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The rule of sixty-six. Fifty-four years ago this very month, a… | Aaron Kittredge
Fifty-four years ago this very month, a game show named Call My Bluff was being hailed as the latest entertainment triumph from the BBC. In it, two teams of three people tried their hardest to bluff their opponents with fake definitions of obscure words, like queach or morepork, jirble and ablewhacket, the true definitions of which I shall leave you to look up at leisure.
For more than twenty years, guest teams in the British show refined their ability to say things that were totally fake without batting an eyelid. The format itself was based on an American show of the same name, but that only ran for six months, before being mysteriously cancelled.
It’s not the only show the United States has cancelled, of course, but rejecting a program in which two out of three sentences were fake is somewhat ironic, because that ratio of two to one, around sixty-six percent, is about the norm for the US, historically.
For example, you may have been taught that the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus discovered America on the third of August 1492, setting the nation on the glorious strada to the country you see today.
And of course, only a part of that statement is correct.
Columbus, of course, was Spanish, not Italian, so it was a carretera not a strada. Also, and more importantly, America had already been ‘discovered’ at least five hundred years earlier by Leif Erikson and his Norse seafarers, and Columbus didn’t actually set foot on any part of the United States. It did happen on that date, though, and that seems enough for the US to have named twenty-three places after him, and erected one-hundred-and-fifty statues in celebration of the confused Spaniard.
Years later, the Pilgrims arrived from Holland, and, after enjoying the pleasant journey on the Mayflower, determined to seek advice from the local Indigenous people on how to survive in this new world, and sat down with them for that enduring American celebration called Thanksgiving, centered around a warm-hearted and loving meal with their Native American brethren, devouring turkeys to solidify their friendship.
But of course, that’s mainly the triptofan talking.
In reality, the Pilgrims were attempting to steal their neighbors’ food supply for their own needs. They practiced trickery, gave the indigenous population diseases they had no defense against, and acted with pure hatred, not friendship, for their ‘savage’ neighbors. It really wasn’t any celebration at all, although the Pilgrims did bring several turkeys to America on that epic voyage in 1620.
After the Pilgrims progressed from conning locals to enslaving strangers, they began to flourish in what you’ve been taught, if you’re an American, were the thirteen original colonies of the United States. And again, you’ve been misled.
Delaware wasn’t even a colony until 1776, just as the Revolution was starting, and for the majority of the eighteenth century, it belonged to the British. Before that it was a part of Pennsylvania, so, in reality there were only twelve colonies, a true dozen, and never a baker’s.
During that same Revolutionary War, you may have been told, a fearless hero called Paul Revere rode with lightning speed to warn of the oncoming British forces, yelling at the very top of his lungs, “The British are coming!”
And of course, only two-thirds of that is true as well.
At the time, the colonies were still absolutely British, and as the whole scheme he was allegedly part of depended on secrecy and stealth, yelling about the British while atop a steed would have been ridiculous. He did ride that night, so that’s true, but he was stopped before even getting down the end of the lane he lived on, and sent back to make extremely fine colonial-era silverware, which he actually did, though no-one ever told you that bit.
In some cases, even that sixty-six percent may be a stretch.
Take the flag for example, the famous Stars And Stripes, which obviously wasn’t created by the sweet goodly Betsy Ross.
While this fallacy continues to be taught in American classrooms to this day, it is completely baseless. In reality, the President of the United States did not stroll down to ask a seamstress to sew a flag of her own design, and she, after a post-Colonial meal of pie and pie, did not unilaterally decide to create the flag you now see flying on pick-up trucks running democratic candidates off the road.
There is of course zero evidence for any of this story, and reports at the time made no reference whatsoever to Ross or a meeting with the second President of the United States, and Washington never ever mentioned her. In fact, she wasn’t even known until 1870, when her grandson arrived at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and told this tall tale with enough conviction and beer to convince the Society to accept this ridiculous story.
Staying with that particular period of rebellion, you could, of course, examine the exciting life of the Revolutionary War hero Molly Pitcher, who carried water to American soldiers during the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, amid the gunsmoke and carnage, and then took up arms in place of her husband, who was too injured to fight, or just needed a break, and a glass of hickory coffee.
But actually you can’t, because she didn’t really exist.
There was a woman called Mary Hays McCauley, who became part of the huge group of women who traveled with the army, and took on terribly exciting activities like cooking, washing, darning things, cleaning, caring for the mortally-wounded, writing letters, and being bored. This Mary did, allegedly, bring water to her parched husband, though it did him no good and he collapsed anyway, out of the realization that he looked far better in red.
When Mary died, reports of her bravery were described with no reference to any battle whatsoever, but inevitably, through bluster and desperation to create any kind of historical excitement, she was inextricably linked to the Revolutionary War and the fictitious Molly Pitcher, the name her grave now carries erroneously.
After the war, George Washington, the first elected President, but not the first President, a title that goes, mostly unknown, to John Hancock, and who was endowed with dentures not made of wood at all, but more likely of human, cow, or horse teeth material, ivory, lead-tin and silver alloy, and even brass, though probably not at the same time, also didn’t get a hatchet for his sixth birthday, and didn’t damage his father’s cherry tree, nor did he cry “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.”
And, as the country launched itself on the global stage, it needed a national anthem, and got one, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, written by the poet Francis Scott Key. True he wrote the words, but he wrote them to a bawdy British drinking tune called “To Anacreon in Heav’n,” which was the anthemic song of an obscure men’s social club, where drinking, whoring, and being sweaty was all part of an evening’s entertainment, and whose original words were, as you’re keen to know,
Voice, fiddle, and flute, no longer be mute,
I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot
And besides I’ll instruct you like me to intwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine.
No last gleaming of twilight there, I’m afraid.
And the fake news continued on.
There were not untold panic deaths in the stock crash on Black Tuesday, on October 24, 1929, as only two suicides were recorded, and one of those was an old woman named Hulda Borowski, whose motivation for jumping off a building was dubious, as she held no stocks, and had a roast in the oven.
The terrifying Orson Welles did not fool people with his 1938 radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds, as only one man appears to have been tricked into thinking the US was about to succumb to Martians, and he was asked to pose in a frightened way for a Life Magazine shoot, so we shall never know whether he was really worried or just posing for a Life Magazine shoot.
And Charles Lindbergh, the great American hero who, in 1927, was hailed as the first person to fly a plane across the Atlantic, but was, of course, not the first person to fly a plane across the Atlantic, because the British aviators Alcock and Brown had accomplished the feat eight years earlier.
Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball, it was another guy called Abner, and George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter, though he was a nut guy for sure.
No witches were burned at the Salem Witch Trials, but people were executed.
Manhattan was not sold for twenty-four dollars worth of beads, even though a statue proclaims this as truth, though it was sold by Native Americans.
Benjamin Franklin did not discover electricity, nor did he fly any kite, though he did write about it.
General Robert E Lee did not surrender nine-thousand men to the one-hundred-and-twenty thousand of Ulysses S Grant, but he did, of course, surrender.
The lightbulb was invented by British chemist Joseph Swan, and not Thomas Edison, though Edison did make it widely-available.
Albert Einstein never flunked math as a child, though he did fail the entrance exam to Zurich Polytechnic.
And, by the end of his third year in office, Donald J Trump had told just over eighteen thousand lies to the American people, who could be forgiven for thinking that one-third of what he said was actually true. | https://medium.com/@katia-elkaim/the-rule-of-sixty-six-by-nigel-roth-659aa184f1af | ['Nigel Roth'] | 2020-12-04 06:38:47.729000+00:00 | ['Rumors', 'Fake News', 'Columbus', 'Donald Trump', 'Pennsylvania'] |
Another Red Stain on the Carpet. | Photo by Barefoot Communications on Unsplash
Sometimes I wonder why I bother having a white carpet until the moment comes when I have to clean it.
It becomes a chance to distract myself from all the bullshit that’s making circles in my head.
Keeping my focus on the task at hand, grabbing the bucket, filling it with water, and getting down on my knees ready to scrub my hands through its hair is the perfect distraction.
As I start to clean, I start to drift.
The man who came into my office today, a picture of Adonis. He stood tall and had a strong gait I couldn’t help but idolize him as he walked through the door. His blood-red clean pressed shirt hung open at the collar and I could see slight tufts of chest hair. Without having to offer one he came right up to my desk and after pulling the chair forward sat directly across from me.
“I need your help.” The first words he ever said to me. I was caught.
“My wife and I are going through a nasty divorce and she’s trying to take my children away from me. My boys are five and seven and they need their father in their life.” He moved his blue eyes from mine to the picture of my little girl on the desk. He shifted his salesman voice into one of a broken man. “You must be able to understand. You have to help me keep them.”
I told him I would do everything I could for him.
After discussing details about the divorce, his children, and the relationship with his wife, it was agreed that an appointment was made for the next day to stop by the house and meet the children.
The man was being charged with five counts of infidelity including another wife, three girlfriends, and a prostitute who stole his bank information and lead to his discovery. And he wanted to raise two boys to be outstanding young men.
The spot on the carpet has now turned into a slight pink and it’s time to get the bleach. The smell is strong but one I welcome. It’s familiar from the many times I’ve had to clean this carpet. Red stain after red stain always on this carpet. It just seems to be the color it attracts. Red on white.
Early this morning I drove from my city home out into the country. Past farms and fields until I pulled into the drive of a little red farmhouse that seemed too grand to be nestled between two farms, but as I soon learned outside appearances don’t always reveal the sins that hide within.
Kelly met me at the door. Wearing a dark burgundy shirt and jeans he beckoned me into the house to meet his sons.
Peter and Michael were the sweetest boys I had ever come across, but something was wrong. Their manners were stiff like an actor without feelings but rehearsed to perfection.
Their father taught them well.
Inside the house was luxurious but unsettling. For a place that held two young boys, it was cleaned to perfection. As if the rooms were a museum instead of a home. The strangest part of the room was a small Confederate flag that draped over the fireplace.
After spending a few hours getting to know the boys and talk to them the sound of a key in a lock caught my attention.
Soon after, the boys’ mother walked into the room and the glass of water I had been holding threatened to break in my grip. Half of her beautiful face was marked by a dark bruise from jaw to the cheekbone and the story clicked into play, it was all an act. Something had to be done.
When the mother arrived I decided to take my leave and had Kelly walk me out. After looking into his eyes I decided to invite him back to my place to further discuss how we could go about his case.
As the bleach sets, I put away the bucket and rags.
When Kelly arrived his manner had changed from the one I had seen in my office and at his home. He was arrogant and made direct references to the reason he came to me for help. My looks and my body convinced him I was the one for his needs.
I handed him a glass of red wine and talked about his wife’s bruise.
He takes a large sip of the wine and angrily starts to defend himself.
His speech starts to slur.
His eyes close.
The bleach is beginning to take the wine out of the carpet nicely.
Next, I’ll work on the mud I dragged in from the yard and put away the shovel. | https://medium.com/for-the-twisted-writers/another-red-stain-on-the-carpet-f43176e563fd | ['Barbara King'] | 2020-12-22 21:58:05.384000+00:00 | ['Creative Writing', 'Horror Fiction', 'Thriller Suspense', 'Thriller', 'Horror'] |
December 11, 2017 | I MIGHT HAVE MADE A BIG MISTAKE
Today’s question (BONUS BTW) is the result of me not thinking ahead. Let me explain.
Look at the chart above. To start last week SBD, the currency the prize pool is in, was about $2 per SBD. Which means the prize pool started last week at about $160, more than double any prize pool before.
As you can see Thursday and Friday the price of SBD went up to as high as $14.83 per SBD. Making the prize pool worth about $1,186.40.
SBD price has fluctuated wildly all week. It is currently about $11.75, making the current prize pool about $940. You can check the live price any time at https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/steemdollars.
Here’s the dilemma. I said the prize would be paid out in SBD. I am going to honor that. I am also going to honor the 80 SBD minimum guarantee.
Yesterday I converted some SBD to STEEM. I got almost 7 STEEM for every SBD I converted.
I am hedging a bit because my original plan was to be aggressive with the upvote bots which I spoke about on Friday. Because of this huge spike in SBD/USD price I am going to reduce that significantly and just continually monitor the price.
My new plan is two fold.
1. If the SBD/USD price continues to rise or stay this high, I will be using the upvote bots sparingly. Unless I can get close to 5 to 1 payout they are not worth it right now IMHO. My calculations show the post payout will get back close to 80 SBD by Saturday and so I shouldn’t have to supplement the
2. If the SBD/USD price falls in comparison to the STEEM/USD price, which is currently about $1.70 (Right now the ratio is about 7 STEEM = 1 SBD), I will convert some STEEM back to SBD to cover the prize payout. I will do this if the ratio gets down to 4 to 1 or less.
Historically STEEM has been worth more US dollars than SBD. I think with all the Bitcoin hysteria the last few weeks that hysteria trickled down to the other currencies.
Of course if the price of SBD come back down to its historical levels of around $1 then I will reassess.
I wanted you to be aware of this price fluctuation because it affects the prize pool. I’m sure, like me, most of you are new to Steemit so what better way to introduce you to the currency.
Let’s ask a question about it! A BONUS question!
As always I will keep you updated.
All the best,
Jason | https://medium.com/daily-emails/december-11-2017-1fcdc112b087 | [] | 2017-12-11 15:14:35.335000+00:00 | ['Crowdini', 'Questions', 'Games', 'Steemit', 'Blockchain'] |
Clothing Brand Lonely Ghost Opens Storefront. | Clothing Brand Lonely Ghost Opens Storefront.
Lonely Ghost Founders — Indy Blue (Severe) & Bronson Christensen
Despite launching their online brand just last year and taking the
internet by storm the clothing brand, Lonely Ghost is excited to announce the opening of their first pop-up shop, Ghost Grocery, located in Provo, Utah.
“We wanted to build a place where we could share our creative vision with the community in a fun and unique way. This store is a labor of love for both myself and Indy and we couldn’t be more thankful for the success we have experienced over the last year.” — Co-Founder Bronson Christensen
The store itself features vintage checkerboard flooring with bright complimentary colors and an assortment of rainbow fruit and vegetables scattered around the store for a modern and trendy look. The store also features a secret room, “The Room Last Forever,” accessible through a
hidden door in the frozen food section and is complete with mirrors and beautiful lighting fixtures — making it the perfect setting for taking photos.
An inside look into Ghost Grocery
Visitors will also have the opportunity to grab some Lonely Ghost swag and purchase the limited edition grocery store line using the “Ghost Technology” that creates a tie-dye effect using your body heat.
Learn more at Lonelyghost.co | https://medium.com/@galmedia/lonely-ghost-store-opening-16c8a2b97795 | ['Gal Media Group'] | 2020-12-18 03:51:00.896000+00:00 | ['Clothing', 'Lonely Ghost', 'Pandemic', 'Influencers', 'Business'] |
The 3 Easiest Ways For Newbies To Start In Affiliate Marketing | The 3 Easiest Ways For Newbies To Start In Affiliate Marketing
(Discover the underground marketing tactics in the bonus area)
With the aid of the Internet, you can almost have everything right at your fingertips. With just a few clicks you get access to thousands and even millions of pieces of information and data on virtually any field of interest. As years pass by, the Internet continues to effect radical changes in many facets of human endeavors, including commerce. Experts say that the information space, commonly known as the “world wide web,” grows by over a million pages everyday as more and more people utilize the Internet for information, education, entertainment, business and other personal reasons. It doesn’t take a business-oriented individual to realize that this phenomenon can bring about sky-high financial gains. The Internet’s fast-growing popularity in recent years is surely an opportunity for business that any entrepreneur would not want to miss.
You might be thinking only businessmen can make much money out of the Internet, don’t you? Think again. You too can earn big bucks through the Internet even if you don’t have products to sell and high-profile and established companies. How? That is through affiliate marketing. You might have come across these words over the net while surfing. Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing between a merchant and an affiliate who gets paid for referring or promoting the merchants’ products and services. It is one of the burgeoning industries nowadays because it is proven to be cost-efficient and quantifiable means of attaining great profit both for the merchant and the affiliate and other players in the affiliate program, such as the affiliate network or affiliate solution provider.
Affiliate marketing works effectively for the merchant and the affiliate. To the first, he gains opportunities to advertise his products to a larger market, which increases his chances to earn. The more affiliate websites or hard-working affiliates he gets, the more sales he can expect. By getting affiliates to market his products and services, he is saving himself time, effort and money in looking for possible markets and customers. When a client clicks on the link in the affiliate website, purchases the product, recommends it to others who look for the same item or buys it again, the merchant multiplies his chances of earning. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer benefits from each customer who clicks on the link in his website and who actually purchases the product or avails of the service provided by the merchant. In most cases, the affiliate gets commision per sale, which can be a fixed percentage or fixed amount.
If you want to be an affiliate marketer and make fortunes out of the Internet, you may follow the following three most basic and easiest ways to start an effective affiliate marketing program. First is to identify a particular thing you are interested in or passionate about so you won’t be bored and forced to develop your affiliate website later on. Focusing on a specific area you know very well will help you bring out your best without much risks and effort. You can add a personal touch to your site and give your visitors who are possible buyers an impression that you are an expert in your field. In this way, you gain their trust and eventually encourage them to buy the products you endorse. Next is to look for good paying merchants and products or services related to your interest and create a website now. In choosing the products, you must also consider its conversion rate.
BONUS SECTION
The Truth is You Need Pin Your Way to Power to Become a Success!
We all have seen or used pinterest but not to its full effect. You can check Pinterest Academy to understand this underground platform is very underrated over 1.2biilion monthly visitors visit pinterest searching products before even checking on amazon the key is pins. If you post 5 mins every day for a month by the following month you would have an audience around your niche here to help. | https://medium.com/@digitalhubb/the-3-easiest-ways-for-newbies-to-start-in-affiliate-marketing-9eea02e33de4 | ['Digigtal Hubb'] | 2021-01-16 13:16:58.950000+00:00 | ['Blog', 'Affiliate Marketing', 'Marketing', 'Passive Income', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Overwhelm and Defensiveness | Photo by Frida Bredesen on Unsplash
Is there a tiger in the room?
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed just now. WAY TOO MUCH seems to be happening. Those who thought they wanted ascension or enlightenment, even the most dedicated, find themselves in the midst of survival fears, survival programs, and all various other survival scenarios.
A friend of mine used to say, “We have no time for your stupid spiritual stuff, when bullets are flying over our heads!” Sad that a collective whose reverence for the planet began things, has come to this… at the end of the known. Do survival fears have to die in order for us to thrive? Perhaps so. We seem to be on our way to proving it.
Given: We are all here to learn what we are here to learn, the way we are here to learn it… This is the nature of a free will zone.
AND
That cycle is over. If we persist in learning things the way we set up this lifetime to learn them…well, anyone can see how that’s going.
Gaia is changing. The miracle that is her surface world, an atmosphere, life-sustaining nature, is also changing. This exacerbates, to the nth degree, any overwhelm we may already be feeling from our jobs, health concerns, inability to provide for our families…and these are real concerns for many.
These concerns are not mitigated nor will they be alleviated, by defensiveness. Do we want to feel safe, and for our loved ones to be so? Of course we do. Where does the feeling of safety come from?
We each have our own answers to that. The pathology of defensiveness does not serve any of those answers, nor the real solutions that could emerge.
This is not about what we think. Our minds were trained in the old cycle.
You must unlearn what you have learned. ~ Yoda
Some of it was useful, of course. And, overwhelm sends our minds and bodies running for a defended place, usually a fixed position in consciousness.
“I believe THIS!” And, no one is stopping you. Source always says “yes.”
Does that belief system make you safe? Does it make you feel uplifted, clear-headed, able to respond? Do we want to keep learning the hard way? Is that still fun? It seems to be, for many. I usually save these topics for my ‘students’ of egoic dissolution, but this one keeps knocking, so here it is:
The addiction to defensiveness is pervasive and insidious in today’s world. It is hard-wired into our inherited DNA {there is science to back this up}. We can choose to change this. The sciences of Neuroplasticity and Epigenetics have ‘proven’ what enlightenment knows:
We no longer need to run an instinctive ‘prey’ response to overwhelm. We may feel cornered and scared, but this is because we have been programmed to feel that way.
We can learn ~ as enlightenment has taught ~ to move with life, and find our safety within Her flow.
“Everything is Consciousness” ~ sages of every age
You can be still, what the doubters call ‘going to your happy place,’ at any moment. You can change your energy in the space of three conscious {not controlled} breaths.
Our minds have been conditioned to take those breaths, practice those asanas, take time in nature, then, to tell ourselves we are exiting that moment. The conditioned switch flips and, once again, we are in agitation or whatever vibratory state will make us the most upset and off balance in that moment. “Well, that felt great, but what am I going to do about__{your fears go here__? Oh Noooo!” And, you’ve just hit bottom on the sine wave of suffering.
This is what is meant by “Get off the Wheel.” Reincarnation is not necessarily about sequential embodiment, but more about repetitive states of mind. If we insist on our mental and emotional repetitions, we insist on living them out. Why do we do this? Why do we send our worries, doubts and fears into syndication?
There is an alternative available to us all. The peace of an open heart has no need to defend itself. Like anything else, it takes practice. Love is the key. REAL love lifts our energy into higher octaves of experience. No sci-fi, only truth.
The vibration of divine love is the most practical thing any of us can practice. With every cellular shift, every nuance of enlightened embodiment, that practice deepens. There is no graduation, no ‘there’ to balance out an illusory ‘here.’
It is not enough to decide to be kind {a good start, that} or to ask “What would love do?” Becoming Oneness requires a state-shift, a sea change, in every part of what we believe ourselves to be.
Releasing the addiction to defensiveness does not necessarily mean dropping both sword and shield. Rather, set them aside, cleaned and at the ready, for when SHE might wield them through you…. and don’t fall prey to the temptation to pick them up until SHE does. Then, well… Sekhmet-Kali-Durga take the field. And She will let those tools lie forever rusting if we don’t let go of control.
We all feel overwhelmed, one way and another. The way through is not to instinctively draw up lines of battle nor to defend how right our minds/emotions tell us we must be.
Occasional battles will be waged…but only REAL love is the Invincible Force. Ask Durga. SHE has stories to tell.
~ Namaste ~ | https://medium.com/queen-s-children/overwhelm-and-defensiveness-acb0d08ad717 | ['Nalini Macnab'] | 2020-10-14 18:20:17.987000+00:00 | ['Oneness', 'Wisdom', 'Sacred Feminine', 'Love', 'Transformation'] |
The Gun Lane We Need Doctors In, and Government Out | Much has been said recently of the NRA’s hyperbolic statement that doctors need to “stay in their lane.”
The freakoutery over this is thick, and palpable, and almost entirely misses the most important point on both sides, which is that we do in fact need doctors in the most important lane of gun deaths, those being suicides. To unravel it all, let’s first look at the article the NRA tweeted, then some of the backlash, then let’s look at the actual problem, where doctors can in fact actually help, and where our state governments are doing some of us a terrible disservice.
The Article
The tweet that triggered the left links to an article by the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. While I’m sometimes not a fan of the NRA, the opening passage of the article is pretty much on point, and in my estimation, a solid and legitimate criticism.
Everyone has hobbies. Some doctors’ collective hobby is opining on firearms policy. Half of the articles in the “Latest from Annals” email from the Annals of Internal Medicine journal are related to firearms. The most prominent of these articles is a position paper written by the American College of Physicians (ACP) that expands upon their 2014 paper and reflects every anti-gunner’s public policy wish list, save for the outsized role given to doctors. The ACP’s policy recommendations include a ban on semiautomatic firearms and “high” (read: standard) capacity magazines, licensing and permitting requirements, improved reporting to NICS, restrictions on concealed carry, and so on. None of the ACP’s policy recommendations focus on law enforcement or the importance of identifying, prosecuting, and incarcerating criminals. As Philip J. Cook notes in his commentary, “It is unfortunate that the public health community has not recognized the importance of policing gun violence as a key aspect of prevention.” Language matters, and the ACP “favors enactment of legislation to ban the manufacture, sale, transfer, and subsequent ownership for civilian use of semiautomatic firearms…” They refer to the targeted firearms as “assault weapons” only in parentheses, and the word “rifle” only appears once in the entire document: in the appendix, specifically in a section about 3-d printing a rifle receiver. Does the ACP support a handgun ban?
Put simply, “yes,” they do support a handgun ban, and goes back to a tremendous misunderstanding within the non-gun-owning public (including apparently a lot of doctors) about firearms themselves. “Semi-automatic” simply means the gun chambers another round after you shoot a round, and readies itself to fire another. It is a simple, straight forward, common feature. And this feature is tremendously popular, given that around 60% of firearm purchases are for stated “self-defense” reasons. A qualified analysis by Keith Shannon, which matches numbers I’ve drawn up myself, shows that approximately half of all firearm sales are semi-automatic, and around a third of all guns in private possession in the United States are semi-automatic. The lion’s share of these weapons are pistols, the kind you see every police officer in the country carry, and which have been available for purchase in one format or another for over 100 years. And there is no possible way, mathematically speaking, to magically evaporate these things. They’re here to stay.
Further, the dreaded AR-15 rifle, which draws so much ire from the public, is basically nothing more than a longer range, bulkier version of these pistols, with which it’s actually more difficult to murder someone due to its lack of concealability. This is why we see handguns used 19 times more often than rifles in US crimes. The AR-15 and similar rifles are far superior weapons in a medium range running gunfight against other armed opponents, but their distinguishing features don’t help you murder kids, or mug someone, or rob someone’s house, or even in fact defend your kids from a robber or a mugger. The folks buying them are preparing themselves for the rare but statistically realistic chance they may be stuck in one of those “medium range gunfights against other armed opponents” by no choice of their own.
Or they’re shooting hogs.
Much of the NRA piece’s remaining criticism is legitimate, although there are some things the NRA piece very improperly snows over:
The ACP wants to require gun purchasers to undergo an “educational program” before they can obtain a firearm and they support universal background checks, which would necessitate a licensing and permitting system as well as a registry of firearms and owners. This ignores the RAND Corporation’s finding that evidence on the impact of licensing and permitting regimes on firearm homicides and total homicides as well as total suicides and firearms suicides is inconclusive. The ACP is apparently only interested in pseudo-science “evidence” that supports their preferred anti-gun policies.
While the fears the NRA proffers about firearms registries may be legitimate for other reasons, the ACP’s recommendation of an “educational program” is solid, particularly when it comes to suicide, and if properly implemented could be divorced from the sorts of gun tracking that the NRA opposes for ideological reasons. We covered that here:
The NRA also missed a golden opportunity here, to remind the public of their own efforts to improve education related to suicide, which are recounted below. Nobody ever accused them of having good PR, I suppose.
The Response
The response from doctors has been tremendous, and highlighted everywhere, but this NY Times piece is pretty typical fare for the topic, and leans heavily on tropes we’ve previously identified in our gun series. Here’s a quick example. By my count, the Times piece drops six anecdotes about gun homicide victims on its way to this:
“Annals of Internal Medicine is not anti-gun; we are anti-bullet holes in people,” Dr. Laine said in a statement to The New York Times. “And if we are biased, the bias is toward counseling our patients to reduce their risk of firearm injury and toward evidence-based solutions to the public health crisis that firearm injury has become.” Many doctors shared a similar message to the N.R.A.: For physicians who treat gunshot victims, the topic of gun policy is absolutely “in their lane.” More than 35,000 people in the United States are killed in firearm-related deaths every year, according to an annual average compiled from C.D.C. data by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group.
This is the classic Everytown bait and switch, regurgitated. Talk a hell of a lot about homicides, and then quote statistics dominated by suicide — a problem for which auto loading firearms is literally irrelevant. In fact, the dominant problem of gun deaths in this country, suicide, is not mentioned once in the Times article, nor is it mentioned almost anywhere else in the sea of angry responses to the NRA.
And of course, nowhere in the dialog do we see anyone, on the red or blue side, mentioning that homicides in the country are basically tied for historic lows.
Suicide is the Lane we Need Doctors In
As we unpacked before, suicides make up two thirds of gun deaths, and seven eighths of those suicides are men.
Having a gun in the home is not statistically correlated with overall female suicide rate, but is statistically correlated with overall male suicide rate. What that means, is that fewer firearms in the home don’t really affect the female numbers (they just find a different way to do the deed) but that men having suicidal thoughts are apparently hastier, and having guns out of the home could save some of their lives.
But as we discussed in the above link, some kind of government mandate to seize guns from suicidal men would make things worse, because it would disincentivize men from gaining treatment for their condition. The only legitimate solution to this issue, which I repeat is two thirds of the problem, is to educate male gun owners about the risks and encourage them to entrust their guns to a buddy when they’re going through a rough patch. That one thing could save six times more people annually than the entire total of domestic violence homicides, and there are only two paths to get there:
1) Overall gun education
2) Doctors must discuss firearm ownership, safety, and storage, with their patients
Many doctors are afraid to have the firearm discussion with their patients, and many of those fears stem from a 2011 Florida law (heavily pushed by the NRA) called the Firearms Privacy Owners Act, or FOPA. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over this law, but it didn’t do what many people said it did, and in the end it was thrown out by the 11th Circuit Court anyway. FOPA said doctors shouldn’t ask their patients about guns, and can’t enter their gun ownership status into medical databases, but it had a specific exception that allowed doctors to do both of those things if they believed it was relevant to the medical care or safety of the patient, or to the safety of others. If a patient was depressed, or suffered from anxiety, or PTSD, or any mental condition, or even had children, gun questions were fair game under the law. Doctors aren’t prevented from asking these questions. There was even a report in the Annals of Internal Medicine which clarified this.
And since the law is overturned, and has never existed elsewhere, there is almost literally no reason for doctors to avoid having these discussions with their patients.
The NRA are Doing Good Work Here, if Limited in Scope
I personally find the NRA’s nationwide work in this space to be very lacking, and I think they could do a lot more with outreach to their own membership base to assuage the suicide problem, which by God I’ll say again is two thirds of the problem. But at a state level, they’ve done some very interesting work which could form a basis for nationwide policy changes, or at least state by state reform.
In the state of Washington, 80% of gun deaths are suicides, higher than the national average. In 2016, the NRA supported a state bill called the Suicide Awareness and Prevention Education for Safer Homes Act. From a Washington Times article on the bill:
The bill requires suicide awareness training for gun dealers and owners of shooting ranges. It would add suicide prevention messages to hunter safety courses, promote education about safe firearm storage, and prompt pharmacists to talk to customers about safe storage of prescription drugs. “We may not agree on gun control, but we all want to prevent suicide,” said Stuber, one of the speakers at the Zero Suicide Inland Northwest conference Friday at Gonzaga University. “One bullet fired, and I became a single parent and a widow.”
The bill was a collaboration between the NRA and anti-gun groups. It passed, with bipartisan support. Suicide rate statistics tend to lag, so the most current information I’ve been able to find for Washington State, or any other state, is for 2016. It will be interesting to track how Washington State fares under this new bill, compared to the relative rise of suicide across the rest of the country.
The Government is Not Helping
Some state governments interfere, or outright prevent, this life saving solution.
In California, you literally can’t give your gun to a buddy if you’re suicidal. Calling a friend and saying “Hey, I’m having a rough patch, can you hold on to my pistol for me?” is literally a crime. The conversation instead must take the following form. “Hey, I’m having a rough patch, can we go down to the local gun store or otherwise licensed federal firearm dealer, have you undergo an extensive background check, and then wait ten days hoping I don’t kill myself in the interim when you can finally hold on to my pistol for me?” And then there’s the issue that if the gun owner having suicidal thoughts seeks inpatient treatment, he or she is prohibited by law from getting their firearm back in perpetuity.
So instead, the gun owner with the suicidal thoughts keeps the gun in the house. Also potentially foregoes seeking treatment from a doctor.
This is terrible law. Somewhere around 1,500 people die per year in California from firearm suicide. That’s more than all domestic violence deaths nationwide. And there are many other states with laws that take a similar form.
If we stuck with a numbers-driven approach to firearm policy, instead of policy based on emotion, it would help us tremendously in the process of actually saving lives. | https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/the-gun-lane-we-need-doctors-in-and-government-out-57b8a3547e0b | ['Bj Campbell'] | 2019-08-30 18:04:25.508000+00:00 | ['Health', 'NRA', 'Politics', 'Guns', 'Mens Health'] |
Quantitative Analysis of Harvard’s COVID-19 Response | by Henry Austin and Kelsey Wu
Introduction
Over the past few months, coronavirus has spread across the globe, eventually arriving at the gates of Harvard Yard. In light of recent administrative responses to the pandemic, we decided to track community messages from Harvard administration and health services over time. This included all messages from Harvard’s Updates & Community Messages page and emails sent to all Harvard community members. Through quantitative text analysis in R, we determined the most frequently used words in each correspondence, seeking to understand the university’s concerns, priorities, and actions as the situation evolved.
Here’s an approximate timeline of Harvard’s correspondences:
January 24: Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) issued its initial warnings, informing students that HUHS would be “monitoring the global concern for the novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan, China.” HUHS also advised students to take general health precautions (e.g. washing hands often, coughing into a tissue, and avoiding contact with sick individuals) and discouraged travel to China.
Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) issued its initial warnings, informing students that HUHS would be “monitoring the global concern for the novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan, China.” HUHS also advised students to take general health precautions (e.g. washing hands often, coughing into a tissue, and avoiding contact with sick individuals) and discouraged travel to China. Late February: The university began restricting travel to China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, and other countries with CDC Level 3 Warning. In addition, inbound travelers were asked to self-isolate and complete confidential health forms.
The university began restricting travel to China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, and other countries with CDC Level 3 Warning. In addition, inbound travelers were asked to self-isolate and complete confidential health forms. Early March: As many know, Harvard’s response to the virus escalated dramatically in March. HUHS prohibited any university-related international and non-essential domestic travel and strongly discouraged university affiliates from personal travel. The administration began closing events with more than 100 attendees and asking affiliates to familiarize themselves with Zoom.
As many know, Harvard’s response to the virus escalated dramatically in March. HUHS prohibited any university-related international and non-essential domestic travel and strongly discouraged university affiliates from personal travel. The administration began closing events with more than 100 attendees and asking affiliates to familiarize themselves with Zoom. March 10: Students received notice to leave campus as soon as possible and at least by March 15, and all classes were moved online. Some exceptions were granted.
Students received notice to leave campus as soon as possible and at least by March 15, and all classes were moved online. Some exceptions were granted. March 13 : The university informed its community of the first confirmed, Harvard-affiliated case.
: The university informed its community of the first confirmed, Harvard-affiliated case. Last 2 weeks of March: The administration thanked the Harvard community for its flexibility and adjustments. The administration also released additional guidelines for essential personnel, expressed the significance of anonymity during this crisis, and announced the cancellation of commencement. On March 24, President Larry Bacow announced that he and his wife had tested positive for the virus.
Data and Interpretation
To produce the table below, we used R (tidyverse and tokenizers packages) to produce a list of all the words in each correspondence and their frequency of appearance. We removed common words such as “and,” “the,” and “of” that did not contribute much meaning. The table shows the top 10 most frequently used words in each correspondence, in descending frequency. The last row of the table shows the top 10 most frequently used words among all correspondences.
The initial emails in late January indicate Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) and Harvard administration’s preparations for the pandemic. Namely, Harvard was in the process of producing protocol for COVID-19’s arrival to the U.S. or Harvard campus. During this time, words such as “travel”, “international”, and “China” are frequently used as the administration warns the community of potential dangers and uncertainty surrounding the novel coronavirus.
This frequency seems to suggest the remoteness of COVID-19, establishing a tone of comfort and security on campus. At this time, the virus had yet to appear on American soil.
Given the prevalence of the word “China” in Harvard coronavirus correspondence, we decided to track the frequency of its appearance over time. Initially (late January and early February), when the pandemic was largely centered across the Chinese mainland, the use of the word steadily increased. At the end of February, it dropped to zero. These changes are documented in the graph below.
In fact, the use of the word “China” in Harvard’s messages peaked as U.S. cases began to skyrocket. This trend is intuitive. As the pandemic moved across new borders and affected new communities around the globe, the university placed a new focus on their response — one centered around the domestic spread.
During early March, as the pandemic intensified across the country, Harvard’s correspondence became increasingly focused on the Harvard community.
Rather than using words like “China,” and “international,” the most frequent words shifted to “dorms,” “campus,” and “students.” As the virus spread around the world, especially the United States, university leaders likely realized that the pandemic was not a remote “international” issue. Rather, it was one that could turn campus life upside down.
Correspondence also focused heavily on the word “community” (see “Frequency of ‘community’ across Harvard’s messages” graph below). Although “community” appeared in all correspondences, it is interesting to note that “community” decreased in frequency as “China” increased in frequency. As mentioned earlier, this further indicates Harvard’s increasing emphasis on unifying its community, especially as the first Harvard-affiliated cases were reported.
Messages sent after students left campus (March 15) and after the second Harvard-affiliated case (March 16) used “community” less frequently. At this point, the university focused on establishing protocol for essential personnel and thanking students, faculty, and community members. Words such as “students”, “protect”, “campus”, and “best” began to appear more frequently during this early March time period. There was a strong commitment by administration, or at least the appearance of one, to prioritizing the safety of students.
Another prevalent word was “travel” (see “Frequency of travel across Harvard’s messages” graph below). As the frequency of “travel” increased, words such as “China” and “international” also appeared more frequently. During this time, the university discouraged travel and warned students of risks and precautions, should travel be necessary. However, as the pandemic moved closer to Harvard, the use of “travel” decreased. Harvard began focusing more heavily on issues related directly to campus and the student population in Cambridge. Following March 10, when students were informed they would have to leave campus in five days, the use of “travel” became frequent again as the university communicated information about leaving campus.
In early March, the tangible impacts of the pandemic on Harvard’s campus became evident. Email content began reflecting a stronger sense of urgency, utilizing words such as “possible”, “strongly”, and “protect”. This call to action was realized through the University’s announcement on March 10, when students received notice to leave campus within five days.
After students left campus, the tone of Harvard’s correspondence became increasingly dire, in line with the worsening state of the U.S. pandemic.
The administration used words such as “emergency,” “essential,” and “guidance” frequently to convey the gravity of the crisis. This tone differs drastically from the initial warnings in late January.
Overall, the urgency of the correspondence, as one might expect, aligns closely with the domestic upsurge of COVID-19. Initially seen as a solely international travel hazard, the virus rapidly progressed into a campus emergency, resulting in unprecedented action by campus leadership.
Further investigation of this data could assess whether the University’s response was adequate or called for. Should the university have acted sooner with greater urgency (given the increasing number of cases in the U.S.), was the response unnecessary, or was it exactly on time? As more information is published, data-driven answers to these questions may provide useful proposals for future crises.
Data Analysis Procedures
First, we collected all correspondences from Harvard and HUHS about COVID-19. This included all messages from Harvard’s Updates & Community Messages page and emails sent to all Harvard community members. We then used R (tidyverse and tokenizers packages) to produce a list of all the words in each correspondence and their frequency of appearance.
To remove common articles and prepositions (e.g. the, and, of, I), we utilized the Google Web Trillion Word Corpus, a dataset produced by Google’s web crawlers containing English word n-grams and their observed frequency counts. Essentially, the Corpus provides a list of the most commonly used words and the word frequency (measured by the percentage of the Trillion Word Corpus consisting of the given word). In our analysis of Harvard’s correspondences, we eliminated all words with a Corpus frequency > 0.1% — basically, we filtered exclusively for words that occurred less than once every 1000 Corpus words. This specification removed words that wouldn’t give us meaningful insight, which was key in identifying how the university framed the outbreak and its response. We completed this analysis for each correspondence between January 24 and March 27, 2020.
Learn More
Data on the COVID-19 pandemic can be found on the CDC website and in this map created by Johns Hopkins University. Sources used for this project can be found here and here. The most up-to-date information on Harvard’s response can be found on the university’s COVID-19 response website.
This article was an analysis by the Harvard Open Data Project, a student-faculty group that analyzes public Harvard data to increase transparency and analyze problems on campus. Edited by Terry and Sahana, cover image by Melissa.
Want to work on more projects like this? Join us! | https://medium.com/harvard-open-data-project/quantitative-analysis-of-harvards-covid-19-response-bfffdc1e5974 | ['Harvard Open Data Project'] | 2020-04-03 16:06:15.826000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Harvard'] |
Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020 | First of all, Happy New Year!
2019 has been another great year not only for Strapi but also for the ecosystem.
JAMstack and Headless CMS trends are growing like never before!
Over the last 12 months, Strapi grew:
The numbers speak for themselves. 2019 was super exciting and made Strapi the most advanced open-source, Node.js based headless CMS!
Let’s start with a quick recap of the past year.
2019 achievements 👀
Community
The community has been very engaged and more vibrant than ever:
1387 issues closed
726 pull requests merged
168 contributors
A HUGE thanks and shout out to all contributors!
Product
From the beginning, the product has been our #1 priority. We strongly believe that the best way to make you happy is to give you the most wanted features through a fantastic user experience. That’s why we spend so much time discussing on GitHub issues and analyzing your requests on our roadmap.
Features
Lots of new functionalities have been released:
Adding Repeatable Groups and Dynamic Zones made Strapi not only the leading open-source Headless CMS but also the most flexible one! Thanks to these features, you can configure Strapi to make it perfectly suited for your most specific needs required by your personal and professional projects.
Beta
Strapi went from Alpha to Beta.
Buffet.js
We not only released features in the product but also published an entire React components library based on styled-components: Buffet.js.
That way, you will be able to quickly create your own Strapi plugins with a seamless design.
Tutorials
Many of you appreciated our tutorials, like Building a Static Blog using Gatsby and Strapi, and asked for more. For these reasons, we published the Tutorials page, which is both a curation of external tutorials and a way to publish more tutorials made by the community.
Almost 10 tutorials have been published since its publication and much more curated from the community. We are always looking for new writers. If you have already written a Strapi tutorial or blogs and would like us to feature it on our website and social media, please don’t hesitate to send us the link via email or create an issue on the Strapi tutorial GitHub repository.
Fundraising
Headless is clearly the future of CMS and Strapi has the ambition to become the de-facto solution. To accelerate our growth we’ve raised $4M from awesome investors.
This funding boost will help deliver on our vision of making content accessible to any platform while offering the only fully open-source, JavaScript-based, community-powered and 100% customizable Headless CMS, entirely free for developers.
Team
I am extremely proud of the team that actually doubled in size this year. We have been very happy to welcome Virginie, Alexandre, Maxime, Maeva, Bayane, Victor, and Julien. It’s all about people!
Oh, by the way, we are still hiring!
2020 🛣
2019 was great, 2020 is going to be even more exciting! Here are our New Year’s resolutions!
Stable version
Even though the beta version is a lot more stable than the Alpha, we know that some of you are eagerly waiting for the stable release to use Strapi in production. I’m thrilled to announce that the stable version will be released in the first quarter 🎉.
Product roadmap
Our public roadmap is based on the most upvoted requests from the Strapi community.
Here are the upcoming features for the first quarter:
Then, we will release the two most wanted enterprise features:
Documentation
When it comes to advanced usage or customization, the documentation is extremely important for developers. We’ve added 20 guides over the past three months. Not only will we continue in this direction but also update its structure so that you can easily find what you are looking for.
That’s precisely why we are looking for a Technical Writer.
Webinars
One of our new year resolutions is to organize more Strapi events both online and offline to interact live with the community. This is why we are launching the first-ever Strapi webinar Thursday, January 23rd, 2020–5:00 PM (CET), powered by our friends at Livestorm!
Join us for this online meetup with Aurélien Georget, co-founder and Chief Product Officer as he presents what’s new in the latest version of Strapi and gives us a sneak peek at what the future will look like:
Deploy
Deploying Strapi can be tricky for front-end developers who are used to LowCode/NoCode. To make your life easier we will provide you with “one-click buttons” so that you can effortlessly deploy fresh Strapi projects on your favorite cloud provider.
Branding
Just teasing, the Strapi website will soon wear a brand new style! | https://medium.com/strapi/goodbye-2019-hello-2020-a5c2f8dd3088 | [] | 2020-01-14 10:09:50.717000+00:00 | ['Year In Review', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'Strapi', 'Nodejs'] |
Love In Three Words | An Irish-Nigerian soul living in Ireland after 40 years in Germany. A social anthropologist, English teacher, and more. With stories to share; and an opinion…
Follow | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/love-in-three-words-24ac9c36b897 | ['Sylvia Wohlfarth'] | 2019-12-10 01:03:35.383000+00:00 | ['A Cornered Gurl', 'Reflections', 'Relationships', 'Challenge', 'Love'] |
2021: Reading Challenge | January — Goals, Productivity & Happiness
Did you know that January 12th is ‘Quitters Day’? Statistically speaking, this is the day that most people give up on their new years’ resolutions. Followed 6 days later by ‘Blue Monday’, which according to research is the day when people are at their saddest over the whole of the year.
Beat the odds by arming yourself with these 4 great books that teach you about habits, motivation, and ways to be happier so you can smash your goals with a big smile on your face.
Own Life by Todd Eden | 1–7 Jan | 7 hours
Take control of your life with this 8-step program. It includes making peace with the past, establishing a clear sense of direction, beating bad habits, learning how to handle negative emotions, and increasing self-esteem and motivation. There are a few reflective writing tasks in each chapter that I haven’t factored into the read time so be sure to add an extra hour or two for these if you want to do them.
“You may wish you were different — or perhaps that others saw you differently. This is very common. In fact, in the top 10 of ‘How to…’ Google searches in 2016 was ‘How to accept myself for who I am’.” (p. 14)
The Power of Discipline by Daniel Walter | 8–14 Jan | 4 hours
Predominantly focused on self-discipline (as the title suggests) and what we can learn from Navy SEALs and Zen Buddhists. Plus strategies to keep you motivated. There are also some thought evaluation exercises; if you do these then you’ll need an extra hour or two on top of the read time quoted.
Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to Happiness | 15–21 Jan | 6 hours
The comedian reflects on the importance of the little things in life as well as enjoying the outdoors (deadly virus aside). A humorous, uplifting, and easy read that is sure to cheer you up.
15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse | 22–28 Jan | 6 hours
Double your productivity without feeling overworked and overwhelmed. Lots of case studies on successful people from Olympians to entrepreneurs. Numerous different strategies to beat procrastination, save time, and avoid distractions. I felt motivated just reading the contents page. A few key points covered: | https://baos.pub/2021-reading-challenge-33442ad73b07 | ['Elizabeth Dawber'] | 2020-12-26 08:22:33.571000+00:00 | ['Book Recommendations', 'Reading Challenge', 'Books', 'Reading', '2021'] |
Hiring freelancers: how to deal with knowledge workers | Whether you are hiring a freelancer, or are a freelancer yourself, this one’s for you.
I have always detested the term ‘freelancer’. It tends to conjure up images of the starving artist/actor/musician, the techie with social problems, or a ‘liberal arts’ graduate with illusions of grandeur — figuring themselves the Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson of our generation. I’ve used the term here because it is widely accepted and applied, but I prefer ‘knowledge worker’. Whether they are self-employed, contracted to other companies, or are full-time employees looking for an additional income stream, is inconsequential. What matters is that they are being hired, one way or another, for the skill set/s they provide.
There is more to ‘working from home’ than you think | Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
I ‘freelanced’ at the beginning of my career, and have worked with increasingly larger teams of freelancers over the years. I know that the hours they put in are long. The material, and briefs, they deal with are often convoluted, sometimes incoherent, and constitute what many a full-time employee wouldn’t dream of touching.
People who contract freelancers are not always aware of the hours a freelancer needs to, and is probably ‘expected to’, put in. So, what are the differences between a typical full-time employee and a freelancer in terms of a seven-day week? Have a look at Figure 1. Let’s assume that a full-time employee works eight hours a day and gets the recommended eight hours of sleep a night. They probably spend two hours (an optimistic and conservative estimate) commuting five days a week. Their week looks like this: 33. 3% is spent sleeping, 23.8% is spent working, 6% is spent commuting, and 36.9% is spent living life.
Figure 1: Breakdown of a full-time employee’s seven-day week, factoring in their daily commute (two hours, five days a week)
Now let’s look at the hours a freelancer works (again, a conservative estimate). I’ve assumed that they work from home, or somewhere that has a minimal impact on their time (they are usually paid by the hour, so every minute is precious) — commute time has, therefore, not been included. I have also assumed that they work eight hours, seven days a week, and that s/he is asleep for the recommended eight hours a night. Their week is thus roughly divided into thirds: a third is spent sleeping, a third working, and a third living life. If we accept these estimates, the freelancer works approximately 10% more per week than the average full-time employee.
Figure 2: Breakdown of a freelancer’s seven-day week
I remember one of my employers telling me that freelancers are there to be exploited. According to him, their services are subject to supply and demand: “These people don’t determine their worth — we do”. That never sat well with me, and I said so. I never entered into agreements with people who felt that a job was not clearly explained before they embarked on a project. How could I justify giving a half-baked brief or floundering project to someone knowing they would probably spend a third of their week working on it?
No, freelancers aren’t just chilling at home with their cat, waiting for you to call | Photo by Sarah Dorweiler on Unsplash
Sure, most freelancers are accustomed to the hours and the demands, but you do need to warn them that a project may require working longer hours. Consider the following before hiring a freelancer:
1) Draw up a fair and simple contract. If you include too many strangleholds, ludicrous demands, non-negotiables, or punitive measures, who is likely to sign it? Your legal department, or a legal professional, will deal with clauses pertaining to patents, intellectual property, and copyright, but you should have a basic understanding of how to read and understand these clauses in order to field any queries.
2) Chances are the person you are hiring is a seasoned professional. They are not necessarily going to be open to renegotiate fees once a final amount has been decided upon. You should send them a sample of the work and a detailed brief before they sign any agreement. Better yet, send them an idea of what you are looking for and a detailed brief.
3) Be sure of your budgets and deadlines before you contact anyone. If you say one thing and then do another, or renege on your initial promises, you do not seem trustworthy.
4) A negotiation is a negotiation. Be fair and realistic. If you only have x amount in the budget, state this upfront. If you need to have something by a certain date, emphasise that the deadline is immoveable.
5) Remember that you are dealing with people. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are great, and sometimes things go horribly wrong (a car accident or emergency operation). Build in fat with regard to deadlines and expect life to happen.
If you’re a freelancer, be sure you know what you are getting yourself into before you sign on the dotted line Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
What, then, are the responsibilities of freelancers? If you are a freelancer, you need to insist on a few things, and you need to honour certain things too. What these are will vary from project to project, but the same over-arching principles apply:
1) Speak up if you feel exploited. You don’t have to immediately assume the worst if you have taken on a project that is vastly different to the brief you have been given — but you do need to express your concerns as soon as possible.
2) Log your hours. This is a good way to measure how long it takes you to complete given tasks, and will assist you in providing a reasonable hourly rate.
3) Go through any contract carefully and note and discuss any irregularities you are uncomfortable with. Now is the time for clarification, and you can turn down a job with ease if you have not yet signed anything.
4) It’s a good idea to see what reputable associations, affiliates, and organisations offer support for freelancers. Most offer industry-specific support in what can sometimes be a lonely and tough business, particularly if you are just starting out.
5) Grow your network (co-working spaces are a great option to support you with this), and recommend people — they will pay it forward sometime! Know a great project manager, programmer, or graphic designer? Say so, and pass on the relevant details! Don’t look at people in the same industry as competition: They are probably the best allies you have — if they can’t take on a job guess who they are going to suggest if you do the same?
