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A shot of coffee IS a shot of whiskey at 8am.

A shot of coffee IS a shot of whiskey at 8am. At least to me. I love it; coffee energizes me, I can think free drinking it; I’m nicer to everyone. If that is not a whiskey effect I don’t know what is.

https://medium.com/no-air/a-shot-of-coffee-is-a-shot-of-whiskey-at-8am-cafda776261

['Toni Crowe']

2019-11-07 16:23:47.556000+00:00

['Coffee', 'Writing', 'Short Story', 'Relationships', 'Friendship']

Ricardo Sullivan Finds Customized Support at the UUFCU

Marine Corps veteran Ricardo Sullivan was living in a shelter when the pandemic hit. He had left jail at the end of 2019 and the relocation from the shelter to a hotel near Queensbridge Houses further upended his attempts at rebuilding his life. His plans included opening a bank account, but that is not easy for returning citizens and other justice-involved people. Fortunately for him, the relocation led to his introduction to the Urban Upbound Federal Credit Union (UUFCU). On his first visit to the UUFCU, Ricardo met Maria Lopes, one of our Member Service Representatives and a certified financial counselor. Maria was able to open an account for him and Ricardo joined the credit union. Having secured a job, Ricardo began working on building his savings. “Urban Upbound was the only institution that accepted the limited form of identification that I had,” said Ricardo. However, the UUFCU was able to do more for him. After spending a number of years incarcerated, Ricardo needed assistance fixing his credit. After taking a credit builder loan at the UUFCU, Ricardo was able to successfully apply for a credit card at one of the commercial banks that had initially rejected him. In less than a year, with Maria’s assistance, Ricardo went from not having a credit score to a score of 689. “Ms. Lopes and Urban Upbound, as an organization, helped get me where I am today by making it possible for me to take my first step and open a bank account,” Ricardo added. Urban Upbound has continued providing New Yorkers with critical services during this difficult period. From access to financial counseling and employment readiness services to food relief and direct cash assistance, your donation makes it possible for us to serve more families. If you’d like to learn more about our impact and work, please follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube) or subscribe to our newsletter.

https://medium.com/@urbanupbound/ricardo-sullivan-finds-customized-support-at-the-uufcu-77a619183cd9

['Urban Upbound Nyc']

2021-04-09 14:37:13.444000+00:00

['Financial Services', 'NYC', 'Urban Upbound', 'Financial Inclusion', 'Humans Of New York']

The tennis ball theory of investing

What goes up comes down! Normally I write about Corporate Social Responsibility. But the pandemonium in stock markets across the world as I write about the future of CSR, has forced me to declare the secret of investing. I shall show you both how not to lose and how to make money through investing. Now, if you got this far, you probably think I am going to try and sell you something. No, I am not! Do read on and/or look at a 7min interview. Part of my own personal social responsibility is to give you some free advice so that when you do gain you can use gains to invest in anything that would make the world a better place. I am just going to write down my theory which I have used all my life and also one that I suggest to my friends and relations around the world. Have I been successful? Yes, although worrying about my personal investments and the stock markets is not, and has never been, my main interest. You see one of the biggest problems with investment analysts, TV broadcasters such as Quest and that shouty fellow on MSNBC who is ridiculous is that they simply reproduce past trends and assume that trends will continue into the future. Oh yes, they’ll add in a few remarks about market fundamentals and company credentials etc. As long as markets act in a straight line trend they are fine. But what we all know is that markets suddenly crash and the straight line is no more. What we get is a parabolic curve..in fact very much like the trajectory of a tennis ball. Hence the tennis ball theory of investing. Like a tennis ball what goes up, eventually comes down. Happily it then bounces back up again, but not always to where it was before. The same thing with stock markets. What goes up, comes down. Now, of course, the big problem is to know the ‘turning point’ i.e. when will the market go down and when will it rise again? I am not talking about day to day fluctuations, but about major falls and major rises. Did you ever hear investment analysts talking about turning points? Rarely! So how can you spot a turning point? Well not easy. We know that simply throwing darts at a list of stocks is at least as successful as all investment analysts on average. And, yes purely randomly some investment analysts are going to be correct but you cant know which ones apriori! Of any one million investment analysts there may be as many as 10,000 who are correct i.e. one per cent! But are they correct consistently? No, the probabilities are against them. One per cent of one percent, if there are a million will give you 100..maybe one of their names might be Warren Buffet..he does good analysis and does think out of the box. But no need to pay him anything just think of a tennis ball! Anyway, back to turning points and how to spot them. Normally these are obvious. When the price of oil goes up to, what was it $US147 a barrel and you know the swing producer Saudia Arabia cost of production is less than $7…something has got to happen. At $147 a barrel, massive investments take place even for the hardest to reach minerals…gradually creating a huge surplus of oil followed by a crash (in parenthesis all that talk about Peak Oil and finite resources was laughable…there will always be resources when the price goes up…no the earth is not finite!). When the Dow Jones hit 12,000 I was worried..when it went up to 20,000 heck I am out! When the dollar went down to 80 centimes per one Swiss France, heck I am buying dollars..they are around 95 centimes today…about a 20% gain in a year. So like a tennis ball, what goes up comes down. Happily it goes up again. Maybe tennis balls are more predictable than stock markets or commodity prices but frankly if Murray serves to me I dont know where it will drop nor when it will go up again (OK we are talking nano-seconds here), but the ball does come down and it does go up again. So my tennis ball theory advice today (Aug 26 2015)? Looks like oil at below $US40 a barrel is a good time to buy. Yes it may go down to $US20…then mass consumption will bring it up again. Like a tennis ball. Of course no-one can predict exactly when are the turning points we just know that sometimes they are obvious to pick — house prices in the USA anyone? The turning points will come just like a bouncing tennis ball. Please listen and invest accordingly. This free advice will save you money and as it will, please don’t forget to invest in socially responsible projects since even if they crash you will have the benefit of helping someone! [first appeared https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tennis-ball-theory-investing-dr-michael-hopkins?trk=prof-post ]

https://medium.com/on-banking/the-tennis-ball-theory-of-investing-60547a912ab6

['Michael Hopkins']

2015-10-11 19:33:31.509000+00:00

['Investing', 'Finance', 'Csr']

My Winding Path to a Career in Product Design — From Fashion Apparel to User Experience

There are plenty of stories out there about how people have recently made the pivot to User Experience Design these days. I figure I might as well talk about mine. All in all, the change made a lot of sense after I looked deeper into the series of events that led me to the path I find myself on today. Photo by Keila Hötzel on Unsplash Design: A Life-Long Passion For as long as I can remember, I have been designing and making things. It’s cliche to say so, but I feel like I picked up a pencil and paper before I could even form spoken sentences. Many more mediums followed, crayons, markers, paints, pens, you name it. Soon that evolved into crafting physical and tangible things, like dollhouses out of shoeboxes, making clothing for my dolls and toys, and even needle-crafting apparel and accessories for myself, friends, and family. I even had a few short-lived business ventures surrounding a few of my crafts. I learned these skills from those who came before me, primarily my father and aunties. When I was in my teen years, being immersed in the world of the internet for several years, I discovered “web design” — not that I knew that term at the time. It started with Myspace and RSS Blogs, where I realized I could manipulate the code to achieve my desired profile and feed layouts. It was completely serendipitous, and if you told me then that I could make a career out of designing for the web, I would have never believed you. I spent hours and hours crafting my layouts to perfection, then redoing them all over again a week later in a completely different theme. I often did them for friends too in exchange for snacks or personal favors. I got really good at it too, however, when Myspace and RSS Blogs fell off due to the emergence of other social media such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram, I lost interest in place of other creative passions. I decided I wanted to be a Fashion Designer. Photo by Michael Lee on Unsplash Zeroing in on Fashion I’ve been doing fashion design work the longest of any other design discipline, my interest in it blossoming at age twelve. I went to High School for it (High School of Fashion Industries in New York City,) did four years of college (attending Fashion Institute of Technology,) and had a full-time career in Children’s Apparel for nearly a decade thereafter. Even now, I still manage my own apparel side hustle, a brand called Lilith et Adalia. So let me emphasize that my passion for fashion has not subsided in the least, and there is so much that I’ve learned from it over these many years. There is nothing more exciting during the design process than the ideation phase. In fashion, it was no different. I felt so much elation from picking themes and colors, deciding on fabrications, as well as sketching and illustrating. This process varies depending on whether I’m working on a personal project, working at a company, or doing client work. Personal projects are the most freeing of them all because it’s up to me to decide what is best, but you learn the most when working alongside others with constraints and limitations. My immersion into the fashion world was longstanding, with many bumps and bruises inflicted on me along the way. The industry itself has many flaws, which I won’t be diving into too much detail at this particular time, but those flaws were a major reason for which I actively sought out other opportunities to flex my design acumen through different means. Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash A Foray into User Experience Design It was 2018 when I first heard the term “User Experience.” I knew someone who was trying to get into it, but they ultimately lost interest. My curiosity however was piqued, and at the beginning of 2019, as my full-time career in fashion began to become more and more unfulfilling, I decided I was going to learn what this “UX thing” was all about. It didn’t take me long to fall into the rabbit hole. I found YouTubers giving explainers, doing user interface tutorials using tools I had never heard of before (the only digital design tools I used for my work were Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop up to that point,) and began reading a ton of articles about it all over the web. At the end of 2019, I began attending meetups and info sessions (then in-person) on the topic of UX Design, and before you know it, I decided that this was the right career pivot for me. Diving into the Deep End I began comparing courses, classes, and bootcamps for price, time, and commitment. Ultimately I left my fashion job and I ended up attending CUNY TechWorks in Brooklyn, NY at the beginning of 2020. When I started taking classes, my love for UX Design grew exponentially the more I learned. I quickly fell in love with new design tools such as Figma and Framer. Visual Design got me the most excited, and I was eager to grow my skills. As we know, the pandemic happened, and my in-person full-time classes became fully remote, and the whole economy and job market shifted dramatically in a less positive direction, but even in the face of adversity, I kept pushing forward because I knew there was no going back. I also rediscovered my passion for code — resurrecting, and refining my knowledge of HTML and CSS from my Myspace days in the coding module of my course. The fire within was lit once again, and I realized the overlapping paths of design and development. It was really exciting to see all my past interests coming to a head in a new discipline. Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash Drawing Parallels Between Disciplines As of me writing this now, I have completed my User Experience Immersive course, and I’m now on the quest of finding my first full-time job and beginning my professional Product Design career. This is no easy feat, as the job market is highly competitive right now. Since graduating back in June of 2020, I have worked on a handful of volunteer and personal projects to beef up my portfolio, and I’m doing my best to make genuine connections with other folks in the industry. Though challenging, the journey has been quite rewarding so far. I’ve begun to draw many parallels to how the Product Design process is very similar between different industries. Fun Fact: Did you know that the first computers were inspired and influenced by the punch cards that textile makers use to weave intricate patterns into cloth? That just goes to show how closely linked design processes between the creative and technological realm can be, and that’s just one example! In my personal experience, I have uncovered the following similarities between Fashion Design and User Experience Design: The ideation process, most commonly the “double diamond”, is basically identical to that of fashion design. For instance, the test phase. Before a garment can go into production, its fit must be tested and refined to the proper specifications, often which you don’t realize in the initial design. Working effectively with product managers and teams is the key to success, coupled with a need for clear and concise communication. Needing to know how to pivot on a dime. Things change rapidly within your organization, and being able to adapt to that change is imperative. Managing multiple stakeholders, within your org, as well as externally. In fashion, it’s the sales team, production teams (often overseas), in addition to the retailers and customers — just like your end-users in digital products. I’m always realizing more parallels too, which brings me to the point of taking what I have learned in the past and directly applying it to where I want to be in the present and the future. Learning from Failure and Embracing the Journey Through it all, failure has been the most valuable to me in my design process, no matter the medium. I’ve messed up, plenty of times, a notable one in my fashion practice being the time I made a pattern draft incorrectly, throwing off the fit of a garment entirely, and not realizing my mistake until the project was due the next day. Whatever the case might have been, or will continue be, I know I will always learn from it and do better next time. Mastery of craft is a life-long endeavor. You can never know it all, and if you’re like me and dabble in a lot of different things, really hone in on what you are most devoted to and continuously refine that. I take that philosophy into my digital product design career and beyond. As I learn and grow in this new space, I will continue to embrace my failures, setbacks, and shortcomings, as they will be the stepping stones to my success. There is nothing more fulfilling than seeing something you put a lot of time and effort into, especially alongside other people on your team, come to life in a tangible way. Be it a sketch on paper transforming into a beautiful flouncy velvet dress, to a sketchy wireframe on a looseleaf sheet manifesting into a crisp clean UI for a mobile app — that payoff of something you designed coming to fruition, the level of joy is all the same regardless. I’m ready to sprint onto this new path and explore the possibilities that yet a new product design discipline will take me. You can find me elsewhere: My Portfolio Twitter LinkedIn

https://medium.com/@ariadesigns/my-winding-path-to-a-career-in-product-design-from-fashion-apparel-to-user-experience-c60b86ea3c2

['Aria Todd']

2020-12-23 17:02:37.162000+00:00

['User Experience Design', 'Career Paths', 'Fashion Design', 'User Experience', 'Career Change']

“History is being made here today” We have elected our First African American…..Woman Vice President Mrs. Kamala Harris 🙏 President Joe Bidan and his Beautiful wife, Jill Bidan 🙏 Another Photo of…

“Congraulations, America has elected a New President” “History is being made here today” We have elected our First African American…..Woman Vice President Mrs. Kamala Harris 🙏 President Joe Bidan and his Beautiful wife, Jill Bidan 🙏 Another Photo of the President, and The First Lady. Kamala Harris and Family Kamala Harris and Husband Kamala Harris and Husband I want to say that, I’m Proud to be an “American” where there’s “True Democracy” May God Bless America Also, I’d like to say that No matter who’s Our President, They’re deserving of Our “Respect” 🙏 “Thank You for your time” 🙏

https://medium.com/@donna-frncs/congraulations-america-has-elected-a-new-president-77ae63042a93

['Ladonna Crawford']

2020-11-07 20:10:16.043000+00:00

['History', 'Unity', 'Democracy', 'Civil Rights', 'American History']

Conserving Liberation

Ideological disparities are for ancient times where at least one party thought spending more than confiscated trillions might eventually cause a few financial issues. Sophisticated modern political participants focus on who is honest about dishonest spending. It’s sort-of a virtue. There’s no difference between liberal and Democrat. Meanwhile, there’s a chasm between conservative and Republican. It’s nice to have a choice who bothers you. Only one side explicitly states it’s cool to have your life run. Half the factions being honest doesn’t quite create liberty. Maintaining the illusion of options to maintain a healthy republic. Structuring your life seems like a pain until the House of Representatives tries it on your behalf. Thinking our stupid government knows how to spend best is not conservatism any more than fired CEO Donald Trump epitomizes how to run a company. The bossy boss’s cunning business strategy was to slap his name on products someone else developed and hope enough rubes are seduced into thinking they’re getting something quality. Now, he’s done so with Republicans. A party that formerly pretended to not bother you must cope with the consequences of their highness not thinking ahead as he bails, which is punishment enough. Linking a party to principles would be easy and doesn’t work. Trump will finish the president more liberal than Nixon while make today’s alleged RINOs look like Barry Goldwater in a cranky mood. Stand up to unprincipled sellouts who defend entitlements. This is getting confusing. The most recent Republican president ran on hoary liberal Joe Biden wanting to take away Social Security and Medicare in case you thought your retirement pittance and insurance ration were poor deals. I have the feeling Trump is not going to announce Obamacare is repealed on the way out the door. Michael Scott is more likely to deliver on a promise. There’s no more mandate: it’s just that government is intimately involved in your insurance, which cannot be denied to you. The only thing off the table is actual treatment, which is of great comfort to the infirm who’ve been promised it. Brokenness in multiple senses is why nobody could scare Trump-loathing Constitution fans into backing him. Demands to join the fraternity will make anyone independent curse at Greek letters forever. You mean you don’t want to be beaten up so you can buy friends? Explaining why a vote for one participant is a vote against whoever the tribe prefers is even worse than debt math. Treating ballot casting like part of a communal strategy instead of an individual statement is how we ended up with zero swell options. A repellant professional politician now has company in wasting what you haven’t even given him yet. Trump will finish his oh so respectable term doing precisely nothing to explain why government engineers society out of Scotch tape and toothpicks. Trump did more to do less than Lindsey Graham. Voters don’t feel motivated to back someone who won’t give back our wallets. Put them in a garbage back to be locked at the National Archives for safe keeping. You might not get your particular model back, but know they’re all equally empty. Democrats will also kindly spend your money, only with more burning cities. Combine the worst tendencies of either George Bush paired with mortifying shtick instead of a vague sense of decency, and the real surprise would be if he suckered enough voters again. Our semi-free nation would be best off discarding government at the same rate of acquiring BlackBerry stock. The little issue of spending more dollars than are available has been festering indefinitely. Republicans straying to the other side is not a fun throwback like a Goonies cast reunion. Establishment pet Trump stayed on course. The most loathsome sort of phony claims everyone else is full of it. The outgoing president confused claiming to get things done with doing things. Running his mouth remains his only exercise. And some actions are worse than remaining sedentary. Taking a sledgehammer to your windshields illustrates activity may in fact be unproductive. Trump was only actually busy pertaining to ensuring there’s ample debt. For someone who thinks a trade deficit means we lost something, Trump’s sure cool with blowing through cash that isn’t his. All those bankruptcies were practice runs. Tariffs are still cool in case you worried Republicans would want to free trade just because Trump is seeing how many Post-it notes he can steal. The question of why a tax on products from abroad won’t discourage creation in the same why they ruin domestic businesses remains unsolved like the Sphinx asked it as a riddle. Despite what Bill Clinton claims about wedding vows while he’s in Europe, rules don’t change while abroad. Math and reality may combine to notices how long we’ll put off resetting spending. The debt clock flips faster than can be perceived, and blurriness may not mean the problem has vanished. Replacing the motor doesn’t count as economic activity. Aside from being neither bold nor principled, Trump was a success who did everything right. A professional phony whose instinct is to attempt controlling life totally wanted you to escape government’s wiggling tentacles. Voting for the Democrat who’s honest about squandering or the Republican who’ll do it anyway has long been a tiresome choice. Add in constant bitchiness, and it’s so shocking the incumbent couldn’t even beat Joe Biden. In his sadly unique way, Trump did the opposite of creating a true choice. In fact, the failed product titan calcified the distinction between dueling spending clans. Spending like a Democrat was the only time Trump created a perception that reflected reality, and it was naturally inadvertent. Knowing it’d be at least four years before an adult confiscated our American Express isn’t comforting in certainty. Thank the outsider for saving us from robbers by emptying the register.

https://medium.com/@anthonybialy/conserving-liberation-2e6f2ff9e3d0

['Anthony Bialy']

2020-12-10 13:11:27.376000+00:00

['Big Government', 'Donald Trump', 'Republican Party', '2020 Presidential Race', 'Conservatism']

How I Fucked Up creating a product Ad Jet # 2

Hi, my name is Polina and here I am talking about our startup in the field of marketing automation. How we subscribed to all this can be read in the first post. Today I will talk about CustDev and how we screwed up while testing the target audience. But first things first. CustDev CustDev is testing an idea or prototype of a future product on potential consumers. The last time I did it two years ago in one of the projects, and to put it mildly, I have dubious memories. I remember to find a potential target client and ask him questions. It turned out that this is not entirely true) How did you look for people on CustDev? It was the easiest. I wrote on FB that I am looking for people with relevant experience in creating and promoting my business/project. 7 people responded I asked each of them to suggest someone else with the same problem. So I got about 5 correct and 5 incorrect interviews. In my first interviews, I had the following list of questions: 1. What business are you in? Do you do it online? 2. Do you have marketing experience? If so, which one? 3. Have you ever set up an ad yourself? 4. Have you ever worked with an agency or freelancer to attract clients? 5. “If setup was easier, would you customize it yourself?” 6. Are there any games, quizzes that catch you? 7. Are there any games/applications that you use to kill time, for example on a plane or in a taxi? Surprisingly, even on these strange questions, I received feedback. True, in the second interview I had a doubt that I needed to update my knowledge. And so in order, first the conclusions from the answers. Whom did I interview: fitness trainer, coworking space owner, natural cosmetics store owner, tattoo artist, online furniture store owner. Key ideas: 3/5 hired a freelancer. The results of their own and others’ work are evaluated on an emotional level, and only one considers the economy. Pain: it isn’t clear how to work with this, there is not enough time to figure it out, there is not enough time for analytics. Thank all the gods, at this moment I slowed down and went to remember how to do a normal in-depth interview. The second batch of questions looked like this: 1. What service/product are you selling? What is the most difficult part of selling your product/service on the Internet? 2. When was the last time you encountered this problem? 3. Why was it hard? 4. What did you do to solve this problem? 5. What did you dislike about the solutions you used? The result has improved dramatically. Interviewed: the owner of a startup similar to Uber, a product specialist from a bank (this was a pass, but interesting), a product specialist trying to launch a startup in the field of blogging, a dance shoe seller, a pastry chef. Key ideas: all the respondents have problems with setting up ads, moreover, regardless of whether they set up ads with their own hands or delegate. Pain: it is not clear what message to broadcast to the audience, in some sites a/b tests and payment for installation are not implemented (relevant for applications), there is no clear analytics. So we decided to focus on solving three main problems: determining which sales channel to go to the client, hiding the internal advertising settings (to give the client only the result), and understandable analytics. Coming to life First, we made up the landing page on a Tilda. I would like to say, “Oh, it was simple.” But we needed to insert a test there. We did not find anything better than the onlinetestpad platform (it feels like a site from the early 2000s), but we managed to use it. What was the point? The client (artisan, small business owner) answers our questions and at the end receives a marketing strategy, in total we had about 36 different answers. For example, if you say that you are selling a product and you have a website, but you cannot buy on it, then first of all we advise you to go to marketplaces, and secondly, add the function of selling goods to the site. Test № 1 We decided that the landing page as a whole was ready and launched the target. (Not so easy) Test № 1 Platform: FB, Insta Region: Estonia, England Target audience: freelancers, m / f, 18–54 In both cases, men responded to our ads better than women. In Estonia, the cost per click was cheaper. We collected a database of 50 freelancers, talked to them, and found out that they are ready to work with us if we have an automated part (like on prototypes). Of course, part of it twisted at the temple and did not understand why we were doing advertising at all, but in general, we received feedback from the market. They did not take pens to do it. Each freelancer has an average of 5–6 clients and we physically and financially cannot meet such a volume of work. Test № 2 Test № 2 Platform: FB, Insta Region: Estonia, England CA: small business, m / f, 18–54 And here we were disappointed. We did not change the site and launched advertising directly to it for small business owners. Of course, small businesses did not understand at all what we want to offer and why they need it, we just drained the advertising budget. At this stage, we realized that we had made a mistake with positioning and we needed to change something. We wrote the text and inserted what we thought were “understandable prototypes”, but we completely forgot that not all representatives of our target audience understand what we mean. And we need to explain the product more clearly. And what we came up with I will tell you next time. This is how our startup is doing.

https://medium.com/@polinaskvortsova/how-i-fucked-up-creating-a-product-ad-jet-2-a525733c7a9

['Polina Skvortsova']

2020-11-19 18:59:11.207000+00:00

['Startup', 'Startup Marketing', 'Marketplaces', 'Advertising', 'Marketing']

2020 Wins for the LGBTQ+ Community

Needless to say 2020 has been ripe with bad news, misfortune, and tomfoolery from the U.S. government. World wide, millions of people are predicted to die from coronavirus, Donald Trump is embarrassing America more every day with his lame attempts to steal the election, and RBG was replaced by someone who couldn’t recite the first amendment. Our postal service has been openly attacked by our federal government and the economy is declining. It seems like nothing good has happened in 2020, and everyday it will only get worse. But that’s not entirely true. This year has been awful for billions of people, but there are some moments worth celebrating, especially for the LGBTQ+ community. At the state level several laws were passed that aid in protecting the LGBTQ+ community from violence and work towards a greater societal acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. In January, New Hampshire passed a law that allowed for a third gender option on driver’s license. This legal recognition of the transgender community is a hopeful move in the direction of wider acceptance and understanding of non binary genders. In Virginia, the governor signed a bill making conversion therapy for any minors illegal. This is a huge victory in the battle to ban conversion therapy. As of right now there are only 24 states and 1 territory that restrict conversion therapy, 20 of which ban it completely. In Washington, the governor also signed off on a bill that removed the “gay panic” defense. This is a legal term used by a defendant, mostly of the time in murder cases, which makes discovering someone’s gender or sexuality a valid legal defense for committing a crime. Before Washington joined this list, only ten states banned this defense. Although Washington marks the eleventh state to ban the “gay panic” defense, there is still a long way to go to rid ourselves of this blatantly homophobic and violent legal defence. Federally, the LGBTQ+ community made a huge step forward, and backward, in June. Many of us will remember the Trump administration rolling back on a law protecting transgender people from discrimination in health care services. But the supreme court also extended federal job protections to the LGBTQ+ community. This was decided in a 6–3 ruling under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. We also saw a huge rainbow wave in this year’s election. During the high tension Presidential race it was hard to focus on the positives. But, a record of almost 600 openly LGBTQ+ candidates makes it a little easier to see the good in this election. Some of the highlights of the rainbow wave are the election of Sarah McBride (the first openly transgender State Senator), Mondaire Jones (one of the first Black LGBTQ+ members of congress), and Mauree Turner (first Muslim and first out non-binary person to serve in Oklahoma House of Representatives). In addition, Elliot Page, star of “Juno” and “The Umbrella Academy” publicly came out as transgender on Twitter. He wrote, “Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot. I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life. I feel overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along this journey. I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I’ve been endlessly inspired by so many in the trans community. Thank you for your courage, your generosity and ceaselessly working to make this world a more inclusive and compassionate place. I will offer whatever support I can and continue to strive for a more loving and equal society.” Elliot Page marks history as one of the first truly famous out transgender actors. The work they have already done for the transgender community combined with the representation he will now bring millions of transgender people will make them an icon for generations to come. Lastly, in 2020 we voted, volunteered, and worked endlessly to ensure that Trump was a one term President, and it worked. The Democratic Party and millions of other American’s ensured that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would end the Trump’s terrible, disorganized, trainwreck of a presidency.

https://medium.com/matthews-place/2020-wins-for-the-lgbtq-community-31b18baf1fc

[]

2020-12-10 19:15:04.384000+00:00

['LGBTQ', '2020', 'LGBT', 'Queer']

NFL Training Camp Preview: NFC West

The story of the NFC West for the 2017–2018 season doesn’t really appear to be any different than the story we’ve seen in recent years: there are two teams in the division with legitimate aspirations of a deep playoff run, and then two teams that are still mired in a prolonged rebuilding process. Seattle Seahawks At the start of the season, it’s really hard to see anyone other than the Seattle Seahawks being the favorite to win the division crown. While the team sputtered to a 6–4–1 record over its last 11 games last year, they were decimated by injuries to so many key players. Even from a purely mathematical standpoint, it’s difficult for a team to endure that level of injury issues for yet another season. In doing his part to stay healthy through the course of the season, Russell Wilson came into training camp this year in the best shape of his life, working with celebrity nutritionist Dr. Philip Goglia in the offseason, losing 10lbs of weight and dropping his body fat by 6%. With no real superstud at running back — the team will cobble together a ground game featuring Green Bay Packers castoff Eddie Lacy, incumbent Thomas Rawls, and 2016 draft picks C.J. Prosise and Alex Collins — this offense really belongs to Wilson now. It’s much more about him running the show, throwing the football to Doug Baldwin, Tyler Lockett, Jermaine Kearse, Paul Richardson, and tight end Jimmy Graham. If the patchwork offensive line can simply give him any time to actually get the football out, he could be poised for an MVP-caliber season. And, of course, you can’t talk about the Seahawks without mentioning the defense. The unit will return nine of 11 starters, including defensive backbone Earl Thomas, meaning it should once again be as stout as we’ve come to know it in recent years. Arizona Cardinals Enduring an injury-riddled season in 2016 themselves, the Arizona Cardinals are looking to rebound closer to the form which saw them win an NFL-high 13 games in 2015. The biggest question for the Cardinals — along the lines of staying healthy — will be whether Carson Palmer’s arm can hold up for all 16 games, especially in an offense that demands a lot of vertical throws. Palmer has shown a penchant in recent years for starting out the season hot, but demonstrating arm fatigue as the year goes on. Of course, the latter the could be mitigated as the team begins to rely more on superstar running back David Johnson, whose combined 2,118 yards from scrimmage last year was second most in the NFL. Johnson’s ability as a running back and pass catcher make him one of the most dangerous weapons in the NFL, and will likely make him the focal point of a somewhat aging Cardinals offense. Arizona’s defense faces questions of their own around health and personnel, especially as they’re looking for the return of a healthy Tyrann Mathieu — who finished last season on injured reserve for the third time in four years — and to overcome the loss of defensive lineman Calais Campbell. However, Arizona has done an excellent job in “restocking the cupboard” on defense with young talent, starting with defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche (their top pick in the 2016 NFL Draft), linebacker Haason Reddick (taken with their first round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft) and safety Budda Baker (their second round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft). There are still plenty of core players left on this team to lead them to one last deep playoff run, if things can finally break right for them. Los Angeles Rams During an episode of HBO’s Hard Knocks, (now former) head coach Jeff Fisher of the Los Angeles Rams chastised his team for resembling a football team destined for a 7–9 record. Little did Fisher realize that his team would be so lucky as to finish with a 7–9 record. The Rams finished a 4–12 record at season’s end, and Fisher didn’t even make it through the season before he was dismissed from his position (which many saw as long-overdue move). As his replacement, the Rams went in the total opposite direction, hiring offensive wunderkind Sean McVay — the former offensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins — and making him the youngest head coach in NFL history (he was officially hired just days before his 31st birthday). McVay’s primary responsibility will be to rectify all the damage that Fisher and his staff did to quarterback Jared Goff, the first overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft. Meanwhile, McVay smartly hired defensive guru Wade Phillips, the latter of whom is only two years away from overseeing a defense that led its team to a Super Bowl victory (in Denver). Supposedly, the early whispers from the new regime are filled with glowing optimism, and everything you hear out of Los Angeles is that the player recognize what a difference in experience, leadership, and intellectual horsepower the new coaching staff has already brought. However, this roster still has major holes to fill — mostly on offense — before it can consider itself a contender in this division. San Francisco 49ers Rounding out the NFC West is the San Francisco 49ers, who underwent a much-needed housecleaning of their own last season, dismissing long time General Manager Trent Baalke and embattled head coach Chip Kelly. In their place will be new head coach Kyle Shanahan, fresh off leading the Atlanta Falcons to one of the most prolific offenses in NFL history, and new General Manager John Lynch, a surprise hire who lobbied Shanahan for the unorthodox opportunity of jumping straight from the broadcast booth to being the man in charge of a team’s front office. The two of them went to work adding numerous players to a roster that was badly in need of a talent infusion all over the board. At quarterback, journeymen Brian Hoyer and Matt Barkley will vie for the team’s starting job in the near future, but it wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprising to see them them address the position with one of their picks in the 2018 NFL Draft (which looks to have a quarterback class absolutely loaded with talent). Early on, they’ll look to the defense to keep them in games, after spending a first round pick on a defensive lineman — Soloman Thomas from Stanford University — for the third year in a row, and then trading up into the latter part of the first round to select linebacker Rueben Foster from the University of Alabama. The defense has some really intriguing players in pass rushing specialist Elvis Dumvervil, stalwart linebacker NaVorro Bowman, free safety Jimmy Ward, and defensive linemen DeForest Buckner and Arik Armstead (their first round picks in 2016 and 2015 respectively). But, with a much-needed roster turnover taking place over the long-term, this team is still years away from being ready to make any real noise in the division. Article originally written as a freelance opportunity for ff-winners.com

https://medium.com/sportsraid/nfl-training-camp-preview-west-a4e2b84b4fbd

['Rajan Nanavati']

2017-08-02 02:21:27.313000+00:00

['NFL', 'Sports', 'Football', 'Fantasy Football', 'News']

Freeholder Mary Ann O’Brien Announces Annual County Job Fair

Freeholder Mary Ann O’Brien announced on Friday, Oct. 14 that the Burlington County Freeholder Board will be hosting their annual County Job Fair on Friday, Oct. 21 through the County’s Workforce Development Institute. The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Burlington Center Mall on Route 541 in Burlington Township. “As Burlington County’s regional business needs continue to grow, so do our efforts to meet those needs,” said Freeholder O’Brien. “The Freeholder Board is proud to once again provide residents of varying talents and backgrounds the opportunity to meet with over 40 employers from diverse fields such as health care, hospitality, retail, finance, skilled trades, transportation, technology and more.” “Events like the County Job Fair, which connect the County’s talented workers with employers looking to hire, are a critical part of our efforts to strengthen our economy,” added Freeholder O’Brien. “We encourage everyone to come out and see what these companies have to offer, and show these companies that Burlington County has a skilled and eager workforce that can support them.” “In past years we have seen an overwhelmingly positive response from this free event, and we expect the same this year,” Freeholder O’Brien continued. “It is also important for residents to feel the personal impacts of improving our local economy. If even just a handful of our citizens find jobs through this job fair, we can consider the effort a success.” For a list of current employers, please visit: http://rcbc.edu/jobfair. For more information, and useful jobseeker tips, visit: http://rcbc.edu/jobfair/jobseekers.

https://medium.com/the-medford-sun/freeholder-mary-ann-obrien-announces-annual-county-job-fair-94e8838538ab

[]

2016-12-19 15:57:11.764000+00:00

['Business', 'Families', 'County Job Fair', 'Business Needs', 'Headlines']

Revenge Is Show Business and So Are You

Revenge Is Sweet and So Are You (LK-180) Now: Revenge is Sweet… Conflicted about this one. Pro: best collection of songs of them all, hardly anything I’d want to change in the lyrics except for a few of those fancy Cole Porter/Irving Berlin type rhymes that don’t always work in the context. Surprisingly good vox. Pretty decent, if overly-compressed, sound. [Ha! See below as well — ed.] Con: generic, uninventive arrangements on around 75% of it. I recognize that generic arrangements are what people like, though, I really do. — My main reservations about the album all boil down to how it could have been so much more than what it was. But I fully realize, if it had wound up more like I’d wanted it to be, everyone would have hated it! — I don’t think the arrangments have to be clever in a hit you over the head kind of way, but that they should be determined by the song. My criticism is that we had this way of doing it that we were comfortable with, and the tendency was to do everything that way, and it was occasionally to the detriment of the songs. — It’s really amazing to listen to six songs in a row and not feel like changing any lyrics. — on the “interesting chords” (in response to a comment now missing): Thanks, Christian. And it is nice you noticed the interesting chords, because I tried hard there. But I think it is kind of hard to notice them, and in fact, you’re the only person I can recall ever having mentioned it. — “Who Need Happiness” is one of those songs where the cool chords are totally squashed by the heavy-handed arrangement and production. You can hardly hear that they’re there. But: “me on assistance and you on the pill…” Sentimentally Retarded was one album title idea that was kicked around. From Ben: “Nobody in the audience got the joke when I read ‘Who Needs Happiness (I’d Rather Have You)’ as my wedding vows.” — “Knock Knock…” was meant to be on there [RISASAY] but got the drummer’s veto. “Thinking of You”, too. I wrote it on that toy keychain thing at the studio, but no one seemed to get it. [See below — ed.] I really wanted “Thinking of You” to be a hidden track, but there was literally no time left to do it even quickly. — At the time, Nancy, there was no thought of a solo album. It was only afterwards, realizing that I had songs I’d never be able to do with the band, that I started to think of doing them on my own. — Of course, criticism aside, it really is all about the songs, and I do feel I can stand behind them all pretty squarely. — I am so self-consciously trying to be the 30s lyricist here (“Love is Dead” at the moment but throughout) It shouldn’t work at all, but I guess the saving grace is that I really meant it. It sometimes works, and it sometimes doesn’t. Worst offender is the ecstasy line in “You You You” — one of the few lyrical regrets here. [Many people, I’ve learned, when I express this self-criticism, really, really like that line/rhyme. And Joel points out that I was uncomfortable with it even at the time of recording. Still seems like too much of a good thing to me, but I get why people like it. — ed.] — “Here She Comes”: "…savoir faire and joie de vivre and je ne sais quoi like you wouldn’t believe…” “Her eyes are saying yes, but her nose are saying no.” Goofy works. — on “The Weather Is Here…”: “Here She Comes” works great just as it is. But playing “The Weather Is Here Wish You Were Beautiful” as though it were “Here She Comes” wasn’t so successful. If you listen to the guitar bits there is a kind of “swingy” feel to them thatthe arrangement just kind of squashes. It should have been done with more of a British Invasion style feel, which is how I imagined it when I wrote it, but we were incapable of executing that, so we just reverted to the tried and true. 1st bridge of “The Weather is Here” is great; second bridge, not so much. But the feat of having two bridges in a 2 1/2 minute song is still something. Oh and I meant to mention, the line that cracked me up the most that I’d forgotten about was: “every time you miss the boat you try to kiss the boat one more time.” — The bridge of “She’s Coming” is maybe my best bridge. — Man, this is an album of decent bridges. — “Swiss Army Girlfriend” is one of those songs where extending a metaphor into absurdity comes off pretty well. And that is one sweet bridge, too. The basinet line still kills me — “I Don’t Need You Now” is probably the song I receive the most mail about, by a wide margin. People using it as break-up therapy. [And also trying to figure out how to play it — maybe I’ll do a tutorial some time — ed.] Whatever works. “You’re moving to the bottom of a pretty, long list.” — On “When I Lost You”: “Freedom, freedom, you’re just gonna be dumb…” Kevin successfully vetoed the line “pretty sleaze with sugar on it.” He was probably right. But that’d be a hell of title if anyone wants to use it for anything. “…to make it through this fog that I’ve been lost in, that we had our love holocaust in…” I wrote this song in my head while standing off in the side stage area at one of those big Green Day Euro-shows. Then I went to the dining area and ate fried flowers. True story. — I have seriously said “will you waste your life with me” before. — on “Hell of Dumb,” in response to a comment from Ben who said it’s “a bit too country-sounding for my taste”: Well Ben, it is a country song. I’ve always thought we should have played it more that way, though listening now it works better the way it is than my impression was. The pedal steel on “Hell of Dumb” was meant to wake people up, and it does do that. and the punk rock playing heightens the surprise. I wish there had been more moments like that. — Yodeling is fun. — “Lawnmower of Love” is maybe the WORST metaphor anyone ever came up with, which is why it is great. The Cosmo verse still cracks me up. — “Our Love Will Last…” is in the top five of my favorite songs I’ve written. “…so if we’re not vaporized in world war three, and if there’s nothing good tonight on tv, and if you don’t meet somebody with more money than me…” — Before there were lyrics to what eventually became “.. and I will be with you” it was known as “A Rat on a Bun” because someone had a T shirt depicting a rat on a hot dog bun. And that’s why set lists from that era always listed this song as “Rat.” — comment from Angela: “This album prompted me to ask you in a zine interview if you found smart women unattractive or something along those lines. I think your response was something like “it’s often overrated”! Love love love this album.” — “I Was Losing You All Along…” [an unfinished out-take from the sessions] was one of my best songs that is kind of a classic example of a song that we were just not good enough as musicians to play. It was planned to be the finale, and just came out so awkward and stilted (because we tried to play it with the same beat and same everything as all the other songs) that it would have had the wrong effect. I tried to jazz it up after the fact with overdubs and stuff, but it really taught me that that is not a solution to a song that is basically just not played properly. You have to start with it being played properly. And to do that, you need to understand what playing it properly takes. It killed me not to be able to put it on the record, but it was a real “learning experience” more than any of the others. So we ended on abrupt note instead. “You You You” is not a typical album ending track. To me that symbolized what was missing, what was unfinished. — I had big plans for the post production on this, but never got the chance to try them because we ran out of money. And honestly, because no one was really interested in them. —on not being able to make the record you wanted to: in response to Jittery Jeff Gammill (of the Capitalist Kids) who said: “I’m sorry you didn’t get to make the album you may have envisioned, but, as you said, we like this one better. So, thanks.” Jeff, that is indeed the way to look at it. At some point, a record no longer belongs to the person who made it but to the people who listen to it. It is just interesting to revisit it as a listener and reflect on it. — One thing that used to irritate me quite a bit was this one thing people always used to say when they were trying to make the point that, when you’re recording an album you should stick to what you know, do what works, not deviate from the formula, etc.: “no one wants to see Jackie Chan doing Shakespeare.” and Jackie Doing Shakespeare was an original idea for the title of the solo album, but of course that would have been too abstruse. — Most of the studio time was spent on the basic tracks leaving the vox and guitars to be rushed and crammed into a couple of days, and you can really tell. — on the guitar sound: a lot of the guitar was done with this old (56?) Les Paul, that had once been a gold top but had been refinished by some idiot hippie in the 70s to a woodtone, hard-wood floor-like finish (presumably so it match his deck and hot tub.) Nevertheless it sounded great. I think the soap bar pickups were original. We had borrowed it from Univibe, but I seriously considered trying to come up with the money to buy it, despite the atrocious look. I think it was $1000, quite a lot for an old guitar in those days. — This band had reached the “fader wars” phase of a band’s existence where everyone wanted their own parts turned up to eleven in every mix, which sure didn’t help! — on the compression/loudness: Yeah, Joel, I’m with you on the loudness/mastering. it was definitely the right thing to do with this. [wow — hard to believe this was genuinely my opinion back then! How things change (though it’s very possible I was dissembling, going along with the crowd…)— ed.] — It’s the only one that was all recorded in a single studio. REM had been there just before! (Original post/thread is here.)

https://medium.com/@drankf/revenge-is-show-business-and-so-are-you-e9ec42ed6226

['Frank Portman']

2021-05-08 22:05:58.857000+00:00

['History', 'Songs', 'Music', 'Memoir', 'Punk Rock']

Focusing on the Needs First

How to focus as a startup… As a startup, it’s imperative to narrow your focus to the things that will get you to market with a usable product the quickest. There are a lot of things that need to be done in order to be successful, but as you are in the beginning stages you must eliminate fluff and deliver the framework so that you have a reference point on how to move forward. Prioritize. Plan. Progress. This is why we have adopted the Agile Method. We set priorities for two weeks at a time. Plan the stories to help us accomplish it. A key to the planning process is estimating how long it will take us to knock out a given task. This is helpful for our team because we have a somewhat limited amount of time we can work daily. Then at the end of the two weeks, we test what we’ve finished and if we met our priorities. Then the process begins again. It’s important to keep in mind that each time we do this, our priorities are in line with the ultimate priority of delivering the app to market. No one wants to work on tasks that don’t help them reach their end goal. Focus is a Choice. Being focused is not something that happens naturally. We must make the choice every day (and sometimes multiple times a day) to focus on what needs to get done. Some things we have found helpful is to break the development and business processes into smaller chunks that are easier to manage. Then when it’s time to work, we are able to devote smaller amounts of time while still moving toward the priorities for the given week. We’ve also had to set up some boundaries with our family that will allow us to be able to work without being distracted. For example, my family knows that most days between 8:45 and 9:30 I’m going to be in our spare bedroom working for the day. I also try to make use of other downtime to help the team reach it’s goal for the sprint. Focus Together. Perhaps the most important element of focusing on a startup is making it a team effort. I grew up playing sports and the team mentality has been ingrained into me. In my eyes, we are successful when we move and work together as a team. A couple ways we focus together include: agreeing as a team what the priorities for the next two weeks will be. Sometimes there are minor disagreements, but we all eventually agree and are better because of it. We also typically have a video conference during the evening to work together. We do this because we have found the evenings are when most of us work and it helps to feel connected even though we are all working remotely. We are always looking for ways to improve; how are you focusing together as a team?

https://medium.com/dyno-dev/focusing-on-the-needs-first-1c63573c5b12

['Jason Wallingsford']

2018-11-23 15:26:01.359000+00:00

['Startup', 'Productivity', 'Focus']

What enough mean to You? if you have enough, is the RAINBOW enough?

how much is enough ? when enough never enough. This may hit close than you expect. I have some serious life experiences and which is a common thing to happen to any person and I’m a believe of JESUS CHRIST gospel and message, that all man are born equal but the anointing is what makes the different. How much is enough? When enough never enough, I’m the child of the dark continent and I have grow understanding that I must share and always ask if I’m in need of something and to say thank you even if I didn’t receive, what I asked for. I’m the eleven child of my father and being born in a big family have it’s own up’s and downs, such as they will be not shopping done for you because all the clothes your brothers dress will be passed down from them to you, just imagine if you have to receive a t-shirt that is been worn by six or eight people before you have it. How does it look…? you may laugh, ha ha ha… The best part about it when you receive it you must show gratitude and embrace it because is the best thing that someone can give you. I just wanted to take you back in the days, our life experiences will never be the same, as we are created to add a certain value to those who are around you it can be your family, friends and co-workers it matters not where you are play your part. How much is enough? When enough never have enough: This can respond to anything that is anything that you fill enough of it, or you could be still searching for your enough of something. The only way that a person can understand that is truly enough is when he evolve and have reach a point of acceptance within that all that is before me is in vain because enough is like un ending song that keeps on playing and playing, over and over without stop. We often want more than we have now. More money, more gadgets, better furniture, a better house, a better car, more clothes, more shoes, more success. What does “enough” mean? Enough doesn’t mean the just bare necessities of life. That would be food, water, shelter and clothing. It could be a house with a bed, a table, a chair, a place for food storage and preparation, a toilet, perhaps a shower. That’s not really enough. What is enough? If enough is not enough Is enough a thing that can be seen with the naked eye or is enough, have to do with our inner beings? the point is to find a balance from what you need apart from what you desire. The most of the world spend time over a desire than a need and failing to see the point of identifying a need around ourselves is the major fact that pushes us to remain in the position of not being enough. This point have captured us as prisoners and we have became enslaved to seeking enough. We end up missing the major point that is to appreciate and embrace the position that is enough today. The fact that we ignore to attend to the present standard in our lives, we create a gap that will course us to seek enough because we have open a gap in our minds that constantly speaks to us, and says you are not enough. This voice will always remind you that you can’t live your life in abundantly because you are not enough. These are the some of the areas in your life you may want to improve: To live an amazing life, let me encourage you to figure out in which of these areas enough is enough. And in which of these areas enough is not enough. This may seem simple, but I think many people spend too much time on “enough is enough” stuff. I’m sure you know people with lots of money who keep focusing on making more money because that’s what is easiest for them, but are doing horribly in some other areas of their life. Perhaps they even use making more money as an excuse for their shortcomings in other areas. I may not know what does it mean to you ,but to me. It means getting rid of many of the things you do so you can spend time with people you love and do the things you love. It means getting rid of the clutter so you are left with only that which gives you value. Let me live with these words: Identify what’s most important to you. Eliminate everything else. I advice you to take control of your not enough Taking action on something or not taking action at all can be the different between enough and not enough. This need us to engage with ourselves on daily bases to be able to identify what matters most. Making your self happier and more and more self- confidence is the real self love, because enough can be hard to achieve and if you spend most of your time trying get enough you may lose the most. These questions may provide you with a simple way out: . looking back at your past can you honestly say that you have leveraged every single experience to your benefits? . looking at your presents are, you completely satisfied with your life as it right now? . looking on the future , are you confident that things will only get better? Suggested things that may assist you.

