (to be posted next week). It will feature the birth of a new university that is intimately linked to the regeneration of our economies, democracies, and educational systems. It’s not a complete plan. More like work in progress and a call to action. But the realization of such an eco-system, one that links science, consciousness, and profound evolutionary social change, has never been so doable and close. As for Hölderlin, he would probably look at us, smile, and return the nod.
By Kelvy Bird Fig. 2: Reimagining the 21st-Century University: Integrating Science, Consciousness, & Profound Social Change
Thanks to Martin Kalungu-Banda, Katrin Kaufer, Angela Baldini, and Marian Goodman for their helpful comments; to Kelvy Bird for creating the two figures; and to James Thompson for the video clip with the founders of PSI. | https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/2018-moving-beyond-trump-rebuilding-our-civilizations-from-source-acf170852358 | ['Otto Scharmer'] | 2018-09-30 11:03:37.676000+00:00 | ['Civilization', 'Articles By Otto', 'Social Fields', 'Three Divides', 'Absencing'] |
The Outpost — S3 Episode 12 (Full Show) | New Episode — The Outpost Season 3 Episode 12 (Full Episode) Top Show
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 193s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 30s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 345313, 345313 and 3334. Since 13, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 30s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-13s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 13s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 13s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 30s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 30s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 13s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare The Outpost, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, The Outpost’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@the-outpost-3x12-online/the-outpost-se03ep012-series-3-eps-12-fu-ll-eps-880bac855a3f | ['The Outpost Online'] | 2020-12-26 07:21:03.917000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Action', 'Fantasy', 'TV Series'] |
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