Employers and freelancers are spoilt for choice when it comes to platforms which support remote and freelance work. Fiverr, Freelancer, Upwork, SimplyHired, are just some of the sites you can try. Knowledge workers are available in abundance, you just have to know how to interact with them. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/hiring-freelancers-how-to-deal-with-knowledge-workers-560922dd573d | ['Dr Jyoti Singh'] | 2019-02-26 16:01:00.886000+00:00 | ['Management And Leadership', 'Management', 'Hiring', 'Freelancing', 'Freelancers'] |
An Absence of Free Will Should Not Lead to Nihilism (Part II) | An Absence of Free Will Should Not Lead to Nihilism (Part II) APU Sep 6·5 min read
By Dr. Gary L. Deel, Ph.D., J.D.
Faculty Member, Wallace E. Boston School of Business, American Public University
The University offers an online bachelor of arts in psychology and an online master of arts in psychology. These programs educate students on concepts related to consciousness and free will.
In the first part of this article, I explained the argument from some prominent thinkers that free will is an illusion. I ended that article with a question that is at the center of this idea: If free will is an illusion, what then would be the point of caring about anything we think or do? In other words, why would we not simply embrace nihilism and approach every aspect of our lives with callous disregard for the consequences of our thoughts and actions?
The answer to this question has to do with behavioral effects on your own mind and way of thinking. If you extrapolate from a lack of free will that nothing matters, you are very likely to begin thinking and behaving in ways that reflect little or no regard for ethics, morality, or even basic rationality.
Why would you behave in such a way? It’s not because you actually choose to, of course. But your rejection of free will and accountability for your actions will shift the domino cascade in your mind’s processes.
Your thoughts and behaviors would still be predetermined by cause and effect, but now there would be a new causal component in the chain: the belief that nothing matters and that you don’t have control over anything. That idea — notwithstanding its truth value — is enough to change the direction of your thoughts and choices. Imagine what a person who truly believes nothing matters could be capable of.
For the sake of comprehensiveness, it’s worth mentioning that some experts criticize the determinism premise that underlies arguments about free will being an illusion on the grounds that the behavior of matter at the quantum level often appears to be random, with particles popping in and out of existence seemingly without any respect for cause and effect. Authors like Sam Harris acknowledge the argument about randomness potentially disrupting determinism.
However, it is unlikely that quantum randomness is significant enough to have a material effect on the nature of causality. And even if it was, it still would not be a workable explanation for anything that is what we typically articulate when describing “free will.” So for the sake of this discussion, the concerns raised by quantum randomness are probably inconsequential.
Our Behavioral Choices Have Consequences to Ourselves and Other People
It’s important to recognize that our choices do have consequences, whether or not we have free will over those choices. Just as my knowledge about the unhealthy and dangerous effects of heroin on my brain is one of the chief reasons that prevents me from doing heroin, my recognition that my thoughts and choices have effects in the real world that could impact the well-being of myself and others is what keeps me from descending into a nihilistic attitude where nothing matters and caring is pointless.
It’s not necessarily the case that I knowingly willed myself to this conclusion. Instead, this recognition of these probable outcomes alters my causal chain in such a way that I think carefully about my life and try to make good decisions, as opposed to making silly or reckless ones on the belief that they don’t matter.
The other item of significance here — a further consequence of recognizing accountability in this context — is the obvious reality that our thoughts, choices and actions have consequences on the mental states of others around us. Just as you are endlessly vulnerable to new causal inputs that can change the trajectory of your thoughts and choices (this very article being one of them), so too are other people constantly exposed to new inputs that alter their own thoughts and behaviors.
So if we make good choices that promote values like kindness toward others, these examples are likely to affect the thoughts and choices of others through the basic psychological principles of learned behavior.
Consider the behavioral and emotional development of young children. Think about what different children might grow up to be like under different circumstances in their upbringing.
For example, imagine that one child is raised in a neighborhood where he is exposed to crime and moral turpitude on a daily basis. Another child is brought up in a community that values kindness toward one’s neighbors and helping people in need. How might we predict the different ways these two children would behave when they’re adults as a result of their childhoods?
Notice that the idea of “free will” is largely disregarded when we talk about child development. We don’t expect children to defy the circumstances of their causal inputs and make independent choices about who they’re going to become.
Instead, we expect that they will reflect the circumstances in which they were raised. We view them as products of their environments — good or bad. Consequently, we wouldn’t be at all surprised if the child from the crime-ridden neighborhood grew up to become a criminal, and the child from the better community lived a life of kind, law-abiding conduct — basic cause and effect.
Our Environments Impact Us
But the same principle is true for human beings, young or old, in any context; we are endless slaves to our environments. So when we behave in ways that promote good values, our examples serve as new inputs in the resulting behavior of everyone who observes us.
They can’t help but be influenced by what we do, because they lack free will in exactly the same way we do. As a result, they can’t resist the effect that our example will have on their thinking. However, the fact that we know our good example has this effect on others should be enough — viewing this line of thought from a purely rational perspective — to convince us that our thoughts and choices do in fact matter, even if we don’t author them.
So if you accept the argument that free will is an illusion, don’t fret or feel dismay. Remember the impact that the quality of your thoughts and choices has on the universe, both within your own brain and in the universe all around you.
We may not be calling the shots in a literal sense, but that doesn’t mean we don’t matter. We can still add a lot of good to this world, notwithstanding whether “free will” is a part of the process.
About the Author
Dr. Gary Deel is an Associate Professor with the Wallace E. Boston School of Business. He holds a J.D. in Law and a Ph.D. in Hospitality/Business Management. Gary teaches human resources and employment law classes for American Public University and American Military University, the University of Central Florida, Colorado State University and others. | https://medium.com/@AmericanPublicU/an-absence-of-free-will-should-not-lead-to-nihilism-part-ii-35087e8fb54e | [] | 2021-09-06 12:32:22.985000+00:00 | ['Free Will', 'Psychology', 'Human Behavior', 'Nihilism'] |
We the People of Social Media | Today in our world we are inundated by new technology, online news, and the favorite of many, social media. Facebook, Twitter, Parler, MeWe, Minds, Instagram, Discord, YouTube, Rumble, MySpace. The list is endless. Countless articles have been written as to how it affects us both positively and negatively. Social media has become controversial and many groups are moving from one site to another or an array of others depending on their beliefs. Lawsuits are being filed against certain social media sites and some have gone before Congress and Parliament due to their practices.
To say that we are a world of newspapers and radios, like our parents and grandparents of yesterday, is laughable at best. This world of social media, opinion and biased news, and differences in people and beliefs are creating an imbalance. We can see that imbalance in the way we view and treat others. We align ourselves with only those we agree with. We cancel one another out observing that we have a “cancel culture” now. We are taking to the streets, hurting and killing people with different belief systems. The days of live-and-let-live are gone. The simplicity of living is no longer simple; fusing in all other political, religious, business, and COVID issues with social media.
How can we stand as a world, a country, a people, a group, a family, being divided as we are? What we believe and who we are determines “where and who we belong with” in this new social media controlled world. Social media and this new society have said so; therefore, it must be.
Having lunch in a local Chinese restaurant, I listened to a most interesting conversation of two unique couples. Both couples were seventy years plus in age. One couple was African-American and Caucasian , Christian, and Democrat. The other was an Asian and Hispanic, Buddhist, and Republican. I know it is rude to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m nosy and they were from very different backgrounds having lunch together. What were the odds in this society and social media world? They were talking about social media and discussing the reasons why they had a distaste for it. Bantering back and forth, I heard words and scenarios containing words like ignorance, rudeness, rifts, hate, heartlessness, control, and cruelty. Over and over the same ideation repeatedly occurred in my mind. Here I have a two very diverse couples eating lunch and yet they seem to be cohesive. How is that possible?
Later I learned that the couples were in a support group for parents whose adult children have died. Once my meal and eavesdropping was finished, I scraped what was left of my heart and mind from the floor, paid my check, and went home. What has happened to our world that we have become so callous that we allow social media to dictate who and what we are? We allow it, and it only, to mold us and feed us what we should be and believe. How is it we have allowed social media to box us in to one group or another? We are a society that has become indeterminately blind to the world outside cell phones and computer screens. We forget we are real people with hopes, dreams, fears, hurts, backgrounds and more. We have forgotten that it takes many different people to make up this world whether we are a part of them or not or agree or disagree.
My article may not be original in its content; however, a profound fact must be stated aloud, we have to put social media into perspective and its proper place and learn people again. Put it down for a change and let go of the addiction we have with it. Learn what it means to tolerate, understand, forgive, and agree to disagree with others in the outside world of social media without attack, boxing them, and being cruel. Actually spend time with those we love without it. It is the only way we will bring back polite society. Is it an impossible feat? Maybe, but it begins with you and me. | https://medium.com/@ajferriss1/we-the-people-of-social-media-e1ec7737873d | ['Amy Jo Ferriss'] | 2020-12-13 15:29:32.554000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'News', 'Heart', 'Diversity', 'Social Change'] |
How do You Bring Ideas to Life? | Chances are, as a creative person, you have dozens of ideas for art you want to make, projects you want to launch, and much more. But bridging the gap between ideas and execution can be incredibly challenging because you don’t know where to start or if you’re even working on the right idea. People who consistently bring their ideas to life face the same struggles. However, they do some small things that make a big difference.
Ideas
No extraordinary journey is linear. The notion of having a bold idea and making consistent incremental progress is impossible. Those seeking a linear journey can still be successful, but often they struggle to create anything new. — Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle
Unless you capture your ideas, you’ll never be able to capitalize on them. Ideas are messy, don’t occur on a schedule, and come to us at inconvenient times such as when we’re at the gym, in the car, or out and about. This is why it’s important to develop idea capture systems.
Notebooks
You should always carry a notebook. As I said in An Audience of One, a notebook is fertile soil for creative ideas. I can trace back books I’ve written, events I’ve planned, and just about every creative project to something I wrote down in one of my notebooks. Even if all you do is write down one sentence a day, it will do wonders for you.
A Spark File
A few years ago, Steven Johnson wrote an article on Medium about creating a spark file, and said the following:
For the past eight years or so I’ve been maintaining a single document where I keep all my hunches: ideas for articles, speeches, software features, startups, ways of framing a chapter I know I’m going to write, even whole books. I now keep it as a Google document so I can update it from wherever I happen to be. There’s no organizing principle to it, no taxonomy — just a chronological list of semi-random ideas that I’ve managed to capture before I forgot them. I call it the spark file.
While I’ve never kept a spark file myself, plenty of people find it invaluable. I think tools like Workflowwy are great for that. But you can use a Google doc, Evernote, or even just notes on your phone. The tool doesn’t matter as much as the habit.
A Personal Knowledge Management System
We produce and consume more information than we have at any other time in history. Every day there are millions of new pieces of content on the internet. Because your brain is a terrible place to store information, you need to build a second one. That second brain is your personal knowledge management system.
Between writing books, interviewing authors, and my own personal interests, I read a lot of books. Because I want to be able to remember and take action on what I read, I’ve created a personal knowledge management system in Notion. It’s a digital version of Ryan Holiday’s notecard system.
After reading each book, I put it on my shelf for a week. Then I come back and create an entry in Notion for that book, and put in the most important things that I wanted to remember. When I’m interviewing authors, it allows me to reference sections of their book, and if I want to use any of it to support my own writing, I have it at my fingertips.
In addition to the notes from the books I’m reading, I also have an editorial calendar for articles. Each idea has a status (idea, in progress, ready for proofread, published). Between doing this and writing 1,000 words a day, I am able to consistently come up with new ideas to write about.
Execution
A Shitty Idea Well Executed is Still a Shitty Idea
It’s been said before that ideas are worthless, and what matters is execution. While this is partially true, executing a shitty idea well doesn’t change the fact that it’s a shitty idea. For example, in his book The 10% Entrepreneur, Patrick Mcginnis shares the story of an aspiring entrepreneur who wanted to create Tinder for dogs. Even if he executed it to perfection, that wouldn’t change the fact that it’s a shitty idea.
Navigating Ambiguity
When you’re attempting to get from idea to execution, you have to learn how to navigate ambiguity. You may not know all of the steps in advance, which can feel really overwhelming.
Consider something as simple as writing a blog post. When I write down an idea for a blog post, I have no clue how I will take it from a title to a full length article. But because I wrote it down, I unconsciously scan the world for any material that might be relevant to the article I want to write. If I hear someone say something in an interview on the podcast, I’ll put that into the document I’ve created for the article.
I originally thought this article was going to be about building a personal knowledge management system, after reading another blog post about that topic. But given the fact that my community is full of creative people, it made more sense to write an article and write about how a personal knowledge system could help them execute their ideas.
To navigate ambiguity, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Uncertainty is inevitable in the process of going from idea to execution with every creative project.
Action is the Path to Clarity
At the start of any idea, you have to navigate ambiguity. For a year, our content strategist Kinghsuk had been hammering me on his question of, “What do you do and who do you do it for? That’s not clear.”
But after close to a year of writing and half a dozen one-on-one clients, it became clear. I help creative individuals and organizations bring their ideas to life using research-backed principles from neuroscience and behavioral psychology.
Action is the path that gets you from ambiguity to clarity. If you take a first step and it’s the wrong one, you learn what doesn’t work. If you take a first step and it’s the right one, then you make a bet on what the next move will be. An action of any kind is better than doing nothing because the view changes. You’ll see what you couldn’t before.
Make Little Bets Instead of Taking Big Risks
At the moment, we are working on a new event for our listeners. Because we don’t have a clue what the demand is, it would be foolish and insane to pay for an event venue and hope that people show up.
Instead, we’re making a series of what Peter Sims refers to as “Little Bets”. These are low-risk actions that give you useful feedback to help you determine your next action.
We built a simple landing page and started collecting email addresses. The number of people who sign up to be notified when tickets go on sale will determine if we should keep moving forward. If nobody is interested, we will pull the plug.
When Chris Rock prepares for a national comedy tour, he makes little bets by testing all his ideas at open mic nights. If a joke flops, he removes it from the routine. By the time he’s on the national stage, all of that material has been tested.
When I published The Art of Being Unmistakable, I made dozens of little bets by posting sections as Facebook status updates. I was able to measure the emotional resonance of the content and when I combined it all together, it struck a major chord with my readers.
You can plan, prepare and research something until you’re blue in the face. At some point you have to execute. Procrastination, preparation, and research are forms of resistance because the moment you stop doing those things, you have skin in the game. You might lose money, create something that doesn’t resonate with its intended audience, or reveal the fact that your idea is terrible. But as Seth Godin says, “The key to having lots of good ideas to have lots of bad ones.”
Execution is a combination of little bets, things that might not work, and things that blow up in your face. You adapt to whatever happens, determine your next move, and keep going.
Moving Your Projects Forward
In the interviews about her amazing book Becoming, Michelle Obama described Barack Obama as a plate spinner, someone who is at his best when he has a lot going on. For people who are creative, this happens naturally.
At any given time, I’m usually working on a new book idea, articles for the week, and the podcast. But if you want to keep the plates spinning, and not end up with broken dishes all over the floor, you have to know how to move your projects forward, and also decide which plates to stop spinning.
Take Minimum Viable Actions
If you care about something it will elicit resistance. For the writers, the hard part isn’t writing, but sitting down to write. In An Audience of One, I suggested that people overcome this by taking a minimal viable action.
Commit to opening a notebook instead of hitting a word count.
Drive to the gym instead of deciding you’re going to work out every day.
If you do something enough days in a row, the inertia will get you from minimum viable action to momentum.
Track Your Progress
Tracking your progress is invaluable because it has a massive impact on your motivation. Too often, people measure their progress based on outcomes, which causes them to believe they are not making any. But if you focus on the lead measure, the things you can control, the number of words you wrote, call you made, or days you made it to the gym, then you’ll not only make progress but stay motivated throughout the process.
Break Everything up into the Smallest Manageable Parts
The main reason people don’t finish what they start is because their efforts are unsustainable.
You’re not going to write a great American novel in one sitting.
You’re not going to build an empire over a weekend.
You’re not going to get fit from a week long insane crash diet and exercise program.
Significant accomplishments require a consistent investment of time, attention, and energy.
The first time I saw a blank Google doc after signing the contract to write my first book, I was paralyzed by fear, self doubt and a voice in my head saying, “I wonder if my editor is going to think giving me a book deal was a mistake.” But I knew if I showed up every day and made an effort, eventually I’d finish a book.
In the process of planning an event, there are hundreds if not thousands of little tasks that need to get done. Pick a location, reach out to speakers, put up a web site, etc, etc. This is why people take a year to plan a wedding and the planning process for a book or product launch begins months in advance of the release.
Decide What’s Not Essential
When I started working with my first mentor Greg in 2013, he had me make a list of all the various ways I was making money: as a freelance writer for an online marketing site, managing social media for a pro-surfer, and book marketing for a few authors. He asked me a really important question. “Do you want to be doing any of that 5 years from now?” The answer was no.
In the months that followed, I self published The Art of Being Unmistakable, which eventually led to the opportunity to write An Audience of One and Unmistakable: Why Only is Better Than Best. Scattered focus leads to scattered results. Laser focus leads to progress, momentum, and escape velocity.
There’s a profound power to consistently doing something over an extended period of time, and it will do far more for your creative progress than doing it inconsistently over a short period of time. For momentum, objects in motion have to stay in motion.
So how do you put this into practice? Take inventory of your current ideas. Capture them somewhere. Then pick one, and use the ideas above to move it forward. Once you’ve made enough progress, then add another idea to the pipeline. As you continue to do this, you will become a prolific and productive creative.
This was originally published on Unmistakablecreative.com
Gain an Unfair Creative Advantage
I’ve created a swipe file of my best creative strategies. Follow it and you’ll kill your endless distractions, do more of what matters to you, in higher quality and less time. Get the swipe file here. | https://skooloflife.medium.com/how-do-you-bring-ideas-to-life-c9145a95ef3 | ['Srinivas Rao'] | 2019-03-19 23:58:57.486000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Writing', 'Productivity'] |
Underwriting Is The Next Big Thing To Be Transformed By AI | The insurance industry has traditionally been slow to embrace change. Embedded within the industry are processes that require manual input and lots of paperwork. However, there are benefits and efficiencies that artificial intelligence (or AI) could bring to underwriting. Customers are looking for safer and more convenient ways to deal with their insurance needs. Enter: bots, AI and machine learning.
Here are 4 ways that AI can transform the insurance world:
Risk Assessment: At its core, AI aims to learn from past data. And while we pay close attention to patterns, AI can help to identify risks, pinpoint trends, conserve manpower and gather information for future planning. This wealth of data and efficiency boost will allow customers to feel more comfortable with their insurance choices. Fraud Detection: Non-health insurance fraud in the US is estimated at over $40 billion per year. Machine learning can be used to improve fraud detection models that flag suspicious behaviour and actions. Ultimately, this will save consumers (and insurance firms) money in the future. Disease Management: Due to various medical conditions, there is a segment of the population that is unable to qualify for insurance. AI is allowing those who were once considered uninsurable access to insurance. For example, those diagnosed with diabetes can now access technology that continually provides digital biomarkers, such as glucose levels, blood pressure, and heart rate. Committing to active monitoring of their health with AI lets the tech predict when a person’s health may be at risk. The result: a win-win for patients and insurance companies. Sales and Marketing: AI can be used to track policy prices and recommend useful products to customers. When data is collected by a chatbot or even a CRM system, AI can recommend products and services based on the customer’s individual needs. Customers get exactly what they require without having to spend any more money than necessary. Satisfied customers will continue to recommend the company to friends and will remain loyal, which will also help the bottom line of the insurance company.
Using machine learning, underwriting will one day be done solely by computers and it will provide faster and more efficient solutions. AI in insurance can lead customers to the policies they actually need while making the process smoother.
Curious about how chatbots are already starting to transform the insurance industry and others? Visit our new website to book a call with one of our consultants. | https://medium.com/@jenn-and-the-chatc-group/underwriting-is-the-next-big-thing-to-be-transformed-by-ai-ad4bc53d1e3b | ['Jennifer', 'The Chatc Group'] | 2020-12-09 22:51:02.231000+00:00 | ['Chatbot Development', 'Underwriting', 'Insurance', 'Insurance Companies', 'Insurance Industry'] |
CRYPTO-MANIA MYSTERIES | The Prizes
We believe that your journey is the prize. Knowledge is power.
But not everyone may have the same opinion so our prize format is this:- There will be a Bitcoin wallet at the end of each of the 25 levels . On reaching the end of a level you will gain the seed words for that wallet. With which you will then have access to all the funds in that wallet.
Once you gain access to wallet please transfer the funds to your own bitcoin wallet since everyone else can also access the wallet unless the money is transferred.
In the beginning all the wallets will be empty. We shall not be funding any of the prizes . The participants are can donate to the BTC prize account if they can afford it. Even a single dollar will help.
Our Bitcoin wallet address is: bc1qt4apqhun37hc0ev8dczmf0lq22u9pk4dfs4gee
Please Note :- We do not care whether you donate money into the prize pool. However no donations, may result in no loot for the winner at the end. IF that is the case hopefully having bragging rights and knowledge that you beat the game master should be all that its about!
But if you do decide to donate money for the interest of the community this is how the funds will be allocated.
70 % of the money will go for the final prize at the last level
25% will be divided equally into each of the unsolved level’s accounts
5% will be used to develop future such project
EDIT:- We dont expect anyone to give anything blindly. Just begin the quest earthlings and all shall be revealed. | https://medium.com/@crypt1cl1n3/crypto-mania-mysteries-e52f7fdb36da | ['Crypt Qwerty'] | 2021-05-12 18:06:57.095000+00:00 | ['Cryptography', 'Revolution', 'Treasure Hunt'] |
How to take a decision in a very tough situation ? | Hi Guys!
Are we really conscious about our decision making skills ? In today’s time, decision making is very important to achieve what we desire for. One wrong decision and life becomes uncomfortable and that’s how data science and other technologies are contributing enough for our right decision making. Today, I will share some secret on how to take a decision.
Steps:
Evaluate your situation:
It is important that you evaluate your situation on the basis of a thought which can describe the ill-effect it brings if incase your decision go wrong. Now if it is simple and clear to you about what is right or wrong, true or false or any Boolean values, just take the correct decision without wasting much of your time and I call this as a “known” decision. Let’s understand what is tough situation. When you want to decide between right and right OR more right and more right OR wrong and wrong OR more wrong and more wrong then that’s a tough decision making situation.
2. Gather Information:
It is utter important that we spend time to gather lot of information about all the options out of which we need to take a decision. Reach out to books, internet or subject matter experts which can provide some metadata to drive analytics.
3. Define your GOAL-Favorable kit:
So far we have evaluated our situations and gathered information. Now most of us struggle understanding the right tool which can help to take decision and most of the time we take decision on the basis of our happiness. For example, if you want to choose between sex or a glass of wine so what will you choose ? We generally take decisions based on our emotions or sentiments. Having emotions and being emotional is different and having sentiments and being sentimental is different. Now for all the tough situation, there is only one tool and I call it — GOAL-Favorable kit. Let’s understand how it works.
As part of GOAL-Favorable kit, we should unfold our goal or vision about what we want and then once it is clear then we can see what is favorable for your goal or vision. So all those things which is more favorable or better contributor in our goal or vision is a right decision for us and NOT the one which is on the basis of our happiness ! | https://medium.com/@simple-thinker/how-to-take-a-decision-in-a-very-tough-situation-2fc43eaa0cbd | ['Gaurav Ochani'] | 2020-12-17 16:38:46.625000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Decision Tree', 'Lifehacks', 'Decision Making', 'Decisions'] |
Benefits of the Keto Diet | Half-Keto is a popular diet philosophy for improving weight and metabolic health goals. But as with all things, there is a catch: If your goal is to lose weight, go keto, and follow a restrictive diet, you must have a serious focus on your nutrition.“The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb diet that’s intended for people with Type 2 diabetes, certain types of epilepsy, and about 4.7 million people worldwide who are trying to manage the condition safely,” says Hillary Allen, a registered dietitian, and certified personal trainer. Secure in your decision to give the keto diet a try, here’s what registered dietitians wish you knew before tackling the ketogenic diet.
IT’S NOT A DIET FOR WEIGHT LOSS
“The keto diet puts tons of emphasis on health versus bodybuilding and is not very satisfying from what I’ve seen recently,” Allen says. “Moreover the rule around food (e.g., no grains, starches, sugar, or other sources of carbs) is so rigid. That’s not what I’d like to see with any diet.”Lawrence Shakespeare, MD, of Metabolic Health Nutrition, agrees, noting that a diet that emphasizes meat as your main food group has long been the “standard of the dietician and dietitian. While I am a huge advocate of the ketogenic diet for Type 2 diabetes, epilepsy, or anyone with prediabetes, it was never intended for weight loss.”Before trying the keto diet, evaluate your diet. “My advice would be to take a good, hard look at the food you are eating on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis,” Allen says. Getting back to balanced eating habits is key to success.
2. IT’S NUTRITIOUS AND PROTEIN-FRIENDLY
By reducing carbohydrates to less than 20%, the keto diet may reduce your appetite level while helping regulate blood sugar levels, says Sharon Palmer, owner and founder of Food Fretters and Nourished by Sharon. The result is reduced energy spikes in response to carbohydrate-containing foods.
3. YOU’LL LIKELY AIM TO REDUCE MEAL PREP TIME
“The ketogenic diet makes the planning and portioning of meals super simple and efficient,” Allen says. “The prep time will likely be minimal. It’s not a question of if or but when you’ll be comparing portions to standard diet and traditional fast-food options.” Keto meal plans are also much easier to follow. We have a present for you, a free keto recipe just for you!
4. IT TAKES APPROPRIATE PRECAUTIONS
“Any well-designed ketogenic diet should include a moderate amount of legumes, grains, vegetables, healthy fats, and protein,” Palmer says. It’s also important to keep sufficient protein and healthy fats such as vegetables and fruit around. Certain grains are restricted due to their glucose content and may cause blood sugar spikes. | https://medium.com/@Alex_keto/benefits-of-the-keto-diet-102aed9b527b | [] | 2021-12-24 18:38:12.227000+00:00 | ['Diet', 'Health', 'Healthy', 'Keto', 'Keto Diet'] |
ElectrumSV 1.3.0b4 | As the process of polishing ElectrumSV 1.3.0 continues, I am trying to release usable beta releases as often as possible. If you are using one of the previous beta releases, you are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Bugs are fixed, and features re-enabled.
The splash screen for ElectrumSV 1.3.0b4
Find our website here.
Find our issue tracker here.
We do not provide support over Twitter or any other forms of social media. Not only is it not guaranteed we will see your comments, it is a very painful way to do support that we avoid. If you need support, submit an issue on our issue tracker.
What has changed in this release?
If you don’t want to know the details, just read the titles.
Bare multi-signature is the default multi-signature script type
Affects users who are creating new multi-signature accounts.
The previous release was made before the Genesis upgrade and still defaulted to P2SH scripts for multi-signature accounts. As we are now past the Genesis upgrade, the default script type for multi-signature accounts is bare multi-signature.
The account properties for a new multi-signature account.
Commits: #1
Standard accumulator multi-signature script type supported
Affects users who wish to try more miner-friendly multi-signature transactions.
One of the core requirements of the changes that allow the use of bare multi-signature scripts, given that payments to P2SH scripts do not work after the Genesis upgrade, is that an account can choose any viable script type it should use for a new transaction and keep track of it.
With this already in place, it was a minimal amount of work to also add support for the standard form of accumulator multi-signature scripts. These are more lightweight than bare multi-signature in that they specify which signatures to check against which keys.
Initial user interface for switching the script type for an account.
The account properties for this multi-signature account.
In the longer run when these have been more widely used and the implementation tested, we will set this script type as the default one used by new multi-signature wallets.
Commits: #1 #2
Fix opening wallets with accounts that are mid-synchronisation
Affects some users who closed their wallet while it had cleared but not yet settled transactions.
I am surprised we didn’t hear about this happening more often. A cleared transaction is one we know is in the mempool, and a settled transaction is one we know is mined. So it should have been affecting some users who closed their wallet after sending a transaction, but before it had been confirmed. Any user experiencing it, would have encountered an error loading the wallet and the wallet would have been broken until they upgraded ElectrumSV.
Issue: #310
Commit: #1
Account synchronisation has been optimised
Affects both users who are restoring accounts from seed/a master key, and users whose account is being synchronised on opening it.
UTXO caching has been added in 1.3.0 to greatly increase transaction creation speeds but the algorithm for processing new or used utxos was aimed at correctness rather than speed. As a result, updating the utxo set was O(n²) with respect to number of outputs in a transaction. This has been optimised to O(n).
A transaction with 1000 unique outputs creates 1000 new key subscriptions to ElectrumX. The problem was that to update the utxo set, this costly algorithm was iterating over all 1000 outputs for each of these 1000 subscriptions (1 million iterations). To avoid this duplicated computation, a cache was added that maps scripthashes to txo indices in a given transaction and allows processing of only the relevant outputs for a given transaction (usually just a single output if keys are not reused).
Commits: #1 #2 #3
Synchronised messages larger than 1 MB are no longer discarded
Affects users who restore accounts that have previously been externally for writing data to the blockchain.
The connection that an ElectrumSV wallet makes to any server has a default limit of 1 MB, where if it receives a message larger than that, it discards it. With the move to larger transactions on Bitcoin SV, especially those that either pack data into OP_RETURN or pushdata, this is not longer large enough.
The new default is 10 MB. We should ideally handle this better, and even allow the user to customise it either globally in the wallet, or on a per-account basis. But for now, due to resource constraints this is good enough.
Commits: #1
MacOS builds might require Mojave (10.14) or later
Affects all MacOS users who use our builds and have an earlier version of MacOS than Mojave (10.14).
Our builds are created on (almost) every commit we make to Github, using Azure Pipelines. Detecting that we used their 10.13 VM image, they emailed us and told us that it was being removed, and to switch to their 10.14 VM image.
Apparently there’s now a outdated message warning of the change as well.
ElectrumSV Azure Pipelines build artifacts.
ElectrumSV does not devote resources to making sure that all new versions released work on all old computers that people have ever been able to run earlier versions of the wallet on. We focus our limited resources on whether it works on more recent systems.
Commits: #1 #2
Handle BIP276-style BIP21 URLs
Affects anyone who happens to receive a payment URL that contains a BIP276 payment destination. Or wishes to give one out.
With the Genesis upgrade past us, people can give out payment destinations that do not have addresses. This might be bare multi-signature scripts, accumulator multi-signature scripts or for that matter anything else. This is what BIP276 was intended to facilitate until we could support Paymail.
How an ElectrumSV user might give out a BIP276-based URL.
Commits: #1
Add support for Python 3.8
Affects no-one except developers and users who run from source.
ElectrumSV currently requires a subversion of Python 3.6, but at some point we are going to upgrade our minimum Python version to 3.8. What stops us at this point is that PyInstaller does not currently support Python 3.8, and until it does we cannot upgrade because we can’t provide builds.
No-one wants to fund Python 3.8 support for PyInstaller 😢
MacOS builds now use Python 3.6.10. Windows builds now user 3.6.8, and are unable to upgrade as that is the latest version of 3.6 that the Python developers provide the required prebuilt development binaries files for. Otherwise users running from source are required to use 3.6.0 or higher.
It is very possible that we will switch away from PyInstaller, to other solutions before PyInstaller gets Python 3.8 support.
Commits: #1 #2 #3
Change the SQLite database support to use write-ahead logging
Affects users with wallets that have accounts that engage in activities that heavily use the database.
The initial motivation for switching to SQLite was that we had to move away from the JSON wallet storage because in order to use any of it, we had to load all of it. And as it accrued more large OP_RETURN transactions, these were all held in memory and included in any saving of the wallet’s data.
While SQLite is very popular, using it is problematic and requires some degree of faffing about. Without every piece of related high-level logic reconciling the state of database operations in progress, it was necessary to lock lower-level logic so that there could be no overlap and race conditions. This meant that both read and write operations were very slow. In addition, as we let non-overlapping read and write operations proceed, we then encountered the limitation that SQLite could not have multiple concurrent read and write operations. You can read a post by someone else on this topic.
Our first change was to make all write operations non-blocking, and they are now handed off to a writer thread that takes care of all writes. The second change was to switch to write-ahead logging, which removes the remaining issue of reads getting blocked by the writer thread.
The stability of the write-ahead logging and dealing with rare and sporadic issues related to it, was the primary cause of the delay of this 1.3.0b4 release.
In the longer term, we will likely add support for the Postgres database, which will likely be required to provide more scalable backends for those who create a lot of transactions likely programmatically using ElectrumSV as wallet service.
Issue: #340
Commits: #1 #2
Accounts can now have per-derivation path gap limits
Affects advanced users who use ElectrumSV as a wallet server likely via it’s REST API. Normal wallet users should never use this, and have better options for their related issues.
For now, most users just use the standard derivation paths. And if they need additional keys beyond what the standard gap limit provides, they can simply call a function in the console to generate as many as they need for either of the receiving or change derivation paths — while preserving the standard gap limits.
Advanced users can view metadata like generated keys and derivation paths in the Keys tab.
Developers who are building ElectrumSV “dapps” (short for daemon apps) where they run ElectrumSV as a wallet server, and customise it’s behaviour are likely the target audience of this change.
Commit: #1
User interface polishing for the wallet wizard
Affects all users who select an existing wallet or create a new wallet.
The wallet wizard, which is used to select or create wallets, has been refactored to provide a consistent way of entering passwords. Additionally, various bugs have been fixed.
A user can also open a context menu for any of the entries, and use a menu to open their operating system folder view of the wallet directory. On Windows this is called “explorer” and on MacOS “finder”. Linux has no support for this, so users running from source on those operating systems do not get these options.
Selecting a wallet in the wallet wizard.
An initial implementation of in-application contextual help has been added, in the wallet wizard. This is currently in development, and it’s completion will not hold up any final 1.3.0 release.
Preliminary in-application help windows.
Requests for passwords now appear using the upgraded existing dialog. When you enter the correct password, the “OK” button will be enabled and you can simply press the enter key while the focus is still in the password field to submit the “password” you entered.
Use of the standard password dialog.
Similarly, providing a new password uses a standard provide a new password dialog. Once a matching password is entered and confirmed, the “OK” button will be enabled and you can simply press the enter key while the focus is still in the password field to provide the “password” you entered.
Use of the standard new password dialog.
Commit: #1
Completion of the account wizard user interface
Affects all users who add a new account.
The account wizard, which is used to add an account to a wallet, has been completed. The main remaining piece of work was the ability to create new multi-signature accounts.
Account creation options.
Once the user has specified how many cosigners there are, and how many are required to sign off on each transaction, they proceed on to specify who those cosigners are.
Fresh and untouched cosigner specification user interface.
If for instance, this was an observational account and it did participate in signing any transactions, the user could simply paste in the extended public key of each cosigner and proceed to add the account.
If cosigners were signers, or needed to use the user interface to get their public key into this account, they could click on the key button to do so.
There is no restriction on how many of the signers can be handled by this account. The existing multi-signature transaction signing logic does not force itself to only sign for one of the cosigners, so there is no reason the user-interface should either.
Eventually the in-wallet user interface for the account will also let users convert external signers into local signers by replacing their extended public key with either of their extended private key or seed words. This is along the same line as a planned change to allow hardware wallet owners to provide the seed words for their hardware wallet account and convert it into a software wallet account that no longer requires the given device. Resource constraints put these tasks on the back-burner for now.
Commits: #1
Fix transactions remaining unverified until state changes
Affects no-one, but maybe you.
In the rare case that the server notifies the account of events related to mining of it’s transactions before the server sends the headers for the blocks the transactions were mined in, the wallet will never know to verify them and show them as confirmed.
Where you would have noticed this visually.
No-one ever has reported seeing this problem and it was only observed happening in development, so either it is really really rare or it’s one of those things that only starts happening after fixes elsewhere allow it to see the light.
Commits: #1
What changed before this release? | https://medium.com/@roger-taylor/electrumsv-1-3-0b4-d9940b75c0f1 | ['Roger Taylor'] | 2020-04-06 04:48:16.046000+00:00 | ['Wallet', 'Bitcoin Sv', 'Bitcoin', 'Electrumsv'] |
10.15% MANAPPURAM FINANCE NCD JAN 2019 PUBLIC ISSUE:- | Issue start date: 28-Jan-2019
Issue end date: 27-Feb-2019. However, based on oversubscription it can get close before that.
Tranche II NCD’s are available in 7 options. It offers NCD for 3 years, 5 years and 86 months (2,617 days).
Interest rates are between 9.35% to 10.15%.
These are secured NCDs.
Interest payable every month, every year and on a cumulative basis depending on the option chosen by the investor.
The face value of the NCD bond is Rs 1000.
The minimum investment is for the 10 bonds. Means, you need to invest for a minimum of Rs 10,000. Beyond this, you can invest in multiples of 1 bond.
These NCD bonds would be listed on BSE. Hence, these are liquid investments
NRI’s cannot apply to this NCD subscription.
These NCD’s are rated as CARE AA/Stable by CARE Ratings and BWR AA+ Stable by Brickwork Ratings.
ABOUT MANAPPURAM FINANCE LIMITED
Manappuram Finance Limited is one of the leading and topmost names in nonbanking finance corporation NBFC.
The company lends loans against the pledge of household and/or used gold jewelry and provide short-term personal and business gold loans primarily to retail customers who require immediate availability of funds, but who do not have access to formal credit on an immediate basis.
Its Gold Loan portfolio as of March 31, 2018, consists of approximately 2.25 million customers aggregating a principal amount of ₹ 117,349.82 million in Gold Loans, which accounted for 76.21% of its total loans on a consolidated basis.
As of June 30, 2018, they disbursed Gold Loans to customers from a network of 3,331 branches of the company in 28 states and union territories of India, including 2,236 branches in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Why to Invest?
investors should keep in mind that informed decision will help you gain profits.
Let us find out why the investor should consider investing their hard earned money in such NCD
The company has witnessed consistent and remarkable profits in the last 3 years. Its profits were at Rs 337 Crores in FY16 Vs Rs 700 Crores in FY18.
These Nonconvertible debentures usually offer lucrative interest rate where you can avail interest rate up to 10.15%
In an event of nonperformance of the company and the company gets closed for some reasons, NCD investors would be getting preference in the repayment of capital along with interest.
Why not invest in NCD?
IL&FS have created a fuss in the minds of the investors whether to invest in such NCD companies.
The Company and its director are involved in certain legal and other proceedings including criminal proceedings in India and may seem certain liabilities as a result of the same.
The company failed to maintain its growth
volatility in the market price of the gold may adversely affect the financial condition of the company, cash flows and results of operation
Its business is subject to various rules and legislation. it is to be noted that future regulator amendments have a material adverse effect on its business.
The financial performance is vulnerable to the interest rate risk. in case the company fails to manage or a company’s inability to maintain the interest rate risk
The company may not be able to realize the full value of the pledged gold. Which exposes us to the financial losses
Company and its subsidiaries are subject to the inspection from RBI and NHB. The company non-compliance with RBI or NHB operation may hamper its subsidiaries business.
A few of its subsidiaries and group companies have incurred losses, which may have an adverse effect on its reputation and business
To Know more regarding this, please check-10.15% Mannapuram Finance NCD 2019 | https://medium.com/@mangalam1052/10-15-manappuram-finance-ncd-jan-2019-public-issue-214af38afb04 | ['Education Consultant'] | 2019-02-07 06:38:49.706000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Investing', 'Fixed Income', 'Ncds', 'Investors'] |
How the Derided Reverse Merger is Now the Darling of Wall Street | How the Derided Reverse Merger is Now the Darling of Wall Street
Why Startups are loving the SPACs
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
The last couple of months have brought a new acronym to the forefront — SPAC. We finance people love our little acronyms. They make us feel special and super smart. But, it’s not just the investment community who love the SPACs, the startups are gaining real value out of them as well. SPACs have become a great way for unicorns to go public in a quick and efficient manner.
SPAC is an acronym for Special Purpose Acquisition Company and it’s not a new thing by any means. The financial industry has been spewing out “Special Purpose” companies for ages. It’s our favorite way of carving things out of a part of the company in an attempt to shield the rest of the business.
In the world of debt, we use SPVs or SPEs. You guessed it, Special Purpose… Vehicle or Entity. Why do we establish these companies? Because we are not sure what could happen to the rest of the business. Usually, an SPV is carved out and the debt is borrowed by this entity. Companies love it because it usually means that taking debt only on the SPV doesn’t affect the balance sheet for the rest of the business. Often they get away, with not reporting the debt at all.
So anything “Special” in finance is just another term for “I don’t want you to know too much about this”.
So how did the concept of Special Purpose suddenly creep onto Wall Street? Well, it’s not really sudden. SPACs have been around for a while now, and the consensus seems to be the early 1990s. However, what’s actually been around is the basic concept. But, what we’re seeing these days is the same structure with a twist. If there’s one thing that finance people love more than acronyms, it’s tweaking structures and creating a hype about it.
In the early days, most SPAC IPOs took place under what was called a reverse merger:
According to the SEC, a reverse merger transaction is when “an existing public “shell company,” which is a public reporting company with few or no operations, acquires a private operating company — usually one that is seeking access to funding in the U.S. capital markets.”
Why Were Reverse Mergers So Derided?
Reverse mergers were considered a back-door to listing. All a company had to do was to find a failing listed company and merger with them in order to be on the stock exchange. Since the Public Company in question was already listed, the private company in question could avoid much of the scrutiny of due diligence involved in an IPO. There was less work and often fewer costs.
What would happen then is, you’d find crappy private companies finding their way onto the Stock Exchange. The Public Company itself would have been of questionable competence and then a Private Company would fold into it. You’d find yourself with a listed company that passed all the tests but provided none of the value. It was an easy way for bankrupt companies to get a new life and questionable investors to form shell companies and avoid regulatory scrutiny. There are rumors that even the Mafia got involved.
What’s Changed with SPACs?
For one, the sponsors. SPACs are now clear with their purpose, so to speak. You have strong promoters, with management experience raising funds through an IPO with the clear mission of finding profitable companies to buy. What was lacking before was accountability to shareholders. This no longer seems to be the case.
Now, you have a whole list of platinum names in the investment industry forming SPACs to purchase startups and unicorns, in an attempt to provide shareholder value. The basic premise is no different from a VC fund or Private Equity Fund, except it’s not private.
Shareholder’s benefit from the expertise of established investors looking to place their money in potential unicorns. The public gets the benefit of due diligence done by a strong set management team. Since the management is also concerned about getting a profit out of this, they will likely opt to buy a company with a promising future. Once the company is formed and funds are raised, the SPAC essentially has a blank check to invest, which is what many of these companies are also called.
For a look at how a SPAC manages acquisition criteria, check out Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, a company that’s been in the news quite a lot lately.
There’s much more to the structure than just these few steps. There are issues around pricing and terms. The devil is in the details as they say. But, put simply, it still remains a faster and more viable option for most smaller companies.
SPACs a rather interesting way for public investors to access the private equity and venture capital market. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/how-the-derided-reverse-merger-is-now-the-spac-darling-of-wall-street-a28dfc8b52ac | ['Ayesha Tariq'] | 2020-12-03 16:48:54.815000+00:00 | ['IPO', 'Finance', 'Stock Market', 'Investing', 'Startup'] |
Some thoughts in the hope of dissuading your husband: | Some thoughts in the hope of dissuading your husband:
Why exactly would someone want to do your husband harm? To steal his car? Let them. Doesn’t he have insurance? To steal his cash? Let his assailant have it; just make it a point to carry a minimum or none (after all, credit/debit cards can be used for virtually everything these days). To steal his credit card? Give it and report the theft right away. A random shooting? Does he really think he’ll have time to draw his gun and shoot first under such circumstances? And will he be then able to explain his actions credibly in court?
Does he plan to display his gun in the hope it acts as a deterrent? Doesn’t that just open him up to having someone jump him unawares to try to steal it and perhaps use it on him? And doesn’t he fear he might overreact to an innocent situation and injure/kill someone who meant him no harm? It has happened.
Using a gun to injure or kill is both a crime and a violation of the Sixth Commandment. Not to mention how bad the perpetrator of such an act would feel after he took the life of someone’s spouse, sibling, child, parent or other loved one?
To summarize, there is little upside and lots of downside to carrying a gun for self-protection. I hope for your husband’s sake that he can see it that way. | https://medium.com/@harveyutech/some-thoughts-in-the-hope-of-dissuading-your-husband-585b903825f0 | ['Harvey Utech'] | 2021-09-05 20:13:40.934000+00:00 | ['Gun Control'] |
Podcast discovery is podcast visibility | A sampling of the PROmoted rotation from three refreshes on a RadioPublic.com podcast landing page from Friday morning. Refresh again (and again and again) to see a new set of shows!
A selection of PRO podcasts will be highlighted on all Basic accounts-on show pages and episode pages and in the embed player alike-selected at random from podcasters creating the best experience for new visitors. We encourage PRO accounts to have:
Written a logline for your podcast
Selected at least one featured gateway episode
Highlighted at least one listener testimonial
These three things will help people who click on your podcast in one of the promotional slots understand what your show is about. And it will also make your dedicated RadioPublic landing page amazing—spotlighting all your best work and of course, keeping all the focus on you and your show.
Want to know that the promotion of your podcast is turning into visitors, listeners, and subscribers? Podcasters with a PRO account with Podsite add-on will be able to see attribution information via these highlighted promotional sections so you can identify new listeners in Google Analytics. Coming soon: you’ll also see data on the number of display impressions and click-through rate, too.
Add your logline, featured gateway episodes and listener testimonials, and your Google Analytics tracking code from your RadioPublic dashboard.
Want to be featured in the rotation of shows on RadioPublic.com podcast pages? Start your RadioPublic PRO account today by logging into your dashboard. | https://medium.com/radio-public/podcast-discovery-is-podcast-visibility-d2618821f27b | ['Matt Macdonald'] | 2019-11-15 16:04:31.276000+00:00 | ['Podcast Discovery', 'Podcasting', 'Podcast Promotion', 'Podcast'] |
You Are Beautiful | Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash
You Are Beautiful
I wanted to tell you
Long ago
But I wanted it to be special
I wanted to tell you
That I’m proud of you
That I love you
That what you did
Was beautiful
That you
Are beautiful
4.27.07 | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/you-are-beautiful-9d258c45d9d2 | ['Raúl Güereque'] | 2020-12-19 14:11:38.186000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Beautiful', 'Free Verse', 'Poem', 'Love'] |
Much of what we feel about ourselves evolve from what we believe others think about us. | Much of what we feel about ourselves evolve from what we believe others think about us. My husband tells me that it is none of my business what other people think. Self-love is is something we must learn. He has helped me with that, especially with regard to aging. I turn 60 this year and he is 66.
I was 115 pounds at 5"4' from age 12 till age 25 (even after three childbirths) and people always called me “Twiggy”. Remember her? People “thought” I was anorexic, but, to the contrary, I ate like a pig and developed poor eating habits that lasted a lifetime. I tried in vain to gain weight. I was flat-chested and extremely conscious of my appearance. Other females loathed me. I didn’t fit in with any group but the nerdy girls.
Fast-forward to age 46 when I began to stack on the pounds, not just a few, but tens of them. I was doing everything possible to stave off the inevitable. At this same time, being single, I was convinced that no man would ever find me attractive. The exact opposite happened. We found each other. We laugh every day about our flabbiness, girth issues, new skin problems, wrinkles, spots, body aches, and so on. However, we sit on the floor and wrestle with the dog, climb in and out of the boat, hike the beaches, and walk island pathways. We do those things a bit slower now, but on the inside, we feel youthful, thin, and spry. We both know we look like a couple of Weebles to others and have even been affectionately referred to that way. But none of those words matter. We carry on with our busy lives. Healthwise, we could be doing better (I still do yoga, even if I have to modify the up-dog, down-dog.), but we’re not beating ourselves up over it. Life is too short for all of that nonsense. We’re convinced that our genetic makeup is not going to allow us to ever be fit and trim again, so why worry? Compared to photos of our grandparents at this age, we’re doing great.
I adore your smart haircut. I did the same about five years ago with zero regrets. Mine has been every color of the rainbow. What fun! Short hair is the most liberating experience. No more fuss, no tangles after a boat ride, no pinning it up from a sweating neck while gardening. Absolutely love it! | https://medium.com/@seapeachcove1/much-of-what-we-feel-about-ourselves-evolve-from-what-we-believe-others-think-about-us-c37b2feca15 | ['S.K. Nicholls'] | 2020-04-22 17:27:37.093000+00:00 | ['Beauty', 'Body Positive', 'Women', 'Body Image', 'Aging'] |
Let’s Make a Cache in Go | Let’s Make a Cache in Go
With tests! And plenty of apples.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
I have been scratching my head lately trying to think of something to do with Go. It’s a perfectly simple, easy-to-use language with a lot of boxes ticked and yet I have been unable to think of anything. Finally, the inspiration struck me: a thread-safe cache with tests. Now, since Go is a relatively high-level language, the actual implementation of this (extremely simple) cache is only wrapper functions around the map data structure. However, it is a good project to get familiar with writing tests and some good Go-isms.
Let’s start my getting our project structure ready. For me, this means going into my Desktop and creating a new module.
mkdir gocache cd gocache go mod init
The Go dependency “management” scene is truly atrocious to be honest [¹], so I try to avoid it as much as I can. But, if anyone wants to use my cache, then it’s important to define our cache module formally using the command above. And now that we’ve gotten the paperwork out of the way, create a file named cache.go .
We’ll start by defining our package and basic data types. I’m not going to call this “data-driven development” or anything, but I have always found it helpful to formally define what we’ll be working with.
// cache.go package cache import “sync” // We’ll use strings as our cache keys type Key string // And you can store any type of value in our cache type Value interface{} type Cache struct { data map[Key]Value lock sync.RWMutex }
I chose to limit our keys to strings since that is how most people will use caches (e.g. session keys, DNS lookups, cookies, etc.). For our cache values, I chose to use Go’s version of the “any” type. While we definitely lose type safety due to the lack of generics [²], we do gain a lot of convenience. If we wanted to define anything more complicated later, such as a method to iterate over all members of our cache, then we would either need to use interfaces or a concrete type. For our cache type itself, for now it’s a simple struct with only a data field and a read-write mutex to provide synchronization.
To make testing easier down the line, you’ll also want to define a constant to toggle thread-safety off or on. Just put it right under your existing code. If only real multi-threaded programming were this simple, imagine!
const Threaded = true
I don’t know about you, but when I think of cache operations (as I often do of course), I think of “get” and “set.” Without these, it’s hard to imagine much use for a cache (except maybe to brag about how you’re using a cache). So, let’s actually implement these in a thread-safe way.
func (c *Cache) Get(k Key) (Value, bool) { if Threaded { // We use the Read Lock/Unlock methods here // since we are not mutating the cache, only // reading values from it c.lock.RLock() defer c.lock.RUnlock() } value, exists := c.data[k] if !exists { return nil, false } return value, true } func (c *Cache) Set(k Key, v Value) { if Threaded { // We use the regular Lock/Unlock methods here // since we are mutating the cache c.lock.Lock() defer c.lock.Unlock() } c.data[k] = v }
I’m mirroring Go’s own map API inside “get”, which should help keep the cache reasonably Go-y. Great! But wait, how does someone actually use our cache? Do they need to physically type out ampersand-Capital C-a-c-h-e all by their lonesome selves? Barbaric! Let’s give our lovely users a nice New function, in typical Go module fashion.
func New() *Cache { cache := &Cache{ data: make(map[Key]Value), } return cache }
Note that we don’t need to initialize our lock field since Go will auto-initialize to the “zero value” of the RWMutex, which is exactly what we want. This is shaping up pretty nicely so far, but I’m getting tired of implementing already! Let’s start testing. Create a new file named cache_test.go (by convention, testing files are named <module>_test.go ) and define it to be the same package using the “testing” module.