https://medium.com/@dondashesindile2/what-enough-mean-to-you-if-you-have-enough-287640691fe9

[]

2020-12-25 18:45:58.149000+00:00

['Family', 'Wisdom', 'Personal Lifestyle']

7 Things You Need To Know If You Want To Take The Crypto Market By Storm In 2018.

1# What Are The Killer Projects? Yep, we are starting bold here. Well, Crypto-land is a place with really diverse animals. Before giving you my insights, let’s touch some points on the main species that we’ve found in this ecosystem: Classic Dapps. Crypto Dapps. Networks & Protocols. Let me briefly describe each one. Basically we have a whole layer of projects proposing new networks and protocols similar to Ethereum or NEO or NEM. There are many different value propositions out there at this point, going from niched applications, to major architecture improvements. These are the biggest animals in Crypto-land. Biggest visionaries, biggest projects, biggest successes, biggest danger. Classic Dapps are decentralised applications that propose to transform the middle man in some industry into a smart contract. It’s like Uber, AirBnB, Alibaba and similar models except it’s on the Blockchain. These animals sound and look pretty much like a classic Silicon Valley startup. I don’t like this kind of animal. Crypto Dapps are decentralised applications that are building solutions to the web 3.0. They are making a big bet that the decentralised networks will moon big time, and they will be ahead building basic infrastructure tools to allow users to interface with the network. These animals are rarer because to build something meaningful here, you have to break the amends that you have with the whole startup culture with classic business models and do what the CEO of ChronoBank, Sergei Sergienko says: “You have to have some imagination bro.” Imagination. My insights about the ecosystem: In terms of networks, there is not yet a winner. Ethereum has incredible products, interfaces and backing. But so has NEM and NEO. The main problem that all these networks face right now is scalability. There is huge demand for the innovation at this point, but if one single application like the cryptokitties can completely overload the network, it makes it clear that there is a shit ton of things to be improved. The projects that heavily focus on solving transactions scalability issues will grow big time. Like internet-size big time. And that’s also why the biggest scams lie in this category. People know that scalability is an incredibly sexy buzzword for a blockchain network proposal. So, how to recognise opportunities in terms of decentralised networks? Look at the team. The team that will solve this has to be AVENGERS level. Right now, this is the hardest challenge in the blockchain world. You have to believe that the person selling you this dream has the skills to really deliver, or at least to give a good fight. Look at their backgrounds, past work, participation in the community. I’ve invested in Polkadot for example because although Gavin Wood has screw up a few times already in terms of funds security, he has been there since the beginning. If there is someone that can solve what he is proposing to solve, it’s him. Not a good fight. In terms of Classic Dapps. I really don’t like these to be honest. I have two reasons for that: The infrastructure is not there yet. Let’s assume that one of this projects manages to build something as clean and usable as the Uber or AirBnB apps. At this point, they would still fail to support 1/100th of the number of transactions of a centralised application due the network limitations. There are so many basic things that have to be in place in the land before a tree like this can prosper, that I just think people could dedicate their efforts and funds to more meaningful things. None of them have met my threshold of subversiveness. What do you mean Moritz? I will explain more what subversiveness means later, but as I mentioned before, what crypto-land ask from its visitors and inhabitants, is to think different. To break the things you assume and allow yourself to have Imagination. There is just so much that can be created in completely new ways, that in my humble opinion, it’s boring to force Blockchain into something just to pretend that you are doing something meaningful and raise funds. 99% of dapps. What about the Crypto Dapps? These are my favourite ones because they are making Blockchain really usable and tangible. They are solving the problems from the network (and there are a shit ton of problems to be solved) like key management, indexing, forecasting, etc. If the networks and protocols will prepare the land, these are the tools you will be using to interface with the network. What should you look for here? DESIGN. Not only in terms of pretty and neat stuff. But in terms of usability and relevance. Is this Dapp solving a burning pain in the Crypto-community? Is it making something that makes it 10x easier to interface with the Blockchain in whichever network? That’s a clear winner. When you find a team that has something that works. 2# ICOs Taking Off? In sum, yes. There will be heaps of explosive growth and the moon is the limit. In that regards, I feel there are two things to have in mind. 2017 was an “observation experiment” for the big guys. Now they will act. Telegram has confirmed what will potentially be the biggest ICO so far, proposing to build a smart contracts network that interfaces with their app that has already more than 100.000.000 users. This could completely change the game in terms of mass adoption and become the one network to rule them all. Having in mind that Telegram is the main competitor for Whatsapp - owned by Facebook, uncle Mark has already publicly mentioned that he is looking to better understand the crypto world to see how Facebook can potentially adopt and implement some of these technologies. We also have interesting players like Kodak, that got its shares up 130% after stating that they will issue their own Cryptocurrency (sometimes you move fast, sometimes you move slow). 2. The market is a little bit more educated. Don’t get me wrong, even a little is quite good in comparison to the kind of things we saw during 2017. But what does it mean in tangible aspects? It means that to thrive, projects will have to show more evidence of potential success. Evidence is king. You can be sure that absurd things will keep happening, but I truly believe that the explosive ICOs will be the ones that have the one core element that I mentioned before. Design. They will be building things that can actually be used by everyone, putting real thought on user experience, marketing, product, applications, and growth strategies.

https://medium.com/bitfwd/7-things-you-need-to-know-if-you-want-to-take-the-crypto-market-by-storm-in-2018-aeb98f587631

['Moritz Neto']

2018-01-29 07:15:15.303000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto']

Story Architects of the [near] Future

Virtual reality — once wedded to photorealistic real-time rendering and advanced corporeal interfaces — has the potential to deliver experiences so transportative and immersive you will forget the compulsion to glance at your phone every thiry seconds (even stereoscopic, surround-sound, IMAX, D-Box cinema can’t seem to accomplish this anymore — not for my girlfriend anyhow). It will be today’s Arrival of a Train. That’s all fine and good, but I can’t help but jump ahead to the next level of audience engagement. One that has been probed by the computer-gaming community for decades, but may soon arrive in the mainstream as a major creative discipline: A new medium for storytelling will soon emerge between games and movies; between the interactive and the non-interactive. Space Content! Whereas video games are about participation in (and mastery of) a challenge-reward process loop; and movies are about passive observation of a self-contained emotionally/intellectually resonant story: the narrative experience of the future will be about participation in (and perhaps even mastery of — more on that later) an emotionally/intellectually resonant story. They will involve world-building in the same resolution and production value as film, but to the depth and scale of world-building in video games. Akin to childrens’ role-play only with big name celebrities for friends. It will be the “holodeck,” realized, one headset at a time.* *And it need not be a solitary experience as many VR detractors seem to pine on about. Two or more headsets could put people together in the same virtual experience. Hell they don’t even need to be in the same geographic locale to be sharing an experience together in virtual space. There’s no reason why VR can’t be social too (Mark Zuckerberg’s bankers would probably agree …emphatically). The technology behind all this is advancing. It is already pretty good. But there is one craft that has not sufficiently kept up with our technical capacity: Storytelling. And that is what most keenly excites me: The addition of this single new element — participation — will require a ground-up rethink of how narratives are built. Tell me a Story There are two types of non-linear narrative: Finite-branching narrative; and a little something I like to call ‘Procedural Story.’ Finite-branching narrative is essentially a linear narrative that is punctuated by user choices. Segments of linear story are strung together at junctions of multiple-choice where the user simply selects from a predefined set of narrative paths. It is the ‘choose-you-own-adventure’ paradigm from paperbacks of yore. The limitations are obvious: Retellings are never truly unique or surprising as all possible eventualities must be described in advance by the author — a workload which, after even just a few binary branches, amplifies exponentially (behold! A mathematically accurate use of this sadly diluted buzzword). That is hardly a cost-effective task when all but one subset of those outcomes will never see the light of day. More importantly, the result (prove me otherwise) is always bland and forgettable. Procedural stories on the other hand (we could also use the term ‘sandbox story’ or “storyscape”), stand to be a fascinating beast indeed. I first touched on this subject in my article Movies in VR: Why They’ll Never Work and What Will Instead where I made the case that audience emotional engagement in a piece of interactive content best emerges organically from the very mechanisms of interaction rather than shoehorned in opposition to them. Procedural storytelling attempts to bend this principle to the sole purpose of building engaging, memorable narratives. Tell me a Procedural Story A procedural story is a narrative written at ‘run-time’ by programs feeding on user and self-generated input. It is an emergent product of the complex interplay between starting conditions, user input, scripted events, and simulated system loops such as character personality engines and environments. Nobody, not even the ‘architect’ knows exactly how it will unfold. The same premise could be re-played a hundred times by a hundred different people and never be exactly the same experience twice. I mentioned the word architect there quite deliberately. Story Architect vs. Writer Just as it is a writer’s job to make a traditional linear story compelling, it will fall to a Story Architect to design interest into a procedural story. Unlike a writer however, a story architect can not know what is actually going to happen in the story. How can they possibly do their job? It begins with a strong premise, but it goes deeper than that. Just as traditional structural/building architects design spaces to contain and impel human activities within, so too does a story architect design narrative spaces to contain and impel human experiences within. A structural architect does not precisely foresee or control how a given space will be used, but he/she can certainly optimize towards a desired outcome through the deliberate arrangement of open vs private spaces; stairs, access and traffic corridors; built-in appliances; the distribution of light, materials, storage, etc. The intention of the architect influences experiences had within the building, but does not strictly define them. Once inhabited, the building’s interior becomes a dynamical living system that may or may not be used precisely as expected but nonetheless is coloured by the character of its designer. In a procedural story, the ‘writing’ process ceases to be one of defining specifics and becomes an exercise in probabilities — tweaking knobs and variables to optimize towards desired outcomes. It is gardening as opposed to sculpture (too many metaphors?). Through an artful arrangement of premise and settings; characters’ fears and desires; and environmental context, the story architect shapes fertile narrative spaces from which compelling events will emerge organically — and if done right — inevitably. Once populated with autonomous and semi-autonomous agents the storyscape, like a building, becomes a living and dynamical system, coloured but not defined by its designer. That sense of ‘Being There’ It’s not impossible: Characters with opposing agendas and fractious personalities hurtle towards an inevitable conflict. The audience could be equipped to either resolve the conflict or exacerbate it, or get sucked into the middle by choosing to take no action. Regardless, something is bound to happen. Deftly constructed triangles of overlapping intent; shifting gauntlets of obstacle; deep relationships teetering on the brink of disequilibrium — all the regular ingredients of a great story will be equally at play here. Only the outcome is uncertain. And here’s the kicker: Because the ‘viewer’ was ‘there’ when it happened, was in fact partly responsible for the way it happened, that eventual uncertain outcome will be all the more memorable and impactful. Don’t believe me? Consider why sports events, so enduringly popular, are best consumed live and not the day after — even when you didn’t know who won! Take that intoxicating sense of ‘being there when it happend’ and multiply it by all the usual reasons humans seek out big-S stories: vicarious fantasy/wish fulfillment, role-play, escapism, catharsis, education, allegory/sense-making of life’s seeming randomness… and you’ve got yourself one potent new medium indeed. Which brings me to the next point: How story theory will need to be advanced. The State of the Art Writers and storytellers, myself included, still operate essentially on instinct. We cast about for ideas, know a good one when it strikes us, and knead out a narrative with often more than a little trial-and-error. But we can not automatically piece one together from component parts like Ikea furniture, let alone generate one algorithmically according to dynamic input. (True there’s no shortage of self-anointed gurus hawking manuals and skeleton-keys to perfect story structure, but there is enough disagreement among them to reassure me that it’s still not an exact science. Moreover, a glance at any of these authors’ own body of work will confirm that their formulae are not yet infallible). Perhaps storytelling was never meant to be an exact science, so dependent as it is on human mirror neurons and personal experience. But still I am fascinated by the notion of what it would take to advance this black art to the point of viable proceduralization (or dare I say automation). Stories will have to be broken down into its component parts: Elements like anticipation+uncertainty (suspense); irony+reversal; comic timing; cultural reference; conflict; romance; character arc; and many more not yet identified. Story structures will have to be abstracted: Why are a sequence of events arranged one way compelling but arranged another way inconsequential? They will require a new ‘functional language’ of conditions and contingencies, that will allow descriptions of dramatic situations and encompass all possible outcomes (along with probability distributions and weights accounting for ‘dramatic effect’). The effort is inherently multidisciplinary: elements of character and personality are already being explored by the engines of AI chatbots, a field basking in investment and whose advances will spill over to benefit the world of procedural story. Finally, stories (like everything nowadays) will have to be analyzed from a holistic-networked point-of-view: How do particular structural relationships between the aforementioned component parts affect the overall impact of the story? What about the contemporary cultural context? A tall order no doubt. Maybe once natural language processing gets real good, we could unleash deep-data-mining-machine-learning-AI (whatever Bloomberg is calling it this week) systems on our collective cultural reservoir and really glean some insights. Maybe it’s a job for quantum computers. Regardless, there’s a good chance it will happen in our lifetimes. Then Story Architecture will be a real bona fide profession. In Closing It’s true that there will always be demand for a linear story well told. One that we can simply sit back and observe. It’s true that an algorithmically generated story might never be as objectively good as the best in traditional literature/screenwriting. But invention is the mother of necessity. If I told you you could be James Bond for a few hours — not just watch him, but really BE him: have what he has; do what he does; feel what he touches; live his life… would you do it?

https://medium.com/cinematicvr/story-architects-of-the-near-future-24910da1ddf5

['Heston L Abbé']

2017-07-12 07:17:07.879000+00:00

['Procedural Generation', 'Video', 'VR', 'Virtual Reality', 'Storytelling']

Getting yourself right!

‘Whether you think you can or you can’t you’re right!’. Henry Ford. The fact that one’s own self appraisal can be so defining in one’s fate must alert at least some to the relationship between thinking and outcome. Now this is in harmony with what a number of self developement coaches teach and most parents tell their children. It is simply a matter of knowing one can do something and then putting together a plan for doing it and executing on that plan. So really there is nothing mysterious in that. But what is strange is that the very thinking of something defines and moulds the outcome. But quite often people surprise themselves with their achievements and often exclaim at a result that they never thought they could achieve that outcome. So is it wise to regard the relationship between mindset and confidence and outcome as so set as Henry Ford thinks? Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye. But it does have to be said that confidence does play a very large part in a person’s chances of success. And in something like marketing having confidence is certainly a factor in determining the outcome of a person’s projects. But understanding the market is too. So actually mindset plus know how count for plenty. Knowing how one’s own market will respond to one’s sales messages is of paramout value. And that takes time to work out. In other areas of life simply saying one can do something is not enough.There has to be a basis for thinking that, some evidence that one is able to carry out an operation or task. Not to have knowledge of ability is to rely on a vague hope. But if you you learn about what you want to achieve first then obviously you know you can do it. Perhaps the distinction here is about the difference between knowing and believing. With belief there is a sort of wishful thinking involved,whereas knowledge of something is very firm and committed. This is where Napoleon Hill fails to make this distinction talking as he does about belief a great deal.The main sentence is to the effect that ‘whatever the mind can conceive and believe,the mind can achieve.’ This sentence is one of the main underpinnings to what is called the ‘Law of Attraction’,which is a law of outcome which many self-developement teachers regard as quintessential teaching in their work. Understanding how to use the Law of attraction is really one of the founding stones in modern Personal developement, and was the main subject of iconic film ‘The Secret’, which claimed that if one had enough belief in an outcome then the reality would become the achievement of that outcome. But peoples’ success in using the ‘Law of Attraction’ in this way has been very low, and the reality is that simplistic understanding has meant many students wasting their time on wishlist fulfilment without a chance of success. Andy Shaw, a personal developement teacher whom I have been impressed by, reckons the problem with this is in the term ‘belief’,which is a word implying wishful thinking more than real chance of success.In ‘Creating A Bug Free Mind’ he says knowing is afar stronger word than belief and if you ‘know’ you can do something,then a success is more than guaranteed. He gives an alternate wording to the ‘Law of Attraction’ -’The Law of Conscious Creation’- which implies a far less passive process and one in which there is a sense of active involvement in the outcome of things. Of course one does attract outcomes in harmony with one’s mind energy and we are doing that the whole time,which is why so many people have unsatisfactory outcomes.If one the other hand one goes through a process of defining what one desires in detail and the steps required to to achieve it then one is most likely to achieve the intended result,because one’s thought wave patterns are aligned with such an outcome. So really it is a matter of someone having their thinking in complete alignment with the reality of a successful outcome in order to achieve it. And to do that one has to understand what it akes to get there and to do it. Wishful thinking is just that whereas conscious creation is exactly that and one works and the other does not. Between knowledge and belief is a whole wide gulf and to stop merely believing ,one has to cross that gulf to near certainty and then act on that. Then understanding one can do something usually turns out to be right.

https://medium.com/@mikescottram/getting-yourself-right-6ab90cf2c5f5

['Mike Ram']

2019-06-17 21:52:26.360000+00:00

['Entrepreneurship', 'Think Success', 'Belief', 'Law Of Attraction', 'Knowledge']

Mtx forever, the sequencing

So sequencing. How do you sequence an album? What makes a good sequence? Historically it is rather interesting, because the aesthetic of the rock album, like the aesthetic of many of the elements of popular music, and indeed the music itself, was largely determined by the technical parameters and limitations of the engineering involved in producing “canned music,” going back to the beginning. Why are pop songs two to three ish minutes long? Now, it’s because it just feels right for them to be that length, but the historical reason, in part, has to do with how many grooves per inch could be effectively inscribed on a 78 RPM ten inch disc in 1910. 45 RPM 7" singles and better technology improved the sonic quality but the aesthetic remained, and remains to this day largely. The pop song has its parameters, technically determined by engineering limitations, but carries on as its own art form to a great degree even in the all-digital world in which grooves per inch don’t enter into it at all. The rock album emerged in the same sort of way, with the long playing 33 RPM record providing a way to present a sonically acceptable program of a collection of songs (still quite often two to three minute pop songs, though they didn’t need to be that length anymore.) Eventually, as is well known, artists started to conceive of these as discrete works of art, as cohesive aesthetic statements as a whole rather than a collection of individual songs aggregated because they could be “stored” that way. But this format had limitations as well, some obvious, some lesser known. It’s two sides, for one: you have to listen to five or six songs, then pause to turn over for “part two” and this influences your experience of the music. The final track of side A lingers in the mind while you amble over to the turntable to stop the thump-thump thump-thump and turn it over. Then the next song you hear is, in effect, a new first song, an opening to the second act. What you put in these positions matters because of how they’re listened to. (Another weird aspect of that is that many people have a short attention span, and a life where things just, you know, come up, and they don’t always manage to go on to side B after listening through side A: I’m one of those people myself, and it’s rather shocking to me, when I think of my favorite albums how much better I tend to know side A.) There’s also a length limitation per side, having to do with the grooves per inch again. The more minutes there are, the less space there is, and the more trouble you run into with sonic quality and fidelity. 17 minutes, give or take, is ideally the length to shoot for on a side. Longer can present problems, though it is often done. That’s why albums have five or six songs on a side, generally, unless some of them are longer than two to three minutes, in which case you have to have fewer, say four songs on a side. And that why I projected 24 songs for the Mtx forever double album, because my songs do tend to be two to three minutes, with some exceptions on either side of that, and that’s how the math works. There’s also a stranger issue that can come up with 33 RPM LP sides, even when they are within the recommended length parameters, which is that the sonic information inscribed in the inner grooves can tend to distort, and you’re much better off with songs in this position that are less sonically dense. And this is why so many of your classic albums end side A with an acoustic song, and also tend to have minimalist or spacious arrangements in final tracks as well. (Though the tendency to want to end the show with a great bit elaborate bang sometimes over-rides this concern, as it often does with me — doesn’t change the risk though. Sometimes you make a decision that you’d rather run the risk of some distortion for the sake of making the grand statement, but that’s part of the technically-influenced aesthetic, too.) (Just as an aside, you’d think the problem would have been solved completely in the CD and digital era, and I guess it sort of was solved, however at great cost. The album aesthetic persisted, in a way; but, with less restrictive parameters, a lot of the inherent logic that contributed to the effectiveness of the two sided rock album tended to fly out the window. And soon many people just dispensed with the album aesthetic entirely, and even forgot what it was. The balance between side A and B was largely left behind. You wanted your best, most accessible, most effective songs front-loaded at the beginning of the single, practically interminable side, after which you just piled on the tracks. Albums became very, very long. And then there were the “loudness wars” where the sonic information was compressed severely to compete with all the other severely compressed tracks out there with the result that recorded rock music, as presented to the public, lost most of its subtlety and dynamics. And a digital album now is just… indistinguishable from the flow of scattered “content”. No matter how high the fidelity or how great the substance, it means less, somehow. Which is why a return to vinyl is so refreshing to people like me, as artists as well as as listeners.)

https://medium.com/@drankf/mtx-forever-the-sequencing-ec27ae050621

['Frank Portman']

2019-04-03 18:34:10.771000+00:00

['Vinyl', 'Music', 'History', 'Spotify', 'Rock']

Accelerating Services at Airbnb by Building — and Open Sourcing — a Blazing Fast Thrift Binding for Ruby

Achieving Bare-Metal Performance in Ruby Writing performant code in Ruby can be difficult due to its dynamic nature: unlike lower-level languages where the idiom is zero-cost-abstractions, pretty much everything in a dynamic language is expensive. As such, it was no surprise that the Ruby Thrift Binding took advantage of an important tool that is often used to improve the performance of libraries in dynamic languages: C extensions. As a kind of abstraction, C extensions hide all the detail of a performant implementation with an elegant interface in a high-level language. However, simply using C extensions does not guarantee high performance. In fact, many patterns we observed in the Ruby Thrift Binding are heavily detrimental to its performance. We will discuss some of these patterns and show how Sparsam is able to avoid them. Avoiding Costly String Allocations Creating a new Ruby string is slow, and it’s not much faster when you do it in C either. One of the reasons the Thrift Ruby Binding was slow was the excessive object allocation it does when deserializing data. For each field it reads/writes, a ruby string needs to be allocated and interned through rb_iv_set/get . This pattern is problematic and adds significant overhead to accessing each field. In one of our experiments, simply caching the interned ID of a string resulted in 25% speedup. In early versions of Sparsam, we store every field inside a hash map of {FieldID => Value} . This way, we avoid the cost of creating strings and string interning completely. Eliminating Excessive Cross-Language Function Calls An important reason C extensions are fast is that they circumvent the Ruby VM. By doing so, C extensions do not share the overhead of a dynamic language. Calls that cross the language barrier are not free, especially when calling a ruby function from C, so the best practice is to handle as much as possible inside a big C function. Although the Thrift Ruby Binding handles a large portion of serialization inside C, it also relies on the dynamic dispatch of Ruby VM in the runtime. As a result, a significant chunk of time was spent resolving the correct method to call in Ruby VM. This trait diminishes the point of using a C extension and can cause performance regressions when the message either contains a large number of fields or has a deeply-nested structure. Sparsam, on the other hand, does not rely on the Ruby VM for dispatching. By doing so, we minimize the number of Ruby VM calls in serialization and greatly improves the performance. Caching Schema Information in C++ Containers One of the bottlenecks we identified was accessing Thrift’s struct definitions in the serializer. Thrift’s highly compact binary format requires both ends of the communication to have the schema of the struct that’s being serialized. For example, in Ruby, thrift compiles a definition for a struct into a ruby hash like this: The schema is stored inside FIELDS , a constant defined under the Ruby class, and such objects are only accessible through the Ruby VM. This means that for every read/write of a field, the C extension needs to access such schema and perform type conversion between Ruby and C data types to determine which method to use. This problem is made worse by Thrift’s nested struct support, as nested structs will result in nested hash objects. To alleviate this effect, we cache the schema information of structs inside a C++ map<FieldID, FieldType> . Besides being faster in itself, we also avoid the cost of invoking functions in Ruby VM and type conversion. Removing Layer of Indirection by Using Instance Variables One of the problems of using our {FieldID => Value} map was that ruby has to constantly grow the hash map: each time a value is read, the hash map’s capacity needs to be expanded to store another pair of data, result in an expensive realloc call. Furthermore, when accessing a field, two hash lookups are involved: from Field Name to Field ID, and from Field ID to Value. Therefore, we replaced this design with using instance variables directly to store the data. The benefits to this approach are tri-fold: ruby’s hash-growing behavior for instance variables are different from that of hash maps, making it more suitable for storing deserialized data; a layer of indirection is avoided when accessing data; and an object created by Sparsam is much closer to a PORO (Plain Old Ruby Object). This optimization gained us almost 3x speedup on the read path, with no impact on the write performance. Benchmarks To test the speed of Sparsam, we compared the speed of several serializers with a simple schema that we’re using in production at Airbnb: This schema is simple, yet complex enough to have both required fields and container types. Results of items/second is shown below (higher is better): QPS Comparison for Different Serializers in Ruby. Higher is better. Through optimizations, Sparsam achieved 25x speedup on the writing path and 8x speedup on the read path, accelerating Thrift in Ruby to be as fast as MessagePack, and significantly faster than JSON, allowing us to move more of our endpoints from legacy JSON endpoints to newer Thrift endpoints without hurting performance. Strict & Powerful Validation of Thrift Structs Besides being fast, Sparsam also provides extensive validation of Thrift structs. By default, Thrift’s only checks for required fields; in Sparsam, we provide two additional validation modes: “strict” and “recursive”. Strict: besides checking required fields, strict mode also checks the types of fields inside a struct. However, if one of the fields is a struct type, it will only check whether this struct has the correct ruby struct, and won’t check the types of its nested fields. Recursive: checks required fields, types of fields, and goes into each nested structs to check the types of fields in nested structs. Conclusion Open-source software plays an important role at Airbnb. Faster serialization reduces the overhead of Service Oriented Architecture, and thereby improves the experience of the Airbnb community. By open sourcing Sparsam, we hope to contribute back to the community.

https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/accelerating-services-at-airbnb-by-building-a-blazing-fast-thrift-binding-for-ruby-8f63044ba149

['Andy Fang']

2017-07-31 18:18:54.032000+00:00

['Infrastructure', 'Backend', 'Open Source', 'Ruby', 'Thrift']

Why a data scientist needs to also be a storyteller

Data Science Discussions Image by Lukas Bieri from Pixabay Working as a data scientist is a fantastic job: you can collect data, through wonderful scraping mechanisms or Web RESTful APIs. Then you can build fantastic datasets or exploit existing ones. You can manipulate data before analysing them through preprocessing strategies, such as replacing missing values, standardizing, normalizing, binning and formatting data. You can also build perfect estimators to predict the trend of your data for the next ten years. You can even build wonderful time series predictors through ARIMA and SARIMA models. Finally you can build extraordinary visualizations and graphs. But ultimately your work may be totally useless. You may have wasted time. You could counter my position, justifying yourself and saying that your work is correct, that the accuracy, precision and recall of your predictors is almost 100%. You are sure you have not made any mistakes and that your work is novel. Nobody has reached your conclusions yet. You are right. Your work is novel and fantastic. You are a very competent data scientist. But a data scientist alone is useless. Why? Imagine that you work as a data scientist for a powerful company that produces thousands of copies of a certain product every day. Imagine that your boss asks you to analyze the sales trend of this product, in order to increase sales. As a good data scientist, you sit down at your computer and start analyzing your beautiful dataset containing the data of the last 10 years of product sales trends. You start with your analysis and get some surprising results: your ARIMA model shows that the product sales will decrease in the next two months. You are sure of your result because the model accuracy is around 99%. You go to your boss and you show him the graph of the accuracy of the results, built with the most powerful visualization tools (d3.js, seaborn etc.). You are very enthusiastic thus you also show him the precision and recall charts, made with the same tools. Your boss listens to you attentively. Everything seems to be fine. But after a week, you get the dismissal letter. Yes, your boss fired you. What went wrong? The problem is that your boss is not a data scientist, thus he does not know anything regarding precision, recall and accuracy. In addition, he does not know anything about d3.js and seaborn and other geek stuff. He wants to know only how to make money in the next months. Communication abilities is what is missing in your work. Yes, you need to communicate your results in a proper way. This is why a data scientist cannot live alone. He needs someone who translates his work in to a more understandable language. Three aspects must be considered for a good communication: it must be clear what you want to communicate well speaking abilities work in a team interdisciplinary work. What can you do if you work alone? If you don’t have the possibility to work in a team, you must develop at least some basic communication skills: understand the context decluttering focus attention build a story Understand the context Firstly, you must think about your interlocutor. Who is your work aimed at? Who will read your results? The presentation of the results depends a lot on this. You need to speak the language of the interlocutor. It is necessary to get out of one’s self-referentiality. The audience is smarter than you think. At least, three basic interlocutors could be identified: public audience — In this case, it is sufficient to build a video for Instagram or Youtube. You can exploit some basic tools such as Adobe Spark, which provides you with some basic features to present your data; — In this case, it is sufficient to build a video for Instagram or Youtube. You can exploit some basic tools such as Adobe Spark, which provides you with some basic features to present your data; your boss — For your boss, you can build a presentation, such as a power point presentation or a google scholar presentation; — For your boss, you can build a presentation, such as a power point presentation or a google scholar presentation; your personal portfolio — You could enrich your personal profile, for example on LinkedIn, by building a custom web site, where you show the results of your research. In this case you could exploit a CMS like Wordpress or other Javascript libraries, such as Bootstrap. Decluttering To convey a message through a graph, it is necessary to reduce the amount of information it carries as much as possible. In other words, you should declutter your graph. Your motto should be less is more: the less information a graph provides, the easier it is to understand it. Focus attention It is very important that the interlocutor does not get distracted while you present your results. For this reason, you should pay attention to some preattentive attributes, such as size, color, and position of graphs on page. Furthermore, your speaking skills should guide the interlocutor to process the information exactly as you want him to process, that is, in the order you have established. Build a story Although you have developed some skills build wonderful graphs, you must enhance also textual elements. You don’t need to write papers and papers of words, but text is always mandatory to understand data. Graphs without text are useless, thus you need to balance the textual and visual parts. Summary In this brief article I have discussed on the importance of communication. A data scientist is able to process data but he does not necessarily have the skills communicate them to others. Communication requires many skills, of which the basic are: understand the interlocutor, decluttering graphs, focus the interlocutor attention on what you want and, finally, build a story. If you want to be a good data scientist, you must be also a good storyteller or a data journalist. Definitely, what people want is not data, but stories. If you are interested in this topic, you can also read my previous article on how to design a data journalism story. If you wanted to be updated on my research and other activities, you can follow me on Twitter, Youtube and and Github.

https://towardsdatascience.com/why-a-data-scientist-needs-to-also-be-a-storyteller-89b4636cb83

['Angelica Lo Duca']

2021-03-14 01:51:27.576000+00:00

['Communication', 'Storytelling', 'Data Journalism', 'Storytelling With Data', 'Data Science']

Have we abandoned rationalism?

I am a man of the natural sciences and as an engineer I work every day with concrete problems that cannot be solved without using knowledge about the actual, real world. This keeps me grounded and rational in a world that feels like it has abandoned rationalism, and I want to explain why with a few examples. Plastic pollution We are constantly being told that plastic pollution in the ocean is a real problem and that we need to solve it. This is true but only in a very special sense: Certain parts of the world, not all, are producing more or less all of the plastic pollution in the oceans. In fact, a study showed that the “10 top-ranked rivers transport 88–95% of the global load into the sea”. And guess what: None of these are in Europe or the United States, and not even South-America for that matter. So why can’t we continue to use plastic bags and straws in parts of the world where waste is handled and treated, and is even a source of energy? Why are we being asked to use much inferior paper-based straws and reusable grocery bags that accumulate food waste and can become breeding ground for harmful bacteria? Because we are not thinking rationally, that’s why. We have been swept away by politicians and special-interest groups, that’s why. Oil and gas Oil and gas as energy sources have long been talked down. They are not “green” and contribute to climate change when utilized, it’s said. This completely ignores that fact that not a single country in the world has become rich without ever-increasing use of oil and gas, up to a point. Yes, only up to a point. Because once people become rich enough they begin care about their environment and afford more expensive energy sources. An excellent discussion on this can be found in the book A Thousand Barrels a Second by Peter Tertzakian. A starving and freezing man only thinks about food and shelter. With fossil fuels, he can generate electricity and move around in a car. Fossil fuels are jetpacks for economic prosperity, and economic prosperity is the source of environmental conscience. Furthermore, as the world has generally been getting richer for the past few decades, the planet is getting greener. There is reason for environmental optimism, and oil, gas and coal are to thank. That said, of course we as humans are constantly looking for alternatives — for everything! Energy sources are no exception. So while Pakistan wants more gas (for many reasons), Europe wants more wind mills (for completely different reasons). For some parts of the world, the energy transition is from having no energy at all to having some energy, and for others its going from dirty energy to cleaner energy. Fossil fuels as either the goal or a stepping stone, and we need it for at least a few more decades. Economics Economics is a topic ripe in irrationality in the public and political debate. I won’t go into detail but point out a few absurdities: If printing more money generates wealth, why don’t we just double the supply of money every day? If going into debt can secure prosperity or relieve economic hardships, why don’t we just borrow as much as possible all the time? If increased public spending is a good thing, why don’t we just hand all of our money to the government? If debt-financed private spending spurs the economy, why don’t the authorities ban caps on borrowing so we can spend some more? What is generally missing is any consideration for the unseen and the long-term. It feels as we for years have been thinking like a kid in the candy store: If only I could stay here forever and eat candy I will have a good future. It’s nice for a few minutes, but that’s it. I am no economist but I know that printing money does not generate wealth, think that debt should only be incurred for productive investments or few, large and important purchases (such as a car) and see public spending as just some guy A spending the money of some guy B, which generally is a recipe for disaster. Conclusion We have a problem. There is the “main stream” narrative and the “fringe” narrative, and these are widely disconnected. Instead of an open debate where all opinions are considered, we just accept the manuscript handed over to us by the media and authorities and special interests with access to these. We rarely self-educate ourselves on complicated topics and rarely bother to break the line, or we don’t dare to. This is bad. We need more independent spirits like William Lloyd Garrison, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Ludwig von Mises and Rosa Parks — individuals that dared to break the line, think for themselves and speak out, even though the majority thinks they are wrong.

https://medium.com/@geiragustsson/have-we-abandoned-rationalism-e681f6dc343

['Geir Agustsson']

2020-12-17 10:20:36.158000+00:00

['Rationality', 'Plastic Bags', 'Economics', 'Environmental Issues', 'Martin Luther King']

How to find the right influencers to follow in crypto

The explosion of cryptocurrency investments has brought on a new class of influencers on social media. There’s a myriad of different types of influencers. Some popular channels are Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, and even Steemit. In other countries popular networks include WeChat and Naver. Despite there being no shortage of platforms or influencers, it’s important to filter out the signal from the noise when it comes to qualifying influencers. In this article we’ll explore the variety of different traits that we use to evaluate the efficacy of advice that comes from crypto-influencers. Track Record The obvious initial qualification metric for crypto influencer is assessing the historical performance attributed to their advice. You can assess this by tracking the quality of their past coin-picks. For instance, if an influencer is simply shilling coins for profit, it’s highly unlikely for all their coins to perform. It’s important to evaluate the performance of prior coins that a influencer recommended as a leading indicator of how their future picks will perform. It’s a sign that they have good judgement, and know what’s important when it comes to crypto picks. While token-price is an important dimension to assess these projects, it’s also important to assess these projects for a variety of other qualities. For instance, it’s important to consider the future potential of projects. One must apply the same scrutiny level as your other investments. Overall, one must treat advice from influencers as lightly-qualified leads. It’s always important to do your own research and to take any advice you get with a grain of salt. Consistency of Advice Throughout the Blockchain Community Once you find a crypto influencer that can be trusted, you can use them as a benchmark to evaluate other influencers. When you hear a coin being lauded by multiple influencers it could be a good sign, as long as one of the influencers is reputable. Influencers may have varying opinions for why a project can succeed. If an influencer (with historically good picks) is bullish about a project, and they can make salient points to support their rationale, it could be a good sign if multiple influencers also voice their support for the project. Reputable influencers understand that the quality of their advice is the leading factor required to grow their brand. Given that, there is a finite number of good projects released every quarter, one will find that leading influencers may sometimes congregate around the same projects. Additionally, when a number of influencers create a lot of attention around a project, it also increases the project’s chances of adoption. Vested Interests The term “bagholder” is commonly used in the crypto-community to describe a biased opinion from individuals that hold a vested interest in a project (usually one that’s currently performing poorly). Bagholders clearly have biased opinions because they have economic incentives to constantly shill a project to build hype around it. It’s a natural bias for them to defend their own economic interests. This is an important aspect to consider before heeding the advice of an influencer. Have they mentioned this project in the past? Do you know of their interest stake in the project? One must always take in consideration the many biases that influencers may harbor while supporting a project. In addition, some influencers are known to take funds or equity to voice their support of a project. This is clearly a conflict of interests as their opinions are moot. The only reason they publicly express these opinions is to earn money. It’s important to investigate into the vested interests of influencers to understand their particular biases. Biased opinions are not necessarily true. Following untrue advice may result in losses that will be reflected in your portfolio. Size and Quality of Following An interesting way to assess the quality of an influencer is to assess the quality of their following. The logic is simple — If you notice the “followers” of a particular influencer are all uniformed and somewhat ignorant about how crypto works, it’s clearly a red flag. A good way to do diligence on an influencer is to evaluate their following. On Twitter and other platforms you can visit the profiles of existing followers. You can evaluate the tweets, and the rest of the content on their profile to try to determine how experienced and knowledgeable they are in the field. There are different categories of followers that vary from different levels of blockchain understanding. Better influencers usually have better followers who have a more in-depth understanding of blockchain concepts. Evaluating Their Worst Advice Sometimes evaluating the worst picks made by an influencer can be as useful as evaluating their best picks. Evaluating their worst picks can be a way to find glaring weaknesses in their evaluation process. In addition, it can serve as evidence to support claims that an influencer is taking money to promote a project. For instance, if they have a reputation of sharing reputable projects and suddenly there’s a project that’s suspiciously-low in quality, it can be a sure sign that they’re taking money to promote projects. In addition, everyone will have lapses in judgement from time to time regarding investments. For influencers, not every project they publicly support will succeed. It’s important to understand why or how an influencer’s bad picks turn out to be unsuccessful projects. On the Hilo.io platform you can follow crypto-influencers and the % compositions of their portfolios. We feel that influencers play a big role in the crypto community overall. On Hilo you can follow their research and opinions in real time. Hilo.com was designed for cryptocurrency enthusiasts of all levels. You can join our waitlist now on our website: Hilo.io. If you’re an influencer, it may be advisable to claim your handle on Hilo.io as well. Handles are unique to each individual’s user account. For more information about Hilo.io, visit https://www.hilo.io/. Join the Discussion on Telegram, visit https://t.me/HiloCrypto

https://medium.com/hilocrypto/how-to-find-the-right-influencers-to-follow-in-crypto-d6d68b985f8

['Nicholas Donahue']

2018-07-07 02:41:15.860000+00:00

['Cryptocurrency', 'Social Media', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Blogs']

Engineering Book Review: AWS You Should Know Now.