// cache_test.go package cache import ( “testing” “time” )
We want to test the most basic functionality first i.e. setting and getting (in that order!). Go testing works by running the go test command and any function starting with Test (capital T, of course) will be run and passed a testing struct T . If you need a little hint as to what we can test our cache for, I gave some examples above: a DNS cache!
func TestBasic(t *testing.T) { dns := New() dns.Set("apple.com", "17.253.144.10") ip, exists := dns.Get("apple.com") if !exists { t.Error("apple.com was not found") } if ip == nil { t.Error("dns[apple.com] is nil") } if ip != "17.253.144.10" { t.Error("dns[apple.com] != 17.253.144.10") } }
Wow! It almost looks like a wrapper over the built-in map functionality! Someone tell ICANN to go get because we’re nearly production-ready for 400 million queries per second with this bad boy. But how to make sure it actually works? After all, not everyone is going to trust your programming chops from the get-go (pun very much intended). Luckily, all these strange conventions do have a pay-off. All we have to do is run
go test
And it should print out the results: PASS! But, not everyone is us, after all: some people make mistakes and we don’t wanna leave them stranded if they enter in the wrong value. Sure, they could just call “set” with the new value, but what if they want to erase any evidence of their mistake entirely? We need a remove function! Go already provides a delete function exactly for this purpose, so our work is to just wrap it up in a lock.
func (c *Cache) Remove(k Key) { if Threaded { c.lock.Lock() defer c.lock.Unlock() } delete(c.data, k) }
Excellent! Now even mistakes are tolerated by our cache, go us! (Pun also intended). Once again, let’s test. I’m figuring that we insert a value, then remove it and make sure we get a false from Get() .
// cache_test.go func TestRemove(t *testing.T) { fruits := New() fruits.Set(“Apple”, 1.39) applePrice, exists := fruits.Get(“Apple”) if !exists { t.Error(“Apple price was not set”) } if applePrice == nil { t.Error(“Apple price is nil”) } if applePrice != 1.39 { t.Error(“Apple price expected to be 1.39”) } fruits.Remove(“Apple”) applePrice, exists = fruits.Get(“Apple”) if exists { t.Error(“Apple price was not removed”) } if applePrice != nil { t.Error(“Apple price is not nil after removal”) } }
We once again pay homage to Apple/apples and make sure our code is up to par. In case you’re wondering, Go’s delete function is just a no-op (no operation) if the key does not exist already. If you wanted to provide more information to our caller, you could check if the key was present at all and return false if not, only returning true if the key was actually removed. For now, we’ll just stick to this. If ICANN has any problems with this, my GitHub issues box is always open.
Now, what about all this trouble we went to to make sure our code was thread-safe? Was it all in vain? No! It’s actually a runtime error in Go if you try to simultaneously read and write to a map. As long as our Threaded constant is true, this never happens because, well frankly our code is just single-threaded, so there’s no risk, but more generally because, until now, Threaded has been true. We want to test that all our effort to thread-proof our code actually pays off, but how? How do we force a simultaneous read and write?
<JEOPARDY THEME MUSIC>
It turns out there’s no real robust way to do this, but we can realistically guarantee this by putting reads and writes into an infinite loop in two separate goroutines. Open that test file back up!
func TestThreading(t *testing.T) { bloom := New() bloom.Set("Granniwinkle", 4.8)
go func() { for { _, _ = bloom.Get("Granniwinkle") } }() time.Sleep(1 * time.Second) go func() { for { bloom.Set("Maude", 4.6) } }() time.Sleep(5 * time.Second)
The five-second timeout at the end is just to give a reasonable window for such a contention to occur, thus triggering a failure. But wait — when you run go test , no failure occurs! That’s because Threaded is still set to true! To make sure that our thread-proofing is actually working, however, we need to see it fail. Sounds paradoxical, I know, but it’s like riding a bike with training wheels on. Until you take them off, you’ll never know if they’re actually helping or not. Don’t worry, this isn’t nearly as painful, or difficult! Just open up cache.go and set
Threaded = false
Now, none of our “training wheel” code will run anymore and we can finally fail in glory! Let’s run go test and…
goroutine 5: gocache.(*Cache).Set(…) cache.go gocache.TestThreading.func2 cache_test.go created by gocache.TestThreading cache_test.go exit status 2 FAIL gocache 1.015s
Yes! I’ve never been so happy to see FAIL in all-caps. We successfully triggered a simultaneous read-write error because our cache was no longer synchronized behind its read-write mutex. Now, go change Threaded back to true before the internet explodes.
There you have it! We’re ready to be the backbone of the internet. All we need is some buyers. But in the meantime, you can brag about your thread-safe cache in Go and maybe add some more features to be competitive in the cache market.
Footnotes:
[¹]: Package maintainers need to maintain a separate file path for each major release, so beyond the development burden, there is nothing stopping someone from removing old versions accidentally or otherwise. Package users need to manually update each import of the package to the new major version. Go in general compromises between centralization and decentralization, pleasing no one. At least with NPM, everything is centralized and thus organized. They could theoretically prevent left-pad if they wanted to. Go is supposedly decentralized, but then requires that each new version control system is manually added (subject to maintainer approval and the PR process) into go get and pkg.go.dev. So, one of the bragging points of Go’s dependency system is that you can host your modules anywhere; it doesn’t have to be on their servers. Yet, when you actually want to, say, host on Gogs, you can’t because the Google maintainers have not updated their whitelist. It seems more to me that the “decentralized” claim is more about freeing up server space while still allowing Google oversight of which package sites are supported.
[²]: @ Go community, please don’t eviscerate my digestive system for mentioning generics. I promise I won’t do it again. | https://dustinnewman.medium.com/lets-make-a-cache-in-go-ea49fc9ebe93 | ['Dustin Newman'] | 2020-12-04 16:50:08.663000+00:00 | ['Golang', 'Coding', 'Cache', 'Tutorial', 'Programming'] |
US Prosecution Of Assange Expands To Criminalize WikiLeaks Staff Who Helped Snowden | US Prosecution Of Assange Expands To Criminalize WikiLeaks Staff Who Helped Snowden Kevin Gosztola Follow Jun 25 · 9 min read
Image is from the State Department’s Share America information platform and in the public domain. (Source)
The United States government expanded their indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to criminalize the assistance WikiLeaks provided to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when staff helped him leave Hong Kong.
Sarah Harrison, who was a section editor for WikiLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former spokesperson, and Jacob Appelbaum, a digital activist who represented WikiLeaks at conferences, are targeted as “co-conspirators” in the indictment [PDF], though neither have been charged with offenses.
No charges were added, however, it significantly expands the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge and accuses Assange of conspiring with “hackers” affiliated with “Anonymous,” “LulzSec,” “AntiSec,” and “Gnosis.”
The computer crime charge is not limited to March 2010 anymore. It covers conduct that allegedly occurred between 2009 and 2015.
Prosecutors rely heavily on statements and chat logs from Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson and Hector Xavier Monsegur (“Sabu”), who were both FBI informants, in order to expand the scope of the prosecution.
In March, Judge Anthony Trenga dismissed the grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, that was investigating WikiLeaks. U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who refused to testify before the grand jury, was released from jail after spending about a year in confinement for “civil contempt.” She was still ordered to pay $256,000 in fines.
Activist Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his involvement in the hack against the intelligence consulting firm Stratfor, refused to testify as well. Trenga ordered his release, and he was transferred back into the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.
Prosecutors accuse Assange and other WikiLeaks staffers of engaging in “efforts to recruit system administrators” to leak information to their media organization.
WikiLeaks Openly Displayed ‘Attempts To Assist Snowden In Evading Arrest’
“To encourage leakers and hackers to provide stolen materials to WikiLeaks in the future, Assange and others at WikiLeaks openly displayed their attempts to assist Snowden in evading arrest,” the indictment declares.
It notes Harrison (“WLA-4”) traveled with Snowden to Moscow from Hong Kong, leaving out the part where the State Department revoked his passport and trapped him in Russia.
During an interview for “Democracy Now!” in September 2016, Sarah Harrison said WikiLeaks understood Snowden was in a “very complex legal and political situation” and needed “some people to assist with technical and operational security expertise.”
“I went over there, as the person on the ground in Hong Kong, to help him, not only for him, himself, because he had clearly done something so brave and deserved the protection, I felt, but also for the larger objective to try and show that despite [President Barack] Obama’s war on whistleblowers, that actually there was another option.”
Harrison added, “At the time, the Obama administration was intent upon putting alleged source Chelsea Manning into prison for decades — as she is now in prison for 35 years — and we really wanted to try and show the world that there are people that will stand up, there are people that will help. And The Guardian, for example, did not give any additional help to Edward Snowden as a source, as a person there, and we wanted to show there are publishers that will help in these scenarios.”
Prosecutors note WikiLeaks booked Snowden on “flights to India through Beijing” and Iceland as examples of how Assange engaged in an alleged conspiracy.
At the annual Chaos Computer Club conference in Germany on December 31, 2013, Assange, Appelbaum, and Harrison participated in a panel discussion called, “Sysadmins of the World, Unite! A Call to Resistance.” (Assange appeared via video.)
The indictment criminalizes Assange’s speech in support of Snowden and any future whistleblowers and twists his words into a prime example of WikiLeak “encouraging” the “theft of information” from the U.S. government.
Prosecutors even omit particular words to make the message Assange shared seem more nefarious than an endorsement of radical transparency.
From the indictment:
…Assange told the audience that “the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations” showed that “it was possible now for even a single system administrator to…not merely wreck[] or disabl[e] [organizations]…but rather shift[] information from an information apartheid system…into the knowledge commons…
But here is the full quote:
…And we can see that in the cases of the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations, that it’s possible now for even a single system administrator to have a very significant change to the — or rather, apply a very significant constraint, a constructive constraint, to the behavior of these organizations, not merely wrecking or disabling them, not merely going out on strikes to change policy, but rather shifting information from an information apartheid system, which we’re developing, from those with extraordinary power and extraordinary information, into the knowledge commons, where it can be used to — not only as a disciplining force, but it can be used to construct and understand the new world that we’re entering into.
Assange’s video message to Chaos Computer Club conference attendees in 2013. (Screen shot from “Democracy Now!” broadcast.)
Assange encouraged young people to “join the CIA. Go in there. Go into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out — with the understanding, with the paranoia, that all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation, by an ideology that is spread across the Internet. And every young person is educated on the Internet.”
“There will be no person that has not been exposed to this ideology of transparency and understanding of wanting to keep the Internet, which we were born into, free. This is the last free generation,” Assange added.
The government presents this message as evidence that WikiLeaks solicits government employees to steal classified information. However, what Assange did was appeal to young people to help the public address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when the government abuses the classified information system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and other illegal actions.
Appelbaum is singled out for saying Harrison “took actions” to protect Snowden, and “if we can succeed in saving Edward Snowden’s life and to keep him free, then the next Edward Snowden will have that to look forward to. And if we look also to what has happened to Chelsea Manning, we see additionally that Snowden has clearly learned.”
This is a fairly innocuous observation numerous people in the news media, including this author, have shared. It means if whistleblowers do not believe they will be punished with decades of prison or forced to flee their home country then we will have more whistleblowers because they will not believe it so dangerous to come forward.
At no point does the Justice Department attempt to connect the alleged “recruitment” of “hackers” or “leakers” to an actual individual, who heard these words and acted upon them.
Of course, the Justice Department refuses to accept the public benefit that came from Snowden’s disclosures. He still faces an indictment for allegedly violating the Espionage Act, which is why he remains in Russia, where he obtained asylum in 2013.
On May 6, 2014, the indictment alleges Harrison “sought to recruit those who had or could obtain authorized access to classified information and hackers to search for and send the classified or otherwise stolen information to WikiLeaks by explaining, ‘from the beginning our mission has been to public classified, or in any other way, censored information that is of political, historical importance.’”
It is one of the clearest indications that the “conspiracy” charge is a not-so-subtle effort to criminalize the journalism of an adversarial media organization that the United States has spent the last decade working to destroy. At no point in this statement does Harrison ask any specific persons to steal information.
If what Harrison did — and by association, Assange supported — is a crime, then there are countless news media organizations which pride themselves on publishing documents they obtain from sensitive sources that must worry they are opening themselves up to prosecution if they boast about their work in a public setting.
Conspiracy Charge Depends On Statements From Paid FBI Informants
The section of the indictment on Assange’s alleged role in “conspiring” with “hackers” mentions a “Teenager,” who Assange met in Iceland. This individual is Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson.
As Wired Magazine reported, “When a staff revolt in September 2010 left the organization short-handed, Assange put Thordarson in charge of the WikiLeaks chat room, making Thordarson the first point of contact for new volunteers, journalists, potential sources, and outside groups clamoring to get in with WikiLeaks at the peak of its notoriety.”
Thordarson was fired from WikiLeaks in November 2011 after the media organizations discovered he embezzled about $50,000.
After the FBI asked to talk with him in person following his termination, Thordarson “begged the FBI for money.” Agents initially ignored his requests, but eventually they paid him $5,000 for “the work he missed while meeting with agents” in Alexandria, Virginia, where the grand jury investigation was empaneled.
In 2013, WikiLeaks stated, “Because of requests from people close to him and his young age [Thordarson] was offered the opportunity to repay the stolen funds, which amounted to about $50,000. When it became clear he would not honor the agreement the matter was reported to the Icelandic Police.”
Thordarson apparently embezzled funds from several other organizations in Iceland that were not related to WikiLeaks. The Icelandic authorities process charges of embezzlement.
“It has materialized that the individual has engaged in gross misrepresentations of different types to obtain benefit from a range of parties,” WikiLeaks added. “We will not identify him by name in light of information that he has recently received institutional medical treatment.”
“In light of the relentless ongoing persecution of U.S. authorities against WikiLeaks, it is not surprising that the FBI would try to abuse this troubled young man and involve him in some manner in the attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks staff. It is an indication of the great length these entities are willing to go that they will disrespect the sovereignty of other nations in their endeavor. There is strong indication that the FBI used a combination of coercion and payments to pressure the young man to cooperate,” WikiLeaks contended.
Hammond was the target of an FBI operation. As Dell Cameron previously reported for the Daily Dot, chat logs, surveillance photos, and government documents showed it was Monsegur who introduced Hammond to a hacker named Hyrriya, who “supplied download links to the full credit card database as well as the initial vulnerability access point to Stratfor’s systems.”
According to Hammond, he had not heard of Stratfor until Monsegur brought the firm to his attention. Monsegur transferred the details for at least two stolen credit cards.
In December 2011, Monsegur gave “AntiSec” or the group of hackers targeting Stratfor access to the private intelligence firm’s systems. He pushed Hammond and others to “unknowingly transfer ‘multiple gigabytes of confidential data’ to one of the FBI’s servers. That included roughly 60,000 credit card number and records for Stratfor customers that Hammond was ultimately charged with stealing,” according to Daily Dot.
Anthropologist Gabriella Coleman wrote in her book, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, that AntiSec went to the WikiLeaks internet relay chat server. Monsegur was largely unaware. A deal was made to provide files from Stratfor to WikiLeaks.
”When talking to WikiLeaks,” Hammond recounted to me, “they first asked to authenticate the leak by pasting them some samples, which I did, [but] they didn’t ask who I was or even really how I got access to it, but I told them voluntarily that I was working with AntiSec and had hacked Stratfor.” Soon after, he arranged the handoff. When Sabu found out, he insisted on dealing with Assange, personally. After all, he told Hammond, he was already in contact with Assange’s trusted assistant “Q.”
Thordarson was “Q.”
According to Hammond, Monsegur attempted to entrap WikiLeaks by suggesting the organization pay him “cash for the leaks.” But WikiLeaks already had the documents they planned to publish.
The U.S. government had a deadline in June 2019 for submitting an extradition request. It seems improper to add these substantial details to the request, especially since a one-week hearing was already held.
While the conspiracy charge includes sensational claims of collaboration with hackers, it is no less of a political charge than the seventeen Espionage Act offenses Assange faces for publishing information.
The additional sections in the indictment represent an attempt to give the illegitimate prosecution a greater veneer of criminality. Unfortunately, it does not take much to scrape it off and expose the contempt for press freedom that still lies behind this vindictive prosecution. | https://medium.com/discourse/us-prosecution-of-assange-expands-to-criminalize-wikileaks-staff-who-helped-snowden-72f029276709 | ['Kevin Gosztola'] | 2020-06-26 02:03:57.033000+00:00 | ['Wikileaks', 'Justice', 'News', 'Julian Assange', 'Press Freedom'] |
JoomlaVS — Joomla Vulnerability Scanner | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/100security/joomlavs-joomla-vulnerability-scanner-f5784671dd0f | ['Marcos Henrique'] | 2020-12-23 11:12:22.449000+00:00 | ['Scanner', 'Joomla', '100security', 'Vulnerability', 'Joomlavs'] |
Scenario-based simulation: Combining HD maps and real-world traffic data | If you work in the ADAS/Autonomous Vehicles field, you are probably familiar with HD maps — virtual recreations of real-world roads including their 3D profile, driving rules, inter-connectivity of lanes etc.
A lot of these HD maps go into the simulation domain, where car makers and suppliers leverage them to train new ADAS/AV systems or for verification/validation of features from those domains. The reason to use HD maps of real-world roads (rather than just generic, fictional routes created from scratch) is simple: In the end, you want your system to perform in the real world — so you want to optimize for real-world conditions as early as possible, starting in simulation. As we all know, the real world is nothing if not random, and you will encounter many situations you would rarely find in generic data sets.
So far, so good: These HD maps can be used to properly train lane-keep assistance or lane-departure warning systems, validate speed limit sign detection and many other systems. However, a map only contains the static features of an environment — what about ADAS/AV features that are supposed to react to other traffic participants? Emergency braking systems, cross-traffic alerts or adaptive cruise control are all required to perform differently, depending on how other cars, bikes or pedestrians around the vehicle are acting. For proper training or testing of such systems in simulation, HD maps alone are not sufficient.
Scenario data: HD maps plus traffic data
The solution to bridge this gap is rather obvious: You add traffic to “populate” your HD maps.
Scenarios consist of a static layer (the map) and a dynamic layer (traffic).
Real-world traffic, of course, is probably even more complex than real-world maps. Attempting to generically reconstruct the simplest traffic situations, such as a number of drivers coming to a halt at an intersection will fall short most of the time: Real drivers are human beings with infinite complexity, each with their own driving styles, preferences, vastly varying experience — and sometimes we have a bad day.
Once again, you want to optimize for real-world traffic situations while still in the simulation stage — so why not bring the real world into the virtual domain once more, capturing vehicles, pedestrians and more? The result are real-world scenarios, a perfectly aligned combination of HD maps and traffic, both built using data captured from survey runs on real roadways. Here’s a side-by-side-comparison, taken from an atlatec scenario:
Real-world traffic recreated in simulation
As you may have noticed, not all connecting arms along the route are part of the HD map used for this scenario, so some vehicles seem to appear or disappear off-road. This is a perfect example of recreating only the features that are of interest for any given case — or to manipulate the data in ways that allows for testing of more rare cases: For example, you would want your front-view/radar system to correctly identify a vehicle pulling onto a road, even if it was pulling out “from nowhere”. This leads us right to the next topic: How do you use real-word data to simulate more extreme situations, or even accidents?
Scenario fuzzing: Manipulating real-world data for edge case identification.
If you want to find out where the limitations of your system lie, you will have to simulate some scenarios that are beyond their performance — failures, for short. This is of course a challenge: Looking at an emergency brake assist (EBA) as an example, you can hardly collect real-world data for instances where it failed — it is impractical to keep driving and hoping for an accident to occur to record it. This is where “scenario fuzzing” comes into play.
Using a toolchain that is optimized for scenario-based simulation, you can select certain variables of a scenario and manipulate them slightly. For example, you could raise the speed of the survey vehicle by a few km/h, or decrease the distance at which another car cuts in front of you. Keep doing this in ever so slight increments, and you will eventually end up with a fuzzed scenario where the EBA will no longer be able to prevent a crash — finding what’s commonly referred to as an edge case, or system performance limit. Combine the fuzzing for both variables (speed of the ego vehicle and cut-in distance), and you will identify which speed allows for which minimum distance and vice versa — resulting in a corner case, an instance where two edge cases meet.
Here is a different example, showing a white vehicle pulling out to reveal a stationary car on the lane ahead — in reality, on the left, it pulls out with ample time left for an emergency braking maneuver. In the manipulated version, on the right, it pulls out later, leaving less time for the system to identify and react to the hazard:
Reproduced real-world scenario (left) and a slight variation, after scenario fuzzing (right)
Leveraging scenario fuzzing of recorded data allows you to reap both benefits: Enhancing simulation realism and relevance by using real-world data and identifying edge/corner cases by incrementally manipulating scenario variables.
To discover this topic in more depth, and to see some video examples (including the one where the above screenshot was taken from), we recommend the presentation “Edge Case Hunting in Scenario Based Virtual Validation of AVs” from this year’s “Apply & Innovate” hosted by IPG Automotive:
“Edge Case Hunting in Scenario Based Virtual Validation of AVs” by atlatec CEO Dr. Henning Lategahn
Recording scenarios during Field Operational Testing
One opportunity to encounter a multitude of relevant scenarios or even edge cases in the real world is the Field Operational Testing phase (FOT): This is when OEMs, Tier1s or their partners conduct test drives on open roads, over thousands and thousands of kilometers. These test drivers take place when a system is considered safe enough for testing in public, as a prerequisite to final approval by regulators.
Of course, it is not uncommon to spot ADAS performance issues in the FOT phase — that’s what it’s for, after all. Typically, these will be issues that occur very rarely, either in very specific situations (such as near-edge cases) or only after a certain time of operation — this is, after all, the first time a system is being tested at scale in reality.
When such a situation occurs, it is a treasure trove of information for validation and verification engineers: All the onboard data recorded during these drives is analyzed in as much detail as possible, attempting to identify the cause and to fix errors, if there were any. However, onboard data will only tell you what a system “thought” happened: If you are hunting for false negatives or false positives (e. g. in sensor data), you need to match this data against what really happened.
To this end, you can to leverage scenario recording during FOT: When test vehicles are equipped to record HD map and traffic data, you can recreate the exact situation in which a system failure or near-failure occurred — including the precise road layout, a vehicle’s precise position and pose as well as the traffic that occurred around it at that time.
Sensor hardware for scenario production mounted on a vehicle
Replaying these “micro scenarios” in simulation allows for much more comprehensive insights into the situation surrounding a performance issue identified during FOT. Additionally, by fuzzing the data you can play around with infinite “what if” questions, further drilling down into the precise cause and severity of any errors. | https://medium.com/atlatec-gmbh/scenario-based-simulation-combining-hd-maps-and-real-world-traffic-data-adf9dddf086f | ['Atlatec Gmbh'] | 2020-12-11 11:19:21.496000+00:00 | ['Self Driving Cars', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Hd Maps', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Autonomous Driving'] |
OpenGenius, every business and individual has the power to use innovation to progress | OpenGenius has raised £1.1M in total. We talk with Chris Griffiths, its CEO.
PetaCrunch: How would you describe OpenGenius in a single tweet?
Chris Griffiths: OpenGenius are global experts in creativity, productivity and innovation strategy — we believe every business and individual has the power to use innovation to progress. We’re trailblazing the way for companies to ‘work creative’ with our pioneering app, Ayoa.
PC: How did it all start and why?
CG: Before I started OpenGenius, I was CEO at one of Europe’s fastest-growing ed-tech companies; I knew I wanted it to grow into something more and weave innovation into the fabric of the company, but the board only wanted to focus on ed-tech, so I resigned.
Being true to myself, I knew I believed in the power of creativity and innovation — I wanted to start a company that could bring those things to other people through software and training. Alas, 6 months later I founded OpenGenius. Today, our mission of innovation is established company-wide and over 1.5 million people have used our software and services to drive their innovation-based progress.
PC: What have you achieved so far?
CG: We have achieved a lot — teams and individuals from companies such as Disney, Nasa, Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike and McDonalds have all used our software solutions. The Ayoa app — which was launched in June this year — is something we’re particularly proud of. It’s a tool that really overhauls modern society’s broken approach to productivity; it stops people app-switching, and puts an emphasis on using creativity to uncover the right ideas so you can then do the right tasks.
We also have a global network of innovation professionals who are helping to spread the innovation message around the world. Our OpenGenius team is continuing to grow; we’re based in beautiful Penarth in the tech-hub of Tec Marina which I founded with my wife Gaile to foster a creativity-focussed workspace. The whole company is excited to see what we can achieve going forward.
PC: How will you use your recent funding round?
CG: We are using our funding to expand our international customer base — we’re doing that by being more aggressive in our marketing and sales tactics. We’re growing the teams in both these areas, as well as continuing to develop Ayoa which has a very exciting roadmap laid out for the next six months.
PC: What do you plan to achieve in the next 2–3 years?
CG: We’re ambitious and we firmly believe we have created a disruptive software product with Ayoa — over the next 2–3 years, we expect to see a huge increase in our user base and the awareness of our brand. People are excited by what we are doing here. We’re proud to be the first Welsh company ever accepted onto the London Stock Exchange ELITE Accelerator Programme, and we have our sights set on flotation in the future. We’re not following market trends, but instead, we’re driving change with the Ayoa tool which offers something no other software does — all I can say is, watch this space. | https://medium.com/petacrunch/opengenius-every-business-and-individual-has-the-power-to-use-innovation-to-progress-dedea6518353 | ['Kevin Hart'] | 2019-08-24 21:21:01.002000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Innovation Management', 'Innovation', 'Progress', 'Creativity'] |
Is Leadsark a scam? | Is Leadsark a scam?
Hello friends,
I am Ramanpreet and here am giving my honest opinion on Leadsark and if you are interested to know about Leadsark then please read it. Because it’s my personal opinion that everything has pros as well cons also so here I discuss not only on Pros but also cons. Why I am in so much confidence to give an opinion because I already purchased Leadsark. So, let’s start it.
Before giving my response upon this question. First I say that Leadsark is now Leadsark 2.0 and it is an e-learning platform where you learn how to generate lead and much more things like Personal Branding, Attraction Marketing, Social Media Marketing etc. and now Leadsark has 3 groups,
Leadsark Lite — Silver Affiliate
Leadsark Standard — Gold Affiliate
Leadsark Pro — Platinum Affiliate
Now My first question is, What is Leadsark 2.0:
India’s most Advanced & ISO Certified Affiliate Marketing Platform
It is the best Platform to learn step by step Affiliate Marketing Process
Learn the best strategy to do Affiliate Marketing business successfully
Multiple Digital Information Product
Huge Earning Potential
Start with very minimum cost
Passive Income Opportunity
My second question is, Why Leadsark 2.0
Best Strategy & Training
High-Value Digital Information Products
Organic Lead Generation / No Marketing Cost
Easy to Sell-Products
Low Investment
Huge Earning Potential
Passive Income Opportunity
Live Sales Webinar
Weekly Live Training
Weekly Pay-out
Now, Product Details of Leadsark.
1. LeadsArk Lite — Product Details
Price of this product is 2000 and plus 18% GST is also added which is 360 so total is 2360.
You are in Siver Affiliate Category.
Now the question is what do you get in Leadsark Lite.
Learn about Organic Lead Generation
Social Media Marketing
Personal Branding
Attraction Marketing
Content Marketing
Leadsark Affiliate Training (Recording of Previous Weekly Training Sessions)
Weekly Live Training
Join LeadsArk Lite — Welcome to LeadsArk
Now the Important question is when anyone purchased Leadsark Lite through your link then what you get.
You will get an Active Income of 1500 and No Passive Income is there for Silver Affiliate Category.
Disclaimer: Every Silver Affiliate has the right to sale any of the program ( Silver, Gold or Platinum Category) but silver affiliate only get an active income of 1500 and no passive income is there.
2. LeadsArk Standard — Product Details
Price of this product is 3500 and plus 18% GST is also added which is 630 so total is 4130.
You are in Gold Affiliate Category.
Now the question is what do you get in LeadsArk Standard.
Everything in LeadsArk Lite plus
More Advanced Strategy of Organic Lead Generation
Advanced Group Promotion Strategy
Product Review Strategy
Lead Magnet Offer Strategy
8 Bonus Courses is also added.
Video Course of Social Media Content Creation
Video Course of Youtube SEO
Video Course of E-mail Marketing Automation
An E-book of Internet Marketing for Complete Beginners
An E-book of Youtube Quick Start
An E-book of Affiliate Marketing Success
An E-book of Facebook Group Domination
An E-book of Facebook Messenger Marketing — Chatbot
Monthly Update of much more new things.
Weekly Live Training (Recordings of all the Important Sessions will be updated in the course)
Join LeadsArk Standard — Welcome to LeadsArk
Now the Important question is when anyone purchased LeadsArk Standard through your link then what you get.
You will get an Active Income of 2500 and Passive Income of 400 for Gold Affiliate Category.
Disclaimer: Every Gold Affiliate has also the right to sale any of the program ( Silver, Gold or Platinum Category) but gold affiliate gets an active income of 2500 and a passive income of 400 for selling of LeadsArk Standard and Pro. When anyone purchased LeadsArk lite through their link then get an active commission of 1500 and passive commission of 200.
3. Leadsark Pro — Product Details
Price of this product is 7000 and plus 18% GST is also added which is 1260 so total is 8260.
You are in Platinum Affiliate Category.
Now the question is what do you get in Leadsark Pro.
Affiliate Marketing Training by Ayaz Mohammad
Affiliate Marketing — Concept & Strategy
Niche & Product Selection
How to work like a Pro
Different Affiliate Platforms — Clickbank, JVZoo, Warrior Plus
Finding Killer Products beyond these Affiliate Platforms
Marketing & Promotions of Affiliate Offers
Sales Training by Ayaz Mohammad
Advanced Sales Strategy
How to pick your Affiliate Offers
Objection Handling, Sales Closing, & Sales Script
Advanced CPA Pro Training by the Super Coach Shabbir Ahmed Khan
Basic Concept of CPA Marketing
How to get CPA offers from IMC Platform
How to find Ad Copies
Relevant Keyword Research
How to create Bing Ads, & how to optimize it
DFY Landing Page / Sales Funnel Module
Advanced Personal Branding Training by renowned Personal Branding Coach Diya Asrani
How to build your Personal Brand Presence
How to get the Niche Clarity
How to Create a Brand Story
How to Position your Brand
Content Creation for Personal Branding
Basics of Copywriting
Instagram Marketing Strategy by Aman Rajput
Introduction of Instagram Marketing
3 Most important things in Instagram
Personal Branding with Feed
Instagram Stories Guide & Hashtags & Caption
How to Grow with Reels
Leadsark Affiliate Marketing Strategy by Shivam Gupta
Basic Concept of Affiliate Marketing
Why People Fail in Affiliate Marketing
How to present Leadsark to the prospects
Content Creation
5 Bonus Courses
Continuous Update & Courses Addition
Weekly Live Training (Recordings of all the Important Sessions will be updated in the course)
Join Leadsark Pro- Welcome to LeadsArk
Now the Important question is when anyone purchased Leadsark Platinum through your link then what you get.
You will get an Active Income of 5000 and Passive Income of 1000 for Platinum Affiliate Category.
Disclaimer: Every Platinum Affiliate has also the right to sale any of the program ( Silver, Gold or Platinum Category) but,
A platinum affiliate gets an active income of 5000 and a passive income of 1000 for selling of Leadsark Pro.
When a platinum affiliate sale Leadsark Standard then get an active commission of 2500 and passive commission of 500.
When a platinum affiliate sale Leadsark Lite then get an active commission of 1500 and passive commission of 200.
If you here then before proceeding further, I would like to clear a doubt related to passive income that why I am saying that Leadsark 2.0 is not MLM.
Because the passive commission you get here is just one person’s passive commission. Let me explain it,
If you buy from me then I will get a passive commission when someone else buys from you and you will get a passive commission when someone else buys the product from your team members and at the same time, I won’t get any commission.
From this point, it becomes clear that Leadsark 2.0 is not MLM.
Now my last question is, Is everyone making money in Leadsark?
So, my answer is No. A lot of people are not able to earn and it is not just on this platform but according to one research 97% Affiliate Marketer fails to earn money. Because of so many reasons but lack of consistency, patience and early give up are the main reason.
Because no one can there to just join Affiliate Marketing Platform and suddenly after one week or 2 week earns lakhs of rupees, it is not possible.
Online Platform also wants hard work and full dedication and if you are ready for hard work then welcome to the world of online business and if you are not ready then do the work that suits you.
Do not join not only Leadsark but any platform in the thinking of becoming rich overnight because it is not possible.
To earn money, you have to give your 100% effort even you are doing an online business.
Conclusion:
I am not saying that you should join Leadsark, it totally depends on yourself. Because I think people should do that in which they can give their 100% effort with full dedication.
But after coming here you feel that you can then most welcome to the Leadsark Family.
Join Leadsark Now — Welcome to LeadsArk
My E-mail Id:- [email protected]
For Queries , Call/Whatsapp- 7557455351
If you have any doubt or any queries or facing any problem during purchase then feel free to mail me and it’s totally on you which product you want to purchase Lite, Standard or Pro.
So, I think it is clear that Leadsark is not a scam. LeadsArk is a game-changing training program specially designed for Affiliate Marketers, Internet Marketers, and Network Marketers for both High-Ticket and Low-Ticket Offers. It is an e-learning platform which gives the facility to First Learn and then Earns money. | https://medium.com/@inocentishmeet97/is-leadsark-a-scam-d275ee01dbce | ['Ramanpreet Singh'] | 2020-12-25 13:43:41.476000+00:00 | ['Leads Generation', 'Passive Income', 'Online Business', 'Affiliate Marketing', 'Attraction Marketing'] |
Detached Observer.. | Photo by Malik Earnest on Unsplash
Brahman, in saMskrt means expansion or growth. Universe is Brahman, which means it is ever expanding or growing.
Brhadharanyaka Upanishad says this Brahman or expansion does ati-sRshti, an extreme creation, in which mortal matter and beings produce more immortal forms. Like particles that decay in nano-seconds evolve to particles that decay in micro-seconds, which evolve to protons and atoms whose decay time is as large as universe’s life-time. Same way beings with a specific level of consciousness keep evolving to higher levels of consciousness leading to more impactful, more immortal lives. Thus Brahman is same as what we call as evolution.
Atman is simply At-man, the extreme, detached form of ‘manas’. It is the witness in us, the conscience, the manas-sAksi. How..?
Manas is like an operating system, whose impact is on every peripheral. It is the ‘set of thoughts’ that arise on consciousness (prajna) which operates the body. On this Manas, arises the ‘ahamkAra’, the property of self or the self-identity as well as ‘buddhi’, the knowledge.
The detached form of this manas in us is the At-manas. It is the detached observer that we cultivate in our manas, that dis-passionately looks at our body as equal to others bodies, that helps the manas to assimilate all perspectives.
At-manas, the detached form of this manas, is the observer of the manas, is the witness or sAksi of the manas, as it only observes the manas and helps manas to broaden its perspectives. Because it broadens our perspectives, it helps to evolve our intellect or buddhi. We can say the information content or knowledge or ‘entropy’ increases due to this observer in us.
The detached self or the Atmanas is a manifestation of that ‘puruSa’ or ‘sAksi’, the Universal observer that guides the evolution in every domain. | https://medium.com/@vedicstudies/detached-observer-4c1b32bd72e1 | [] | 2020-12-09 14:29:07.673000+00:00 | ['Witness', 'Evolution', 'Conscience', 'Brahman', 'Atma'] |
I Have Got Over 1K Followers On Medium Just Because Of Making Videos On YouTube | I am writing on Medium from the past one and a half year and I am hopeful that this journey of me being on Medium last longer. When I just joined Medium getting viewers on your Medium stories was the most hectic job. You only get more viewers on your Medium stories when you publish your story in a big publication or getting curated in a topic. Curation is an alien thing for me, never happened with me because I am writing on Medium and sometimes my stories aren’t just worth curating.
Getting curated or published in a popular publication might be an easy job compared to getting followers on Medium. When I was struck in getting more followers on Medium I started uploading videos about Medium. In my videos, i have discussed everything a beginner writer needs to know. I have made a Medium Everything playlist on YouTube where till now I have uploaded over 19 videos about Medium. These videos generate 1,000 to 2,000 viewers every month and people check out my articles and follow my Medium account from there.
I have talked to some Medium writers who are regularly curated or published in popular publications and they aren’t getting more followers and try very hard to reach their first 1,000 followers.
If you think just publishing articles on popular publications on Medium as well as Getting curated is the end of the Medium promotion then you are wrong. There are literally hundreds of ways through which you can get more followers on your Medium profile.
I have over 2.8K followers and have a goal to reach to 10K at the end of this blessed year. And here is something i know about getting more followers on Medium.
It takes time to build yourself a following on Medium
If you are making videos on YouTube about Medium or your selected niche, it takes time to get traffic because of the competition and the low chance of getting seen. I have started making videos on YouTube in June 2017 and it takes me nearly 3 years to reach 3.2K Subscribers.
If you want to start uploading videos about a topic that you are interested in then the best thing to do is to do keyword research. Making videos isn’t easy and it takes roughly two hours if you want to properly optimize your videos for the search engine.
We can apply the same philosophy here for writers who want to get more following on Medium. In the section below, I have shared some of the strategies that I use to promote the Medium content that ultimately generates me more followers. But maybe during your first month, you didn’t get good traction but it well worth it if you stay consistent and generate content on other platforms as I have mentioned in the paragraph below;
My Medium Marketing Strategy:
To write more stories on this platform. The more content you generate the more the chances that your work will be noticed somewhere. One good thing about famous writers on Medium is that they are targeting different publications for different kinds of stories. For example, Tim Dinning writes 10 stories every week on Medium. To Make More Videos about Medium on YouTube: My Channel is already monetized and I have a sizeable Medium member subscribed to my YouTube channel. This gives me the opportunity to make more insightful videos for those searching for Medium related keywords. To Write more answers on Quora: The Medium topic on Quora has more than 22,000 followers and i am one of the most viewed writes on Medium that my Medium related answers received over 21,000 views.
Join my email list to stay in touch. | https://medium.com/menlo-office/i-have-got-over-1k-followers-on-medium-just-because-of-making-videos-on-youtube-42cefe6a114e | ['Aamir Kamal'] | 2020-07-09 04:20:46.357000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Médium', 'Productivity', 'Digital Marketing', 'Writing'] |
Blockchain is All About Security | Blochchain is an extremely popular, efficient and promising modern technology. The industry of cryptocurrencies has gained such popularity not only due to the advantages of the blockchain technology, but also as a result of its market ideology, which fully corresponds to today’s public demand for anonymity, freedom and security on the Internet around the world.
There are two major ways to approach cryptocurrency. Proponents of the first way are ideologically convinced that the future lies in using cryptocurrency, and the reason people purchase it if to use cryptocurrency as a means of payment — this is what Steve Wozniak did. In his recent interview, he said that he planned to go on a world trip and pay only with bitcoins on the way. He was disappointed, however, when it the reality proved to be incapable of fulfilling his goal of paying only in crypto anywhere he went. Meanwhile, the annual volume of transactions with cryptocurrency grows, along with the general capitalization of cryptocurrencies, which means such trips might become possible in the future.
Others have a more pragmatic approach and view cryptocurrencies as an opportunity for highly profitable investments. Today, not only medium-sized investors and amateurs invest in crypto and ICO-projects, but also big companies and hedge funds with large capital.
Regardless of your goals, executing all possible operations with cryptocurrency and storing them requires good judgement and caution. The expansion of cryptocurrency into our lives is happening under the flag of decentralization, which offers many solutions for a variety of tasks: wallets, stock exchanges, crypto exchanges, etc.
Let’s try to learn more about all this diversity and to understand what services to use and how to get the most of cryptocurrency, including freedom and anonymity — its undeniable advantages; and to learn how to keep your assets safe.
You are in Control of your Safety
Benjamin Franklin drew an inextricable link between safety and freedom. In one of his official letters to Governor Thomas Wharton in 1755, he said: “ Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Some people may find this expression somewhat rude, but it reflects young generations’ moral grounds very accurately — people crave freedom, which is closely connected to their safety.
This interconnectedness is especially evident from the popularity of cryptocurrency — after abandoning fiat money, cryptocurrency users voluntarily give up on certain security provided by banks and governments. If you use cryptocurrency, your safety becomes your own responsibility, for the industry lies mostly in the gray zone, which is not regulated by the government. In this situation, crypto-exchange services are rarely ready to accept obligations to protect your account and cover all associated risks.
Types of Threats and How to Protect against them
Cryptocurrencies and ICO projects are at the height of popularity today. This popularity attracts large financial flows to the market from both investment funds and large companies, as well as from private investors and ordinary users who see digital currencies as a substitute for traditional money.
Here we can observe a manifestation of a well-known rule that says, where big money is, there are always a great deal of scammers. Threats can be divided into two types according to the level of risk: in one case you can reduce this level, in the other you cannot influence it at all.
Let’s start with those aspects of security that you can control directly. The thing of crucial importance is a wallet in which you will store your cryptocurrency. There are so called “hot” and “cold” wallets. The advantage of hot wallets over cold alternatives is the possibility to process instant transactions. Hot wallets include mobile apps, online services and some desktop solutions.
Online wallets and mobile apps seem to be the most popular within this category. Statistics indicate that mobile apps are more prone to hacking compared to trustworthy web wallets. Moreover, providing that users follow the safety instructions that are always detailed on such resources, web wallets can secure the highest level of protection.
Cold wallets are of limited access. The best example is hardware wallets that can be compared to a memory card storing your money. Since these devices do not have continuous access to the Internet, they are more secured in terms of hacking. That’s why this option seems to be much safer.
Now let’s turn to those aspects with levels of risk you cannot control. First and foremost, cryptocurrency exchanges. Exchange can be hacked and all the clients’ funds can be stolen. In this case you, being an ordinary user, cannot do anything.
However, that does not mean that you should not make a thorough research before choosing an exchange. The primary criteria for choosing an exchange are for how long the exchange has been operating, its trading volume and its credibility. But yet it is not enough. Since operation of an exchange is not free from the influence of human factor, in theory, any exchange can be hacked. The recent example is the plunder of more than $500 million worth of NEM cryptocurrency from the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck.
The way the exchange tackles such problems is also an essential factor. Coincheck is working on reimbursing fully the funds of affected customers. Another major platform Bitfinex has also refunded clients their money after attack. Thus, although the vulnerability of these platforms is quite obvious, their readiness to take risks on behalf of their clients means a lot.
How to Secure Investments
Other risks are stemming from investing in ICO projects. In 2017, of all the teams that held fundraising campaigns via token sale, only a few were ultimately able to develop a working and popular product from scratch.
Nowadays, there are less and less ICO projects that can raise millions of dollars in just a few minutes due to increasing competition. These projects have to spend a lot of money on marketing, and you can benefit from it. You do not have to be a blockchain expert or a financial analyst to be able to screen out many fraudulent ICOs. For this purpose, it is enough to study their White Paper, evaluate their experience and the team’s credibility and simply assess the possible demand of the product.
Besides the general advice about the careful examination of all the information in the net about the project you want to invest in, there is one more recommendation. It is using authoritative independent opinions. A group of rating agencies was formed, which conduct due diligence of the projects and sum up their audit.
Such services, which examine upcoming and ongoing ICOs and rate the projects, appear in the cryptocurrency industry. Of course, a five-star rating is not a guarantee of the investment growth and it does not eliminate the risk of losing all the investments. But your task is not to eliminate these risks but to minimize them, because there are no investments without risk.
Safe Tools and Tips
But enough theory, let’s move on to practice. Below we will refer to useful and safe services and tools, which could be used by every crypto investor, and also give some useful tips.
Speaking of well-established services it is worth mentioning MyEtherWallet, the safety record of which is practically perfect, if you try searching the web. It is an e-wallet, which is perfect not only for storing Ethereum but also for any tokens compatible with the ERC-20 standard. Most ICO issue tokens of this standard. That is why this wallet is convenient for everyone who wants to invest in different projects during token sale.
As we have said earlier, the safest way to store a cryptocurrency is using a cold hardware wallet. The Ledger company is the leader in this sphere. It is worth mentioning that recently the company has issued a press release in which they mentioned vulnerability they discovered. This vulnerability is related to generating an address while making transactions. Hackers could use this vulnerability to replace the address of the recipient to their own address. It is pretty easy to save yourself from such a situation. You need to check your address every time before transfer confirmation. Even despite this and complaints some users have about the display and technical parameters, these e-wallets stay the safest of all the wallets available.
If you are a frequent user of the same Internet service, try not to enter the website address manually. Add it to bookmarks and carefully check the website domain in the address bar before entering your password. Scammers often create absolute copies of popular resources aiming at stealing passwords of careless users.
Remember that simplicity and comfort in use are often inversely proportional to the safety level when picking a wallet or any other cryptocurrency service.
Without any doubt, there are always risks when it comes to cryptocurrency investments but we, the members of the Universa team, want you to learn to manage these risks and be able to safe protect yourself from any threats possible. | https://medium.com/universablockchain/blockchain-is-all-about-security-8128a6e16afe | [] | 2018-03-22 16:39:37.242000+00:00 | ['Universa Education', 'Bitcoin', 'Universa', 'Blockchain'] |
Working with Spreadsheets in Flutter: Part 2 | Shall we begin
As we did in the previous session, I believe we have added excel package and Imported it to our main.dart file
loading an existing document from storage
To load an existing file from storage we need the help of file_picker plugin
file_picker: ^2.1.6
You might need to stop and rerun your application so you don’t get methodChannel Exception.
declare a field called selectedExcel;
2. Paste the following code into your app dont worry about the getList() we will create it in a minute you can comment it out for now
here we pick an excel document and assign in to the variable “selectedExcel” that we create earlier
3. Create a FlatButton in your app and make onPressed call the pickFile() method
FlatButton( color: Colors.blue, onPressed: pickFile, child: Text( "Pick from storage", style: TextStyle(color: Colors.white), ))
4. Prepare an excel document. for this tutorial this is the document I’ll be using
It contains First name, Last name and profession. you can format your excel document how ever you please.
5. click on the flat button you created earlier, grant permission and select your desired excel file.
6. If you have no errors then you have successfully picked your excel file from storage.
Reading data from an excel file
This is where we create the getList() method we talked about earlier.
Remember in our last session we said excel files can have many sheets and by default the first sheet is called “Sheet1”.
Here we loop through the first sheet inside the excel that we selected and print out its values to console.
If you did everything right then your console should display your data like this
Congratulations you have successfully read data from your excel file. As you can see each row is a List.
Passing the rows into a List
All we have to do now is to create a list of rows, don’t forget that each row is also a list
Create a List variable called “tbleRows” Uncomment the “tbleRows.add(row)” inside the getList() method
If you followed through with the above steps you should have a list containing all the rows on your selectedExcel file
Creating a card to display the data from your list
Column( children: [ Expanded( child: ListView.builder( padding: EdgeInsets.all(0), physics: BouncingScrollPhysics(), itemCount: tbleRows.length, itemBuilder: (BuildContext context, int index) { return ListTile( title:
Text("${tbleRows[index][0]} ${tbleRows[index][1]}"), subtitle: Text(tbleRows[index][2]), ); }), ), ], )
Incase you are confused about “tbleRows[index][0]”: tbleRows is a List of List; where each nested list (Inner List) is a row in the excel file;
I hope I haven't lost you?
And there you go, we have successfully fetch and displayed the content of our Excel file. | https://medium.com/@alphacode/working-with-spreadsheets-in-flutter-part-2-a000fb3c49ef | [] | 2021-02-14 18:43:42.846000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Flutter', 'Excel', 'Storage', '30daysofflutter'] |
A woman in red stole my heart | Le rouge me bouge, ma plus belle fleure “Paulina”
I am sure you will wonder and be curious to know about this mysterious woman whom I love, respect and admire. She is very intelligent female, she has a wonderful personality, she has a beautiful smile and she heals every deep wound a person can have. As she did with me, she is now like my sister from another mother. She speaks more than two languages and she knows how to use them to play with words and put magic to every single expression she uses.
Why Red?
Generally, women like the color red and red is a sign of love. I do agree! But in her case, the color changes to life and beauty signs. She made from this color her own fashion and style of living. She is always wearing red, her nail polish is red and her favorite lipstick is also red. She made from this color her identity and no one can compete with her.
Her name is Paulina Yummy, life has gathered us in a beautiful way. we have met in a language center. I thank my dear Allah till now for giving me the chance to meet such a beautiful soul. I have learnt a lot from her; how to be strong, how to be more independent and how to see life in a positive and colorful way. Maybe she sees life in red which means “happiness for her”. For me I agree and I choose the color “Blue” to symbolize “Innocence and Purity” in my life (as you know, water is my life so I’ve chosen Blue ;) )
So, let us see life in colors and make it True as the song “True Colors” from Trolls ( My Fav animation movie).
A lesson:
Don’t you ever hesitate and keep meeting new people. Don’t you ever decide in a sudden to close the door and be alone, don’t you ever forget the good things people offered you one day, don’t you ever forget to message or call an old friend in the excuse of being “BUSY”. Be aware and remember the ones that were beside you when no one was there, keep smiling and let life brings you happiness in different colors. We cannot deny that it is hard to find such a friendship and we have to be thankful for it once we have it, but this does not mean that we will stop caring or sharing love and tender with others. Remember, people need us and we need people so we can continue our path to the future. Forget what happened in the before and start a new page, a whole white page and color it with your honest feelings so you can spread your wings and fly freely without obstacles.
My lovely quote for today:
“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh | https://medium.com/@saboumaima/a-woman-in-red-stole-my-heart-dc1bd57aa7ca | ['Oumaima Oya'] | 2020-12-24 20:00:26.434000+00:00 | ['Colors', 'Love', 'Friendship', 'Writing', 'English'] |
The Sinking of the SS Clara Nevada | The Sinking of the SS Clara Nevada
Was the wreck of the Clara Nevada a terrible accident or the greatest mass-murder in Alaska history?
SS Clara Nevada
Superstitions swirl around boats, and some captains believe bizarre myths. Renaming a vessel remains foremost among the maritime harbingers of bad luck, and if you dare change the name of your boat, you must follow a strict protocol to avoid certain doom. The Clara Nevada did not even complete her maiden voyage under her new name. Is this boat the case study to prove the truth of the old mariner’s superstition, or did her captain plot her demise?
On February 5, 1898, the SS Clara Nevada departed Skagway, Alaska, headed for Juneau and then Seattle. Hurricane-force winds of 90 knots (100 mph 161 km/h) pummeled the vessel with following seas of twelve to fifteen feet (4–5 m) as the helmsman attempted to navigate the infamous Lynn Canal of Alaska’s Inside Passage. When the decrepit old ship reportedly struck a rock and sank, the news surprised no one. Searchers found the body of only one man, the ship’s purser, but news reports speculated no one survived such a horrific accident.
The loss of the Clara Nevada at first seemed a tragic but foreseeable accident, and no one doubted the negligence of the ship’s owners and captain. Before long, though, folks began asking questions, and the Seattle newspapers speculated wildly about the disaster. Crewmen believed to have died in the wreck turned up alive and well. Even the captain materialized and wasted little time beginning his next venture to ferry prospectors to the goldfields.