What should I learn to be a backend engineer? TypeScript and Node? Java and Spring? Database and SQL? Cloud and AWS? Docker and Kubernetes? I have been already using TypeScript, Node, Database and SQL. Learning a new language and framework has a lower priority than learning infrastructure. Learning Docker and Kubernetes is expected to show a steeper learning curve than learning AWS. I decided to learn AWS. I found an easy-to-follow book on AWS. The title is AWS You Should Know Now. The authors are professor Lee Yeong Ho and engineer Han Dong Su. Yes, the book is written in Korean. Let the review begin. An Image of AWS You Should Know Now. Chapter 3. AWS Accounts AWS has a unique authentication system. We created a root account of the root privilege. And then, we created IAM accounts of specific privileges. It was a necessary experience. It happened in early 2020. I created an account but cannot log into AWS. I asked a question in a chat room. An AWS system architect told me to check whether I tried logging by the root account or the IAM account. His advice was right. Anyone who teaches AWS should teach how to manage AWS accounts. Chapter 4. AWS Lightsail and WordPress We created a Lightsail instance which contained an image of a WordPress blog. The process was simple. We made a beautiful blog by clicking. Far in the past, I loved optimization. I loved reinventing the wheel. I loved low-level programming languages. I believed this mind was the spirit of engineers. It was no wonder that I ignored WordPress because it was too rudimentary. But after using WordPress today, I recommended WordPress to my friends for the same reason. We live in a world where time and money are limited. WordPress can be an excellent alternative in this world. Chapter 5. Amazon S3 and Bootstrap Page We created an instance of S3. And then, we uploaded a template of Bootstrap. Lastly, we hosted a static website. The process was simple, too. We made a landing page by clicking. Chapter 6. AWS DynamoDB AWS You Should Know Now handled AWS DynamoDB. I wanted to learn AWS RDS. Anyway, not bad at all. We created an instance of AWS DynamoDB. I asked my friends: Are use using something like AWS RDS, or something like PostgreSQL on AWS EC2? The answer was AWS RDS on the business project. Chapter 7. AWS Lambda, SNS, SES We learned how to create two Lambda instances. One sends a message to my phone number, and the other monitors the cost and writes a mail to my email address. Before reading this book, I heard a front-end engineer, Mr Ha Min, say AWS Lambda is innovative. I tried but failed. FaaS was a little awkward. Today I came to know the mechanism of FaaS. Chapter 8. Amazon API Gateway and Amazon Translate We created an application which translates Korean to English. The process was intuitive. We created the front-end application on Amazon S3. We connected Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda. We connected Amazon Translate. I couldn’t imagine I would implement a translation app. Amazon Translate is an innovative API. Without it, how can a solo software engineer do this! Chapter 9. Amazon Elastic Beanstalk I do not use Amazon Elastic Beanstalk. It is more complicated than Lamda and more restricted than EC2. Chapter 10. Amazon EC2 I already know Amazon EC2. Chapter 11. Amazon ECS I need to read other books. This book is too elementary to handle containerization and orchestration. Chapter 12. Amazon QuickSight Ummm. Conclusion After reading AWS You Should Know Now, I came to know EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, Lightsail, S3, DynamoDB, ECS, API Gateway, SNS, SES, Translate and QuickSight. Of course, it is an introductory course. I should learn other services and many design patterns. Despite that awareness, I am satisfied.

https://medium.com/@leegeunil96/engineering-book-review-aws-you-should-know-now-cf47d5a6fce6

['Lee Geun Il']

2020-12-24 19:51:59.899000+00:00

['AWS', 'Backend', 'Software Development']

Virtual reality startup demos prototype at Berkeley

Virtual reality startup demos prototype at Berkeley “Project Aether” puts the player in a virtual forest. In a three-dimensional virtual forest, archers pop up in the distance and aim their bow and arrow in the player’s direction. In a five by seven-foot square space viewed through a headset, the player picks up rocks from the ground with two controllers and throws an air punch in the direction of the attacking archers. More Equal Studios, a Berkeley-based virtual animation startup, demonstrated this prototype last Saturday at the Virtual Experience Convention held at University of California, Berkeley. It was one of 11 companies, who were there to introduce students to virtual reality technology, which puts users in immersive computer-generated environments. Called Project Aether, the company’s demo was an immersive combat arena game that puts players in a dusky forest where they fight intruders with a number of offensive and defensive strategies. Hand gestures summon objects like rocks, pillars and walls or a head nod moves the player from one spot to another. The game employs a sophisticated gesture recognition system based on machine learning, a way to automate programming with data, so the game recognizes what players are trying to do through gestures and motion. “A lot of VR games these days require you to press a button for something to happen,” said co-founder Zain Nayer. “This one you really immerse your body. If I raise my hands up, a rock comes out of the ground.” Participant at Virtual Reality Experience Convention punches a rock in an offensive move. The emerging platform has received increased attention since Facebook bought VR headset company Oculus VR for $2 billion in 2014. The demo by More Equal Studios is one example of the technology’s potential to change various fields from the arts to medicine and gaming. Kevin Yin, another co-founder, explained that the company made a breakthrough with its motion gesture algorithm, which can be applied to various training programs, exercising programs, and anything that requires movements or gestures. Nayer, Yin, Charles Niu and several others founded More Equal Studios earlier this year. They said they were inspired by a game they liked to play called League of Legends, where players summon superpowers and battle against an opposing team. Co-founders Charles Niu, Kevin Yin and Zain Nayer (from left to right). In September, they demonstrated their concept to wide acclaim at PAX West Seattle, a popular gaming convention Users filled out surveys to give the developers an insight to what worked and what didn’t work. “We’re all developers so sometimes we miss things,” said Nayer, adding that it was helpful to get insight from people, who had never tried VR before. VR is widely expected to be the next big technology, but the high cost of the equipment remains the biggest impediment to wider spread adoption. Currently, popular headsets cost between $600 and $3000. The most popular, HTC Vive is $799 and Oculus Rift $599, while Sony PlayStation VR is slated to release a headset for $399 on October 13th. Most headsets also need a powerful PC system to run content, which can cost from $999 to over $4000. The cost of the full setup is out of reach for most consumers. Still, More Equal Studios is optimistic about the future potential of the market. “We’re not going to wait for everybody to get a headset, we’re going to inspire them to get a headset,” said Yin. The company is currently working on adding multiplayer functionality to Project Aether. The founders said some big players in the industry have shown interest in their product. Yin said they also want to enter the VR market through e-sports, a competition sports arena facilitated by video games. “In a world where everyone had VR, we would do well,” said Yin.

https://medium.com/@naniwalker/virtual-reality-startup-demos-prototype-at-berkeley-29dc603e6a9c

['Nani Sahra Walker']

2016-10-14 06:55:57.931000+00:00

['Virtual Reality', 'Esports']

To My Parents

She is so beautiful in her white dress that she looks like a princess. Seeing her slim, slender silhouette, her sparkling smile, and her fine blonde hair, I quickly realized why my father said yes to her in 1978. No one would have said no. Absolutely no one. He is standing a little further to the right in the photo, next to other family members, a cousin, and some of my grandparents. I immediately notice his brown hair and his perfectly trimmed beard, black as obsidian. He is very handsome too, with deep black eyes, smiling like my mother. I see a gold ring around the ring finger of his left hand. The memory of a beautiful spring day, when he was thirty years old and that she made such an important move. I can no longer keep moving, overwhelmed by emotion. I grab the polaroids one by one on my father’s desk and scroll them continuously in front of my eyes, which are beginning to get wet. My hypersensitivity is playing a trick on me again. I’ve never seen these pictures of my parents, and as I look at them I try to hear what their hearts are saying to each other. They must be about the same age as I am today. These are not pictures of their wedding, but simple and joyful family times. Originally, I had gone to my father’s office looking for two batteries to bring to life the interactive book that my five-year-old niece had just unwrapped in a state of excitement at the foot of the Christmas tree. I never thought I would stumble upon these images and suddenly be teleported back to the happiest years of my dear parents. They are beautiful, incredibly beautiful, everything is perfect and I feel like crying. But I’m holding myself back, it’s Christmas after all, and my niece needs me. My mother pushes the door of the little room and asks me if I’ve succeeded in my mission to find the batteries. She pulls the stacks out of a drawer, gives them to me and we share a few words about the photos. Then she leaves the room without noticing the state I’m in. I stay there for a few more minutes, looking at the photos again and hoping they come to life. I want to go back in time. I want to see them move, I want to see them play, I want to see them smile and laugh, I want to see them kiss, I want to see them hug, I want to see them love and desire each other. Please help me. I end up joining my parents, my sister, her partner, and my three nieces who are laughing in the living room. I have to get back to my life, to our lives, and to the damn present moment that I have such a hard time living with.

https://medium.com/scribe/to-my-parents-57b13fd64230

['Thomas Gaudex']

2020-12-25 22:02:20.579000+00:00

['Love', 'Illness', 'Grief', 'Life', 'Family']

Sleep Training For Baby: Myths And Real Facts All Parents Need to Know

Sleep training for children has always remained a topic of debate among all parents. When some parents find it harmless for their little ones, some others find cruelty in the “cry-out” methods. And different misconceptions about sleep training propagate such baseless debates. In the upcoming part of this article, we will discuss some myths about baby sleep training in the UK and beyond. Hopefully, after going through them, you will get the required knowledge about this training. Continue reading. Myths About Sleep Training For Your Baby Myth 1- Only Parents Get Benefitted From Sleep Training Sleep training offers better sleep for tired parents indeed. But it does not mean only they enjoy its benefits. Waking up many times at night could leave an adverse impact on the children’s health. It causes exhaustion, and disturbed sleep never goes well for them. Sleep training teaches them self-soothing that helps them to avoid night crying. Myth 2: Sleep Training Comes With Long-Term Adverse Effects Many parents hesitate to go for such training, considering the adverse health impacts. But the fact is no scientific study has found any adverse effect of this training. In fact, studies prove that sleep training benefits your children’s physical and mental health by offering many short-time developments. Myth 3- In Involves Crying Out Process Necessarily Cry-out is the fact from where the debates regarding sleep-training emerge. But thankfully, all this training doesn’t involve this process at all. If you are one of those parents who find it frustrating, you may opt for such a session. The two most popular examples of these techniques include routine awakening and fading. Anyway, to find a suitable sleep training session for your kid, make sure to get detailed information on different sessions carefully. And before you book an appointment with your trainer research different companies offering this service carefully. Amid several options, you may keep your trust in this trusted baby sleep trainer. Contact This Trainer For The Satisfactory Sleep Consultation Deal with Holistic Childcare Solutions and get baby sleep training in the UK. It does not matter what the sleeping problem is, trainers over there always remain committed to giving the best solutions. Go Through its website carefully and get an idea about its services. To gather more relevant information about this reputed sleep training provider, visit its site holisticchildcaresolutions.com now.

https://medium.com/@holisticchildcaresolutions/sleep-training-for-baby-myths-and-real-facts-all-parents-need-to-know-b78618f5b787

['Holistic Childcare Solutions']

2021-04-21 09:27:14.750000+00:00

['Sleep Training Baby Uk', 'Baby', 'Sleep Training Baby', 'Sleep Training']

stumbling to never catch up

I saw my love through the windows of a coffee shop I didn’t go in because he was with her and their energy was dancing to a melody that only the deepest souls can hear. I didn’t go in because when they I saw them they were fused from their lips through the caverns of their hearts. I didn’t go in because I was already inside, I was inside the coffee shop and I had to watch him float past the coffee shop, underneath the glow of the streetlight with her trailing behind, trying to keep up with his double-time stride that was a result of the traces of love from his head to his feet. When he loved, it was with his whole being. I had to watch her face disappear into the dark, but her body fall under the yellow glow waiting for his next touch I had to watch him and her glued at the hand, no matter how much she stumbled trying to keep up. He warmed her hands with his breath when they would stop to watch the traffic whiz by. The traffic worked like the electricity running through their veins; travelling like time doesn’t exist and not knowing where the next turn would be. I knew he would bring her to her door and they would kiss, not that they hadn’t before, this kiss was different. She would kiss him and suddenly she could breathe warm air made effortlessly by the stars, and it would find it’s way through her entire body; the kiss would warm the back of her eyelids and the bottoms of her feet. I knew he would touch her and smile. Without saying it, they would both know it’s new, it’s unlike anything you can touch, see, or dream; its beyond what you can imagine love is. I met my love through the windows of a coffee shop. I stopped under the street lamp and we locked eyes through foggy panes. I went in because I knew if I didn’t touch his skin with my own fingertips that he couldn’t be real. I knew I used to stumble behind on the sidewalk with frozen fingertips begging to slow down. I knew I saw him him peek in the window and heard him remind me of the booth he was sitting in when we fell in love. I knew it used to be me glued to the concrete on the step of my tiny apartment, feeling like I was spinning a million times and falling into a haze of a certain type of love. I knew eventually he found himself at the street lamp forgetting to glance up to see the booth where he sat the day we met. I could walk at his side with ease and his stride slowed by the second because when he fell out of love he fell with his whole being . Our kisses became harsh; like spikes on the road made for ruining the trajectory of a fast machine. I saw my love through the windows of a coffee shop and she stumbles forever behind him, and I hope she never catches up because in my opinion the worst part about losing your love is when you can walk just as fast.

https://medium.com/@meghanmokhtary/stumbling-to-never-catch-up-74a909c7d62e

[]

2019-10-08 18:08:48.437000+00:00

['Poetry', 'Love', 'Lovestory', 'Poem']

The Truth Behind Why People Give Up

Why People Give Up Our brain can only focus on the risk, threat, or the potential for danger to avoid pain and discomfort. The problem with this self-defense mechanism is that on the journey toward achieving your dreams and living the life you desire — You will face countless risks. You will no doubt have to face pain. It might be the pain of rejection. The pain of disappointment. The pain of temporary failures. Or even just the pain of waiting. The desire to avoid pain is why people give up and settle. They settle to “play it safe” thinking they’re better off not pursuing their dreams because it’s hard and pain will be involved. What they don’t realize though, is that the pain of regret will hit them later on. Most people choose comfortable roads and easy paths. So if you do what is easy? Your life will be hard. Not taking the risk for your dreams and desires is hell. Choosing to settle for comfort is the worst risk you could choose to take. Because one day, when all windows of opportunity have closed for you, regret will be your companion for the rest of your life. That’s the worst pain of all because at that point — You can’t change it. More on that later. Pain is inevitable. It will find you in some way, shape, or form. This is a good thing. Why is this good? Because pain forces us to grow. Pain forces us to adapt. You see, we humans are adaptation geniuses. We can use cognitive thinking to adopt new behaviors to adjust. We adapt, adjust, and change through pain, stress, and friction. When you choose to do the hard things now, later on down the road, your life will be easy. Training Makes Your Fear-Based Brain Stronger In the gym, we learn first-hand that pain is your teacher. It’s essential. It stretches us and forces us to tear down who we currently are. Literally! The act of working out, especially lifting weights, actually tears our muscle fibers apart on a microscopic level. This is done by putting ourselves through the pain. Putting ourselves through resistance. When we are in a set, the pain builds up. We start to get tired and sore. Our form on the movement might waver. This is when pain is taking over and that stupid little voice in our head enters our inner dialogue: “This hurts.” “This is uncomfortable.” “Stop now and the pain will stop.” “Stop now and it’ll all be over.” “You’re not strong enough.” “You’re too weak.” “You’re gonna get hurt.” “Quit.” Every single person on Earth feels pain and has this voice. This voice tells you these lies that you aren’t good enough, strong enough, fast enough, tall enough, smart enough, talented enough, or pretty enough. It’s simply there to get you to give up on the risk and avoid the pain. It wants you to go back to that place of comfort and security. It wants you to settle. Now, something else to note: Every person who went on to achieve their dreams — and the life they desired — has heard this voice and felt the urge to quit. Every president, leader, monarch, soldier, CEO, celebrity, and athlete has felt these same urges. They just refused to listen to that voice and didn’t mind the pain. In fact, they learned to embrace it, stayed the course with their purpose, the vision of what they wanted and who they wanted to be. What if Abraham Lincoln had given up? What about Steve Jobs? How about Walt Disney, Oprah, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Lee, J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, The Beatles, Harrison Ford, Gandhi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and the Wright Brothers? I could go on and on. If You Want to Win, You Have to Endure The one common trait or quality that all these people had and have is perseverance. Specifically, their ability to persevere through the pain. I’m grateful that these individuals I listed persevered. Not only did they change the world, but they serve as living examples of what’s possible when we face pain and do not give up on our dreams, vision, and goals. In the process of working out, taking martial arts, dance, or any physical discipline, pain is a part of the game. We’ve all heard the cliche saying “No Pain, No Gain.” Cliches are there for a reason, they’re normally true and there’s wisdom in them. The first week of working out is awful. You’re tired and sore and feeling pain all over. Hurting in portions of yourself you didn’t know you had. But over time? The pain doesn’t last as long because our bodies are recovering and adjusting to the process. Adjusting to the resistance. We learn to endure. Eventually, we no longer seek to just hit our ten reps or whatever our goal for the set is. Instead, we look to smash that goal and exceed it. Champions don’t just show up to their workout to check the box. Their work starts when they’re tired and when they hit the pain. When the pain sets in, that’s when they start counting. When we face this pain through our physical disciplines day in and day out, we keep introducing ourselves to it. We get comfortable in its presence. We are adapting to the experience and we eventually become immune to it. We make a habit of facing adversity each day during our sets. We step up to it over and over again in the gym so that when adversity arises in life, we don’t back down. We keep going until the pain sets in. And when it does? We don’t quit. Instead, we choose to live in that pain for a few more miles or a few more reps. That’s how we grow. When we choose to push past the failing point and push past the pain — ignoring that little voice that fills our head with self-doubt and we choose to do those extra reps, drills, and miles — then something extraordinary happens. After we press through, going further than we thought we could go, the pain leaves, and pride takes its place. We feel incredible. We feel powerful because we could have quit when things got tough and we could have listened to that voice and given up, but we chose not to. We chose to persevere! We chose to endure and in doing so we discover that there’s more in us than we originally thought. We uncover that “hidden quality” or that “special sauce” that those individuals I previously mentioned discovered that helped them change the world. So now, we have opened a new doorway in our minds. The old doorway identified risks and brought you to a safe place. A place that avoided pain. But this doorway? It opens you to a world of pain with pleasure and pride on the other side of it. Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is all about balance. Light/Dark. Male/Female. Yin/Yang. Up/Down. Negative/Positive. Pain/Pleasure. You must walk through the mud in life if you ever want to get to the higher ground. Meaning, if you choose to endure pain today? You will experience pleasure later on. But if you choose to avoid pain? If you choose the easy road? The comfort zone? The known doorway? If you choose pleasure today? You will no doubt experience pain in the future. Do What Is Hard Now and Your Life Will Be Easy Later On What is that pain of the future? It can be summed up in one word which I mentioned earlier and bears repeating: Regret. And if I’m honest? It’s my biggest fear. I don’t want to look back on my life, on my deathbed regretting a single thing. I don’t want to settle now knowing that I let my fear run the show. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Fear of falling. Fear of discomfort. No. Face the pain today for tomorrow’s pleasure. I want you to go to the dungeon, the dark place in your mind, and I want you to be able to thrive in it. I want you to be able to exist in it knowing that no matter how hard life can get, you can take it. You can endure it and overcome it. Now, when you leave the gym, you have that sense of pride. That sense of accomplishment. That sense of confidence knowing that the old you would have quit, but not this new and improved version of you. As you go about your life, you will experience pain and discomfort in other situations and realms. There will be painful experiences with pursuing your dreams. There will be painful situations with your job. Pain with relationships. Pain with finances. Pain with your family. Except now? You aren’t afraid of the pain. You now know that when you face it and when you endure? On the other side of the pain is a reward. You will run at the fear and the discomfort. You will not quit in the face of this adversity. You will not give in just because things get difficult. You will embrace the pain. You will get comfortable feeling uncomfortable. Sounds intense? You’re damn right it is. Why? Because we get one life. That’s it. And in this life, everything is abundant except for one thing. You can lose money and jobs and lovers but you can get those things back! The one thing that we cannot get back is time. It’s depreciating. It’s fleeting and it’s always moving. I do not want to see you waste what little time we have just because life can be “uncomfortable.” Growth is painful. Change is painful. This is the way. It is part of nature and the universe. Knowing this, thicken your skin! It’s like when you take Tylenol too much, your body builds up a tolerance to it. It is the same thing with pain. The more you embrace it when it comes, the less affected you will be when going through it. You can face the pain now and reap the rewards later on. Or, you can avoid it and settle into your comfort zone only to invite regret in as your companion for the rest of your life. It’s up to you.

https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/the-truth-behind-why-people-give-up-eb6fe254e677

['Chris Teutsch']

2020-12-27 22:44:08.638000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Goals', 'Inspiration', 'Health', 'Self']

Exploring Income Share Agreements

Today, despite the city’s record-breaking economy and dropping poverty rates, too many New Yorkers are struggling. We know that skills training and continuing education programs can be gateways to a stable, family-supporting future, but can also be cost-prohibitive. That’s why the Economic Development Corporation, the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, and the Department of Small Business Services are exploring income share agreements, or ISAs to enable low-income workers to upskill and achieve economic stability. This funding system ensures people of all backgrounds will be able to access high-quality training programs in 21st century fields, regardless of their ability to pay tuition upfront or their credit histories. Training providers would be held to the highest standards and participants would only be responsible to pay back after they secure a high-paying job. Because this funding mechanism factors in what students may realistically be able to pay based on their financial circumstances, they are all but guaranteed to be better off financially than before enrolling in the program. At a time when we need effective training models that can be scaled, EDC and its partners are energized by ISAs’ potential to expand access to accelerated training programs such as coding bootcamps to low income New Yorkers who don’t have the resources to afford them. That is why we are pleased to announce a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) to establish the Talent Financing Fund. By placing participants’ interests at the heart of this initiative while simultaneously aligning the incentives of training and capital providers, the Fund will dramatically increase accessibility to good-paying opportunities in the tech sector. At a time when tech bootcamps are seeing a 49 percent increase in their graduates’ median salaries nationwide (according to Course Report’s 2018 Coding Bootcamp Alumni Outcomes & Demographics), we see a responsibility to connect even more people with the skills they need to take part in this burgeoning economy. The Talent Financing Fund is not just a funding system. It will also include additional services, such as career coaching, financial counseling, and access to emergency funding, to meet the educational needs of the most vulnerable New Yorkers. These services will be provided to ensure they have the tools they need to succeed in an accelerated learning environment. The RFEI can be found here. It further outlines our goals for the Fund and how stakeholders can contribute to the development of this exciting new model. We encourage training providers, student financing servicers, and community-based organizations to submit proposals to support the City’s efforts to advance economic mobility for all. Respondents may be selected according to a range of factors, including quality of service (demonstrated by successful student outcomes from prior learning programs), quality of student engagement and support (demonstrated by a robust ecosystem of wraparound services), and operational and financial feasibility (demonstrated by proposing fair ISA terms to students). We look forward to seeing your plans; together, we can build even more paths to success for everyday New Yorkers. Ana Ariño is the Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of New York City Economic Development Corporation. Follow her on Twitter: @ArinoAna To learn more about NYCEDC’s programs and initiatives, please visit edc.nyc.

https://medium.com/@NYCEDC/exploring-income-share-agreements-f5fa802314ad

[]

2019-11-27 15:03:33.187000+00:00

['Income Share Agreements', 'Tech', 'Codingbootcamp']

Value Streams Mapping for Humans

Organizing around value is a tenant of the Scaled Agile Framework, the most widely applied scaling method for Agile. It is essential to reducing time to market, and building a productive workplace with happy employees. Every product or service has a value stream that goes from a trigger to delivering value to the end user, aka, concept to cash. We all assume someone already has this map, at least in their head, but they often don’t, and working through it can be an enlightening experience for leaders and organizations. Mapping this process for each product or service, and then organizing our people and teams around the desired flow of value will remove countless blockers and reduce cycle times caused by siloed departments. Change is coming Great, let’s do it! But wait, a re-org by any other name is still a re-org. Many people bring with them the scars of past experiences alongside the usual fear of change. “What does it mean to work on a cross functional team?” “Why don’t I see my title on this map?” “How will my role change?” “Will I be good at this new role?” hmmm, so now what? Tell the story. I don’t mean talking about the benefit of organizing around value, I mean your organizations concept to cash flow. Make visuals and walk your teams through it until it is so clear to them they roll their eyes because you’re telling them something so obvious. You likely won’t know what features they will have, or what the individual teams will be working on at this point, and that is ok. Telling the story of how value is delivered will allow them to see themselves, and others in the story. Hearing it so many times they could tell it themselves, means they will understand it, and understand it well enough to articulate their concerns and questions before changes are made. The Choice is Yours Let people self select into teams. This may be scary for many leaders concerned about balanced teams and filling certain roles but when set up well, it leads to the individual ownership and buy-in needed to make the change stick. At this point you will need a general idea of your epics and top priorities, the number of team you are creating, and a list of roles to fill on each team. Present those teams and the Epics or value they are expected to deliver end to end as a follow on to the value stream story. It is essential to show how these teams will function differently than the teams as they are now. You inevitably won’t have enough of at least one role to go around. Most commonly, design, Product Owners, and Scrum Masters will need to be on several teams. In marketing it is often your data experts, writers, or other specialists that will either need to stay on a shared services team, or agree to how they will serve a maximum of 2 teams. You MUST be able to answer those questions BEFORE having people choose teams, and make it very clear to those people what it means to be on two teams. Organize into teams. Once you have identified and made clear the value each team will be delivering end to end, and the roles required on each, have a job fair! This should be fun! In person you may have tables for each team with details on the epics and Product managers to answer questions. Remotely, you can set up break out rooms that can be hopped in and out of. At the end, set the expectation that in a spreadsheet/ collaborate forum/ Miro board, whatever, each person has moved their name to a team. Here is the fun part. You will inevitably have doubles of roles on some teams, gaps on others, and even teams that somehow look the same as they did before. DON’T FRET! Bring everyone back together to discuss what still needs to be done. Send them back to the breakouts they signed up for, and let them work it out as a new team. Make sure business owners and product managers are there to answer questions and send team members from teams with openings into larger team breakouts to lobby for a move. You can set the expectation at the beginning that you may work with some people 1:1 after to make a few adjustments, but that no one will be forced into a team or role they don’t agree to. Who is my manager? This is where the dual operating system comes into play. At least at the start, you should change people managers as little as possible. You want these new teams to be egalitarian so they form understanding and respecting how every role and expertise fits into the puzzle. Keeping managers the same also removes an extra layer of fear, uncertainty and doubt in the change process. What if we didn’t get it right? With all this work, and all the emotional stress on the organization of major change, it can be hard to admit you may not get your value streams right the first time. Part of the story from the beginning needs to be a commitment to continuous improvement. Relentless improvement is a tenant of Agile practices, so the end cap to this story is to make it clear how these new teams and value streams will be inspected and adapted as they go. Answer the following questions clearly for your organization, and put them somewhere accessible, like an intranet page. What does success look like for the value streams? How will we know we are organized correctly? When are pivot or persevere moments and how will we decide? Follow up on how it is going. Change efforts should be treated no differently than any other feature or epic. Have the leaders of the change demo progress and struggles at system demos or all hands meetings. Bring data on how the change is going into your product vision and release stories. Whatever you do, don’t stop talking about it. Keep it in your company narrative and ensure it is acknowledged along with other wins and value delivered. To the humans, this is an effort as daunting, and time and energy consuming as any other. As your internal customers of change, they deserve a lot more than just being along for the ride.

https://medium.com/@lieschen/value-streams-mapping-for-humans-9517b7480385

['Lieschen Gargano Quilling']

2021-02-25 18:30:42.001000+00:00

['Scaling Agile', 'Agile', 'Change Management', 'Value Stream Mapping']

Belief in God is morally wrong

April 1, 2021 (From www.rationaloptimist.wordpress.com) In May 2019, Attorney General William Barr, in a speech at Notre Dame, thundered that America is undergoing a moral apocalypse. Which he blamed on irreligion and secularism. As if religion gives us morality. Which many people believe. “Is something holy because the gods love it, or do they love it because it is holy?” That was Socrates’s great question in Plato’s Euthyphro. It cuts to the heart of the matter. Is something moral just because God says so, or does he say so because it is moral? If the latter, he’s merely telling us what we should realize ourselves. But if not — if God’s dictates are not independently justifiable — must we obey them? And anyhow, can any human know what God thinks? Self-anointed prophets, gurus and mystics claim to know — sure signs of delusion or charlatanism. Well, we do have the Bible. Actually written by humans. But let’s assume for argument’s sake it’s the word of God. Could it then be our moral guide? Start with, again, the obedienceproposition. That’s the tale of Abraham and Isaac. The Bible praises Abraham’s readiness to obey God and kill Isaac. True, God changed his mind. But the very idea of killing an innocent like that surely is morally vile. As was the mental torture inflicted on Abraham while he felt obligated to kill his beloved son. The Bible does also say “Thou shalt not kill” (absent God’s order), or lie, or covet thy neighbor’s wife; to love thy neighbor, do unto others, and so forth. As if we need to be told all that. In fact it’s in the Bible because people did know it long before. As Adam Smith explained in his other great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, we come by our moral ideas not from God but through mutual sympathy: projecting another person’s feelings onto ourselves. And here is the one core concept for any moral system. It’s whatever enables people to flourish and enjoy life; whatever impedes that is immoral. Anything outside those parameters is prejudice, not morality. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said law makes no sense without morality. He said this in dissenting from the decision allowing gay marriage. Surely marriage is not immoral. It’s gay sex Scalia considered so. Why? Because of the Bible? It also commands killing people who gather sticks on the Sabbath and children who disrespect their parents. It allows owning slaves, beating them as long as they don’t die within two days, and selling your daughter into slavery. Most believers today ignore these atrocious passages. Picking and choosing the ones they agree with. On what basis? Obviously it’s not God telling them; instead it’s because they do have their own sense of right and wrong. And if they do condemn gays, it’s not really obedience to the Bible, it’s the Bible as their excuse. Scalia was not bowing to some eternal moral truth but rather his own atavistic gut revulsion at gay sex. But gay sex cannot be immoral, because it doesn’t harm anyone’s ability to enjoy life. Offending YOU doesn’t make it immoral. In fact, aversion to homosexuality, among its many other ill effects, breaks up families and estranges parents from children. That doesn’t serve human flourishing. And what about God’s own moral behavior? Abraham’s already been mentioned. Then there’s Job, unjustly afflicted by God for no reason other than to taunt Satan. God did make it up to Job — though not to Job’s children he killed. Then he floods the planet, killing innocent millions, in a fit of pique. He kills the children of Egyptians for their ruler’s deeds. In fact, just to supply a pretext for that, he “hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” He directs the Jews to conduct a genocidal pogrom in Canaan, except for women taken as sex slaves. Yet he kills thousands of Jews because a few had sex with Midianites. He sends bears to tear apart 42 children because some had mocked the prophet Elisha’s baldness. One could go on like this for many pages. Morally sick as all this might seem, believers say we can’t presume to question God’s motives. That if God did it, it must have been okay. But recall the old Dostoyevsky canard against atheism: “Without God everything is permitted.” Actually it seems instead that with God everything is permitted. To him at least. But it’s worse than that. Not just that God’s every deed is permitted, but therefore in principle everything can be permitted. That destroys any idea that there are universal moral verities. Destroys the very moral certainty which believers imagine religion supplies. The truth is that the God of the Bible is a fictional character, created by human authors whose primitive notions about violence and morality are abhorrent to us today, and whose book would be a gross libel against God if he existed. Their prescientific psychology fixated on agency — everything had to be caused, if not by us, then by some unseen hand. If a bad thing happened, some angry god caused it. Those people trembled at the thought. That psychology pervades the Bible. But if theirs is the God we are asked to believe in, then it’s a stunning argument against such belief. Against the existence of such a being. The idea of the universe governed that way is absurd. If this seems overstated, think about Hell. I mean, really think about it. No torturer in history ever came close to this diabolical absolute: inflicting maximum suffering forever. Maybe you could imagine it as justice for, say, Hitler. Okay, a thousand years of burning for every Jew. But that’s still far short of eternity. And it’s not just Hitler getting this torture. It’s most people on Earth! At least so says Christianity: everyone not buying the Jesus story goes to Hell. Some Christians even anticipate part of their reward in Heaven is relishing the sufferings of the victims in Hell. Nice. It’s a fundamental precept of morality and justice that punishment should fit the crime. No human crime could ever justify such extreme punishment. Let alone the “crime” of merely not being Christian. And people believing this say they’re getting morality from God? Meantime, though the sufferings of Hell are fortunately nonexistent, the pain here on Earth — caused by the belief — is all too real. Millions have spent whole lives tormented that some misstep will condemn them to eternal hellfire. Often afflicted by guilt and terror just because they have unavoidable natural sexual feelings. It’s the idea of Hell that is itself evil. It’s those who promote it that deserve punishment. The mythos at the heart of Christianity is that all Adam’s descendants were to suffer for his supposed “original sin.” Even though they were not complicit. And instead of just mercifully exonerating them, God makes his son suffer and die to expiate the so-called sin. Jesus is a scapegoat (the Bible is filled with scapegoating — punishing people for the sins of others, including Adam’s). But Jesus doesn’t die anyway, he’s resurrected, so was the price really paid? Can anyone actually make moral sense out of all this? Likewise moral nonsense is the idea of prayer — that God will change what was (foreknown?) to happen because someone asks. Why should a human preference influence God’s actions? Isn’t he supposed to know better than us? And what about the fate of those not prayed for? Should God discriminate against them? Believers have always had a hard time trying to square their idea of a good God with a world so filled with suffering. They say God gives us free will to commit evil. But — given his evident penchant for smiting people with very little pretext — couldn’t he stop them somehow before they act out? And anyway, much suffering has no human causes, it’s built into the fabric of nature that God supposedly designed. Reality is far more consistent with a vicious than a loving God. Religion being actually a source of moral confusion, rather than moral guidance, is proven by the legions of religious believers like William Barr who, with no sense of cognitive dissonance, inveigh against immorality but bathed themselves in Trump’s cesspool of wickedness. Showing they don’t know right from wrong. Their minds scrambled by religion’s false and nonsensical beliefs. Indeed, the very fact that belief in God is so powerful an idea makes this brain-mushing effect all the more powerful too. Leading untold numbers of people, all throughout history, again and again and again, to commit the most atrocious evils, in the name of God. You might answer that their idea of God was just wrong, and yours is right. They would say the same to you (and maybe kill you over it). You’re both arguing over something nobody can know. But — ridding your brain software of that dysfunctional religious virus leads to moral clarity, utilizing instead the human welfare maximization heuristic. Conclusion: We get morality not from God but from our own hearts and rational brains. Belief in God is not merely false, it is morally wrong. Only atheists can be truly moral.

https://medium.com/@franksrobinson/belief-in-god-is-morally-wrong-1bfc1c77dbf2

['Frank S. Robinson']

2021-04-01 13:33:21.758000+00:00

['Philosophy', 'God', 'Religion', 'Morality', 'Atheism']

Mainstream vs Specialized Content on Community Radio

Mainstream vs Specialized Content on Community Radio Community radio is known for having an eclectic mix of content, but is there a way to reach out to one sector without alienating the rest? Erin Snell Dec 18, 2020·5 min read Photo by Pixabay from Pexels Any media outlet needs consumers to stay afloat. If no one is listening, there’s no reason for a station to continue. In that case, radio stations need to produce content that appeals to a large audience in order to atract advertisers and justify it’s existence. Community radio stations differ from commercial stations because they have an interest representing unheard voices and appealing to underserved communities, despite the smaller audience size. This can result in a calender with a mishmash of very niche shows that may not be apealling to the average listener. Unlike commercial stations, community stations may have the support of extra funding for supproting underserved communities through special shows, and a general understanding that community radio ‘is a bit quirky’. However, low listener numbers due to inconsistent or overly niche content can still result in funding issues and has been the COD for many community stations. Benefits and Drawbacks of Mainstream Content Photo by Harrison Haines from Pexels Most community radio stations attempt to appeal (at leaste in theory) to the entirety of a small geographic community. This is done by a combination of the use of ‘specialized’ show, designed to appeal to certain tastes, and what I would call more ‘mainstream’ content. Mainstream content is content that is designed to appeal to as many members of the listeneing community as possible. These include playlists of popular music (usually a mix of older rock songs and newer pop songs). Links consist of discussions of concern to the general community such local news, events guides, and community resources. Finding a consistent sound across talk and music is a tried and true tecnique for radio stations to get larger audiences. Though community stations may be attempting to reach a less targeted section of potential listeners by mixing a number of locally popular genres music, mainstream content can still establish a specific sound. The mix will appeal to a the group of listeners who like that music and will know they can expect it if they tune in to that station. The larger the listening audience the easier it is for community stations to hold successful fundraisers, justify their continuation to the sponsors, and attract advertisers. Mainstream content is also seen as the best way to hold ‘daytime’ audiences. During traditional weekday breakfast (7am-10am), lunchtime (12pm-2pm), and drive-time (4pm-6pm) slots most audiences will be listening from their cars or in their workplaces (this research doesn’t account for our lockdown habits). Cars are seen as turn off points for listeners, who are more likely to switch stations when driving. As it’s a very busy time of day many stations opt for more mainstream music and features during rush hour to avoid listeners hearing something they don’t like and switching to a more ‘predictable’ commerical station. While at the office or first thing in the morning conventional wisdom is that listeners are looking for easy, enjoyable content that won’t distract them or jar them awake. While having more mainstream content can attract more listeners, especially during busy times of day, there can be drawbacks to community stations relying too heavily on ‘expected’ or popular content. First of all, it’s what most commercial stations do. If community stations start to sound exactly like commercial local stations (but perhaps a bit less refined) then it’s hard to sell audiences on why to choose them. Community radio exists (among other reasons) to provide content created by and for communities that are underrepresented by other media, perhaps because the population is not big enough to be considered mainstream or popular. Finally community radio stations are not only trying to serve the needs of the audience, but also of their volunteers. A lot of people get involved in community radio to share their passions or to bring up issues that they don’t feel like are being addressed. A show targeting the disabled community may not be more traditionally ‘popular’ but it’s more likley to encourage enclusion of diabled volunteers than another classic rock show. Benefits and Drawbacks of Specialized Content Photo by Snapwire from Pexels As I mentioned early listeners generally learn to expect the unexpected from community radio stations. Regular community radio listeners often put the variety, uniqueness, and quirkiness of the station as a reason for their interest. In a high-choice media world, having a variety of unusual specialized shows allows listeners to find things they never knew they’d enjoy. Beyond your expected music variations I have found in my time shows dedicated to: veganism, the supernatural, celtic music and much more! Community radio commits to representing the entire community, especially those underserved by traditional media. One way of doing this is to have shows that specifically represent communities that volunteers, staff, research, etc. feel should have a voice in the local area. A more practical benefit of specialized shows is that they are more likely to draw funding, awards and media attention. Shows that serve certain communities can be effective ways of justifying the stations importance to Ofcom and sponsors. If you have a show that’s truely unique sometimes local media may cover it allowing for further spread of station’s brand (see this article about Future Radio’s vegan show). The drawback of too much specialize content is that it can be confusing for listeners, especially if the change is abrupt. If someone’s listening to a rock show they really love and then it switches to a dance music show, there’s a good chance the listener will lose interest. Especially during causual listening times of day, knowing what to expect from a station can be a important factor in whether it’s chosen. The Mixed Approach Because of the dangers of having either too much mainstream or specialized content, most community stations scedule a mix of both. Many stations have more mainstream features during the traditional mornings and work days and then have specialized content in the evenings (see the schedule for Air or Future Radio). I should also mention that some community stations are designed to entierly specialize in one community, whether it’s musical like Celtic Music Radio, or ethnic like Asian Star. Focus on one genre or population is more similar to the commerical approach as it aims to get as much of that population as posible by providing them with an expected sound that they will likely enjoy. However these community stations often include some more community focused and out there content to hold on to the uniqueness of community radio. The mix is never the same for two stations, and of course the station sound is unique to what is believed to fit that distinct geographical community.

https://medium.com/@ellensnellenbu/mainstream-vs-specialized-output-on-community-radio-40f56b577bb3

['Erin Snell']

2021-01-16 13:30:06.952000+00:00

['Radio', 'Content', 'Targeting', 'Music', 'Community Radio']

Art Deco in the Roaring 20s

By the end of the 19th century in France, many of the notable artists, architects, and designers who had played important roles in the development of the Art Nouveau style of architecture began to feel that it was becoming incredibly last-century. With the destruction brought with the wars, and a new Industrial Revolution taking hold, contemporary life became very different from a few decades earlier. It was time for something new, something that would shout “20th Century” from tasteful, modernist rooftops. That is how Art Deco became a trademark of the years after the pandemic: the “Roaring Twenties”.

https://medium.com/@artyfynch/art-deco-in-the-roaring-20s-262fa4ddb7f0

[]

2020-12-22 17:26:10.578000+00:00

['Europe', 'Artdeco', 'Architecture']

Australia cut humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees agency

Australia cut humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees agency The Australian Government’s recent decision to cut funding to UNRWA from $20 million in 2019–2020 to $10 million in 2020–2021 is regrettable and will have a considerable impact on both the livelihoods of Palestinian refugees and the stability of the Middle East region. Whilst it is understood that COVID-19 has presented increased budgetary pressures, the Australian Government has not decided to reduce funding towards other United Nations departments or humanitarian agencies, yet funding to UNRWA has decreased by half. The impartial role UNRWA plays in providing humanitarian support to Palestinian refugees grants Australia with a unique opportunity in diplomatically contributing to the Middle East Peace Process and in turn, a two-state solution. UNRWA provides life-saving services to over 5.6 million refugees, operating under an independent mandate to ensure these individuals receive access to emergency services, education and healthcare. This includes providing free education to over 530,000 children who would otherwise go without. This education is impartial and reflects the values and principles of the United Nations such as tolerance, neutrality, equality and non-discrimination. UNRWA also works to uphold Sustainable Development Goal 5, Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls Empowerment. This is achieved through the provision of women’s health services such as family planning and career support through Women’s Training Centers. Essential funding from states such as Australia, ensures UNRWA can continue to guarantee vulnerable refugees receive access to their basic human rights. Without UNRWA, the provision of these essential services becomes the responsibility of neighbouring states such as Jordan and Lebanon as well as Palestine. Considering the already fragile situation within these areas, UNRWA plays an essential role as a stabilising factor, ensuring the economic burden of these refugees is not felt by already struggling states. Indeed, it is the sole responsibility of UNRWA to provide services to the Palestinian refuges according to the UN resolution 302 (IV), until they will be able to return to their homeland. In decreasing aid to UNRWA, Australia is heightening the risk of increased instability within the Middle East region, threatening the establishment of a two-state solution and potential peace processes. The provision of Australian aid to UNRWA not only stands as essential in allowing Australia to contribute humanitarian support to Palestinian refugees, it acts in Australia’s national interests as an uncontroversial mechanism for maintaining peace. The General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific calls for the Australian Government to reinstate their original funding amount of $20 million annually to UNRWA in ensuring humanitarian support to Palestinian refugees and preserving the possibility of a two-states solution.

https://medium.com/@thepalestineproject/australia-cut-humanitarian-aid-to-palestinian-refugees-agency-aefdec8c5064

['The Palestine Project']

2020-10-20 12:45:51.892000+00:00

['Unrwa', 'Australia', 'Overseas Aid', 'Palestine', 'UN']

Growth Mindset & Amal Totkay

Among the many qualities that an entrepreneur must have one is a “Growth Mindset”. It is as important as water to a fish or air to a living being. Before getting into the growth mindset let’s first see what is a mindset. “The deeply held beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions we create about who we are, how the world works, what we are capable of and deserve, and what is possible is known as a mindset” Our mindset defines our perception around the world, how it works and how we act in certain situations and problems. Having a growth mindset, we approach the problem and failure as an opportunity to learn and not a full stop in our progress. We are not born with a pre-installed mindset rather we learned it from people, culture, and the environment around us which means that it can be changed if we want to adopt a certain mindset. For growth mindset, here are five tips by Amal Academy, which are also known as Amal Totkay given below 1. Self-Talk 2. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone 3. Create New Habits 4. Ask People Help 5. Fake it till you Make it. These five tips are extremely helpful and are essential for self-growth and development. All of the above tips are equally important. Positive self-talk leads to what you find impossible. Leaving your comfort zone lets you discover your real potential. Creating new and good habits are also important for self-growth and adopting habits that help in applying the growth mindset like learning new things. One person cannot do and learn everything by himself, therefore asking for help from relevant people and asking for comments on your recent change in interaction with them after developing and practicing a growth mindset will help in self-assessment about growth mindset. The last one is to fake it until you make it, like working on your growth mindset which cannot be developed in a day or two so until you achieve it try acting like if you already have a growth mindset. My favorite part of Amal Totkay is self-talk. Instead of telling yourself negative and demotivating things if you start telling positive that I can do it, or I am learning it will have a huge impact on your overall mindset, productivity, and efficiency. I have started implementing the habit of avoiding negative self-talk and telling yourself positive things and getting out of your comfort zone and run an extra mile. In developing a growth mindset from today, the first step is commitment and consistency. If you have these two and start practicing Amal Totaky, you can rewire your mind from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

https://medium.com/@syed.bacha207/growth-mindset-amal-totkay-7068449cd70d

['Syed Bacha Hussain Bukhari']

2021-08-20 20:33:45.812000+00:00

['Amal Fellowship', 'Amal Totkay', 'Amal Academy']

New airdrop: RacingPlayerOne (RPO)

Reward: 0.05 RPO ($5) Remarks: A well-known project in Asia Focus: Distribution in February 2021 Airdrop bot : https://t.me/RaceonePlayerAirdropBot 🔹 Join Telegram group (https://t.me/Raceoneplayer) and channel (https://t.me/RaceOnePlayerANN). 🔹 Follow (https://twitter.com/NakerNKR?s=09)RacePlayerOne on Twitter (https://twitter.com/racingplayerone). 🔹 Post a tweet according to the rules. 🔹 Submit your ETH address and detail. 🔹 And get 0.005 RPO for each referral. Note: The project is invested by Xianlu Capital (https://www.cailu.net/article/13173387132634423.html) and has been announced in many media in Asia, including: www.bilibili.com (https://www.bilibili.com/video/av585396787/), bishijie.com (https://m.bishijie.com/kuaixun/838406.html), jinse.com (https://www.jinse.com/news/blockchain/933643.html) and many other authoritative media. Done ✅Done✅ Additional Information: RacePlayerOne (https://rporacing.github.io/rporacing/#/?tgm=0x28900ca8eb9bb8c03180561a4f998a18c7616179) is the world first gamefi platform that utilizes Ethereum blockchain to bring you a gaming evolution in a form of true digital ownership. RPO consists of two main components: the collection of NFTs(non-fungible tokens) and Defi.In RPO, a digital asset and collectible that is truly yours.

https://medium.com/@eddgia/new-airdrop-racingplayerone-rpo-317d47396d7d

[]

2020-12-24 14:36:27.938000+00:00

['Cryptocurrency', 'Airdrop', 'Defi', 'Token', 'Blockchain']

A practical guide to building your own financial plan

A practical guide to building your own financial plan Marillynbagenda Jul 15·3 min read Financial planning is not just for the rich but it’s for everyone including college graduates, singles, professionals, married, mid-career, single parents, senior corporates, and entrepreneurs. With this, money is spent wisely and as a result, you will have an improved lifestyle. So, if you’re willing to know what you need financially, and how to get there, then financial planning will give you an advantage over one who merely reacts to financial events as they occur. Think about, the Covid 19 virus, which has caused a lot of financial crises. Do you think that planning for your finances would have helped you survive through this economic storm? In this post, I’ve assembled a practical guide on how to plan for your finances. Let’s dig in. Drawing your financial goals What are financial goals? These are the results that you want to achieve. Such as buying/building a home, achieving financial independence, saving up for business capital, or investments. So, what are your financial aspirations? Have you spelled them out? If so, then we need to know where we are heading financially, so that we can manage the major monetary events in our lives. And activities such as saving, investing, and retirement planning should be key to your financial life We have three types of financial goals. Short term, intermediate and long term goals Short-term goals are usually for 12 months. And with these goals, one has to make solid, regular contributions to savings accounts to accumulate a desired net worth. Establishing an emergency fund with 3 to 6 months of your income should be part of your short-term goals. These special funds serve as a safety reserve in case of financial emergencies. And unless you attain your short-term targets, you probably won’t achieve any of your intermediate and long-term goals. Your goals should also be specific. An example of this can be “I want to save 40$ at the end of every month to spend on what I want” put as; What is the goal? How much money do you need for it? When to achieve this goal. Develop a financial action plan and keep it simple How will you achieve the financial goals you set for yourself? Of course, you will need a plan. The process of financial planning is dynamic because as you move through the different stages of your life, your needs and goals change. But with careful planning, you can get through tough times and prosper in good times. For example, setting up an emergency fund or reducing monthly expenses will protect you and your family financially if setbacks occur. How great is that? A financial action plan directs you on how to manage your finances and achieve your goals. This plan should include specific goals and clear actions to monitor. Your plan can be as simple as writing down three to five goals and the steps to achieve them. As this simple plan succeeds over time, you can then update and redefine it to include more complex goals like making an investment or retirement plan. And for these added goals, the services of a professional planner can be desirable. These planners not only get you onto a sold path, but they can also save you a lot of money over what you might spend on. Now, not two financial action plans are the same. They differ based on how complex your needs are and how much of your life plans you want to cover. These plans can be as simple as listing each goal and then the means of achieving each one. For example: Setting goals: Write down the things you want to achieve. Developing the plan: Set a simple task list to attain the goal. Carrying out the plan: Do the tasks and mark them as done when they are finished. Monitoring your actions: Set a reminder on a calendar or an app to see how you are doing. In brief, Goal: Save 40$ at the end of every month to spend on what I want. Make a budget. Look for less expensive alternatives to reduce expenses. For example, eat out a few times per week. Have this money saved in a different place. Now that you have learned how to create a financial plan, remember to monitor it every end of the month to make sure you’re on track. Then redefine and revise your actions and strategies as personal circumstances change. What’s your take on this? Let me know in the comment section. Good luck!

https://medium.com/@marillynbagenda/a-practical-guide-to-building-your-own-financial-plan-c27b8e940390

[]

2021-07-15 14:01:33.742000+00:00

['Business', 'Finance', 'Freelance Writing', 'Personal Finance']

Tactics Narcissists Use to Gain Self-Esteem and Power

To some degree, most of us desire to improve our social status and acceptance, but narcissists feel compelled to. A recent study concluded that it’s their constant concern. More than most people, they look to others for “self-definition and self-esteem regulation; inflated or deflated self-appraisal…,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Their self-esteem fluctuates between exaggerated inflation and deflation. Narcissists are preoccupied with managing their self-esteem, image, appearance, and social rank. They see the world and themselves in terms of hierarchical status, where they’re superior and others are inferior. In their mind, their presumed superiority entitles them to special privileges that others don’t deserve. Their needs, opinions, and feelings count, while those of others don’t or only do to a lesser degree. They have grandiose fantasies extolling their greatness, wherein they’re the most attractive, talented, powerful, smartest, strongest, and wealthiest. Narcissists’ Self-Esteem Self-esteem reflects how we think about ourselves. In most tests, narcissists score high on self-esteem. Traditionally, the high self-esteem of a grandiose narcissist was considered a façade for underlying shame. Their insecurity was usually only revealed in therapeutic settings. Recent research challenges that theory. However, since grandiose narcissists have a distorted self-image, tests that rely on self-reporting cannot elicit beliefs and processes inferred from narcissistic attitudes and behaviors nor those observed in clinical settings. For example, having grown up mocked and belittled by his father, according to Donald Trump’s niece speaking about him (and confirmed by his sister), lying was common. She claims it was “primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was.” Narcissists have been shown to lie on tests. However, when researchers subjected them to a polygraph test where being found out would reflect poorly on them, they didn’t lie, and their self-esteem scores declined markedly. People usually think of “high self-esteem” is optimal. However, esteem that relies on others’ opinion is not self-esteem, but “other-esteem.” I believe that unrealistic and other-dependent self-esteem is unhealthy and prefer to describe self-esteem as either healthy or impaired. Ranking narcissists’ self-esteem high is misleading, due to the fact it’s generally inflated and unrelated to objective reality. Additionally, it’s fragile and easily deflated. Healthy self-esteem is stable and not so reactive to the environment. It’s non-hierarchical and not based on feeling superior to others. Nor is it associated with aggression and relationship problems, but the reverse. People with healthy self-esteem aren’t aggressive and have fewer relationship conflicts. They’re able to compromise and get along. Tactics Narcissists Use to Maintain their Self-Image, Self-Esteem, and Power The fact that narcissists brag, exaggerate, and lie about their greatness and self-esteem suggests that they’re trying to convince themselves to disguise hidden self-loathing and feelings of inferiority. Their hidden shame and insecurity drive their hypervigilance and behavior regarding their self-image, self-esteem, appearance, and power. They use a variety of tactics: Hypervigilance Narcissists are extremely sensitive to threats to their image and vigilantly attend to cues that could affect it in the eyes of others. They struggle to regulate their self-image through their thinking and behavior. This strategy requires constant effort. 1. Scanning Moment-to-moment, they scan other people and their surroundings to assess and elevate their rank. 2. Selective environments and relationships They select situations that will raise rather than lower their esteem. Thus, they seek public, hi-status, competitive, and hierarchical environments over intimate and egalitarian settings because they offer greater opportunities to gain status. They prefer acquiring multiple contacts, friends, and partners over developing existing relationships. 3. Status evaluation They perpetually evaluate their influence and the attention and praise they’re receiving relative to how their competitors are doing. They watch for any impediments to their aims. Self-Esteem Regulation Once narcissists have assessed the environment and who they’re dealing with, they determine the best way to achieve status by either raising theirs or lowering that of other people. To regulate their self-esteem, they primarily utilize internal self-inflation and interpersonal skills. 1. Impression Management Impression management is designed to influence others to gain both internal and external status and benefits, such as romantic partners, power, and money. They employ charm, using their wit, resources, talent, conversational skills, and self-promotion through boasting, embellishing, and lying to manage their impression. These strategies boost their self-image and raise their status with others. These are most effective in the initial stages of a relationship or short-term interactions. Some researchers propose that the main difference between vulnerable and grandiose narcissists is that vulnerable or covert narcissists employ threat-oriented defenses and internal negative dialogues that don’t satisfy their needs for esteem and validation. In contrast, grandiose narcissists employ more mature reward-seeking strategies in pursuing acceptance and admiration. 2. Dominance When self-promotion doesn’t work, grandiose narcissists’ resort to dominance. They are skilled manipulators, including covert manipulation, but also use direct power tactics and narcissistic abuse, such as belittling, lying, bullying, attacking, criticizing, or raging at the person they’re trying to influence as well as derogating their competitors. They put down others to elevate themselves. They create conflict that can lead to violence. Grandiose narcissists sacrifice getting along to get ahead, while partners of narcissists sacrifice themselves to get along. They forego their status, rights, feelings, and needs to make the narcissist happy at their own expense, but the narcissist’s demands are never-ending. Their self-worth suffers as a result of this bargain and the narcissistic verbal abuse continues nonetheless. Find out about “How to Change an Abusive Relationship.” Learn more about narcissistic relationships and how to handle them. Get Dealing with a Narcissist: 8 Steps to Raise Self-Esteem and Set Boundaries with Difficult People. © Darlene Lancer 2020 Grapsas, S., Brummelman, E., Back, M.D., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2020). “The ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 15(1) 150 –172. DOI: 0.1177/1745691619873350. Trump, Mary (2020). Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. (NY: Simon & Schuster).

https://medium.com/narcissism-and-abusive-relationships/tactics-narcissists-use-to-gain-self-esteem-and-power-3698fe4446db

['Darlene Lancer']

2020-12-13 12:06:03.876000+00:00

['Narcissism', 'Self Esteem', 'Relationships', 'Personality']

IED Awareness for First Responders

You are a first responder. You have received a call at a crowded local motel for a medical emergency. The manager unlocks the room and you enter to find a man unconscious on the floor. As you treat him, you notice something unusual. Around the room, you notice bottles of chemicals; acids, hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and other bottles of unknown liquids. You also notice a number of batteries on a table next to an electronic timer, dozens of nuts and bolts taped inside the lid of a briefcase, and half a dozen mason jars containing a clear liquid, and what appears to be white sediment. Then the kicker, you observe several small, silver, cylindrical objects with wires protruding from the ends labeled DANGER EXPLOSIVES on a nearby shelf. Your partner looks at you and says, “Well, well. What do we have here?” That question has surely been asked many times by first responders who have stumbled upon bomb making operations in the course of their duties. Some might default to thinking they have walked into a meth lab due to the chemicals present. But the presence of certain items signals something perhaps more nefarious. In either case, I will say right now, if you should ever encounter something like this get out, secure the room, call the bomb squad and evacuate the premises. Read on, and you will discover why. The intent of this article is to educate first responders on how to recognize the components of potential improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Without getting into too much detail, it provides a very basic understanding of IEDs. In addition to the container, which can be anything from a shipping envelope to a backpack, briefcase or even a vehicle, there are four components to most IEDs. Remembering them is made easy by using the acronym PIES: Power, Initiator, Explosive and Switch. Power is self-explanatory. It provides the heat needed to initiate an explosion. Batteries are a good source of power as they allow the IED to be easily transported and remotely placed without tell-tale wires giving away its location. It is important to understand that not all explosives are the same. Some, such as gun powder, are sensitive to being handled and are easily set off, while others, such as Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and Semtex are not. Regardless, if you think you have explosive compounds present, it is important to leave and secure the area immediately. Situations such as this require the expertise of properly trained and equipped ordnance disposal teams. More stable explosives need the shock of an initiator, the second component to PIES. In the scenario presented above, the small, silver cylindrical objects were blasting caps. The blasting caps would be connected to the power source and inserted into the explosive to provide the shock necessary to detonate a more stable, less sensitive explosive compound. This sequence is known as the firing chain. An IED explodes at the Boston Marathon. The next component in the PIES acronym is the explosive. Explosives are categorized as either low explosives or high explosives. Low explosives, like gun power, burn rapidly or deflagrate, whereas high explosives, such as those used in military applications, detonate. Low explosives are often found in commonly made devices, like pipe bombs. Low explosives were used in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, resulting in three deaths and hundreds injured. High explosives are used, for example, in hand grenades and explosive shells. Regardless of whether they are low or high explosives, all explosives are dangerous and should be treated accordingly. A completed IED showing all four components of PIES. It is not uncommon for explosives to be manufactured with commonly available chemicals. Practically every hardware store carries the precursor chemicals and other materials needed to create an IED. Every explosive contains is an oxidizer, to cause rapid burning, and a fuel to burn. An example of this is the compound known as ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO). ANFO was the main explosive used to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which resulted in 168 fatalities and nearly 700 casualties. The ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer, served as the oxidizer, providing oxygen for the rapid burn of the fuel, which was a mix of diesel fuel and nitro-methane. All these chemicals, and associated components, were purchased from commercially available sources. In the scenario presented at the beginning of this piece, acetone, hydrogen peroxide and acid were present to make Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), a popular explosive compound among terrorists. It was TATP that Richard Reid, the infamous “Shoe Bomber,” tried to ignite on a Paris to Miami bound flight before he was subdued by the other passengers. The mason jars in our fictitious motel room contained the mix of chemicals and resultant TATP sediment, which would be later dried into a powder for use. The final component to any IED is the switch. The switch can take many forms, from a simple pressure switch to a timing device, such as a digital timer or even a simple alarm clock. More sophisticated on-demand switches would include something like a cell phone, similar to the one found in the notional motel room. With it, one could dial the phone’s number at a moment of opportunity, which in turn would provide the power to initiate the firing chain. Other components not included in the PIES acronym would be a container for the device and shrapnel. In our motel room scenario, the nuts and bolts would have been used for shrapnel intended to cause death and injury. They were taped to the inside of a briefcase, which would act as the container for all the components. When put together, you would have a lethal IED in the form of an innocuous, everyday item. In some cases, such as with a pipe bomb, the container provides the shrapnel. What has been presented here is a very basic overview of IED components. In and of themselves they are mostly harmless. But the same concentrated hydrogen peroxide your local hairdresser would use to bleach hair may also be used as an oxidizer. The batteries used to power your child’s toys, could be the power source needed to initiate a firing chain. The key for first responders in defending our nation against terrorist bombings is to first be able to recognize the potential components of an explosive device. Once a bomb has gone off, it’s too late. Recognizing what may be a bomb in the making is not difficult. You only need a little knowledge to know what to look for. Likewise, unfortunately, you only need a little knowledge to create these infernal devices. There are a number of resources available on the internet and through your local library that provide an awareness of explosives. The best resource I have encountered for first responders is the Incident Response to Terrorist Bombings (IRTB) course, offered by the Department of Homeland Security, through New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology in Socorro, New Mexico. This class is offered free of charge, inclusive of travel, by the federal government. It offers intensive classroom instruction and live demonstrations of various explosives. For more information on the IRTB, follow this link http://www.emrtc.nmt.edu/training/irtb.php. You can also contact the state point of contact (SPOC) in your respective state who can provide you with information and the application necessary to register and attend the training. You can locate your respective SPOC by following this link http://www.emrtc.nmt.edu/training/statepoc.php. If you should ever encounter any PIES component, especially if in combination with other components, you need to ask yourself, “Well, Well. What do I have here?”

https://medium.com/homeland-security/ied-awareness-for-first-responders-423fbb5d8912

['Hs Vortex']

2015-11-23 23:15:12.147000+00:00

['Awareness', 'Terrorism', 'Homeland Security']

A LOVE STORY

I laid in the meadow next to the garden, As he descended over my body. Moving from my toes to my navel to my neck. I was intoxicated by every scale on his body. As he exposed his fangs and poured his venom into me. All I could think about, All I could dream about, Were those little beady eyes.

https://medium.com/the-composite/a-love-story-e5d0f6c18076

['Em Lingenfelser']

2017-09-15 03:11:41.738000+00:00

['Relationships', 'Poetry', 'Lit']

How to Go From Zero to 5k After an Injury

I am part of a local pickup soccer group. We have a long-standing weekly game. We’ve played for long enough now that many of our kids are now old enough to join us. On this night, my team worked the ball out of our end, beat a few defenders, and were on a breakaway towards the goal. One of my teammates sent a beautiful pass across the field to me. It came across my body from the right and onto my left instep. Running full speed, I did the only thing I could do and took the shot… … and then I was on the ground, pounding my fist into the turf. As I struck the ball, my right shoe caught in the turf, my right knee bending completely inward. That hurt, but my foot hurt worse. I’d learn later that I had also fractured my foot in multiple spots on the way down. I managed to get off the field and get to my car. Fueled on adrenaline, I somehow got home, where my wife helped my get my shoe off. It looked bad and felt worse. I saw a specialist the next day, and they tentatively diagnosed a sprained MCL. It was still too swollen to see if it was torn or not, so I was fitted for a Bledsoe Brace and sent home to wait for my MRI. Waiting became almost unbearable. The pain had ebbed a little, but I didn’t know exactly what I’d done. And without knowing what was wrong, I couldn’t start working to fix it. I’m impatient on a good day. Having nothing to do but wait was its own kind of hell. Three weeks later, I got my results. My MCL wasn’t torn, (good news!), but I had a severe sprain (ok). I also had a completely torn ACL (wait, what?!), and it apparently had been that way for a while. Convinced they’d sent me someone else’s results, I called back. They assured me that they were correct, and I went from mildly annoyed at being in limbo to scared. Would I ever get to play again? What would life look like if I couldn’t? Soccer wasn’t just a game I loved, it was also the nexus most of my social life was built around. Picturing a life without it was tough to take. I realized that some things were out of my control, but that if I was going to be kept off the field, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. My rehab plan was built around NOT repairing my ACL — given that I had been without it for some time, we would instead focus on the surrounding muscles to cope. My first exercises focused simply on regaining strength-it’s amazing how fast everything atrophies. Leg bridges, walkouts, and more filled my days. Later, I progressed to lateral movements, and working with resistance bands. There was also a horrible attempt at getting back on a treadmill. I tried to tell myself it was progress, but really it was just a dumb move on my part, and about 90 days too soon.

https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/how-to-go-from-zero-to-5k-after-an-injury-2c36f941a007

['Kevin Alexander']

2020-12-19 16:34:54.311000+00:00

['Running', 'Inspiration', 'Health', 'Lifestyle', 'Mental Health']

ICO Alert Crypto Minute: May 31, 2018

Tron (TRX) Begins Migration to Own Blockchain Odyssey 2.0, the mainnet software for the cryptocurrency Tron, was launched early on May 31, signaling the first step in transitioning the Tron network away from Ethereum and towards its own independent network. According to an article on CCN.com, the network will be in beta for the majority of June, with token migration occurring from June 21 to June 24. The official launch of Odyssey 2.0 will take place on June 25 with the implementation of the Genesis block. Monster Products, Inc. Planning $300 Million ICO According to Coindesk, electronic accessory maker Monster Products, Inc. has filed with the SEC and plans to run “one of the biggest ICOs of all time”. The Monster Money Network will be an e-commerce site for selling the company’s various products. According to the report, Monster Products, Inc. has been losing money for years, but “a $300 million initial coin offering (ICO) may be what it takes to turn the company around.” Ethereum Classic Upgrades Protocol So Mining Remains Viable According to CoinTelegraph, Ethereum Classic has successfully implemented an upgrade to the system protocol that will ensure mining on the network remains viable. On May 29, a fork removed the “difficulty bomb” that was leftover as a “component of the original Ethereum (ETH) code that was designed to exponentially increase the difficulty of mining to the point where it would become impractically slow, thereby triggering the need to transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm”. According to the report, the ECIP-1041 protocol upgrade will not result in an AirDrop, or the creation of a new token.

https://medium.com/ico-alert/ico-alert-crypto-minute-may-31-2018-77b55743763e

['Zach Quezada']

2018-05-31 12:36:19.577000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto Minute', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin']

How to create navigation in Angular 9 Application using Angular Router

This article will demonstrate the proper way to create page navigation leveraging routing features provided by the Angular 9 framework. 1 — Create a new Angular 9 application First let’s create a simple Angular 9 application which we will use for the demonstration purposes of how to create page navigation. If you want a detailed step-by-step tutorial showing you how to create a new Angular 9 application, I have written an article that details the process. You can see it here: Run the following command in you VScode terminal: ng new Navigation and follow the prompts on the screen. When prompted with the following question: “Would you like to add Angular routing? (y/N)” You need to choose the yes option. This will include the AppRoutingModule and imports it into the AppModule of the Angular application. If you accidentally chose no, you can always add it after the fact via the CLI using the following command: ng generate module app-routin --flat --module=app Creating the application will take few minutes to download all of the necessary dependencies. Once the application is completed successfully you will get a prompt in the terminal indicating so. 2 — Test As noted previously, the AppRoutingModule is automatically included in the app.module.ts file. This makes the AppRoutingModule available application wide. In the screenshot below you will notice that the AppRoutingModule is included in the imports inside the @NgModule decorator.

https://zeroesandones.medium.com/how-to-create-navigation-in-angular-9-application-using-angular-router-6ee3ff182eb6

[]

2020-07-27 17:26:33.980000+00:00

['Angular', 'JavaScript', 'Typescript', 'HTML', 'Router']

Why has real-time marketing become so important in the COVID era?

Why has real-time marketing become so important in the COVID era? COVID era Confirmed the need to meet United States’ annual Super Bowl requirements , starting with the end of Power to run the 11 million kWh game. The snack brand Oreo has been waiting for about two years for a power outage after 11 years of not being able to run all 11 kWh of electricity. Branding is the time for them to execute their punchline. Fortunately, several years ago, a power outage at the Cookie Company Stadium in Super Bowl XLVII eventually resulted in a power outage. Oreo sent a tweet on their setup and they are watching for interactions and interactions. On Sunday evening, Oreo’s Twitter account received about 8,000 followers and was reposted nearly 15,000 times. Their Instagram account has over 2,200 followers. Received 36,000 Facebook and nearly 20,000 likes. Finally, Oreo’s strategy was successful and showed a unique approach to real-time marketing. Marketing within COVID-19 Businesses have many ways to promote and sell their products and services. One way to consider this is to market yourself in real time. In particular, it is a clever way for marketers to react to coronavirus. By providing an in-depth explanation of the above example, Real-time marketing is about a company’s visibility, Visibility by comment or action; It is a quick response to get traffic or sales. Reports show that real-time data is one of the top 3 markets that refined their strategies and added value. With COVID-19 in Our Lives for the Future, COVID-XNUMX now enhances the marketing relationship between your brand and your followers and enhances the reputation of your company. Particularly because of the fact that real-time marketing has reaped the benefits of large companies, they already own the digital world. When such a business releases a message in response to a current event or crisis, The audience has the ability to share the news with their followers. Custom In response, small businesses should learn to stick to their big companies’ strategies. It’s a way to get people to comment on their posts or share their content on your own platforms. Real-Time Marketing Tips Larger companies are generally easier to create to achieve real -time marketing strategies Small businesses need to take on a different approach to help promote themselves, expanding their reach with an existing audience. Along with learning and learning about creative approaches from established businesses, Here are some things to keep in mind when designing your own small business’s real-time marketing strategy: Beware : an event can have potential in a minute. Your company needs to be very careful if it wants to successfully market itself over time. This may include setting up Google Alerts or other alert platforms for content that your business wants to display. This will help your brand be the first to be notified of new situations and events. Another option is to follow influencers or other companies in your field that cover topics that are similar to your business. If you can not read the latest news, then someone may be following you. You still have the opportunity to act quickly with your own marketing strategy. Resources Available: Your company is good at preparing resources while marketing within COVID-19. It can be very difficult because the behavior of consumers is constantly changing these problems. But being ready to go, as Oreo mentioned earlier, will help you achieve your real-time marketing strategy. Interaction : If your company decides to get involved in real-time marketing, you should be ready to reach out to your potential audience to respond to your content. for example, If your business decides to make a post about how to deal with current proliferation and security precautions, you should be ready to answer your customers’ questions to build trust between your brand and your customers. Get Creative : Although effective when COVID-19 eCommerce was launched, it is time for businesses to innovate and develop new strategies to engage video content distributors . Companies now have the opportunity to show their personality and take their customers to the next level. Whether it is a clever joke or not. Whether it’s a problem or a show of sympathy. Creating a sound for your brand can connect with your audience. Businesses need to take these ideas into account when formulating their own business strategies. Within COVID-19, real-time marketing enables fast response, They should also be aware of the challenges that come with this approach, as it is difficult to do without the available information and knowledge of a topic. As a result, consumers lose trust and loyalty to brands that produce inaccurate content for large issues. If you want their brand to succeed, your brand needs to do specific research on what it produces quickly. Real-time data is essential New statistics and new information about COVID-19 provide opportunities for everyday businesses to apply real-time marketing strategies. Companies with these effects can last a long time as the effects that should not be ignored to build relationships with their audiences gradually pass. In conclusion Properly covered, it will withstand a great deal of adverse conditions. If you liked this piece why not check out some of my other pieces here.

https://medium.com/@everythingcj/why-has-real-time-marketing-become-so-important-in-the-covid-era-3b1de5c15a3

['Everything Cj']

2021-02-07 13:46:26.963000+00:00

['Marketing', '2020', 'Covid 19', 'Real Time Analytics', 'Twitter']

Learn Solidity: Events

How To Declare and Trigger an Event In order to declare an event, you need to use the following syntax: The definition of the event contains the name of the event and the parameters you want to save when you trigger the event. Once you have declared your event, you can emit an event from within a function, as follows: emit MyEvent(block.timestamp, 'hello'); Let’s build an example to see how this actually works. In your terminal, create a new directory and use truffle init to build a new truffle project. Open the project using your favorite code editor and create a new contract named EventExample.sol in the contracts folder, then copy-paste the following code: Create the corresponding migration file 2_deploy_eventExample.js : const EventExample = artifacts.require("EventExample"); module.exports = function (deployer) { deployer.deploy(EventExample); }; Let’s deploy now the contract using truffle migrate , but before migrating don’t forget to edit your truffle-config.js file to configure the network and the compiler. In your terminal, start the Truffle console using truffle console . We’re going to call the storeData function and examine the logs of the created transaction. Let’s start by getting an instance of the deployed contract: let eventExample = await EventExample.deployed() We can now call the function using: let tx = await eventExample.storeData(10) If you print the content of the transaction receipt logs tx.receipt.rawLogs , which store an array of the triggered events that happened during the execution of the transaction, you will get an array with one object that looks like this: Transaction log You can see that the event data is stored under the data field in hexadecimal.

https://betterprogramming.pub/learn-solidity-events-2801d6a99a92

['Wissal Haji']

2021-01-13 21:52:56.170000+00:00

['Solidity', 'Ethereum', 'Programming', 'Crypto', 'Blockchain']

Creating your own Chaos Monkey with AWS Systems Manager Automation

In a recent post, I explained how to use AWS SSM Run Command to inject failures on EC2 instances. SSM Run Command is well-suited to execute custom scripts on EC2 instances, especially to inject latency or blackouts on the network interface, do resource exhaustion of CPUs, memory, and IO. However, we need more than that. Failure injection should target resources, network characteristics and dependencies, applications, processes and service, and also the infrastructure. We also need to have a broad set of controls and capabilities to perform chaos experiments safely. We might want to: Execute commands and scripts directly into EC2 instances. directly into EC2 instances. Invoke Lambda functions to run custom scripts. Orchestrate several failure injections to form chaos scenarios. several failure injections to form chaos scenarios. Schedule them for execution at specific times. them for execution at specific times. Have automatic cancellations if errors are detected. if errors are detected. Have safety measures in places with approvals. in places with approvals. Apply velocity controls to limit the blast radius of experiments. That is where AWS System Manager Automation (SSM** Automation) comes in. So, let’s take a look! ** Note: AWS Systems Manager was formerly known as Amazon Simple Systems Manager (SSM). The original abbreviated name of the service, SSM, is still used and reflected in various AWS resources.

https://medium.com/the-cloud-architect/creating-your-own-chaos-monkey-with-aws-systems-manager-automation-6ad2b06acf20

['Adrian Hornsby']

2020-06-15 09:59:45.584000+00:00

['Cloud Computing', 'Software Engineering', 'Fault Tolerance', 'Chaos Engineering', 'AWS']

4 Reasons Why Data Scientists Should Version Data

4 Reasons Why Data Scientists Should Version Data How to start data versioning using DVC While working in a software project it is very common and, in fact, a standard to start right away versioning code, and the benefits are already pretty obvious for the software community: it tracks every modification of the code in a particular code repository. If any mistake is made, developers can always travel through time and compare earlier versions of the code in order to solve the problem while minimizing disruption to all the team members. Code for software projects is the most precious asset and for that reason must be protected at all costs! Well, for Data Science projects, data can also be considered the crown jewels, so why us, as Data Scientists, don’t treat as the most precious thing on earth through versioning control? For those familiar with Git, you might be thinking, “Git cannot handle large files and directories.. at least it can’t with the same performance as it deals with small code files. So how can I version control my data in the same old fashion we version control code?”. Well, this is now possible, and it’s easy as just typing git clone and see the data files and ML model files saved in the workspace, and all this magic can be achieved with DVC. Quick start with DVC First things first, we have to get DVC installed in our machines. It’s pretty straightforward and you can do it by following these steps. As I’ve already mentioned, tools for data version control such as DVC makes it possible to build large projects while making it possible to reproduce the pipelines. Using DVC it’s very simple to add datasets into a git repository, and when I mean by simple, is as easy as typing the line below: dvc add path/to/dataset Regardless of the size of the dataset, the data is added to the repository. Assuming that we also want to push the dataset into the cloud, it is also possible with the below command: dvc push path/to/dataset.dvc Out of the box, DVC supports many cloud storage services such as S3, Google Storage, Azure Blobs, Google Drive, etc… And since the dataset was pushed to the cloud through the version control system, if I clone the project into another machine, I’m able to download the data, or any other artifact, using the following command: dvc pull Well, now that you know how to start with DVC, I suggest you to go and further explore the tool, or similar ones. Version control should be your best friend as a Data Scientist, as they allow not only to version datasets but also to create reproducible pipelines, while keeping all the developments traceable and reproducible. If this hasn’t yet convinced, next I’ll tell why you must start versioning control your data!! Why should I start using data version control? 1. Save and reproduce all of your data experiments As Data Scientists we know that to develop a Machine Learning model, is not all about code, but also about data and the right parameters. A lot of times, in order to find the perfect match, experimentation is required, which makes the process highly iterative and extremely important to keep track of the changes made as well as their impacts on the end results. This becomes even more important in a complex environment where multiple data scientists are collaborating. In that sense, if we are able to have a snapshot of the data used to develop a certain version of the model and have it versioned, it makes the process of iteration and model development not only easier but also trackable. 2. Debugging and testing While playing around in Kaggle competitions many times we do not understand the real challenges inherent to the development of an ML-based solution while working with production systems. In fact, one of the biggest challenges is to deal with the variety of data sources and the amount of data that we’ve available. Sometimes can be a bit daunting to reproduce the results of experimentation if we are not even able to retrieve the exact dataset that has been used. Data version control can ease these issues and make the process of machine learning solutions development must simpler, organized, and reproducible. 3. Compliance and auditing Privacy regulations, such as GDPR, already request companies and organizations to demonstrate compliance and history of the available data sources. The ability to track data version provided by version control tools is the first step to have companies data sources ready for compliance, and an essential step in maintaining a strong and robust audit train and risk management processes around data. 4. Align software and data science teams Sometimes, to have Data Science and Software teams talking the same language can be quite challenging and can highly depend on the profiles involved in the interactions between the teams. To start implementing some of the good practices from the software into the data science processes, can help not only to align the work between the teams involved, but also to accelerate the development and integration of the solutions. Conclusions Data science is had to productize, and one of the main reasons for that is because there are too many mutable elements, such as data. The concept of versioning for data science applications can be interpreted in many possible ways, from models to data versioning. This article aimed to cover the importance and benefits of versioning data for the data science teams, but there are many more aspects that we should pay attention to as Data Scientists. In the end, keeping an eye on continuous delivery principles is very important for the success of ML-based solutions!

https://medium.com/swlh/4-reasons-why-data-scientists-should-version-data-672aca5bbd0b

['Fabiana Clemente']

2020-09-03 18:58:07.573000+00:00

['Version Control', 'Software Development', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning']

The New Saviour

The new Saviour. AlieNadia. Acrylic on canvas. 24"x31". ©NadiaCamandona The New Saviour The coldly logic of robot religion What I was thinking when I painted this canvas? Whatever is your interpretation, I have mine and I don’t know if you agree but I will try to share with you the mental process in which my artwork was grown. It is dangerous to have certainties, I know, but I am pretty sure that, although religions needs humans to exist, humans don’t actually need religions though history has exactly demonstrated us the opposite. The future is so fleeting also because we are so changeable, not only as single persons but mostly as a species. Some might argue that this is called evolution and I completely agree theoretically, even though facts prove every day that our changes don’t depend from our rationality but mostly from an ancestral conservation instinct that calling us all to gather together under the umbrella of a unified behaviour. The majority of people call it “religion” and they use it to hide their fears. They wouldn’t need it if they would try to use common sense and it will be really the lack of judgment to destroy our Planet. Not only at the end of our life but mostly at the end of the life of our Planet we will need to trust in someone who is different from us because to trust in ourselves is too complicated. Someone said, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people” (Carl Marx). It may seem brutal, but don’t we recognize our actual condition in it? And for “religion” I mean all the conditions in which we stop thinking on our own and leave someone else to think instead of us. Unfortunately, the destruction we are causing to the Earth, while we are praying in our churches or posting on our phones, won’t watch us as saviours, but we will need, until the end, to trust in a New Saviour, even him created by us, not in our fantasy but with our hands. If we will save the Planet it will be only because, in one way or another, we will step aside. While I was making that reasoning, my husband remembered me the SciFi short story, Reason, by Isaac Asimov. Suddenly I realized that my artwork The New Saviour summarizes the concept of this ingenious plot, taking it to its extreme consequences. It’s worth spoiling a bit the story, because you can still read and enjoy it. I want only summarise the main concepts that meet my thought. After being created by controllers of a space station , the advanced model of robot who has been conceived to coordinate the robots that control the energy beams, said, “I have spent the last two days in concentrated introspection and the results have been most interesting. I began at the one sure assumption I felt permitted to make. I, myself, exist, because I think.” causing, obviously, the sardonic response of the humans, “Oh, Jupiter, a robot Descartes!” Although he had been informed about his origins, he started thinking about it on his own, saying, “Just what is the cause of my existence?” coming to the conclusion, “The material you are made of is soft and flabby, lacking endurance and strenght, depending for energy upon the inefficient oxidation of organic material. […] You are makeshift. I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.” Cutie - this is the robot’s name - thinks about his existence: “The Master (Editor’s note: the Converter) created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.” The conclusion of one of the controllers was: “You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason — if you pick the proper postulates”.

https://medium.com/my-alienart/the-new-saviour-984009ee51d7

['Nadia Camandona']

2020-06-30 10:08:25.881000+00:00

['Art', 'Robots', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Robotics', 'Religion']

Not Backing Down at Berkeley: Free Speech Under Siege

By John Rice-Cameron In February, rioters rampaged through Berkeley’s campus, setting fire to private property, hurling firebombs at police, and assaulting various individuals. The violence prompted UC Berkeley to cancel a talk from Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor. Free speech is in danger on college campuses across our country. Too often, students shelter themselves from opinions with which they disagree, claiming that the espousal of these ideas makes them feel unsafe. In recent months, no student organization has fought more gallantly on the front-lines of this battle than the Berkeley College Republicans. The university’s cancellation of conservative firebrand Ann Coulter’s appearance at Berkeley marked the third time that the school buckled to violent threats and intimidation against Berkeley College Republicans (BCR) and its guest speakers. I interviewed Troy Worden, President of Berkeley College Republicans, to get his thoughts on the aforementioned events and on the state of free speech on college campuses. Worden placed part of the blame on an “extremely hostile” campus environment. He recounted how several members of their organization were “called names,” “spat at,” “threatened and attacked.” Unfortunately it was not only students, but also the university who contributed to the silencing of free speech at Berkeley. Worden claimed the “university pulled the plug on these events” due to “mere threats of violence.” This prompted them to place “arbitrary restrictions” on BCR events, “making these events [virtually] impossible.” The university was intent on making sure that BCR “could not go host a high-profile speaker,” by not permitting “high-profile” speakers after 3PM on campus, making it exceedingly difficult for many students to attend due to their class schedules. Worse still, the university was hesitant to condemn the violent threats of protesters. It took UC Berkeley six months to denounce the riots that led to the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos’ event. Worden accused professors of being “directly responsible for the violence” that has lately been directed at conservatives and conservative speakers on campuses. Since the 2016 presidential election, Worden noted, “we have seen professors and teachers go out of their way in class making death threats against the President and try to get the university or school to punish students who record them.” Furthermore, Worden discussed how radical professors have, for decades, “perpetuated the idea that America is an evil white supremacist nation, and [more recently] that Donald Trump epitomizes that white supremacist representation.” Professors cannot make such “inflammatory claims and not expect people to react violently.” While radicals have long enjoyed an outsized presence in academia, professors inciting violence is a disturbing development. Worden provided further insight into the mindset of campus radicals, explaining how their tactics and attitudes have changed since the beginning of President Trump’s term. In separating today’s so-called “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs) from the civil rights leaders of the past, Worden argued that “we now see untrained, young individuals resort to violent protest to advance their goals.” While activists have resorted to violent protests in the past, with the 1960’s anti-war protests as an example, this behavior by today’s SJWs reflects what Worden called, “a fundamental misunderstanding of history.” He recounted how “other peaceful forms of civil disobedience were successful” because “civil rights leaders…were proud and believed in the justice they are fighting for.” However, many of the the violent, so-called anti-fascist activists of today are “not willing to show their face[s] in public,” a reflection of cowardice. To explain the heightened aggression on campuses, Worden hypothesized that because college students overwhelmingly dislike President Trump, radicals feel emboldened: a phenomenon that manifests itself in the recent torrent of physical assaults, death threats, and destruction of private property. Worden concluded by exploring what conservatives can do to shatter the monopoly on intellectual discourse which many leftists believe they are entitled to: “Do not be silenced when the university cancels your event, do not be intimidated, the minute you cave in, the minute you don’t make the infringements a big deal, you lose.” According to Worden, “College Republicans have the ability to lead the new free speech movement.” If leftists at Berkeley were the champions of free speech in the 1970s, then conservatives at Berkeley have certainly taken on their mantle. University administrators should no longer yield to those who seek to withhold freedom of speech from anyone. Universities can only fulfill their roles as intellectually open institutions if they respect everybody’s right to be heard. The treatment of Berkeley College Republicans by the school administration, students, and outside agitators should disturb people of all political persuasions. If universities continue to cave to the demands of so-called anti-fascists, the persistent debasement of free speech will create an intellectually repressive environment reminiscent of true fascism.

https://medium.com/stanfordreview/not-backing-down-at-berkeley-free-speech-under-siege-b596f2d7939e

[]

2017-05-30 02:42:20.153000+00:00

['Free Speech', 'Milo Yiannopoulos']

Network Graph with AT&T data using Plotly

I recently made a network graph using plotly on AT&T data and it turned out to be beautiful so I thought why not share it with everyone. This will be a detailed tutorial on how to make a network graph. In addition to plotly, we will also be using networkx to construct the graph. You can download the dataset from kaggle. Network graph helps in visualizing connections between different nodes. This, in turn, would help us with network analysis. So without further ado lets discuss our data and see how we can plot it. When we see the data there are two columns with source IP and destination IP which represent our edges. And each of these unique IP addresses is a node. Head of the dataset We use networkx to build our graph and include our nodes and edges in the graph and then pass on the nodes and edges to plotly to plot. A = list(network_df["source_ip"].unique()) B = list(network_df["destination_ip"].unique()) node_list = list(set(A+B)) G = nx.Graph() for i in node_list: G.add_node(i) In the above for loop, we add all the nodes into the graph using the add_node method. Now we add edges to the graph. for i,j in network_df.iterrows(): G.add_edges_from([(j["source_ip"],j["destination_ip"])]) We now assign some position to each node for plotting. We can do so using a very convenient method called spring_layout in networkx. pos = nx.spring_layout(G, k=0.5, iterations=50) for n, p in pos.items(): G.node[n]['pos'] = p Now that our graph is set, we are ready to plot using plotly. edge_trace = go.Scatter( x=[], y=[], line=dict(width=0.5,color='#888'), hoverinfo='none', mode='lines') for edge in G.edges(): x0, y0 = G.node[edge[0]]['pos'] x1, y1 = G.node[edge[1]]['pos'] edge_trace['x'] += tuple([x0, x1, None]) edge_trace['y'] += tuple([y0, y1, None]) node_trace = go.Scatter( x=[], y=[], text=[], mode='markers', hoverinfo='text', marker=dict( showscale=True, colorscale='RdBu', reversescale=True, color=[], size=15, colorbar=dict( thickness=10, title='Node Connections', xanchor='left', titleside='right' ), line=dict(width=0))) for node in G.nodes(): x, y = G.node[node]['pos'] node_trace['x'] += tuple([x]) node_trace['y'] += tuple([y]) In the code above we create go objects of plotly and assign the data to the objects. Now we assign annotations to the nodes and edges. for node, adjacencies in enumerate(G.adjacency()): node_trace['marker']['color']+=tuple([len(adjacencies[1])]) node_info = adjacencies[0] +' # of connections: '+str(len(adjacencies[1])) node_trace['text']+=tuple([node_info]) Now we plot go objects created above node_trace and edge_trace using Figure. fig = go.Figure(data=[edge_trace, node_trace], layout=go.Layout( title='<br>AT&T network connections', titlefont=dict(size=16), showlegend=False, hovermode='closest', margin=dict(b=20,l=5,r=5,t=40), annotations=[ dict( text="No. of connections", showarrow=False, xref="paper", yref="paper") ], xaxis=dict(showgrid=False, zeroline=False, showticklabels=False), yaxis=dict(showgrid=False, zeroline=False, showticklabels=False))) iplot(fig) The output is an interactive network graph which could be saved as a png, HTML and many other forms. For the sake of using the interactive nature, I saved it as an HTML and uploaded to plot.ly. Check out the below link which is the output of the above code. So that's it! We created a network graph. The code for it is available on my Kaggle and Github. Let me know what you think below. You can always hit me up on my mail ID saianand0427@gmail.com. Clap and share! See you in my next blog!

https://medium.com/@anand0427/network-graph-with-at-t-data-using-plotly-a319f9898a02

[]

2019-03-11 15:23:36.685000+00:00

['Data Visualization', 'Plotly', 'ATT', 'Plot', 'Network']

How Gastrointestinal Symptoms Affect Covid-19 Outcomes, Meta-analyses Find

The CDC acknowledges gastrointestinal symptoms as part of Covid-19. The question is: Does the appearance of gastrointestinal symptoms means a bad disease outcome? What Meta-analyses Say Chinese researchers at the Department of Gastroenterology at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University systematically searched the PubMed database and identified 21 studies for analysis. The pooled sample stands at 3024 Covid-19 patients, of which: 9.1% had diarrhoea (based on 19 studies). 5.2% had nausea and vomiting (based on 14 studies). 3.5% had abdominal pain (based on 4 studies). Importantly, the prevalence of these symptoms did not differ significantly between mild and severe cases, or between survived and deceased cases of Covid-19. This study implies that gastrointestinal symptoms are not a typical trait of severe Covid-19. An earlier meta-analysis asking the same question arrived at a similar conclusion. Harmonizing data from 10 studies, the authors found that nausea, vomiting, or diarrhoea was not related to disease severity. But abdominal pain was associated with severe Covid-19, though this result is based on only three studies with near-missed statistical significance (p = 0.45). A third and most extensive meta-analysis — by eight professors and four medical doctors from China, UK, and Hong Kong — provides conclusive insights on this matter. Their paper — published in the distinguished Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology journal — analyzed 6686 Covid-19 patients from 35 studies, of which: 9% had diarrhoea (based on 26 studies). 7% had nausea and vomiting (based on 18 studies). 21% had appetite loss (based on 8 studies). 3% had abdominal pain (based on 6 studies). “Patients with severe disease were more likely to have gastrointestinal symptoms compared with those with non-severe disease” they found. “More specifically, a higher risk of having abdominal pain (OR 7.10) was observed in patients with severe disease than in those with non-severe disease.” An odds ratio (OR) of 7.10 means 7.1 times increased odds of an event. Whereas the loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhoea had nothing to do with Covid-19 severity in this meta-analysis.

https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/do-gastrointestinal-symptoms-affect-covid-19-outcomes-meta-analyses-find-ab20ab5cfb6a

['Shin Jie Yong']

2020-05-24 08:35:30.245000+00:00

['Health', 'Ideas', 'Life', 'Covid 19', 'Advice']

Research Recap: Is Bad BDSM Letting Men Get Away with Murder?

By Mimsy Borogoves Is the normalization of BDSM in the media connected to the use of the “sex games gone wrong” defense in murder trials of men who have killed women? New research attempts to answer this question. Here’s what you need to know. What was the study? Elizabeth Yardley, a professor of criminology in England, examined cases of femicide, which she defines as murders of women committed by men, in which the men blamed what happened on “sex games gone wrong.” Yardley posits that this defense has become more popular due to the normalization of BDSM in the media. The findings were published on November 4, 2020, in the journal Violence Against Women. How was the research conducted? Yardley compiled information about 43 femicides that male perpetrators claimed were caused by rough sex. All of the cases resulted in a homicide conviction and took place in Great Britain from 2000 to 2018. Yardley compiled and performed statistical analyses of a variety of attributes of the cases. What were the findings? The findings that Yardley highlighted as being particularly relevant to her claim were as follows: Age: There was a wider age gap than in most couples-on average, perpetrators were 5.7 years older than their victims. And victims were most commonly in the 25–34 age range. There was a wider age gap than in most couples-on average, perpetrators were 5.7 years older than their victims. And victims were most commonly in the 25–34 age range. Occupations: A quarter of the victims had “caring, leisure, and other service occupations,” such as hair stylists or classroom assistants. About 15 percent of victims were sex workers, while another 15 percent were students. A quarter of the victims had “caring, leisure, and other service occupations,” such as hair stylists or classroom assistants. About 15 percent of victims were sex workers, while another 15 percent were students. Criminal History: Three-quarters of all the perpetrators had a history of abuse of women, coercion, or stalking. Criminal conviction information was only available for 26 perpetrators, but of those, more than half had been convicted of violent offenses in the past, and nearly two-thirds had been convicted of property offenses. Three-quarters of all the perpetrators had a history of abuse of women, coercion, or stalking. Criminal conviction information was only available for 26 perpetrators, but of those, more than half had been convicted of violent offenses in the past, and nearly two-thirds had been convicted of property offenses. Location of Murder: Nearly half of the murders occurred in the perpetrator’s home, and nearly a quarter happened in a home shared by the victim and the perpetrator. Nearly half of the murders occurred in the perpetrator’s home, and nearly a quarter happened in a home shared by the victim and the perpetrator. Murder Method: In 60 percent of cases, perpetrators strangled their victims to death. In another 20 percent of cases, blunt instruments were used. The rest were killed via asphyxiation or a sharp instrument. In 60 percent of cases, perpetrators strangled their victims to death. In another 20 percent of cases, blunt instruments were used. The rest were killed via asphyxiation or a sharp instrument. Nature of Sexual Relationship: Over half of the perpetrators said that the victim initiated the sex act that caused her death. In two-thirds of cases where the people involved were partners or ex-partners, the perpetrator claimed that he and the victim had a history of partaking in consensual BDSM prior to the murder. Over half of the perpetrators said that the victim initiated the sex act that caused her death. In two-thirds of cases where the people involved were partners or ex-partners, the perpetrator claimed that he and the victim had a history of partaking in consensual BDSM prior to the murder. Case Outcomes: Over three-quarters of perpetrators were convicted of murder, while a little more than 20 percent (9 people) were convicted of manslaughter or culpable homicide. Manslaughter cases increased as time went on, with 5 occurring between 2015 and 2018. Over three-quarters of perpetrators were convicted of murder, while a little more than 20 percent (9 people) were convicted of manslaughter or culpable homicide. Manslaughter cases increased as time went on, with 5 occurring between 2015 and 2018. Sentencing: Men convicted of murdering their partners were sentenced to shorter terms in prison (about 15 years on average) than men who were convicted of murdering women who were not their partners (about 19–27 years). According to Yardley, these findings paint a picture of a patriarchal culture that has allowed men to feel entitled to turn women’s sexual equality and liberation against them and use it to mask long-standing abuse and misogyny. To support this claim, Yardley highlights that the majority of the perpetrators in these 43 cases had a history of abuse of women, and many had criminal convictions for violent offenses. Yardley also argues that mainstream acceptance of BDSM and rough sex in porn and popular culture-choking in particular-have “created a culturally approved script for perpetrators of violence against women.” By claiming that the victim initiated the rough sex that resulted in death (as more than half of perpetrators did), these men “are using women’s sexual liberation to explain and justify their violence.” Yardley argues that the “sex games gone wrong” defense seems to work best in cases where the victim and perpetrator were partners, as evidenced by the shorter sentences for men convicted of murdering their partner. Yardley attributes this to the idea that victims who did not know their attacker are more likely to be seen as blameless in comparison to victims who were in a relationship with their murderer. What were the study’s shortcomings? The most obvious problem in Yardley’s research is the sample size. She studied 43 cases that used the “sex games gone wrong” defense, but many of her data points deal with subsets that are even smaller. For instance, only nine people were convicted of manslaughter. Yet Yardley asserts that it’s worrisome that the bulk of these convictions (five) took place in more recent years, indicating that this defense may be “gaining traction.” That seems like a stretch given the tiny sample size. One reason for the small sample size is that Yardley focused only on cases where there were convictions. She opted to do this because she knew she could access more publicly available data about such cases than ones where there was no conviction. However, even she acknowledges that had she studied cases that didn’t result in prosecution or conviction she might have found more evidence to back up her argument that “sex games gone wrong” defenses are working in the perpetrators’ favor. Examining only convictions makes it impossible to say this defense was successful, especially when the majority of those convictions were for murder. Finally, Yardley’s argument hinges on the idea that the popularization of BDSM in media has enabled the “sex games gone wrong” defense to flourish. But as people in the BDSM community are all too aware, there’s a huge difference between proper BDSM and bad BDSM. And, unfortunately, bad BDSM is often what is shown in porn and mainstream media like Fifty Shades of Grey. Yardley does acknowledge that a lack of judicial and forensic understanding of BDSM combined with nonexistent testimony from expert BDSM witnesses can lead to a lopsided view of what BDSM is. But she stops short of making the point that it’s not the normalization of BDSM that’s problematic so much as the normalization of bad BDSM. What’s the main takeaway? Although Yardley’s research raises some interesting questions about bad BDSM’s influence on certain types of homicides, the sample size is too small to conclude anything definitive. To study this correlation in greater depth, researchers would need to increase the sample size to include cases from other countries that have equivalent legal systems and/or include cases that did not result in a conviction. Overall, Yardley’s research reads like she had a bone to pick with BDSM before she even began this study. She seems to be arguing that the widespread portrayal of BDSM in porn and other media is literally allowing abusers to get away with murder. But since everyone in her sample was convicted, this connection is tenuous. That said, everyone can likely agree that if education about consensual BDSM was as prevalent as bad BDSM, the line between BDSM and abuse would be much brighter for many people.

https://medium.com/bound-together/research-recap-is-bad-bdsm-letting-men-get-away-with-murder-6cabc90a0513

['Bound Together']

2020-11-22 20:48:13.795000+00:00

['Media Criticism', 'Criminal Justice', 'Research', 'Murder', 'BDSM']

The Art Of the Shrug

I admire women who have perfected the art of the shrug. It is the right response to so many things (I won’t list them; I am leaving that to your imagination), nonverbally powerful: neither fighting the information coming your way, nor faking fascination. I only observe it in people who are real and want to be known as they are. The shrug communicates: “There is not enough energy in here. Let’s move on to something more captivating, something more on my wave length.” The difference between tolerance and thrill may be lost on many, but may it never be lost on you! 18 November 2016 … Artwork by Kristina Laurendi Havens. Visit her @ http://www.krystyna81.com/ … Also published on my blog:

https://medium.com/@nandajurela/the-art-of-the-shrug-29c071bb86a5

['Nanda Jurela']

2020-12-10 15:44:47.979000+00:00

['Emotional Intelligence', 'Coexistence', 'Attraction', 'Nonverbal Communication', 'Assessment']

>⚽+LIVE|| Premier League 2020!! “Arsenal vs Chelsea” FULL-Match

WATCH Live Streaming (Arsenal vs Chelsea) Full HD [ULTRA ᴴᴰ1080p] | Live Stream Live sport streams free all around the world. Visit here to get up-to-the-minute sports news coverage, scores… t.co Watch Live Streaming : “Arsenal vs Chelsea” live stream In HD VISIT HERE >> https://t.co/ALeRvbLkaT?amp=1 ●LINE UP : Arsenal vs Chelsea, live ●Date : 12:30 AM,December 27, 2020 ●VENUE: Emirates Stadium Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live, YouTube Live, Periscope, Instagram Live Over the past several years, major social media platforms democratized and commodified live streaming, with YouTube Live launching way back in 2011, and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others (R.I.P. Meerkat) following suit. Most recently, LinkedIn launched live streaming on its platform, too, so businesses and professionals can reach their network in new and engaging ways. These free platforms are great for brands and businesses looking to dip a toe in the live streaming pond, but they are not viable solutions for long-term scale and growth of a video strategy. Why? While ease of use is a major draw, for sure, none offer onboarding or customer support. If your team hits a snag with an event, you’re left to your own devices to problem-solve in real-time. What’s more, streaming is only possible on a platform-by-platform basis. This means if you want to stream to Facebook and Twitter at the same time, you’ll need two cameras to live stream from each device — creating twice as much work (or more) and a less-than-ideal experience for the on-screen talent and viewers alike. ANOTHER POST. Nobody is ever thrilled to pay nearly $11K for a golfer they probably hadn’t heard of until a handful of weeks ago, but both Zalatoris, along with Sam Burns will be at the top of my list this week on DraftKings. Zalatoris gets the slight edge with his outstanding play in nearly every metric that’s not near the green. He ranks first amongst players in the field in SG: total and fourth in SG: approach. We also joke about getting the putter hot for a weekend, and if Zalatoris can improve on his SG: putting which ranks 129th in the field, he should absolutely contend yet again. Other Games. He’s finished no worse than T19 in his last five events, including three top six finishes. His T6 result at Winged Foot opened up plenty of eyeballs, so he’ll be a popular play, which makes him all the more worthwhile in cash at the top. While I was impressed with the way Will Zalatoris played last week at the U.S. Open, I’m more inclined this week to go with the more experienced Tour pro. Will will (that’s funny “Will will”) be a fixture on the PGA Tour — if not this year than next. He is one of the top players on the Korn Ferry Tour now. However, Corey Connors made the Playoffs and has been playing well last season (this is so weird calling it last season already). I’ll have both in a lineup this week, but my gut has me leaning with the Canadian. MORE POST.

https://medium.com/@centrad/live-premier-league-2020-arsenal-vs-chelsea-full-match-51bdb54971f0

[]

2020-12-26 02:04:24.683000+00:00

['Social Media', 'Soccer']

Jenkins vs Bamboo — Which CI/CD tool to choose?