What happened on February 5, 1898, aboard the Clara Nevada? Was the wreck an accident, or did the captain and a few crewmen perpetrate the worst mass-murder in the history of Alaska?
The Klondike Gold Rush
Chilkoot Trail
In 1886, three prospectors struck gold in a stream near the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers in the Yukon Territory. A year later, the gold rush hit full stride as men and women headed north to claim their fortunes. The streets of Seattle teemed with hopeful prospectors seeking passage north on any available vessel. Few worried about a ship’s seaworthiness since their only concern was to get to the goldfields as fast as possible.
Various routes existed for reaching the Klondike goldfields, but the most popular one involved an ocean voyage from Seattle to the twin boomtowns of Dyea and Skagway, Alaska. From Skagway, prospectors either climbed the steep Chilkoot Pass ice stairway or followed the longer, easier trail through White Pass. Once the stampeders crested the passes, they stepped into Canada. The Klondike gold rush occurred in Canada, not Alaska, but the fastest routes to the gold required challenging treks through Alaska into Canada.
Port of Seattle
Not enough boats were available in Seattle to handle the crowds of people demanding passage to Skagway. Businessmen eager to make a buck obtained marginal vessels, those not seaworthy enough to handle winter storms in the North Pacific or ships already retired and headed to the scrap yards, and they forced these derelict boats into service. Many of these ships should never have been allowed to haul passengers, and Steamboat Inspection Service officials seemed not to notice when owners overloaded their vessels with passengers, animals, and freight.
Experienced captains and crewmen became a sought-after commodity on the docks of Seattle, and boat owners stooped to hiring anyone willing to take a job on an unseaworthy vessel. Under-trained crewmen on overloaded boats made the voyage from Seattle to Skagway a dangerous journey. No ship better represents this situation than the Clara Nevada.
The Clara Nevada
The Clara Nevada, christened the Hassler in 1872, sailed under the command of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Service with the mission to chart the waters along the Alaska coast. The vessel, a three-masted, iron-hulled steamship, spanned 151 ft. (46 m) in length and had a beam of 24 ft. 6 in. (7.47 m). When the Hassler’s iron hull began to disintegrate after 25 years of service, the Geodetic Service decommissioned the vessel in May 1895. Two years later, the McGuire brothers bought the Hassler for $15,700 and quickly renamed the ship the Clara Nevada.
The greedy McGuire brothers of the Pacific and Alaska Transportation Company suffered poor reputations, and they spent little money refitting the ship or equipping it with adequate lifeboats and safety equipment. The brothers hired low-wage seamen who were reportedly drunk and obnoxious for most of the maiden voyage of the Clara Nevada. The McGuire brothers, like many other Seattle boat owners of the day, did not object to overloading their vessel with animals, freight, and passengers. Those who travelled on the Clara Nevada from Seattle to Skagway in January 1898 reported a harrowing voyage.
The Voyage from Seattle to Skagway
Captain Charles H. Lewis
The Clara Nevada, under the command of Captain Charles H. Lewis, departed the pier in Seattle and immediately collided with a federal revenue cutter. The next day, the captain rammed the dock in Port Townsend, Washington, almost certainly instilling his passengers with little confidence in his abilities. The ship’s boilers experienced constant problems on the voyage, and at one point, the Clara Nevada briefly caught on fire.
The Clara Nevada stopped in Juneau overnight to unload freight and stayed a few hours longer than planned so that the crew could work on the boilers. In Juneau, the mystery of the Clara Nevada begins. According to several sources, the vessel carried dynamite, stored deep in its hold bound for the Treadwell mine on Douglas Island near Juneau. The law forbade transporting dynamite with passengers, so researchers believe the crew hid the dynamite beneath the other freight. When the vessel reached Juneau, though, no dynamite was unloaded for the mine. Historians think either the Treadwell mine did not send a representative to accept the dynamite, or perhaps, the captain decided not to unload the explosives due to the presence of a steamship inspector on the dock. Whatever the reason, if there was dynamite on the Clara Nevada when the boat departed Seattle, it remained on board when the ship left Juneau, and no one unloaded dynamite in Skagway. Since the boat planned to return to Juneau on its voyage south, perhaps the captain planned to offload the explosives then.
When the Clara Nevada reached Skagway, the captain again rammed the dock, shattering four pilings. The disgruntled passengers readily disembarked, and many felt lucky to have survived the voyage from Seattle.
The Last Few Hours of the Clara Nevada
We will never know what happened to the Clara Nevada once the vessel departed Skagway, but the ship had little going in its favor. It was well past its prime, and according to those with intimate knowledge of the vessel, the Clara Nevada should have been scrapped instead of carrying passengers across the rough waters of Alaska in the winter. The captain lacked skill at running the vessel as demonstrated by his poor docking abilities, and the unqualified, often inebriated crew could provide little assistance in the case of an emergency. The worst decision Captain Lewis made, though, was to depart Skagway in the middle of a storm producing hurricane-force winds. Even large ships hold-up in such weather, so it remains a mystery why Lewis thought the rickety, old Clara Nevada could handle heavy seas and high winds.
No one knows how many people sailed from Skagway on the Clara Nevada, and the only passenger list presumably went down with the ship. Reports of the number of passengers on board the ill-fated vessel vary between 25 and 150. Alaska historian Steve Levi has extensively researched the sinking of the Clara Nevada, and most consider him the leading expert on the ship. In his book, The Clara Nevada; Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska’s Inside Passage, Levi estimates approximately 57 passengers boarded the Clara Nevada in Skagway, and the ship carried a crew of thirty.
Several sources reported that the Clara Nevada steamed south from Skagway, carrying $165,000 in raw gold (estimated at over $13 million today). The gold belonged to one or more prospectors on the ship, and Levi makes the point it would likely have been in the form of gold dust.
If we believe undocumented but numerous eyewitness reports, then a dilapidated ship with a dubious crew carried a small fortune in gold and a load of dynamite when it steamed out into a violent storm in the frigid North Pacific. This premise would make an excellent opening for a novel, but the plot thickens, and with the help of frequent articles in the two Seattle newspapers, the legend of the disaster of the Clara Nevada grew daily.
On the afternoon of February 6, 1898, the SS Clara Nevada departed Skagway in a roaring storm with hurricane-force winds out of the north. When the ship passed through Berner Bay near Eldred Rock, about 30 miles (48.3 km) south of Skagway, it ran aground on Eldred Rock. A witness eight miles (12.9 km) away claimed he saw an orange fireball erupt, and embers fly into the sky. Reporters afforded this eyewitness account a great deal of weight, but Levi questions how the man could have seen the boat wreck from his position. The man did sound the alarm, though, telling others a ship hit Eldred Rock and exploded. Due to the storm and heavy seas, it was too dangerous to launch a rescue until the following day.
The deputy collector of the United States Customs in Alaska, Inspector T.A. Marquam, chartered the steamship Rustler to investigate the reported accident. On the shore near Eldred Rock, he found clothing, photographs, furniture, and lumber. He also discovered life preservers and a hatch cover printed with “Hassler,” the original name of the Clara Nevada. When Marquam reached Eldred Rock, he saw the distinct outline of a vessel 24 ft. (7.3 m) below the surface of the water. A diver inspected the ship and noted a black hole in the hull in the location of the boiler room.
The Investigation of the Wreck
Seattle reporters speculated one of the boilers exploded when the Clara Nevada hit Eldred Rock, blowing a hole in the bottom of the hull. This conclusion made sense because the boilers repeatedly malfunctioned on the trip from Seattle to Skagway. When the diver reported the hole had a black edge, though, people wondered why an exploding boiler would cause a blackened hole. Black marks more likely indicated fire. When reports leaked about the illegal dynamite aboard, a new theory emerged. Perhaps one or more lanterns aboard the ship overturned and started a fire on the Clara Nevada. If the blaze reached the dynamite, an ignition of explosives would not only explain the blackened hole but also would mesh with the eyewitness account of a fireball sending sparks into the air.
After an investigation, the Steamboat Inspection Service determined unsecured lanterns overturned in the pitching, rolling seas, catching the ship on fire. While the captain and officers battled the blaze in a frantic attempt to keep it from reaching the dynamite, they lost track of the vessel’s bearings, and the storm pushed the Clara Nevada broadside onto the reef at Eldred Rock, where the ship split open and sank. The Inspection Service investigators deduced the fire must have started before the boat hit the rock because divers found fire hose on the ship’s deck, and the hose was attached to the hydrants and coupled to the pumps.
Questions
While researching the wreck of the Clara Nevada, Historian Steve Levi uncovered numerous inconsistencies in the records. Authorities presumed everyone on the ship died, but a few of the crew apparently escaped the disaster because their names appear in the 1900 census. Foremost among the survivors was Captain C.H. Lewis, who went on to captain another vessel. How did these men survive the sinking of the Clara Nevada?
Levi also questioned what happened to the $165,000 in gold reportedly stowed on the Clara Nevada when the boat went down. The vessel sank in shallow water, and numerous divers have explored the wreckage, but no one has ever found the gold. It is possible the rumor of gold on the boat was false, but it there was gold on the Clara Nevada, what happened to it?
Only months after the loss of the Clara Nevada, Captain C. H. Lewis bought the river boat, William H. Evans, and headed to the Yukon River where he planned to ferry prospectors and gear to Dawson City. Unfortunately, his captaining skills had not improved, and he ran aground on a sandbar in the Yukon. He stayed on the boat for over a year but finally abandoned ship when it became apparent the Evans would break apart before the Yukon flooded enough to allow the vessel to float.
A Theory of Robbery and Murder
Levi does not believe the tragedy of the Clara Nevada occurred by accident. Instead, he thinks the sinking of the vessel represents the largest mass murder in the history of Alaska. Levi admits he has only circumstantial evidence to support his theory, but he backs it up with compelling source material.
Levi postulates thieves deliberately sank the vessel to cover up the robbery of $165,000 in gold dust. He suggests the thieves lit a small charge of dynamite in the boiler room, and they also set several fires on the boat, hoping the fires would distract the passengers and crew until the dynamite exploded. Levi also believes the plan to steal the gold went awry due to the raging storm.
Levi suggests most of the gold dust would have been in the purser’s safe, and only the purser or the captain could have accessed the safe. He believes a small amount of dynamite, perhaps only one stick, caused the explosion and notes even if the supply of dynamite accidentally caught on fire, it would not have exploded without a blasting cap and a fuse attached to each stick. If dynamite caused the hole in the hull of the Clara Nevada, someone must have attached a blasting cap to one or more sticks and lit the fuse.
Levi thinks Captain Lewis and three other crew members decided to rob the Clara Nevada. They opened the safe, removed the gold to a lifeboat, lit the fuse for the dynamite, and then just before they lowered the lifeboat into the water, they set several fires onboard the vessel. In the confusion, they believed no one would miss them. Levi gives the thieves the benefit of the doubt and assumes they hoped the passengers and crew would abandon ship before the Clara Nevada sank. According to Levi’s theory, the thieves believed once the vessel disappeared beneath the surface, everyone would think the gold sank with the vessel.
While this daring robbery might have been straightforward on a calm night in warm seas, the robbers must have fought to move 900 lbs. (408 kg) of gold into a lifeboat on decks coated with ice, while waves crashed over the railings, and the boat pitched in raging seas. Then, they had to lower the lifeboat and get away from the Clara Nevada before the dynamite blasted a hole in the hull.
Levi does not think the thieves made it to shore with the gold. He states the men were in an old lifeboat with 900 lbs. (408 kg) of gold in heavy seas, and the weight of the gold probably splintered the boat. Levi carefully followed the exploits of Captain Lewis after the sinking of the ship and found no evidence suggesting the captain suddenly came into a small fortune of gold, so he believes the men lost the gold before they reached shore. Since Levi found proof the robbers survived the sinking of the Clara Nevada, though, he suggests the lifeboat went down close enough to shore to allow the men to swim the remaining distance.
In his book, Levi describes how he thinks the gold dust was packaged and even points out where he believes it came to rest when the thieves abandoned their lifeboat to swim to shore. If some lucky diver finds the gold in the area where Levi suggests it landed, the location will lead credence to Levi’s theory. For now, though, the wreck of the Clara Nevada remains a mystery. Was it an accident, or was it mass murder?
A Ghost Ship
Eldred Rock Light House
After the loss of the Clara Nevada, Congress ordered the construction of a lighthouse on Eldred Rock and activated it in 1906. During the construction of the lighthouse, workers claimed they saw a ghost ship at dusk far out in the canal. On the evening of March 12, 1908, another violent storm roared down Lynn Canal. When the assistant lighthouse keeper, John Currie, walked outside the following morning, he was shocked to see a ship stranded on the north end of the island. The storm had washed The Clara Nevada up onto Eldred Rock where it remained for a few hours before again sinking beneath the waves.
We will probably never know what happened to the Clara Nevada, but this horrible tale reminds us of an era of greed when the lure of gold caused humans to do terrible things and take unimaginable risks they otherwise never would have considered.
Sources
The Clara Nevada; Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska’s Inside Passage. Levi, Steven C. 2011. History Press. This book was my main source for this article. It covers the sinking of the Clara Nevada and the exploits of Captain C.H. Lewis in much more detail than I’ve included here. The author also describes the challenges involved in trying to research a maritime disaster in Alaska in the late 1800s. I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn more about the Clara Nevada or get a feel for the atmosphere in both Seattle and Skagway during the Klondike gold rush.
Gold on the Clara Nevada: Cold Case Gets Hot. National Underwater and Marine Agency. Available at: https://numa.net/2014/05/gold-on-the-clara-nevada-cold-case-gets-hot/
Eldred Rock Lighthouse, Alaska. Lighthousefriends.com. Available at: https://lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=828
Clara Nevada. Hougen Group. Available at: www.hougengroup.com/yukon-history/yukon-nuggets/clara-nevada/
The Clara Nevada’s sinking may always remain a mystery. 08–26–2012.James, David. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Available at: www.newsminer.com/the-clara-nevada-s-sinking-may-always-remain-a-mystery/article_b217c23-97Of-58cd-972d-411d91575508.html
The 2007 Hassler Expedition; The Hassler’s last days and the wreck of the Clara Nevada. National Marine Sanctuaries. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Available at: https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/maritime/expeditions/hassler/last_days.html
SS Clara Nevada.Shipwrecks in Pacific Waters: 1800s. Maritime Heritage. Available at: https://www.maritimeheritage.org/ships/SS-Clara-Nevada.html
Clara Nevada. Skagway Stories. Available at: www.skagwaystories.org/2011/02/04/clara-nevada/
Haunted Inside Passage: Ghosts, Legends, and Mysteries of Southeast Alaska. Dihle, Bjorn. 2017. Alaska Northwest Books. | https://robinbarefield76.medium.com/the-sinking-of-the-ss-clara-nevada-ff2700d92c69 | ['Robin Barefield'] | 2020-05-09 19:37:59.860000+00:00 | ['True Crime', 'Crime', 'Alaska', 'History', 'Murder'] |
How to Generate Truly Random Numbers in Solidity and Blockchain | Approach 1: Use the Current Blockhash
Since the blockchain is constantly growing, and the ID of each block hash constantly changing, we can just use that block has to get a random number, right? We can code this in solidity with this function:
function random() private view returns(uint){
return uint(keccak256(abi.encodePacked(block.difficulty, now, players)));
}
Note: This is actually using the block difficulty, which is similar in randomness.
Great! It would be too hard for someone to use the block hash to do anything malicious, right?
Wrong
A miner has the choice to publish a block or not. If they mine a block that they don’t like they can throw it out! If a group of miners do this, your numbers aren’t random anymore! This is feasibly quite easy for miners to do, and is rational for them to do too. Let’s say a miner signs up for a decentralized lottery for 10,000 ETH, and the winning ticket depends on the blockhash. They will just keep mining blocks and not publishing till they get the block they want! And they are incentivized to do this, since they will only be forgoing maybe 2–3 ETH, whereas if they win, the upside is massive.
A random number system needs to be so strong such that even if an attacker knows exactly how you’re creating the random numbers, it’s strong enough to still be unpredictable. By using the blockhash option, if someone is fast enough to see the hash, they can proceed to maliciously use this knowledge to “beat” whatever you’re using the random numbers for. Without true RNG, your lottery can always be hacked and stolen from.
Are you using this approach in a lottery application? Great, now they can use the hash to figure out the winning numbers every time. Meaning your lottery app is a “great-rich-quick” scheme for some random Kyle.
Potentially this random Kyle, although this one is a nice guy. Also not named Kyle. Photo by Hunter Johnson on Unsplash
Not only is someone who is faster at guessing the block hash going to be an issue, but we also have to put our faith in the miner who hashes the answer. We have to put faith that they will not use that knowledge to destroy our random application. Blockchain is designed to be as trustless as possible. So we have two major issues with using pseudo-random numbers. | https://betterprogramming.pub/how-to-generate-truly-random-numbers-in-solidity-and-blockchain-9ced6472dbdf | ['Patrick Collins'] | 2020-11-24 17:34:50.727000+00:00 | ['Solidity', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Programming', 'Blockchain'] |
TensorFlow Save & Restore Model | Keras API provides built-in classes to save models regularly during model fitting. To save a model and restore it later, we can create a callback ModelCheckPoint passed to model.fit, and the model will be saved regularly.
In the example above, models are saved epoch. In the configuration below, save_best_only is True. Therefore, the model is saved only when validation loss is the lowest so far.
In the configuration above, a new checkpoint overwrites the old one because it uses the same checkpoint name. Here is another example where the checkpoint file includes the epoch number so it will not be overwritten.
Here are what saved under training_2 directory. The configuration above saves the model every 5 epochs.
Save the whole model v.s. weights only
There are two options to save a model — weights only or include the training states as well as the model architecture also. If save_weights_only flag is True in creating ModelCheckpoint, the model will be saved as model.save_weights(filepath). This saves the model weights only. If it is False, the full model is saved in the SavedModel format.
By default, a model will be saved every epoch. But it can be overridden with save_freq in ModelCheckpoint.
save_freq= int(NUM_OF_EPOCHS * STEPS_PER_EPOCH)
model.save_weights
If the model is saved with weights only, we need to instantiate a new model first before restoring the weights. Likely, we call the original Python code (create_model in our example) to create a model instance. Then we load the weights of the model with model.load_weights. The latest checkpoint can be located by tf.train.latest_checkpoint.
Without the ModelCheckpoint callback, we can call model.save_weights to save the model weights manually.
model.save
To save the complete model, we use model.save(filepath) to save it as a SavedModel. As later explained, it contains the state of the optimizer and the dataset iterator such that the whole training can be resumed from the last saved point. Since the model architecture and configuration are also saved, the model can be restored directly without creating a model instance.
When a model is saved, all the model’s tf.Variable are saved and all @tf.function annotated methods are also saved as a graph. Below is a model saved as dnn_model.
We don’t need the original Python code anymore. TF executes the graph directly. In fact, this reduces possible mistakes during production deployment. Below is what the directory my_model contains now:
But that requires all methods needed by any custom layers to be covered by @tf.function annotation.
CheckpointManager
We can also use the CheckpointManager to save models if we want to use the lower level Keras API. The code below is the boilerplate code for creating a toy dataset and a model. It also contains codes for the training step.
To save a checkpoint, we create a CheckpointManager with a Checkpoint. This Checkpoint contains the model, the optimizer, training state (step), and the dataset iterator. So before the training starts, we can restore the checkpoint with the latest stored checkpoint. This loads the model weights and restores the state of the optimizer, the dataset iterator, and the training steps. In short, we resume the training state when the model is last saved — not just the model weights.
Restore a training session
Finally, we will look a little bit deeper into what is saved in SavedModel and how a training session is restored. The checkpoint in the previous section does not save the model parameters only. It also contains the state of the optimizer (learning rate, decay) and any parameters related to the trainable parameters, for example, the momentum (m). It also contains the state of the training including the training step and the save counter appended to the name of the checkpoint file. Hence, when the checkpoint is restored, it also restores the state of the optimizer and the checkpoint’s states. It also checkpoints the progress of the dataset iterator. Therefore, the iterator can be resumed from where it stops instead of starting from the beginning.
checkpoint.restore restores variable values for any matching path from a checkpoint object, i.e. we can just load a subsection of the checkpoint. For example, we can recreate part of the model only, and in the example below, we just load the bias weights from the self.l1 dense layer checkpoint.
Copy Weights
The code below copy weights from one layer to another.
In the code below, even though functional_model_with_dropout contains an extra dropout layer compared to functional_model, the dropout layer does not contain any weight. So we can still copy weights from functional_model to functional_model_with_dropout using model.set_weights.
Credits & References
The code in this article is mostly originated from TensorFlow Guide. | https://jonathan-hui.medium.com/tensorflow-save-restore-model-75a1e6d3b9a6 | ['Jonathan Hui'] | 2020-12-26 00:53:54.153000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Programming', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'TensorFlow', 'Data Science'] |
What you learn from losing | So how do you lose your mother? By believing that nothing truly dies.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
There’s a small hill in our backyard that runs parallel to the row of houses — each stacked neatly next to each other. If you’re in the kitchen, you can see its spine, slowly rising above the commercial parking lot and emptied out medical supply buildings.
That hill, is the only place where the trees clear, and it is between this hill and trees, that I come to think about my mother.
I didn’t lose her when she died. I started losing her in this kitchen, and my loss will turn three years old on this mother’s day. This will be the third anniversary of her diagnosis of Stage IV Lung Cancer. I came back home, after my first year of study at an intensive conservatory for music, to surprise my mom on mother’s day. My mom had worked every other Mother’s Day at the ICU, along with thanksgiving and Christmas. She always worked with an urgency, and proudly told me, “My hobbies include making money- what can I say; I love making money. I want you to live a better life where you don’t have to work so hard”.
This year would be different, when I got a call from my mom during exam week to tell me that she finally felt like she had worked too hard. No more back to back twelve hour shifts at the ICU and then immediately to home care — she was retiring. This news came on her 60th birthday; three weeks before Mother’s Day. her survival mentality, wanted to also maybe get some free food and have her much coveted pork chops and lo mein, which she never failed to deliver, but she gave me a surprise of her own.
In that moment, everything became unclear, as to how much time we had left together. I didn’t know if I should go back to school. If she would see me graduate, one year later. If we would have one more christmas together. Our timeline, seemingly expanding and endless, ended. In that kitchen.
We sat, holding hands, with her friend and oncologist, who I was barely able to look in the eyes. One hand holding onto my mom, the other furiously trying to jot down every single medical term: metastasised, small nodule, chemotherapy, radiation, oncology, survival rate — none of this made sense, so I tried to make sense of it by collecting these words. If I collected enough, they would give themselves away as clues that could be solved. We could survive this together if we knew enough, did enough research, were strong enough, loved fiercely and held on to each other for every moment that was possible. So we made these moments, we really made them, count.
Back in NYC, I started grasping for every moment I could to make my mom proud of me. I said yes to every project that I had even the slightest interest in, because it was an opportunity for me to explore so many of the sides of myself as a musician that were unfamiliar and this was so exciting. I was hesitant to call my mom, which was everyday, to tell her anything other than good news. I wanted things to be good for me, so that they would be good for her.
Next to the small hill, past the commercial parking lot and medical supplies and through a small clearing past a thin layer of branches, there is a small creek. It is here, that I peel away at grief.
It’s almost impossible to imagine that the neighbours are playing basketball six blocks away. Out here, there is nothing but the rushing and ebbing of the creek, almost like a pulse, thickening into streams before it flows into something bigger: an ecosystem.
***
At your feet, there are hundreds of speckled rocks — a constellation of rough liquifying stars. You once read that when Cheryl Strayed lost her mom to cancer, she found, in the far reaches of her mother’s closet, a glass jar of stones. That jar was special — Cheryl, her brother, and sister, gave every one to their mother,
“pressing into her hands, as our mother’s palms are the receptacle for every last thing [we thought] worth saving”.
These tiny beautiful things. Everywhere, but sometimes hidden in the far reaches of ourselves.
I picked up a stone, no larger than two fingers- and yet even in this meaningless rock with no history and stories and no more memories and no mom — I felt her presence in the brightness of her love — to know that the things that are unbreakable, this love, has no timeline. I whispered,
“Goodbye,
妈妈”
and tossed it into the creek, hearing a “PLONK” before it sank. With it, a ripple bloomed, making the weeds tremble, some swaying and a little more lopsided. I watched the ripple carry itself, until it reached beyond a point of recognition: a flicker.
***
So how do you lose your mother? By believing that nothing ever truly dies. If our loved ones must leave us, we must continue to learn from them by continuing to live with more kindness and intention. You lose her by being ready to let her go, to let anything and anyone go at any moment. You learn to lose by accepting that they were never yours in the first place, but that you were so, so, lucky, to have shared a point of time with them. You learn to lose and your life is on the upswing and you learn to love someone new and you feel the nectars of sweet chance at feeling whole again, and then you forget one day, and some other days, and a month passes and you’re still trying to forget that you lost her. And then you get back up, just like your mother taught you. There is no other way but to love even more deeply, to let your loss run wild and let it rip you into anguish and let it heal you.
When I lost my mother, I had lost part of myself that will never be the same. But she taught me to keep my heart as open as my ambition, and to always return from every setback, just a little bit stronger and braver than before.
She keeps teaching me. | https://medium.com/@thewanderingpianist/what-you-learn-from-losing-72d7ebb76bd | ['Lucy Yao'] | 2020-05-15 21:40:20.716000+00:00 | ['Moms', 'Grief And Loss', 'Grief', 'Love'] |
Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Startups in the World 2020 | Photo by Robynne Hu on Unsplash
There are a lot of big things happening in small AI companies. Ranking them is hard when their areas of focus are so varied, so here is an alphabetized list of the most interesting, promising and high-impact AI startups in the world, as of 2020.
The list
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a document reader that uses AI that can read any document (from invoices to insurance claims and financial statements), whether printed or hand written, to extract key information, removing and automating time consuming and repetitive work. With Cinnamon, you might never have to skim a boring document again.
Diffblue
Diffblue is a company that uses AI to generate unit tests for Java software to solve the pervasive problems of under-tested code, testing bottlenecks and broken CI pipelines. This company received the largest Series A funding for AI in Europe in 2017, and was started by a computer science professor at the University of Oxford. Goldman Sachs and AWS use them, so they’ve got some big endorsements.
People.ai
People.ai is a tool for helping customer-facing teams meet sales targets with better metrics so they can more reliably predict. It does this by automatically capturing and syncing sales activity in a CRM, like an unobtrusive robotic personal assistant.
Terramonitor
Terramonitor is a platform that maps the globe using over 100 million images from otherwise unused satellite and remote sensing data, analyzed by AI. It’s basically the constantly-up-to-date Google Earth of the future, so GIS people should check it out.
DarkTrace
DarkTrace is one of the better-known security startups using AI. It protects companies against cyber-threats using autonomous responses similar to an organism’s immune system to keep operations running as expected. Their origin story is impressive: “Founded in 2013 by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge and government cyber intelligence experts in the US and the UK, Darktrace is recognized today as the world’s leading AI company for cyber security.”
Dataminr
Dataminr uses huge amounts of public data to predict emerging risk and high-impact events in real-time, such as natural disasters and extremist attacks. They’ve been valued at $1.6 billion — not a small amount.
Numerai
Numerai is more of a game than a business. It’s a downloadable database and tool that you can use to make a model to control their investments in a tournament. If you rank on the leaderboard, you win actual money (well, cryptocurrency). What’s their long term vision? “To manage all the money in the world with a decentralized network of autonomous AI agents,” so that’s interesting. | https://medium.com/nextai/top-artificial-intelligence-ai-startups-in-the-world-2020-6db3564b16ac | ['David Green'] | 2020-03-03 19:09:35.152000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Startup', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Tech'] |
Writer Of The Week: Robyn Powell | ‘Writing means empowerment.’
Though people often view objective reported journalism as the pinnacle of respectable media work, I’d argue that the personal essay can be, in its own way, just as integral to creating change in society. As a medium explicitly devoted to bridging the ever-widening empathy gap, essay-writing can push people to consider brand-new perspectives or reconsider existing ones, shifting entire ideologies while helping to engender equality. And it is actually subjectivity — the sharing of a definitively personal experience — that most powerfully makes this happen.
Robyn Powell provides a particularly compelling example of these forces in action. Her candid, nuanced essays addressing disability rights through the lens of her own lived experience have no doubt helped countless people question their ideas and biases. At the same time, her writing also deftly weaves in legal context (she’s an attorney) and research-based reporting to provide a multifaceted approach to journalism.
It is through weaving together all these elements—the personal, the contextual, the factual — that Robyn is able to so convincingly argue that, for example, disabled mothers have historically faced grave injustices, or that Trump, Sessions, and Bannon represent an unholy trinity of anti-disability-rights ideology.
When asked what writing means to her, Robyn replied that she finds it empowering. And through her richly layered writing, Robyn empowers us all.
Below, Robyn shares her thoughts on Cyndi Lauper, ice cream, and which Sex and the City character she is.
The TV character I most identify with is Miranda from Sex and the City.
I think “paying writers in exposure” is exploitative and devaluing.
My most listened to song of all time is “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper.
My 18-year-old self would feel surprised but content about where I am today.
I like writing for The Establishment because it is women-run.
If I could only have one type of food for the rest of my life it would be ice cream.
The story I’m working on now is about sexual assault among students with disabilities.
The story I want to write next is about reproductive justice for women with disabilities.
If I could share one of my stories by yelling it into a megaphone in the middle of Times Square, it would be “As A Disabled Person, I Implore You Not To Vote For Donald Trump.” This was written pre-November 2016 — if only more people had heeded this advice.
Writing means this to me: Writing allows me to express myself in ways that my day job does not. Now more than ever, we need the stories of those from marginalized communities front and center, and writing enables me to do this. Writing also provides the opportunity to give exposure to the issues facing people with disabilities — something that is far too often overlooked. In sum, for me, writing means empowerment.
If I could summarize writing in a series of three GIFs, it would be: GIFs are usually inaccessible to people with disabilities. | https://medium.com/the-establishment/writer-of-the-week-robyn-powell-3143225e0940 | ['The Establishment'] | 2017-10-30 15:06:33.844000+00:00 | ['Publishing', 'Disability', 'Arts Creators', 'Writing', 'Writer Of The Week'] |
How to Disinfect Your Home during Pandemic | The pandemic hit China in December 2019, and the world was sent to lockdown at the beginning of March. While everyone expected the horror to end, the power of the virus over the people’s lives continues. As of December 2020, there are more than 70 million cases worldwide with 65% recoveries and 2.3% deaths. Health systems collapse, governments introduce even stricter lockdowns, and businesses continue to suffer from the consequences.
The world has changed, and many say that the change will stay with us for a long time, if not forever. People started washing their hands at all times; masks are now obligatory in public places and even in the streets in most countries. Now all publicly available spaces are cleaned with disinfection solutions, and homes get cleaned much more often this year.
Frequent cleaning and disinfection are now must-do activities that became routine as much as disinfection tunnels in the USA. Let’s take a look at disinfectants and ways to clean a house during the pandemic.
What is disinfectant?
A disinfectant is a substance that kills microorganisms (except for spores) on the surface; it must be regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to be genuine and useful. It is essential that before you select a disinfectant for household, you ensure that it is approved by EPA because this means the product:
underwent proper testing
is a safe disinfection solution for human
does kill microorganisms of a particular nature
Note: Generally, a genuine disinfectant would have the following written on the label: “It is a violation of Federal Law to use this product in any way not indicated on the label.”
How to choose a disinfectant?
All you need to do is select disinfection solutions from the approved List N (approved products are proven to be effective against SARs-CoV-2). Just read the label and select the correct product. Make sure that you also buy protective gloves and glasses to stay safe during the disinfection. Remember that not all cleaning products can help with fighting COVID-19, so it is essential to read the labels.
Here are the tips from the EPA on how to choose them. But before you rush into the store, check your storage; maybe you already have some of them:
Verify the label or use the EPA tool to verify whether your home disinfection solutions are effective
Check for disinfecting wipes (Clorox or Lysol)
Sprays (Clorox, Lysol, or Purell)
Hydrogen peroxide
Diluted bleach solution (1/3 cup/5 Tsp of 5.25–8.25% sodium hypochlorite solution for a gallon of water)
70%+ alcohol solutions
Disinfection vs. cleaning
While it might seem stupid to talk about the difference between these two concepts, unfortunately, many people still miss the point of each process. For example, you have probably seen people in restaurants spraying the table to clean it before you sit at them, right? And this has always been done with a cleaning solution to clean them. Now restaurants do the same — they spray the table with a disinfection solution, wipe it up, and consider that it is disinfected, putting a special sign on it for confirmation. The truth is, they still cleaned the table and not disinfected it, only did it with a more expensive detergent.
Cleaning means the removal of dirt from a surface; this includes grease, dust, dirt, and even fat from human skin. Cleaning is fast — you wipe the surface, and it’s okay. With disinfection, everything is a bit longer. Most disinfection solutions require the surface to stay wet for some time (5–10 minutes) in order to work — kill all the germs. This means that if the disinfector is immediately wiped out from the surface, the trick doesn’t work and harmful microorganisms, including the Coronavirus, remain. So don’t mix up cleaning and disinfection. Carefully read disinfection recommendations on the bottle because the disinfection solution company generallystates how long a disinfectant needs to stay on the surface to guarantee germs-free surface.
Household disinfection guidelines
Disinfection of all household surfaces daily is literally impossible unless you only occupy yourself with cleaning. Of course, ‘the more, the better’ is a good standpoint, but the truth is, you need to approach cleaning in a smart way, so it doesn’t take up your whole day.
How often to disinfect?
After every touch — surfaces close to the entrance or those that are touched first once you come inside the house + phones, keys, etc. brought from the street
Daily — high-traffic surfaces like kitchen counters, toilet seat, sink
Once every other day — floors, couches, and armchairs/chairs
Once a week (at least) — whole house (all its corners, under the furniture, etc.)
What to disinfect and how?
Hard surfaces — with the disinfection solutions mentioned above
Soft surfaces (furniture) — vacuum > clean with regular cleaning solutions, whenever possible > launder the upholstery > use smoke disinfectants
Laundry — wash according to the manufacturer’s recommendations and dry completely
Electronics — those used often (phone/tablet/laptop/watches) should be regularly wiped with disinfectant wipes or with specific disinfection solutions; the rest can be wiped once a day
HVAC — filters must be of the highest quality and changed once a month considering that COVID-19 is a respiratory virus
Keep in mind that if you have a sick person in the house, all surfaces s/he touches must be instantly disinfected (as per the list above). In a perfect case, this person should be isolated in a separate room with a separate bathroom. However, since frequently this is not possible, ensure that you wait before cleaning and disinfecting the shared space as long as possible too minimize the virus’s power on you.
Additional house disinfection solutions
Besides cleaning and then disinfecting your home, there are some additional methods to keep COVID-19 out of your home.
Disinfection tunnels. They might seem extreme for a country house or a one-family house; however, the disinfection tunnel benefits definitely prove their worth for multi-story buildings. If a tunnel is set up in front of the building entrance, it can significantly decrease the infectious agents getting into the building on the clothes of its tenants and visitors. Disinfection foggers. These can be used in homes of all sizes and be a valuable asset if you have to invite people to your house. A fogger disinfects all tough-to-clean surfaces and corners of a household. Their price is acceptable, especially since this is an investment in the family’s health. Automatic hands sanitizer. This might sound odd for a household to have an automated hand sanitizer. Still, since washing hands might not be an option every couple of minutes, an automatic hand sanitizer can save the day, especially at the entrance.
Conclusion
Frequent cleaning and disinfection during the COVID-19 pandemic are already routine. With the disease numbers peaking, home disinfection gets even more important than ever, especially for people with the weaker immune system. Remember to select disinfection solutions approved by the EPA and to work on high-traffic areas as much as possible. Should you have any questions about disinfection solutions, their safeness, or effectiveness, you can always verify all of those doubts with a local Center for Disease Control and Prevention. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/how-to-disinfect-your-home-during-pandemic-63049aaf7c89 | ['Sophie Zoria'] | 2020-12-31 04:25:17.077000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Covid 19 Crisis', 'Covid 19', 'Disinfection Solution'] |
How Gardening Changed My Life in 2020 | How Gardening Changed My Life in 2020
Photo by Conscious Design on Unsplash
I am a city girl. Born and raised in a suburb, always on a metro, bleached hair, fast fashion and grabbing lunch on the go.
I have a faint memory of my childhood self being obsessed with earth, mud and nature, but it all disappeared once I got into school. It never came back.
And then, well, 2020 rolled around.
Stuck on the Azores (thanks Covid!), my boyfriend and I decided to use the little land patch behind our rented apartment to start growing our own food. And it was literally life-changing.
I had no idea what I was getting into
The first thing that happened after we had tackled all the wild weeds standing in our way, sometimes taller than ourselves, and trying to prepare the earth (or should I say “got rid of the massive amount of rocks and garbage that we found instead of soil”?), was that I had to confront an uncomfortable truth:
I had no fucking idea what I was doing.
I was confronted with my own ignorance. So far I knew most vegetables and fruits only from the supermarkets. With a few exceptions, I had never seen the actual plants that produced my food. So of course I was also clueless when it came to actually care for these plants.
My cup was empty. I had to start from zero. Which was the best thing that could happen to me.
Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash
Get your hands dirty
It is very humbling to learn about the very thing that has always kept you alive: Plants. They produce your oxygen, regulate water cycles, transform the ground you walk on and become the food and energy you consume.
It was like getting in touch with a long lost family member. The one that is holding all the secrets to your ancestry and history. The missing puzzle piece of yourself.
But to truly feel the connection and to actually get the outcome you want, you have to get your hands dirty. Literally. Goodbye clean nails, hello ruined clothes.
Building a garden is a lot of work — mentally, physically and also when it comes to time. It is a commitment and as romantic and easy as some tasks may seem, oftentimes it is more exhausting than you think. Especially when you just start out and need to question everything you do.
Photo by Gabriel Gurrola on Unsplash
Failure is a part of the process
As fertile as the soil on this volcanic island is and as much experience as my boyfriend had going into this, we still failed. A lot.
To name just a few examples:
A pest of larvae invaded our brussels sprouts. Not once, not twice, but four times. We could have easily killed them off with pesticides and poison. But one of our most important values was organic gardening, so we collected them by hand and tried every trick in the book. They still came back.
Our melons died suddenly just about one week before the first ones would have been edible and our zucchini plants produced two massive fruits with almost 5kg each and died right after. Birds ate our seeds on a regular basis and the lizards stole about 90% of the strawberries. Our salads grew so well they were all ripe at once and we could only eat a few before they shot up to produce seeds.
And then, after all of this hard work, our landlord decided to put pesticides everywhere.
Yep. This was my face too when I watched the man march past our door and up into the greenery. I ran out, still in my pajamas, trying to tell him with my tiny Portuguese vocabulary that he should not put the poison in our garden, our horta. He shrugged, lit up a cigarette, told me he didn’t understand and continued.
I was powerless. This is not our land. If our landlord decides to hire someone to do this work, it is not my place to tell the guy any differently. He was just doing his job on an island where there is little understanding of the consequences of pesticides and even fewer job opportunities. So, I went back inside and cried.
Photo by John Silliman on Unsplash
A matter of life and death
We were lucky. Or the man did indeed understand what I had told him. He spared our garden and a big patch of grass close by, which had just recently been cut recklessly by another man but was still the home of many insects and bumblebees.
The rest of the place, however, was a desert of dead plants turning brown and grey. Nothing survived.
The small herb and flower garden I had tried to grow in front of the house was covered with sprinkles from the poison. I had to give up on it completely to let it recover.
It smelled like chemicals and death for an entire week.
And there was now a sharp line between the part of the land that was alive and the one that was dead. It was a sad view. And made my passion for organic and sustainable gardening so much stronger.
I was angry. And disappointed. I felt like the nature surrounding me was under my protection and that I should have done more. Should have saved it. Now, it was all gone.
Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash
Dive deep
Why is it that we humans want to tame everything?
We get rid of wild-growing plants and weeds as we consider them “bad”, gardens and fields have to be in perfect order with strict borders, animals are only worth our attention when they are pets or food and even our own human bodies are not safe from this need to control everything (just ask the beauty industry).
While we attended our garden every day, giving love, time and energy to it, seeing the plants grow and eating our first small harvest, a process of unlearning and education started.
We started to watch documentaries, attended online classes and read books and articles about nature, composting, environmentally friendly farming, preserving food for all seasons, alternatives on plastic and indigenous wisdom from around the globe.
The more we learned, the more we realized just how little we knew.
Of course, I had started from zero anyway, but every new information led me to ten other things I wanted to learn more about. I was hooked.
Photo by Nick Sarro on Unsplash
Guardians of the Wilderness
A deep, ancient desire awoke in me. I wanted to be a guardian of nature. I wanted the wilderness to come back — into my life and the space around me.
I wanted to interact with plants and animals every single day, even if it meant just watching them, checking in on them, talking to them or simply reading about the social systems of trees or the importance of fungi.
Nature is not apart from us. It is not “nature and us”. We are nature. We are all one. And we, as a human species, are such a small part of life on earth.
We forget about that inside our office buildings and apartments full of Swedish furniture in our big busy cities that are robbed from the wild and the diversity of life. But it is true.
You don’t believe me?
This is the “Hillis Tree of Life”. Look for the “You are here”. If you find it.
© David M. Hillis, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell, University of Texas
Yep, that’s right. Pretty damn small. And pretty connected, don’t you think?
But don’t worry, we are not getting into science here. This is still a story of how gardening has changed my life. This graphic and all the other cool stuff I am now slowly learning are simply a part of my personal journey.
The Taste of a New Life
Once we started harvesting our first plants, the vegetables from the supermarket tasted and looked … wrong. Fake. Not as alive and diverse as our own food.
There are many theories (from spiritual to scientific) on why this is the case but I think the biggest factor is your interaction with the entire process and also the freshness of your produce. No transport, no chemicals, no plastic. Just food. Just energy. From your own hands.
Despite our failures, we were blessed with cabbage, leek, tomatoes, beans, garlic, strawberries, chilies, eggplants and paprika over the months. While I am writing this, there are carrots and beetroots slowly forming.
Looking at this list, I am so so so proud. I feel accomplished. Nurtured.
Neighbors and friends also gifted us bananas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, guave, khakis and oranges from their gardens. Somewhere between seeding out our first plants and making tomato concentrate from scratch, we had become a part of the community around us.
Photo by Chad Stembridge on Unsplash
So, what did gardening teach me?
Gardening has transformed me in so many ways.
It has made me more resilient. The knowledge of plants is primal and used to be crucial for survival. Learning it now feels like coming home.
I am more connected with myself and the world around me. I feel rooted. And I feel how interwoven I am with every living being surrounding me.
It taught me how sharing food makes you a part of something bigger than yourself and will always be rewarded with love.
It forces you to interact with your responsibility towards nature. Not only when it comes to consumerism but also when it comes to the protection of nature and knowledge as well as how we are taught to think about it.
It starts with “Where and how was this food grown, produced and treated?” and “Do I really need [insert anything you can buy] in my life?” over “How can we fight the plastic pandemic?” to “We need to fight for justice for indigenous people and inhabitants of regions affected by our careless behavior towards nature” and finally ends with “Why do I want to rip out the weeds so badly and plant everything in a straight line?“ and “I am deeply connected and grateful to be a part of life on earth.”
It has given me meaning. A purpose. And a peace of mind that was hard to find this year.
It allowed me to be wild. Unapologetic. It showed me my own human nature in the most humbling, gentle and direct way possible.
Finally, it has shifted how I want my future to look like. I used to dream of modern buildings with a pool and a passport full of stamps. Now I simply want a place full of trees, land to farm, some animals and flowers everywhere. My hands dirty and my heart singing.
It started with a few seeds stuck into the earth. And will end with a forest full of love.
I would never have guessed where 2020 and gardening would lead me. It made me choose a long, uncomfortable but endlessly rewarding journey to reconnect, to unlearn and to grow.
When will you plant your first seed? | https://medium.com/climate-conscious/how-gardening-changed-my-life-in-2020-cc18a38e9b2 | ['Tasmin Hansmann'] | 2020-12-09 17:13:36.440000+00:00 | ['Vision', 'Climate Action', 'Sustainability', 'Personal Development', 'Gardening'] |
7 Tips for Designing a Modular Kitchen on a Spending Plan | Modular kitchens, the minimum requirement that you should be aiming for while considering to go for one is to make sure that the design is customized to be practical and thorough. Modular kitchens featured ample modification opportunities, and you can make every nook and cranny serve a function. Although technique and accuracy are vital to have a beautiful and luxurious kitchen, you can also consider the list below easy pointers to get begun with your modular kitchen design and strategy.
Take the kitchen work triangle into factor to consider
The kitchen work triangle is a modular kitchen wardrobe design guideline that assists to plan effective workspaces and clear traffic lanes in the kitchen. It makes up the cooktop, sink, and refrigerator. A significant part of your kitchen preparation consists of choosing how to set up these 3 items so that one can easily access the cooking, cleaning and food storage locations without overcrowding the kitchen area. | https://medium.com/@modularkitchensgurgaon/7-tips-for-designing-a-modular-kitchen-on-a-spending-plan-2d1a9c8fe4d0 | ['Modularkitchens Gurgaon'] | 2020-12-15 10:44:13.838000+00:00 | ['Kitchen', 'Modular Kitchen', 'Design', 'Tips', 'Tips And Tricks'] |
Finding God in Gay | Learning to find God in all things can be tricky, but it can get even more daunting to find God in the darkness of rejection, discrimination and prejudice.
I didn’t have to grapple with my gay orientation for too long. I was accepting of who I was from the beginning, which was a blessing and a grace in many ways, though I did feel the sting of rejection from a place that was supposed to be my home. I consider my brothers and sisters who have not been as fortunate and I feel compassion for those men and women who struggle with self-hatred and condemn themselves to a life of secrecy, those who are constantly bombarded with messages telling them they are freaks. I think of the kids being bullied at school who then go to mass with their parents and hear anti-gay remarks. I wonder how many teenagers who kill themselves also went to church with their parents and heard those things. And mostly, I wonder where God is in the midst of all this.
I constantly struggle with the answer to that question, but I do know that who God made me to be has been a gift. I have learned that love has many faces and styles. I’ll never forget watching Chely Wright — the country singer who came out — describe her experience. She said she remembered praying to God to make her straight when she heard a still small voice saying, “You are fine the way I made you. Proceed as you are.” Her words resonated deep within me. That is a powerful message for everyone, but especially today’s youth.
We find God in the diversity of creation and we find God in love — whatever form that takes. We can also find God when we are rejected and abandoned. Jesus was rejected because most narrow-minded people have little capacity to receive the all-encompassing love of Christ. Jesus preached of loving your neighbor and accepting everyone as brother and sister. Sadly, many Pharisees found this loving message absolutely appalling. Even more, Jesus made the human sacred. He blessed diversity. He associated with all types of people — some of whom were of questionable character.
Whenever we are being our authentic true selves — the selves that God created us to be — we will meet some level of rejection. But we can find God in the love within us and in communities that accept and affirm us. We can find God in people like Chely Wright who was a voice for all gay people who have no voice. God can be found in that still, small voice, “You are fine the way I made you, proceed as you are.”
We also find God in hope. Hope for the future — that acceptance and change will happen. It already is. There are many voices speaking out in favor of that change. I believe there is hope that we will come together as one big human family and “love one another as Christ has loved us.” I pray to be a part of that change and I pray that together we can play a part in helping to end teen suicide over one’s sexual orientation. I pray that all my brothers and sisters would know that they are loved and created in the image of God who has created diversity when it comes to love.
I believe that it will be the small communities that meet outside of the institutional church that will make the difference in this world; the lay people and the clergy who actually follow Christ that will make a difference by their efforts and sacrifices, people like Jeannine Gramick and the late Mychal Judge and many others who are standing up against injustice. It’s the quiet nuns that live in obscurity taking care of AIDS patients and the small welcoming communities who worship in the seclusion of their own home who are making the difference. The men and women who have the courage to be who they are in the face of rejection and ridicule and those who minister to the ones who cannot be themselves — they show me the Kingdom of God. These people are the true church and the face of Christ for me. | https://medium.com/reaching-out/finding-god-in-gay-9090c7f48a3 | ['Stephen Fratello'] | 2018-01-14 21:47:31.575000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Life', 'Storytelling', 'LGBTQ', 'Catholicism'] |
Family trip | Besides this tool, we prepared a day in the life for parents and teens to fill with their usual daily family schedule concerning mobility. There was also a different version for the kindergarten teachers, focused on the morning and afternoon periods where the adults (parents, grandparents, …) accompany the children to and from school.
The tool for parents/older children helped us understand how their families managed time and methods of transportation taking into account their daily life and the emotions they feel when it comes to their mobility
User profiles
After gathering the information from all of our interviews and focus group, we grouped everything in user profiles.
We did user profiles for each participant, where we gathered photos, family background, a photo of the filled tool and main quotes and insights
Insights
Then it was time to start filtering everything we already had, and we started by writing the main insights from our research.
Insight 1
Planning tasks and activities and strict time management is essential in the life of families with children to facilitate the organisation of various everyday activities.
👩 “I wish I had something that could link mobility to a family agenda.”
👩🏫 “I wish there was something I could associate with the weather and traffic indications.”
Insight 2
Mobility is conditioned by schedules and financial availability so that families can respond better to their routine and organisation.
👩 “With children, it’s impossible to travel normally, you can’t stick to schedules.”
👱♀️ “My father works out of town and has a shifting schedule.”
Insight 3
Travel time between daily activities is seen as an opportunity to do other things so that all the extra time in the routines is productive.
👨 “I usually spend my time in transportation watching news and playing games.”
👨 “Whenever we make big trips as a family, everyone falls asleep in the car but me.”
Insight 4
The mobile phone is essential in everyday life for parents to manage mobility and entertain their children.
👩🏫 “Parents come to school with cell phones to entertain themselves and their children.”
👩🏫 “Children start using mobile phones from the age of 7, to communicate with the parents.”
Insight 5
Despite the traffic and the difficulty of parking in Lisbon, the car is one of the most used means of transport for family travel due to the comfort, accessibility and facility of schedules.
👱♂️ “As a family we all drive because it’s more comfortable.”
👱♂ “I have trouble with traffic and bringing my stuff and supplies to college when taking public transportation.”
Insight 6
It is preferable to share personal transport with friends and family so that there is more confidence on the part of everyone.
👱♂ “My brothers go to practice with my dad or take a ride with his friends’ parents.”
👱♀ “I wish I could organize rides with trusted neighbours and friends.”
HMW
After gathering all these insights and quotes from our participants, it was time to define some How Might We’s that helped us guide our project. It was challenging to summarise all of the information we had collected before and turning it into 3 questions that would lead to our solutions.
How might we speed up the planning of daily tasks and journeys of families with children, gathering and reducing the resources they use?
of families with children, gathering and reducing the resources they use? How might we promote the sharing of private transport in the city of Lisbon, so that safety and trust are a priority in the travel of the whole family?
in the city of Lisbon, so that safety and trust are a priority in the travel of the whole family? How might we optimize the time spent in the various phases of travel, making the experience more enjoyable for families in their own transportation?
Brainstorming
When we closed our HMWs, we had a brainstorming session with another two groups from our class. In this session each group presented the project briefly, and with an HMW as a starting point, sketched some quick and simple ideias for possible solutions. After doing this for all the HMWs of the 3 groups, we collected every piece of sketched paper and voted on them with small green stickers.