Jenkins vs Bamboo — Edureka Jenkins and Bamboo are leading automation servers with plugins built for continuous integration. So before using them in your DevOps lifecycle, you must understand what exactly they are and how do they work. To understand the very same, read this article which talks about the usability face-off between Jenkins vs Bamboo. The topics covered in this article are as follows: What is Jenkins? What is Bamboo? Differences between Jenkins and Bamboo Popularity License Terms Origin Ease of Setup User-friendly Documentation Platform Dependency Support Plugins Support Compatibility Which CI/CD tool you should choose? Before, we look into the differences between Jenkins and Bamboo, let us understand the basics of Jenkins and Bamboo. What is Jenkins? Jenkins is one of the most popular tools in today’s market, built for Continuous Integration purposes. Written in Java, Jenkins is used to build and test software projects and makes it easy for developers to integrate the required changes to the project. This tool also aims to continuously deliver software by integrating a large number of testing and deployment software. By using Jenkins, startups to hyper-growth companies can accelerate the software development process through automation. Also, Jenkins integrates the development life-cycle process of different kinds such as build, document, test, package, stage, deploy, static analysis and much more. It provides various plugins to allow integration of various DevOps stages. For example, if you want to use a particular tool, then you just need to install the required plugins for that particular tool. Refer the image below to understand the role of Jenkins in various DevOps stages: Next, in this article on Jenkins vs Bamboo let us understand the basics of Bamboo. What is Bamboo? Bamboo is an automation server used for Continuous Integration. Developed by Atlassian in 2007, this tool allows the developers to automatically build, document, integrate, test the source code and prepare an app for deployment. It comes with the flexibility to use various tools, easy to use graphical user interface and allows the developers to use CI/ CD methodologies. With Bamboo, you can ensure high quality and status, get end-to-end visibility into release implementation and spend maximum time writing the code rather than integrate various software. It also provides built-in deployment support, powerful build agent management, automated merging, and built-in Git branch workflows. In Bamboo, we have to create Plans, then set Stages, Jobs, and Tasks using the GUI. Refer below. The differences between Jenkins vs Bamboo are briefly summarized in the below table. A detailed explanation is provided later in the article. Jenkins vs Bamboo In this face-off on Jenkins vs Bamboo, I will be comparing both these tools based on the following grounds: Popularity License Terms Origin Ease of Setup User-friendly Documentation Platform Dependency Support Plugins Support Compatibility Jenkins vs Bamboo: Popularity On comparing these tools based on popularity, Jenkins definitely wins the game and is much popular than Bamboo. Jenkins was released much before than Bamboo, and it immediately started gaining popularity among organizations. Also, if you look at the current Google Trends of these tools, you will clearly observe that Jenkins is much ahead in the competition. Jenkins continues to dominate a solution to build a continuous delivery pipeline as it has more than 165,000 active installations. Jenkins vs Bamboo: License Terms Jenkins is an open-source tool, whereas Bamboo is a commercial/ licensed tool. Jenkins has a global community for development, but Bamboo has its own team of dedicated development. So, any individual or professionals working in the DevOps field can go and download Jenkins. However, to use Bamboo you can download the free version available for 30 Days. After that, you have to buy the license either for $10 which provides 10 jobs, unlimited local agents, no remote agents or for $1270 which provides unlimited jobs and local agents. Here, remember that the more plan you have, the more will be the agents you will require. Else, you will risk creating a process and slowing down the process. Jenkins vs Bamboo: Origin Well, the origin of both tools is the programming language — Java. Jenkins was developed as the Hudson project in 2004 by Kohsuke Kawaguchi and was first released in java.net in 2005. Similarly, while developing Bamboo, Atlassian decided to use a simple Java-based plan description language, to ensure syntax checks, code auto-completion, validate code, and also run offline tests. In Bamboo, you can write your code in any JVM language which incorporated Java-like Groovy, Scala, or Kotlin. Do not have to worry, if you are not familiar with Java, both these tools will bootstrap you directly into a working environment with the help of the documentation available. Jenkins vs Bamboo: Ease of Setup Both of these tools are quite easy to be installed and configured. They can be configured with a snap of your fingers. Yet, if we still have to choose one out of them, then I would say, Jenkins, stands out, as it can be done in 3 steps if Java and Apache Tomcat are already installed. You have to download the Jenkins war file from the official website, deploy the war file, and then install the required/ suggested plugins. However, to setup Bamboo, you need to few more steps when compared to that of Jenkins. Here, after installing Java and create a dedicated user to run Bamboo, you have to follow the below steps: Download Bamboo Create an installation directory Create the home directory Start Bamboo Configure Bamboo Jenkins vs Bamboo: User-friendly When it comes to user-friendliness then Jenkins is not a confident defender here. This is because Bamboo has a much user-friendly approach with a neat and intuitive user interface. So, every time a new task is added, it provides proper guidance throughout the plan’s build and deployment states. But, when it comes to Jenkins, this tool is completely based on functionality. So, in case you wish to make the Jenkins platform more intuitive, then you need to work extra on it. Yet, I would say these leaves a room for the developers to customize, create, allows the developers to choose from a variety of plugins. Jenkins vs Bamboo: Documentation Jenkins and Bamboo both of them have fantastic online documentation that offers clients the option to research and find a solution before reaching the support for help. In this documentation, you will find all the information related to the tools like, how to install, pre-requisites, steps to perform a task, commands, etc. Documentation also provides various tutorials to help you gain hands-on experience in the tool better. Jenkins vs Bamboo: Platform Dependency Jenkins and Bamboo work on various platforms and can be integrated with various tools. The following are the different operating systems and browsers Jenkins and Bamboo can work on. Jenkins: Works on operating systems such as Windows, Ubuntu, RedHat, MacOS. It can be used on browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Bamboo: Works on operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Solaris It can be used on browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Jenkins vs Bamboo: Support Jenkins offers global community support to users who are facing issues while using Jenkins. But Bamboo offers great professional support for licensed customers. It also has detailed online documentation available. Apart from this, Bamboo gets support from the Atlassian community. So my take on this point is, that both of them do offer support. Yet, I would say its completely user-perspective regarding the help offered by these tools. Jenkins vs Bamboo: Plugins Support Jenkins dominates this field and offers more than 1000 plugins which enable Jenkins to integrate with any tool like Git, Maven 2 project, Amazon EC2, HTML publisher. These plugins enable the user to give the best of solutions throughout the continuous delivery process. Even if a plugin does not exist, you can code it and share it with the community. But, Bamboo is not the confident defender here. Bamboo has around 100 plugins in the Atlassian environment, as most of the features are built in the Bamboo marketplace. Also, this tool easily integrates with JIRA and Bitbucket when compared to that of Jenkins. Jenkins vs Bamboo: Compatibility Refer below for the comparison of these tools based on compatibility: Since you are familiar with the nitty-gritty of Jenkins and Bamboo, in the next section, I will deal with the major question revolving in your mind. Which CI/CD tool you should choose? As I have already mentioned, both tools are prominent in the DevOps field and hold paramount importance. So, you can opt for either of the two. But before you choose your tool, there are a few important aspects that you need to consider like: Support and management offered by tools User interface and integration support Type of systems such as standalone systems and large software systems In short, I would say it is your choice which tool you want to choose based on your requirement in the DevOps lifecycle. So, these are the relevant parameters you have to keep in mind before choosing one between, Jenkins vs Bamboo. I hope you found this article informative. If you wish to check out more articles on the market’s most trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Python, Ethical Hacking, then you can refer to Edureka’s official site. Do look out for other articles in this series which will explain the various other aspects of DevOps.

https://medium.com/edureka/jenkins-vs-bamboo-782c6b775cd5

['Arvind Phulare']

2020-09-09 12:11:41.189000+00:00

['Jenkins', 'DevOps', 'Continuous Integration', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Bamboo']

It’s The Wanting

When was the last time you really wanted someone? Wanted to taste them everywhere; to pull them closer than physically possible, to devour them? Some of us feel that kind of desire all of the time. For some of us, it’s instinctive, as natural as breathing, but acting on it can be complicated. For others, authentic desire is fraught, something we’ve been made to feel ashamed of, in one way or another. When I think back on my steamiest nights, it’s not how cut the guy’s body may have been, or how fine the wine. The truth is always simple, and there is no simpler truth than this one. The full-proof key to hot sex is an authentic desire. That’s it. No bells or whistles. It’s the wanting that makes it hot. If you’re sitting alone, reading this right now, and you’re clear that what you want for yourself now, today, is incredible sex, then believe me when I tell you, you’re already halfway home. Because you were made feel exactly what you’re feeling right now. And when you let yourself feel your lusting — craving, tingling down to your toes and out the hair on your head — then your skin tone changes, your posture changes, your energy levels change, and your body releases pheromones that are designed to make you look hot. Because you are hot in your wanting. Wanting may be natural, but it is not easy. Wanting takes courage. The path to great sex can be something of a Catch 22. Why? On one hand, the human brain is optimized for novelty. It’s an instinct that started out as protective — red wild berries, never tasted, might be dangerous. So, when our hunter-gatherer ancestors came across some new possibly tasty but possibly deadly morsels, their bodies released a sumptuously stimulating cortisol cocktail to put them on high alert. Attentive and brave, the prehistoric person who popped one in her mouth was blessed with an extra powerful rush of dopamine in response to the berry’s sweetness. (If it was bitter, well, better luck next time, as it just might have killed her…) When it comes to pleasure, we respond to that which is shiny and new. On the other hand, new lovers are rarely safe lovers, and real wanting takes courage. I have to be brave to tell you that I want you. After all, nothing feels worse than making that long trek across the room in pursuit of someone you really like, only to be rebuffed. If you want to have endlessly hot sex, one way or another, you have to reclaim your wanting. Some of us get there through self-love, embracing our fetishes and our curves, society be damned. Others get there through good ol’ fashioned monogamy, leaning into our lover’s presence day in and day out, knowing that we are loved as much for our flaws as for our features. Desire is a beautiful thing. It’s the most generous gift you can give your lover. “But, what if I am terrified when I climb into bed with you?” you ask. Then, I say to you, “The first step is admitting it!” Now that you have, we can get to work. Wanting The only thing hotter than a man telling me that he wants me is feeling how badly he wants me. The more I can feel the “yes!” in my partner’s hands, the more turned on I am. And to be a good partner, I let my man feel how much I want him. I tell him so. I set aside the little girl in me that is screaming “but, what if you don’t want me to?!” I pull up my big girl pants and I say “There is nothing I want more than to be filled up by you. You are what I want.” When we let our fears take center stage during sex, we make the sex about us, and not about connecting with our partner. And, we can be bigger than that. So, the next time you have the pleasure of climbing into bed with a lover, trust your body and trust your desire. Drop the Guilt So many of us have been fed so much crap about sex and sexuality. But, here’s a little heads up for the Christians out there: The other monotheisms — Islam and Judaism — don’t equate sex with original sin. And, Hinduism has a full stream that embraces sex as worship! Viewing sex as something to feel guilty about is just one way of looking at the whole thing. And, I’m here to tell you, it’s unhealthy. It puts you at war with yourself, and that’s no way to live. Sex makes us feel alive and it creates life. It’s not bad. It’s so so good. Sex makes us feel alive and it creates life. It’s not bad. It’s so so good. It’s time to drop the guilt, and drop the stories that folks told you when you were coming of age that made you feel like something was wrong with you when you listened to your body begging for touch. They probably just needed to get laid. “I don’t feel sinful, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing!” Its really something how many of us make it to adulthood, to parenthood even, still feeling like we don’t know what we’re doing in bed. To you who feel inadequate, I have two messages. First, you are not alone. So many folks are right there with you. Second, you can not learn if you don’t try. There is, simply, no better activity for learning on the job than sex. It’s just something you’ve got to do. You can’t know what you like and what you don’t like if you don’t try. Playfulness The key here is playfulness. Can you call to mind that feeling of total freedom that came with being a child at play? No time. No fear of failure. Just you, your creativity and your desire. Sex is just like that. Good sex is playful. And, it’s fun. If you’re struggling with feelings of inadequacy about sex, just tell your partner that that’s how your feeling when you next find yourself pressed up against them. Let that honest sharing be your beginning. Hands are hot. Flesh is hot. Desire is hot. Kink is hot. Fetishes are hot. Because wanting is hot. So want it. And know that when you do, you’re hot.

https://medium.com/sexual-tendencies/its-the-wanting-8007dd4ccb34

['Sarene B. Arias']

2020-11-07 15:07:53.916000+00:00

['Health', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Sex', 'Sexuality']

How to Find Courage to Deal With Everything Life Throws at You

Overthinking is a common disease. If you’re anything like me, you replay a mistake thousands of times. Envisioning marriage with someone you met last night. But while you believe you’re learning from the past and preparing for the future, all you’re doing is compounding a problem with more anxiety. “The future, the worry, the regret, the anxiety — these are all the mental events that do not have to be a part of the difficulty of life: these can be transcended here and now.” ~Eckhart Tolle We understand this concept but simply can’t help it. Because we’re wired to constantly look for problems in our lives — we’re biologically outdated. But like anything else in life, conditioning and practice will form habits. Once we start consciously rejecting unnecessary thoughts, they’ll fade away slowly. Only focus on what’s in front of you Problems are endless in the past and future. At this moment though, there’s only one or several. You aren’t afraid of getting up to speak in front of the crowd. The real fear that’s preventing you comes from your thoughts. Worrying about slurring and forgetting lines, recalling the bad experience you had last time with public speaking. If you could simply stop thinking, anxiety wouldn’t exist. And the best way to block your thoughts is to take action. Walk up to the podium before your brain can generate fear. Countdown, 3, 2, 1, go. Similar to Mel Robbin’s 5-second rule. There’s real psychology behind it. We can only cope with things when they are present, not before they occur. And the present always gives us the energy and courage to deal with them. “Don’t think of yourself as having a past, don’t think of yourself as having a future. What’s left?” — Eckhart Tolle What’s left is just the absence of fear.

https://2madness.com/how-to-find-courage-to-deal-with-everything-life-throws-at-you-7d80b31c63f4

['Colin Zhang']

2020-12-09 01:06:52.012000+00:00

['Life', 'Personal Growth', 'Courage', 'Overthinking', 'Fear']

27 Inspiring Law Of Attraction Quotes

Are you lacking motivation when it comes to manifesting? These handpicked Law of Attraction quotes will shift your mindset on the right path to abundance. Some of the links here might be affiliate links. Today I have decided to list a collection of my favorite Law of Attraction quotes. As you’ve probably guessed already, this topic is very close to my heart. And that is why I love writing about it. To say that the Law of Attraction is one of the most important laws governing our Universe almost feels like an understatement. Its principles and rules affect everyone. Through the power of the Law of Attraction, we can manifest the life of our dreams. It can allow us to manifest wealth, health, and a perfect relationship. It has been a source of abundance and happiness for millions of people. On the flip side, if we’re not careful with our thoughts, intentions, and actions, we can also attract bad things into our lives. Law of Attraction works towards your intentions and manifestations. It is up to you to define them clearly and precisely. There are many great techniques to mastering the Law of Attraction. They have been described in numerous books, blog posts (such as this one :D), and even movies. Principles of attraction and manifesting have been studied by thousands of experts from various different cultures, religions, and regions of this world. The Law of Attraction has been also heavily endorsed by many great celebrities. Law of Attraction quotes and manifesting When it comes to manifesting, the Law of Attraction quotes can serve as a great addition to your daily affirmations. They are not only a great source of inspiration, but also can give you some positive boost to your vibrations. These quotes carry with them both wisdom and good vibes, straight from people who have achieved great success. Before we continue, I just wanted to tell you about a system called Overnight Millionaire that I discovered some time ago. It has allowed me to shift my mindset and to start seeing abundance in a different way. What makes it relevant to this topic is that it was created by a truly successful person. One that was able to attract amazing wealth that completely transformed his life. Now he is sharing his techniques to allow you to manifest the life of your dreams. If you want to deepen your manifesting skills and attract the wealth of your dreams, go here using my link. How can the Law of Attraction quotes help you? So, let’s look at a lighter side of manifesting and the Law of Attraction quotes. I have plenty of other blog posts where I dive deep into more serious manifesting techniques and the Law of Attraction methods that work wonders for me. I also share a lot of affirmations to keep your vibrations at a high level. Feel free to browse My Happy Manifesting blog posts here. However today we will simply look at some quotes that can be a source of inspiration for you. This is a collection of Law of Attraction quotes from successful people, various entrepreneurs, celebrities, experts, and overall happy people. Many of them have helped me in my manifestation journey. I use some of them as daily affirmations, especially when manifesting money. You can use them to boost your vibration, to look for inspiration when manifesting, or to simply put a smile on your face. Sit back, relax, and enjoy these Law of Attraction quotes. List of my favorite Law of Attraction quotes The first one is an absolute beauty, as it is the Law of Attraction in essence. “If you think you can then you can.” — Stephen Richards “Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny” — David O. McKay “See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it.” — Bob Proctor “What you think you become. What you feel you attract. What you imagine you create.” — Buddha “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” — Helen Keller “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way, you are right.” — Henry Ford “You cannot solve a problem in the same frequency in which it was created.” ― Lynn Grabhorn “Be thankful for what you have, you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never ever have enough.” — Oprah Winfrey “The law of attraction is not the law of magic rather it is an action-based law where you have to be the person you desire to attract to your vortex.” ― Dhiraj Kumar Raj “Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified.” ― Neville Goddard I hope you’re enjoying these Law of Attraction quotes. You can see how they are centered around a focused mindset that allows you to manifest your dreams. They relate to attracting wealth and abundance, as well as happiness in life. “The first place where self-esteem begins its journey is within us.” ― Stephen Richards “I attract to my life whatever I give my attention, energy and focus to, whether positive or negative.” — Michael Losier “When working with the Universal Laws you are working with the laws of manifestation, not instant gratification” ― Jennifer O’Neill “A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts.” ― James Allen “The moment you say , , or , the skies will open for you and the non- physical energies begin instantly to orchestrate the manifestation of your desire.” ― Esther Hicks “When you stop blaming others for where you are in life, that is when you can start to manifest your dream life!” ― Stephen Richards “The law of attraction is not the law of magic rather it is an action-based law where you have to take inspired actions for manifesting your ideal partner into your physical experience because the last six letters in the word “attraction” are “action”.” ― Dhiraj Kumar Raj “The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.” ― Rhonda Byrne You can’t manifest your ideal partner with the old pattern of your thought, emotion, decision and action rather you have to change the pattern that must be relevant to your relationship goals as per the law of attraction.” ― Dhiraj Kumar Raj You should remember that these Law of Attraction quotes can serve as a great basis for your daily affirmations. You can use them exactly as they are, or you can modify them using your language to best suit your vibrations. Ultimately you can make them different for each manifestation. This personal touch will greatly improve your manifesting abilities. “Intention plus action equals manifestation.” ― Heather Colleen Reinhardt “Our thoughts are powerful enough to attract into our lives, whatever truth or lie, good or evil, we passionately nurture in the corners of our hearts.” ― Kayide Banks “You are either attracting what you want or you are attracting the absence of what you want! The law is still working!” ― Rhonda Byrne “When you want something with all of your heart, the universe conspires to helping you achieve it” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist “The Universe and Spirit do not understand limitations…PEOPLE invented limitations!” ― Jennifer O’Neill “The power of manifestation lies in your ability to communicate with the source. Manifestation is essentially an active communication with the cosmos, which makes the reality.” ― Amit Ray “The “Law of Attraction” simply states: “What you think about, you bring about.” — Susan C. Young This list of Law of Attraction quotes is by no means exhaustive. There are hundreds of great thoughts expressed by people who have mastered manifesting their dream life. We should all learn from them to improve our manifesting skills. And speaking of learning from the best: I would like to once again point you towards this amazing system I have discovered and used to some good effect. It’s called Overnight Millionaire and in it, you’ll find useful techniques of tuning in your mindset towards abundance, wealth, and other things you desire. It has been created by a highly successful and wealthy young person. He has decided to share his knowledge to show others the wonderful world of the Law of Attraction and manifesting. If you wish to invest in yourself to enhance your manifesting abilities, this one’s for you. Find out more using my affiliate link here. To give you even more of a boost, you should do what I did and combine this program with another tool that has been of great help in my journey. This one is called Manifestation Magic and it does exactly what is on the tin :D. This program was developed by experts in the Law of Attraction methods and various manifesting techniques. This is actually their second iteration and they have other amazing products that have helped thousands of people around the world. Feel free to read my full and detailed review here. Or if this already sounds like something you’d be interested in, go ahead and visit their official website using my link here to find out how it can help you too with your manifestations. As always I would like to thank you for reading this article. Stay Awesome!

https://medium.com/@myhappymanifesting/27-inspiring-law-of-attraction-quotes-3e0de6effc6b

['My Happy Manifesting']

2020-10-25 22:38:56.949000+00:00

['Affirmations', 'Law Of Attraction Quotes', 'Manifesting', 'Manifestation', 'Law Of Attraction']

TensorFlow Serving — Deployment of deep learning model

Deployment of an ML-model or deep learning model simply means the integration of the model into an existing production environment which can take in an input and return an output that can be used in making practical business decisions. It is the last stage of machine or deep learning. Tensorflow Serving is one of the powerful libraries , which is an extension of Tensorflow libraries to put the model on production server. Its handle lot of stuff in background Following features of Tensorflow Serving - It can serve multiple models or multiple version of the same model Expose both gRPC as well as HTTP inference endpoints Allows deployment of new version of model without change in client code Install can be done using docker It can be deploy on Kubernetes Apart from TF Serving we can use Flask to access the deployed model from any web application. TF Serving have some advantage over Flask Scalability Low-latency Handles multiple model Handles multiple version of same model TF Serving Architecture - Servable Handler handles or serves the model . Its like a lookup or inference Version manager responsible to publish new model or new version of same model Loader scans and load the model, get message from version manager to what model to be load, based on the message Loader will reach to file system and load the model and get back to version manager. Version manager then inform Servable handler that model has been loaded and ready to be served. How to use TensorFlow Serving Below are the Installation Steps for TensorFlow Model Server echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow-serving-apt stable tensorflow-model-server tensorflow-model-server-universal" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tensorflow-serving.list && \ curl https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow-serving-apt/tensorflow-serving.release.pub.gpg | sudo apt-key add - After installing model server install TensorFlow GPU . Install Requests module . Requests allows you to send HTTP/1.1 requests extremely easily Import all required dependencies Now load dataset and divide it to train and test data. Refer dataset from link https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~kriz/cifar.html . You can find the class name from the the dataset link used. Before train and evaluation of model , Image Normalization is required so that loss would be minimum. Now create a sequential model add layers and compile it Train the model with epoch 10 Evaluate the model with text data and check the model accuracy Save the model for production . Create the directory name ‘model’ or you can choose any name of your choice and save the model inside that directory for TensorFlow Serving. After saving the model , now set up the production environment. Export MODEL_DIR to system environment variables. Run TensorFlow Serving model server at port 8052 in python. Here we have to use ‘%%bash — bg’ to execute linux command as a service. Server.log is used to see the logs. Using tail command we can see the server logs. Finally server is up and running for image classification. Now to test deployed model, we have to create a POST request for which a JSON object to send the request to model server After create of JSON request, send the first POST request to model which is deployed on TensorFlow model server. Set the content-type as application/json , since we are sending a JSON request. Use the same modelname and port used to start and run tensorflow model server. Use predictions to check the data This is how we can create a scalable image classification API. Now the question how to change the model or version of same model. For that there is only change in the URL, that has to send with POST request. If there is change in version just append ‘/version/1(2…)’ to URL.

https://medium.com/@ravivalecha30/tensorflow-serving-deployment-of-deep-learning-model-20b7e0494c71

['Ravi Valecha']

2020-11-21 13:59:04.939000+00:00

['Deep Learning', 'Flask', 'Classification', 'Tensorflow Serving', 'TensorFlow']

Today is International Men’s Day … but when is it Women’s day?

Is that not the question one asks on these days? I’m only asking because each year on International Women’s Day social media is flooded with men asking angrily or sarcasticly (or both) when it’s International Men’s Day. Well it’s today. In all seriousness though, this is a very important day! This year’s theme is “Better Health for Men and Boys”. So let’s start with the sad fact that the suicide rate for men globally is much higher than that of women. One cause is toxic masculinity and gender stereotypes. Till this day many still teach boys and men that “boys don’t cry” and to “man up”. Subsequently, when struggling, men tend not to reach out and get the help they desperately need — with fatal consequences. The same toxicity is also the root cause for another issue that men face. Many men put off going to their doctor when physically ill, meaning that life threatening illnesses may be further along by the time they seek treatment. An example of toxic masculinity at work is that right now #BringBackManlyMen is trending on Twitter. Most likely caused by the pictures of Harry Styles wearing a dress — something that the brilliant Billy Porter has done to per-fec-ti-on on multiple occasions previously — as if that is somehow an offence that diminishes all men. Rather than one person living their best life. Because to some people, people conforming to gender stereotypes is much more important than the wellbeing of a single individual. They’d rather force everyone to take the blue pill & have us all remain enslaved by the toxic masculinity that hurts everyone, rather than redefine and broaden masculinity to better suit all men. So on this #MensDay day let’s focus on bettering the lives of men — gay, straight, bi, cis, trans, etc. — by making masculinity inclusive for ALL men. I firmly believe that it will have a positive long-term impact on both the physical & mental health of men & boys. #YouAreIncluded PS. Women’s day is 8 March, in case you didn’t know and don’t know how to use a search engine.

https://medium.com/@camillaengelby/but-when-is-it-womens-day-d802387aed1c

['Camilla Engelby']

2020-11-19 17:33:04.627000+00:00

['Toxic Masculinity', 'Mental Health', 'Masculinity', 'International Mens Day', 'Mens Day']

Observable vs Observer: RxJava

For a min, don’t think about Rxjava. If, in general, I ask you what is observable, what would you say? Lets search on google According to google: Observable Observer Observable:- able to be noticed or perceived; Observer:- a person who watches or notices something. Can I say here, observable is something that can be observed. Or observable is a source that we can observe for something? For what observable can be observed, it could be any data. For example, you are watching movies on your laptop, so here your computer is observable that is emitting movies, and you are the observer who is receiving that data. Similarly, in RxJava, Observable is something that emits some data or event, and an observer is something that receives that data or event. Note: I will be using Kotlin code examples in this post. Let’s create a simple observable : val observable: Observable<T> = Observable.just(item : T) Here T could be of any type like a string, char, int, or even a list. What observable will do here is, it will emit item T. There are other ways to emit items, we will see later in this post. How do Observable works???. An Observable works through its onNext(), onCompleted(), and onError() calls. At the highest level, an Observable works by passing three types of events: onNext(T):- used to emit item(of type T) one at a time all the way down to the observer onComplete():- communicates that all data has been emitted or indicates that no item will be emitted after this call. onError():- communicates an error Let’s see how can we emit a string val observable: Observable<String> = Observable.just("Hello") Now let’s see how to receive this string using subscribe (will discuss just in few moments): observable.subscribe { s -> // received string s here Log.d(TAG, "received string:- $s") } Output received string:- Hello Let’s start with creating a source Observable using Observable.create() and see how we can use onNext() to emit data(say some string): val observable: Observable<String> = Observable.create<String> { it.onNext("hello") it.onNext("Kotlin") it.onComplete() } Use subscribe to receive these string : observable.subscribe { s -> Log.d(TAG, "received string:- $s") } Output received string:- hello received string:- Kotlin You may be wondering we have only seen how is observable emitting data. We are still not sure where the observer is, how it works? So what is this subscription thing here? Let’s see what is subscribe here doing: Well, subscribe is the method to attach an observer to an observable. For that subscribe method, accept observer object as a parameter. How do we create an observer then? The Observer interface public interface Observer<T> { void onSubscribe(Disposable d); void onNext(T value); void onError(Throwable e); void onComplete(); } Let’s understand each one by one: onNext(T value): Here, we will be receiving T value emitted by observable. onError(Throwable e): Used for error handling onComplete(): Called when observable is done emitting items. onSubscribe(): here we get disposable, which will be used to dispose of the stream, or we can say to unsubscribe the observable. Now let’s get back to the previous example : Observable: val observable: Observable<String> = Observable.create<String> { it.onNext("hello") it.onNext("Kotlin") it.onComplete() } Create Observer: val observer: Observer<String> = object : Observer<String> { override fun onComplete() { // onComplete called of observer } override fun onSubscribe(d: Disposable) { // onSubscribe called of observer } override fun onNext(t: String) { // onNext called of observer Log.d(TAG, "received string: $t ") } override fun onError(e: Throwable) { // onError called of observer } } Pass this observer to subscribe : observable.subscribe(observer) Output received string:- hello received string:- Kotlin Instead of creating observer like above, shortened the observer by lambda: observable.subscribe( { // onNext called of observer Log.d(TAG, "received string: $t ") }, { // onError called of observer }, { // onComplete called of observer }, { // onSubscribe called of observer }) Here the output will be the same. Can we reduce more? Off cause, we can. All these functions are optional, and we can only pass the lambda for receiving item like below: observable.subscribe({ s -> Log.d(TAG, "received string:- $s") }) Or observable.subscribe{ s -> Log.d(TAG, "received string:- $s") }

https://0202gaurav.medium.com/observable-vs-observer-rxjava-8739b7612a54

['Gaurav Rajput']

2020-08-30 18:28:35.755000+00:00

['Rxjava2', 'Observer And Observable', 'Observer', 'Observable']

The Intrepid Report Issue #66

Here’s what’s in store for you this week: What to expect when Ethereum’s Constantinople hard fork happens, and new developments in regulations in Europe and the US. We’ve got thoughts from the Blockchain Review on Blockchain Governance Principles, as well as insights on blockchain tech trends and vulnerabilities in private keys in major blockchains. Check it out below! Key news highlights. What’s going on in the world of Blockchain? What to Expect When Ethereum’s Constantinople Hard Fork Happens Expected to activate this Wednesday, Jan. 16, Constantinople is a type of upgrade known as a hard fork — which means it needs to be unilaterally installed across all nodes in the network to function as intended. This approach aims to make smart contract and decentralized application design more approachable, although there are inherent risks. Here’s more on the 5 upgrades introduced in Constantinople and how they could impact the ecosystem. Read More Advice on ICOs and Crypto-Assets — European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) Crypto-assets raise specific challenges for regulators and market participants, as there may be a lack of clarity as to how the regulatory framework applies to such instruments. The Advice by ESMA above clarifies the existing EU rules applicable to crypto-assets that qualify as financial instruments and provides ESMA’s position on any gaps and issues in the current EU financial regulatory framework for consideration by EU policymakers. Read on and download the Advice here. Read More Colorado State Senate Introduces Bill to Exempt Crypto From Securities Laws Following a recent effort from Colorado’s state commissioner to crack down on fraudulent ICOs, the bill argues for a state environment that supports crypto-based business activity. In setting up the framework for a new law, the bill details several significant premises for new support of cryptocurrency. Read on for more. Read More The latest insights, thoughts, and analysis from the Intrepid Team Blockchain Governance Principles: Who Guards the Guards? The principles of decentralisation embodied by blockchain technology serve as a conceptual and realistic alternative to the centralized manner in which our lives are currently run. Much of what we now experience is determined through top-down decisions, which can be vastly different from the decentralised governance structure on a blockchain. Which makes us question — who determines a blockchain’s DNA? Who has the right to make decisions, and how is this right implemented in reality? Read More Want to be a Thought Leader in Blockchain? Apply to be a contributor to The Blockchain Review. Reach thousands of entrepreneurs, investors and blockchain enthusiasts globally. Contribute Now Articles, white papers, ebooks, and more Bitcoin At 10: Untold Stories Here’s an interactive multimedia feature exploring untold stories from bitcoin’s first 10 years. From explainer videos to the most iconic memes, click here to check out the fun stories and videos. Read Now Vulnerabilities In Bitcoin, Ripple, And Ethereum Digital Signatures Discovered Some researchers have just reported vulnerabilities in cryptographic signatures for Ethereum, Bitcoin and Ripple. These vulnerabilities allow attackers to calculate private keys, and steal cryptocurrencies from a given wallet. Here’s more on the vulnerabilities. Read Now Updates on what we’re up to and our upcoming events Panel Discussion: Human-Centred Blockchain How is blockchain used to achieve more human-centred purposes? How can we apply blockchain to design, creativity, UX, and UI? What makes blockchain service driven, and human-centred? Join us as we cut through the blockchain buzz in this panel discussion in Singapore. Sign Up Invite Your Friends & Get Bonus Tokens Get 5% Metabase tokens when your friends buy tokens using your invite link. Doing so will also give your friends additional bonuses of 1–5% on their first purchase. Invite Friends Want to learn more about blockchain? Check out our new micro-site How Does the Blockchain Work, a clear and non-technical guide on how blockchain, Bitcoin, and Ethereum works, and more. Check it out. Interested in learning from leading entrepreneurs in the blockchain world? Check out our Founders in Focus interview series on YouTube. A show where we uncover the personal stories and journeys of founders and innovators from the crypto sphere.5

https://medium.com/blockchain-review/the-intrepid-report-issue-66-7cb287127e78

['Grace Zhai']

2019-01-15 08:44:20.595000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Technology News', 'Newsletter', 'Cryptocurrency']

UI/UX: The One Academy’s Website Redesign

These are some of the insights from the research : The course provided and the campus life environment is the most important criteria for findings on a college. Teaching methodology also needs to take consideration because the user wants to get the best education. Most of the user would prefer images more than words as the image would be more impactful and gives more imagination. Users felt that the website is cluttered with text which makes it hard to understand which content really matters. Not very sure where to find the right content as some of the words were misused. In a nutshell, The One Academy’s website looks professional and informative yet it doesn’t reflect how an art and design college should look like. Validated Problem Statement After the qualitative user test, I did some refinement on the problem statement : FOR potential The One Academy Student WHO wants to join an art college THE website Is a platform THAT helps them to envision the actual classroom scenario UNLIKE others art college OUR PRODUCT is able to let them immerse the real life classroom scenario Validated Persona As a result of the research, I also get to validated my persona based on the data collected. User Persona (Validated) User Journey After crafting a validated user persona and problem statement, next up will be a user journey map. This was to understand the essence of the whole experience from the user’s point of view. The user journey map was able to track the user’s potential emotions during the experience: curiosity, confusion, anxiety, frustration, relief, etc. User Journey Map User Journey Map Moving forward, it’s time to turn the existing problems into opportunities gained from mapping. And these opportunities were to provide a better experience for the user. Opportunities Competitor Competitive Analysis (CCB) Right now business will always have competition. Therefore, getting to grips with the ins and outs of competitor analysis can help me know the market, product, and goals better. I’ll also understand the competition, get actionable insights, and boost the brand. The competitors that I compared with mainly design colleges/universities in Malaysia in terms of the user interface, functionality, visual structure, and user experience. Full Research Sprint Deck.

https://medium.com/@sleepatone/ui-ux-the-one-academys-website-redesign-491602559f7e

['Rou Tong']

2020-12-23 16:14:14.546000+00:00

['User Experience', 'Website', 'UX', 'Product Design', 'UI']

It’s sex without intellect, the curse of dialect.

It’s sex without intellect, the curse of dialect. A plastic dildo to fill your ego Match and make the dumb and fake, fill the hole with a porno show. A strapping stud with a bucking mare turns the win into a stunning pair. Bet your race on the winning stakes, tonight you might get lucky spilling your drink over her dress. Go back home to little red fucky, with lips that encircle your sticky member. Push push like a rabid dog, tomorrow you will be lucky.

https://medium.com/artrock-sexual-manifestations-queer-madness/its-sex-without-intellect-the-curse-of-dialect-3318155d2253

['Mimi Bordeaux']

2017-09-15 23:03:02.708000+00:00

['Masturbation', 'Poetry', 'Sexuality', 'Men']

The Discovery of a Promising Technology

By Zhang Jianfeng “Everyone has limited time, so it becomes particularly important to choose a technology worth devoting oneself to.” I have been working with data for 12 years since 2008. During this period, I have dealt with a plethora of data challenges. Specifically, I have participated in developing underlying framework kernels for big data such as Hadoop, Pig, Hive, Tez, and Spark, upper-layer data computing frameworks such as Livy and Zeppelin, and data applications including data processing, data analysis, and machine learning. Now, I am a member of the Apache and Project Management Committee (PMC) for multiple Apache projects. In 2018, I joined Alibaba Cloud’s real-time computing team and specialized in Flink R&D. Today, based on my career experience, I want to discuss how to evaluate whether a technology is worth learning. I have been working on big data technologies, from Hadoop to Hadoop’s ecosystem projects. Then, I moved on to the new-generation computing engine Spark, and to Flink on which I have been working recently. So, generally, the evolution of big data computing engines reflects different stages of my career. Personally, I am lucky to have worked on then-popular technologies at all stages. But I also have to admit that I mostly chose which technologies to work on based on my own interests and intuition. By summarizing my experience, I concluded three dimensions that help evaluate whether a technology is worth learning: 1) Technical Depth, 2) Ecosystem Breadth 3) Evolutionary Ability 1) Technical Depth Technical depth refers to whether the foundation of any technology is solid and irreplaceable by other technologies. Generally, technical depth stresses whether this technology solves major problems while other technologies cannot. This involves the following key points: 1) No other technology could solve the problems. 2) The technology produces great value by solving the problems. Take Hadoop as an example. I learned Hadoop at the beginning of my career. When Hadoop was released, it was a revolutionary technology, as no companies in the industry had a complete set of solutions for massive data, except Google, who claimed to have a GFS and MapReduce systems internally. At the same time, with the development of Internet technologies, data volume increased daily, and the ability to process massive data became imperative. The emergence of Hadoop met this urgent need. Though Hadoop was good at processing massive data, as technologies developed, its defects became increasingly intolerable, such as poor performance and complicated MapReduce programming. At this time, Spark was released and solved the chronic problems of the Hadoop MapReduce computing engine. Spark featured a good computing performance that far surpasses that of Hadoop and extremely elegant and simple APIs. With these features, Spark met users’ various requirements and was widely accepted by big data engineers. At present, I am engaged in the research and development of Flink at Alibaba Cloud, as I have seen the industry’s demand for real-time processing. In this field, Flink is dominant. Previously, the biggest challenge of big data processing was the huge scale of data. This is also why we call such data a piece of “big data”. After years of effort, the data scale problem has been solved by the industry. In the next few years, the major challenge will be speed- the real-time capability. The real-time capability of big data does not only mean the real-time performance of transmitting or processing data but also means end-to-end real-time performance. Throughout this process, if any of the steps are inefficient, the real-time performance of the entire big data system is compromised. In Flink, however, everything is a stream. Flink adopts a unique architecture in the industry, as it uses Stream as the kernel. The features of superior performance, high scalability, and end-to-end Exactly Once make Flink the leader in stream processing. Currently, there are three mainstream processing engines: Flink, Storm, and SparkStreaming. Note: Spark Streaming only supports term searching, and therefore, in theory, it is not a commensurable opponent. However, we are more concerned about its variation in trend, so Spark Streaming is also included here. According to the preceding Google trends, Flink is becoming increasingly popular, Storm is declining year by year, and Spark Streaming has almost come to a halt. This proves Flink has a deep foundation in stream processing, and none can take its dominant position for now. 2) Ecosystem Breadth For technology, it is not enough to hold its position with technical depth alone. As one technology only focuses on one specific aspect, therefore, to solve complex practical problems, it must integrate with other technologies. This requires the technology to cover a sufficient breadth of the ecosystem. The breadth of the ecosystem is measured with two dimensions. 1) Upstream and Downstream Ecology: It refers to the upstream and downstream data from the data streams perspective. 2) Vertical Ecology: It refers to the integration of a specific domain or application scenarios. In the beginning, Hadoop had only two basic components- HDFS and MapReduce, which targeted massive storage and distributed computing respectively. However, the development of technologies introduces increasing numbers of complex problems, and HDFS and MapReduce can no longer resolve them all. Given this situation, Hadoop ecosystem projects, such as Pig, Hive, and HBase, emerged. These projects, as part of the vertical ecology, had solved these problems. On the other hand, the same happened with Spark. Spark was designed to replace the original MapReduce computing engine. Later, however, Spark developed various language interfaces and upper-layer frameworks, such as Spark SQL, Spark Structured Streaming, MLlib, and GraphX. These interfaces and frameworks greatly enriched Spark’s application scenarios and extended its vertical ecology. In addition, Spark supports various data sources and as a computing engine establishes a connection with storage. This builds a powerful upstream and downstream ecosystem of Spark and lays the foundation for developing an end-to-end solution. The Flink ecosystem I am working on is still at its startup stage. However, we saw the dominance of Flink not only as a stream processing engine but also as the opportunity to build a Flink ecosystem. Initially, I focused on the core framework layer of big data, but then I slowly moved to the derived ecological projects. This shift is based on my prediction about the big data industry. The first half of the struggle to implement big data was concentrated on the underlying framework, and this stage has already come to an end. In the future, there will not be many new underlying technologies and frameworks for the big data ecosystem. Meanwhile, superior subdivisions of the ecosystem will be retained, while inferior ones will be evicted. As a result, each subdivision will be more mature and centralized. The focus of the second half of the combat is moving from the under layer to the upper layer, and finally to the ecology. Previously, big data innovations mostly adopted the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) model. In the future, you will see more products and innovations in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS). Every time I discuss the ecology of big data, I refer to the preceding figure. This figure includes all the big data scenarios required to deal with everyday challenges. The workflow in these scenarios starts from the leftmost data producer to the subsequent data acquisition and data processing, and then to data applications, such as business intelligence (BI) and artificial intelligence (AI). Interestingly enough, you may find that Flink can be applied in each of these steps, from big data to AI. However, though good at stream processing, Flink is still in the startup stage in the ecology of other fields. I am working on to improve Flink’s end-to-end capabilities, as shown in the preceding figure. 3) Evolutionary Ability If a specific technology has both technical depth and ecosystem breadth, it is worth learning for now, at the minimum. To evaluate technology, it’s crucial to consider its changes over time. Undoubtedly, you never expect the technology you are working on to become obsolete soon and learn a new technology every year. Therefore, a technology worth learning must have the ability to evolve. It has been more than 10 years since I first learned Hadoop, and it is still very popular today. Although many public cloud vendors are competing for a larger share of the Hadoop market, you still have to admit that if a company wants to set up a big data department, the first task is to set up a Hadoop cluster. Today, when we talk about Hadoop, it is no longer about the original Hadoop prototype, but more of a general term for the Hadoop ecosystem. For more information, read this article by Arun C Murthy, CPO of Cloudera. Spark projects are better in terms of evolutionary ability. Spark erupted in 2014 and 2015 and has now entered the stable phase. However, Spark is still evolving and embracing changes. Spark on Kubernetes is the best proof that Spark is embracing cloud-native. In the meantime, Delta and MLFlow, which are the most popular models in the Spark community, show Spark’s strong evolutionary ability. At present, Spark is not only used to replace MapReduce but is also a general computing engine suitable for various scenarios. It has been almost a year and a half since I joined Alibaba in 2018, and during this time I have witnessed the evolutionary ability of Flink. Firstly, Flink has integrated most functions of Blink after releasing several major versions, which greatly improved its SQL capabilities. In addition, the support for Kubernetes, Python, and AI all demonstrate the strong evolution of Flink. Tips In addition to the preceding three dimensions, I would like to share some tips for evaluating new technology. 1) Follow Google trends. Google trends can reflect the development momentum of technology well. The preceding Google trends figure compares the 3 stream processing engines: Flink, Spark Streaming, and Storm. It’s easy to conclude that Flink takes the lead in stream processing. 2) Check the Awesome list on GitHub. The popularity of technology can be partly seen from the Awesome list on GitHub. Check the GitHub rating for a specific technology on this list. Additionally, take a weekend to read through the Awesome list, which contains the essence of technology. Based on this information, you may roughly assess the value of technology. 3) Check whether technical evangelists have endorsed the technology on technology websites, such as Medium.com, which is one of my favorites. Often, you may see a group of people in the technical community who are enthusiastic about and understand new technologies. If the technology is actually good, technical evangelists will endorse it free of charge and will share their experience of using the technology. 4) Summary Everyone has limited time, so it becomes particularly important to choose a technology worth devoting oneself to. This article summarized my thoughts on how to evaluate whether a technology is worth learning, which is also a quick review of my career in terms of technology selection. I hope it is helpful in your career planning. About the Author Zhang Jianfeng (Jianfeng) is a veteran in the open-source community with GitHub ID @zjffdu. As an Apache Member, he has worked for Hortonworks and now is a senior technical expert at the Alibaba Computing Platform Department. He is the PMC for three open-source projects- Apache Tez, Livy, and Zeppelin, and is also a committer for Apache Pig. He has been working on big data and open-source for years and hopes to make some contributions to big data and data science in the open-source field. Original Source:

https://medium.com/@alibaba-cloud/the-discovery-of-a-promising-technology-b32964e1f07