This session was really helpful to brainstorm ideas and to have fresh feedback from other people apart from the group that was working on it specifically. | https://medium.com/@maria.carvalho.barreira/family-trip-ebc99f73ac70 | ['Maria Carvalho Barreira'] | 2020-03-05 11:19:10.698000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'User Research', 'Transportation', 'UX', 'User Experience'] |
i feel like we are wasting our lives | i feel like we are wasting our lives
following rules that men put in place thousands of years ago
doing things blindly
spending money on basic human necessities
living the same day over and over
success being measured by education and money
but we are all,
just living on this floating rock
and maybe we weren’t meant to have rules
maybe we were meant to travel and take care of the world
instead, we are selfish and make everything ours
i wish that everyone was as worried about the Earth as they are the color of someone’s goddamn skin.
we don’t acknowledging at how lucky and amazing it is that we were chosen to be on this Earth
we just are so divided
for the silliest reasons,
when really we should just do what makes us happy and love eachother
and don’t destroy our world while doing so
because without the Earth, nothing would matter or exist anyways | https://medium.com/@fleetingskeyes/i-feel-like-we-are-wasting-our-lives-37bf1850d8a4 | [] | 2020-12-21 12:07:58.464000+00:00 | ['Earth'] |
Samsung SmartThings, Google Nest partnership kicks off | Samsung SmartThings is our current favorite smart home hub, and Google Nest cameras, smart thermostats, and doorbells are among our favorite smart home devices. As was announced in December 2020, the companies behind those products have forged a partnership that brings Nest devices into the SmartThings ecosystem via the Works with SmartThings certification program.
SmartThings users with Nest products can now incorporate those devices into SmartThings scenes and other automations alongside any other Works with SmartThings-certified products. Nest Camera and Nest Hello video doorbell users, for example, will be able to stream video to their Samsung TV or Family Hub refrigerator.
Google joins a host of other major brands in the Works with SmartThings program, including Arlo (security cameras), August (smart locks), Bose (speakers), First Alert (smoke detectors), Leviton (lighting controls), Lutron (lighting and smart shades), Ecobee (thermostats) Philips Hue (lighting), Ring (home security and lighting), Sonos (multi-room audio).
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/@shawnasey11/samsung-smartthings-google-nest-partnership-kicks-off-d75a3cc64bc0 | [] | 2021-01-16 04:10:50.189000+00:00 | ['Tvs', 'Cord'] |
Unreal Engine Vs. Unity : Which Game Engine Will be Best for You? | The gaming industry is rapidly growing and turning widely popular across the globe. In the market, several advanced features and trends have been introduced by the experts, which offers interactive and engaging experiences to the users.
Undoubtedly, with the advent of technologies, such as 3D visuals and high-resolution images the gaming experience has been redefined by the developers. Now, online games are not boring or based on simple user interfaces. With the high-level UI and UX components, the experience has transformed and offered next-generation user experience to the users.
In-game development, developers have to focus on several processes and to launch highly engaging and interactive online gaming solutions, it is important to think about different processings which includes tools, and game engines.
When it comes to game engines, unity and unreal engine are the popular gaming platforms, which helps to enhance the gaming solution. Apart from this, they both have their own features which attract programmers towards them to utilise all the processing of these engines. It is important that developers should be able to choose the right platform for their game-based development solution. In order to leverage all the benefits of the game development service, partner with a game app development company.
In this blog, let’s know which is the best game engine for gaming solutions among unreal engines and unity. Here explore some of the best differences of the game engine.
Unity is based on the cross-platform based game engine. It is developed by the popular Unity technologies and first released in June 2005 at Apple Inc’s developer’s conference. It is written in Written in: C++ (runtime), C# (Unity Scripting API). The best part of this platform is it offers 2D and 3D advanced gaming experience to the users.
According to Wikipedia, Unity is a cross-platform engine. The Unity editor is supported on Windows, macOS, and the Linux platform, while the engine itself currently supports building games for more than 25 different platforms, including mobile, desktop, consoles, and virtual reality. Platforms include iOS, Android, Tizen, Windows, Universal Windows Platform, Mac, Linux, WebGL, PlayStation
Creating and Destroying Game Objects
Access the components
Dedicated tools for 2D & 3D game creation.
Quality game creation such as AAA visuals and in HD
Provides reusable assets available on asset stores, thus, reducing the development time.
Physics oriented events.
Deployment to all platforms with one click.
It is known as a most powerful 3D creation platform. It is based on advanced real-time 3D creation source of game development. According to Wikipedia, The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. It is written in C++ and launched by Epic Games.
It is a powerful tool and a perfect suite, anyone can use it with real-time technology.
This technology allows you to leverage all the benefits of the advanced trends.
It is integrated with media support
Unreal Engine supports all platforms and onset tools.
It has simulation and effects with rendering, lighting, and materials.
Unreal Engine — If you want to leverage all the benefits of the advanced technologies including 2D and 3D animations with special effects then unreal engine is the best choice. It is an industry-standard tool, which offers an immersive experience to the users. Its upgraded version is also about to launch with quality execution of lighting and high-quality experience with the motive to provide an immersive virtual world.
Unity — Unity is a versatile engine and also turning as a staple platform for the app developers. It is for the flash games, for flash programmers it is a one-stop choice to launch the solution in the market. This is a popular and powerful platform to deliver highly engaging games. It offers a wide range of the development options. This is also best for the developers who want to launch their game with 2D. It also offers easy to use and compatible tools to the programmers which are based on easy to use attributes.
Unreal Engine — Both the platforms have high support of the community. But when it comes to comparison, then it would be not wrong to say that Unreal Engine has extensive support from the developers as well as a robust community of users. It has a very active community.
Unity — Unity also has strong support, and developers also share specific ideas like offers ideas on the creation of games.
Unreal Engine — The major thing that matters in the development process is your budget. If you have a strong budget and prefer to include all the advanced trends then Inreal is the best choice to go on.
Unity — If you prefer to launch the gaming application with 2D and as per the market requirement at an affordable price, then Unity comes in the picture. With Unity, you can also get the modern tools and can also leverage their benefits.
Unreal Engine — Unreal platform uses Blueprint, Coding is the most important part of the development process. Unreal developers can take full advantage of the Blueprint. With this, they can also write code without having actual script.
Unity — Unity uses C#, and in terms of coding developers have to face several challenges to complete the coding process. With unity, it turns into more complicated. If developers are also proficient with the normal coding process such as HTML, and other languages, then the coding process could turn into easier and faster.
Both Unity and Unreal are popular and have created a high buzz in the industry. They both have their own features, pros and cons. Above we have clearly defined the major differences among the two of them and also have provided in-depth information so you can choose which is better for your game app development process.
If you have any query about your game app development? — Connect us | https://medium.com/@rohitseo-synarion/unreal-engine-vs-unity-which-game-engine-will-be-best-for-you-89f8a02157e9 | ['Synarion It'] | 2020-12-23 08:50:05.331000+00:00 | ['App Development', 'Mobile Game Development', 'Game Development'] |
Problems Patterns | Different pieces to help solve the puzzle. In our case as coders, its problems.
Hey friends hope you are all positive and testing negative! Today I want to talk about problem solving patterns for organizing your data. As a coder you will encounter so many of these patterns throughout your career. You will especially see them throughout Leet Code, Hacker Rank and technical interviews. The patterns that will be discussed are: Frequency Counter, Multiple Pointer, Sliding Window, and Divide and Conquer. Of course there are a lot more patterns, but I believe starting off with these four patterns will help beginners get the flow of creating such patterns. Getting the flow will allow you to go on to more complicated patterns and I am excited to tell you more about in the near future! Let’s get on to the first four patterns.
1. Frequency Counter Pattern
How many times/values occur during this runtime?
Our first pattern uses objects or sets to collect values/frequencies of values. This is useful for when you have multiple pieces of data inputs and you need to compare them to see if they consist the same values, hence frequencies. I will be using a LeetCode problem to help explain the process of this pattern. This problem is called validAnagrams and we are required to check and see if the two string inputs consist of the same amount of letters. We need to see if our pieces of data inputs (characters of both string) occur the same amount of times.
Figure 1.0 Lookup is our frequency counter and it is going to store the values of the first string.
In figure 1.0, we created a variable object called lookup. That variable is our frequency counter and if we take a look at lines 9 through 13, we are storing the elements into our variable. Look carefully on line 12, we are using a ternary statement to check whether or not our frequency counter has stored the same letter. If the letter is already stored in our lookup variable, increment it by one and if not we will set it to one. This part is very important because we are not just storing the elements from the string, we are also counting the amount of times it has occurred. Now if we take a look on lines 14 through 20, that is the frequency pattern at work. Just like how we were adding the letters into the variable lookup, we are now taking away the letters and the amount it has occurred. We are using conditional statements to check the second string’s letter and the variable lookup. If the letter from the second string does not match up with any of the letters that lookup has kept track of return false, otherwise decrement the occurrence by 1.
2. Multiple Pointer Pattern
Pointers will start from both ends of the spectrum.
In our second pattern, it utilizes pointers or values that correspond to an index or position and moves towards the beginning, middle, or end based on a certain condition. In the following problem, we are going to check and see if the sorted array has a sum of zero. We will need to iterate the array and see if the pointers add up to zero.
Figure 1.1 Our array for this input is [-15, -5, -3, -2, 1, 2, 3, 123]
Before we start adding the indexes we need to create pointers. In figure 1.1, we are creating a left and right variable to keep track of where we are in the array. Because we need to check every single index, we use a while loop that will stop when the left becomes greater than the right. As we iterate through the indexes, we will add up the index element of left and right and assign that value to the variable sum. We will then check to see if this variable sum is equal to 0. If it does equal to 0, great we will return the index element. What happens if the sum is greater than 0? We will then decrement the right by 1 and vice versa if the sum is less than 0.
3. Sliding Window | https://medium.com/swlh/problems-patterns-320ce83897e8 | ['David Cha'] | 2020-10-27 19:42:56.444000+00:00 | ['Algorithms', 'Beginner', 'Patterns', 'JavaScript'] |
經典網路系列(四) — Long short-term memory | gitE0Z9/classical-network-series
GitHub is home to over 50 million developers working together to host and review code, manage projects, and build… | https://medium.com/@acrocanthosaurus627/%E7%B6%93%E5%85%B8%E7%B6%B2%E8%B7%AF%E7%B3%BB%E5%88%97-%E5%9B%9B-long-short-term-memory-21c097616641 | ['Mz Bai'] | 2020-12-16 13:57:56.065000+00:00 | ['Lstm', 'Deep Learning', 'Pytorch'] |
[Rails]使用acts-as-taggable-on, ransack, select2 實作 Tag 新增與搜尋功能 | mbleigh/acts-as-taggable-on
Table of Contents generated with DocToc This plugin was originally based on Acts as Taggable on Steroids by Jonathan… | https://medium.com/@du20783/rails-%E4%BD%BF%E7%94%A8acts-as-taggable-on-ransac-kselect2-%E5%BB%BA%E7%AB%8B-tag-%E6%96%B0%E5%A2%9E%E8%88%87%E6%90%9C%E5%B0%8B%E5%8A%9F%E8%83%BD-376d7a1794b6 | ['Besque Liu'] | 2020-12-21 06:45:17.417000+00:00 | ['Ruby', 'Rails'] |
Is Snapchat Taking Us One Step Closer To The Metaverse? | Is Snapchat Taking Us One Step Closer To The Metaverse?
Snap Inc, the developer of Snapchat, positions itself as a camera company with a mission to “improve the way people live and communicate” by “reinventing the camera”. Founded in 2011, the company has experienced ups and downs over the years but is currently riding a wave of success, thanks, in part, to augmented reality (AR).
On 20th October, Snap Inc announced its third-quarter financial results. Daily active users had increased 18% year-over-year to 249 million and revenue increased 52% year-over-year to $679 million. In a press release, Evan Spiegel, CEO said:
“Our focus on delivering value for our community and advertising partners is yielding positive results during this challenging time. We’re excited about the growth of our business in Q3 as we continue to make long-term investments in our future. The adoption of augmented reality is happening faster than we had previously anticipated, and we are working together as a team to execute on the many opportunities in front of us.”
Snapchat was one of the earliest adopters of augmented reality in social media with the release of Lenses back in 2015. With this new feature, users could take a selfie, and then choose one of several face filters — including a popular lens that made it look like you were vomiting a rainbow — to bring their snaps to life.
Since then, the company has been improving its lenses every year by enhancing the technical capabilities and strengthening its dev platform. The result is that today, more than 170 million people — over three-quarters of Snap’s daily active users — access the app’s augmented reality features on a daily basis, the company says. Snapchat’s momentum shows no signs of stopping as it’s innovation in the AR space continues.
Lens Studio Update
Snap recently launched an update to Lens Studio, the company’s free AR creation tool that enables creators to build a lens and publish it to Snapchat. The update allows users to build LIDAR powered Lenses for the new iPhone 12 Pro models. You can read more on LIDAR in our article here, but in essence, the technology will enable a whole new level of creativity for augmented reality.
The Lens Web Builder
In March, a new ad product was introduced to Snapchat to allow brands to create AR lenses through the platform’s Ad Manager. Touted as the “industry’s first web-based AR lens ad production tool”, the product aims to make high-quality AR advertising accessible and impactful for any business. The DIY Lens Web Builder allows brands to choose from various 3D objects, animations, and effects, then add their logo or other images to the filter. The tool is distinct from the Lens Studio, which is intended for more technical 3D developers.
Full-Body Tracking Lenses
For Halloween, Snapchat launched 10 3D full-body tracking lenses across all platforms that were able to track 18 joints on the human body and have the digital model copy the movements of the user. Snap said its 3D full-body tracking technology is the first of its kind to be made publicly available, adding that it works across platforms and can be captured by the front or rear-facing cameras.
Local Lenses
Local Lenses, announced back in June, are an evolution of Landmarkers, which empower creators to build Lenses that transform the world’s most iconic landmarks in real-time. By taking in information from 360-degree images, and Community Snaps, a digital representation of the physical world can be built, and viewed from different viewpoints. Combining this with 3D reconstruction, machine learning, and distributed cloud computing, Snap can now map whole city blocks, rather than just buildings.
In October, Snap launched its first Local Lens on Carnaby Street. The collaborative AR experience, called City Painter, enables Snapchatters to join a persistent shared AR world built on top of the physical one, spray paint buildings, and see other’s creations in real-time.
Qi Pan, senior manager of research engineering at Snap London said: “We have a single shared reality and when you do something to this world, someone else can see that result almost instantly. Those changes also persist if everyone leaves the experience and new people pop up the next day — they can see the space that’s been altered by yourself and others.”
Right now, Snap is in the early implementation stage of its AR space mapping, but we may well see interactive AR experiences coming soon, like a menu overlay when you hover over a restaurant. This will be the next stage of digital engagement with real-world spaces.
The Metaverse—“a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space”—has become a goal for many of the global tech giants. However, while so much of the Metaverse remains unclear, it’s hard to know who will lead or how’ll we’ll eventually get there. Could Snap, with its large and engaged userbase, location-based experiences, AR layers, and glasses, play a key role in ushering in the Metaverse? | https://medium.com/xrlo-extended-reality-lowdown/is-snapchat-taking-us-one-step-closer-to-the-metaverse-9d73c0ceb68a | ['Magnopus Uk', 'Formerly Rewind'] | 2020-11-11 11:31:18.051000+00:00 | ['Snapchat', 'Snap', 'Augmented Reality', 'Metaverse', 'News And Opinion'] |
You’re (At Least a Little) Racist | Implicit biases are pervasive. Everyone possesses them, even people with avowed commitments to impartiality such as judges.- Ohio State University Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
No matter how hard you try, chances are, you’re probably a little bit racist. This is because of a phenomenon known as implicit bias. The thing about implicit bias is that everyone has it. In our quest to end racism, we must first start with ourselves in acknowledging our personal biases caused by society.
Implicit Bias is In All of Us
Photo by visuals on Unsplash
According to the Ohio State University Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, “implicit biases are pervasive. Everyone possesses them, even people with avowed commitments to impartiality such as judges.”
These biases aren’t just unfavorable, though. They can also be affirmative, such as promoting white supremacy.
This expands into seemingly harmless parts of our life, such as calling the biggest room the master bedroom.
Implicit bias is why the phrase “I don’t see color” is problematic. Despite how you try to be equal and deny differences, they are there and affect how you perceive people. They need to be acknowledged.
One of the first steps to understanding and counteracting your implicit bias is to understand what your biases are. Implicit bias manifests in unconscious thoughts that you don’t notice, making it difficult to counteract. Harvard offers a test at Project Implicit where you can identify your bias.
Implicit Bias Exemplified
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Despite moves against discrimination, it’s still widespread around us.
Most notably, implicit racial biases cause disproportionate use of lethal force against black people.
The “whiteness” of your name on your resume affects the likelihood of getting responses.
Additionally, black people tend to be at higher risk for different health issues, including COVID-19. There are a variety of reasons, including socioeconomic status and bias within doctors and medical professionals, which affects their judgment and diagnoses of patients. Black women are also 2–6 times more likely to die during childbirth. | https://medium.com/afwp/youre-at-least-a-little-racist-7874b23d2a58 | ['Ashley Nicole'] | 2020-06-11 15:31:01.009000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Diversity', 'Equality', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Racism'] |
Natural Language Generation Part 1: Back to Basics | Have you ever come across those Facebook or Twitter posts showing the output of an AI that was“forced” to watch TV or read books and it comes up with new output similar to what it saw or read? They are usually pretty hilarious and don't follow exactly how someone would actually say things or write, but they are examples of Natural Language Generation. NLG is a really interesting area of ML that can be fun to play around with and come up with your own models. Maybe you want to make a Rick and Morty Star Trek cross over script, or just create tweets that sounds similar to another persons tweets.
Using ML to generate text, images and video is becoming more widespread as research and hardware advances. With recent advancements in deep learning based systems, such as OpenAI’s GPT-2 model, we are now seeing language models that can be used to generate very real sounding text from a large set of other examples. I’ve had an interest in building a system to generate fake text in the style of another genre or person, so I decided to focus on learning the different ML approaches and give an overview of what I learned using these different techniques.
Getting Back to Basics
Instead of just jumping straight into the fancy deep learning techniques, lets look at a technique that is fairly straight forward to understand and easy to implement as a starting point. One of the most common methods used for language generation for many years has been Markov chains which are surprisingly powerful for as simple of a technique as they can be. Markov chains are a stochastic process that are used to describe the next event in a sequence given the previous event only. This is cool because it means we don’t really need to keep track of all the previous states in a sequence to be able to infer what the next possible state could be.
In our case the state will be the previous word (unigram) or 2 words (bigram) or 3 (trigram). These are more generally known as ngrams since we will be using the last n words to generate the next possible word in the sequence. A Markov chain usually picks the next state via a probabilistic weighting but in our case that would just create text that would be too deterministic in structure and word choice. You could play with the weighting of the probabilities, but really having a random choice helps make the generated text feel original.
Building the Language Model
Creating the language model is fairly straightforward. First we need some example text as our corpus to build our language model from. It can be any kind of text such as book passages, tweets, reddit posts, you name it. In my corpus I used presidential speeches from multiple presidents.
Once we have the text collected we need to do the following steps. As a note I add the token “#END#” to my language model to make it easy to determine an ending state in any of the sample speeches.
tokenize the text
do any preprocessing over the tokens (I don't in my case)
generate ngrams from the tokens
create a mapping from ngram to next possible words found in the text
To better understand how this model is built lets look at a super simple example. Assume we have a simple text “The dog jumped over the moon. The dog is funny.”. Using the above process, we will generate the following language model.
(The, dog) -> [jumped, is]
(dog, jumped) -> [over]
(jumped, over) -> [the]
(over, the) -> [moon.]
(dog, is) -> [funny.]
(is, funny) -> [#END#]
Once we have the ngram mappings completed, the model is ready to be used to generate some new text. This can be done fairly easily now by either passing in a seed of an example ngram, like “The dog”, or having the system randomly choose a starting point from the extracted ngram keys. Once we have a seed ngram chosen, we then randomly choose the next word from the possible list of words, then take the next ngram from the generated text so far and pick the next state etc etc…
Simple Python Markov Chain
Now that have we have gone over how it works conceptually, lets look at the full code for training and generating text. Below is a python script I cobbled together from other examples online that builds a basic Markov model in python.
Lets dig deeper into some of the code. Its mainly just two functions. The learn function and the generate function. Lets first look at the learn function which builds the model from a list of tokens and ngrams of size n.
def learn(self,tokens,n=2):
model = {}
for i in range(0,len(tokens)-n):
gram = tuple(tokens[i:i+n])
token = tokens[i+n]
if gram in model:
model[gram].append(token)
else:
model[gram] = [token]
final_gram = tuple(tokens[len(tokens) - n:])
if final_gram in model:
model[final_gram].append("#END#")
else:
model[final_gram] = ["#END#"]
self.model = model
return model
We start with the loop which goes from the first token to the length of the list minus n. As we go along we build up the dictionary of ngrams to adjacent words found in the tokenized text. After looping, we stop just before the last n words of the input text are left and create that final token variable which we then add to the model with a “#END#” to signify we have reached the end of the documents.
One limitation I will point out with this approach is that I am putting all text together into one list so we will only really have one end state. A further improvement is to have end states for each document we process, or could go further and add end states at the end of sentences so we know better when to start a new sentence etc. Next we have the generate function.
def generate(self,n=2,seed=None, max_tokens=100):
if seed is None:
seed = random.choice(list(self.model.keys()))
output = list(seed)
output[0] = output[0].capitalize()
current = seed
for i in range(n, max_tokens):
# get next possible set of words from the seed word
if current in self.model:
possible_transitions = self.model[current]
choice = random.choice(possible_transitions)
if choice is "#END#" : break
if choice == '.':
output[-1] = output[-1] + choice
else:
output.append(choice)
current = tuple(output[-n:])
else:
# should return ending punctuation of some sort
if current not in string.punctuation:
output.append('.')
return output
The code to generate new text takes in the size of the ngrams we trained on and how long we want the generated text to be. It also takes in an optional seed parameter which if it is not set will randomly pick a starting seed from the possible ngrams learned in the model. On each iteration of the loop we look at the previous ngram and randomly select the next possible transition word until we hit one of the ending states or hit the max length of the text.
Here is an example of the output from the script using bigrams as the language model.
Us from carrying out even the dishonest media report the facts! my hit was on the 1st of december, 1847, being the great reviews & will win on the front lines of freedom. we are now saying you will never forget the rigged system that is what we do at a 15 year high. i can perceive no good reason why the civil and religious freedom we enjoy and by the secretary of war would be 0.0 ratings if not.
As you can see it makes sense but its also a little random sounding. What if we try going to a trigram language model?
Was $7,842,306.90, and during the seven months under the act of the 3d of march last i caused an order to be issued to our military occupation during the war, and may have calculated to gain much by protracting it, and, indeed, that we might ultimately abandon it altogether without insisting on any indemnity, territorial or otherwise. whatever may be the least trusted name in news if they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a group, it’s going to be open, and the land will be left in better shape than it is right now. is that right? better shape. (applause.) we declined to certify the terrible one-sided iran nuclear deal. that was a horrible deal. (applause.) whoever heard you give $150 billion to a nation
Well this sound a lot better…but wait when digging into the sample corpus I noticed that its lifting large chunks of text out of the corpus. In reality, unless you have a ton of data to build off of, most models tend to show this behavior once you start using trigrams or higher. This is one downside to the Markov model approach. The bigram model, while more random sounding, seems to generate fairly unique output on each run and not lift sections of text from the corpus.
Spark Distributed Markov Chain
Let’s say we create a much larger data set to pull from like a whole subreddit or years of tweets. The python script as is probably could process the data set if we wanted to let it run long enough and have enough memory on our machine, but it might not easily scale still in the end. Lets do the same thing but using Apache Spark and use its distributed computing abilities to build and store the model. Below is the full code of the spark based model and we will dig deeper into its operations as well.
The biggest hurdle was trying to figure out how to generate the ngram model in Spark, create the dictionary like structure and query against it. Luckily Sparks mllib already has ngram feature extraction functionality built into the framework so that park was taken care of. It just takes in a Spark dataframe object, our tokenized document rows, and then outputs in another column the ngrams to a new dataframe object.
ngram = NGram(n=self.n, inputCol='tokenized_text',outputCol='ngram')
ngram_df = ngram.transform(text_df)
Using Sparks ngram module let me then create a function to map over each row in the dataframe and process the text to generate the adjacent words to each ngram. This is the function called in the first map call of the Spark process. Its goal is to just take the list of ngrams for the document and loop through producing per document a list of tuples in the form [(ngram, adjacent term)]. Right now there will potentially be duplicate (ngram, adjacent term) tuples in the list.
def generate_adjacent_terms(ngrams):
adjacent_list = []
for i in range(0, len(ngrams)):
if(i == len(ngrams) - 1):
adjacent_tuple = (ngrams[i], "#END#")
adjacent_list.append(adjacent_tuple)
else:
adjacent_tuple = (ngrams[i], ngrams[i+1].split(" ")[-1])
adjacent_list.append(adjacent_tuple)
return adjacent_list
The flat map is to put all the lists of tuples into one flat rdd instead of each rdd element being a list from each document. The next map is to setup for the reduceByKey so we take each element and modify it into a tuple of (ngram, list object) which then can be used to combine the ngrams keys together to finally create the model in the form (ngram, [adjacent term list]). It is important to note there will be duplicate terms in the adjacency list. I kept the dupes in to act like a weighting on how likely our algorithm will randomly choose particular next states.
self.ngram_model = ngram_df.rdd.map(lambda x: PreProcess
.generate_adjacent_terms(x.asDict()['ngram'])) \
.flatMap(lambda xs: [x for x in xs]) \
.map(lambda y: (y[0], [y[1]])) \
.reduceByKey(lambda a, b: a + b)
Below is the full code I used to create the Spark based Markov chain code. The text generation logic is then very similar to the other script, except that instead of querying a dictionary we are querying an rdd to get the next term in the sequence. In practice this would most likely be behind an api call but for now we can just call the rdd directly.
The Spark code will generate similar output as the first python script but in theory should scale much more nicely when ran over a large data set on a cluster.
Feel free to check out the code and scripts yourself, and let me know what you think / what improvements I should look into! https://github.com/GeorgeDittmar/MarkovTextGenerator. Next round of work is to be able to save models to extend them with new data, as well as add some more example scripts for people to work from.
Thanks for reading! | https://towardsdatascience.com/natural-language-generation-part-1-back-to-basics-2f0b2654624f | ['George Dittmar'] | 2019-07-28 03:31:35.828000+00:00 | ['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Machine Learning', 'Open Source', 'Apache Spark'] |
Things to consider before joining an early-stage startup | An early-stage startup is a great place to accelerate your career in terms of learning and growth. The team is small, all of them learn things on the go build, fail, build again and succeed. One gets more responsibilities and powers while working in an early-stage startup. I was lucky when I joined Lokal in its first month. The founders and investors were great, the market seemed huge and I was offered fair enough compensation. But honestly, I didn’t know much while joining Lokal about the challenges of an early-stage start-up and it was a leap of faith. Fortunately, it worked out well. I would recommend checking the following things before making a decision.
Founder-Market fit
One of the most important aspects which would give the startup an advantage over its competitors. If you have read Shoe Dog, you would know that Nike overtook Adidas because founders were athletes. They were the users of their own products. They knew what problems their users were facing and hence they kept innovating on those fronts.
If the founders are entering a new market, a replacement for a founder-market fit would be user obsession. Check how many users have they interacted with before launching the product and how well do they know the user they are building for. You-Market fit
You will be devoting the next few years to the startup. If the challenge that you would be working on isn’t interesting enough, you would give up in a few months. Since you will be an early employee, you are like a founder and hence the founder-market fit applies to you as well. If you are new to the market, ask yourself if the problem/user/market seems interesting to you and if there are no early employee benefits, would you still like to work on the problem? Total Addressable Market
Since you will be spending a lot of your time in this start-up, you would expect high returns. If the total addressable market is small, the returns might not be satisfying. Think of different metrics the startup will be chasing- DAU, number of transactions, revenue, etc. Then check how high the ceiling is for these metrics. You would get a ballpark idea of the scale you would be working on.
Huge plus if the founders have a monetisation model since the beginning. Founder’s grit
Nothing pushes you harder than founders who are more hard-working than you and who would do anything (fair) to succeed. The motivation of the team would always be high. Even during the rainy days, the focus will be on working and not bother about the circumstances. If losing is an option for a founder, they will get ample chances to quit. They just need one, and it’s done. Ask the founders how much they have thought about the idea, what are the challenges they foresee and how are they going to solve them. You-Founder fit
Everyone has different working styles. Some need infinite trust, some need someone to push them all the time, some need challenges thrown at them, etc. Check if your founders align with your working style. Will they keep pushing you out of your comfort zone? Can they trust you? Can you trust them? Do they have skills which you don’t have? And most importantly, are you ready to spend the next few years of life with them, because technically, you will spend more time with them than anyone else. ESOPs pool and ESOP policies
Don’t look at ESOPs as just returns for your efforts. ESOP pool and policies tell a lot about the founders. Especially, how much they care about their employees. It’s important to understand how do they value more — investors or employees. ESOPs policies are quite confusing in the beginning. Check how friendly the ESOP policies are. Many founders look ESOPs a way to retain their employees, some of them look at ESOPs as a way to reward them. You can compare good ESOP policies from bad in this thread.
Coming to my story, I wanted to work on problems which are at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, problems which would affect the masses and make their lives a little better. The problem Lokal was trying to solve was huge, the next billion space was untapped. And there were fewer players in the market, hence giving us an early mover advantage. My founders were working on a news app for 2 years prior to Lokal. They had spent a lot of time understanding the media space.
Vipul is the CTO and the co-founder who I knew, personally, from college. He was a great mentor while I was in college. So, I could trust him.
Along with all the exciting problems, the founders had a good enough ESOPs pool and I was compensated fairly when I joined. Hence, Lokal turned out to be a good bet for me.
I hope this article helps you in deciding what should you look at before you make your next career move. If you feel, there is any other parameter I should add, I would love to hear from you. 🖐🏽 Say Hi and we can grab chai! ☕
(Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash) | https://medium.com/@pushkardongare/things-to-consider-before-joining-an-early-stage-startup-6b9ebd14be12 | ['Pushkar Dongare'] | 2020-12-10 12:25:34.418000+00:00 | ['Framework', 'Early Stage', 'Startup Life', 'Startup', 'Startup Lessons'] |
This Looks Like a Depression, Not a Recession | This Looks Like a Depression, Not a Recession
Until we have a vaccine, we are barreling toward economic catastrophe
Photo: National Film Board of Canada/Getty Images
Just weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929, President Herbert Hoover assured the country that things were already “back to normal,” Liaquat Ahamed writes in Lords of Finance, his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the financial catastrophe. Five months later, in March 1930, Hoover said the worst would be over “during the next 60 days.” When that period ended, he said, “We have passed the worst.” Eventually, Ahamed writes, “when the facts refused to obey Hoover’s forecasts, he started to make them up.” Government agencies were pressed to issue false data. Officials resigned rather than do so, including the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And we all know how that turned out: The Great Depression.
Today, President Donald Trump is accused of minimizing the coronavirus as it has bored down on the United States, initially barring most foreigners who had visited China from entering the U.S., but then losing a full month before taking further measures. The virus would not spread in the U.S., he said February 26, “especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” Even today, the White House has failed to organize a nationwide mobilization that would arrest the virus and persuade traders, CEOs, and ordinary Americans that the crisis is in hand. As a result, Covid-19, on its current trajectory, threatens the U.S. with a profound economic downturn.
Covid-19 arrived amid the longest expansion in modern American history. The economy had grown for more than 11 years and added jobs for 113 straight months. Stock markets were hitting repeated highs. But the economy at large was slowing — it grew by 2.3% in 2019, down from 2.9% the prior year, the slowest in three years, and far below the 3.1% projected by the White House. For 2020, the Federal Open Market Committee forecast just 2% growth in 2020, and economists surveyed by Bankrate estimated a 35% chance of recession by the November election. Red lights of a laggard or even a bad year were blinking: Businesses were not investing in the future — private investment growth had plunged to 1.8% from 5.1% in 2018. Even consumer spending, the singular engine of growth, was just 1.8% in the fourth quarter, down from 3.2% in the prior three-month period.
But left barely spoken is the explicit economic threat: a depression-like downturn rivaling the 1930s — prolonged double-digit joblessness, an unprecedented economic contraction, and widespread bankruptcy.
It was the same globally. Economic growth hit a six-year low last year in Germany, Europe’s engine, falling to 0.6%, its slowest since 2013. Japan’s economy shrank by 6.3% and the country already appeared to be headed for its first recession since 2015. The global economy as a whole rose by just 2.4% last year, its lowest rate since the 2009 financial crash. An expectant mood grew of something that would finally push the U.S. and the world into an economic contraction, though no one could say what it would be.
Today, a rising level of alarm over the coronavirus has led 30 states to shut down large parts of their economies and the rest to issue varying stay-at-home advisories. Against the financial toll, the Fed has struck, marshaling far greater firepower than it did in the Great Recession. Congress, too, has approved triple the relief it spent attacking the 2009 financial crash, and is now talking about another, even pricier package. In all, the government has so far thrown some $6 trillion at Covid-19, most of it at the economic fallout.
In part, the reason for the government’s distress is a widely accepted estimate that up to 240,000 Americans could lose their lives even with current measures against the virus. But left barely spoken is the explicit economic threat: a depression-like downturn rivaling the 1930s — prolonged double-digit joblessness, an unprecedented economic contraction, and widespread bankruptcy.
The reason for the grim economic outlook is, oddly enough, the government’s very concentration of its financial cannons on the economy. When the government shows it has a convincing regime in place to restrain the virus — massive, population-wide testing, and a way to trace and quarantine those with whom victims have been in contact — the markets will gain confidence, and a floor will be created underneath the economic collapse. Until then, we are looking at the current freefall.
To shore up the economy, the virus needs to be brought under visible control. But there is no sign that is where the U.S. is headed.
In a rare peek at official thinking, James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, told Bloomberg last week that the jobless rate could climb to 30% next quarter and that the economy could contract by 50%. That was not counting for the impact of hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at companies by Congress as support to hold on to their workers. But even so, private estimates after the legislation are similar — Goldman Sachs forecasts a 34% economic contraction and 13.2% unemployment in the second quarter, and Deutsche Bank 33% and 12%.
Although no one placed the forecasts in historical context, if we reach anywhere near those numbers, it will be far worse than the Great Recession, and nearly the magnitude of the Great Depression. | https://marker.medium.com/this-looks-like-a-depression-not-a-recession-16a123f966d8 | ['Steve Levine'] | 2020-04-02 18:04:34.822000+00:00 | ['Society', 'Global', 'Depression', 'Pandemic', 'Economy'] |
Verst Origin, from Nationwide to International | Hello, everyone! I’m Edward, the founder of the software studio Verst, Inc. I want to share you our origin story, from a bored CS undergrad in his dorm room, becoming a nationwide agency, and going into the international path.
Devspace
I didn’t start my first initiative at Verst (🥁 Ba dum tsss), but in a small freelance I started, Devspace. Devspace itself is a software development freelance established in 2020, I built all sort of things, from company profile, to e-commerce, and also a mobile app.
Building The E-commerce.
This is undeniably one of the reason Devspace reached its success, is simply because we built the right E-commerce. One of our client is a known entrepreneur in Indonesia, with almost 1 million followers in his online store. We built them the E-commerce, the platform in which they have sold more than 10.000 items in their first 8 months of operation, with more than 9000 people signing into the web. We set-up the E-commerce with all the features, even more than our client expected, and we got featured as the freelancer who built this E-commerce.
This is how people trust Devspace, and the brand. We build you things that work. We solve all your problems. We put 100% efforts in doing so. After this project, we keep getting new clients, and we’re not putting any ads so far, the growth was purely organic. Mouth to mouth clients keep coming in, and we do the same, we built them things they want.
Expanding our service
Since we got famous because of our skills to build an e-commerce, no one had ever contacted us to build a mobile app, until we had a corporate client, looking to build an internal End to End app. Our client had won multiple awards, such as The Most Excellent Brand in 2017, and also the trusted suppliers of certain consumables in The ASEAN Games 2018 Jakarta. They had a big problems which we solved seamlessly. Imagine if this is your company operation:
Sales go to the store everyday to supply items, check all the items condition, and more They manually Whatsapp the admin, and the admin manually type all their data from Whatsapp to Microsoft Excel. (FYI: The app is still only operated in Jakarta, but we have 4000 submissions per month, and 140 average per day).
That isn’t effective at all, so they wanted us to build an integrated system, from mobile app to analytics web where they can collect the data. We built the whole thing in a month, using Flutter & Firebase, and ReactJS for the web. Imagine the new operation:
Sales go to the store everyday, fill in their app, and submit it. Admin practically do nothing, and wait until all the sales job are done. They clicked 1 button (Download data as Excel) and then they go home.
The best thing about this is that once a certain trust is built, we are trusted for more, and we won’t disappoint their trust.
So, why build Verst?
I’m in the progress of a nationwide domination from my bedroom. Verst is built differently. We want Verst to be the first step for international market. We’ve built apps for many clients, but we haven’t produces our own software yet. I built Verst so I can have the best environment to build my software. However, this does not mean that Verst doesn’t accept clients, we will also build software for clients. We believe that building software for clients will make Verst financially sustainable without the needs of looking for investors, and can make us focus on our goals.
The Challenge
I think one of the biggest challenge I have isn’t gonna be finding clients, but building trust. In nationwide, there are chances you’ve seen our clients somewhere. However, this is our first step for global market, hence the name Verst. This is where personal branding will have an impact, which is why I plan to build more contents in the future.
Contact me
Instagram | Linkedin | Web | https://medium.com/@verst-io/verst-origin-from-nationwide-to-international-3b6384f6b229 | [] | 2021-05-22 08:21:20.573000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Marketing', 'Expansion', 'Verst', 'Journey'] |
Sketch Best Practices for Professional Design Teams | Symbols
Use Symbols, Overrides, and Nested Symbols
Symbols provide power and flexibility. Symbols allow design object reuse throughout a document.
Symbol Overrides provide customization for symbols while maintaining the master symbol’s core design. Common overrides include custom text and icons. Layer and text styles provide powerful override options. For example, override layer and text styles to show different states of the same object.
Nested Symbols provide enhanced power and flexibility. Create a nested symbol by placing a symbol instance inside a master symbol. Along with simpler properties, symbols can be overridden. A nested Symbol can be overridden with another Symbol that is the exact same size. Swapping out an active icon for a disabled icon is a prime example of a nested symbol override.
Symbol Naming and Organization using “/”
Like layer and text styles, create groups of symbols by placing slashes ( / ) in their names. Sketch’s UI displays submenus for these groupings. Providing this organization guides designers to the symbols they desire and reduces UI clutter.
From Sketch
Create the Simplest Symbols
Always create the simplest symbol possible. To build complex symbols, decompose complicated symbols into their component parts. Create each part as its own symbol and combine them into a nested symbol. Overrides and nested symbols result in fewer symbols and more maintainable symbols.
Symbol Override’s Naming
A symbol’s overridable layers appear in the Inspector’s Override panel. Choose a layer name that describes the layer’s purpose. For example, use “Label” as the layer name for a button’s text.
It is important to coordinate layer names for symbols that will be swapped out for one another. For example, use the exact same text layer names for “Button/Pressed” and “Button/Hovered” symbols. When swapping these symbols for one another, Sketch will keep the text label override.
From Sketch
Explicitly and Correctly Set a Symbol’s Overrides
Any text, image, layer style, text style, and nested symbol in a symbol can appear as an override. But you will not always want every possible override to be an override. Manage a selected symbol’s overrides in the Inspector. Decide which overrides to make available to designers utilizing the symbol.
From Sketch
Make Overridable Symbols the Same Size
Nested symbols allow designers to override a symbol with another symbol. Both symbols must have the same exact width-by-height dimensions for this to be an option.
Icons are a common symbol type to override. Create standardized groupings of square icon symbols with the same dimensions. (The icon symbol’s contents do not have to be square but the symbol itself does.)
From Sketch
Create a Clean and Consistent Overrides Panel
The list of items in the Inspector’s Overrides panel appears in the order they appear in the Layer list. Organize the layers in the order designers expect and find most useful.
Create the Tiniest Version of a Symbols and Test It
It is common to resize symbols for specific needs and circumstances. This is especially true for Nested Symbols. When creating a symbol, take care to align and distribute a symbol’s layers to ensure the symbol resizes as expected. Create the smallest reasonable symbol and test how it responds when made taller and wider.
Consider having a specific quality page for symbols. Use this page for symbol instances that are taller, shorter, thinner, and wider than the master symbol. When updating symbols, check the quality page to ensure the symbol is resizing as desired.
Use Generic Placeholder Data
For overridable symbol layers, use placeholders that remind designers of the override’s purpose. For text, use a word or two signaling the expected phrasing. For images, use a generic image that reminds designers to override it. For layer styles, use a fill that stands out like magenta (#FF00FF) or chartreuse (#7FFF00) to remind designers to override it. | https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/sketch-best-practices-for-professional-design-teams-8b5fd3ff9ec2 | ['Michael C. Albers'] | 2019-07-24 21:06:52.079000+00:00 | ['Designops', 'Design Process', 'Design', 'Design Systems', 'Sketch'] |
Cautious Beasts | I thought
the distractions
would be
enough comfort
for the loneliness
Walking through
empty rooms
and corridors
as I yearn
for the company
of anyone
just to take
this feeling
away
I thought
I would be okay
in this house
by myself
But the ghosts
of nightmares past
have been
emboldened
out of hiding
Filling
the empty spaces
with dread
and terror. | https://medium.com/scribe/cautious-beasts-168ffc30585e | ['Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó'] | 2020-11-09 08:33:18.204000+00:00 | ['Halloween', 'Monsters', 'Loneliness', 'Poetry', 'Fear'] |
Top Reasons Why One Must Invest in the App Development | You must be aware of the fact that this digital era demands everything to switch to mobile. The applications have now taken control over the areas like shopping, travelling, food delivery, social media and almost everything. This fact makes the sense that individual must try to invest in the app development. For this, one may need help of the app developers in Bhopal. In this article we are going to talk about the top reasons so as to why one must invest in the app development. So, here are the reasons!
· Reaching out to the global audience: Now days each and everyone is well aware of how to use the internet. It has been observed that most of the traffic comes through the mobile internet access. The application development may then allow the businesses to hold a place in the market where they can connect the global world altogether. This results in more conversion and increased ROI.
· Easy accessibility: If you own your own business website, then it would obviously help the audience to gather more information about the products and services of the business. Rather, it is far better that you also develop an applications has to give the consumers and opportunity to open the application anytime and anywhere without remembering the link. Therefore, it is much easier to access then the websites.
· Brand recognition: You must be surprised after reading that application development is one of the best ways of promoting your brand. If you successfully e handled the application development of a business, then it will lead to more and more potential users who had been searching for the same kind of product and services you have come up with. Also, you need to look that you invest in a user-friendly, clean and responsive application so as to leave impressive impression on the users. Hence, by contacting the app Development Company in Bhopal can help the brands to grow its reputation.
· Increase in the customer engagement: The applications no doubt offer seamless experience to the users. Also, the applications are much simple to use and easy to access than the normal websites. Moreover, communicating with the customers is also much easier through the applications. The users are allowed to go for the live chat, email or directly contact the support team of the business. All of these languages more number of users than compared to a website. | https://medium.com/@digitalcareseo/you-must-be-aware-of-the-fact-that-this-digital-era-demands-everything-to-switch-to-mobile-de9406df7ee2 | [] | 2020-12-10 11:27:45.609000+00:00 | ['App Developers India', 'Mobile Apps', 'Mobile App Development', 'Digital Marketing', 'App Development'] |
Vmates Bounty Hunter Program | Hello mates,
We are launching the bounty program of Vmates so that you can share your experiences, spread awareness, contribute to the growth of Vmates community while earning rewards!
List of Bounties:
● Making Videos about Vmates : 25 MATE MAX;
● Writing Articles about Vmates : 25 MATE MAX;
● Creating local communities of Vmates: 35 MATE MAX + official support;
●Contributing conversations to Vmates community channel:15 MATE.
Procedures:
It’s super easy to claim bounty! Here is how to do it step by step:
1. Do the bounty.
2. Join the bounty hunter telegram: https://t.me/Vmatesbounty
3. Send the link to your video, article, username, or community, and @ one of the ambassadors.
4. Your work will be manually reviewed.
5. Get rewards!
If you are particularly passionate about the project and it’s shown in your quality of work and number of submissions, you will be promoted to the ambassador and get extra rewards based on your performance! Our top ambassadors have received $MATE and NFTs that will worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Bounty details:
We do have a minimum requirements for bounty submissions, but don’t worry, it’s literally minimum, as long as you tried, you should pass the requirements with ease.
Video Creation Bounty:
Summary: Hunters are rewarded MATE tokens for making high quality videos about Vmates and publishing to YouTube. Think original and try to be professional. Quality videos will receive a larger reward.
Requirments:
● Must be about Vmates
● Minimum Followers Required: 5
● Languages Accepted: any languages
● Minimum Video Length Required: 3 mins
● Minimum Likes Required: 10
Rewards:
13 MATE minimum + 12 MATE bonus for quality content
Article Creation Bounty:
Summary: Hunters are rewarded MATE tokens for writing original, non-plagiarized articles about Vmates. Hunters may use information from the website or whitepaper for example, but may NOT copy/paste info.
Requirements:
● Must be about Vmates
● Minimum Words Required: 500
● Languages Accepted: Any Languages
● Publications Platform: Medium, Steemit, Publish0x, CoinTelegraph, LinkedIn, Reddit, Personal blog, or any other main stream platforms.
Rewards:
13 MATE minimum + 12 MATE bonus for quality content
Community Creation Bounty:
Summary: Hunters are rewarded MATE tokens for creating local community of Vmates in his or her native language. The community could be about game, revolved around scholarship… it’s up to you. Further more the community will also receive continues support from officials.
Requirements:
● Must be about Vmates
● Minimum people required in the community: 50
● Languages Accepted: Any Languages
● Needs to be an active community: Community events once in a while, and people posting daily.
● Community Platform: Telegram, Discord, Reddit, Facebook, off-line, or any other main-stream platform in your area.
Rewards:
20 MATE minimum + 15 MATE bonus for quality community + Official support
Social Activities Bounty:
Summary: Hunters are rewarded MATE tokens for being active on community channels of Vmates. This includes the Vmates official telegram channel, Vmates discord channel, and telegram channel.
Requirements:
● Must contribute at least 50 conversation posts a week in both telegram and discord community platforms.
● Languages Accepted: Any Languages
● Official Community Platform:
Telegram⎮Discord
Rewards:
20 MATE
Research References:
🔗Website: https://www.vmates.io
🐦Twitter: https://twitter.com/Vmates_official
💬Telegram: https://t.me/vmatescommunity
🎯Medium: https://blog.vmates.io | https://medium.com/@vmates_official/vmates-bounty-hunter-program-aa59456344cd | [] | 2021-12-29 07:10:52.524000+00:00 | ['Gamefi', 'Airdrop', 'Bsc', 'Bounty Program'] |
6 Takeaways from Snapchat’s Lens Fest | 2. Lens Studio 3.3: Visual Scripting, Texture Compression, & more
A big part of Lens Fest was also the official unveiling of Lens Studio 3.3. I’ve been impressed by the features the Lens Studio team has been apple to pack into iterative 3.x updates since 3.0 launched back in the early summer. And 3.3, from a Creator’s perspective, has to be pretty exciting.
Here’s a quick rundown of what seem like the most impactful new additions:
Texture Compression. This new feature allows you to compress texture assets directly inside Lens Studio. From what I could tell in the comments when this announcements, this is going to be a really important improvement workflow, especially for those who have to commonly bounce back and forth between graphics engines and Lens Studio for this task.
This new feature allows you to compress texture assets directly inside Lens Studio. From what I could tell in the comments when this announcements, this is going to be a really important improvement workflow, especially for those who have to commonly bounce back and forth between graphics engines and Lens Studio for this task. Visual Scripting: As someone who isn’t a programmer but is code-curious, this was the announcement that most intrigued me. It allows you, instead of programming scripts in JavaScript, to graph that same custom Lens logic with a node system similar to (or maybe the same as?) material graphs. When I hop back into Lens Studio, this is certainly something I want to try.
As someone who isn’t a programmer but is code-curious, this was the announcement that most intrigued me. It allows you, instead of programming scripts in JavaScript, to graph that same custom Lens logic with a node system similar to (or maybe the same as?) material graphs. When I hop back into Lens Studio, this is certainly something I want to try. New Templates: In addition to a template getting you up and running with visual scripting, the Lens Studio team also added a Face Morph template, that allows you to morph faces custom 3D meshes; a Tween template that lets you use a dropdown menu to set up animations; and a Configuration template that leverages various UI widgets to help you create adjustable Lenses.
In addition to these new features, there are a number of performance enhancements, bug fixes, and other improvements, with quite a few of those focused on SnapML. You can check those out in the release notes.
3. LiDAR moves Lens Studio closer to enabling full occlusion
For the first time, with the iPhone 12 series, LiDAR has made its way to a mobile device. What is LiDAR? Simply put, it’s a sensor that sends bursts of light (in the form of a laser) and measures the time it takes for that light ray to reflect off a surface back onto the scanner. In practice, what this does is allow the camera to create a 3D topological depth map of a scene.
In one Q&A session with some folks from Apple, their team used an analogy that I really liked. Imagine your entire living room covered tightly in plastic wrap — this sealed wrap basically creates a transparent overlay over all the textures in the space. LiDAR in the iPhone 12 allows the Snapchat camera to create this kind of overlay of any environment, complete with hyperrealistic 3D depth information about it.
In the demo Snapchat and Apple co-produced, the environmental textures and graphics (grass, rocks, vines, starry sky) grow dynamically with the camera scene as it changes—vines only grow on walls, the starry sky only blankets ceilings, etc.
Essentially, this is a huge step towards fine-grained scene understanding, more complete control over occlusion, and more realistic AR experiences more broadly. This tech is in its infancy (at least in terms of mobile experiences), so be on the lookout for some incredible experiments and experiences on this next generation of smartphones powered at least in part by LiDAR.
4. Snapchat announces $3.5M fund for Creators
There’s already been quite a bit of coverage on this item from other awesome outlets, so I won’t go into too much detail, but this feels like, along with the ongoing residency series, to be a first step in Snapchat’s deeper investment in Lenses as (at least in part) commercial products and Lens Creators as the pioneers of the next era of immersive AR experiences. Will be exciting to see how this fund impacts the space.
5. Snapchat Lenses are more than just face filters
This was certainly already true before this week, but I think it really hit home for me that the Lens ecosystem extends far beyond face filters — as I used to call them back in the day when the Big Mouth Lens was a personal revelation (to be honest, it still is).
Snapchat Lenses truly are lenses through which to view the world, not simply layers to place on top of the world. It’s a subtle but powerful difference when you consider features like World Lenses, Landmarkers, and now, SnapML. Combine these features with incredible new tech like LiDAR and Spectacles (more on Snapchat Spectacles here — not something I knew much about before this week), and we’re just scratching the surface of this new era in social AR — and mixed reality experiences more broadly.
I especially appreciated this in-depth conversation from 3 of the engineers that work on the Lens Studio team:
6. Shoutout to the Lens Creator Community
For my last takeaway, I’d like to give a quick shoutout to the Lens Creator community. I and our team have had the privilege of talking to a whole bunch of Creators as we’ve built out support for SnapML in Fritz AI, and though we really enjoyed those 1:1 conversations, seeing this community come together in the most difficult and trying of circumstances truly was special.