['Alibaba Cloud']

2020-12-23 07:05:28.841000+00:00

['Hadoop', 'Flink', 'Alibabacloud', 'Max Compute', 'Big Data']

C++ Basics — Part I (for beginner’s)

C++ is a general-purpose programming language. (and a lot more) Before diving into code you must have compiler installed in your system. Compiler — A program that converts High Level Language(HLL) into Low Level Language (LLL). HLL : int fib(int n) { int store[n+2]; store[0] = 1; store[1] = 1; int i; for(i=2;i<n;i++) { store[i] = store[i-1] + store[i-2]; } return store[n-1]; } // Any language that you can code in, and is very close to "English" (a natural language) which is easy for a human to read, write and understand. LLL : mov edx, [esp+8] cmp edx, 0 ja @f mov eax, 0 ret // Commands or functions in the language map closely to processor instructions. Windows Users : Install CodeBlocks (IDE) from here Linux Users : Install g++ (highly recommended) and a CodeEditor (Sublime or VSCode) Lazy Users : (yes lazy) : Can use online IDE’s , hackerearth, ideone .. etc. “I recommend you to always refrain from online IDE’s especially during a contest” before we start, you must know that a C++ file has extension ‘cpp’, while a C file has extension ‘c’. Let’s Start #include<iostream> using namespace std; int main() { // A simple program to print "Hello World" cout<<”Hello World!”; return 0; } Output: Hello World! Now with explanation #include<iostream> // iostream is a header file, it contains // definition of cin & cout using namespace std; // if this were not used then we'd have to // write std::cout<<"abcd"; in the program int main() { // declaration of function with name // 'main' and return type of integer. // the definition is found within "{}" cout<<"Hello World!"; // cout prints output on the terminal // notice - '<<' this is an operator // notice - '//' statements beginning with // these characters do not get executed, // they are used for comments return 0; // function main would return 0 // (an integer) } Let’s Math #include<iostream> using namespace std; int main() { cout << "3 + 2 = " << 3+2 << endl; cout << "3 - 2 = " << 3-2 << endl; cout << "3 * 2 = " << 3*2 << endl; cout << "3 / 2 = " << 3/2 << endl; cout << "10 / 3 = " << 10/3 << endl; cout << "10.0 / 3 = " << 10.0/3 << endl; return 0; } OUTPUT : 3 + 2 = 5 3 - 2 = 1 3 * 2 = 6 3 / 2 = 1 10 / 3 = 3 10.0 / 3 = 3.33333 Notice 3 / 2 = 1 and 10 / 3 = 3, yes you guessed it correct, only the integral part is retained. This happens because by default data-type is integer. Unless specified like in example 10.0 / 3 = 3.33333 (any operation that includes a decimal will result in one) Book : Balaguruswamy OOPs with C++ (recommended) Please go through chapter 3, 4 for a detailed content. “Recommended” All the chapters are important and would be covered in your course in span of one to two semesters. I cannot cover everything in this blog hence provided you with a resource. Topics that you must know before moving forward are: Variables (data type) Loops (for, while, do) IF ELSE Arrays & Matrix Functions Important: To learn C/C++ you must read a book and run your code. There is no other easy way. (do not watch videos for this, start reading the book) The next part would focus on getting a good grip on the language.

https://medium.com/programming-club-nit-raipur/c-basics-part-i-for-beginners-6c147101b35b

['Aditya Agrawal']

2018-09-24 01:40:30.726000+00:00

['Technical', 'Students', 'Programming', 'Programming Club', 'Nit Raipur']

The Ultimate Prep Guide For Studying Abroad

Students preparing for overseas education always get information, albeit scattered. How great would it be to know everything stocked concisely in one place! To save your precious time, we have compiled an ultimate guide for studying abroad preparations: Best Study Preparation for Overseas Education This section includes a quick look at the academic areas that need your attention before getting enrolled. Academics Work hardest on your last 1–2 years of study, just before enrolling overseas. This helps in building a strong foundation for your course abroad. Language Tests Nail your language with the highest scores. It helps in securing a seat in the best college. Scholarship Enquire about the scholarships offered by your selected university and work hard for them. It’s a great way to save costs. A good reputation in the college is an added advantage, of course Recommendations Obey your teachers when it comes to submissions and tests back home. You might need a recommendation letter from them to secure admission abroad. Post-study Preparation for Overseas Education You selected your favorite college, worked hard for it, and finally got admitted. It’s time to prepare yourself to migrate: Paperwork It’s time to get all the paperwork done immediately. First is the college admission confirmation. The next is to get your passport, visa, and migration work done. Pack them all with 2–3 copies as backup. Get a digital copy made too. Personal Development To adjust to a new environment, it’s important to groom yourself mentally and physically to merge well. Practice the language, understand their culture, and be the best version of yourself. Luggage Pack the most appropriate luggage. Look for the permissible luggage weight first. Then pack within the limits. While selecting things to pack, look for the weather and climate of the country. Do not pack anything that is banned in the country. Overseas Preparation for International Students This pre-prep would make your life easier once you are there: Know the Land Know everything about your to-be home country. Research the local culture, traditions, and language. Research the civic laws in the area you’d be staying at. Read thoroughly the general law of the land. Know the People Knowing about the local people in advance would help you strike strong bonds with them. This way you’d know the generalized reactions of the locals. Read the blogs or join social media groups to get informed. Preparing for Financial Independence Gaining financial independence in a foreign country is the most important survival rule. To secure a job there, lay the foundation of interviews from your home country. Use online classified websites to find out suitable part-time jobs and go for them as soon as you land. Stay Grounded for Sanity This one’s the most important preparation to sail happily through your study abroad journey. Stay grounded. Don’t get carried away with new cultures and traditions. Some countries might have a lifestyle that is flashy enough to blind you. For staying focused, talk to your family daily. Be true to them for having their back. This would lend you mental strength. And there’s no preparation bigger and stronger than a mental one.

https://medium.com/@Gradway/the-ultimate-prep-guide-for-studying-abroad-c2617d71908d

[]

2021-12-30 18:11:49.099000+00:00

['Study Abroad']

Why Video Is King For Digital Marketers

Video may have killed the radio star, however it has given rise to a veritable universe of other stars, from Charlie Chaplin to PewDiePie. It’s showing no sign of slowing, as it has seamlessly transferred into the digital world. Currently if you tried to watch all the video content that is uploaded in just one second, it would take you two years of doing only that. Not sleeping, not working, just watching video. That is an insane amount of content. How much of that is cat videos? Marketing Given the mind-blowing amount of video that is being produced and consumed by people online, it’s no surprise that brands and agencies have got involved. Marketers have invested bigly (to quote a certain Wotsit-hued world ‘leader’) in video production and promotion. According to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau and PwC report, the amount spent on online video content has usurped banner ad spend for the first time in the UK. The first six months of the year saw a splurge of £699m on online ads. This equates to an impressive increase of 46% compared to the previous year. In comparison banner ad spend fell by 2% to £685m. Video is the fastest growing advertising method. From its humble beginnings, it now represents 35% of all display advertising spend. This isn’t particularly surprising if you think how long you spend watching videos per day. Over the last three years, this has grown from 51 minutes a week, to over two hours. Being tagged in videos on Facebook really adds up. Video… Marketing? What? If you don’t have video marketing it your box of tricks. You could be missing out on a massive amount of exposure and potential business. Did you know 78% of people watch videos online at least once a week, while 55% watch videos on a daily basis? The glass half-full way of looking at this is that there are a huge amount of eager recipients for your video content. They are also accustomed to being marketed to in this format. The pessimistic view point: there is already a vast amount of content bombarding your target audience. This means that you need to work extra hard, or spend extra money to stand out and earn decent response rates. We’re not saying that video marketing is an easy area to excel in. However, it appears destined to grow. Imagine your brand not being on social media now. Exactly. It’s almost unthinkable. The same will soon be said about video marketing in the next few years. There isn’t just one method of video marketing. Whatever your marketing aims, or industry, or target audience, video marketing can benefit you. Platforms Many people’s first thought when they hear the words ‘video marketing’ are immediately Youtube. However this shouldn’t be where the thoughts stop. Whilst Youtube is an important platform to show off your content, there are also a wide variety of platforms for you to show off. Half of the UK’s internet browsing now takes place via smartphones, with the majority of this taking place on social media apps. It’s therefore logical that you should ensure your videos are on a social media platform relevant to your target audience. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Instagram Snapchat Youtube Email Your Website Types of video Video marketing is just like any other avenue in marketing. Content is key. You could produce a beautifully edited video, but if the concept and content is absolute drivel, it will obviously fail. I’m not going to patronise you to tell you what your business should be marketing about, or what videos to produce. However, if you’re new to video marketing, there may be a couple of types of video you’re not aware of: Live posts Recording a live video can seem like a terrifying prospect for brands. Their very existence is often to portray the fact that they are perfect, polished and in many cases aspirational. Pulling back the curtain and revealing that a brand is comprised of mere mortals who are just like the rest of us can be daunting. There is nothing more authentic than a live video though. No matter how scripted it is, there’s always the opportunity for something to go wrong. This allows the brand to really show a bit of personality and authenticity. Thanks to smartphones, it’s a piece of cake to record a quick video. This works well to give behind-the- scenes views at events, or to make brand announcements. Millennials tend to distrust traditional adverts and are sceptical of brand messages by default. Producing sincere live videos screams authenticity and can be an effective marketing tool for the younger demographic. This is definitely a growing trend, with 13% of videos being produced across social media being live, over the past year. Stories Stories are like old school Facebook statuses, except they are comprised of videos and images. This can be great for a brand to share their experience of an event (or a non-event: a typical day at the office etc.). Stories typically last 24 hours, so are also viewed as authentic by millennial audiences. Most social media networks now have a stories section with varying degrees of engagement, Instagram -> Snapchat -> Facebook. Be mindful of who your audience is and their preferred platform to decide which networks to adopt. 360/3d video This is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It’s now relatively straightforward to produce eye-catching 360 and 3d video. Whilst this can be truly spectacular, it’s vital that you don’t let the shiny visuals and effects paper over the gaping holes in your content. When producing one of these videos, it’s important to ask yourself whether this video is worth making in 2d. If the answer is negative, you could be on the slippery slope to making the marketing video version of Piranha 3d. Just… one more thing Once you’ve got a solid idea for a video, you know how you’re going to make it and how it’s going to fit into your overall marketing strategy. It’s time to think about where you’re going to display it. It’s worth thinking about the intricacies of each location. It’s also always better to upload your video directly to the platform, rather than simply linking a Youtube or Vimeo video. This is because ‘native’ video autoplays in a user’s timeline or newsfeed. This means that engagement rates will be higher as users won’t need to go through the exhausting step of clicking on your link. Approximately 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound as they autoplay on newsfeeds. Is it therefore worth adding subtitles so that all the people covertly skiving in the office can follow the plot of your work? The length of your video is also a key element of its success. There is a trend at the minute for longer videos on Facebook and particularly Youtube (by long, we mean maximum 2–3 minutes). We’re also seeing this on Instagram. There used to be a theory that shorter was better as brands wanted to get their message across before the audience lost interest and carried on scrolling down their newsfeed. However now there has been a shift in thinking. If you’re content is engaging enough, length is less of an issue. Having said that, Snapchat tends to be shorter and punchier, Instagram can be either really, but we’d still advise to not go for a Scorsese epic on the platform. We know it’s possible to start to view your video as a piece of art rather than marketing. You may not want to ruin its exquisite plot with something as uncouth as a call to action. But remember, video marketing creates stronger customer engagement and can be great to drive purchase behaviour. But only if you provide direction to the viewer. Hopefully this has demonstrated the increasing importance of video marketing in the modern marketing mix, and that whatever the size of your business, video can help you achieve your marketing ambitions. Still not sure, get in touch.

https://medium.com/h2o-creative-communications/why-video-is-king-for-digital-marketers-17ea0af86bdb

['Adam Brummitt']

2018-06-25 13:06:16.341000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Video Marketing', 'Marketing Strategies', 'Digital Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing']

Fbi Prince Biography & Music Career

Prince Monday Popularly known as Fbi Prince, is an American Nigerian Rapper, Singer Songwriter, Performing Artist, Video Producer/Director and a Computer Scientist who was Born on 15 July ,1995 in Eleme, Rivers State . Pkute is from Rivers State, Nigeria in the Western Part of Africa. He was Formally called Fbipkute as a nickname/stage name. Music Career FBI PRINCE Started Music at an Early age and has gone into various filed of Entertainment and musical works. Fbi Prince (Pkute) is a rapper /song writer and a video producer/Director. He is also a virtue artist he draws art. He has created awareness about his music around his area and state . Engaging with fans who love his sounds Prince is planning on working with Nigerian American Pop singer “Davido” Dmw Boss on his new song titled Fake Love (Forth Coming Release). Fbi Prince was the first wowapp ambassador in Nigeria Educational Background . He was a student of benson Kenule Benson Saro-wiwa polytechnic, (Kenpoly) Formally Known as Rivers State Polytechnic in Bori, Rivers State, Nigeria COURSE: COMPUTER SCIENCE FAMILY & Early Life: He started his music career 2014 and leter gave a brake to finish his education, Pirnce Monday is the first born and only son with three female ,His Dad is an electrical engineer, And mom is a business woman who loves marketing…

https://medium.com/@dtmstories/fbi-prince-biography-music-career-8fa9a90853e3

['De Thrills Music']

2020-12-06 08:19:35.188000+00:00

['Biography', 'Fbi Prince']

Create Your Own Lattice Boltzmann Simulation (With Python)

Fluid dynamics on a Lattice We will begin with a microscopic description of a fluid that lives on a lattice. For this exercise, we will consider a 2 dimensional lattice with 9 possible velocities at each lattice site (D2Q9). There are 4 connections running North, South, East, and, West, 4 diagonal connections, and 1 connection from a node to itself representing zero velocity. Each lattice site also has a weight wᵢ associated with it: The microscopic particles that make up a fluid can be described with the distribution function f(x,v), which describes the the phase-space density of fluids at location x traveling with velocity v. The particles will do two things. Stream and collide. This behavior can be captured by the BGK approximation: where the left-hand side represents streaming, and the right-hand side approximates collisions. In this approximation, τ is the timescale of which collisions happen, and the distribution function f tends towards some equilibrium state f^eq as a result. The equation may be discretized onto the lattice as follows where i denotes 1 out of the 9 lattice directions (with velocity vᵢ). Moments of the discrete distribution function can be taken to recover fluid variables at each lattice site. For example, the density: and momentum: where the sum is over all lattice directions. It can be shown that this description approximates the Navier-Stokes fluid equations. Streaming The first step in the Lattice Boltzmann method is to stream the particles. This step is incredibly simple. Conceptually, here is what happens. At each lattice site, for each direction i, the value Fᵢ is shifted over to the neighboring lattice site along the connection. Typically in the Lattice Boltzmann method uses units of Δt=Δx=1 and we will use this convention throughout. The streaming velocities are hence: (0,0), (0,1), (0,-1), (1,0), (-1,0), (1,1), (1,-1), (-1,1), (-1,-1). Collisions Next we need to define the equilibrium state as a result of collisions. This depends on the fluid model’s equation of state. For this example, we will assume an isothermal (constant temperature) fluid, which has a constant sound speed. We define units using common conventions such that the lattice speed is c=1 (which corresponds soundspeed²=1/3). The equilibrium state is given by: which corresponds to the isothermal Navier-Stokes equations with a dynamic viscosity: Boundary Boundary conditions in Lattice Boltzmann are implemented on the microscopic level. In our simulation, we wish to add a solid cylinder. Lattice sites part of this cylinder may be flagged. Here particles will behave differently. In our example, we will consider reflective boundary conditions. Instead of collisions that lead to equilibrium, particles will simply bounce back. This is easily accomplished by swapping lattice directions: where i and j correspond to lattice directions that point in opposite directions. Lattice Boltzmann Method That’s it conceptually. Let’s put it all together! The following code sets up the lattice and initial condition for Fᵢ, and alternates streaming and collision(+boundary) operators to evolve the system. It is remarkable that this restricted microscopic representation is able to capture macroscopic fluid behavior. Flow Past Cylinder The initial conditions above place a static cylinder into a periodic box with rightward moving fluid. As the flow progresses, turbulence develops in the wake behind the cylinder. This is known as the Kármán vortex street.

https://medium.com/swlh/create-your-own-lattice-boltzmann-simulation-with-python-8759e8b53b1c

['Philip Mocz']

2021-02-05 21:02:02.847000+00:00

['Python', 'Lattice', 'Physics', 'Fluid Mechanics', 'Simulation']

The 7 Most Terrifying Figures of Sardinian Mythology

The 7 Most Terrifying Figures of Sardinian Mythology Cristinamiceli Follow Dec 9 · 5 min read From the Ammutadori to the Panas: ghosts, demons, goblins and much more Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son — via Wikimedia Commons Known abroad for its amazing landscapes, crystal clear sea and beautiful beaches, Sardinia is one of the most popular destinations when travelling to Italy. But only a few know its mythology and the many figures which make up the Sardinian folklore. Sardinia is situated in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, far from both Italy and France. Because of this, through the centuries people inhabiting this island came up with their own tales and traditions, which are very different from the ones that can be found in Italy. Sardinian folklore is full of dark figures such as goblins, demons and spirits. Here is a list of the most terrifying ones.

https://medium.com/the-collector/the-7-most-terrifying-figures-of-sardinian-mythology-7312e1bc637c

[]

2020-12-09 15:52:27.579000+00:00

['Mythology', 'Sardinia', 'Culture', 'Myths', 'History']

15+ Binary Tree Coding Problems from FAANG Interview

Image by Omni Matryx from Pixabay A Binary Tree is a hierarchical Data Structure. Depending on how you store the nodes in a tree, the Terminology differs. Out of Free Stories. Here is my Friend Link Hey guys, I have been sharing a lot about Tech Interview Questions asked in FAANG, I am currently working on the Tech Interview Questions asked in LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Oracle. I have been researching a lot about these “interview problems”. When it comes to Binary Tree Problems, Most of them can be solved, if you have a strong foundation in certain types of problems. This post is all about making you strong in the fundamental Logic’s that are used to Solve Binary Tree Problems. So that when you are in your Interview and you come across a Binary Tree problem you will know which logic to use and how you could approach that problem! Free For Kindle Readers If you are Preparing for your Interview. Even if you are settled down in your job, keeping yourself up-to-date with the latest Interview Problems is essential for your career growth. Start your prep from Here! 15+ Binary Tree Coding Problems from Programming Interviews What is the Lowest Common Ancestor? How to find the Lowest Common Ancestor of Two Given Nodes? Solution How to find out if a given tree is a subtree of another tree? Solution How to Traverse the Binary Tree Iteratively? Solution What is Breadth First Traversal? How to implement it? Solution How to find out the Diameter of a Tree? Solution How to Traverse the Tree in Zig-Zag fashion? Solution What is Depth First Traversal? How to implement it? Solution How to print the Right Side View of A Binary Tree? Solution How to Construct BST from Preorder Traversal? Solution How to find out if two given trees are mirror images of each other? Solution How to find out the sum of the Deepest Leaves in a Binary Tree? Solution How to Capture a Binary Tree into a 2D Array? Solution How to Merge Two Binary Trees? Solution How to find if a pair of Nodes in BST is equal to a target? Solution How to Find the Minimum Distance Between Two Nodes in a given BST? Solution These are some of the most popular binary tree-based questions asked on Programming job interviews. You can solve them to become comfortable with tree-based problems. Go Even Further These are some of the most common questions about binary tree data structure form coding interviews that help you to do really well in your interview. I have also shared a lot of Coding Interview Questions asked in FAANG on my blog, so if you are really interested, you can always go there and read through them. These Challenges will improve you in Dynamic Programming, Back Tracking, Greedy Approaches, Sorting and Searching Techniques to help you do well in the Technical Interviews. Good Knowledge of these Different Algorithms and the time and space complexities behind is a must-know for every interview. Focus on this the most. Further Reading 4 Incredibly Useful Linked List Tips for Interview Top 25 Amazon SDE Interview Questions Do you think you really know about Fibonacci Numbers? 9 Best String Problems Solved using C Programming One Does not Simply Solve 50 Hacker Rank Challenges End of the Line You have now reached the end of this article. Thank you for reading it. Good luck with your Programming Interview! If you come across any of these questions in your interview. Kindly Share it on the comments section below. I will be thrilled to read them. Before you go: Want to become outstanding in java programming? Free for Kindle Readers. A compilation of 100 Java(Interview) Programming problems which have been solved. (HackerRank) 🐱‍💻 This is completely free 🆓 if you have an amazon kindle subscription. If you like this article, then please share it with your friends and colleagues, and don’t forget to follow the house of codes on Twitter!

https://medium.com/dev-genius/15-binary-tree-coding-problems-from-faang-interview-2ba1ec67d077

['House Of Codes']

2020-06-22 12:54:02.762000+00:00

['Coding', 'Java', 'Software Development', 'Interview', 'Programming']

12 steps to healing your heart after a break-up. (This too shall pass)

When I broke up with my ex, I thought, “How the hell am I going to get through this?” I was crying every day for nearly two months. I would cry at the drop of a dime. I was drinking every day and luckily I wasn’t blanking out. I had never experienced these types of emotions before in a break-up. It was a rollercoaster of emotions. I felt like I was out at sea. It was a title wave of emotions. Photo by Evan Brockett on Unsplash I recall being at work and the song “Praying” by Kesha came on the radio, and I ran out of the building. I could feel the wave of emotions starting to build in the pit of my stomach and as soon as I got outside, I burst into tears. I had never experienced a break-up like this before and I thought…. When is this going to end? But I remembered this promise I made to myself. “Whatever happens, do not close your heart, you will remain open in order to heal and learn and grow.” That was the best decision of my life. I remained open to all the lessons that I learned and what I learned was “That I am worthy of great love AND I am capable of cultivating great love.” His fears were not mine and I don’t have to blame nor shame myself because I know now that that past relationship was showing me where I needed to grow. Even though I wanted him back so badly, I knew he needed to grow too and he can’t do that by being with me. He has his own journey and I have my own journey to grow in love. Here is what I’ve learned from therapists, coaches, friends, and love and being a relationship coach myself. Photo by Luis Galvez on Unsplash 1) Cry, cry, cry- You want to get it all out. Allow yourself to feel all the feelings of the loss of a breakup but don’t make sure self-wrong. Let yourself feel your feelings because you don’t want to repress them,” You should also be sure to talk through any grief that you have so that you can work on moving past it instead of holding on to it. 2) Stay away from trashing the other person on social media. It serves no one. 3) Be careful of the language you are saying to yourself like “why me? Why this is happening to me? I fucked up or they fucked up. Why didn’t I see this coming?” etc. This type of self-talk gives you no access to the lessons you need to learn from these relationships. It’s psychological abuse to yourself. Instead, ask yourself questions like “What is this teaching me about me? What do I need to learn from this? And it’s never “I don’t trust men or women. or Men ain’t shit. Women ain’t shit.” These are damaging beliefs. These beliefs will unconsciously run your future path for love. The lessons that we need to learn has to do with us. Like, “I need to learn how to be vulnerable. I need to learn how to speak up, or I need to set boundaries.” Whatever comes up for you don’t wait until the next relationship. These lessons are meant to be practiced with the people in your life. 4) Cut off communication if you need to. This is hard, I know, but to move on, you need to honor yourself at this moment. It’s learning to break free of the attachment. If it helps, you may need to set a boundary with the other person and say, “I need no communication from you at this moment. I am not cutting you out of my life, but I do need time to heal and take care of myself.” 5) If you were in an abusive relationship, this might be an excellent time to seek professional help. Often, we have been traumatized, and we need professional help to help us process this painful past. Men are quick to repress their emotions and they feel embarrassed but there is nothing wrong with seeking help and talking about your experience. This is probably where you really need to go to work the most. In order to cultivate healthy relationships, it’s learning to identify those emotions and know how to articulate what’s going on inside. Photo by Sonja Langford on Unsplash 6) Give yourself time and structure your days. You want to keep your life moving, and at the same time, you want to give yourself room to grieve. 7) Take care of yourself because you’re going to be emotionally rundown,” Sherman, Ph.D. says. This is the perfect time to focus entirely on yourself and make sure your needs are being met. “Focus on your self-development and your self-esteem because sometimes that takes a hit, whether that’s through exercise or some hobby, something you like to do or learn. So you feel like you’re becoming your best self, and you feel confident again.” 8) Forgive yourself. Most people spend so much time beating up on themselves after a breakup that they set themselves up for emotional failure in the next relationship, or they create blocks for themselves for the possibility of new love. 9) Remain open. Do not close your heart. It is at this moment that you are growing and learning. Be open to growth and learning from this breakup 10) Make amends with the other person both mentally and outwardly (if you are ready). Most people never make amends with the other person. You don’t have to do this in person or over the phone physically. You can bring this person into a visual mediation and make amends with them. One of the biggest growing lessons for me is when I made amends with my ex two years later. We sat down over coffee, and after months of personal growth courses, I finally became aware of my beliefs about love and relationships and how those negative beliefs helped sabotage our relationship. I owned my part, and he owned up to his part. At that moment, we closed the chapter, and all my negative thoughts about him melted away. 11) Make a list of all the things negative beliefs you are willing to release and give-up. Please write it down and burn the list. Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash 12) Make a list of all the things you are ready to embrace. Where do you need to grow? 13) Do things that make you happy and surround yourself with people who make you happy. 14) Don’t Get rid of any physical things like clothes, items just yet. You want to store away anything that brings you down or send you into an emotional spiral. Hide them. After a few months of grieving, then you can decide to throw them away. In the book, “The life-changing magic of tidying up.” She suggested that if items from an old lover still bring up painful emotions, then it is time to thank the item and give it away. Only keep the things that bring you joy and get rid of anything that triggers sabotaging emotions. 15) Take responsibility for your 3% of the relationship. One of the biggest lessons I learned and the most significant growing moment was to own my part. We are not perfect, and we played a role in the relationship. 16) Give up blaming and shaming yourself and the other person. It will give you no power, and it will not heal your heart. 17) Be with people you love. Allow them to love you and stay away from talking shit about the other person. It will do you know good. 18) Know your worth. Remember that a breakup doesn’t make you unlovable or undesirable. Internalizing negative beliefs about yourself is damaging. Instead, turn your focus to your best qualities. “Write down 25 things that make you a great catch,” says Sherman, Ph.D. “[You] can read that over before [you] start dating again.” 15) Rebound: This scenario varies from person to person. “It’s important to be a little careful of the whole rebound thing,” Sherman cautions. “First of all, you can hurt the other person, but also maybe your mind-set is not ready to deal with more emotions when you’re already upset. For some people — if they can handle it, and it’s something they’re conscious of — it can help them get back out there without getting too intense.” It is essential to be upfront with people if you date or hook up so soon. It saves you from hurting others, and it lowers all expectations so no one will get hurt. YOU GOT THIS! If you need help, then please don’t be afraid to schedule a call to see if coaching is for you. https://www.jimmyallencoaching.com/application

https://medium.com/@jimmyallencoaching/12-steps-to-healing-your-heart-after-a-break-up-this-too-shall-pass-8ea30b118511

[]

2020-12-23 20:14:57.527000+00:00

['Breakups', 'Breakup Problem Solution', 'Healing', 'Black Men', 'Overcoming Heartache']

The reason for a Mentoring Program!!!

A mentor is a person who may tell his or her mentee about to get successful. SkillPal is the platform or you can say a well-built program where you can find industry expert successful man and woman who will share information and their stories. This could save time and money both of a young person. Important feedback from SkillPal experts can lift you in your career. Everybody has to make a professional benchmark where he or she can be tagged as a successful person. Chasing the dream is not as easy as that young people think of a whole. If only a successful person comes and leads then the difference can be seen. SkillPal is an augmented reality program where you can meet industry expert and successful leaders who will provide professional mentoring. A mentor may share with a mentee or protege information about his or her own career path, as well as provide guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modelling. A mentor may help with exploring careers, setting goals, developing contacts, and identifying resources. SkillPal is the best platform for getting a perfect mentor. Good mentors of SkillPal have not only a willingness but a keen desire to share this information. They possess empathy and understand what it was like to be just starting out in their career or field. This drives them to pay it forward, so to speak, through mentorship. The SkillPal mentorship is a relationship between two people where the individual with more experience, knowledge, and connections is able to pass along what they have learned to a more junior individual within a certain field. In today’s competitive landscape a mentoring relationship can give you an edge that differentiates you from your peers and/or your competition. You may be ready to make a career change or advance in your present career but something is holding you back. Wouldn’t you benefit from a relationship with someone who may provide knowledge, insight, support, guidance, and open doors for you? It may surprise you that some of the world’s most rich and famous had mentoring relationships to help them in their quest for excellence. A mentor is a person with specialized knowledge whom you may enlist to educate and motivate you, either in your personal life, your career or both. Similar to coaches and teachers, mentors guide less-experienced people through the learning process by establishing trust and modelling positive behaviours. A decent mentor is important in every sector. The key factors that the mentee should approve by his or her mentor. If the mentee sees that a mistake take place the mentor may solve it. SkillPal is the best platform to get a decent mentor. Here you can scan the plans that you have made and check if it is going good or not. Suppose somebody needs guidance regarding his or her plan, where should they go! To a mentor of course. Everybody needs to make a good relationship with his or her mentor. A mentor can show a young guy the right choice. A right decision needs to come from the right person at the right time. Most of the time the young members make mistakes and therefore time and money everything gets wasted. So, a mentor’s perception is very important in every category. If you are searching for a mentor SkillPal is the best way. Effective mentoring requires more than common sense. Research indicates that mentors and mentees who develop and manage successful mentoring partnerships demonstrate a number of specific, identifiable skills that enable learning and change to take place.

https://medium.com/@chatterjeesayantan62/the-reason-for-a-mentoring-program-e0ca1ab9b18a

['Sayantan Chatterjee']

2020-12-18 06:26:25.342000+00:00

['Personalized Mentorship', 'Growth', 'Augmented Reality', 'Virtual Mentoring', 'Skillpal']

Submarine cable connecting Portugal to Latin America starts operating in 2021

Submarine cable connecting Portugal to Latin America starts operating in 2021 Ineews Jan 18·2 min read The addition of the new infrastructure that will connect Portugal to Latin America through a transatlantic submarine fiber optic cable is one of the great bets of the Portuguese presidency of the European Union and the cable has already reached Sines. he project involves an investment of 150 million euros, 50% financed by organizations such as the Bella Consortium, Cabo Verde Telecom and EMACOM and with the remaining 50% coming from the pan-European investment fund Marguerite II. This cable opens a ‘corridor’ for data transmission between Europe and Latin America, providing the first direct and high-speed connection by submarine cable. The project foresees several land routes that connect strategic data centers in Lisbon, Madrid, Marseille, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza. The entry point in Europe will be located in Sines and the FCCN (FCT National Scientific Computing Unit) highlights the decisive role of the academic and research community in implementing the project, highlighting that funding was possible under the BELLA program which aims to create a research and education network between the two continents. The BELLA program is led in consortium by several national research and education networks, with Portugal being represented by the FCCN. For future needs, latency values ​​are an essential factor, with applications requiring a shorter period of time for information to pass through the network, in the path between users, data centers and platforms.

https://medium.com/@ineews/submarine-cable-connecting-portugal-to-latin-america-starts-operating-in-2021-72611e34e88a

[]

2021-01-18 19:04:01.099000+00:00

['Companies', 'Ellalink']

There’s even more to it than what I wrote.

There’s even more to it than what I wrote. My Dad was very concerned about the plight of the poor worldwide, not just here in America, and became one of the founders of the charity called Heifer, International — helping people help themselves. My brother and I do work in a similar vein. It’s very evident to us that identity divisions fueled by toxic patriarchal white supremacy (often promoted by Christian churches!) enable America’s government to refuse assistance to minority groups of all types while trampling on their human rights. This has turned the US into a human rights disaster, as I’m sure you know.

https://medium.com/@larsonstoll/theres-even-more-to-it-than-what-i-wrote-1e60e642eea9

['Jane Stoll']

2020-12-27 02:45:45.704000+00:00

['Patriarchal Society', 'Identity']

HOW TO INSTALL RASPBIAN OS IN YOUR RASPBERRY PI

You need to download 2 software and 1 OS i.e. Raspbian for this complete process. 1st software: The first software is Win32 Disk Imager. https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ 2nd software: Second software is SD Card Formatter. https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ Raspbian OS: This is the Main operating system of the Pi. https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ Extract all files to the desktop.

https://medium.com/@everythingcj/how-to-install-raspbian-os-in-your-raspberry-pi-480aa64de7d7

['Everything Cj']

2021-02-07 16:45:08.768000+00:00

['Raspberry Pi', 'Pi', 'How To', 'Operating Systems', 'Computers']

Buy a Coffee Machine and Shut Your Pie Hole

Probably just my mood today, but this just reads like an entitled douche bag moaning about not being able to be an entitled douche bag in public every day. I lived in downtown Vienna — famous for coffee — for a few years just to be in crawling distance of my favorite bars. Each morning I would walk to the local coffee shop for a double espresso. After a few months I realized that literally no one gives a shit if you can afford to pay €5 for a cup of coffee 2–3 times a day. It is just an ego trip. A stupid waste of time and money. I bought a Nespresso machine. Nespresso had elegant stores all over Vienna, one within crawling distance of my flat. I was George Clooney suave as I sashayed back to my flat with dark tubes Ristretto and Lungo in a branded bag. After a few months I realized that literally no one gives a shit if you can afford to go shopping every couple of weeks and pay € 80 / kilo for coffee in environmentally unfriendly packaging. It is just an ego trip. A stupid waste of time and money. I bought a machine with enough pressure to make espresso like a commercial machine. I drank coffee just to enjoy the coffee. Then I quit drinking coffee all together for several years, just to see if I could. 2020 I started drinking again. I like the taste. I know that I can quit if I feel I’m using coffee as a crutch. 2020 is a year when most of the western world fell apart. My family and friends back in the US are suffering. Some are struggling. We have it much better here in Austria, but it is still tough. Now I buy coffee beans from my gym that is on lockdown. I think it is outstanding coffee, but I buy from them just as much to give them some additional income to get through the pandemic. I really enjoy the coffee — Brasil Catuai is my favorite. No one sees me drink it except maybe my wife and/or dog. For the record, they don’t give a shit either — except my wife keeps an eye on me that I don’t get too caffinated. There are a lot of things I have missed in 2020. #1 being able to visit my ailing mother. Nowhere on the list of things I miss is acting like an entitled douche bag while buying overpriced coffee. I skip the overpriced coffee part and rant on Medium.

https://medium.com/@jlalbrecht/buy-a-coffee-machine-and-shut-your-pie-hole-79db710e5573

['Jack Albrecht']

2020-12-23 14:30:18.166000+00:00

['New York City', 'Life', 'Culture', 'Coffee', 'Work']

There’s More to “console” Than Just .log()

Most people involved with web development are familiar with console.log(). It’s a tried and true mechanism for testing and validating code, troubleshooting, and generally sending feedback to the browser as code executes. What you may not know, however, is that there’s so much more to “console” than just .log(). Here are a few of my favorites: console.clear() As the name may suggest, this clears the console. Use with caution. This method clears everything out of the console, so you could miss some important information if you’re not careful. console.info() Similar to console.log(), console.info() writes an informational message to the console. Some browsers allow you to filter the console based on the type of message sent, including: Info, Warnings, Errors. Some browsers may also offer a visual indicator of the type of message. Firefox, for example, adds a small “info” icon to the left of the message. console.warn() When something is more important than a simple informational message, console.warn() can be used to write a message to the console. Most browsers will highlight these messages in yellow, with a warning symbol to the left of the message. Some browsers will even provide trace details to help pinpoint the source of the message. console.error() When things are truly broken, console.error() is what you’ll want. The output looks the same as a “real” JS error, but if used properly (within a try/catch block), gets the point across without actually breaking the entire page or application. These messages are highlighted in red, with a warning symbol to the left of the message, and access totrace details to help pinpoint the source of the message. console.table() This is where console logging starts to get fun. Using console.table(), it’s possible to display an array or an object (or an array of objects) as a table in the console. And, as a bonus, some browsers (eg// Chrome) allow sorting by column by clicking on a column header. console.count() / console.countReset() Consider this a simple counter. Each time console.count() fires, it increments by 1. By default, the counter is labeled as “default”, but the method supports specifying any custom counter label by passing in a string as the lone parameter. Each time the label is called, that label — and only that label — increments by 1. The example below shows four (4) separate labels: default, first, second, and third. To reset the counter for a specific label, calling console.countReset() sets the counter back to zero (0). For example, to reset the counter for the “first” label, call console.countReset(“first”) . console.group() / console.groupCollapsed() / console.groupEnd() Using console.group() creates a hierarchical grouping structure in your console. There are many use cases, and the ability to nest groups multiple levels deep make this a powerful tool. The simple example below illustrates a single-level group showing students enrolled in a series of courses. Row 20 initiates the group, specifying the label/name, and row 22 ends/exits the group. Using console.groupCollapsed(group_name) in the above example (row 20) generates the same output, but collapsed as shown below. Clicking the arrow to the left expands the group. These are just a few of the lesser known, but still useful (powerful?) features of the “console” object. What are your favorites? Did you already know how to use the ones highlighted above?

https://medium.com/@hitgovernor/theres-more-to-console-than-just-log-d118b5936bbe

['Brian Johnson']

2021-01-21 21:53:03.655000+00:00

['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Analytics', 'QA']

Localize your React Application

Internationalization (i18n) could be one of the features that you need nowadays. Thanks to i18next , the task of localizing your application can be done easily. In this article, I will show you how to localize your React application using i18next and react-i18next . What will be covered in this article? Init and use the translation function. Handle language selection from user. Manage translation files. Store the language key in Cookie. I will focus on how the internationalization is implemented in a React application. For this tutorial, I use a new React application created using Create React App and Ant Design for components. You can create your React application in a way you prefer. What do we want to achieve?

https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/localize-your-react-application-5ab3219ee5d5

['Reza Mauliadi']

2020-06-15 15:12:42.847000+00:00

['Internationalization', 'Programming', 'React', 'JavaScript', 'I18n']

Teens have been forcibly medicated while in immigration custody.

Migrant teenagers have been forcibly medicated while in immigration custody, according to Vice. The report is based on an ongoing lawsuit against the federal government for its treatment of migrant children. Teens described being administered up to 20 pills per day, placed in physical restraints, placed in isolation, and receiving injections, among other practices. The findings are horrifying, though not surprising. Migrant children have long suffered abuse and faced inhumane conditions while in custody, whether they are in detention centers, shelters, or hotels. Attorney Leecia Welch told Vice the government doesn’t track how many minors are being medicated. “They just don’t have the data; I find it horrifying,” she said. “It’s just a black box.”

https://gen.medium.com/migrant-teenagers-have-been-forcibly-medicated-while-in-immigration-custody-according-to-vice-c674f0cd2057

['Andrea González-Ramírez']

2020-12-10 18:30:42.977000+00:00

['Politics', 'Trump Administration', 'Immigration']

How to Run Android Studio on ANY Device With JetBrains Projector

Of course you would never code on a phone, but it proves that the device hardware is irrelevant. If it has a browser, you can use it to code. This changes everything! Without the constraints of a beefy hardware, I can choose a development machine that is portable, lightweight, and much cheaper! A good choice in my opinion is a decent Chromebook, a MacBook Air, or a Surface Go. I even considered an iPad as an alternative, it works, but definitely not as comfortable as a real laptop. My personal favorite so far is the Pixelbook Go, great keyboard and super lightweight, been really enjoying coding from it. Where is Android Studio actually running? You still need a beefy machine either in the cloud on on your local network to do the actual heavy lifting of running the IDE and Gradle builds. Luckily cloud VMs are now a commodity, and you can get one up and running in a matter of minutes via services like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. I went with AWS, chose an EC2 instance with 8 cores, 32Gb of RAM and 100 Gb of storage. Running the instance costs me around $0.40 / hour, not cheap if you’re running it 24/7, but since I use it only for a few hours a week for my personal projects, it ends up being quite affordable. Even if I used it for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it would cost me around $64 / month. Not bad considering I don’t need an expensive laptop anymore. When I want to work on my projects, I just start my EC2 instance, run Projector on it, then open a Chrome tab and I’m ready to code. No more crazy fans, no more overheating! How does it work? The idea behind Projector is simple but rather brilliant. It intercepts drawing commands from the IDE (or any Swing application) with a custom drawing engine (AWT implementation) that instead of rendering things on screen, records each command, serializes them and sends them to a web client. The web client interprets those drawing commands and renders them in a web page. The web client records keyboard and mouse input, and sends it back to the IDE via AWT. The beauty of this approach is that even with a slow connection, it renders crisp, pixel-perfect fonts and UI, because it understands the underlying software, so it can render fonts in vector format. Input is also very responsive, because the protocol is specialized, and therefore optimized. This is the killer advantage over more generic remote desktop solutions like VNC, which stream pixels directly. Remote desktops solutions usually render blurry fonts and feel unresponsive over slow connections. The only drawback from this approach is that some IDE keyboard shortcuts conflict with the browser’s own shortcuts. For instance, cmd+w closes the browser tab instead of one of the tabs in the IDE. There is a work around for that though, by adding the page as a desktop shortcut, which opens any website in app mode. With that, everything has been working really well for me, including all my shortcuts. When putting Chrome in full screen, it pretty much feels like the real thing. Projector is still very early days, but I can’t wait to see how it evolves.