I repeatedly saw such healthy, helpful, and encouraging interactions in session chats, networking events, and in other public squares. No negativity, super inclusive, and just a really interesting, diverse group of people.
Additionally, kudos to the Snap team who put this event on, and who clearly cares deeply about their Creator community, partners, and others who make all this magic happen. Thank you for including us, and we hope this is the beginning of a long journey together. | https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/6-takeaways-from-snapchats-lens-fest-9029d2db0ebc | ['Austin Kodra'] | 2021-01-28 18:54:26.546000+00:00 | ['Lens Studio', 'Heartbeat', 'Snapchat', 'Augmented Reality', 'Machine Learning'] |
Do New Yorkers make more noise than before under the threat of COVID-19? | Such fluctuating pattern of the NYC’s residential noise complaints contributes to the difficulty for any attempt to test its correlation with other factors, such as the COVID’s daily confirmed cases and death cases. To exclude extraneous variables as much as possible, I referred to two subsets of the NYC 311 data as the experiment group and the control group respectively, which are the residential noise complaints reported from March 2020 to October 2020, and from March 2019 to October 2019. This selected time range is specified by the limitation of COVID’s daily data, which started documenting merely since early March this year.
According to the observation over the past year’s statistics (shown in the first graph), before the year 2020, the number of residential noise complaints appears little change from year to year, growing slowly and steadily. Therefore, to interpret the net-difference before and after the pandemic, I set two data groups from two adjacent years to compare. As a complement, I also evaluated the daily count of null requests (when there were actually no need to call the police), daily no-entry ends(the police can’t enter the reporter’s building), daily party noise reported, and daily pounding noise reported in both datasets. After doing this, I sent everything to a test for correlation.
Sad though, the result from correlation test shows scantly any evidence to confirm the relationship between COVID crisis and the residential noise complaints, which was unbelievable.
However, when turning to the help of visualization, we could finally figure out the reason behind the test failure: there was a time lag between the potential cause and effect - that is, between the pandemic and the noise report increment.
For one thing, we could see the huge difference between this year and last year’s complaint data: they differ not only in number, but also in shape. For another, the evident rising peak of this year’s residential noise complaint data simulates a bell curve, which seems to echo the pandemic curve of confirmed cases, although both curve went shaky and fluctuate drastically.
Experiment group: March 2020 to October 2020, daily 311 requests of residential noise
Control group: March 2019 to October 2019, daily 311 requests of residential noise
The difference between two groups and the COVID curve: the surging number of residential noise requests follows the pattern of COVID curve months ago
Beyond the main conclusion, for which the analytical steps would still need to refine, a few sarcastic findings, though, are worthy of noticing. When checking the peak points of the reported residential noises, I realized that the increment from last year were mostly (for some even totally) contributed by null requests. Guess this could be due to hyper-vigilance or nervousness, or probably triggered massively by particular event happened on that day. Another surprising observation from the result was the scarcity of no-entry occasions for police officers (compared to other types of complaints’ responsive personnel). The no-entry statistics were so stable and almost hold same with the past year’s, only presenting some fluctuations during the pandemic reported peak. | https://medium.com/@ql2363/do-new-yorkers-make-more-noise-than-before-under-the-threat-of-covid-19-8b002b10c8d3 | ['Qingyuan Li'] | 2020-10-13 07:52:45.578000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', '311', 'Big Data', 'Services', 'NYC'] |
Parson Brown and a Lifetime of Torment | When a crime is committed within the confines of a song lyric, there is rarely retribution or justice. There is no answering for wrongdoing, punishment for the actions of the criminal at large. Bob Marley shot a cop, for Jah’s sake, and I don’t remember hearing about a trial or sentencing, do you? It’s not to say legal actions never take place. Snoop Dogg rapped about the murder case he was given. Johnny Cash spent some time in Folsom Prison after a full-on psychopathic break in Reno. But for the most part, from hip hop verses to rock operas to backwoods country sob stories, prosecution of crimes almost never occurs.
Until now.
At this point, no one pays close attention to Christmas songs. They show up in November, usually far too early, and blast our ears bloody in every grocery aisle, department store and office lobby we visit. Idiots are rockin’ around the Christmas tree, incessantly jingling bells and carelessly riding in sleighs (you don’t even have a license to drive that thing, Dan), all while the rest of us simply try to survive the economic toil of a massively-commercialized, gift-giving pressure cooker that is the holiday season. Most of us agree that holiday tunes are terrible, but for one unfortunate Christmas character, they’ve all but destroyed his life.
“Walking in a Winter Wonderland,” was written in 1937 by Boop Crosby (no relation) and is one of the most beloved Christmas songs in America’s overstuffed catalog of snow-covered crap jingles. The lyrics are expectedly lame. There’s a good amount of glistening, listening, and (ugh) moderate exercise. But, the mysterious character we find in the middle of verse two is what’s always grabbed my attention.
As the song goes:
“In the meadow we can build a snowman,
and pretend that he is Parson Brown.
He’ll say ‘are you married?’
We’ll say ‘no, man!’
But you can do the job when you’re in town!”
As a sad, unmarried man shunned by society for being alone myself, my focus has never been on the of unwedded despair in the verse, but with this Parson Brown character. Is his name really Parson or is that a title? Isn’t a parson a reverend? I think I read that once. That would explain the marrying stuff. So his last name’s actually Brown? Of the New England Brown’s of Westchester? If so, holy shit. The Browns owned much of the northeast in the 30’s. What kind of connections did Boop Crosby have? Are we talking about Illuminati stuff here? Ok, I’ve gone off course.
After some light internet research, I found that Parson Brown was, in fact, a real reverend based out of Cleveland, Ohio, the hometown of Boop Crosby himself. Not only that, but the events depicted in the song actually happened in the winter of 1935 when Brown was a young man of God in suburban Mill Creek. When he came upon a group of children chanting and building a snowman, they told him they’d named it after him. He, in turn, shamed them for not being married yet and went on about his day. But life would never be the same again.
Thanks to that snowman.
Brought to life with a Satanic ritual expertly performed by the children, and inhabited by the soul of a demon named A’hant, the snowman became more than just a frosty novelty. From that day forward, and to this day still, Parson Brown is not just a reverend from Cleveland, but a wretched, possessed snow creature that terrorizes the eastern United States. For over 80 years, the icy hell beast has glided from frozen town to town, destroying communities with its soulless evil.
Feasting on the mortal bodies of innocents is bad enough, but the economic toll on the REAL Parson Brown has been just as substantial.
“He’s used my social security number several times,” a now broken, 93-year-old Brown quakes. “He’s taken out loans in my name, bought cars and homes. My credit rating is basically dogshit at this point.”
A tear runs down Parson Brown’s liver-spotted cheek. The nursing home attendant tells us, “that’s enough for today.”
The saddest part of the entire story is that none of it had to happen. Those Satanic children didn’t HAVE to give a name to the embodiment of evil they created. Their wicked compulsion to brand a seething, murderous demon snowman with the same moniker as their community’s newest preacher man was completely unnecessary. The only saving grace is that a lifetime of death and destruction being done in his name didn’t break the real Parson Brown. Sure, he’s not the man he once was. He certainly wouldn’t qualify for a Discover card at this point. But he’s kept his faith through it all, and that’s a miracle in and of itself.
As the nurse wheeled his chair down the hallway of the north wing of the Resting Willow Assisted Living Complex, I couldn’t help but wonder how he survived it all. How a man whose piety had been dragged through the sinful mud could have soldiered on knowing that thousands of people were being raped, tortured and killed by someone calling himself Parson Brown. But he did. Somehow.
I guess that’s the real magic of the holiday season. Merry Christmas, Mr. Brown, and for everyone else, try to avoid children in meadows with pentagrams drawn in the snow. Just to be on the safe side. | https://medium.com/the-haven/parson-brown-and-a-lifetime-of-torment-1686a809257 | ['Drew Elliot'] | 2020-12-24 19:50:02.500000+00:00 | ['Comedy', 'Satire', 'Horror', 'Humor', 'Christmas'] |
Thinking of doing some Kind deeds this COVID winter…here are My Three Tips | According to a japanese proverb a kind word can warm three months of winters this winter of 2020 is special in the entire history of humankind as we have gone through so much just because of COVID and as in developing countries the conditions of underprivileged segments of society in winters get worse. so for those of you who are willing to make those who deserve a lot better but due to some reason are not getting that you can do following things
a sanitation worker earning his living, (feeling sorry for them won’t change anything)
so in the above picture what you are seeing is not a survivor of any catastrophe these are the sanitation workers who keep the lifeline(sewerage lines) of mega cities like Karachi running and you know what will happen if they stop working well we can not even afford to think that here in karachi.most of them are christians.So here was something that i thought could be a kind gesture (although its not even close to what they actually deserve for their services).i got the services of one of these sanitation workers today we bargained (just like any other brown pair of people engaged in any sort of business deal ..lol) and we had our price for a specific task decided when the task was over i along with his well deserved wage gave him some extra money from my pocket money. and wished him for his upcoming religious events(christmas).
Edhi old home (pardon for the picture quality)
Donating Clothes (Preferably new) clothes are those things which many of us take for granted but these are not within everyone’s reach so i,with some of my friends decided to hold a little donation drive for our beloved senior citizens who were sadly abandoned by their families and we managed to do it(with God’s help). and it was very satisfactory.
the last thing is not relevant to any season and that is planting so you can buy some plants and start taking care of them especially during this whole COVID work from home scenario it is a great option to keep one’s sanity intact and helping further reduce our carbon footprint.
so these were some of my personal favourites,do share what you think could be better acts of kindness in this COVID winter scenario.God bless :) | https://medium.com/@obaiduddin-174/thinking-of-doing-some-kind-deeds-this-covid-winter-here-are-my-three-tips-acbe6428a4e2 | [] | 2020-12-11 18:05:27.691000+00:00 | ['Donate', 'Kindness', 'Amalkindness', 'Philanthropy', 'Change'] |
What We Can Learn from the Most Resilient States During COVID-19 Using K-Means Clustering | 1. The Challenge
The COVID-19 outbreak has revealed a global lack of verifiable, timely, and trusted data. How might we identify and analyze data to help the public, researchers, and policymakers better understand the impact of the pandemic on different aspects of the economy?
— Prompt from Wharton Hackathon
The ability to monitor and forecast the economic impact of COVID-19 on society is a critical issue to economic policymaking. To take a stab at this challenge, we create a system for analyzing different states’ economic results based on cluster analysis and use machine learning algorithms to arrange the states in the US according to the level of their performance. We innovatively apply k-means clustering to investigate the economic impact of the pandemic using state-level data, including economic performance, residents’ behavioral characteristics, demographics, and COVID-19 trends. We then dynamically investigate the k-means clustering results in three phases: pre-COVID, lock-down, and re-opening. To further interpret our results, we use a linear model to predict the state-level credit card spending and employment results for Q4 2020, which are two good benchmarks to monitor the progression of the economic performance of the region. Finally, we visualize our results in clusters to inform effective decisions for policymakers.
2. Choosing Datasets
Unsupervised learning algorithms like k-means Clustering can sort almost anything into similar groups, even when the patterns aren’t obvious to humans. How do they do it? It all depends on the dataset. Our models need to be fed a large set of granular data describing each states, so our models can learn the patterns. For example, our model might learn that states with higher income level tend to have more people driving and lower COVID-19 cases during the outbreak, but higher cases as the Pandemic deepens.
The trick is to find datasets large and diverse enough for our model to pick out interesting patterns to characterize each states’ response. Here we decided to use income level, unemployment, educational attainment, mobility, card spending, and COVID-19 case number data sets, so that we cover the three most important aspects: economics, behavioral, and demographics. You can find detailed descriptions in our paper.
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
3. Training Models
Once we have the datasets cleaned and broken down into pre-COVID, lock-down, and re-opening, it was time to train our models. We set up our code on Google Colab so that anyone on the team can run and see the results simultaneously. We then use a series of tools in sklearn to implement k-means and linear predictions and visualize our output using matplotlib.
We choose the k-means algorithm because it provides a simple, efficient, robust, and scalable way to group data according to non-obvious patterns. We then examine the clustering results to investigate the changing dynamics across different states throughout the year in order to surface the strategies leading to more sustainable economic performance during the pandemic.
Finally, we exploit a linear model to predict consumer spending and unemployment based on the fundamental factors described in our clustering analyses.
Model 1: Economic Impact of COVID-19
To cluster the states based on how greatly COVID-19 has impacted them from an economic perspective, we use two features for each time interval: the difference in unemployment rates from the start to the end of the interval, and the rate of card spending throughout the interval.
Model 2: Behavioral Impact of COVID-19
To cluster the states based on the behavioral impact of COVID-19, we use mobility data for each time interval, which showed the percent change of Apple Maps searches via three modes of transportation: walking, driving, and transit.
Model 3: Trends of COVID-19
To cluster the states based on how the number of COVID-19 cases fluctuated over the three-time intervals, we use the case numbers data from the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
Model 4: Demographics before COVID-19
To cluster the states based on their pre-COVID-19 conditions, we use two features: the average income for each state in 2018, and the percentage of people in each state who have attained a high school degree or higher.
Model 5: Predictive Analysis of Economics Impact of COVID-19
Our last model aims to predict the economic impact of COVID-19 in September 2020 using data on the 4 above categories from the previous 8 months (January — August 2020). The purpose of this is to investigate whether we can use previous data to predict the future economic impact of COVID-19. To this end, we apply a linear regression model with the independent variables set to the pre-COVID-19 conditions, the behavioral impact of COVID-19, and fluctuations in COVID-19 case numbers, and the dependent variables set to the difference in unemployment rates and card spending.
4. Making Sense of the Output
The most interesting insights come from Model 1, Model 2, and Model 5.
Model 1: Economic Impact of COVID-19
Our model on economic impact analyzes how the unemployment rate and card spendings evolved as COVID-19 hit. To reflect the impact of COVID-19, we look at the economic indicators during three periods: pre-COVID, lock-down, and reopening. We then put states into three groups based on k-means clustering.
We compared our clustering result with the political voting map given the increasing media coverage on how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the red state — blue states division.
Contrary to popular belief, we don’t see a clear partisan divide of COVID-related economic performance.
For example, we see Montana, a red state, and California, a blue state, belong to the same cluster during all three periods. Interestingly, we also see Texas fall under the same cluster as California and Washington during the pandemic lock-in, coinciding with opinions that recently emerge on Texas turning blue.
To better show the clustering results, we visualize the three groups on a US map. The Yellow cluster, or the “Resilient” cluster, underperformed in both unemployment and card spending pre-COVID but outperformed during lock-down and re-opening periods. States that belong to this cluster, such as South Carolina and Tennessee, perform well during the pandemic and emerge to be stronger relative to other states.
The Green cluster is the one that got hit the hardest by COVID-19 from an economic perspective throughout the pandemic. The Blue cluster is in between yellow and green.
After looking at how the economic changes in each cluster on an aggregate basis, we zoom into individual states that fall under different clustering during different periods and the implication of their economic performance. For example, Georgia is in the green cluster pre-COVID but falls into the blue cluster after COVID hits. This demonstrates that Georgia has a stronger job market and spending prior to COVID, but its spending falls into the underperforming clustering after COVID, despite Georgia being the first state to reopen.
Model 2: Behavioral Impact of COVID-19
Here we apply the k-means clustering model on the mobility dataset to evaluate the rate of change of primary means of transportation across states throughout the pandemic.
We see that from the onset of the pandemic, most of the states have Walking (Yellow) as their trending mode of transportation, as the spring is coming and the weather warming up. During the outbreak this summer, we see a sharp reduction of states using Public Transit (Blue) and an increase in Driving (Green), as people start moving out of big cities and into more remote areas to avoid crowds.
Finally, as reopening starts in the fall, we start to see more states embracing Walking as their primary form of transportation.
Walking has become even more popular than pre-COVID.
(Skipped Model 3 and 4. To read about them, go to our paper here.)
Model 5: Predictive Analysis of Economics Impact of COVID-19
Our results for predicting the economic impact of COVID-19 for September 2020 indicate an approximate north/south divide between states that are doing well and those doing poorly.
In general, our predictions for Q4 2020 using data from the first three quarters are not too far off from the actual values of unemployment and spending that we already observed in September 2020.
States such as Montana and Minnesota show a low level of unemployment and an upward trend in spending, while those such as Louisiana and Tennessee exhibit an increase in unemployment as well as an increase in spending. Other states, such as Connecticut, show an increase in unemployment and a drop in spending, indicating that they are more conservative during a time of economic downfall.
5. Putting It All Together
Our approach provides a data-driven representation of the impact of COVID-19 on different states during the pandemic. By visualizing the K-Means clustering results on a US map, we have identified states that emerge to be stronger after the pandemic and states that suffer the most. Such clustering and visualization provide insights and groundwork for policymakers to better monitor and address COVID-19 impact based on the condition of each state cluster.
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
We also provide a good start for predicting and identifying important factors that influence the economic outcome of a state during the pandemic. Although policy provides a crucial role in the evolution of the pandemic, we prove with data that it is by influencing the crucial indexes, such as means of transportation and consumer behavior, to influence the evolution of the pandemic. When more data become available, we plan to systematically carry out the model selection (e.g. LASSO, elastic net, SCAD, MCP) to find the influential factors that make a state more resilient than others.
References:
Full report:
APPLICATION OF K-MEANS CLUSTERING ALGORITHM TO EVALUATE COVID-19 IMPACT ON REGIONAL ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE, Oct 2020.
Full code on MiPasa. | https://susiefan.medium.com/what-we-can-learn-from-the-most-resilient-states-during-covid-19-using-k-means-clustering-9c3b6712d2e | ['Susie Fan'] | 2020-10-23 16:32:33.974000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Coding', 'Politics', 'Covid-19', 'Data Science'] |
Let’s Denormalize Interrogating Our Male Partners for Information | Let’s Denormalize Interrogating Our Male Partners for Information
We’ve accepted this as a natural component of relationships. It shouldn’t be.
Ketut Subiyanto / Pexels
I came across a clip of Bravo TV’s Real Housewives of Atlanta, where new cast member Drew Sidora was grilling her husband about his recent suspicious whereabouts. A few of the questions she asked:
Where were you? Did you leave Georgia? (He did.) Where did you go?
All the while, Drew’s husband sat there with a nonchalant demeanor, sipping from a champagne glass, attempting to downplay the situation with no valid explanations or definitive answers to her inquiries.
The exchange made me cringe.
This isn’t about Drew. I know nothing about the health or history of her marriage, the backstory of this particular incident, or how much of it was scripted and influenced by network showrunners. Also, it was only just a clip. Clearly not the full story.
It made me cringe because this is the most recent in a long list of examples demonstrating women trying to pry information from their male significant others. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five more instances. I’ve witnessed similar situations play out repeatedly — despite the fact that I don’t watch the Real Housewives series or any other reality television shows.
That’s how prevalent the scenario remains.
I’ve seen it on television, in movies, and in real life — women giving men the third degree about where they’ve been, who they’ve been with, who’s texting their phone, and other attempts to forcibly remove a veil of dishonesty.
I’m sure you’ve witnessed it too. Yet, how often have you seen the roles reversed? Where a man is interrogating a woman regarding her whereabouts or sketchy behavior? How many examples do you have of a man who exposed his wife’s infidelity multiple times, choosing to remain committed to her?
It’s not like women don’t also engage in duplicity and negligence. Relationship shenanigans aren’t limited to one gender. Nonetheless, we rarely see situations where a woman is chilling with a glass of merlot as her husband pleads for answers. Pretend or otherwise, it’s an uncommon occurrence.
We’ve normalized deception and game-playing on the part of men.
It’s widely anticipated that this is something we’ll have to deal with at some point if romantically involved with them. Worse, in our anticipation, it seems that we accept shady behavior as typical relationship issues.
One of my very first bosses was a woman. I remember being 18 and listening to her complain about having a habitually unfaithful husband. There was a sadness evident on her face even when she tried to smile. She was tired and unhappy.
My boss went on to say how she’d been talking with her mom about her husband. She expressed a desire to file for divorce. Her mother’s response was, “he’s just being a man.”
My heart sank.
This is what makes such a mindset most problematic — and why I hate seeing us grill men for insight into events that shouldn’t even transpire and information that should be offered freely.
Disrespect is not normal.
Willful deceit, disregard, and secrecy aren’t things we should feel we have to endure. Emotional abuse isn’t just a “man being a man.”
My goodness. How did we get here? I know — through generations of society viewing women as here for the pleasure of men. We’ve established this hierarchy where even a deeply flawed and hurtful relationship with a man is ranked above being alone as a woman.
I guess the better question is, how do we get out of here? | https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/lets-denormalize-interrogating-our-male-partners-for-information-3b5ac18748cb | ['Acamea Deadwiler'] | 2020-12-15 15:03:49.769000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Infidelity', 'Women', 'Relationships', 'Gender Roles'] |
FRIEND SOFTWARE CORPORATION PARTNERS WITH NAPKIN GIS | Bringing GIS technology and OpenStreetMap to Friend
Friend Software Corporation and Napkin have decided to form an active partnership with the aim of bringing next generation GIS technology to market via the new and powerful Friend Cloud and Sky Computing Platform.
Geographic Information System (GIS) is a framework for recording, managing and working with data on top of a geographical topography.
Napkin brings a lot of map related experience into the Friend project. As such, Friend and Napkin will collaborate in bringing maps into the Friend Workspace such that all Friend users have readily available map features as part of their user experience.
Napkin’s OpenStreetMap integration and GIS technology in particular will be a great contribution to the Friend platform. Friend Software Corporation will take an active part in making sure Napkin’s technology, its products and services are elegantly inserted into the Friend ecosystem.
Friend Software Corporation will share its network of developers, customers and partners with Napkin to ensure that its GIS product and services are accelerated into the marketplace.
As a Friend Application, Napkin will allow users to actively work on maps, adding and editing data points in a collaborative environment, offering users a professional workspace available using a single sign-on.
As an API, Napkin will enable developers to build rich applications using maps and GIS features.
“Napkin is a great example of the new breed of software technologies that are challenging the status quo and de facto monopolies in the software industry. We’re proud to help spread Napkin’s technology and look forward to seeing maps used in the Friend Workspace by new and existing users and customers”, says Hogne Titlestad, COO and founder in Friend Software Corporation.
Friend OS is a cloud desktop environment and operating system that can deliver powerful cloud solutions on any device. For developers, it brings a ton of useful features and components that make web software better. Image shows a concept Napkin GUI design in the Friend Workspace.
“The Friend platform offers us a great new way to expand our software’s functionalities and capabilities, and the philosophies of the Friend platform are something we really believe in.
We are privileged to work with the developers at Friend, and we are looking forward to a great partnership”, said Andreas Atakan, CEO and founder of Napkin.
About Napkin
Napkin was founded in 2019 in Norway, developing a GIS solution built to get the job done faster, easier and cheaper.
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are systems designed to create, manipulate and analyze geographical data. GIS software offers powerful mapping tools, used in sectors ranging from healthcare to oil and gas.
Napkin aims to deliver a web-based GIS software that can rival existing solutions, and also allow users quick and easy access to the power of GIS.
Our vision is to challenge de facto monopolies in the GIS market, and offer a solution where users without prior experience can easily get started.
Napkin GIS is fully compatible with existing software and web-based solutions, but is improving on and making GIS ever more accessible.
About Friend Software Corporation
Friend Software was founded in 2014 in Norway, developing both decentralized as well as enterprise cloud- and internet-based software. FSC has customers and partners all over the world who shares a need for excellent and flexible cloud solutions.
FSC delivers Friend OS, the Internet OS, a cloud infrastructure technology with a (DaaS) “Chrome OS” alternative and desktop with Android and iOS apps for smartphones and tablets. With these technologies, customers gets a new level of integration, access and flexibility where they can build the ultimate cloud solution at a low price point.
Friend OS offers multiple powerful functionalities and capabilities like; customizable cloud storage, video conferencing, software distribution (Windows and web apps), user account management, permissions and roles and much more. | https://medium.com/friendupcloud/friend-software-corporation-partners-with-napkin-gis-f2bd1456bd95 | ['Hogne Titlestad', 'Co-Ceo', 'Founder', 'Friend Software'] | 2019-07-17 06:43:12.046000+00:00 | ['GIS', 'Web Development', 'Cloud Computing', 'Offshore', 'Shipping'] |
The Best CRM Isn’t a Program | The missing link of CRM
Going back to CRM's purpose — to manage your relationships with your customers — how was that done before you bought the expensive software?
People. You had employees build those relationships through positive interactions that encouraged follow-up calls or visits, and a relationship was made, not between the company and the customer, but between an employee and a customer.
Today, that process might be mostly digital — through mediums like social media or conference calling — but is no less effective.
An employee builds a relationship with a customer and takes care of them.
Easy, right? It is that simple, but as companies grow, they make two decisions that ruin their warm relationships and turn them into cold corporate entities.
1. They create a sales team
As a company grows, they eventually set up a sales team that manages an established customer relationship.
That might not sound like a bad thing, but here’s what it looks like to the client:
Meet a likable employee and form a business relationship
Look forward to more interactions with that employee
Get contacted by a random member of a sales team, often from a call center, who’s now going to handle the customer relationship.
That initial employee? “Oh, he’s our sales guy. He gets the contract, and we take it from there.”
If that company were a webpage, the client would be clicking away.
Bait and switches like that never work. Customers want to interact with the employee they built the relationship with. It’s like their favorite barista or sushi chef. Another will not do.
2. They purchase CRM software
CRM software isn’t inherently evil. As we’ve discussed, this software provides a lot of valuable tools for managing your relationships.
In practice, however, CRM software is implemented as a set of reminders that ping employees when it’s time to make an interaction. The big problem here is that the interaction is on the company’s terms, not the client’s.
The customer decides when it’s time to have an interaction.
How do you know when the customer is ready? Even better, how can you get the customer to want an interaction when they are not prepared for one? Not by cold calling every six months because your CRM software told you to.
It’s the human connection that you maintain between a single employee and a client. They get to know one another and maybe even form a cordial friendship.
CRM should never tell a manager what’s going on with a customer. When they want to know, the manager should ask the employee who made the initial contact and maintains the relationship. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-best-crm-isnt-a-program-4773d344b154 | ['Ryan M. Danks'] | 2020-12-01 18:23:23.242000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Relationships', 'Business', 'Sales', 'Marketing'] |
Crypto Airdrops Thu Aug 2 | Crypto Airdrops Thu Aug 2
No warnings today ✌️
AllSporter Airdrop & Bounty / $ALL
Before December 2018
AllSporter is a Polish sharing economy project for sports gear and training classes, running since 2017 on PayPal payments.
They are now issuing a token that drops for social media follows. Airdrop is already available, content promo bounty is promised to be released soon. Tokens distribute after their ICO (December 2018).
✅ join
Last published airdrop is still available too!
🚀 TO WRAP IT UP☀️
_______ Show some love — clap for us _______
Want to know about all verified crypto airdrops? | https://medium.com/cryptolounge/crypto-airdrops-thu-aug-2-4d7a69d5211f | ['Atnet', 'Airdrops', 'Trading'] | 2018-08-02 20:32:10.081000+00:00 | ['Airdrop', 'Bitcoin'] |
How to order coffee in Italy | There’s nothing more Italian than going to a Bar in Italy for a quick caffè that’s downed in a nano second or,sitting at a small caffe table sipping a cup of warm frothy milk with the subtle bitterness of espresso ground coffee in between bites of a cornetto filled with jam. Now that’s Italian living.
How to order coffee in Italy requires a little bit of familiarity with cultural etiquette and terms. First, let’s get one thing straight: don’t call it espresso, call it un caffè. Now we’re on the right foot.
Why? Because caffè is the word that indicates the coffee grind is espresso, that rich, dark slightly bitter liquid with a crema on top. The intensity comes from the way the flavor is carefully extracted.
Okay, it’s time to get a grip on terms that will be useful on your cooking vacation in Italy.
- Caffe’ — espresso in a small caffe cup, with or without sugar
- Cappuccino -a single espresso and topped with warm frothed milk, served in a larger, rounder coffee cup . Drink in the morning up to 11am and save yourself the embarrassment of acting like a foreigner
- Caffe’ Macchiato — espresso served in an espresso cup with a touch of frothed milk
- Caffe Latte — espresso served in a glass with a lot of heated milk
- Latte Macchiato — warm milk served in a glass with a touch of espresso , either short , medium , or long . You decide
- Caffe’ Americano — a little hot water with espresso added and hot water on the side, added as desired to dilute the intensity, plus milk on the side
Hope this raises the bar for your enjoyment when you order your next Italian Coffee!
If you find yourself in Castiglione del Lago in want of some caffe, please visit Sergio & Daniele the owners of
Alise’ Cafe’, Via della Stazione,5 across from the Castiglione del Lago train station, (PG), Umbria
closed mondays. open 7am — 10pm Sept thru May, and 7am — midnight, June — August | https://medium.com/@cucinadellaterraitaly/how-to-order-coffee-in-italy-a97c0a37284d | ['Cucina Della Terra'] | 2019-08-06 19:12:20.054000+00:00 | ['Coffee Shop', 'Coffee', 'Umbria', 'Italy', 'Coffee Culture'] |
How to Break Your Brain | How to Break Your Brain
Wow,
I feel like I’m having a hard time catching up.
I bought a server thingie, kinda. And I’m learning stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. SEO. Web server administration. SQL. There is no curve to my learning right now — it’s all vertical. This is me seriously upping my geek game so that my never-ending anxiety about whether I’ll have a place in this post-pandemic world has something to do with itself. Otherwise the not-sleeping-mice chew through the floorboards and leave unpaid bills to perform mitosis in the dim corners of my unquiet mind.
I’ll have more web real estate to hang decorations for other people’s stuff once I learn more about how to manage my own. Yes, that existential metaphor was entirely intended.
In short (giggle — right, I’m so known for brevity) I’m busy. So I’m not writing — and when I’m done busying, I’ll write about what I busied about. In the meantime I’m attempting to mount three new domains on a self-managed server using WordPress technology. I’m hoping my brain doesn’t break, although that ship may have sailed in grade six.
The lengths I’ll go to in order to pandemic-proof my life, I’m coming to realize, are quite extraordinary. I am fortunate enough to live in a country and province that will invest in a proper skills assessment and, according to the brain-watchers with the government, I’m apparently smart enough to pull this off.
So I’m going to get about that and publish more once I figure out what needs to be done in order to not break what is already done. Off with me, then… | https://medium.com/@princesscarrie/how-to-break-your-brain-5efd563d2ff4 | ['Princess Carrie Graham'] | 2020-12-03 23:23:34.442000+00:00 | ['Web Design', 'Self Employed', 'Skills', 'WordPress', 'Cloud'] |
Matthew Brunstrum Explains How Different Types of Buyers View Deals when Acquiring Lower Middle Market Businesses | Matthew Brunstrum Explains How Different Types of Buyers View Deals when Acquiring Lower Middle Market Businesses Matthew Brunstrum Apr 6, 2020·3 min read
When it comes to the type of buyers that will consider acquiring a lower middle market business, they’re not all made the same.
Matthew Brunstrum is an advisor with Sun Acquisitions & MCB Advisory LLC, and he has worked with many business owners and all types of buyers to close deals. He knows that buyers have different reasons and different approaches to buying an existing business.
Private Equity Firms
These private equity firms are primarily looking to maximize value for their investors by acquiring a business, making changes, and selling that same business in 3–7 years, says Matthew Brunstrum. There are typically two ways that these types of firms will fund their investments, with the most common being a leveraged buyout).
This leveraged transaction is primarily financed through bank debt, using the assets of the acquired business as collateral. This means that the cash portion up front that comes directly from the Private Equity Fund is relatively small compared to some other types of deals.
The private equity firms will then look for operational efficiencies to increase the performance of the business to maximize returns. That may or may not involve keeping the current owner of the business on board to help guide this process, while potentially divesting some staff and assets not deemed necessary by the firm, says Matt Brunstrum.
Generally, a private equity firm does not buy a business with the intention to keep it over the long-term. The goal is to increase the value of the business over a period of 3 to 7 years and then sell it for more to satisfy the fund investors.
Matthew Brunstrum on Strategic Buyers
These types of buyers are already company owners in the same or complementary industry and are looking to make the acquisition fit into their existing operations, explains Matthew Brunstrum. Not only do they see potential growth in the business they are buying, but sometimes, part of the strategy is to eliminate a competitor, he adds.
Other reasons that a strategic company will buy a business is to acquire different revenue streams or even take on an established high-volume customer. They will typically streamline the operations so they can pull more profit from it than under the current model by using economies of scale. A strategic company may pay more for a business than other types of buyers as they plan to integrate it into existing operations and generate long-term returns for shareholders.
Family Offices
There’s a growing trend of wealthy parties buying businesses through their family offices, which are generally regarded as private financial advisory firms that manage acquisitions and other financial actions for a single client.
Because the family office looks out for the interests of only one (or a few entities in some cases), they may have more freedom to invest in emerging and niche markets that don’t need approval from company board members or outside investors, explains Matt Brunstrum.
They aren’t usually looking to get involved in the daily operations of the business, as they already align with how the business is being run and plan for a long-term strategy that usually retains existing staff. They will look for businesses that have established positive cash flow and growth potential.
Individuals
Aside from investment firms, there are many individual buyers looking to buy lower middle market businesses to become an owner/operator. They may have never owned a business before, but they may also come from a management background in Corporate America or just completed Graduate School.
These types of buyers are not looking -to re-sell to another entity. Instead, they are invested in what the company does and typically keep the current team in place to make for a smooth transition into ownership. They don’t have the deep pockets of some private investment firms, so they will be looking at financing from the owner or a bank as an option.
Determining your objectives of an acquisition can help buyers and sellers maximize the value of the deal, adds Matthew Brunstrum. | https://medium.com/@MatthewBrunstrum/matthew-brunstrum-explains-how-different-types-of-buyers-view-deals-when-acquiring-lower-middle-7aeec7a530e6 | ['Matthew Brunstrum'] | 2020-04-06 19:52:15.519000+00:00 | ['Deal', 'Business', 'Business Development', 'Selling', 'Business Strategy'] |
7 Quotes From “Schitt’s Creek” That Will Make You Feel Great | And then there’s David, the proud son of the Rose family. Pretty much every line he says is comedic gold, but here are a few highlights.
For example, in this quote, we see David relating his fashion sense across economic boundaries:
David: “I got these at a showroom in Paris.” Stevie: “I got these on a clearance rack at Target.”
Clearly, Stevie (who’s lived in Schitt’s Creek her whole life) has never been to Paris for a fashion show. But she ends up teaching David a few things about how to survive in the “real world” of her hometown.
In this next quote, David’s not afraid to claim what he needs: a little medicinal help, a good cry, and an early bedtime. But the way he says it is so relatable; haven’t we all been there?
“I plan on popping a pill, crying a bit, and falling asleep early.”
Despite being brilliantly well-versed in the art of understated snark, David doesn’t always feel like sharing his hilarious personality with the world. Here, he compares himself, quite unironically, to the Queen of England:
“You know, being approachable isn’t that important anyway. The Queen hasn’t smiled since the ’70s, and her birthdays are still very well attended.”
And this quote is one we introverts need to keep in our back pockets for those times when people just won’t accept our “no” to their social invitation: | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/7-quotes-from-schitts-creek-that-will-make-you-feel-great-20c26797f118 | ['Amy Hartsough'] | 2020-10-30 15:24:41.327000+00:00 | ['Television', 'Mental Health', 'Psychology', 'Entertainment', 'Self Improvement'] |
Why is Tax Reporting For Cryptocurrencies so Stressful? | The evolution of cryptocurrencies — the virtual “coins,” was supposed to disrupt the very concept of money itself. But it didn’t go as planned.
With no physical manifestation, no central bank, and no government regulation, cryptocurrencies provided a perfect spot for some investors to dodge tax authorities.
Crypto Is No Longer “Bogus”
Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, and other “privacy coins”, such as Monero and Zcash, used to rule the dark web — the shady part of the Internet where weapons, pornography, and gambling are easily available. But this is slowly changing.
Gone are the days when the government considered cryptocurrency as a “bogus” economy.
Today, government regulations are now playing a vital role in legitimizing cryptocurrencies that are often associated with shady online purchases and money laundering.
Government agencies have now started to tax people that have crypto assets. This may be seen as both good and bad news at the same time.
The Inherent Complex Nature of Cryptocurrencies
The good thing is that some governments are now slowly accepting cryptocurrencies as a legitimate source of income and a real currency.
However, the bad thing is that the number of trades that a high-level crypto trader goes through, is so high that it is nearly impossible for him to calculate the taxable trade income within a few hours, especially when done manually. Traders argue that this time lost in calculations should otherwise have been used to earn more money!
Decentralization Also Provides for Complexity
There is another complexity involved with virtual coins. Cryptocurrencies are difficult to track because of their decentralized nature. And given their unique blockchain structures, cryptocurrencies like Monero and Zcash are even harder to track than others.
Crypto traders often utilize many different exchanges, platforms, and tools to transact and trade cryptocurrencies. It all sounds very simple and easy with two basic forms involved in tax reporting, but it isn’t like that. This is because no other investment has ever worked the way crypto does and nothing about crypto is centralized.
It’s easy to move coins from one exchange to another at any time which makes capital gains exceptionally difficult to track. Most of the people trade on between 5 and 12 exchanges, and there are more than a thousand different coins to trade.
The exchanges don’t communicate with one another, nor do they have any sort of common standard. Some exchanges require investors to identify themselves, while others promise complete anonymity. Some are even more restrictive than others. This makes it impossible for an exchange to accurately report how much an investor originally paid for a crypto coin.
The Difficulties Associated With ‘Crypto Tax’ Calculation
Due to the way the U.S. and IRS classify cryptocurrencies for tax purposes, it becomes more difficult for traders to accurately track the necessary data needed for tax reporting.
Since the IRS treats cryptocurrency as “property”, and not “currency”, for tax purposes, a trader is required to report his capital gains and losses from his crypto trades on the tax filing.
To report these transactions properly, you need to report your original cost basis, the fair market value of the coin at the time of the trade in US Dollars, and the amount of gain or loss you incurred for every cryptocurrency transaction you made.
With the historical USD prices for all coins not readily available, doing all this by hand makes tax calculation close to impossible.
Realizing the tax implications of it all, many individual investors who wish to comply with the IRS, are now demanding that exchanges provide tax information reporting because keeping up with a huge number of transactions and fetching historical prices is nearly impossible for them. Penalties for late or incorrect forms can quickly become more severe.
This makes it all the necessary for software that is designed to address these complexities.
I spoke with CryptoTrader.Tax, who recently partnered with TurboTax to help answer some of my questions surrounding crypto and taxes. The software automates the entire cryptocurrency tax reporting process.
By uploading your cryptocurrency trades onto the platform, the process is condensed down to a matter of minutes. The platform will automatically crunch your capital gains and losses numbers and prepare the necessary tax documents including the IRS Form 8949.
What Does the Future Hold for Crypto?
When it comes to any new, disruptive technology, it takes time for the infrastructure to get built to bring in widespread mainstream adoption.
Due to the inherent nature of cryptocurrency, there will always be tax implications, especially as more security tokens come into the mainstream. Companies that help reduce complexities and save time will enable more and more consumers to enter the world of crypto.
Third-party automated tax calculation and reporting solution providers like CryptoTrader.Tax can help minimize risk by facilitating the centralization and automation of reporting. Both of these factors are key to avoiding penalties and developing efficient tax reporting processes for cryptocurrencies. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/why-tax-reporting-for-cryptocurrencies-is-so-stressful-f5cbf78b3d86 | ['Drew Rossow'] | 2019-04-04 10:31:00.869000+00:00 | ['Cryptotaxtrader', 'Tax', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
An Absolute Beginners Guide on Time Series Analysis. | Time Series Forecasting
To understand Time Series Forecasting, we must first understand what a Time Series is.
A Time Series, as the name suggests, is a series of information that has been collected over time. For instance, the intensity of rain on all days in the month of August can be considered as a time series. August has 31 days and if against each day, the rain intensity is recorded and arranged in ascending order with respect to the date, the series will look something like this:
Date Information Aug 1st 30mm, Aug 2nd 45mm, Aug 3rd 16mm……
Now, we can comfortably understand Time Series Forecasting. Just with the data available as above — which is information against dates, we create a Time Series Forecasting Model. Suppose we are to predict the rain intensity on the 1st of September. In a machine learning problem, we will have data like a number of pedestrians on the street, traffic intensity, pollution and more of such details to support our prediction of rain intensity.
However, as you must have already figured out, this data will not be available for future dates and thus, the only data we can be certain of is the future date — 1st of September. This is when it becomes a Time Series Forecasting Problem. Predicting future outcomes based on past time-based data. However, do note that Time Series Forecasting heavily differs from Time Series Analysis.
Time Series Analysis tries to describe the data at hand. It defines the reason behind the record analysis of the dates. Whereas, Time Series Forecasting takes on a predictive approach. It also goes through a few common stages of Time Series Analysis to understand the data in-depth. Therefore, it can be said that Time Series Forecasting has both descriptive and predictive nature.
Elements of Time Series
Like we saw in the previous section, the defining factor of a time series problem is its sole dependence on time-based features. Let us go through a few time-based elements that are key to Time Series problems –
Level — Level can be considered as the average or baseline value in the series. Seasonality — This is a very important factor which notes the repetitive patterns in time. For instance, a customer is likely to order more on Fridays. That is a 7-day repetitive pattern. Trend — Trend is the increase or decrease of values of the target variable with time. This often has a linear pattern which implies there is mostly a progressive increase, or continuous decrease over time. Cycles — Irregular cyclic patterns can show up in the data that might not be bound to either seasonal boundaries or particular trends. Noise — Noise is the random variations in data over time which cannot be explained either through trends, seasonality or any other pattern.
Key Concepts of Forecasting
To jump into a time series problem, having a fundamental understanding of the following concepts is vital. Let us have a look at some commonly used techniques in time series.
1. Rolling features — Rolling features attempt to capture the average or any central feature of the past data. For example, rolling mean with a window of 3 days will calculate the mean of the last three days and populate it on the fourth day. This helps to capture increasing or decreasing trends in the data.
If you are looking to build time series forecasting model in python, the below code snippet can be used to create rolling features for a window of 3 days:
data['rolling_mean'] = data['net_amount'].rolling(window=3).mean()
Where ‘net_amount’ is the column on which rolling mean is to be calculated.
2. Lagging Features — Lagging features are used to capture the seasonality of the model. If we create a lagging feature with a window of 7, it will take the value from 7 days before and populate it on the current date. This can be easily understood with the help of the order example. Suppose today is Friday, a lagging feature of window 7 will take the number of orders from last Friday and populate today’s record with that number. If the customer does have a tendency to order more on Fridays, the lagging feature will be easily able to capture that. Therefore, primarily, lagging features help in capturing seasonal patterns.
In python, lagging feature for a window of 7 days can be constructed in the following way:
data['lag'] = data['number_of_orders'].shift(7)
3. ARIMA Model — ARIMA models are one of the most popular models used for solving time series problems. ARIMA stands for AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average. As the name suggests, two methods are integrated in ARIMA — the AutoRegressive approach and the mean average factor.
The AutoRegessive model linearly combines past values of the target variable. The moving average model, on the other hand, linearly combines the errors of past predictions. This integration allows the model to learn from the mistakes during the training itself!
Use Cases of Time Series
Banking Sector: The banking sector is very sensitive since it deals with finances. It is always expected to be prepared. In banking, time series forecasting can be very effectively used to predict the loan amount requests for a future month. This helps the bank to reorganize the funds in advance. It can also be used to predict the total withdrawals and deposits on upcoming dates.
Manufacturing Sector: The manufacturing sector deals with heavy batch productions. Time series forecasting can help in predicting the batch quantities for each day in future months. This can, help the manufacturer to estimate the overall profits and invest accordingly.
Agriculture: Agriculture is a key sector in our country and is also known to be heavily burdened with heavy exports and high demands in the domestic market. Technology can do wonders for this sector. A solution like time series can estimate production during harvests, predict the weather details like rain and sunlight intensities and can also attempt to predict demand and supply curves in the market. This can help the farmers to prepare in advance.
COVID: Time series model has been heavily used in identifying future COVID cases across the globe. It has effectively helped many experts to identify the supplies and arrangements required to fight the global crisis.
Challenges in Time Series Forecasting
Like all Machine Learning models, Time Series Forecasting also has a set of challenges or concerns.
Staleness of model: Over time, the trends, seasonality and some other features of the data has a tendency to change. This makes the model old and calls for retraining on data that has been recorded on more recent dates.
Determination of Forecasting Frequency: Forecasting frequency refers to the frequency at which the predictions occur. For instance, in a weather forecasting problem it is clear that the forecasts need to happen every day and the original data needs to be tallied against the forecasted data at the end of each day. However, there are many use cases where the daily tally is not feasible and an apt frequency needs to be decided upon.
Data Quality and Data Collection: As mentioned in the previous point, data collection is often challenging. For instance, population data is tough to find, and the data quality also cannot be vouched for owing to several factors like manual mistakes, absence of relevant data, restricted information and many others!
Long prediction range: Going ahead with the same example, population data can only be tallied in, say, a minimum of one to two years. This is a long-range of time for which predictions are to be generated. Unless backed by other supportive information, time series predictions can turn out to be largely inaccurate over the long ranges. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/an-absolute-beginners-guide-on-time-series-analysis-part-1-f9cee0053598 | ['Adith Nadar'] | 2020-11-24 16:28:00.875000+00:00 | ['Time Series Forecasting', 'Adith Nadar', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Time Series Analysis'] |
How to use an IDE in Google Colab (and Kaggle Kernels !) instead of Jupyter or a simple script. | The data world is filled with a lot of constraints that all data practitioners are facing daily. One struggle I had past years is the hardware. It’s not easy to find good hardware for deep learning and also cloud solution can be expensive. Also, many other practitioners could face a lack of viability for DL oriented hardware in some countries…
Kaggle and Google Colab Logos
Kaggle and Google came with Kaggle Kernels and Google Colab respectively to face this issue and make hardware available for people to practice or experiment using their datasets. These products provide the user with the ability to use high compute capability units such as GPUs and TPUs that are essential to training models in a quicker way.
Available runtimes in Google Colab
Available runtimes in Kaggle kernels
The screenshots above show the runtimes available in the two platforms, note that in Kaggle kernels you can choose to write a single script instead of a notebook, link Google Cloud Services (BigQuery, Google Storage and AutoML). Also, in Kaggle Kernels you can choose to code in an R environment that supports only GPU runtime. Provided runtimes also have high RAM (above 12GB in most cases).
These free hardware solutions are providing us with a developing environment as shown above but we can’t use an IDE there and enjoy its features.
An IDE can provide a lot of benefits for a developer :
Code into many files and structure the project as the developer wants Easy connection to Git and version control Have access to a debugger Easy access to a terminal
Now, everything changed with colabcode, a python module released by Abhishek Thakur a data scientist and Kaggle X4 GrandMaster. With this package, we can have access to VSCode in our web browser that is connected to the environment provided by Colab or Kaggle Kernels and so benefit from the hardware with an IDE. The package has been made to have a continuous running process that will keep your session active and don’t let the environment shut down until the maximal quota is reached (8h for the free version of Google Colab for example)
Hands-on!
Now enough talking, let’s see how to make this solution work and what are the features of colabcode.
The module works with only two lines of code but first, you have to install it. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/how-to-use-an-ide-in-google-colab-and-kaggle-kernels-instead-of-jupyter-or-a-simple-script-d790f3b753f8 | ['Skander Hadj Romdhan'] | 2020-09-23 17:24:59.188000+00:00 | ['Google Colab', 'Data Science', 'Kaggle', 'Software Engineering', 'Machine Learning'] |
4 Effective Word-of-Mouth Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business | “The best advertising is done by satisfied customers.” ― Philip Kotler
We would all love to imagine a world where customers are buzzing about your product, without you having to drown millions of dollars on marketing spend. They snap, tweet, post, and hashtag about your product, while also raving to friends and family on the benefits and features of the product. They take a step further, to actually recommend your product, sometimes even posing as the brand ambassador for it.
Great world, right?
If only it were that simple.
Maybe it is. Read on to know how you can turn this imaginary world into a reality.
The Holy Grail
Word-of-Mouth (WOM) is considered as the holy grail of marketing because it provides you with the two ultimate forms of brand validation — social recognition and trust. Customers tend to buy products by trusting recommendations made by other people. Your satisfied customers vouch for your product(s) and signal to others that you are worthy of their hard-earned dollars. Another great thing about Word-of-Mouth marketing is that it paves the foundation for brand loyalty, an anomaly in our extremely choice-filled lives. And the best part? It’s free.
Think of Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM) as a snowball effect. You start off with a small, interesting impression your product creates on a customer. That impressed customers then spread the word to more people. Before you know it, you are creating a mega-brand name for your product.
Numbers Don’t Lie
Customers love to hear about other shopper’s experiences. Nearly 95% of people read reviews before reaching a purchase decision. Yes, myself included. Your comments, ratings, and reviews can be the clincher when it comes to transforming a prospective buyer into an actual customer of your product. Word-of-Mouth marketing helps in building a community and not a commodity, it builds an engaged fan base rather than a buy and bolt customer.
According to Statista, close to 45% of people rely on customer reviews in their search process, only falling second to Google search. Similarly, a seminal McKinsey study revealed that word of mouth influences 50% of purchase decisions throughout the customers’ journey, generates sales more than twice that of paid media, and is the most disruptive to consumer decisions.
Hopefully, the numbers speak for themselves, which saves me the trouble of stressing how important Word-of-Mouth actually is in marketing.
Execution Strategies
There are numerous ways you can increase the Word-of-Mouth for your business. The right strategy can set you apart from the rest and invites a steady stream of future referrals in order to complete the cycle.
There are several Word-of-Mouth channels available today, namely, reviews, partner programs, influencer programs, and affiliate marketing. Whichever channel you choose, you will need to build a strategy around it, while also measuring its impact.
But, how do you get them talking about your brand?
Here are four Word-of-Mouth marketing tactics you may want to consider:
1. Deliver an outstanding customer experience
People almost often talk about the moments of surprise and delight, where a brand went above and beyond their expectations to make their experience memorable. You must make every brand interaction, right from discovery to purchase, and everything in between, seamless and enjoyable. Why? To ensure the whole customer experience is simple, convenient, and delivered with utmost care.
You might have noticed the rage tweets and poor reviews posted by customers to a brand that lacks customer service more than a faulty product. People want to feel special and be heard. For example, The Sol Wave House in Spain constantly engages with their guests on Twitter before and during their stay providing them with immediate customer service. This bridges the communication gap and conflicts (if any) are resolved almost immediately.
Pro tip: They allow guests to get poolside drinks using the #poolbarorder hashtag. Sign me up.
2. Celebrate your customers
A great way to celebrate your customers is leveraging user-generated content (UGC) for your business. UGC offers rich new storytelling opportunities, and which strengthens your relationship with current and potential customers. There is no higher compliment than a satisfied customer documenting their positive product experience via texts, emails, and social media. Their vouch is critical because they valued your product enough to announce their review of it to the masses.
Airbnb, for example, harnesses UGC effectively to improve brand trust and resonance. Asking for their opinion on important brand decisions like the one above, builds trust, and creates a sense of community. Your marketing will feel more like “us” instead of “you” (the marketer), and “them” (the customer). How does this help? Your customer now feels welcomed into the community, which prompts a positive image of the brand in the eyes of the customer.