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-run-android-studio-on-any-device-with-jetbrains-projector-3d9d23a8c179

['Joaquim Verges']

2020-12-13 21:14:04.294000+00:00

['Development', 'Android', 'AndroidDev', 'Jetbrains', 'Linux']

Canvas and Game Development with JavaScript

Learn to build games with Vanilla JavaScript, Phaser, p5.js, PixiJS, and more. Hey, thanks for checking this page out! This series is very early in the development stages and right now you’re on the index / tutorial list page. You can see some planned tutorials below. Update This series is on hold for a bit as I’m currently working on a course and book. If anyone is actually interested in this series, let me know in the comments along with which part you’re most interested in and I’ll try to make time for it. Prerequisites and Introduction You should have a decent understanding of JavaScript / ES6+ I will not be focusing on explaining JS methods in this series. However, I will be explaining how to use the canvas API and other related methods. A decent understanding of maths would be helpful, but not required. We’ll be using Classes heavily throughout this series. I suggest you get familiar with them but don’t worry about it too much. (you’ll be a master of classes after a few tutorials) Game Development is HARD Let me start by saying this is not intended to scare you away. I want to be upfront and let you know right now, game development is hard. It’s difficult because it’s a combination of many different fields; art, graphics, math, sounds, AI, writing, programming on the client-side and the server, etc. The difficulty is amplified if you’re working on a game solo or with a small team. Take a look at this roadmap if you feel like being overwhelmed. Now that you’re overwhelmed and contemplating whether you should make that game you’ve been thinking about, let me bring it back a bit. You don’t need to be a master in every area. You can be an average programmer who is terrible at math and still make a great game. In fact, if you don’t want to do any programming or math there are easier tools such as Game Maker that let you develop games using a graphical interface. This series is about developing games that can be played anywhere, using JavaScript. Other great alternatives are Godot and Unity. Disclaimer: I’m not great at game development, I am that average programmer who is terrible at math. My inspiration for writing this series comes from the lack of up to date, good tutorials online (or at the very least my inability to find any). I’ll do my best to share what I know and to learn and grow with the community here. 😄 This series will be a long and difficult journey, but if you stick around, you will find all the tools you need to develop your own games. How to Read this Series/Course? I try to order the tutorials you should do first starting at the top to bottom, but you can skip around and each tutorial will have a prerequisites section of its own. You should code along with the tutorials and attempt to do the challenges/projects on your own. (it’s the best way to learn) One more thing to keep in mind, everything here is a work in progress (including this page) which means some parts may be missing or incomplete and it should only be considered a draft for now. If you notice any issues, then please point them out. Getting Help Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Ask questions in the comments section and provide a link to your code on GitHub or CodePen. You can also ask me on Twitter. Help improve This Series Before starting, let me know your current skill level on the topics by filling out this form. You can also leave a comment or question on Medium or DM me on Twitter. Thanks and good luck! MDN Game Dev I found this hidden gem on the MDN Web Docs, and it’s actually very thorough. Make sure to check the contents on the left. (Introduction, APIs, Techniques, Examples, etc) You can use this as an introduction to game development and reference alongside this series. Vanilla JavaScript Tutorials using JS only without any rendering/game frameworks. We will be remaking some of these using a framework for comparison later. Before we get into game development tutorials, we are going to master the HTML5 Canvas. (which is used for game development) HTML / CSS / JS Primer For complete beginners. Setting up the Boilerplate Code Most tutorials will start with this starter code, it will be updated as the series goes on. Creating and Drawing on a Canvas We’ll learn about what the canvas is and then jump right into it by learning how to set up a project and draw different shapes. Project: Pie Chart, Bar Chart, Point Chart Learn more about positioning and drawing from data. Creating a Bouncing Ball Animation Project: Let’s Design a Few Animated Landing Pages You’ve probably seen a few animated landing pages that also have mouse interactivity, let’s make some of our own. Project: Let’s Make a Drawing App We’ll use everything we’ve learned to create a basic drawing app similar to Microsoft Paint, Gimp, Photoshop, etc. The Anatomy of an HTML5 Game Basically a quick version of the above MDN pages. Covers setting up a project, the main methods involved in a game loop, object management, etc. Let’s Make Our First Game, Circle Shooter We’ll use what we learned from the canvas tutorials to make a simple target shooting game. Players will use the mouse to click on targets as they appear which sounds simple, but targets will disappear shortly after spawning, and this process is sped up over time. Missing 3 targets is game over. With this project, you’ll learn more about collision detection (point to circle), animation, tracking scores, working with sounds, perhaps some skill-based game theory, and it’ll be our first actual game project. Vanilla Pong Pong, ping-pong, table tennis… you’ve probably heard of this game. There will be one player and one AI player each with their own paddle used to hit a ball back and forth. Letting the ball slip through on your side causes the opponent to gain a point. We will learn circle to rectangle collision detection, how to make a basic AI, managing score and resetting the game when a certain score is reached, etc. Vanilla Platformer Game We’ll learn more about collision detection, gravity, making evil creatures, etc. Vanilla Top-Down Game This will probably be some form of asteroids or a bullet-hell game. NodeJS Primer We’ll be making use of NodeJS for our multiplayer games. Command Line Text Adventure Taking a break from the web and canvas API, we’ll get our feet wet working with NodeJS. Highscore API Continuing with NodeJS we’ll create a high score API to allow our players to share their high scores with friends. Chat Application Key topics include working with WebSockets, registering users, logging in / authentication, creating separate “rooms”, etc. Graphic Engines TBA TBA Working with Phaser.js (v3+) Using Phaser as a framework. Phaser.js Basics TBA Pong with Phaser.js TBA Pong Royale (online 4 player pong, elimination-style) TBA Multiplayer Top-Down Shooting Game TBA Other Games (not sure on framework yet) Idle Game Something like Venture Capitalist. Tic Tac Toe Learn about the Minimax algorithm and use it to make a Tic Tac Toe AI Let’s Make a Chessboard Learn about game grids 10x Simon Says Classic Simon game but with more colors Miscellaneous Tutorials Standalone tutorials that don’t have a category. Math Basics for Games and Cheatsheet TBA Manipulating Images TBA How to Make a “Camera” that Follows a Player or Target Object TBA Creating Simple 2D Game Art TBA Let’s Create a Tool to Draw Animated Diagrams / Images for Tutorials TBA Discord Bot Game TBA Hacking Games and Securing them TBA Let’s Create a Voice Chat (not game dev specific) TBA Working with 3D Objects (not game dev specific) TBA Working with Virtual Reality (not game dev specific) TBA An Interview with an Indie Game Developer TBA Case Studies and Analyzing Successful Games Let’s take a look at what makes a game good and then dive into how the technical details and mechanics might be implemented. Resources More will be added as the series goes on. Cheatsheets Tutorials and Examples Free Art and Assets Learning Paths and Resource Pages Thanks for checking this page out! I would love to hear your feedback or any ideas you might have for new tutorials or series.

https://medium.com/dev-compendium/game-development-with-javascript-ed8b302756bf

[]

2020-02-28 01:12:50.423000+00:00

['Programming', 'JavaScript', 'Game Development', 'Web Development', 'Technology']

Love Me, Love Me Not

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash You stand in the kitchen and you’re telling me about her. And I am not sure how I am supposed to feel so I reach for the sink and hold the edges. I grab a plate. Add soap. Scrub. “So, what you’re saying is you don’t love me anymore?” I move the plate to the counter. Water drips from my hands. And you say, “it’s not that I don’t, because I do love you, but she is love and, God, I didn’t think a person could be like that.” - Love me, love me not

https://psiloveyou.xyz/love-me-love-me-not-d2f191fbb7e9

['Elyse Wright']

2020-12-27 13:03:02.935000+00:00

['Writing', 'Poetry', 'Poetry Sunday', 'Love', 'Poetry On Medium']

International Derivatives Group — Top Online Masters in Finance Programs.

Most colleges today offer the Masters in Finance as an alternative inside the structure of the MBA program. Schools of business as a rule have a few regions of fixation to look over in the second year of a multi year, full time MBA course of study. At most schools the most well known major for the MBA is Finance. The rundown of schools beneath all incorporate money as a MBA choice and now and again offer extra alumni level alternatives for degrees identified with account, either inside the setting of corporate activities or as an explanatory calling. A few colleges offer a Masters in Financial Mathematics for understudies inspired by the complexities of investigation or in a PhD program that has practical experience in the innovation of business fund. The schools recorded beneath all have degree programs intended for professional success in the business world. New England College of Business and Finance has been in presence since 1909 when it was established as the New England Banking Institute. Throughout the years it has advanced from an account preparing foundation to an undeniable degree conceding school licensed by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. The Master of Finance degree incorporates eleven propelled courses that spread International Finance, Applied Quantitative Methods, Enterprise Risk Management, Portfolio Management and a few different zones of the scholastic order. The school has a strong foundation in instructing hopeful experts in the banking and fund enterprises

https://medium.com/@jameslopezorm_35162/international-derivatives-group-top-online-masters-in-finance-programs-7623d75582a7

[]

2020-02-20 17:25:34.713000+00:00

['Trading', 'Finance', 'Forex', 'Bitcoin', 'FDA']

TLX contract upgrade

Dear All, The anticipated TLX token contract upgrade has been completed. We have successfully pushed our new custodial contract model to the Ethereum mainnet, which occured at block 6177787. The new contract address is 0xb3616550abc8af79c7a5902def9efa3bc9a95200. The upgraded tokens have been distributed to the old TLX holders according to the snapshot taken at block 6160000. Thus, the old TLX tokens are now null and void. You may want to use the “burn” method of the old contract to dispose of your old tokens to prevent future confusion. Additionally, we are reaching out all of the token directories — including etherscan.io — to make sure our new contract information is accurately reflected. Please note that, from now on, the TLX markets at Yobit are totally irrelevant to the actual token, and your TLX balance at Yobit does not represent any right with respect to the TeleX AI project. We encourage those who are interested in trading the token to use the decentralized exchange ForkDelta. You may reach the TLX/ETH market at ForkDelta at market.telexai.com. If you think there is an error with the new TLX token distribution, please reach us at info@telexai.com. The 20th of October 2018 is the deadline for us to accept any dispute regarding the TLX balances. After that date, no refund, swap, or any other change-of-balance request will be considered. Best, TeleX AI Team

https://medium.com/telexai/tlx-contract-upgrade-ab504cd8dad3

['Can Soysal']

2018-08-20 00:29:22.863000+00:00

['Telex Ai', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Telegram', 'Blockchain']

The Ultimate Example Of Forgiveness

To err is human, but to forgive, allows us to be free and enjoy our lives. Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash Those of you who read my articles know that I am very much vested in forgiveness. If you want to enjoy internal peace, if you want the sun to shine on you, if you want to free the pain, learn the art of forgiveness. Think of forgiveness not as something magnanimous, but more as a gift to yourself, allowing you to move on. Nobody would suggest that it’s easy, nor is it about negating any harm done, or about kissing and making up. But it’s very much about the release of pain, knowing that you have done the right thing. Forgiving is better for your health, it frees you up to get on with life, which as everyone reminds us, is short enough. That being the case, why on earth would you polish your anger instead, and feed your ill-health? Today I was passing one of my favorite wine shops and I did a little window shopping. Okay, I lie. It wasn’t window shopping. I actually went into the store, and that’s to your advantage. Had I not done so, I would probably not have recalled this story that I now share with you. It goes back a fair few years, to the early days of our marriage and my introduction to drinking wine, real wine that is. Before that I had no palate for wine, probably because I had never tasted anything worth drinking. But where my husband worked, a gourmet club had been established, and once each month we would meet in the home of one of the couples and eat fine food and drink even finer wine. I had to learn very quickly to do two things, learn how to cook, AND appreciate fine wine! They were fun times. One night I was talking to one of the men in the group, Ian. He’d just been to the funeral of an older friend who’d passed away. He told me that he’d got talking to the youngest son after the funeral, who told him that he had ‘hated the old bastard. So,” he said, “I got my own back on him. I drank all his Grange Hermitage.” Ian gulped. He had been storing his personal collection of Grange in the father’s cellar in the Adelaide Hills, over a number of years. He had three dozen bottles stored there, along with other fine wines. In fact all the Grange bottles in the cellar belonged to him. Now just to put you in the picture. I had a look today at a 2010 vintage. That now sells for $3000 Australian dollars. I know, totally obscene, but people will pay that money. So, three dozen bottles in today’s terms would be $108 000. Ian’s vintages would have been older, so worth a lot more money. “What did you say?” I asked. “How did you react? I mean, he must have known is was good wine.” At that stage I was thinking about a friend of mine who would not even try a red because she hated the taste. My husband bought a bottle of Grange for her to try, (not a three thousand dollar one,) and she was hooked! That’s how good it is! Ian’s answer has stayed with me to this day. “You know,” he said, “if I couldn’t let this go I was always going to be a prisoner in my own jail. Sure, it hurt, but I’ll get over it. This young fellow will grow up to realize what he did. Meantime, I’ve decided to be kind to myself. He’s not off the hook, but I am.” It brought a tear to my eye. Would that many more of us could so determinedly forgive. And would that we could do so, with such a huge heart. There are clear benefits to forgiving: Enjoying a clear mind Having a stronger, more resilient immune system Feeling good about ourselves Being able to be happy Being wonderful to be around We have all been hurt at times, often by people who don’t give it a second thought. It’s part of being alive. But if we determine to be forgiving. it will show up in so many ways. We will be happier, stronger, able to care, and able heal over time. And you’ll be liberated. It’s not about pretending something didn’t happen. Nor is it about not being angry. But it’s very much about personally taking charge, getting over things, and enabling peace. Failing to forgive means that you shortchange your life. You are unable to enjoy the present, often bitter, and people tend to avoid you. There are two options here. You fail to forgive and the hurt hangs over you like a dark cloud, or you let it go, turn a corner, and life goes on. If the forgiveness demands a huge shift, it may take time, and hard work, but the intention should be there nonetheless. Holding on to anger means that you tote around a heavy, burdensome load that will, in the end, drag you down. So…let it go. Set yourself free. Feel the earth move.Life is good.

https://medium.com/@mariarattray/the-ultimate-example-of-forgiveness-4768a8d60fbb

['Maria Rattray']

2021-03-08 06:05:57.343000+00:00

['Peace Of Mind', 'Happiness In Life', 'Resilience', 'Forgiveness', 'Moving On']

Chicago’s New Hip-Hop Radical: The Sounds of Sol Patches

Chicago’s New Hip-Hop Radical: The Sounds of Sol Patches Meet the young trans artist with a politically charged mixtape redefining the game by Caleb Brennan In recent years, the Chicago hip-hop scene has experienced a renaissance in terms of burgeoning young artists. With sounds dramatically different from predecessors like Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West, the new vanguard of the city’s hip-hop sound has flourished. The Savemoney crew fronted by Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa and Joey Purp have been skyrocketing to fame since the 2010s began. Zero Fatigue’s Monte Booker and Rayvn Lenae have brought an experimental brand of R&B, while rap groups like Hurt Everybody respond to the brutish nature of East Coast collectives with aggressive yet sentimental production and rhyme. As their metropolis deals with yet another series of corruption scandals and violence spikes, it is yet to be seen whether powerhouse Chicago MCs will attempt to take an outspoken stance politically. Many of the artists mentioned above do seem to be shifting towards revolutionary politics in their music and social media. However, assertiveness in regards to black liberation does not seem to be at the forefront of their messages. While Vic Mensa has attempted to go from Kanye underling to poignant hip-hop muckraker, and soulstress Jamilla Wood released a protest and black power LP, these efforts feel scattered amongst a sea of drill and testosterone. It should be noted that Chance the Rapper, arguably the current face of Chicago rap, has yet to denounce divisive mayor Rahm Emanuel. His father Ken Bennett is the deputy chief of staff for the Emanuel administration. It seems one needs to look beyond the blogospheres and hype of modern hip-hop to find artists who revel in the political dynamite that the genre is rooted in. Photo by Chaski Often, they stand proudly at the frontlines of civil protest and wave their heart and hurt like a battleflag. Outside the performance space or studio is where Chicago-born artist and MC Sol Patches makes their mark. Patches has been involved community organizing on the city’s South Side and in the #byeanita protests, which focused on removing former Chicago district attorney Anita Alvarez from her position. Alvarez had been involved in the LaQuan McDonald police shooting cover-up. While the recent high school graduate wouldn’t be the first artist to take to the streets to express disillusionment, it is the relentless academic critique in their music that sets them apart from other hip-hop artists. The 18-year-old released their debut mixtape As2Water Hurricanes on June 30th. It is a sprawling work of musical scholarship, one that unapologetically champions blackness, queerness and feminism. It shifts sonically between breakneck punk spits, radio hooks laced with Black Panther theory, soapbox rap ballads, and spoken word monologues, all sprinkled with grinning hip-hop tropes. Originally titled “Queer in the 606,” the tape is as multifaceted as its many cultural theories. The self-described gender abolitionist said the album was a response to the murders of Rekia Boyd, LaQuan McDonald and other victims of police brutality. Patches was kind enough to sit down with Houseshow and discuss their tape and experiences making music. “I think rage is one of the first emotions that comes across on As2Water Hurricanes. I mean, it starts with the directive, ‘burn it to the ground.’ But Patches is a dancer and the album is also catchy and danceable. Patches and their brother Eiigo, who did a lot of the production, are both really attuned to detail and craft these tracks that are sonically really dense,” described collaborator Sasha Tycko in conversation with Houseshow. Tycko was one of the many collaborators who worked with Patches on the tape. Sol Patches has been rapping since their pre-teens, but the genesis for the tape started when Patches became involved with the political art collective LetUsBreathe. “Early May of last year I was organizing with [the collective] and working with them, we would use art as a form of protest. How could we put artistical elements into protest? We would walk through the community and clean up the environment, hand out food and have a traveling open mic,” Patches said. Upon learning about the murder of Rekia Boyd at the hands of an off-duty cop and working with the collective to have the officer fired without pension, Patches wrote the first song of the tape, “BLK HURRICANES,” last spring. “It was one of those events where I really had to…I didn’t know what to do with what I was feeling and so I started producing. That was the day I started producing my own music. I just made this track and I have to put words to it. I knew the words before I even wrote them,” they said. Photo by Chaski Unfortunately, a period of writer’s block would keep Patches from completing the tape sooner. While at NYU studying acting in the summer of 2015, the aspiring artist struggled to compose lyrics for an album they knew needed to be made. “Spending that time trying to find balance, trying to make sense of drama that was happening in Chicago and being so far away from it was really huge for me. Getting back to Chicago I was really dedicated to finishing this tape,” Patches said. After digesting the cocktail of emotions that they were feeling internally along with the external crisis that surrounded them, Patches knew that this piece of music needed to be in service to their community and not be self-serving. Part of that experience came with coming to terms with the climate of current rap music. “How do you get away from inheriting this toxic masculine language of ‘I’m the best this…and all y’all people are this’? How do you put yourself in service to the community? How do you be selfless? How do you uplift one another and make it sound good?” Patches asked themselves. The key was finding a way to utilize their voice. Influenced by the theatrical performance of Freddie Mercury and the smirking gall of N.W.A. member Eazy-E, Patches sought to create music that was both exciting and potent, with meaning and narrative. “It eventually grew up with me. The only instrument I knew how to play was my voice. That’s the only instrument I had at my access and I really wanted people to feel what I was feeling,” they said. Photo by Chaski This desire for storytelling through rap was brought on by learning how their idols had passed due to the AIDS virus and the history of the disease. Disturbed and intrigued, Patches researched the epidemic relentlessly. “All my heroes growing up, for the most part, died of AIDS. I remember carrying this certain feeling while I was in the library learning about this virus, how it works, what it does. I remember feeling like I want to do something about this. I want to make sure these people’s works don’t just fade away. But then I also thought about how many people won’t get heard or seen…[because] they died,” Patches revealed. All of these events and revelatory moments are what lead us to As2Water Hurricanes. A piece of music that, as described by its author, takes the micro-level emotions of its writer and expands them into the macro of the city that surrounds them. You can see it in their live performances as well, utilizing their theater background to create the physical movements of fury, fleeting hope, and other beauty. Performing at popular DIY spaces like Eco and Hostel Earphoria, Patches has been a part of the tide of artists seeking to shake the rock n’ roll, white-male centricity that permeates the Chicago music scene. Patches seeks to do this by playing these predominantly white-owned venues. Though Patches will be heading to New York City in the fall to study acting at NYU, their stay in the Chicago’s underground scene has proven to be very impactful, with contemporaries like Mykele Deville, Witch Hazel and The Color Brown also leading the charge in reshaping the genre and color in independently run spaces. “I go into these spaces and just talk about a bunch of black stuff. That matters because it should be in that space! What a lot of people don’t know about Sol Patches is that I’m very influenced by punk music,” they said. “[Punks’] not giving a fuck attitude about what you are lacking and creating what you got. I think that’s what people will experience when they come see me. I got something special planned.”

https://medium.com/houseshow-magazine/chicagos-new-hip-hop-radical-the-sounds-of-sol-patches-e305bffb781

['Caleb Avery']

2016-08-04 21:42:53.988000+00:00

['Music', 'Chicago', 'Hip Hop', 'Queer', 'Black Lives Matter']

Phast phresh pho

serves 4 Pho, pronounced fuh, is a hearty Vietnamese soup traditionally made with beef. In this quick and tasty, albeit nontraditional, version, seitan, or wheat meat, replaces the beef. Look for seitan in the refrigerated section of natural food stores. If you can’t find it, substitute one of the vegetarian “beef” strip products available under different brand names. Fresh rice noodles help with the speed of this recipe, but, as noted below, linguine makes a good substitute. 5 cups water 2 teaspoons fresh or bottled minced ginger ¼ cup hoisin sauce 1 teaspoon chili paste 1 bunch scallions, minced 4 ounces seitan, cut into strips 6 ounces fresh flat rice noodles (see Note) 2 tablespoons tamari 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice 2 tablespoons dark miso paste 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil ¾ cup fresh bean sprouts ¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro Bring the water to a boil in a large pot over high heat. Add the ginger, hoisin, chili paste, and half of the scallions. Decrease the heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir in the seitan, noodles, tamari, and lime juice. Remove ½ cup of the hot liquid to a small bowl. Stir the miso paste into the liquid to blend well, then return to the soup. Stir in the sesame oil and bean sprouts; simmer for 3 minutes to blend the flavors. To serve, ladle the soup into a large tureen or individual bowls and garnish with the cilantro and the remaining scallions. Serve hot.

https://medium.com/@plansvegan/phast-phresh-pho-e51cb499d634

['Plans Vegan']

2020-07-26 07:18:21.946000+00:00

['Foodie', 'Food', 'Dinner']

What would a supermarket just for guys look like?

We do most of our grocery shopping online, but this still applies. Why is the site showing me 10 different colors of soap? I buy the same one each time (don’t ask me what it’s called, it’s the one my wife puts on the list…). The paradox of choice (watch the great TED talk below if you haven’t yet), states plainly that too much choice isn’t good for us, so why isn’t there a shopping establishment (off or online) that offers me only one choice?! How many types of bread do I need to see before I pull a bun of the shelf? How many types of cereal do I need? I want a shop that knows me and displays to me only the items I buy, don’t try to have me move to a different product, that’s a slippery slope, simply show me only the brand of coffee I drink, all the rest is noise! I couldn’t care less about how many types of yogurt you keep in stock, I care about you making it thoughtless (effortless) for me to find it. Save me time, save me grief and I’ll be loyal!

https://medium.com/on-banking/what-would-a-supermarket-just-for-guys-look-like-3a819e54ea1d

['Eitan Gersh Kaplawi']

2015-12-13 22:10:32.676000+00:00

['Online Shopping', 'Supermarkets', 'Ecommerce']

How a Respected Film Festival Became a Scam (Allegedly) — The Oaxaca Film Fest Story

This is the story of a major film festival that began from humble origins with good intentions. A film festival that ran successfully for a decade, earning the respect and acclaim of independent filmmakers and screenwriters around the world. A film festival that was rocked by natural disaster, protested by the local population… and quietly turned into an alleged scheme to suck money out of creatives by preying upon their dreams, ambitions, and kind hearts. This is the story of the Oaxaca Film Festival. The video version of this story As an independent filmmaker myself, I have a modicum of experience with film festivals. I have largely had positive experiences, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that film festival scams are real and they are prominent. It is an issue that doesn’t really get talked about. When submitting to a film festival, you need to do a fair bit of research to weed out the “fake” festivals and get to the real ones. These “fake” film fests pop up on the main submission platform of Film Freeway and formerly on WithoutABox before it was shut down. The easiest ways to detect a scam festival are to check the number of years the festival has been in operation (scam festivals don’t usually go beyond their “1st annual” iteration), look for an external website for the festival, look into the festival’s staff, and ensure that they have a venue. Even with legitimate film festivals, the entry fees can be costly and they add up quickly. After submitting, the notification date to find out if you were accepted or how you placed in the competition is more often than not several months away, frequently taking the better part of a year. With most “fake” festivals, they will accept your entry fee, then proceed to quietly sever all forms of communication and eventually disappear off of the Film Freeway platform altogether. Some of these “fake” festivals will send blanket-rejection letters to all applicants, others will send mass acceptance letters to every applicant, the end result however is the same. The showcase of filmmaker work that was promised never comes to fruition or does at a greatly reduced scale. They might promise to send out the submitted work to the “industry professionals in their network”, which, as you would guess, means nothing in this context. It’s a good “fake perk” to promise because they don’t need to show any proof or produce any results. I ran an experiment through Film Freeway, and the results were… worrying. It’s arguable whether or not the platform should have any accountability for the scams run on it, but I would say that, at the very least, they shouldn’t make it so easy for these scams to put together and carried out. In my experiment, I jumped to the other side of things. I took on the role of a festival director establishing a new, 1st annual film festival. It was extremely easy and required little to no verification. Within an hour and a half, I was ready to publish this made-up film festival and begin collecting money from any unsuspecting creatives trying to pursue their dreams. I had set up a bunch of awards categories with different entry fees and deadlines, I had promised a 3-day festival at a large venue, cash prizes for the award winners, and the dissemination of submitted projects to “industry connections”. And Film Freeway went, yeah cool. You ready to publish this thing? No proof of staff, no proof of venue, or verification of prizes, or awards, or dates. Publishing this fake festival and sharing it around with some legitimate social media marketing is all it would take to make a quick buck with little to no consequence. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but this is where my experiment ended. I, of course, did not publish the fake festival. But I was surprised by how easy it would have been to do. When I was younger, I fell for a couple of these festival scams and had to learn my lesson the hard way. They get easier to spot as you see more of them… but the Oaxaca Film Festival was different. It was different in a number of ways, perhaps the most important being that it did not start out as a scam. The first edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival was held all the way back in 2010, and the festival has run annually ever since with the 10th festival taking place this year, in 2020. For the vast majority of its existence, the Oaxaca Film Festival has been a legitimate, well-respected film festival, even becoming known as one of the biggest and best festivals in the level right below the top-tier fests like Sundance and Cannes. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Guillermo Del Toro, and Takashi Miike have all shown their films in the Oaxaca Film Festival, and the fest was also named one of the “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” by MovieMaker magazine, which is a prestigious list to be on as a festival, and a trustworthy source to turn to as a filmmaker. The Oaxaca Film Festival even forged a partnership with the Sundance Film Festival for a time, and the two were integrated with shared workshops. This was a beloved festival for many years. The festival typically ran for 8 days, give or take, and took place in the festival’s namesake of Oaxaca Mexico. A beautiful, culturally rich setting that could make attending the festival a wonderful experience even if you didn’t attend a single screening. These 8 days were filled with a mix of film screenings, parties with open bars, dinners, networking events, workshops and labs, Q&As, pitch events, the awards ceremony, and even guided tours of the nearby Oaxacan pyramids and of the local food and art scenes. The festival itinerary was jam-packed, with each and every moment of these 8 days being filled. At its inception, the festival was great for the local economy, a real boon to Oaxacan tourism. Most years of the Oaxaca Film Festival’s operation went smoothly and the festival grew year after year. There were no massive scandals in the early years but there were minor issues, such as some filmmakers having their films accepted and flying all the way to Oaxaca, only for their film to not end up screening, or being re-scheduled to an unenviable time slot or moved to a hard to reach venue. The festival staff chalked this up to logistics and improper scheduling, running out of time to show every accepted film. They also stated that they would try to arrange screenings at later dates for any films that were not shown during their scheduled festival slot. I was unable to confirm whether or not these rain-check screenings ended up taking place. Now, I’ll get into my personal experience with the festival. I became involved as a participant in the 8th edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival (the 2017 edition). I saw them on the aforementioned “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” list from MovieMaker and I submitted my short script Snow Day. The entry fee was $11.99. Fast forward a couple of months, and my script gets chosen as a finalist in the best drama category AND is in the running for the Best Overall Script award in the Global Script Challenge. These are two different competitions that are both related to the Oaxaca Film Festival. I only paid to enter one of them, but the festival staff chose my script for both competitions at no extra charge. This is noteworthy because, in the most recent Oaxaca Film Festivals, they began charging additional entry fees just for filmmakers to be eligible to compete in the categories that they thought they had already paid to enter with their initial entry fees. Also, in the 2017 festival, my $11.99 entry fee secured me a spot in the Oaxaca pitch fest, whereas in 2020, the pitch fest came with another cost. There’s obviously nothing illegal in this change, this isn’t where the festival became a scam, but it does demonstrate a clear change in business practices between the 2017 and 2020 festival cycles. I should note that throughout the 2017 festival, the Oaxaca Film Fest staff I was in communication with were extremely hospitable and provided some of the best customer service I have experienced from any film festival. Some of the communications I received were mass emails and/or form letters, but the majority of them were personal messages delivered from actual humans, I considered this especially impressive given they had more than 7,000 submissions in that cycle. But next come the travel packages. The festival offers and heavily promotes filmmaker travel packages for attending the festival. The package includes a stay in a 4-star hotel local to the festival for the duration of the event, it includes private transportation to and from the airport, specially curated meals, walking tours, access to additional conferences and workshops, and a few other perks. You aren’t required as a filmmaker to pay for this package, you can arrange your own accommodations, but the festival does heavily push this travel package. So, what does this travel package cost? It is a $449 total cost with a $149 deposit required. For point of reference, a stay in the festival’s chosen hotel for the duration of the event costs approximately $362, though rates do fluctuate. The remaining costs of the travel package go toward covering the other various perks, which seems pretty fair to me. In the year I participated, the festival definitely tried to hard-sell this package, and they really tried to rush filmmakers into making a decision. The first email I received about the travel package, of many, required me to book it by the following morning if I wanted it. They also tried to sell a travel package upgrade later on at a different hotel for an additional $179. I can’t speak as to whether or not the travel package was worthwhile in the 2017 edition of the festival, for reasons I will get into shortly, but there are numerous accounts of the travel packages being outright scams in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the festival. A number of filmmakers purchased the travel packages, flew to Oaxaca, and arrived at the hotel, only to find the specified hotel to not have any record of their reservations and charging their full rate for lodging on top of the amount already paid for the travel package. When asked directly, the hotel denied having any arrangement with the festival whatsoever. Many filmmakers were left without lodging or forced to pay the additional room rates. During the 2019 festival, the board members of the festival stated that they would reimburse the cost of lodging to the affected filmmakers. After months, many filmmakers reported ongoing issues with receiving their reimbursement. The festival eventually claimed that everybody affected had been successfully reimbursed, but many non-reimbursed attendees objected to this claim. Other filmmakers reported much difficulty and back and forth arguing with the festival director, but eventually found success in securing the reimbursement. This was not the experience that everybody had with the 2019 festival. Since my personal involvement with the festival ended, for the most part, with the 2017 festival, I reached out to Keri Lee, a fellow screenwriter who went in-person to both the 2018 and 2019 editions of the festival. She got the travel package both years and did not experience the reported issues with said travel packages. She said the 2018 festival was great, and the 2019 festival was definitely more chaotic, for reasons I’ll get into shortly, but not to the degree that it was enough to ruin the entire experience. Let’s jump back to the 2017 edition for a moment. The one truly questionable aspect of the 2017 festival came inside an email with the subject line: “$10 for Absolutely Nothing!”. This email was sent out to every participating filmmaker and screenwriter, and in it, the festival board was asking for $10 donations from everyone. It strikes me as extremely unorthodox to charge people entry fees, then ask them to donate additional money, especially while they’re competing to win prize money. And perhaps even more strange was the decision to frame this money begging as being for “absolutely nothing” in return. They sent me a total of six emails over the course of one week, each one asking for a $10 donation. This whole angle did not sit right with me and, needless to say, I did not Paypal them $10 as requested. The reason why I can’t report on my experience with the 2017 travel package is because… the 2017 Oaxaca Film Festival didn’t happen. The event was canceled following three massive earthquakes that severely damaged the city of Oaxaca. 2017 Oaxaca Earthquakes After the first earthquake happened, the festival director released a statement saying the damage was extensive, but that Oaxaca is a resilient city, and that the festival would still happen without any interruptions or changes. Then, within the next 10 days, two more earthquakes had struck Oaxaca. The second and third earthquakes caused far more destruction and devasted the local infrastructure. This was a natural disaster and a complete tragedy. Hundreds of locals lost their lives and thousands of buildings were damaged or completely destroyed. Following the final earthquake, the 8th edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival was postponed indefinitely, AKA: canceled. The festival director and board handled this about as well as they possibly could have. They canceled all of the events, encouraged people to cancel their travel plans, refunded travel packages and facilitated refunds from hotels, and they provided a document that filmmakers could present to whichever airline they had booked their flights with to secure a refund on their travel expenses. Amidst this tragedy, The Oaxaca Film Festival staff remained committed to fairness and transparency in regards to the affected filmmakers. It was commendable, and it makes it all the more surprising that just a couple of years later, the festival would begin using shady tactics, refusing promised reimbursements, and flat out scamming unsuspecting filmmakers, allegedly. Following the earthquakes, the festival director called the event a “possible festival killer” and estimated the loss of revenue for the festival and the local economy to be in the excess of two million dollars. It was unclear if there would ever be a 9th edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival. As it turns out, the earthquakes would not be a “festival killer”, but they just might have killed the festival’s good intentions and transparency, as the majority of the bad practices and potentially illegal activity began with the festival’s return from this tragedy. Protests interrupted the 2019 Oaxaca Film Fest The 2019 festival was caught up in a large-scale protest from locals against the governor of Oaxaca. These protests led to the shutdown of one of the festival’s theaters, resulting in the cancellation of many film screenings whose creators had traveled from other countries to see their film shown on the big screen. Some canceled screenings were rescheduled and/or moved to other venues, while other accepted filmmakers claim their films simply never screened at all. Festival leadership denies this happening, despite claims from several unrelated filmmakers, promising that all accepted films were screened at some point. A second, unrelated protest was also mounted before the end of the festival. This second protest interrupted the award ceremony and was geared directly against the film festival itself and one of their main sponsors: Minera Cuzcatlán, a mining company that is alleged to be responsible for acts of strong-arm violence and for polluting local water sources. The Oaxaca Film Festival did eventually cut ties with the company following the protests. Keri Lee, who saw the protests first-hand, said they definitely contributed to the general sense of chaos during the 2019 festival. She said the troubles with the 2019 festival seemed to negatively impact the filmmakers more than the screenwriters, as their screenings were moved, rescheduled, or potentially canceled. She said of her experience, quote, “The downsides from my perspective were mainly in 2019 and almost all were logistical… as that week went on, they started wearing on people. Especially filmmakers who didn’t always get the greatest crowds or technical equipment etc.” Some attendees suggest that even if the protests had been taken out of the equation, the 2019 festival would still have been a poorly organized, administrative mess. According to The Hollywood Reporter, many attending filmmakers rebranded the Oaxaca Film Festival as the Oaxaca Fyre Festival. During the 2019 edition, the film festival claimed to have deals in place with HBO, UTA, TBS, and Viacom. The festival suggested potential distribution and acquisition deals with these companies and suggested that executives from these businesses would be present to hear pitches during the festival’s movie pitch event. When The Hollywood Reporter launched an investigation into this, they, “confirmed that there currently is no relationship between them and the fest.” They also noted that after they began asking questions, the logos for these companies were removed from the Oaxaca Film Festival website’s “Industry Alliances” page. In 2019, in-person attendance was mandatory for all participating filmmakers, which was not the case in previous years, and is by no means standard operating procedure for film festivals. I personally find it quite strange and more than a little suspect considering that they demanded proof of filmmaker travel arrangements while constantly pushing their own travel packages, which in 2019 increased further in price. Instead of the $449 travel package offered in 2017, there were now multiple travel packages offered, with the most expensive costing $799, with an initial $199 deposit required at the base rate. And, this time if you wanted to bring a guest along, it cost an additional $399. It is hard to not see the in-person attendance mandate as anything other than a dirty tactic to sell more of these overpriced travel packages, which, if you recall from earlier, were the same travel packages that hotels did not always recognize, leading to some filmmakers needing to then pay the full room rates for the duration of their stays. One additional shady detail is that the festival actually charged more for these travel packages to what they called “legacy filmmakers”. Keri was one of these “legacy filmmakers”. This is just their term for filmmakers who had been a part of the festival in previous years. Why returning filmmakers had to pay more was never explained, but Keri did say she believed the Legacy Filmmaker package came with a couple of extra perks. Some called into question the legacy filmmaker program and the in-person attendance mandate. After the event concluded, members of the festival staff put out a statement that stopped just short of apologizing for this policy. They said, “it is not who we are as a festival,” and they also said that the in-person attendance mandate and higher costs for returning filmmakers would not return in subsequent festivals. This is them clearly acknowledging the policy as problematic. And the pitch event, which was previously included for all accepted filmmakers, was now an added charge, costing an additional $30 for each project pitched. This was on top of an additional $13 charged to filmmakers to be eligible for consideration in a competition that they thought their initial entry fee was implied to include. There was confusion as additional fees for additional sub-competitions were added throughout. The festival also promoted various upselling options, including charging $99 for a project to receive a written review on IMDb and charging another $29.99 for what they called the “industry partners program”, which was just a simplified version of a program that was included in the initial cost of the festival in 2017 and earlier. Keri participated in the pitch fest in both years and said her experiences were great, and that the people hearing her pitches were definitely industry professionals. Attendance rates were not just higher than normal because of the in-person attendance mandate. Another way the festival sacrificed good intentions and transparency for the sake of money in 2019 was by accepting more films than in previous years. Far more films, in fact. The 2019 edition of the Oaxaca Film Fest accepted approximately five times the number of films as the previous edition, despite not increasing their venues, staff, or scheduled time frame to anywhere near the same degree. This obviously was a major contributor to the logistical problems faced by the festival. Five times more films accepted means five times more filmmakers and their guests being required to attend in-person with proof of their travel plans, which means far more sales of their questionable travel packages. They sold out of these overpriced travel packages, by the way. Once they ran out of travel packages, they began selling basic ticket packages, no longer including any form of lodging. The emails sent out about the basic ticket packages said, “Now Available for Just $99.” However, once you looked into it, you would find that the basic ticket package actually required a deposit of $99, with a total cost of $399 dollars. And, keep in mind that this is the pricing for filmmakers who have films screening in the festival. It’s no wonder the festival accepted five times more films when they were making this much money off of every filmmaker, all of whom are required to attend. For point of reference, the vast majority of film festivals provide free passes to all accepted filmmakers. Since I was also technically considered one of their “Legacy Filmmakers”, I was one of the targets of this marketing push, and the emails they sent out were constant. They sometimes sent out several emails in a single day. After three weeks had passed without me biting on their $399 ticket package, they then said, okay wait, hang on, how about a $200 discount? Yes, they reduced their price from $399 to $199, if nothing else, proving that the $399 price was grossly over-inflated in the first place. When I didn’t bite on that one either, they raised the price back up to $299, but this time, that included bringing a guest along at no extra charge. Throughout this whole process, almost every single one of the dozens of emails I received included something to the effect of “this is the final deadline” or “you must purchase a package today or you will be locked out of the festival”. And, of course, that deadline kept moving back regardless. When I still didn’t respond to any of these offers, they then shifted gears and offered me money. They sent me an email saying, “would you like $4,000 USD to offset your cost of (your short film)? Would you like a complimentary hotel package for 2 including FULL VIP ACCESS to (the festival)?… would you like an hour meeting with Industry representative(s) who want to discuss collaborating with you?” The email did not go into further detail, it only encouraged me to “contact immediately”. When I did reach out for more information, I was told that this was actually for an additional sub-competition, which again, had its own entry fee, and that four lucky projects would receive the hotel package and one-hour meeting, and one would project would win the $4,000. All I had to do to enter was Paypal them $12.99. Great. There were plenty of questionable happenings with the 2019 festival, but it was the 2020 festival that reached into alleged outright scam territory. When they began the advertising push for the 2020 edition of the Oaxaca Film Fest, they again claimed to have partnered with HBO, Viacom, and UTA, despite that claim being proven false the previous year. Throughout the lead-up to the 2020 festival, I received constant emails getting progressively pushier and more aggressive as time went on, urging me to sign up for this year’s pitch fest, which of course came with an increased entry fee. Worth noting is that this year, instead of all of the emails coming directly from Oaxaca Film Fest email labels, a number of them came labeled as “CEO” and were signed “Ramiz Adeeb Azar”, who is the founder, CEO, and festival director. These emails quickly began to seem like complete spam. With the subject line: “incredible opportunity awaits”, it’s hard to not view this as Oaxaca sending out inarguable spam. As the emails continued, the claims got larger. The festival began claiming partnerships with Netflix, Amazon, and Apple TV. You can understand why many were skeptical of the veracity of this given the festival’s past track record with lying about partnerships. I received one email stating these were the final hours to register for the pitch fest… then I continued to receive emails urging me to register for the pitch fest for months. I guess they didn’t specify how many “final hours” there were to be fair. Final deadline June 30th- Oh wait, now it ends August 31st- Oh, hang on, it got moved back to September 6th- Oh, wait a second, now the deadline is September 30th- Ah, I see, now the deadline is the 30th of October- Oh, never mind, now the deadline is November 30th…. The Oaxaca film festival became one of those stores that are perpetually going out of business, except in this store, you don’t even get what you paid for. Throughout this push to pay for the pitch fest, the CEO was also asking for donations and consistently claiming that, “all proceeds raised go to help local filmmaking community effected by Covid-19.” This was called into question immediately for a number of reasons, the first being that these emails were targeting independent filmmakers… but were supposedly donating to those same independent filmmakers? I’m not sure that tracks. More importantly, no evidence has been provided of any donations being made or any evidence to suggest that the funds raised went toward helping anyone at all in any capacity. The festival is not aligned with any charities and provided no insight into the plan for disbursement or utilization of these supposed charitable funds. It has not been proven, but many are alleging that the CEO, Mr. Ramiz Pour Azar, who also goes by the name Ramiz Adeeb Azar, may be lining his own pockets with these proceeds. Again, this is the allegation, it has not been proven. This activity is clearly shady, especially when paired with the festival director constantly changing emails, ditching the old ones so he can’t be contacted, pulling the Oaxaca Film Festival’s social media presence, cutting all forms of viable contact, and scrubbing the site’s website and Film Freeway page. The Festival is still on Film Freeway, seemingly unaffected by the dozens of disgruntled filmmakers who have lodged complaints with Film Freeway against The Oaxaca Film Fest. When I entered in 2017, there was a section at the bottom of the Film Freeway page full of 5-star reviews and glowing testimonials from participants. Now, that entire section is gone. What is the point of hosting customer reviews for others to make informed decisions, if the festival can choose to hide the reviews? In 2017, the Oaxaca film festival website was full of information, photos of the events, testimonials, schedules, full lists of the films and scripts accepted in the current cycle and the winners of the previous cycles, and every finalist even got their profile and project pages. Now, there is no information about the festival or the participants whatsoever and even the winners of the previous festival cycles have been expunged. Any suspicions I had about the management of the film festival were all but confirmed on December 14th, when a joint letter was published by 14 former Oaxaca Film Festival staff members. They joined together to formally distance themselves from the current management of the festival and to condemn the actions of the founder and CEO Ramiz Pour Azar, AKA Ramiz Adeeb Azar. If you want to read the full letter, this is it. They say they are concerned about the current management and activities of the festival. They clarify that for more than six months, the Oaxaca Film Festival has been run solely by Ramiz Pour Azar, despite him never making this public. They, “disclaim any responsibility or relationship regarding any actions conducted by Mr. Ramiz Pour Azar (AKA Ramiz Adeeb Azar). We also state that his actions do not reflect in any way the work and values that we proudly cultivated until the 10th edition in 2019;” They also clarify that the claims of fundraising to support local filmmakers and families are entirely the doing of Mr. Azar. They close the letter by stating that they share the concerns expressed by the filmmaking community over the, “selection process, management, accountability, and destination of the funds collected during this fundraising.” That’s where the situation is currently. I put this together because I wanted to spotlight the issue, and because there are so many deceitful people out there who try to take advantage of the dreams of creatives. If that is what is happening in this instance, and if we can put an end to it and return the collected funds to those allegedly scammed, then I think that’s a worthwhile endeavor.

https://medium.com/@brickwallpictures/how-a-respected-film-festival-became-a-scam-allegedly-the-oaxaca-film-fest-story-fef8b05663c4

['Sam Kench']

2020-12-22 21:42:03.785000+00:00

['Oaxaca', 'Filmmaking', 'Scam', 'Film Festival', 'Scandal']

What is Front-End and Back-End Development: Key Technologies and Concepts

Front-End Development The website’s Front-End is everything you see and can interact with using a browser. So, creating this visual part is called front-end development. You could even say that designers creating user interfaces and planning experiences are also front-end developers, as they are working in collaboration on the same part of the project. To render the front end, engineers use HTML (for basic page and content structure), CSS (for visual editing), and JavaScript combinations (for making websites interactive). The same techniques are used to develop progressive web apps — mobile apps which are native but are produced using technology on the front end. Back-End Development The Back-End, on the contrary, is something that is happening, okay. It involves servers that locate the website and the reasoning behind which the functions and processes of this site are controlled. If you want to find this out, we have a thorough overview of the internal functioning of web applications. The back end is built using a different set of technologies, including Java, PHP, Ruby, C#, and sometimes JavaScript, which we’ll explain in a corresponding section. The Key Front-End Technologies HTML HTML is a programming language designed to build websites that are then explored by everyone on the Internet. This language is called Hipertext Markup Language. The structuring of a web document typically includes HTML. It identifies elements such as headlines or paragraphs and allows photographs, video and other media to be inserted. How HTML works — → HTML consists of a set of shortcodes called tags, which a website designer normalizes into a text file. The text will then be saved as an HTML file and accessed through a browser. The browser scans the file and interprets the text in a visible form and, at best, makes the page as designed by the designer. Hyper Text is the way by which we travel across the web by clicking hyperlinks — specific texts taking you to other pages. Hyper means it’s non-linear, which allows for moving to any other place, as there is no predefined order to do so. is the way by which we travel across the web by clicking hyperlinks — specific texts taking you to other pages. Hyper means it’s non-linear, which allows for moving to any other place, as there is no predefined order to do so. Markup determines the qualities that HTML tags apply to the text inside them. Tags mark it as a particular type of text. determines the qualities that HTML tags apply to the text inside them. Tags mark it as a particular type of text. As a Language, it holds code words and syntax like any other language. For example: The text between <html> and </html> specifies the web page, while the text between <body> and </body> determines the visible content. <!DOCTYPE html> on the top is the Document Type Declaration for HTML5. If it’s not included, different browsers will render it in their way. This is how we gradually move to HTML5. HTML5 HTML has undergone several changes since its first publication in 1991. In 2014, HTML5 was released. Added features such as support for offline media storage, more detailed contents (e.g. header, footer, browse) and audio and video embedding support. 2. CSS: Styling Your Facades CSS is a sheet style language (or cascading style sheets). It is used to describe how HTML-elements must be displayed for various screen-sized devices on a web page in style, layout and variations. CSS masters the layout of several various web pages simultaneously. How it works. CSS interacts with HTML elements, the components of a web page. To communicate with HTML, CSS uses selectors . A selector is the part of CSS code defining which HTML piece the CSS styling will impact. . A selector is the part of CSS code defining which HTML piece the CSS styling will impact. A declaration contains properties and values that are employed by the selector. contains properties and values that are employed by the selector. Properties define font size, color, and margins. Values are the settings for these properties. If we take an example, P (for paragraph) is selector, { font-size:24px; color: blue; } is a declaration, font-size: and color: are properties, while 24px; and blue; are values. CSS is written in plain text over a text editor or word processor on a computer. If you were to examine how the CSS code is implemented to HTML content, there are three ways to do so: The external style sheets are stored in the form of.. css files. Instead, additional instances of CSS code are attached to any HTML feature that must be changed to determine the appearance of a whole web-site. In order for a sheet of external type to be used, .html files must have a header region attached to the external sheet. Internal style sheets are CSS directions put straight into the header of a particular html page. Inline styles are snippets of CSS recorded into HTML code itself. CSS Frameworks A default collection of CSS and HTML files is a CSS application. It expands the capabilities of a front end website design developer. CSS frameworking also provides distinct and symmetrical lay-outs, helping to construct a responsive interface, saves developers from writing code at any time from ground zero. Typically, the platforms and the screen sizes are considered a perfect choice. CSS Frameworks considerably speed up development workflow with standard user interface elements, grid structures, templates and many other features. In the CSS universe there are several frameworks: Full featured (Bootstrap, Foundation, Semantic UI, and more), Aimed at Material Design: (Materialize and Material Design Lite), and Lightweight (Pure). 3. DOM: The Web Page Structure The Document Object Model (DOM) is defined as a programming interface for HTML and XML documents. It interprets the page so that programs can modify the document structure, style, and content. The DOM renders the document as nodes and objects, enabling programming languages to connect to the page. How it works : — Consider a web page as either a text that is displayed in the browser window or as an HTML source. This document can be updated in the Document Object Model (DOM). The DOM represents the web page object-oriented, but can be modified using a scripting language such as JavaScript. 4. JavaScript: Making the Web alive One of the most common scripting languages is the JavaScript (JS). The company is best known for offering a complete pile of technologies for growth in both front and back-end. As we speak of the first, it is used to improve the interactive web pages. How JavaScript works : — - JS increases the interactivity of the website overall. It allows the modeling of animated user interfaces including image sliders, evolving images, comprehensive website navigation menus, etc. JavaScript offers a website with improved features, which otherwise cannot be done with HTML and CSS only. JavaScript enables web pages to react to user behavior and refresh themselves dynamically. This method does not involve a reload of a page in order to alter its representation thanks to JavaScript. JavaScript frameworks and libraries and why we need them Many who join this field of expertise may assume that frames and libraries do the same thing, so that various visual elements may interact. And we’re not too far from the facts, let’s be honest. There are, however, a variety of distinctive characteristics. So, let’s describe what a JS system is, what a JS library is, and how it serves. Frameworks are website or web application models. They are designed to coordinate the whole project (such as a skeleton or a scaffolding). The layout with particular assigned areas to include a framework code is defined while the framework sets the page templates. JavaScript frameworks are also full tools to build a website or web application. Libraries are pre-written snippet collections that are used and reused for JavaScript core functionality. If required, the snippet can easily be inserted into an existing project code. Libraries are also advanced coding tools, not a user friendly machine to carry out the entire current project. Main Frameworks Angular is a Google-powered front-end application compatible with most popular code publishers. In Angular dynamic, single-page web applications (SPAs) and progressive web applications are developed. The framework was most recognized for its ability to transform HTML-based documents to interactive content after its initial release. Angular is one of the best known implementations of front end. Vue.js is an additional platform for open source SPA. It uses a development model focused on components and allows components to be incorporated into a project. Vue.js is a library example which is more of a setup. The application of Vue.js includes an absolute knowledge of HTML and CSS. It allows for the creation of a whole range of models and patterns. For limited document size and HTML-based syntax Vue is often recognized. React is an open-source library for the development of Facebook-born, interactive user interfaces. The framework is used to build multiple dynamic components of web applications. The Facebook PHP language extension depends on JavaScript and JSX. Reaction permits the creation of reusable front end HTML elements. React also provides React Native, a mobile development system for cross-platform applications. JavaScript for the Back-End In terms of JavaScript as an end-to-end development environment, its backend implementation must be stated. As JavaScript is so popular, JS is adapted to backend specifications in the software engineering world. Node.js has currently been one of the most popular tools for web server creation using JavaScript. It’s not a structure or a library, though. Node.js is a Chrome V8 JavaScript-based runtime environment. Communication Between Front- End and Back-End The Front-End is not separated from the back end or the server supplying data. Let’s look at the principles for customer server messages. Asynchronous Operations One of the main principles that explained how the web worked was AJAX in the 2010s. The word is called JavaScript and XML asynchronous. Basically, the development of websites and web applications is a complex of techniques. Let’s analyze the key AJAX components. Asynchronous — the basic component of the toolkit. The main task of the approach is the asynchronous renovation of Web material. The consequence is that if a small part of the content needs any alteration, for example, you don’t have to load the entire eCommerce web page again to add a further filter to the search results. The resulting web browser must be reloaded. You just need to update these results. How to become a developer Almost every Front End Developer job includes HTML, JavaScript, and CSS based on what you have read so far. For any web development jobs, framework knowledge like JSON and jQuery is also needed. PHP expertise or frameworks with server-side templates may be needed for Senior Front End job descriptions. Development positions are subtly different from one sector to another. The most popular languages are ruby, python and Php, while the popular tools are SQL and MySQL database administration. Some industries may prefer to have Java experience or the . Net system of Microsoft. Our own student results show info, which language students use in their careers. An advanced degree is not required for web dev jobs. Most jobs on Glassdoor are looking for practical experience instead of advanced education. You now know what Back End vs Front End is, if you want to become a developer, you’ll have to learn code. Start building technical know-how and find out what excites you on a technological career. Web growth is only a common starting point for a coding profession and differs from mobile development. By designing Android apps or iOS apps, you can specialize. All depends on your interest I think now you can understand about Front-End and Back-End Development. Thank you very much for your valuable time. References : - https://www.w3schools.com/

https://medium.com/@hansanasilva23/what-is-front-end-and-back-end-development-key-technologies-and-concepts-dbedb292fc39

['Hansana De Silva']

2021-02-23 11:45:56.157000+00:00

['Web Development', 'Framework', 'JavaScript', 'Front End Development', 'Back End Development']

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF LAW& CULTURE AND EVOLUTION

Anthropology is a science that studies various aspects of people living in past and present societies. It is very important for the development of law to examine the law in past societies by following up to the present. It will shed light on the present and give us many experiences. The need for justice and property rights has been preserved since ancient times. In this context, ‘decisive criteria for primitive society: low population, simple economy, weak division of labor, no writing and no state.’ The point we will examine within the framework of these is, in the anthropological study of law, is it necessary to look at the legal order and changes of primitive societies, and what is its importance? We will also examine the relevance of this research to evolution. Many different opinions have been made on this issue. Firstly, ‘Most recent anthropological works are descriptive rather than comparative. This certainly applies to the law monographs of the 1950’s which have been heavily slanted towards studies of individual societies. There are comparative data buried in chapters of monographs such as those by Nadel, Colson, and Nader. There are, furthermore, several relevant articles that are comparative: Schneider , Harper, Gluckman, Hazard, Nader and Metzger, Schwartz and Miller, Nader, Nicholas and Mukhopadhyay. political scientist, sociologists (Schwartz and Miller), and psychologists (Bacon, Child, and Barry). Nagel’s comment about Comparative law, it’s interesting.’ ‘What we need to examine first is the contribution of social control models to the study of law. ‘Paying little attention to comparing the structure of the various models of social control in a society is a contribution to the study of law. Indeed, this was one of Malinowski’s most severe criticisms of the study of jurisprudence. For him, anthropology is part of the law. Needless to say, Schapera is quite correct in chastising Malinowski for this statement since many prominent jurists such as Ehrlich, Pound, and Vinogradoff are quite aware that laws take their place among other rules of conduct. The evolutionary approach is best illustrated by Maine’s works , although Barton attempted to analyze Ifugao and Kalinga materials in terms of an evolutionary system such as postulated by Maine. Hoebel implies an evolutionary development in his societies that illustrates varying levels of economic complexity.’ ‘Anthropologists are interested in what is happening, in describing a changing situation in order to understand the implications that follow from change. They are not directly concerned with the practical problems confronting new nations; that is, they are not seeking “to arrive at one truly national law”. One such study of legislation in preliterate societies is that by Pospisil (1958b), in which he records how a marriage “rule” was deliberately altered by a single individual. Pospisil’s interpretation of where change begins, however, is challenged by Leach (1959) who suggests that Pospisil was merely describing the phenomenon of fission in a segmentary society. In an earlier work Schapera (1943) notes examples of legislation by chiefs in council but as Gluckman (1965b) has noted, such materials are rare. Rheinstein (1963) comments change in Africa in the light of similar occurrences in the history of European law. Anderson (1957) describes the mechanisms used for changing Moslem law- “a divine law which as such is essentially immutable[1].’ According to Oliver Wendell Holmes, a common research tradition has never developed between law professors and anthropologists[2]. In terms of, ‘Kin selection theory posits that non– self-interested (altruistic) behavior among related individuals occurs because individuals will accept costs when the net result is an increased likelihood of transmitting shared genes to future generations. Theories of indirect reciprocity focus instead on the self-interest that is served by accruing a good reputation through altruistic behavior.[3]’ ‘While reciprocity and kin-based models appear inadequate to account for the natural selection of cooperation in humans, a compelling alternative has been proposed. Evolutionary models support the idea that strong reciprocity can maintain cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals, and studies in primates show that chimpanzees will sanction conspecifics who have directly harmed them, suggesting phylogenetic origins for normenforcement behavior. Data from behavioral economic studies provide empirical support for the critical role of punishment in enforcing norms of distributional fairness and cooperation.[4]’ ‘The widespread propagation and consistent intergenerational transmission of beliefs about appropriate behavior highlight the importance of social learning processes in promoting norm-compliant behavior. Recent evidence from human neuroimaging demonstrates the involvement of mesolimbic circuitry, particularly the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and ventral striatum, in the generation of these observational learning signals[5].’ ‘Mitchell and colleagues have argued that we evaluate the state of mind of others through a process of “self-projection,” whereby another’s mental state is inferred by referencing it to a projection of our own state in that situation. Self-projective “mentalizing” engages a core network that includes the medial prefrontal cortex , temporo-parietal junction and posterior cingulate[6]’. ‘Cross-cultural data indicate that costly second- and third-party punishment is practiced across the globe, from Tanzanian villages and Amazonian rainforests to American college campuses. Worldwide, the degree of altruism present in a society is directly relatable to its punishment practices: when norms are enforced, cooperation follows. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the mechanisms of third-party punishment may be deeply ingrained in H. sapiens[1].’ Here, we talked about the criminal law as an example. But it applies to all areas of law. This is a development process that awakens from primitive societies line Homo sapiens to the present day. ‘Applying such models to the evolution of altruistic punishment leads to the prediction that people will not incur costs to punish others to provide benefits to large groups of nonrelatives. However, here we show that an important asymmetry between altruistic cooperation and altruistic punishment allows altruistic punishment to evolve in populations engaged in one-time, anonymous interactions.[2]’ These models will explain cultural evolution to us. Cooperation in bilateral relations, altruistic cooperation, Interdemic group selection, another mechanism requires asocial, lonely types, which is an illogical assumption for people, to leave behind individuals living in non-cooperative social groups. These concepts are always in confusion within each other. Altruistic punishment provides a solution to this confusion. ‘In laboratory experiments, people punish noncooperators at a cost to themselves even in one-shot interactions and ethnographic data suggest that such altruistic punishment helps to sustain cooperation in human societies. It might seem that invoking altruistic punishment simply creates a new evolutionary puzzle.[3]’ ‘Two simulation programs implementing the model were independently written, one by R.B. in Visual Basic, and a second by H.G. in Delphi.[4]’ ‘Base case parameters were chosen to represent cultural evolution in small-scale societies.[5]’ As you can see, the representation of cultural evolution also changes according to the size of societies. Although the underlying logic of altruistic cooperation and altruistic punishment is similar, it must be said that they have no evolutionary dynamics. ‘These results suggest that group selection can play an important role in the cultural evolution of cooperative behavior and moralistic punishment in humans.[6]’ Norms are the rules of a group of people that determine what is appropriate, permissible, necessary or prohibited for various members in different situations. ‘The psychological focus of cognitive-evolutionary approaches to norms gives them a fairly clear research agenda.[7]’ ‘A working hypothesis of cognitive-evolutionary approaches is that the psychological mechanisms underlying norm cognition are evolved adaptations to important selection pressures in human evolutionary history. Culture is understood as information that is transmitted between individuals and groups via behavior, rather than processes like genetic transmission (Ramsey 2013). Beliefs, preferences, norms, skills, techniques, information-containing artifacts, etc., are passed from individual to individual, and thus across populations and between generations, mainly by social learning (Mathew & Perreault 2015). Culture looms increasingly large in evolutionary explanations of human ultrasociality, i.e., our species’ ability to cooperate on a remarkably large scale[1].’ ‘The first dimension concerns a distinction between type 1 and type 2 cognitive processes made by dual processing and dual systems theories. The second dimension concerns the view that the mind is, to some degree, made up of modules. Third dimension, it should be clear how commitments along the first two dimensions could support different views about the extent to which normatively governed expectations and behavior require or are susceptible to voluntary control. The fourth and fifth dimensions are where the traditional nature/nurture debate plays out with respect to norms and normative psychology[2].’ ‘If group selection is part of the explanation of the evolutionary success of cooperative individual behaviors, then it is likely that group-level characteristics that enhance group selection pressures coevolved with cooperative behaviors. Alexander (1979), Boehm (1982), and Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1982) first applied this reasoning to human evolution, exploring the role of culturally transmitted practices that reduce phenotypic variation within groups.[3]’ ‘Cooperative behaviors would thus result in advantageous alliances for those signaling in this manner, and the resulting enhanced fitness or material success would then account for the proliferation of the cooperative behaviors constituting the signal with Eric Alden Smith[4].’ There are two themes where we describe the origins of cooperation between people: (a) the importance of groups in human evolution and the power of multilevel choice; (b) the underlying dynamics of gene-culture coevolution. The principle of self-interest, like some leading researchers in evolutionary biology (Dawkins, Richard Alexander). ‘In an Anthropological Examination of Law Edward Burnett Tylor was the first scientist to argue that the subject of anthropology is culture.There is a perceived dichotomy between evolutionary explanations for behavior and social or cultural ones. Two classes of evolutionary explanation for cultural variation, ‘evoked’ and ‘transmitted’ culture should be study together.[5]’ In conclusion, the studies of anthropologists and non-anthropologists show that the anthropological study of law is undoubtedly relevant and intertwined with legal changes in societies. In this context, evolution makes the connection between the concepts we talk about. The researches we have mentioned clearly show the reason for the existence of culture and the benefit of evolution in its development. As culture gathers people together and forms the state and communities because of this gathering, we can say that it is its basis in law.

https://medium.com/@tevfikkaanyavru/anthropological-study-of-law-culture-and-evolution-454d6ba51b8

['Tevfik Kaan Yavru']

2021-06-14 22:06:44.758000+00:00

['Sociology']

Radical Joy

The Third Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 13, 2020 The other day somebody asked me if I was an optimist. An optimist? In my mind I thought an optimist was somebody that could stand in a burning building in the middle of a war zone and say “Oh, everything’s fine. Just fine.” I didn’t know if I was an optimist, but I knew I wasn’t a pessimist. You know, like Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street, always looking for something to complain about. “Crummy weather. Gotta chill this hot chocolate down so it tastes good and yucky.” I guess I thought of myself as someone who is hopeful. Even when things are crappy. Like even in this crappy pandemic. Even now we’re figuring out new ways to cope and build community. We’re looking forward to what might happen when the dumpster fire known as 2020 comes to a close. This third Sunday of Advent is also known as Guadete Sunday. It’s signified by a pink candle on the advent wreath. At my last church we had fancy pink stoles and chasubles that we only got to wear this one Sunday a year. I just have this blue one. Anyway, the point of Guadete Sunday is to take a little break from all of this penitential business of being so introspective and look outwardly with joy. This is the Sunday of joy! Be joyful? Now? In the middle of a global pandemic? When we’re out of work? When it’s getting cold? When we can’t go anywhere or do anything? One of my theologians, Henri Nouwen, described the difference between joy and happiness. While happiness is dependent on external conditions, joy is “the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing — sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death — can take that love away.”[1] Thus joy can be present even in the midst of sadness. Today we hear a passage from a letter that the Apostle Paul was writing to the people in the Greek town of Thessaloniki. He wrote them a letter of encouragement. I remember one time my dad wrote me a letter of encouragement during my freshman year of college. It was incredibly moving. It came out of the blue. I don’t think I’d expressed that anything in particular had been difficult but he knew acclimating to change could be challenging and whether I knew it or not, I needed that letter and it was good to receive. It was good to know that I was loved. He also included a can of anchovies and some shaving cream so there was that too. Think about the way Christmas cards have a tendency to cheer us up this time of year. In a way they’re letters of encouragement. And this is why Paul was writing to these folks in the Greek town. He was giving them a strategy for remaining joyful in troubling times. He’s asking a troubled people in a troubled time rejoice. Rejoice always! Even when times were crappy. Because all of us are loved. He reminded them to hold fast to that which is good, to not return evil for evil, and to not neglect the words of the prophets that give us hope. Yes, the prophets of scripture can bring us joy! I know we’re used to hearing about prophets that lament oppression and provide warnings about a dire future if we don’t get ourselves in check, but prophets can also foretell us of immeasurable joys to come. Listen to Mary, the mother of Jesus! Today we hear her response to the news that she’s pregnant. Now, consider her situation. She’s an unwed teenager living in a backwater that’s occupied by an oppressive foreign army. She’s poor. A peasant. Life is hard. And now… she’s pregnant! Mary doesn’t say “Oh no, my dad’s gonna kill me”. And I’ve haven’t even been messing around, either. Mary doesn’t say “Oh, no.” She says yes! Not just yes! But more like a OH YEAH! Not only YES but also… with this baby, the whole system is coming down! Things are about to get radical! And they DID get radical. They got radical when God became incarnate as one of us in a cosmic solidarity. God came down to be with us, to fully understand what it’s like to be a human being. Not a human being living in a mansion, living in luxury, but a homeless man who openly and radically loved every single person he ever met. And then some. He loved us so much that he even willingly gave himself to the ultimate sacrifice. So, yeah, things got radical. The lowly were lifted The mighty were cast down from their thrones. The hungry were fed. The rich were sent away empty. He remembered his promise of mercy. And he still does today. Let this message be a Christmas card of hope to you today. Maybe I’m an optimist after all. I don’t know. But I am hopeful. I am filled with the hope of what Jesus offered us. I am filled with the hope of a better world that offers fulfillment to all people. There is joy in this world. We find it in the smallest of places and the most unexpected encounters. It is a joy of the promise of a better tomorrow replete with God’s unending love for all of us, even Oscar the Grouch. Amen. [1] Laskey, Mike Jordan (11 December 2014). “This Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Despite the Heartbreak All Around Us”. National Catholic Reporter. Kansas City, Missouri. Retrieved 11 December 2018.

https://medium.com/@michaelchaney_77267/radical-joy-f07c6be91bc6

['Michael Jackson Chaney']

2020-12-13 17:26:52.369000+00:00

['Hope', 'Magnificat', 'Advent', 'Joy']

Introducing Lelux, another level of Redux/toolkit

Introducing Lelux, another level of Redux/toolkit # Introducing Lelux Redux is probably the most popular and tested library for application state management. We can spend a whole day talking about the benefits of using Redux in an application with complicated data structure. However, it has also been criticized for introducing a lot of boilerplate. Some efforts have been made to tackle this issue. For example, @reduxjs/toolkit has a bunch of utility tools that aim to simplify action and reducer creation and thus reduce boiler-place. The idea is very good but selectors still have to be created manually. To resolve this issue I have created a function called “createBoilerPlate” based on “createSlice” from @reduxjs/toolkit. createBoilerPlate supports all functionalities that createSlice has. It also creates selectors in addition to reducers and actions. The way Ledux works is that it uses the path of data in the state to create a function for both read and write. With the traditional way of writing reducers and selectors, they have to be created separately because they are two completely different functions. However, if we use the path of the data in the state we can create both reducers and selectors programmatically. To demonstrate how easy is it to use createBoilerPlate, I have created the following example: import { createBoilerPlate } from ‘ledux’; const contact = createBoilerPlate({ name: ‘contact’, initialState: {}, config: { name: { path: ‘name’, }, mobileNumber: { path: ‘mobileNumber’, }, }, }) This will create something like below, very similar to createSlice. Apart from that selectors have also been created. { name : string, reducer : ReducerFunction, actions : Object<string, ActionCreator>, selectors: Object<string, Selector>, } In “actions” attribute there are two action creators according to the config, updateName and updateMobileNumber while “selectors” has two selectors, selectName and selectMobileNumber The default selector name and reducer name are generated based on the key under which the config object is: For example, The key for the following object is name, so createBoilerPlate will create selectName selector and updateName reducer name:{ path:’test1’, } If you want to provide custom selector name, reducer name and reducer function you can just provide selectorName, reducerName and preProcess Note that instead of using a reducer directly we use preProcess to massage the value before we write it to the path in the state. This way we prevent writing to a different path. import { createBoilerPlate } from ‘ledux’; const contact = createBoilerPlate({ name: ‘contact’, initialState: {}, config: { name:{ path:’name’, selectorName: ‘selectFancyName’, reducerName: ‘updateFanyName’, preProcess: (state, action) => { return “fancy” + action.payload; } }, mobileNumber:{ path:’mobileNumber’, }, }, }) Conclusion: createBoilerPlate is best suitable for applications where simple setters and getters(read and write value from/to a path in the state) are mostly needed. If you have already have a state design then you can also use “flat” npm package to extract the path and automate the generation of the “config” for createBoilerPlate.

https://medium.com/@sdujack2012/introducing-lelux-another-level-of-redux-toolkit-5f9871088f81

['Kai Jiang']

2020-03-03 05:40:18.810000+00:00

['Reactjs', 'React', 'Redux']

Linear Regression

Linear Regression Basic of Simple and Multiple Linear Regression Introduction Linear regression is the supervised learning approach. In particular, linear regression is a useful method for predicting continuous values (target) and attempts to model the linear relationship between target and one or more predictor. 2.Simple Linear Regression (one predictor) Simple linear regression lives up to its name: simply, finding a relationship between one predictor (𝑥) and target (y). Mathematically, we can write this linear relationship as In Equation 1, ŷ is target, 𝑥 is Predictor, 𝜷₀ and 𝜷₁ (coefficients) are two unknown constants that represent the intercept and slope terms in the linear model. Simple linear regression attempts to produce estimates 𝜷₀ and 𝜷₁ for the model coefficients. 𝜷₀ and 𝜷₁ obtained, we can predict the target. 2.1 Residual Linear regression actual Response e is residual error. Mathematically, we can write residual error in linear regression as following this is the difference between the i-th actual value and the i-th predicted value. We define the RSS (residual sum of squares) as or equivalently as 2.2 Estimating the Coefficients 𝜷₀ and 𝜷₁are unknown. So before we can use equation 1.1 to make predictions, we must use data to estimate the coefficients. As mentioned in equation 4.2, the least squares approach chooses 𝜷₀ and 𝜷₁ to minimize the RSS. Using some calculus 𝜷₀ and 𝜷₁ can we write as Where y_hat is mean of y (target) and x_hat is mean of 𝑥 (predictor). In practice, we use Advertising case within TV, Radio, Newspaper as predictor and sales as target. In order to implementation simple linear regression, The only TV predictor will be used in practice. Graph of Sales and TV as following : 2.3 Implementation As mentioned above, we only use TV as 𝑥 (predictor), Sales as y (target) and number of data is 200 row (github) First, we solve for the coefficient 𝜷₁ (slope) with equation 5.0 and y_hat = 14.0225 and x_hat = 147.0425 𝜷₁ = 69727.65 / 1466818.94 𝜷₁ = 0.047536644161412324 𝜷₁ = 0.048 Once we know the value of the coefficient 𝜷₁, we can solve for the coefficient 𝜷₀ (intercept) with equation 6.0: 𝜷₀ = 14.022 - (𝜷₁ * 147.04) 𝜷₀ = 7.033 Therefore, the regression equation is ŷ = 7.033 + (0.048 * 𝑥) Regression graph of sales and TV as following : 2.4 How to Use the Regression Equation since we have regression equation, we can predict sales for new data (TV). In our example, new data of TV is 100, the predicting sales with 100 TV as following ŷ= 𝜷₀ + 𝜷₁𝑥 ŷ = 7.033 + (0.048 * new_data) ŷ = 7.033 + (0.048 * 100) ŷ = 11.833 Sales = 11.833 2.5 Implementation with Python sklearn github repository 3. Multiple Linear Regression (predictor > 1) Dealing with such a large number of values and operations computers tend to perform efficiently matrix, To express the regression equation in matrix form, we need to define three matrices: 𝑦, 𝜷, and 𝑥. General parametric equation : Representation equation 7.0 in matrix form 3.1 Residual Similar to simple linear regression, multiple linear also calculates the residual error represented in the form of a matrix RSS in equation 4.0 can be re-written as 3.2 Estimating the Coefficients Computing coefficients in multiple regression are the same thing in simple linear regression, where minimizing the RSS (residual sum of squares). Using some calculus Computing coefficients can be written as 3.3 Implementation same as simple linear regression, we also use Advertising case within TV and Radio as predictors and sales as target. Graph of TV, Radio, and Sales as following : What the next? We define 𝑥, 𝑥 transpose, compute 𝑥 transpose * 𝑥, find the inverse 𝑥 transpose * 𝑥, and define 𝑦from this table where TV as 𝑥1, Radio as 𝑥2 and Sales as 𝑦 After we have 𝑥 , 𝑥 transpose, 𝑥 transpose * 𝑥 , inverse 𝑥 transpose * 𝑥, and 𝑦. we can use equation 9.0 3.4 How to Use the Regression Equation since we have regression equation 7.0, we can predict sales for new data (TV and Radio). In our example, new data of TV is 100 and radio is 200, the predicting sales with 100 TV as following ŷ = -1.898 + (0.068* new_data TV) + (0.228* new_data Radio) ŷ = -1.898 + (0.068 * 100) + (0.228 * 200) ŷ = 50.502 Sales = 50.502 3.5 Implementation with python sklearn github repository The results are different from point 3.3 because in this session using all datasets About Me I’m a Data Scientist, Focus on Machine Learning and Deep Learning. You can reach me from Medium, Linkedin or Github. Reference

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/linear-regression-35f8a65d83b9

['Arif R']

2020-04-09 03:39:43.150000+00:00

['Linear Regression Example', 'Simple Linear Regression', 'Linear Regression Python', 'Regression Analysis', 'Linear Regression']

How to write a user testing report that people will actually read

Over the decade or so I’ve been a UX designer, I’ve run a lot of user tests. They’re a great way to find out how people really behave when confronted with a website or app. Whilst it’s important to run them, if you don’t record the results then they may as well not have happened. If only one or two people try to keep the findings in their heads then they’re liable to misremember and by not sharing the results with others you’re missing out on a chance to convince others of the changes that need to happen. Of course creating a big report can mean you end up with a document that no-one reads, so it’s important to keep it lightweight and follow lean principles so it doesn’t slow down your process. After all, the tests are just a means to an end of improving your site experience. I always aim to keep my reports under 10 pages or slides, with several clearly defined sections and plenty of bullet points, so it’s all easy to digest. Here’s my guide to making a comprehensive but light user testing report, with a rough indication of how big each section should be. I tend to run remote user tests or guerrilla tests, which can be quite different but both benefit from a document to share with clients and team members, so everyone can see the issues you find. Format Keeping the documents online is a great idea, as people can refer to them wherever they are, so I tend to use Google Drive for my testing reports. I initially did them in a Doc (like Word), but this looked quite text-heavy so I have now switched to a Presentation (like PowerPoint). Here the sections are more clearly marked by slides so it’s easier to consume. Introduction Summary of key findings 1 slide Even though we’re aiming to keep our report short, we can still make room for an executive summary. This is where we put the most important two or three findings from the round of testing, so even if a client or stakeholder reads nothing else, they learn this. What were the pressing issues that arose from the tests? If you wanted nothing else to change after this, what is the thing that must happen to improve life for your users? This should help you focus your findings, and you can wrap up a few little issues into a theme, like ‘navigation’, ‘ordering of information’, or ‘the mobile experience’. Who you tested with 1 slide Here you should summarise the demographics of the users you tested with and how many there were. This generally means age, gender, devices, and possibly income and education level. It’s good to show that the people who took the tests match your actual users, so people will take the findings seriously. If you used any screener questions to filter the people to take the tests, then here’s where you should mention them too. What the tasks were 1 slide At this point you should show the tasks that you ran the tests with. If you’re doing this for a client you should have already cleared these with them but for future reference is always useful to be able to quickly see what the test covered. I aim to keep the tasks to no more than five or six so this won’t take up too much space. Results Bugs 1 slide (hopefully…) There are lots of things you can discover when running user tests, and one of them is bugs or broken parts of the experience. For example if a menu doesn’t work on a certain device, or nothing happens when a user clicks a link, then you know this isn’t working and should be fixed. Clearly state the problem that the user has found and embed or link to a video clip showing the issue so it can be recreated. It’s also worth noting the device and browser being used too. Ideally bugs should be found during QA and not during user testing but it’s hard to catch everything: things can break over time and users can do things you just didn’t plan for. I like to keep this separate from the rest of the results as they are things that can immediately be sent to developers for fixing. If you’re not sure whether something is a bug then record it as a ‘maybe’ or with a question. Usability problems Approx 3–4 slides Usability issues are the core of your testing report and the main purpose of running these tests. Thus this should be the main focus. I use a bullet point for each thing discovered, with a clear statement explaining the problem and then ideally a link to a video clip showing the problem happening (this is easy to do if you’re using a remote testing tool like Validately). These videos are really powerful for backing up what you say you saw with proof. If you have a repeated issue you only need to show a single example of it to illustrate your point. Try to avoid suggesting any solutions here. This report is a place to clearly state what you observed in the user tests and so you have a record of how the website performed at that time. Even if they seem obvious, solutions should be separate from this. To help make this more digestible I try to order the issues by severity, with the issues that I witnessed the most at the top. If more than one user is finding a problem then it probably needs fixing. If only one is then it can be treated as less important. I also aim to break this content up in other ways to make it easier to scan. I do this either by splitting up the content by the page of the site it was found on (e.g. homepage, about page, product page, etc) or by device. If there are a lot of usability problems then I might do both. Other feedback 1–2 slides If you discovered any odd bits other than bugs or usability problems during the tests, then it’s worth keeping a record of them too. I like to make sure any positive feedback that users expressed is recorded — it’s easy to get lost in the problems and negatives! You can also record any little observations that don’t fit in the other sections. Perhaps the way users generally behave can inspire some changes, such as ‘people scroll fast on mobile’, or ‘users rely on the browser back button on desktop’, etc. Post-test questions (optional) 1–2 slides Finally, a lot of remote user testing platforms offer the opportunity to survey participants after the test. These questions can be of varying usefulness but any chance to gather a bit of extra detail from real folk should be taken. You could use it as research into other sites they use or find out a bit more about them. State any questions you asked and record the answers — you can potentially summarise the general themes of the answers rather than put them all in, if there are a lot of empty words. Get the template To make your process even quicker, I’ve put together a Keynote and Google Slides template of this user testing report, which you can get hold of here and customise as much as you want.

https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-a-user-testing-report-that-people-will-actually-read-652d15d2f92e

['Matt Isherwood']

2018-07-19 14:58:53.167000+00:00

['Product Management', 'Report', 'User Research', 'UX', 'User Testing']

When I Win, It’s Skill. When Someone Else Wins, It’s Luck

When I Win, It’s Skill. When Someone Else Wins, It’s Luck Roll the dice more when the worst that can happen isn’t a big deal From PIRO4D on Pixabay The title is a joke in a fantasy football league of my friends from college. Whenever we win on a given week, we talk trash about our skill at starting just the right players. Whenever we lose, we blame it on bad luck and external factors like weather and injuries. Of course, with COVID-19 making the season especially precarious, there are even more factors our fantasy football league can attribute to bad luck. The facetious attitude is that when we win, it’s skill. But when we lose, our opponents got lucky. Of course, I don’t believe this attitude outside the realm of fantasy football. It’s simply the dynamic with my friends that make it interesting and entertaining to trash talk. On a more serious note, as a writer and teacher, it’s easy to fall into the trap of getting jealous and attributing your successes to skill and others to luck. You can think that other teachers teach easier classes and less challenging students. But the lesson here is clear —most of life is luck. It’s a reality I first started to realize this year, and then start to buy into as a way to cope with realities I faced, my students faced, and more faced that seemed increasingly unfair. It’s a human tendency to attribute our own successes to our own skills and merit, and the accomplishments of others to luck. Luck is more important than skill. And while most people in western society find that mindset defeating, I find it liberating — I don’t take too much stock in my own successes and think I’m better than people, because I just got luckier. I don’t take my losses and failures as personally as I used — I just got unlucky. And I’m more than willing to take risks and venture out of my comfort zone because luck dictates I have no idea where the outcome is going to go. Don’t get me wrong — I have a lot of willpower. The problem is that willpower, determination, productivity hacks, and anything else I can credit to my personal attributes only goes so far. It only lasts so long. As a writer, luck means writing about topics I’ve never written about before because I don’t know how well I’m going to do writing about them, or how much I’m going to enjoy the writing process. Luck means pitching big and dreaming big, and not taking it personally when I get no response from a prominent editor or publication. According to Scott Barry Kaufman at Scientific American, the secret to success just might be luck. Kaufman emphasizes that magazines like Success, Forbes, Inc., and Entrepreneur as telling the secrets to success, and that success is all due to personal characteristics like hard work, toughness, optimism, a growth mindset, and emotional intelligence. And that’s not only a part of our values but also how we allocate resources. In the words of Kaufman, “We tend to give out resources to those who have a past history of success, and tend to ignore those who have been unsuccessful, assuming that the most successful are also the most competent.” Kaufman is a psychologist, and he spent his whole life studying psychological characteristics that predict creativity and achievement. While he has found many traits that explain differences in success, much more is left unexplained. Kaufman concludes that luck and opportunity play a far greater role in anything than we previously realized. He doesn’t think luck is everything but instead thinks that personal characteristics matter much less than we think, and are more determined by other determinants of success. Some of these determinants of success are that half of the differences in income of people across the world is explained by the country they’re raised in and the income distribution in their country. Kaufman also notes that scientific impact is randomly distributed, not based on productivity. Also, the chances of being a CEO is often most influenced by your mother’s name or month of birth. So that begs the bigger question — is all of success just luck? And what would be the implications for whether successful people are just lucky? How would we allocate resources? How would we assess the “potential” of others? The idea of a meritocracy has been discredited enough, and in a 2018 paper by Pluchino et al., the Italian author credited the “toy mathematical model,” which defined talent as the personal characteristics that allowed them to exploit lucky opportunities. The authors replicated the Pareto Principle, which suggests that a small number of people end up achieving the success of most of the population. The simulation found that talent was equally distributed, but success was not equally distributed. The 20 most successful individuals held 44% of the total success in that study, which is consistent and even an underestimation of how wealth is distributed in the real world. The authors found that talent isn’t irrelevant to success since people with talent had a greater probability of increasing success. People with more talent could exploit the possibilities offered to them. But talent is not the most important factor, since the most talented people in the study were often not the most successful. The people most successful had above average talent, but the most luck. “In general, mediocre-but-lucky people were much more successful than more-talented-but-unlucky individuals,” Kaufman says. Luck ended up being the most important factor in the study. As a Christian, I believe everything is up to God. At the same time, I believe God controls luck. And God isn’t Santa — He doesn’t just reward you because you believe in him. The “shit just happens” attitude of Robert Frost is one I completely buy into, because the randomness of life makes it so a lot of good people suffer immensely, while people who commit mass genocide gain power. I personally will have to read much more into the theology of luck. Luck is an unpopular idea in western society, and for good reason. We want to focus on what’s merely within our control. But maybe we need to keep believing in luck, according to the School of Life, despite luck being “a substantial offence against modern ideals of control, strategy, and foresight.” We want to be the authors of our own destinies, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that notion. Advances in science, medicine, insurance, and education tilt the tide against luck. But luck will never be tamed as an entity. Every success requires a significant amount of luck, and we avoid failure using luck. Think about driving a car — the most dangerous activity most of us do every day. Lord knows how many near accidents each of us has gotten into, how many close calls we’ve had either making risky turns or having other people make risky turns. People see themselves less as passive actors in the world by day. Personal responsibility is the idea and concept with which we feel the greatest degree of control, and luck often assigns our failures to things outside our control. But a belief in luck should ground us in humility when we’ve successful, and not blame other people for their circumstances. A belief in luck can help enforce our own sense of compassion and empathy, because no one is to blame for their circumstances. At the same time, a belief in luck means no one else is to blame for our circumstances — there’s a tendency in some circles I’ve been in to blame all our problems on our parents. And while I didn’t have the perfect and picturesque childhood, my problems are my own. Luck and personal responsibility can co-exist. But doesn’t luck give us the capacity for personal responsibility? We’re lucky that we didn’t get into that accident that nearly ended our lives. We’re lucky for so many things. And just because we’re so lucky doesn’t mean we should be complacent, but rather aim higher and take more risks. Of course, that doesn’t go for all high stakes situations, but situations where there’s really not much to lose. Roll the dice more when the worst that can happen isn’t a big deal. Apply for that dream job. Pitch that dream publication. Strike that conversation you’re nervous about. Go on that trip. Have some fun. What’s the worst that can happen? We just might get lucky.

https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/when-i-win-its-skill-when-someone-else-wins-it-s-luck-477e3b551473

['Ryan Fan']

2020-12-20 17:38:47.421000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Ideas', 'Philosophy', 'Nonfiction', 'Self']

That Sound — Don’t You Want To Hear It More?

Know someone long enough and you’ll be able to tell the person’s different types of laughter. There’s the genuine jolly kind, there’s the fake polite kind, there’s the gentle kind, the uncontrollable tears kind and perhaps a few more kinds only you can identify. Even if you don’t know a person well enough, you can tell. You can feel it — when someone laughs with lighthearted joy. It’s soft and fluffy. It’s the layer of foam on top of your latte. It’s the cloud drifting above your head. The cotton candy melting softly on your tongue. Have you ever heard a baby laugh? 109 million views. There must have been a reason why so many of us are attracted to that delightful sound, right? I love it. I absolutely love the sound of laughter. Which is why I developed a goofy personality. My silly self. ©️Agnes Louis People have questioned my silliness as I grew older. They don’t understand why I love being silly at times. I’m addicted to that pleasant sound — the sound of laughter echoing inside my head. It makes me laugh too. It lifts my spirit. That sound carries me like a cloud. A sense of lightness, of peace. It envelops my whole being I feel like floating an inch above the floor, my heart is so full I feel like it’s going to explode in colours. Am I weird? Is this weird? I love the sound of laughter. I have loved it since I cracked my first joke, since my first accidental slapstick. I love it when I am the reason behind that heavenly sound. Watching the world these days, I can’t help but wonder. Why? Why do many of us like to tear apart something beautiful, something whole? Why do many of us love to create petty grievances out of thin air? We are so tiny in the scheme of things in the Universe. There’s so much space. There’s enough to house everyone. Enough for everyone to share. Why fight? Why kill? What? To take something already owned? To make more space? What? What is it? I don’t understand. Why silence the pleasant ring of a laughter? What for? Am I weird, liking the sound of laughter? Those who order, who call upon wars, fighting to the last man standing, do they not like the sound of pure joy? Why oh why?

https://medium.com/warm-hearts/that-sound-dont-you-want-to-hear-it-more-fb9e237cd011

['Agnes Louis']

2020-12-13 15:32:39.084000+00:00

['Laughter', 'Compassion', 'Kindness', 'Joy', 'Happiness']

Weight Loss Tip 12 How Starving Your Body Can Make You Gain Weight

Weight Loss Tip 12 How Starving Your Body Can Make You Gain Weight Kamarajuvenuturupalli Jun 17·1 min read No, that title is not a typo. One of the things that makes people not get the weight loss results that they want is that they may occassionally be starving their bodies. There are two basic ways that this can happen. One is for it to be done inadvertently — like when you just get busy and forget to eat. Another is when you purpose deprive your body of food to try and “speed up” your results. Regardless of how it happens, either scenario in this case is equally damaging. Although you will decrease the calories that you take in which may lead to some short-term weight loss, the kicker here is that you will be slowing down your metabolism. What this means is that after the starving is over, your body will hold onto the next meal you eat for dear life, expecting be be starved again. If you allow starvation to become a habit, you will actually be contributing to your own weight gain in the future. Therefore, make sure that you are keeping your meals no more than 4 hours apart. As long as you do this, you will be supporting the healthy metabolism that you’ll need to lose the kind of weight that you’ve committed to. Click Here to learn more

https://medium.com/@kamarajuv1975/weight-loss-tip-12-how-starving-your-body-can-make-you-gain-weight-e821ba88b102

[]

2021-06-17 06:09:27.263000+00:00

['Diệt', 'Fitness Tips', 'Health', 'Weight Loss']

How I created the brand identity for our startup, p. 1. Background and challenges

This story comprises three parts — the background (with almost no illustrations), the making-of (with some illustrations), and the very demo of the final result (with a lot of illustrations). You can read all parts one by one or skip to the final part. Background Who am I and what the product is I’m Valeriia, a product designer and the co-founder of SharpShark — a startup that helps to protect intellectual property. Last year, we started from a mere idea, then enrolled in the Startup Chile acceleration program, got two government investments, and raised a seed-stage investment from a private VC. Now we’re doing pilots on the LatAm market and preparing for the next stage of our soft launch. And for a year we had been pulling it off without snazzy design — all the visuals were generic. Only now is when we decided to create its visual image. Why so late? Why we decided to start without visual design We started off in a tandem with my partner (a business developer by profession), and the first 6 months of our work were spent in Google docs and spreadsheets, in talks with future clients and investors. The rest of the efforts we decided to dedicate to the development. And only my remaining focus and time were left to visual design. On purpose. It was rather a counter-intuitive decision — especially when you’re a designer yourself, especially when there are tons of beautiful startups everywhere — but we are glad that we did so. It saved our focus and let us proceed to the next stage of our product development. When we decided to go with the brand identity When we built the underlying logic of the product and its alpha version, got funded, expanded our team to four people, and became able to hire outsource specialists, I decided it was time for the brand identity. Simultaneously, I found out that Svyat Vishnyakov (Electric Red, NY) — the art director who had a great impact on me earlier this year in the design field when I completed his course in typography — will be accessible for brand identity mentorship during his next programe. It looked like a real godsend; besides, nothing inspires more than a real deadline. So I decided to dive into Identityville. Let me describe the process and challenges specific to our project. Challenges After “bringing up” the product for almost a year, we had some context. So we had certain constraints but knew what outcome we wanted. Briefly, the design should be functional and meaningful. And, of course, esthetical. Let’s start with functionality. Compactness and accessibility I wanted to keep the color palette restricted: it makes it easier to work with outsource talent or to make quick amendments in presentations, etc. for our non-design team members — the fewer colors you have, the lower the chance of mistake is. Also, I wanted to use as few fonts and font families as possible. On one hand, because of license costs. On the other hand, to retain clarity. Last but not least, I have a certification in UI accessibility and I just can’t afford to go with a classy but non-contrast color palette — so all the fonts, colors, and elements should be clear and sharp. Existing platforms We could roughly divide our assets into two big groups: official materials (a one pager, a certificate, business cards) and eye-catching materials (presentation covers, banners, etc.) Needless to say, I wanted to have a visual language that incorporates it all. Below I’m listing what assets we already had on our plate. Presentations It’s probably the richest asset in terms of objectives and constraints. First, I needed both bright eye-catching slides to capture the attention, and moderate informational slides to deliver messages. Second, I wanted the option of having either very light or very dark slides. Depending on the projector screen, light design sometimes isn’t visible and vice versa. So I wanted some flexibility. Web app The first round of UX tests of our interface showed that we should make the UI as generic as possible: the product was rather new and uncommon which might cause stress, so its appearance should be rather conventional to mitigate the unease. Still, the app should look authentic and translate the product message. And remember what I mentioned about a restricted color palette? So, (at least one of) my brand colors should go well with an accessible UI. Website Besides the reasonable ratio between clarity and vividness, the website should be really “lego-like” — we’re a young company, and we’re going to add/remove/swap blocks, based on feedback. Seamlessly. Existing context Since the product will exist within a certain context, it was important to do the design with regard to it. What context? Our investor’s ecosystem We’re members of the Symbol by NEM ecosystem — it’s our main strategic partner and investor. I wanted to refer to it somehow, to show that we sprang out of there. Mutual context with other projects In its turn, there are other projects that we want to stand out from. Say, while different startup logos are placed in a row on an event page. Practically speaking, to meet these criteria, our logo should take the most of the useful area of square and rectangular formats, have a light and a dark version, and have different size variations. My skills As a startup, we wanted to be as independent of outsource talent as possible. Thus, the core kit of the brand identity should be built around those techniques I’m familiar with. My skill set included: colors, typography, composition, semantics. And I haven’t mastered yet: illustrations, motion, 3D art, AR/VR, etc. But I assume that the visuals can evolve into something more compound. For this, I wanted the system to have some flexibility for future metamorphoses. Last but not least, the ability to expand Today we’re a one-product company. But what if we decide to organize an industry conference? What if we make a partnership with somebody and create a joint venture? Or expand our product line? Or pivot, making the most of the existing brand? So the system should be easy-to-alter. *** Pretty many restrictions, isn’t it? Let’s see how I dealt with it →

https://medium.com/@vlree/how-i-created-the-brand-identity-for-our-startup-p-1-background-94566b3fad13

['Valeriia Panina']

2021-01-18 12:00:55.488000+00:00

['Startup', 'Design Process', 'Design', 'Branding', 'Blockchain']