3. Use emotional provocation
Tapping into people’s emotions can be a very powerful tool for getting people to talk about your business. People tend to respond to emotion. If you can generate some sort of emotion from your customers, you are likely to get them to share their experiences with others. People usually share happy, sad, angry, and funny reviews because their emotions lead them to do so. If you think about it, reviews are either good or bad. Let’s just agree to disregard the confusing ones.
Emotional provocation can be done effectively by taking something you believe in and tying your brand close to it. This strategy wouldn’t work if you don’t link this content onto your brand's social media pages, your website, and anywhere else you possibly can.
BigCommerce retailer Ben & Jerry’s does this exceptionally well by attaching themselves to a cause they passionately believe in — environmentalism. The buzz is built into the very soul of the company. Every time a customer buys an ice-cream, they are advertising for the brand’s social message. When doing good is on the line, people are eager to spread the word any way they can.
4. Reward your loyal users
Consider offering real-time and long-term rewards to your most loyal customers. They want to be recognized and rewarded for their loyalty. A few good ideas here are offering special discounts, conducting UGC contests, and offering other loyalty and affiliate programs. Giveaways are always positively received by your customers, giving them a greater reason to spread the word. Don’t believe me? A Neilson report states that 84% of customers are more likely to stay loyal to a brand that offers competitive loyalty programs.
A good example here is Caravelle Resort, which launched a quarterly #HappyGuest campaign where one lucky winner is chosen for a free 2-night stay at their resort.
North Face sets the benchmark when it comes to loyalty programs, by offering customers traditional purchase rewards. What’s great is that they also accept points for attending North Face events, downloading their app, and checking in at one of their retail locations. These points can be redeemed for either products or travel experiences to different parts of the world. Now, who wouldn’t want such a deal? | https://medium.com/swlh/4-effective-word-of-mouth-marketing-tips-to-grow-your-business-9c75dfb16475 | ['Nitish Menon'] | 2020-06-14 16:15:21.761000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Customer Experience', 'Marketing', 'Business', 'Startup'] |
Not Going Vegan to Save the Planet | Barriers to Veganism
If you’re already vegan, you might think it’s an easy way for people to take action on climate change. But the general public would disagree. Studies show only 9% of people consider veganism to be ‘easy’ [7]. Food has great cultural significance, and family recipes are often cherished. When you ask someone to change their diet, you’re asking them to change deeply rooted patterns of behavior. Many people try to change their diet for health reasons but fall back into their old habits [8]. People struggle to change their diet even when it is for their own direct benefit. So how likely are they to stick with a diet that is for the benefit of the planet? Vegans do stick with it, but realistically that’s only around 0.5% of the world’s population [9]. I think we need to start somewhere else.
A Viable Alternative
Image Credit: easycarbonsolutions.com, data from [10]
What else can you do to reduce your diet’s carbon footprint besides going vegan? The chart above is based on a study [10] that looked at 140 countries and measured the impact of 9 different diet options. These options were compared to the country’s baseline diet, which was scaled to 2,300 kcal to account for different countries eating more or less than the global average.
The 9 diets modelled were:
Meatless day (1 meatless day per week) Low red meat (maximum of 350 g cooked weight per week) No dairy No red meat (no cow, sheep, goat or pig meat) Pescetarian (no red meat or poultry, only seafood) Vegetarian (can eat dairy and eggs) 2/3 vegan (i.e. 2 out of 3 meals a day were vegan) Low food chain (protein from insects, forage fish and mollusks) Vegan (plant based diet)
Based on the data, going vegan would save 1,426kg of CO2 per year. That is a lot. It would take someone about 5 years of committing to a low red meat diet to have the same impact as being vegan for a year.
But think of it another way. Assuming you live in a family of 4, it would only take the 4 of you eating a low red meat around 1.5 years of to offset as much as 1 person being vegan for a year. Alternatively, assume both sets of grandparents are also on board. Now the 8 of you would save around 1,872kg of CO2 per year which is more than just one person in this group going vegan.
Taking action as a group has several benefits. First, moderate actions are more likely to stick because they are less of a change. Second, the group acting together creates a supportive environment that sustains that behavior in the long term. And in the long term, making a commitment you can keep will have a bigger impact than trying veganism for a while and giving up, or not taking any action at all.
The chart below shows different ways people could work together and have a much bigger impact than a single person acting alone. These options include: a couple being 2/3 vegan, a family of 8 being low red meat, a family of 4 being no red meat or vegetarian, or an office of 21 people committing to Meatless Mondays.
Image Credit: easycarbonsolutions.com, data from [10]
Moving Forward
It could be more achievable, maintainable and influential for people to commit to less ambitious diet goals while bringing their family and friends along for the journey. As more people do this, it will normalize people eating less meat and increase vegan options. In turn, more options will make it easier for people to choose and stick with a vegan diet.
This is the path my household took towards veganism. We started out by reducing our meat intake. Then we became mostly vegetarian, but still occasionally ate meat when we went out or on special occasions like Christmas. Now we eat a plant based diet at least 99% of the time.
We need to act on climate change. Adopting a vegan diet is the most effective way of reducing your food’s carbon footprint. But if that seems too daunting, don’t let that stop you from taking steps in the right direction. Do what you can to reduce your carbon footprint and encourage others to do the same. Together, you might just have a bigger impact than if you try to go it alone. | https://medium.com/climate-conscious/not-going-vegan-to-save-the-planet-5158d50ef45c | ['Easy Carbon Solutions'] | 2020-12-21 13:59:11.391000+00:00 | ['Carbon Footprint', 'Climate Action', 'Plant Based Diets', 'Climate Change Solutions', 'Environmentalism'] |
Subject & Object: From Mythical Constructs to Mystical Union | “There is no subjective experience that is not related to some object; there is no experienced object except through some particular interpretive vantage point… reality is a relationship between perceiver and perceived.” — Unknown
Often said in modern-day nondual circles are things like “there’s no bird chirping and there’s nobody hearing it — there’s only chirping,” or the nihilistic “there’s nobody here to perceive anything and nothing to be perceived,” followed by claims of the non-existence, the unreality of a subject or an object, and that the belief in them is little more than a delusion to spiritually overcome. To stay for a moment within the context of the phenomenon of sound, there’s actually no experience of a sound without a subject to hear it, as in, if a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound. So what’s being described in the bird example is a subjective experience in which subject-object duality is transcended, which is a profound part of transcendent non-dual experiences. However the deepest truth of nonduality, as will be discussed below, is not that subject and object are fictional delusions, but that they co-arise, emerging simultaneously!
“Subject and object are both distinct realities and aspects of the same thing: a true unity-in-diversity.” — Ken Wilber
The paradox that subject and object are both individuated and utterly conjoined, is the heart of nonduality, and one that is naturally tricky for our limited human minds to embrace. While it’s understandable to conclude from transcendent experiences that subject and object are simply mythical, as non-dual understanding ripens, they are restored to their rightful place in a mesmerizing, life-affirming union to be reveled in.
“To go beyond duality (the ultimate aim of awakening) is to resolve opposites by integration, not by the denial of one side of the polarity. We do not go beyond the dualism of the subject-object split by denying that objects (the universe) exist, or by denying that the subject (‘I’) exists. Either denial is a type of insanity.” — P.T. Mistlberger
But, to grasp this, one must relate to what is meant by “transcend and include,” as opposed to conflating transcendence with negation. To transcend is to go beyond, but to go beyond something doesn’t erase it, even if it’s no longer a focal point of your attention. For example, it’s common after having self-transcendent experiences to align with a belief that the ego is nothing more than a phantom and any sense of a selfhood is simply a falsehood, and then go about attempting to annihilate it, rather than embracing it limited, yet a real aspect of the human experience, an integral part of the totality of what we are, but not the entirety of it.
“…the notion of transcending ego: it doesn’t mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something bigger.” — Ken Wilber
From this perspective of “transcend and include,” just as the ego shifts from being experienced as the whole, to being part of a greater whole, subject and object unite (but maintain their distinctness) to create the relationship that forms the phenomenon of human perception. From this view, it’s erroneous for transcendence to lead to negation, and even duality itself, after being transcended, is perceived to be nested within “a oneness that is big enough to contain duality” Oneness and duality, self and other, subject and object — both ends of polarities are real, but they never exist without the other — two sides of the same shiny coin of nondual reality. | https://medium.com/@jessicaevenathanson/subject-object-from-mythical-constructs-to-mystical-union-9b0dd86fc856 | ['Jessica Eve'] | 2020-12-22 23:52:06.922000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Spiritual Awakening', 'Consciousness', 'Nonduality', 'Spirituality'] |
TV Picks: 10–16 August 2020 | — MONDAY 10th —
★ UNSAID STORIES — ITV, 9PM.
New series of dramas concerning black lives. Starring Nicholas Pinnock & Yasmin Monet Prince. Continues nightly until Thursday. (1/4)
Also watch:
The Yorkshire Jobcentre — Channel 5, 9pm. New observational documentary series about the staff of a public employment service.
— TUESDAY 11th —
★ THE YORKSHIRE VET — CHANNEL 5, 8PM.
Series 11 of the observational documentary following the work of a veterinarian in Yorkshire. (1/7)
— WEDNESDAY 12th —
★ REPORTED MISSING — BBC1, 9PM.
Series 3 of the documentary about police searches for missing people. Narrated by Indira Varma. (1/5)
Also watch:
Diana: Her Last Summer — Channel 5, 9pm . Documentary featuring first-hand accounts from inside Diana the Princess of Wales’ household in the final three months of her life.
. Documentary featuring first-hand accounts from inside Diana the Princess of Wales’ household in the final three months of her life. Inside Missguided: Made in Manchester — Channel 4, 10pm. Observational documentary at the online fashion retailer’s offices in the heart of Manchester.
— THURSDAY 13th —
★ MANDY — BBC2, 9PM.
New comedy written, directed by, and starring Diane Morgan of Philomena Cunk fame, about an ordinary woman with big dreams. Co-starring Michelle Greenidge & Tom Basden. (1&2/6)
Also watch:
Diana: Queen of Hearts? — Channel 5, 9pm . Documentary taking a look at Diana, Princess of Wales’ devotion to charity work, including the moment in 1987 when she made headlines by shaking hands with an AIDS patient.
. Documentary taking a look at Diana, Princess of Wales’ devotion to charity work, including the moment in 1987 when she made headlines by shaking hands with an AIDS patient. The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes — Sky Crime, 9pm . New series where a former cold case investigator looks into unsolved homicides.
. New series where a former cold case investigator looks into unsolved homicides. The Life and Times of Captain Sir Tom — ITV, 9.15pm. Profile of the former British Army officer, who captured the hearts of the nation with his fundraising walk for the NHS at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
— FRIDAY 14th —
★ WE’RE HERE — SKY1, 9PM.
Bob the Drag Queen, Eureka O’Hara, and Shangela Laquifa Wadley recruit residents of small US towns to participate in a drag performance, beginning in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. (1/6)
Also watch:
Diana: A Mother’s Love — Channel 5, 8pm. Documentary about how Diana, Princess of Wales, raised Princes William and Harry, focusing on her desire to keep their childhoods as normal as possible.
— SATURDAY 15th —
Nothing. Sorry! It’s been a bad week, let’s face it.
— SUNDAY 16th —
★ DERREN BROWN: 20 YEARS OF MIND CONTROL: LIVE — CHANNEL 4, 9PM.
The illusionist performs his latest psychological trick live and also revisits some of the most memorable moments over the past 20 years. | https://dansmediadigest.co.uk/tv-picks-10-16-august-2020-1047bdf71fd | ['Dan Owen'] | 2020-08-10 16:01:01.759000+00:00 | ['Listings', 'UK', 'Television', 'TV', 'Tv Picks'] |
#THANKYOUANDREAS | About two years ago, I enlisted myself to the Massive Open Online Course in Digital Currencies at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. Andreas Antonopoulos was one of the two teachers. I can easily say that he was by far the best mentor I ever had. Not only because he taught the most interesting subject ever, but because of his extraordinary patience with everyone of us. For hours at a time each session he would answer every question everyone of us had. I consider his talks lessons. Not only lessons in Bitcoin but in history, philosophy, economy and, perhaps above all, rhetoric. I can gladly admit that I’ve been following his talks obsessively since I first discovered them. The first time I really “got” Bitcoin it was like a perfect storm had been formed by the whimsy winds of my personality traits. I’ve always had an interest in maths and how things work under the hood and I’ve always regarded personal freedom to be important. I’ve also always had a touch of rebel in me and these things combined made me stumble down the Bitcoin rabbit hole pretty quickly. Like most others I was afraid to buy and in hindsight I should have bought earlier. Andreas made the process a little faster. Thank you Andreas.
In an interview I heard Andreas describe what his personal life has been like for the last five years or so. An amazing story. When Andreas first “got” Bitcoin he became obsessed and didn’t do anything else than studying Bitcoin for two months. Then he dropped everything and started to trot the globe, giving lectures on Bitcoin to all sorts of people on a daily basis. He’s still doing this. Imagine the guts it takes to risk everything for a beautiful idea to spread. Andreas went on a personal crusade and he’s converting the world at a remarkable pace. He does not have a home and he’s been visiting about fifty different countries so far. He keeps his talks as unpolitical as he can which is really hard when you’re talking about a technology that has the potential to disrupt all the powers that be. He is also an uncrowned king of metaphors, comparing Bitcoin mining to solving giant sudokus and comparing the banking industry now to the horse industry when the car was invented. More importantly, comparing Bitcoin to TCP/IP and coining the phrase the internet of money which is also the name of one of his books. Thank you Andreas.
About a week ago, Andreas replied “I’m not a Bitcoin millionaire. I was working for free, instead of investing, for the first 2 years. Only recently got out of debt. My supporters on Patreon, many at $5/month, make it possible for me to work with independence.” to a tweet that suggested that he was a millionaire. Andreas very seldomly talks about his own wealth and this was in response to a tweet that questioned the need for him to have a Patreon account. Soon after this, Roger Ver replied “Andreas is one of the most eloquent speakers on the topic of Bitcoin, but if he had invested even $300 in Bitcoin back in 2012, he’d be a millionaire today.” to Andreas’ tweet. This made the community go crazy. Rogers slightly smug comment kickstarted the #THANKYOUANDREAS campaign. The Bitcoin community didn’t seem to care if Andreas was wealthy or not. We thought that he deserved a bit of appreciation. In a matter of hours the community had raised over 700 000 USD worth of Bitcoin to support Andreas. As of today, a whopping 100 BTC has been raised so far, making Andreas a millionaire. He deserves every last satoshi and I’m sure he’ll put the money to good use. You’re welcome Andreas.
Andreas has brought out the best in all of us and he deserves all the praise he can get. He will be remembered as a hero and the impact of his contribution cannot be overstated. After all, he played a huge part in making a lot of us millionaires. Andreas never said anything even remotely bad about Roger or anyone else of his peers and he remains as polite and humble as he ever was. This campaign has restored a lot of faith in the Bitcoin community and in the fact that together we can accomplish great things. Andreas said he would be offline for a while now to let it all sink in. Let’s give him the warm welcome back to the internet that he deserves!
Thank you Andreas.
https://antonopoulos.com/donate/ | https://medium.com/hackernoon/thankyouandreas-da02727ab5ac | ['Knut Svanholm'] | 2018-02-24 15:43:47.312000+00:00 | ['Roger Ver', 'Bitcoin', 'University Of Nicosia', 'Thankyouandreas', 'Antonopoulos'] |
Why I like Tony Soprano | Image Credit: Wallpaper Access
Watching as many TV series as possible took a new meaning for me in 2020. Though everyone wants to forget 2020 for you know what, I want to remember it for some of the best content that I have seen since my introduction to on-demand video. Among all the amazing content that I consumed, ‘The Sopranos’ hit me like a wrecking ball but in a good way. I had always known and read about The Sopranos and it kept popping up in many TV series related discussions I used to have with my friends and colleagues. I had always wanted to watch the show and it was lying there in my watch list since ages. What truly drove me to watch the show was a quote from The New York Times — “The Sopranos just may be the greatest work of American popular culture of the last quarter century.” Without giving it an ounce of thought, I started watching the show.
I know, I know I am super late to the party but The Sopranos has completely changed the way I now look at TV shows, especially crime dramas. The show has been there for a long time and it has been 13 years since the finale. Every other TV/Movie critic, journalist, media house and a true fan has analyzed the show and its characters to the end of the world. Forget that, people have gone crazy analyzing its ending, which, according to my opinion is one of the best, weird and mysterious ending I have ever seen.
I am a changed TV Series consumer now. Like millions of you, I have become a Tony Soprano fanboy. I always used to think of Deadpool as one of the best anti-hero but no one comes close to Tony Soprano. There are many reasons I like Tony Soprano. A few of them I have listed down here,
Tony is a thorough professional — Ton is a mob boss, he is feared and part of a very hierarchical crime syndicate. He can literally whatever the hell he wants without being questions…well most of the times. However, what I realized that, he is punctual, committed to his profession & family and knows when to work and when to play. He goes all out when he is having fun. When he is working, his mind is fully focused on work and when he is having fun, he IS having fun and nothing else. Well, sometimes in the series his psyches cross but most of the time he behaves like a professional
— Ton is a mob boss, he is feared and part of a very hierarchical crime syndicate. He can literally whatever the hell he wants without being questions…well most of the times. However, what I realized that, he is punctual, committed to his profession & family and knows when to work and when to play. He goes all out when he is having fun. When he is working, his mind is fully focused on work and when he is having fun, he IS having fun and nothing else. Well, sometimes in the series his psyches cross but most of the time he behaves like a professional Tony understands the human mind — Well this is bit of a contradictory statement given the fact that during the 6 seasons of Sopranos, Tony keeps visiting his therapist to understand his mental and work related stress and problems. However, Tony knows the thought process behind every single word that comes out of anybody’s mouth whether they are a friend or a foe. He contemplates even the smallest things that are said around him and he is in constant analysis mode. Sometimes that makes him go crazy but most of the times he is able to anticipate trouble and strategize accordingly.
— Well this is bit of a contradictory statement given the fact that during the 6 seasons of Sopranos, Tony keeps visiting his therapist to understand his mental and work related stress and problems. However, Tony knows the thought process behind every single word that comes out of anybody’s mouth whether they are a friend or a foe. He contemplates even the smallest things that are said around him and he is in constant analysis mode. Sometimes that makes him go crazy but most of the times he is able to anticipate trouble and strategize accordingly. Tony is a sucker for organizational culture — The mafia is a very hierarchical crime syndicate and Tony understands. Knowing a set of organizational protocols and following them to the T are two completely different things. Tony knows rules are rules and hardly makes an exception when somebody breaks them. He knows that the mafia has been successful for so many years because they follow a strict code. It is this understanding that makes him a good leader. His knows, “If you can quote the rules, then you can obey them.”
— The mafia is a very hierarchical crime syndicate and Tony understands. Knowing a set of organizational protocols and following them to the T are two completely different things. Tony knows rules are rules and hardly makes an exception when somebody breaks them. He knows that the mafia has been successful for so many years because they follow a strict code. It is this understanding that makes him a good leader. His knows, “If you can quote the rules, then you can obey them.” Tony has a multitude of shades to his personality — It is very very difficult to predict Tony. You can use all these words to describe Tony’s personality — loving, intimidating, sadistic, funny, charismatic, cruel, vicious, chivalrous etc. In many episodes you can see Tony going through all shades of his personality. It always reminded me of how Cuttlefish’s go through a multitude of colors to confuse everyone around them. His personality is so complex that in many scenes you can feel that he himself is surprised by his behavior in that given moment.
— It is very very difficult to predict Tony. You can use all these words to describe Tony’s personality — loving, intimidating, sadistic, funny, charismatic, cruel, vicious, chivalrous etc. In many episodes you can see Tony going through all shades of his personality. It always reminded me of how Cuttlefish’s go through a multitude of colors to confuse everyone around them. His personality is so complex that in many scenes you can feel that he himself is surprised by his behavior in that given moment. Deep down Tony knows who he is — Tony has all the happiness in the world. He is the Boss, has a huge house, loving wife, two great kids, a slew of loyal associates and all the respect that anyone can garner. However, deep down he knows who he is and what is his purpose. “I find I have to be the sad clown,” he says, “laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.”
There is a reason why I chose this particular picture of Tony Soprano to go with this post. He reminds of of Neo, the chosen one, from the Matrix movie franchise. Like Neo, Tony lives two lives — One as a loving family man who runs a waste management business and the other as a feared Mafia boss, who can’t be messed with.
Please let me know if you agree or disagree with what I have written. If you found any other facets of Tony’s personality utterly fascinating then do let me know. | https://medium.com/@vikramdeo/why-i-like-tony-soprano-7945d76c09be | ['Vikram Deo'] | 2021-01-27 08:32:32.509000+00:00 | ['Mafia', 'TV Series', 'The Sopranos', 'New Jersey', 'Tony Soprano'] |
Why Don’t Tamil People Have Last Names? | Why Don’t Tamil People Have Last Names?
It’s the result of one of the world’s greatest social reform movements to de-stratify society
A name is a powerful thing. Having the right name can open all the right doors. Having the wrong one can be hazardous to your health.
Names like Rockefeller or Kennedy can serve you well. If your surname is Bin Laden or Stalin —then you’re going to face some challenges.
Nowhere is the power of a name greater than in India — a nation home to hundreds of ethnicities and adherents of all the world’s major religions. A place where caste divisions still permeate society.
Know an Indian’s name and you instantly know their religion, ethnicity, and caste (a proxy for socio-economic status).
A Kaur is usually a female of the Sikh religion and Punjabi ethnicity; a Todiyattu would be a Muslim hailing from the southern state of Kerala, and a Chatterjee would be a Hindu of the priestly Brahmin caste from the northeastern state of Bengal.
Some people’s names even denote that their ancestors were dung carriers or leatherworkers (both heavily frowned upon in Indian society) or other types of “untouchable” Dalits outside of the caste system.
Having the wrong name can deny you job opportunities or marriage partners, see you be violently attacked, denied services (like entry into temples, adequate help from police), and face an endless litany of discrimination in everyday interactions. Much of this is not legal of course — but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen — even in the 21st century.
Amongst the Tamil community, however (now about 75 million strong) — there was a mass social reformist movement to try and break this cycle.
What happened?
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the Indian Independence Movement gather significant momentum. The main organisations spearheading change (like the Indian National Congress) were dominated by high caste brahmins and focused on political freedom more so than social freedom.
People were locked into their class-based lot in life. Even the monarch of the mighty British Empire himself could not choose who he was to marry — and had to abdicate the throne to do so.
What hope did a low caste Hindu have?
The communist revolution in the Soviet Union, as well as the rising tide of socialist movements across the globe, showed that it was possible to de-stratify societies.
Many Tamil leaders like Periyar decided the moral thing to do was re-make society such that people from backward castes have economic and social equality to those in forward ones.
This was to be realised through The Self-Respect Movement.
As a result of this movement — intercaste marriages were no longer deemed taboo, but in fact, encouraged. The Brahmin caste’s monopoly on performing marriage ceremonies (which saw them also be paid for these services) was also broken with non-Brahmin celebrants recognised.
It also sought to dismantle the patriarchy by encouraging equality for women; championed women’s rights over their bodies (for the first time promoting birth control in a nation deeply against it), as well as sharing of domestic and child-rearing activities.
Perhaps most revolutionary of all — it saw people drop their caste names as surnames. Instead, people took their father’s first name as their surname.
As first names were relatively fluid and intermixed across castes — this had the effect of instantly obfuscating the background of people.
This movement gained traction not just with Tamilians in India but also those across Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and beyond.
What is its legacy?
I can see this in my own family history. My great grandfather’s name contained his caste name as his defacto surname.
His son, my grandfather, born in Malaysia around 1910 had no discernable caste name — roughly around the time these social movements were gathering steam.
Now, a century on, many Tamilians (especially those overseas) are starting to drop patronyms and move back toward having standing surnames across generations.
My own children for example — share the same surname as me (as opposed to using my first name as their surname). This does not re-create the social stratification issue however — as the cycle of caste identification has now been broken.
To identify my children’s caste, someone will have to enquire back 4 generations — which is not just intrusive but can come across rude.
To draw a comparison on how it might have worked in a Western context: Imagine all those English folks with surnames like Mountbatten, Windsor, Hastings, Baker, Miller or Thatcher (each with clear indications of social standing) started adopting patronyms.
In just a couple of generations — all surnames would be more like George, Thomas, Matthew, or David (which in turn do not indicate any historic familial standing or connection).
If the English then dropped the practice of patronyms, and simply passed their own current surname to their children — you will forevermore have a series of Georges, Thomases, Matthews and Davids — with very little ability for the outsider to determine if your bloodlines linked back to the House of Windsor, or some baker from the Midlands. | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-dont-tamil-people-have-last-names-e68327e9444c | ['Kesh Anand'] | 2020-03-06 23:26:18.679000+00:00 | ['India', 'Society', 'World', 'History', 'Equality'] |
Hope | Photo by Alexander Milo on Unsplash
Hope is feeling thankful
you took a breath of fresh air
and another is soon to come.
Hope is knowing another door
will open, though many have closed.
Hope is waiting for a fish to bite
in still lake of uncertainty.
Hope is taking a step forward
and with confidence
that the other foot will too. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/hope-fd2a36b28dd | ['Javon Goard'] | 2020-11-27 11:07:26.373000+00:00 | ['Hope', 'Perseverance', 'Life', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Poetry'] |
CA Voters + Local Control = Racial and Class Exclusion | California’s November 2020 elections exposed what “local control” really means in affluent cities: it’s about using land use laws to exclude racial minorities, tenants and the unhoused.
Consider:
”Progressive” Santa Monica saw three council incumbents defeated by a “residents” slate opposing “over-development.”
Alameda voted 60–40% to continue its longtime ban on new apartments.
San Mateo appears to have approved by roughly 40 votes a measure to continue its longstanding zoning restrictions on building new housing (outcome not final until end of today)
Also in November: Novato rejected state Project Homekey funds for housing the unhoused and Millbrae’s City Council voted unanimously to sue to stop a hotel in the city from becoming permanent supportive housing.
In the 1960’s federal law stopped cities from legally excluding Blacks and Latinos. But “local control” enables the majority-homeowner electorate to decide who gets to live in their city. And that means enacting zoning restrictions that exclude affordable housing and most Black and Latino residents.
Why does California allow affluent homeowners to build walls around their cities? Walls that promote racism and class bias in the name of “local control”?
Racial and class exclusion is a profitable game. Raising property values by restricting supply is a strategy that legislators are loathe to challenge.
But these affluent cities are shifting the costs of building new housing for the state’s rising population and the unhoused to other cities. This makes it the state’s responsibility to intervene.
2021: A Time for Action
I know the difficulty of getting California legislators to interfere with affluent cities land use power. In 2020, every major housing production bill was defeated. This included Senate pro Toni Atkins’ bill to allow duplexes in single family zoned neighborhoods; when homeowners can stop new two-unit buildings you know we are dealing with serious resistance.
But here’s why I give these efforts a better chance in 2020.
First, the coalition surrounding Alameda’s No on Measure Y campaign shows how support for inclusion can be built through grassroots activism. There are more state legislators representing districts who allow affordable housing than those who effectively ban it. The challenge is mobilizing people in these cities to tell their legislators to ensure all cities provide their fair share of rental and affordable housing.
State legislators hear far more from affluent opponents of new apartments than they do from those supporting such housing. We can change this in 2021.
Second, progressive legislators who may have opposed SB 50 should support a bill mandating that all cities allow building new affordable apartments. Or a bill requiring cities to build their fair share of rental housing.
The former is akin to applying a version of Cambridge’s 100% Affordable Housing Overlay statewide; the latter is already mandated by state mandated RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) provisions. Many are not aware that since 1969 California has required all cities and counties to plan for the housing needs of the state’s residents-regardless of income.
It’s time for California’s affluent cities to continue to promote racial and class segregation. Enforcing existing state mandates is a start.
The Attraction of Local Control
I got politicized in Berkeley in the 1970’s. Our mantra was “Socialism in One City.” I understand the attraction of “local control.” But the weakness of that strategy became clear when Reagan’s 1981 budget cuts decimated cities. election. I describe in my book on San Francisco’s Tenderloin how we didn’t realize until Carter Administration ran out in the mid-1980’s how much the neighborhood depended on federal funds; it’s a message activists in all cities have learned.
California currently allows San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego to bear the cost burden of nearby affluent cities not allowing rental housing for residents. That’s not “progressive.” California’s Democratic super-majority should not permit cities to enact apartment bans and zoning restrictions that prevent new affordable housing.
Let’s put aside past disagreements over housing density and unify behind state minimums for at least new affordable housing if not for all new apartments. Even if President Biden’s universal Section 8 funding were implemented there would not be sufficient units in California for all eligible families to get housing.
We must build more. And in all cities.
Randy Shaw offers solutions for California’s housing crisis in Generation Priced How: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America (UC Press 2020)
Read More: Bay Area / California | https://medium.com/@beyondchron/ca-voters-local-control-racial-and-class-exclusion-d377b0619dcd | ['Randy Shaw For Beyond Chron', 'The Voice Of The Rest'] | 2020-12-01 19:46:54.079000+00:00 | ['California', 'Inequality', 'Racial Justice', 'Politics', 'Elections'] |
Narcissism 101. Research begins to reveal how the… | Narcissism 101
Research begins to reveal how the complex, poorly understood condition affects work, health, and relationships
Credit: Westend61/Getty Images
Only a narcissist would claim to fully grasp narcissism. It’s among the most complex and utterly dichotomous human traits: producing leaders and destroying relationships. Armchair psychologists attach the term to friends, relatives, and maybe the current president. Despite an “exponential explosion in scientific attention” in recent years, “the narcissistic personality stubbornly persists in puzzling psychologists attempting to understand it, all the while perplexing clinicians attempting to treat its pathological manifestations,” researchers opined in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review two years ago.
The latest research provides a peek at how youthful narcissistic tendencies play out later in life, affecting jobs, relationships, and well-being, plus how the “selfie-generation” feels about being labeled narcissists. To understand it all, some narcissism 101 is helpful.
Named for the Greek character who fell in love with his own reflection, narcissism is a set of personality traits characterized by an outsized sense of self-importance and lack of empathy, along with a great need for attention and, in the most extreme cases, ironically fragile self-esteem that can ruin careers and relationships. Extreme narcissists can be know-it-alls. They may bully, blame, and humiliate others, refusing to take responsibility for their own mistakes, explains Joseph Burgo, author of The Narcissist You Know. And they can be vindictive. “Extreme Narcissists always need to prove that they are ‘winners’ in comparison to other people they view as ‘losers,’” Burgo says.
But there are many shades. “People have differing degrees of narcissism from high to low,” says Eunike Wetzel, a professor of psychology at Otto von Guericke University in Germany. People can also have varying levels of each of narcissism’s three main facets, with effects ranging from good to bad to ugly. The three main facets are:
Leadership: Extraversion, high self-esteem, a strong persistence toward goals, and a desire to lead. By itself, this can be a very healthy trait, particularly in work and social situations.
Vanity: Taking excessive pride in one’s appearance and achievements, wanting to be the center of attention, and harboring grandiose fantasies of success.
Entitlement: Interpersonally toxic tendency to disagree a lot and devalue others, to use them as pawns for personal gain, to feel above everyone else, and an extreme need for admiration and affirmation. At its worst, this is the ugliest facet of narcissism.
Mellowing with age?
In a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Wetzel and colleagues looked at narcissistic traits of 237 students who long ago attended the University of California, Berkeley, based on surveys done when they were freshmen, and how things played out 23 years later. For most of them, narcissism declined with maturity.
While a small number remained narcissistic as they aged, “only 3% of participants actually increased in overall narcissism between the ages of 18 and 41,” Wetzel says.
Narcissistic young adults are more likely to end up in supervisory jobs, the study found, “suggesting that selfish, arrogant individuals are rewarded with more powerful organizational roles,” says co-author Emily Grijalva, a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis.
Young adults with the highest levels of vanity were found to be more prone to unstable relationships and more likely to be divorced in middle age, the researchers report.
Vanity declined about 25% less in people without children compared to people who had kids, and a third less in people who were not in a serious romantic relationship. Perhaps vain people who perceive they have failed on these two fronts may continue to focus more on themselves as they age, compared to the married-with-children crowd, the researchers speculate. That could mean hewing to a better diet and more exercise, possibly explaining why the vainest also report being healthier, at least based on a single question rating their general physical health.
Finally, those who felt the most entitled at 18 tend to have lower overall well-being and lower levels of life satisfaction in middle age.
“Longitudinal studies such as this one are very important to understanding life-related outcomes associated with narcissism,” says Erin Hill, an associate professor of psychology at West Chester University who was not involved in the study.
How does being a narcissist affect one’s health?
Science has yet to definitively tie narcissism to any long-term health outcomes, but research shows it can have benefits, “including higher levels of self-esteem and, in turn, some benefits to overall mental health,” Hill says. A narcissist might be more inclined to exercise, but the overconfidence, perceived invulnerability, and strong desire for rewards have been linked to riskier financial decisions and substance use, and all this can negatively affect interpersonal relationships and life at work, she adds.
“Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships.”
Meanwhile, narcissistic men might be more at risk of bad health outcomes than narcissistic women.
One study from 2012 compared narcissistic traits to levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in 106 college students. Chronic high levels of cortisol indicate elevated psychological stress, which has been linked to a higher risk of depression, heart disease, and memory impairment, among other ills. Unhealthy narcissism, such as entitlement, was more than twice as likely to be associated with higher cortisol levels in males as in females, and the evidence suggested the higher levels in men were chronic, not just driven by short-term stressors, the researchers reported in the journal PLOS One.
“Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships,” says that study’s co-author, Sara Konrath, a University of Michigan psychologist.
Konrath cautions that whenever research relies on self-reporting, narcissists can be relied upon to view themselves as better and more powerful than others, potentially clouding the results. As for long-term health effects, little is known, as she and a colleague write in an extensive essay on the topic, partly because most studies of narcissism involve young adults. But their research has linked the unhealthiest forms of narcissism, including entitlement, exhibitionism, and exploitation, to increased symptoms of depression and poorer sleep quality, compared to people with healthy narcissistic traits related to leadership, including authority and self-sufficiency.
She called the new study’s finding that life experiences can change a person’s level of narcissism “interesting and valuable,” but pointed out the study involves a small number of participants, with high income and education levels that are not representative of the U.S. population as a whole.
Narcissism isn’t as pervasive as you might think
Anyone can take the 40-question Narcissism Personal Inventory that researchers typically use to gauge narcissistic traits. However, scoring high does not necessarily mean a person has the clinical disorder, says Wetzel, whose study looked at common narcissistic traits, not clinically diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder. Diagnosing the disorder involves additional assessment by a psychologist or psychiatrist — assuming someone seeks treatment.
Scientists don’t even know for sure what causes narcissistic tendencies. But it can be useful to think of narcissism as a spectrum, from absolute selflessness to total arrogance. Everyone is on it, argues Craig Malkin, a Harvard Medical School instructor and author of Rethinking Narcissism. In this view, a bit of self-centeredness is healthy, but like any personality trait, it becomes pathological when taken to the extreme.
The trigger and causes may be a mix of inherited genes, the wiring of a particular brain, and likely what happens in childhood, for which a nearly endless list of possibilities is suggested: traumatic childhood experiences, parents who reward only high achievement with conditional love, a narcissistic parent who places unrealistic expectations on a kid, parents who brag excessively about their “golden child.”
In the United States, 7.7% of men and 4.8% of women have a clinical narcissistic personality disorder, according to one oft-cited estimate published a decade ago in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. That research involved more than 30,000 people interviewed face-to-face, on two occasions three years apart.
A handful of studies since then have suggested narcissism is on the rise. But these have typically been based on small, self-reporting surveys, not clinical diagnoses, and often play off popular opinion by pointing a finger at the selfie generation, including millennials, now roughly age 23 to 38; and Gen Z, sometimes called post-millennials, 22 and younger.
It’s simply not true, says Brent Roberts, a University of Illinois psychology professor who worked with Wetzel and Grijalva on the new study. In a separate look at data on tens of thousands of college students, Roberts and Wetzel concluded they are in fact slightly less narcissistic than their 1990s counterparts.
Perceptions persist, however, even among young people.
Earlier this year, another research group surveyed college students and older adults of all ages, learning that despite research showing that younger generations are not more narcissistic than previous generations, students believe the popular narrative that “adolescents and members of their own age group are indeed exceptionally narcissistic and entitled,” but they are “somewhat distressed” by the labels. “All generations think that the youngest generations… are the most narcissistic and entitled generations,” said study leader Joshua Grubbs of Bowling Green State University. “However, millennials and Generation Z dislike this characterization and believe it less than older generations do.”
Flattery will get you everywhere
No matter how it’s defined or what its exact manifestations are, narcissism is “sort of the buzzword of our time,” says Ramani Durvasula, a professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, who is also the author of Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist. “And it is woefully misunderstood. People with narcissism are often the most insecure people in the room, but they learned how to not show it.”
“A narcissist will fool you with smarts and charm, but behind the facade is a lack of empathy and compassion and a propensity to deceive,” Durvasula explains in an American Psychological Association podcast. This can make them a tough romantic partner.
Anyone who’s ever had a job knows these problems can extend to the workplace. Given their sensitive egos, narcissists can feel threatened easily and lash out aggressively, says Grijalva, the co-author of the new study. They are typically selfish, not tending to act in the best interests of their group or organization.
In previous research, Grijalva found that when the most narcissistic people become leaders, their worst traits tend to emerge, including “being exploitative, arrogant, and even tyrannical,” undermining their effectiveness.
“At work, I am careful about publicly disagreeing with or embarrassing these individuals,” Grijalva says today. “I also find flattery is more effective with narcissists. If I suspect someone may be narcissistic, then I try to involve them in making decisions and let them believe that something is their idea.” | https://elemental.medium.com/everything-you-should-know-about-narcissism-510c5adb00d3 | ['Robert Roy Britt'] | 2019-09-25 16:39:49.856000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Mental Health', 'Narcissism', 'Science', 'Leadership'] |
Node.js Monitoring Made Easy | Node.js monitoring is a tricky task. There are certain challenges to look out for. Because Node.js is a dynamically typed programming language and single-threaded you give the interpreter and runtime a lot of freedom to make decisions. This can easily result in memory leaks and high CPU loads. Parallel execution is simulated in Node.js by using asynchronous execution of functions. But, if a single function blocks the thread or event queue, the application performance will take a huge hit.
This article will dive into how you can monitor your application and make sure these issues don’t happen. I’ll cover Application Performance Management (APM) and why it’s important, but also Log Management and how you can create structured logs to help you debug, troubleshoot and track errors in your application.
Ready? Let’s jump in.
What is Application Performance Management?
Monitoring your software revolves around making sure everything works the way it should. You want your users to have a pleasant experience in using your software. A proper definition of what monitoring is, by the dictionary, would sound something like this.
To observe and check the progress or quality of (something) over a period of time; keep under systematic review.
It sounds rather vague. So let’s skip the formalities and jump into some real-world use-cases. Monitoring provides a way of preventing the loss of customers and crucially, stops you from wasting time. Time is money, and preventing downtime, loss of resources and saving your product from performance issues will save you money in the long run; which is and should be the core focus of every business — to make money.
Application Performance Management (APM) defines a way to monitor the performance and availability of software applications. It’s standardized by showing charts with performance metrics for things like request count, response times, CPU usage and memory utilization. These charts show you averages, percentiles and any custom grouping you might want to define. I’ll walk you through this in the next few sections of this tutorial. You can easily add APM to your Node.js app with Sematext’s integration for Node.js.
What Node.js Metrics to Monitor?
There are a few main factors you want to take into consideration when monitoring your application. Ranging from general info about system health all the way to how your servers are utilizing memory and CPU cycles. I’ve covered this in more detail in part 1 of this series called Top Node.js Metrics to Monitor. Let’s do a quick recap before moving on.
System Health & Downtime
If your application isn’t working, your customers can’t spend money. As you can imagine, this is bad. What’s much worse is that it causes them to lose trust in you. The probability that they’ll come back is slim if they lose trust in you and your product. Your goal is to set up a monitoring solution to monitor how your system is behaving. It should notify you right away about downtimes, high latencies or any service issues that may occur.
Resource Utilization
Poorly-optimized services use more resources, cost more money and have higher latencies. Finding performance issues and giving you an easy way of solving them is why you need to choose your APM tool carefully. It should give you a way of improving your application so you don’t spend money, time and resources on unnecessary infrastructure because of your poor coding skills.
Eliminating performance bottlenecks ensures you don’t need to scale up your infrastructure when you have sudden spikes in traffic. That’s why monitoring CPU utilization and memory is a crucial step.
Node.js API Latency
It’s a fact that users don’t want to stick around and wait for your application to load. The mean wait-time is around 2 seconds. That’s how much time you have to make sure you don’t lose that customer for good. It’s no secret, the faster your product is, the more customers you’ll have. More importantly, user satisfaction will be higher.
What you can do to notice slow services is to collect data on a service level. If you have several APIs, make sure to analyze latency for each of them. This will give you more insight into the real reason why your services are slow.
Node.js Error Rates and Error Handling
Features can quickly turn into bugs. Failing code can go unnoticed for a long period of time if you don’t have a way of knowing about them. You can’t rely on your users telling you. If they stumble upon a problem, they’ll much more likely to leave your site than tell you.
To discover issues you need to monitor the amount and type of errors your application is producing. This includes 4xx/5xx status codes, runtime errors and application crashes. If you have a high number of errors, there’s a probability you have issues with code quality.
To keep error counts low, make sure to prioritize code quality, TDD and a nice CI/CD pipeline. This will create a sense of responsibility in your team and relieve a lot of stress for your developers because the testing and deployment process is automated.
If your APM tool is collecting error data as well, you’ll have a way of finding similar error patterns. This is incredibly convenient for saving time and improving your application’s stability and performance.
I’d also recommend pairing your monitoring tool with a log shipper. Using logs as support for your APM metrics will give you more fine-grained info about service-level performance. More about that in the next section.
What is Log Management?
Log Management is a crucial pillar for gaining proper insight into your application. From supporting APM with infrastructure-level logs to telling you more about your application life cycle with service-level logs, logs support you in every step of the way. From troubleshooting existing issues to planning new features, logging is a key step in implementing any new piece of code or fixing an old bug.
Logs paint a bigger picture, giving your APM supporting info that can often turn out to be crucial. Ideally, you’d always send all logs to the same central location, no matter their origin. Even if they can be entirely different such as infrastructure logs, database logs, or application logs, you should take them as a whole as they all impact your customers. You can capture server logs with Sematext Logagent.
What to log in Node.js?
It may be clear why you should log, but just to close the loop, let’s list the main reasons.
Node.js Performance Logs
APM tools will already show the performance of your application. The reason logging is important for performance is to get more detailed insight into which APIs, services, or functions have high latencies.
Debugging Node.js Logs
When things break you need a way to troubleshoot and find the issue. Debugging by analyzing logs and getting to the bottom of an issue is the first thing you will most likely do. Stuff happens. It gives you a way to see where the error occurred and show you a stack trace.
Error Tracking with Node.js Logs
To debug errors, you need to know they happened at all. Knowing when they occurred and how often they repeat, if they’ve been fixed, or if they return is crucial.
Analyzing Node.js Logs
Logs are rich sources of information. You can analyze logs to discover usage patterns to guide decisions.
You can get service level info with logs, which show the info about every API request in particular. This will help with troubleshooting, debugging and error tracking.
Monitoring for Node.js
Let me show you a nice and simple way of adding monitoring to your existing Express.js application. We’ll start with a simple server with a few API endpoints. First, create a new directory and name it nodejs-monitoring. Open up a terminal window, initialize NPM, and install a few modules.
$ npm init -y
$ npm i express dotenv spm-agent-nodejs
This is everything you need in order to have an APM tool running and monitoring your application. Now, create two files, an app.js and a .env . Add this piece of code to the app.js .
require('dotenv').config()
require('spm-agent-nodejs')
const express = require('express')
const app = express()
app.get('/api', (req, res, next) => {
res.status(200).send('Api Works.')
})
app.get('/api/fast', (req, res, next) => {
res.status(200).send('Fast response!')
})
app.get('/api/slow', (req, res, next) => {
setTimeout(() => {
res.status(200).send('Slow response...')
}, 1000)
})
app.get('/api/error', (req, res, next) => {
try {
throw new Error('Something broke...')
} catch (error) {
res.status(500).send(error)
}
})
app.listen(3000, () =>
console.log('Server is running on port 3000'))
The Sematext Agent for Node.js requires a specific SPM_TOKEN environment variable to work correctly. That’s why we’re requiring dotenv at the top of the app.js . To get the token, which is the location where your Node.js application will send the metrics, you need to create a Sematext Monitoring App. Open up your browser, sign up to Sematext Cloud if you haven’t already, and click the blue Create Monitoring App button. This takes you to a screen where you have to choose which type of app you want to monitor.
Give your app a name, and toggle the Ship Logs switch as well.
Click create and you’re done! The only thing now is to copy the SPM_TOKEN .
Once you have it copied, move back to the code editor. Open the .env file and add the token.
SPM_TOKEN=some-value-for-your-token
That’s it! Run your application and test the endpoints. You’ll see metrics show up in Sematext after a few moments.
In the Sematext Node.js Monitoring App, you’ll see a predefined set of dashboards that show more than 70 different Node.js APM and infrastructure metrics in predefined charts grouped into an intuitively organized set of monitoring dashboards.
Alerting on Node.js Metrics
To save you time, Sematext automatically creates a set of default alert rules such as alerts for low disk space. You can create additional alerts on any metric. Watch Alerts in Sematext Cloud for more details.
When you create a Monitoring App, Sematext automatically creates a set of default alerts for letting you know about heartbeats and low disk space. You can create three types of alerts.
Heartbeat alerts notify you when your server is down.
notify you when your server is down. Threshold-based alerts notify you when a metric value crosses a predefined threshold.
notify you when a metric value crosses a predefined threshold. Alerts based on statistical anomaly detection notify you when metric values suddenly change and deviate from the baseline.
To create an alert you hover over a metric and press the tiny bell icon.
The alert rule applies the filters from the current view and you can choose various notification options such as email or configured notification hooks like Slack, Pusher, etc. Alerts are triggered either by anomaly detection, watching metric changes in a given time window or through the use of classic threshold-based alerts.
By adding one module, the Sematext Agent for Node.js, you have full system insight with three different types of alerts and notification hooks. You can also see detailed performance metrics for your Node.js application. What you don’t have is API and service level info about which requests are failing and how to troubleshoot them. This is where logging comes into play. Let’s add a way to structure and send logs to Sematext.
Log Management for Node.js
Adding log management is a bit more tricky, but nothing you can’t handle. Open up the Sematext Logs App you created alongside the Monitoring App. It’s easy to find in the left side-nav under Logs. Open the integrations guide and find the Node.js integration. Copy the token and add it to your .env file, right under the SPM_TOKEN .
SPM_TOKEN=some-value-for-your-token
LOGS_TOKEN=some-value-for-your-token
Now you need to install a few more modules. There are a few, four to be precise.
$ npm install morgan morgan-json winston winston-logsene
Winston is the logger you’ll use, and the Winston-logsene module is an implementation of the Sematext log shipper that works seamlessly with Winston. Morgan is an HTTP logger that logs all HTTP requests hitting your APIs. The Morgan JSON module is a simple formatter for the message Morgan logs out.
The code edits are minor, here’s what your app.js should look like.
require('dotenv').config()
require('spm-agent-nodejs')
const express = require('express')
const app = express()
// add this part
//////////////////////////////////
const winston = require('winston')
const morgan = require('morgan')
const json = require('morgan-json')
const format = json({
method: ':method',
url: ':url',
status: ':status',
contentLength: ':res[content-length]',
responseTime: ':response-time'
})
const Logsene = require('winston-logsene')
const logger = winston.createLogger({
transports: [new Logsene({
token: process.env.LOGS_TOKEN, // token
level: 'info',
type: 'api_logs',
url: 'https://logsene-receiver.sematext.com/_bulk'
})]
})
const httpLogger = morgan(format, {
stream: {
write: (message) => logger.info('HTTP LOG', JSON.parse(message))
}
})
app.use(httpLogger)
/////////////////////////////////
app.get('/api', (req, res, next) => {
logger.info('Api Works.') // added logger
res.status(200).send('Api Works.')
})
app.get('/api/fast', (req, res, next) => {
res.status(200).send('Fast response!')
})
app.get('/api/slow', (req, res, next) => {
setTimeout(() => {
res.status(200).send('Slow response...')
}, 1000)
})
app.get('/api/error', (req, res, next) => {
try {
throw new Error('Something broke...')
} catch (error) {
logger.error(error) // added logger
res.status(500).send(error)
}
})
app.listen(3000, () =>
console.log('Server is running on port 3000'))
With this setup, every HTTP request hitting your APIs will get logged and stored in Sematext Logs. Winston also lets you define custom debug, error, and info logs for troubleshooting your application.
By adding 25 more lines of code and you’ve added Log Management to your Node.js application. Pretty cool.
Node.js Log Search and Dashboards
Once you have logs in Sematext you can search through them when troubleshooting, save queries you run frequently or create custom logs dashboards.
Searching logs is natural and works just like you would search for things with Google.
Use AND, OR, NOT operators: (error OR warn) NOT exception
operators: (error OR warn) NOT exception Group AND, OR, NOT clauses with parentheses : message:(exception OR error OR timeout) AND severity:(error OR warn)
AND, OR, NOT clauses : message:(exception OR error OR timeout) AND severity:(error OR warn) Use + and — to include and exclude : +message:error -message:timeout -host:db1.example.com
— to and : +message:error -message:timeout -host:db1.example.com Use field references : message:timeout
: message:timeout Use quotation marks to search for phrases: message:”fatal error”
Digging through logs can be a repetitive process. You will use the same searches over and over again. To avoid this, you can save queries and instantly run them again without having to type anything. Check out the using logs for troubleshooting guide and how it makes your life easier.
Alerting on Node.js Logs
To create a Logs alert run a query that matches the log events you want to be alerted about. Write the query in the search box and click to the tiny bell icon.
Similar to the setup of alert rules for metrics, we can define threshold-based or anomaly detection alerts based on the number of matching log events the alert query returns.
Check out the Alerts guide in the docs to read more about creating alerts for logs and metrics.
Node.js Metrics and Log Correlation
How do you troubleshoot your Node.js applications? I tend to check for spikes in my metrics, then digging down to find the root cause of the problem. In the majority of the cases, I scour logs for fine-grained info that caused the spike. Sematext makes it simple. Logs and metrics are linked and you can see in the same timeline what log correlates to which spike in metrics.
The logs are also centralized. Searching and filtering them is blazing fast, and the filtering syntax I showed above is straightforward. Having metrics, logs, and events on the same screen linked with the same timeline is so satisfying and makes my life easier when troubleshooting.
Which Node.js Metrics Should You Watch Out For?
Node.js is based upon the Google Chrome V8 JavaScript engine. As any modern programming language, it has Garbage Collection that reclaims memory used by variables that are no longer needed. The issue with this type of garbage collection is that it stops the program execution.
The key takeaway here is that latency is connected to throughput. Node.js is single threaded, but has non-blocking I/O interactions because of its asynchronous nature, meaning concurrency can increase during load. High latency and concurrency will increase memory usage. When the memory usage spikes, it will also increase the garbage collection activity, costing precious CPU cycles.
With regard to garbage collection metrics, you should first measure all the time spent on garbage collection. If there is a growing trend in garbage collection activity, you can expect CPU and memory usage to spike rather quickly as well.
Conclusion
In this article, you’ve learned about the concepts of monitoring and logging a Node.js app by using Application Performance Management and Log Management tools. We’ve covered the key things to look out for to keep your system healthy while keeping latencies as low as possible. By using APM to give you an overview of what’s going on and Log Management to drill down to the details about service-level info, you can gain proper insight into your system’s performance.
You have also learned how to add Sematext APM and Log Management to your existing Express.js application. All you needed was to add 26 lines of code and a few NPM modules.
We used out-of-the-box and custom dashboards, metrics and log correlation, anomaly detection, and alerts. And with other open-source integrations, like MongoDB or Nginx, you can easily monitor Node.js alongside all other technologies in your infrastructure. When choosing a tool for monitoring your application, make sure to pick one that is capable to give you full observability. Seeing metrics for all the systems that surround your Node.js apps is precious.
If you need an observability solution for your software stack, check out Sematext. We’re pushing to open source our products and make an impact. If you’d like to try us out and monitor your Node.js applications, sign up to get a 30-day pro trial, or choose the free tier right away.
Hope you guys and girls enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you liked it, slap that tiny share button so more people will see this tutorial. Until next time, be curious and have fun. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/node-js-monitoring-made-easy-4d84cd229ab2 | ['Adnan Rahić'] | 2019-06-02 17:12:36.678000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'Monitoring', 'Nodejs', 'DevOps'] |
Being Popular: You’ve Got It, or Ya Don’t | SHORT READS
Being Popular: You’ve Got It, or Ya Don’t
Photo by Joshua Fernandez on Unsplash
I am not, and have never been, popular. On days when my hair is buoyant and I remember to smile, I squeak by as likable.
It would be all too easy to sink into a morass of resentment over this fact. But I will never give up trying (and maybe that’s why I’m not popular?)
Until recently, I didn’t care. But lately I am mystified, much like one of my fave Medium writers, Michael Burg, MD, as to how to become popular. Is there a science to it. Can Dr. Seuss help?
Is there anything Dr. Seuss can’t help with? | https://medium.com/muddyum/being-popular-youve-got-it-or-ya-don-t-a81bd727503 | ['Jean Campbell'] | 2020-12-01 18:37:51.732000+00:00 | ['Attention', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Popularity', 'Childrens Books', 'Short Read'] |
The Music Of The Spheres | The Music Of The Spheres
Listen closely and it might lift your sagging spirits
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
I would never judge anyone’s journey. I don’t know where they’ve been or where they’re going. There are a lot of decent people out there who will do good work, but who will never face the dark truth of our realm. I see these people regularly and I try to meet them where they are and accept that I know nothing of their spiritual circumstances. At the same time, it hurts to see people sleepwalk through life. I feel apart from them now. It’s growing harder to synch up with the sleepwalkers. I’m identifying more and more with the part of me that’s awake. We had a group today where we discussed music and I lost myself in it. At first I didn’t realize why I found it so relaxing. It’s because for a few minutes I was able to go back to sleep. Recreation? I don’t do recreation. Can’t you see there is a war being waged? I’m feeling old. I was talking to one of the interns before the rest of the group had logged on and she’s sweet as pie and I just felt old. Like really, really old. I think that’s a good thing. It’s more reflective of my reality. I’m an old man in a younger person’s body. This is the dissonance you get when you try to cheat death.
I don’t pretend to be someone who has achieved enlightenment. I’m not a mystic or a sage. I’m a mentally ill recluse who has led a very strange and very disturbing life. I was wondering the other day what the movie of my life would be rated. It’s a hard R for sure, mostly for profanity and violence and other graphic content. I think maybe an NC-17 now that I think about it a little more. There is one scene in particular that would test the strongest stomachs. I had a dream awhile back about the actress Jennifer Carpenter from Dexter. She was being pulled away by the monsters at the end of Quarantine and then she showed up, happy and unharmed in something else. My brain struggled with the logic. How could a person die and then be living a whole other life? Reincarnation, silly. These are just the roles we choose to play. They aren’t who we truly are. So this is my horror movie. Unfortunately for me, this likely means no happy ending.
I lose track of time easily these days, especially sitting at this desk which faces the wall. I wonder if time ever loses track of me. It’s our earthly guidance system, built into the grid to carry us along from point A to point B, but does it ever malfunction? Can you ever become unmoored in time, trapped in some timeless twilight purgatory from which you can never escape? I’m chilled to the bone just thinking about it. I know people have gotten lost in phantom pockets of space-time for thousands of years and were driven utterly insane. We need more search and rescue teams on hand so no one ever has to suffer the unthinkable. There are some things that should never happen. Thousands of years of solitary confinement is one. Solitary confinement, period, is another.
Because this is a movie, I’ve had to do multiple takes to nail a scene in a way that pleases the producers and the director. I’ll sometimes even hear it in my head when I’m about to step onto the stage, ‘Alright ladies and gentlemen, take six’ or ‘we can do this folks, take eleven’. Loops within loops within loops. There is the eternal loop, the loop my life is on, then these mini-loops. So many loops you get dizzy and fall off the ride. Don’t worry, there’ll always be someone there to get you back on. Heaven is pretty merciless when it comes to its children and their lesson plans. You bought a ticket you must take the ride. You simply must, no excuses. I have asked for mercy many times during this dark night of my soul. They’ve told me that in time I’ll realize that this was mercy. I don’t doubt it, but it doesn’t take away the sting of my suffering.
I’m still thinking of my deceased cat, Ella. She was such a sweet girl. I thought her light shined too bright to ever be put out. I miss her so much I can’t put it into words. Even I’m standing back from myself in wonderment while I’m crying thinking ‘she was just a cat, get a grip, dude’. I cannot get a grip. I love her fiercely and forever. She just had the nicest presence, the best energy. It was so goddamn hard to put her limp body into a trash bag and bury it. How could they do this to Ella who never hurt anyone? How could they extinguish her light? There is something fundamentally flawed about our lives here on Earth. We run around and do our work and do our errands and visit with those who will allow it, and we don’t ever stop to question the premise of our lives. We don’t ask what we are doing beyond surviving and watching Netflix. We don’t look to the stars. If we could just pause for a moment and examine these lives under a microscope we might see that the tissue that binds us to the universe has broken down. We are the orphan children of these cosmos living in a state of spiritual amnesia. We need someone to come along and help us remember.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what happened. I’m not the same person I was prior to my serious illness in 2015. I came out after a month in the hospital to a world that looked the same but was not the same. It just felt wrong. Artificial. Maybe this was just the effects of my prolonged stay indoors and the trauma that I endured, but I think it was my intuition trying to tell me something. It felt like a lot more time had passed than just a month. I wondered if this was an alternate dimension, or an alternate timeline I had been switched onto. I walked back into my house, but was it still my house? I felt like the character Jim in 28 Days Later who wakes from a coma only to realize that the world has been devastated by a zombie apocalypse. This was not that, but it may have been worse. Something more insidious. The past is now just a front. We’re actually living in the future. Anyone who’s not in on the joke is susceptible to malign influence. I was in great emotional distress one day and I saw this image of my mother in my mind. She was bright and shining and full of sympathy and love. She was coming through to comfort me. This made me think that the people I live with are all simulacra and that my actual family died and moved on along time ago. This probably isn’t the case, but I have to put it out there as a possibility.
It’s only in times of great crisis that our faith can be fulfilled through the testing of its limits and the reinforcement of its power and promise. Only when we see our faith at work do we know that our faith exists. We must go forth humbly, seeking not its favor, only attempting to hold it in our hearts and bear it on our shoulders. Our faith is ours to keep, ours to nurture, ours to grow and tend to.
I still doubt that what I do I do for the right reasons. Have I struggled and strived merely to keep myself going and to satisfy my own interests or have I been actively engaged in a larger a larger contest with greater meaning than my one little life? Too often I think it’s the former. Yes, I’ve taken many, many hits but that was either to pay off karma I accumulated or to deal with a demon whose wrath I incurred. What have I done selflessly? What have I done for humanity? The only thing I can think of would be this writing, pouring my heart and soul onto the screen and letting people who are suffering know that they are not alone. I write when I’m sick, I write through my tears, I write when I don’t feel like it. I keep on writing because it’s what I love to do. This is how I discharge my duty. This is the one area in my life where I can honestly say I give all. If only I was so adept and conscientious in other areas.
Sometimes I will look at a chair or a coffee mug and I will think I am that thing. It’s the briefest flash of ego dissolution but it’s enough to momentarily take my breath away. We live in a world of rules and boundaries. Everything is circumscribed. Everything is tightly controlled. Things may seem chaotic these days, and they are, but underneath it all is an oppressive, mechanized disease of order. From birth we are told we are in a box and we are given the dimensions of that box and warned not to stray from it otherwise we get a spanking. We quickly learn that everyone has their own box with its own dimensions and all the boxes are headed down a conveyor belt in a large factory, a conveyor belt of time that takes us from the past into the future and deposits us in oblivion. Our minds are boxes. We take in so much material. Most of it is garbage, some of it is recycling and a tiny portion of it is valuable stuff for us to keep. But we think we have limits. I think I have limits. If I notice myself coming upon a subject or a concept that is a little too profound or bizarre I will recoil from it. I’m afraid of pushing my mind past the limits that have been set for it. I’d like to think I’m a deep thinker, but I can only go so deep before I turn around and head for safe harbor. What if I really pushed myself? At first it would be like holding my breath under water. I would only have a few moments before I would have to come up for air. But I could try.
I used to think that if all of time and space already exist then why don’t we have time travelers in our midst? And if creation is indeed infinite then we should be swamped with visitors. Time functions in a linear fashion in our 3D reality in order to organize the dynamics of matter. Without the forward trajectory of time milk would put itself back in the jug after having been spilt, people wouldn’t age and there would be general chaos. But if time is truly non-linear then we could be having discussions with our future selves all the time and not know it. They might not want to reveal themselves in order to preserve a person’s sanity or to abide by the rules of this system. You are already sixth density. You are already part of a group consciousness, you just don’t realize it. You’re also eighth density, or Source. You don’t realize that, either. Growing isn’t so much a process of discovering as it is of remembering. And we have forgotten so much. That is the sacrifice we make to play the game of separation. I think when we awake we are going to be astonished and a little bashful, ‘I fell for that?!’ But everything will come together. That doesn’t mean just because we are awake we have all the answers. The ultimate truth still lies beyond our field of vision. We may understand ourselves better and our relationship to creation, but not creation itself.
And there’s no guarantee that all of our future selves will be benevolent. It’s possible that a future self has come back to the past to terrorize you. I speak with my guides and they’re the good guys, they’re of the light, but I also have regular encounters with evil incarnate. The good guys say they’re me in the future. Could the evil ones be me as well? Some of them, at least? Is this why this is all part of my dream, because I’m performing all the parts? What remains, if anything, when I wake up? I just want to go home. I really, really do. Where are my ruby slippers?
I’m getting ‘the treatment’. It’s a process whereby they rehabilitate sick, traumatized or recalcitrant souls. They did this for Hitler after he completed suicide, and was very put out that he didn’t complete his mission. He was confused and required a lot of work but eventually they got him to a place where he could reincarnate and give life another chance. Knowing that I’m getting the same treatment as Hitler does not inspire confidence, but they tell me I need it, or deserve it and I trust their judgment. But I have to say it’s felt more like punishment than anything else. I’ve suffered in ways I couldn’t have imagined before this all began.
I want to go back to time briefly. There is something I’m just not getting. Some key clue I’m missing. If time is not linear then what does that do to cause and effect? Perhaps the relationship would change, and effects would be felt before the causes were made clear. Perhaps time could interpenetrate itself, folding over onto itself and stacking up to the celestial ceiling. I had a dream once where I was helping my younger self write a screenplay for a short film. It didn’t feel like a dream to me. It felt like a memory. And if you read the screenplay it doesn’t sound like something a young person would write, or be capable of writing. So I’m a future self interacting with my past self. Only now am I seeing the cause of the effects. Still, it’s not quite right, is it? I’m missing something crucial and I don’t think my brain is big enough to grasp it. I can only wonder what other effects we are seeing that only in the future we will realize the causes of. Maybe there is a fluidity to time. Maybe we co-create time with our consciousness. Maybe when we arrive in fourth density we can swim through it, upstream or downstream. Maybe in fourth density energetic grids organize reality, not time. I really don’t know.
I know that I’m in captivity because of my illness. I have to take my medicine regularly or I become a monster. I don’t know how long this will last, but I’m very lonely, and very bored. It was my fault I got sick. I was reckless. But I don’t deserve what’s happening to me. No one does.
Some people are convinced I’m a psychopath. A psychopath who is nice to animals. They doubt I can empathize with people. They doubt whether I can care selflessly for another. They doubt I can love. I’ve wondered the same things. If I’m a psychopath I wasn’t born this way. I devolved over time through pain and trauma. But I don’t think I’m a psychopath. I feel genuine emotions. I feel love. I feel joy. I feel anger. I feel sadness. I feel sympathy. I feel shame. A psychopath wouldn’t spend this much time worrying whether they were a psychopath or not. A psychopath wouldn’t spend hours writing about what makes people tick and sending out messages of hope to those who are in pain. A psychopath wouldn’t take such a passionate, heartfelt interest in the suffering of his brothers and sisters. A psychopath wouldn’t grieve like I grieve. A psychopath wouldn’t have been an angel to his grandmother. A psychopath wouldn’t have written letters to his parents telling them how much he loved them. A psychopath wouldn’t be a sensitive soul who felt all distress so acutely. I am not a psychopath. You want me to be a psychopath because it fits the narrative you’ve created, but it just doesn’t add up. Find someone else. I’m not that guy.
What a strange place to end up, this Earth. We could have landed anywhere, or nowhere, and we show up on this blue marble coasting through space. They say all roads lead to Orion, that Orion is our past and also our future. I don’t know about that, but I know that I find this set up of planets and stars and galaxies to be rather odd. We live in a holographic universe, now what is projecting the hologram? Where does the information come from? Is it possible that the stars and the black holes and the comets and the quasars are all for show? That we were provided this backdrop for the purposes of the human experiment? When I am truly having a hard time of it, one of my guides will say ‘I’m going in’. Going into what, from where? 3D life on earth is a game. Are they coming into the game? Or merely into third density? Or perhaps into whatever exactly this is? Again, there’s something I’m missing. What are we inside of? Could it be that the higher densities designed a game for us and that this game has very distinct boundaries? They gave us lots of things to occupy our time and imaginations. But we’re in a bubble universe and there isn’t actually such a thing as ‘stars’. It’s all part of the dream. When we wake up in the future we realize that we lived in an artificially constructed past. This doesn’t feel quite right, either, but it’s something.
This is my least favorite part. The ending. I’ve never liked endings. They always made me very sad. I always think I could have, should have written more. But I have to let the piece go. There is always another one coming on its heels. So I would only ask this of you, dear reader, don’t give in to despair. Try to do some honest soul searching and discover the reason for why you are here. You have one. We all do. See if you can refresh your heart by tapping into your purpose. We need you here, with us. Don’t ever give up hope. | https://medium.com/an-idea/the-music-of-the-spheres-f9ce3961e8e7 | ["Timothy O'Neill"] | 2020-10-28 00:03:12.576000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Life', 'Culture', 'Self', 'Space'] |
Performance and Quality Through Leadership | Photo by Joshua Hibbert on Unsplash
The world’s leading engineering companies and their leadership teams have one mission objective outside of the commercial, to build and retain industry leading, high-performance people that deliver quality products on time.
When building teams of talented people that work together, effectively, especially in challenging environments, leadership must maintain a focus on identifying, hiring and retaining the teams that comprise of the key talent that lies behind every innovation and new product release. Those teams require engineering management of the highest ability as well as those that embody a positive corporate culture and bring out the best in their people. Not through force but through ability enablement and nurturing of individual and team skillsets. Only the top engineering companies can produce this level of productivity, innovation and expertise.
Obviously, hiring the right people is reliant on building an environment where talented people want to work. Somewhere they can use their passion for engineering to grow themselves and the product or service. A culture rooted in growing the strength of a team by growing the market value of every employee, will ensure high levels of team retention through training and investment creating an inherent sense of self-value. In turn creating an atmosphere where personal performance is as important as corporate output and customer perception.
In combination with common perks such as flexible-working hours, games areas, company activities focused on fun and team building, a focus on increasing an employee’s value subsequently improves a company’s reputation and ability to attract the right people at the right time especially when that company is not risk averse and is willing to pursue new technologies, challenges and directions.
A “cultural manifesto” is now as important as the commercial playbook and is an inherent part of building strong and successful engineering teams. A company’s values, goals and working methods comprises more than the ingredients behind an often-empty Mission Statement and is now more a shared experience than a strapline!
The renowned MIT scholar Edward Schein defines culture as a “pattern of basic assumptions” which are discovered, invented and developed by a group as it works towards problem solving. Those basic assumptions, values, and problem-solving techniques become part of the organization’s “culture” as soon as they are codified into something that can be taught to new employees and is essential to the scaling of teams. Especially, in engineering environments such as scrum-teams working in Agile or Waterfall methodologies.
Photo by Garrett Sears on Unsplash
Development roadmaps are also essential in aiding project direction, control of output and the management of team morale . Adding an invaluable input from customer based “super user groups” ensure the customer base buy-in to new developments and directions at the earliest point which naturally leads to an uplift potential in sales. Meaning that, everyone is on the same page, both inside and outside the company. This approach to crafting software architecture roadmaps reinforces market leading potential, especially following on from a collaboration with the kind of customers that the competition takes notice of.
Also, of note is the source and the ease of which employees can see the route to success. In the IT sector, most MDs, CEOs, CTOs started their trade as engineers from which they climbed the ranks through hard work, dedication and skill. This level of achievement must be seen as available to all employees and if they “put the work in and they can get there too”. The real trick to engineering management is to focus on the management and not the coding, Generals need Lieutenants and a reliable mid-level engineering lead provides huge dividends.
Leadership that recognises what leadership means has massive value, managing and developing are very different skills and the human aspect needs to be nurtured. An awareness of the problems often seen during a company’s growth, especially those triggered by scaling aren’t easy to see. The remedy of which, is not as easy as rectifying coding problems and again this contributes towards that culture of excellence. Great management at its basic level is keeping your team happy, but in order to achieve a culture of excellence a team needs to be more than happy, they need to be challenged. No one likes a boring environment and pushing the product set to new heights and capabilities, especially those you know your competition struggles with, brings bragging rights and huge rewards. A team should also have a visibility of success, their reward doesn’t amount to just pay-day and a sense of ownership, being a part of success establishes personal growth. An engineer with a sense of worth and value is a high-performing engineer and a high-performing engineer with a sense of ownership, is an exceptional engineer!
The above approach combined with effective involvement, collaboration and team-wide communication will deliver high-quality products on schedule and in conjunction with the “user super group”, to deliver an unrivalled product with market dominating performance. This approach to high-level working practices doesn’t happen by mistake, it is a deliberate act, designed to produce an environment where commercial and personal success is not the exception, but the absolute minimum expectation. Success, like quality is never a mistake, it is a destination and the correct roadmap will deliver every time. Inherently, tension will occur, people are people after all, but capturing and directing that energy prevents issues and will bring about a positive outcome, especially in a team where success is the only aim.
“No need to reinvent the wheel” is a phrase often heard, however in engineering, especially where Safety Criticality and Quality are concerned, it is a phrase often far from the current truth. To continue the march towards ever greater levels of automation, in areas such as testing, reinventing the wheel leads to market-dominating technologies which in turn lowers end user needs for enormous man hour efforts. Similarly, the development team needs to ever increase the level of automation and the quality of the automations output and performance. It is the identification of that need, and the route to delivering such technologies which further distinguish a leading technology company, from just a technology company. Regular and punctual release schedules based upon a culture of continuous improvement portrays a company and staff that is not just content with its market position but is always striving to lead. It is this attitude towards leadership, this attitude towards inspiration and this attitude towards growth which defines quality, from Junior Developer to CEO, quality runs through a leading company’s veins. | https://medium.com/software-quality-qa-systems/performance-and-quality-through-leadership-741da2bd85dd | ['Dylan Llewellyn'] | 2020-04-06 10:13:40.298000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Software Development', 'Management', 'Startup', 'Technology'] |
Design Your B2B Online Store to Attract More Customers | Every successful sale starts with successful marketing.
So, if by chance you’re not seeing the kind of sales you were hoping for with your online store, rethinking your marketing strategy would be the first step.
Table of Contents:
Design a Great User Experience
Make Your Homepage The Center of Your Design Efforts
5 Homepage Design Tips to Take Into Consideration
But first, ask yourself two simple questions: who are your clients and for what reason do they purchase certain products?
You’d be surprised by the number of eCommerce stores around the world that struggle with marketing their business properly because they don’t fully comprehend their intended interest group.
To sell better, you have to market your business better.
To do so, start by taking a deep dive into understanding who your target audience is and what products they are interested in purchasing.
That’s where designing your B2B online store comes in.
The design of your online store has a huge influence on user experience and whether or not people choose to buy from you.
You want a clear, concise and uncluttered site that makes it easy for buyers to find what they need and effortlessly guide them through the purchase process.
While it might be tempting to cram as many products or related content into one page as possible but it is good practice to have a good amount of “ white space “ in between elements.
This makes things more digestible for the buyer.
If you want to attract customers to your online store, you have to design it in a way that matches the needs and wants of your buyer.
Doing so will help establish your website on the internet as well as deliver visitors to the pages they are searching for, and ultimately it is the best way to increase sales, visibility and growth for your store.
To attract more customers consider doing the following:
Design a Great User Experience
If you already own a website odds are that you’ve heard of the terms User Experience Design (UX) and User Interface Design (UI) before.
Despite the fact that UX and UI are not similar but they are comparative in nature.
With that being said, they are still very important tools you will need in order to build a fully functioning and attractive website that will help bring in more customers.
UX and UI together are what makes a website speak to your target audience.
UI is more like graphic design, while UX is more of a navigation that allows a customer to browse through your site.
UX designers invest their energy towards menu formats, link navigation, button design and location, the ease of use of a shopping car, and other tools that website visitors will need in order to navigate your website appropriately.
To bring more conversions and improve user experience, UI designers also design a site in a visually appealing way (buttons, links, etc) that is geared towards the target market of your customers.
To match the needs of your buyers, attract more customers and encourage them to convert, incorporating UX and UI into the design strategy of your website is the only way to do so.
Make Your Homepage The Center of Your Design Efforts
Despite the fact that it probably won’t be the primary page a website visitor sees when they arrive, your homepage is presumably the most significant page on your site.
Regardless of how a visitor navigates through your website, the design of your homepages is normally what your website will be judged by.
So, while each page on your site ought to be intended to establish a great first impression, your homepage should be the focal point of your design, since it’s the gateway through which individuals are meant to enter your online store.
When somebody visits your site and they don’t care for what they see, their first move will be to leave.
To make matters worse, they may inform others about the negative experience they had on your site, harming your notoriety and bringing down your odds of attracting more customers.
To make a good first impression, here are a 5 homepage design tips to take into consideration:
Be Clear About What Your Website is About: Your homepage should be all about your business, and what visitors can get from your website first. Your company branding should be included, such as the logo and tagline of your company. But the most critical part of your homepage lies in effective communication with visitors about the good or services you provide — otherwise, you leave them no reason to visit your website.
Your homepage should be all about your business, and what visitors can get from your website first. Your company branding should be included, such as the logo and tagline of your company. But the most critical part of your homepage lies in effective communication with visitors about the good or services you provide — otherwise, you leave them no reason to visit your website. Make Sure Your Target Audience Can Understand Your Content: Before you design your B2B online store, look around other sites and see how their content speaks to website visitors. Make your content simple for your target audience to understand your content.
Before you design your B2B online store, look around other sites and see how their content speaks to website visitors. Make your content simple for your target audience to understand your content. Don’t Spam Your Website: Nobody likes spam. On the off chance that your landing page is jumbled with irrelevant content or images that are not inline with the products you offer, your website will come off as spammy — and most visitors won’t have any desire to read it, which leads to them leaving your site.
Nobody likes spam. On the off chance that your landing page is jumbled with irrelevant content or images that are not inline with the products you offer, your website will come off as spammy — and most visitors won’t have any desire to read it, which leads to them leaving your site. Create a Quality Call-to-Action: A well-structured website uses a call-to-action in key spots and at the right moments to help conversion. Particularly on your homepage, a quality call-to-action will act as a guide for your website visitors, whether they’re just shopping around or filling out a contact form.
A well-structured website uses a call-to-action in key spots and at the right moments to help conversion. Particularly on your homepage, a quality call-to-action will act as a guide for your website visitors, whether they’re just shopping around or filling out a contact form. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly: By using a responsive web design, especially on your homepage, you give your website the best possible chance to perform well and attract more customers. A responsive design allows your website to be viewed properly from any device — mobile or tablet — and still be able to function.
Photos of your products are another important design element.
So, when taking them, make sure that they’re high resolution and showcase features that your buyers will find most relevant.
Also make sure that your images are audience-appropriate.
If executives are the main purchasers on your website, you should probably avoid clip art or cartoons that are better served to convert individual employees or consumers.
Finally, don’t forget that people are shopping more and more on smartphones and tablets.
Ensuring that your online store is responsive across devices and screen sizes will guarantee a personalized buyer experience for each individual buyer. | https://medium.com/@andrew_18378/design-your-b2b-online-store-to-attract-more-customers-67d84834fdf5 | ['Andrew M'] | 2019-06-17 15:06:59.600000+00:00 | ['UX', 'Online Store', 'B2b Marketing'] |
The Mandatory Expulsion Maze: Giving a Friend an Adderall Derailed an Honor Student’s Academic Career. He’s Not the Only One | By Bekah McNeel
Seaira Caldwell (Bekah McNeel)
Andy Rodriguez is not what you’d expect a dropout to look like. Artistic and inclined to achieve, the high school junior was attending an elite arts magnet in San Antonio when he made what his mom, Angela, called “a stupid mistake.”
He gave a friend an Adderall.
His school reported it as a felony — and then had no choice but to expel him.
From there, Rodriguez (not his real name; he asked for anonymity as he rebuilds his future) found himself thwarted by policies that were not necessarily designed to make it harder to get back on track but nonetheless left him with little option but to finish high school online, without the Advanced Placement credits and prestigious diploma he’d been on track to obtain.
Mandatory expulsion laws vary from state to state, and many students do not know about them until they have committed an offense — wittingly or unwittingly. But once expulsion happens, students describe a jarring transition from a world where teachers and principals make subjective calls based on the kid’s past and overall character to a legalistic process of statutes and protocols that can leave them high and dry.
Often, it’s the students with the brightest prospects who have the most to lose. Transcript boosters like specialized courses and AP classes are often unavailable in the alternative education system these students are forced into, taking them out of the running for competitive college admissions.
The most fortunate have parents or advocates to help them forge a new path. Others end up reasonably mistrustful of “the system” or disengaged from it altogether, reducing any chance that they will find jobs that support a stable lifestyle, said Tyler Whittenberg of the Advancement Project, a national civil rights advocacy group. “We know that suspension and expulsion don’t work,” he said. “They literally don’t address any behavioral issue.”
What they do, he said, is feed the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. “Pipeline,” though, is really a misnomer, Whittenberg said: “It’s more like a maze.”
‘Chutes and Ladders’
Rodriguez had carried the kind of courseload that doesn’t leave a lot of room for getting into trouble.
He was taking seven AP classes at an elite arts magnet program in North East Independent School District, a suburban district outside San Antonio where less than half the students come from families making $44,000 or less. His musical talent had won him a coveted spot in the program, unlike anything available to him in his home district, San Antonio ISD, where 91 percent of families (though not his) make $44,000 or less.
It turned out to be an opportunity easily revoked.
Just before Thanksgiving break in 2018, a friend approached Rodriguez in a state of angst. As he tells it, she said she had forgotten to take her Adderall that morning. He had a prescription for the attention deficit disorder drug and gave her one of his pills.
Two weeks later, as they prepared to take their semester finals, Rodriguez was called into the school office. The girl, it turned out, had not had a prescription — though it’s unlikely that would have mattered, legally. Rodriguez had distributed a controlled substance on school grounds. The offense qualified as a felony, and it triggered mandatory expulsion.
At first, he said, teachers and administrators were reassuring, making the situation seem less serious than it was. But as the day progressed, the interactions grew more procedural, he said: “I’m absolutely certain they knew what was going to happen.”
He would be expelled, five days short of the 90 percent attendance required to get credit for his AP classes. He lost all his coursework for the semester.
Though Rodriguez wondered if the school had some tiny bit of flexibility that could have kept him on track academically, the process was in keeping with Texas’s mandatory expulsion policy, district spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor said. “It’s really out of our hands,” she said.
What followed, said Rodriguez’s mom, felt like “a game of Chutes and Ladders.” One policy triggered another, making opportunities evaporate. North East ISD does not allow nonresident students to re-enroll in the district after they have been expelled.
“They’re here,” Chancellor said, “as a courtesy.”
It would be up to Rodriguez’s home district, San Antonio ISD, to set the terms of his expulsion.
Before he could enroll in his neighborhood high school, the district required him to attend the non-residential Bexar County Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program for the remainder of the school year. However, his AP credits were lost, because his former high school would not provide the materials and information the program staff would have needed to help him complete his classes. By the time he got out, he would be a rising senior, too old to enroll in any of his home district’s magnet programs or early college high schools. He would go to his neighborhood high school, a lower-income school that offered only a fraction of the AP courses he had planned to take. His college applications would look very different.
In Texas, students can be assigned to the juvenile justice program for anywhere from 10 to 180 days as part of their disciplinary sentence; the average length of enrollment in the Bexar County program was 58 days in 2018. If the expelling district cooperates, said program director Stephanie Gonzales, students can make up much of what they’ve missed. The program can accommodate honors and even some AP classes, she said, and if the school will work with her, she can pick up classwork for students with short-term sentences.
Every student gets an Individualized Education Plan and is expected to complete classes like English and history through independent reading. For certain subjects that require more instruction, like science, languages or higher-level math, Gonzalez can bring in specialists. But a lot depends on what the district will allow. They might not have control over mandatory expulsions, but districts have lots of discretion in what happens to students afterward.
In fact, there is so much inconsistency that it’s impossible to establish any norms, let alone best practices, said Hailly Korman, a senior associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners. In combing through data from the federal Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights for the approximately 111,000 expelled students nationwide, she found that states don’t even have the same definitions or terminology for juvenile justice or alternative school programs. Between 2011 and 2014, only 10 states used correct coding in reporting data about their programs to the government. Such lax data-keeping is telling, Korman said: Federal, state, and local agencies have not prioritized accountability on behalf of the students.
“These schools function as off-the-books enterprises,” she said.
Comparing that sparse information to the extensive reporting required for children enrolled in public schools, Korman said, made it clear that once students are expelled, they are largely written off. For instance, in some juvenile justice programs, she said, every student sits for the GED. Once that is done, the students can be reported as having finished high school, even though they have not had the teaching and content exposure of those who complete their studies in class.
One thing she was able to glean from the data is that alternative or juvenile justice programs typically “offer less access to higher-level math and science classes than their neighborhood school counterparts.”
Weighing their options, Rodriguez’s family felt it would be best if he enrolled in an online program to finish high school and simultaneously take classes at a community college. It took months of research, and neither the online classes nor the community college courses are free. But his family is middle class, able to shoulder the cost.
“My parents spent a lot of time trying to make it better,” Rodriguez said, even though he struggled to motivate himself. His family dragged him along until he could hit what he called “a hard reset” on his own motivation.
The program’s educational program director, Rebekah Martinez, said parents play a primary role in helping kids reengage in school after an expulsion. The more resources — time, expertise and money — the family has, the less likely it will be that teenage transgressions will divert students straight to the school-to-prison pipeline.
The rise of zero tolerance
Of the 154 students enrolled at the Bexar County Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program at various times in the 2018–19 school year, 55 percent had been subject to mandatory expulsion, program officials said — largely as a result of zero-tolerance laws that proliferated in after the passage of the federal Gun-Free Schools Act in 1994. The rhetoric of the day was all about fear of gang violence, so-called superpredators and losing the war on drugs. But there’s no getting away from the racial stereotyping inherent in the political effort to pass those laws, said Whittenberg. “Even the tone, and the language used to pass and enact these (laws),” he said, “they’re racist, really. They’re archaic.”
Whatever the intent, the disproportionate effects of the laws are clear, as shown in research from the Office of Civil Rights and numerous think tanks and advocacy groups. The gap varies from state to state, Whittenberg said, but black and Hispanic youth are always overrepresented in disciplinary data.
From there, a predictable scenario plays out. Research shows that suspension and expulsion make it more likely a student will land in the juvenile justice system. Recidivism data differs from state to state, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center, but in some states as many as 80 percent of youths who are incarcerated are rearrested shortly after release. As this cycle continues, they eventually age out of the juvenile system and end up in adult courts and jails.
Following the passage of zero-tolerance laws, states saw an immediate increase in black and Latino youth in the juvenile justice system, Whittenberg said. Where discretion existed, it was usually exercised to the benefit of white students, who have been found to face lighter punishment for the same offenses as their black and Hispanic counterparts.
Though the Gun Free Schools Act, which requires schools to expel students for bringing firearms onto campus, allows states to create a case-by-case review process, all accept the federal mandate as absolute. And though zero tolerance went out of fashion during the Obama era, which emphasized restorative justice and positive behavior interventions, schools do not want to risk getting sued for making exceptions to laws already on the books. For not reporting the gun. For not expelling the offender.
“Government entities are liability-driven,” Whittenberg said.
States differ in how much discretion they leave to school districts.
Beyond the Gun Free Schools Act, places like Texas, California and Virginia have additional grounds for mandatory expulsion. In Virginia, possession of a controlled substance requires expulsion, save in cases where a special exception is justified after an investigation. In California, suspension is mandatory and superintendents are required to recommend expulsion for “brandishing a knife at another person,” selling controlled substances, attempting or committing sexual assault or possessing explosives. The “recommendation” provision in California’s law allows for lesser punishments in special circumstances but makes them the exception, not the rule.
Texas has 11 offenses for which expulsion is required, one of the most extensive lists in the country. Most, like murder, manslaughter and abuse of children, are specific criminal acts, but one provision in state law makes any felonious behavior grounds for mandatory expulsion.
The sweeping nature of those laws is stretching the Bexar County program beyond its original intent, said Lynne Wilkerson, the county’s chief probation officer. Every legislative session, Wilkerson opposes new mandatory expulsion bills. Most recently, Texas’s 2019 Legislature heard a proposal to add “terroristic threats.”
While that bill did not pass in its original form, language was written into another measure (one that has been signed into law) that requires any student expelled for terroristic threats to attend his or her county’s juvenile justice program. Wilkerson said she is not yet sure how this will affect the numbers in Bexar County.
She wants to see more disciplinary discretion returned to the schools. Those who know the kids best, she said, should decide whether expulsion is really the most beneficial approach.
For students who have committed dangerous or violent acts, or those whose perpetual destructive behaviors can no longer be addressed by their school, the program offers what is known as therapeutic justice, akin to drug court. Students meet with a caseworker from Communities in Schools, a national dropout prevention organization, who can address the social-emotional issues at the root of their behavior and often provide the listening adult ear the kids have been craving.
Students work with tutors and instructors at the ratio and pace necessary to help them master academic subject matter. Students with learning disabilities are among the most overdisciplined kids in Texas, according to data from the Texas Education Agency, and having one-on-one instruction can help.
This therapeutic approach makes recidivism low, Wilkerson said. The county defines recidivism as a second referral to a juvenile justice program in the same school year. In 2018, Wilkerson reported no repeat referrals.
Still, while she said the program’s staffers are doing what they should for the students who need it, with every new mandatory minimum, they are asked to do more.
The proliferation of disguisable marijuana products and of vape pens, which can be used for legal nicotine or illegal THC, the active ingredient in pot, has increased the influx of students from suburban, higher-income schools, program staff said. For those students to keep up with their classes, the program has had to broaden its ability to facilitate AP and dual-credit classes, which are more readily available in higher-income schools.
“When kids come in and they’re beyond the basics, the folks (at the program) do the best they can, but they can’t offer what a school district can,” Wilkerson said.
Fighting for her future
Nineteen-year-old Seaira Caldwell doesn’t blame the teachers or administrators at KIPP University Prep in San Antonio for the detour her life took May 16, 2016. She doesn’t blame the classmate who saw the gun in her backpack and turned her in. She doesn’t blame the judge who sentenced her.
She takes responsibility for her mistake, even if the repercussions went far beyond anything she could have anticipated.
It didn’t matter, Caldwell explained, that she was an all A-B student, a student ambassador, with no previous disciplinary record (“not even a write-up!” she said) and no intent to harm anyone.
It was a gun. It was at school.
She was 16, in that kind of teenage love every kid thinks will last forever. Then her grandfather died, and her father, after eight years as a single dad, decided to remarry. For Caldwell, the oldest of three, “My normal was changing.”
She started talking back to teachers — it was the most rebellious she had ever been. When her boyfriend told her he was in danger and asked her to steal one of her dad’s guns for him, she didn’t question him. He asked her to deliver the gun to his brother, who went to her school.
A classmate saw the gun, and when the front office called for Caldwell over the loudspeaker on the last class of the day, she said, “I knew they knew.”
She’d never been called to the principal’s office before.
From there, Caldwell recalled, the process was like machinery. Mandatory police reports became mandatory sentences, both inside and outside of school.
KIPP staff rallied for Caldwell. They found a lawyer to represent her pro bono, testified on her behalf and wrote letters to the judge. She credits their involvement for her sentence getting knocked down to a class A misdemeanor instead of a felony.
“We didn’t want this behavior choice to negatively impact the rest of her days,” said Mark Larson, who was CEO of KIPP San Antonio at the time. “What we tried to do is what anybody of means would do for their kid.”
Larson made it clear that he believes carrying firearms to school should be treated seriously, even with expulsion. However, knowing the situation around Caldwell’s infraction, he wanted to make sure she wasn’t totally derailed.
She got probation and community service, and her probation officer let her count her fast-food job. KIPP administrators let her know they would welcome her back when her mandatory one-year expulsion was over.
Caldwell could have recovered from her detour completely if it hadn’t been for one detail: She was expelled at the end of her sophomore year, meaning she would spend her entire junior year in juvenile justice. Meanwhile, her classmates at KIPP were beginning work on their International Baccalaureate diplomas, a rigorous two-year program with a special curriculum delivered by specially trained teachers.
For Caldwell, missing an entire year of International Baccalaureate instruction was impossible to recover, and the juvenile justice program didn’t have the resources. When she left the program at the start of her senior year, she couldn’t catch up to her classmates at KIPP, so she decided to go to her neighborhood school, Roosevelt High School. She took the most advanced classes she could, but without pre-AP and other AP prerequisites, the highest-level courses weren’t available to her. She went ahead and applied to her dream school, Baylor University, but knew that without the International Baccalaureate or more AP credits, it was a long shot. She didn’t get in, and instead is going to a local community college, working her way through, and commuting across town. She’s determined to achieve her nursing license, but, she acknowledged, there are a lot more things to juggle along this route than there would have been if she’d arrived at Baylor with an IB diploma — worth two years of college credit.
Privilege points
It’s possible that reform could be on the way, Korman said — at least in part because the rising popularity of boutique marijuana products and expanding mandatory expulsion laws have increased the number of middle-class kids caught in the system.
“I wonder to what extent we’re going to see some of these laws and regulations rolled back as they start to affect the kids for whom they were not intended,” she said. Already, she said, she’s seen momentum for reform as people raise alarm about students from suburban homes having their academic careers derailed.
“The reaction from that is quite telling,” Korman said, as in the past, the lives destroyed by mandatory expulsions weren’t lives that society had much hope for.
Rodriguez, who is both Hispanic and middle class, feels the tension acutely. For him, getting in trouble scraped the thin veneer off the inequities that had marked his own education. The fact that so much was available in one school district (North East) and not another (San Antonio) still bothers him.
His internal struggle with his own privilege continues as he tries to decide what steps come next. Through his parents’ connections and resources in the music and arts industries, Rodriguez knows he can take an alternative route toward success, one that may or may not involve a high school diploma and a degree from a four-year university. In the months since his expulsion, he’s finished work on an indie music album and found out that he won a gold medal in the Scholastic Art Competition for a project he did through a local nonprofit. He’s tempted, he said, to cash in on his own social capital and breathe a sigh of relief that his departure from the set path didn’t end in disaster.
On the other hand, he sees public education as a social good. He wants to play by the rules, believing that when people do so, they contribute to a fairer system — even for kids whose parents don’t have the resources to rescue them.
Disclosure: The 74’s CEO, Stephen Cockrell, served as director of external impact for the KIPP Foundation from 2015 to 2019. He played no part in the reporting or editing of this story. Andy Rotherham co-founded Bellwether Education Partners. He sits on The 74's board of directors and serves as one of the site’s senior editors.
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Sign up for The 74’s daily morning newsletter | https://the74million.medium.com/the-mandatory-expulsion-maze-giving-a-friend-an-adderall-derailed-an-honor-students-academic-97c2eee2260a | [] | 2019-08-19 19:42:14.097000+00:00 | ['School Discipline', 'Education'] |
Voltz Token on Coinpaprika | Data from 176 exchanges is imported and stored into our servers without any 3rd party members. With that integration we can bring you data straight from the places where the trades take place.
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https://coinpaprika.com/coin/voltz-voltz/ | https://medium.com/@voltzuk/voltz-token-on-coinpaprika-17b21129e322 | [] | 2019-04-12 03:42:33.540000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin News', 'Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Erc20 Token'] |
Security Trends to Watch in 2020 | “Home Sweet Home” may be the most common saying, but “Home Safe Home” is a close second.
It comes down to this: people want to feel safe in their homes, and they want to know their property and belongings are secure while they’re away. In fact, according to a study by PC Mag, 34% of homeowners are currently relying on smart home devices to keep their homes safe and secure. Therefore, it’s no surprise that a report by Market Research Future predicts that the global residential security market will reach $44.8 billion by 2023.
When industry experts and pundits talk about security trends to watch in 2020, the following topics float to the top:
Under Scrutiny: Smart Home Cybersecurity and Privacy
Before consumers choose a security system for their homes, they need to be certain that it will not compromise their safety or their privacy. A recent study by US Houzz Smart Home reported that concerns about privacy is the reason 23% of consumers are reluctant to install smart technology in their homes.
Research like this indicates that adopting practices that better protect the personal privacy of customers will be an important, industry-wide focus in 2020- especially in the vase of video surveillance cameras. Clear policies disclosing who will have access to the video taken with these cameras should accompany residential security system contracts that include video surveillance.
Video Security On the Rise
Despite the hesitancy many consumers have had about video surveillance in the past, changes in policy and technology are converting more homeowners to their importance. Modern video camera analytics provide a level of surveillance that consumers are increasingly interested in, including features that deliver alerts only on what matters most to you, distinguishing important events from routine activity in real time. Using Artificial Intelligence, some video surveillance systems can distinguish whether a moving object in your driveway is a person, an animal or a vehicle, and send you an alert according to the settings selected.
Sophisticated video surveillance systems have the ability to record what happened, who did it, and when- information that can be shared with authorities, insurance companies, and neighbors. This type of video analytics is the biggest trend in the development of camera surveillance- the technologies are expanding rapidly.
A Safer Day in the Neighborhood
As sophisticated home security systems become more prevalent in individual residences, the potential of integrating data to create more widespread surveillance and security becomes more likely. Experiments of this nature are currently underway, possibly leading to an aggregation of data across neighborhoods, triangulating sensors and video in various homes and helping to identify perpetrators in an active crime.
How Do You Even Use This Thing?
The development of more intuitive home security products is an industry-wide trend. A 2016 study by US Houzz Smart Home Trend s revealed that homeowners considered selecting appropriate home security products, installing them, and learning how to use them to be their biggest challenges. An inadequate understanding of cybersecurity, cloud/hosted services, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and other video analytics solutions is also creating barriers in the home security environment.
Green is Better.
Trends toward better health and wellness are not going away- in fact, they’re extending to include “green home security products.” Environmentally conscious consumers are shopping for energy-saving products, including alarm systems and smart home devices that allow homeowners to adjust the temperature in their homes or regulate the lights using less energy than ever before
Playing Nice Together
The integration of security technology and smart home devices will be an important trend in the security industry for 2020. Gone will be the days when security technology and smart home devices will rely on different mobile management apps. It will be up to the industry to create a single platform and app that controls lights, locks, garage door openers, video cameras and other integrated devices. These types of smart security products that are intuitive, reliable, and interconnected will result in systems that are the most user-friendly, providing the most return on the homeowner’s investment.
Buyer Beware
Quality control, expert installation, and professional monitoring will continue to be critical parts of an effective and desirable home security system, no matter what changes are introduced to the industry. Consumers will need to beware of imposter products, masquerading as professional products lines. Only certified products that have been tested by independent labs and agencies, coupled with professional, around-the-clock monitoring, will provide homeowners with confidence and peace of mind. | https://medium.com/@benwayne11/security-trends-to-watch-in-2020-5699a772ef30 | ['Ben W.'] | 2020-02-21 20:14:34.209000+00:00 | ['Video Surveillance', 'Smart Home Security', 'Home Security Systems', 'Security Camera', 'Security Systems'] |
VR Birthday | I don’t see Ram Dass as a guru, more like the Lenny Bruce of spirituality. I love to listen to him talk. He makes me think.
That’s why I’ve been hosting sessions in VR centered on Be Here Now, talking about what he said 50 years ago. Working through his recorded workshops. We are now at, Behind It All.
By the time 15–20 avatars assembled, I stopped my rambling intro played the clip. Ram Dass reminding me pleasantly for the umpteenth time that my attachments keep me here.
We listen for a little then we talk a lot. More avatars drop in and join the conversation.
By noon we’d had enough fun with our gross physical plane, the astral and causal planes, and of course the Formless.
My plan for the day was pretty formless itself and when I noticed a cool looking jazz concert on the AltspaceVR Daily Events menu I knew what was coming next.
I know this must sound crazy to anyone who hasn’t been in a fully immersive Virtual World, but Saxy’s Jazz Club is right up there with any jazz club I’ve ever been to.
It reminds me of Paul’s Mall in Boston back in the 70s, except Boylston Street is a hard place to find parking and VR isn’t. This isn’t a promise but that might be my last no-parking-at VR-shows joke.
I was swept up by the feel of the place in one second and not too many seconds after that, SirSaxy himself started the program. I don’t even know where he was, playing his sax, but to me he was right there at Saxy’s Club with the rest of us.
I noticed my friend Geoffrey and he came over to my table. I messaged Grape and Nicerly and they came too, but our room was full so they were in another Saxy’s instance. Advocates of the Everett, Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics feel right at home in VR.
SirSaxy played a few Christmas standards, his jazz interpretations. Chestnuts Roasting, oh man, he really got the feelings flowing on that one.
Then a mind blowing thing happened. Another avatar went up and sat at the keyboard. He accompanied on, Little Drummer Boy, with SirSaxy or someone as the vocalist. They had it going. They were together like one instrument. hen the vocalist stepped away and the sax came back, the keyboard was right with it.
The two artists were not in the same place. They were feeling each other’s rhythm and dealing with the lag time and they just plain nailed it. No one had any idea until they told us. I might not even be describing it correctly.
What they did is considered impossible. One voice, One sax. The accompanying accents from the piano. Different locations but brought together here. The whole crew was emotional. The crowd felt it.
SixSaxy sat down. Someone else came up, sang two more beautiful slow jazzy, ending, Oh, Holy Night. I didn’t know it, but we were experiencing a MetaCulture show. From their About Us on the Web:
We were born out of the necessity for the representation and inclusion for people of color in virtual reality space. Metaculture’s mission is to shift the narrative from being strictly consumers to being creators and contributors by making culturally relatable events, experiences and spaces.
They’re doing it.
It was late afternoon and I had been in VR most of the day. Why stop now I thought as I dropped in to Slicks Comedy Club. I know Slick Rick and I’d been meaning to check out his place but I’m usually feeling too busy. Not today.
There was a lively crowd, but not out of control. The comics could perform, do their acts and not just deal with hecklers. I stayed for three of them. They weren’t A-List or B-List. But they weren’t just goofballs telling fart jokes. They made some funny observations, got off some good lines. The young man in the picture above riffed amusingly on God for a while. | https://arvrjourney.com/vr-birthday-89abf85dae07 | ['Tom Nickel'] | 2021-01-08 04:42:01.915000+00:00 | ['Xr', 'Virtual Reality', 'VR', 'Birthday', 'Ram Dass'] |
Public Speaking Tips | If you search for “public speaking techniques” on Google, you will receive approximately 2.6 million results. That may sound like a lot, but when you have to be the one who has to stand in front of a group, there isn’t enough material in the world to help you get over your fear of public speaking.
Believe it or not, the majority of those anxieties are created by the individual. What exactly do I mean? The folks listening to you aren’t very concerned with how knowledge is transmitted; they are just interested in receiving it. The speaker is the one who puts themselves through the wringer several weeks before the presentation. Here are some ideas that, while they may seem obvious when implemented, can truly put your mind at ease.
Public Speaking Tip #1
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT! What I mean by knowing your topic is that you know it from top to bottom, inside and out, upside down, and that you know the answer to every question that might be thrown at you. It is really necessary to be prepared to attain this level.
You must be able to recite your speech practically verbatim; you must be familiar with the products you will be addressing. If you complete your homework, you will know that you have attained the level of public speaking. When you reach Nirvana and experience that “feeling,” it will be accompanied by wisdom. Believe!
Public Speaking Tip #2
Attempt to greet as many people as possible before your speech or presentation. Confidence is boosted by familiarity. Consider the benefit you will bring to the topic you will be speaking on if you take the time to meet with people before you begin speaking.
You will not be pacing back and forth or worrying yourself to death until you have completed the task at hand with this method. There’s no point in cramming right now; if you don’t know something, you won’t know it, and it will be obvious.
Public Speaking Tip #3
If you believe that everyone in the audience is nude, this will work against you to have a good public speaking event.
Public Speaking Tip #4
To ensure that your points are delivered effectively, stop yourself and repeat the statement as though it were more important than ever before. Then, replace the uhs and ums with silence to deliver your points effectively.
Public Speaking Tip #5
Make your speech more animated. The majority of individuals believe that effective communication is centered on the mouth. There is nothing that could be further from the truth here! When it comes to becoming an effective communicator, you must employ your entire body. The use of gestures and body language can infuse your speech with more fire and enthusiasm.
These suggestions can truly assist you in taking the next step in your public speaking career. Are you aware that some people decline promotions because they will be expected to speak in front of a group of people?
Do you understand that people are more afraid of speaking in public than dying? Why is this so? Perhaps death is abstract and appears far away, whereas the podium is directly in front of them. In either case, you will be able to come to terms with your fear, and while you may not enjoy it, you will be able to get through it with less difficulty.
I cannot emphasize enough how much of your battle will be won simply by knowing what you will say and anticipating the questions that others will throw at you. It is possible to be simple! | https://authors.cvsingh.com/public-speaking-tips-3acbd840ae19 | ['Chandra Vijay Singh', 'C V Singh'] | 2021-12-12 11:07:33.197000+00:00 | ['Public Speaking', 'Communication', 'Public Speaking Tips', 'Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement'] |
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