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How climate change is threatening native Alaskan culture | Climate change can be felt all over the world, however its impact is not equally distributed across geographies. When looking at the United States, it might surprise many of us that the most impacted state is actually the one with the lowest population density in the nation — the most northern state of the US. Alaska.
When we are talking of the impact, climate change is having on the arctic, most of us may be thinking of vanishing glaciers or green fields which once were covered with snow, however we usually forget to acknowledge the fate of thousands of natives living there. Through the rapid change in temperature and the associated changes of the arctic environment, especially the indigenous community of Alaska, which directly depends on natural resources, is hit the hardest.
In this blog will be first taking a look at the changing environmental conditions of Alaska and then emphasize its impact on the natives living there.
RISING TEMPERATURES
Our Data Integration Engineer Eneli Toodu has analysed temperature data from ECMWF ERA5 dataset and discovered many interesting and at the same time worrying findings. Yearly average temperature in the state of Alaska hasn’t dropped below the long-time average (1979–2019) of -2.7 °C degrees for 7 years now. This means that 2012 was the last year that the average temperature was below -2.7 °C. At the same time, 2012 also marked one of the coldest years in 40 years history, where temperature was -4.5 °C on average. Only 1999 was colder with a recorded average temperature of -4.7 °C. How drastically climate change is affecting Alaska can be seen when looking at the average temperature in 2019, this being the first year average temperature levelled off above 0°C degrees.
Mean annual average temperature in Alaska from ECMWF ERA5
Above, we looked into average temperatures across the state of Alaska. To see temperature anomalies across Alaska, Eneli has created an infographic where yearly temperature anomalies can be seen for the different counties.
Average temperature anomalies calculated from ECMWF ERA5
In the animation minus degrees are resembled by blue tones while plus degrees are shown as red tones. Looking closer, we can see that temperatures in the last seven years have not fallen much below zero degrees celsius. Naturally it’s completely normal to have years that are warmer than usual, however seven consecutive years with such high numbers is exceptional, marking a turning point of Alaska’s climate.
If you are interested in finding out more about environmental changes in the Arctic and its corresponding impacts on industrial networks, we recommend reading this Post.
DECREASE IN SNOW COVER
As a consequence of the previously discussed warming weather in Alaska, Eneli also calculated snow cover percent from ERA5 snow depth variable to see how snow cover has changed over time. Snowfall, snow season length and snow cover has been decreasing steadily over the past years. Lesser and shorter snow cover brings unexpected problems to the people living in Alaska. For example, one of Alaska’s most popular means of transport, the snow mobile, is losing part of its utility. This forces the native alaskan community to adapt and change to quads or expensive bush-planes. In addition snow cover also plays a part in controlling the surface hydrology and underlying soil properties while also influencing near‐surface air temperature, which in turn can cause the thawing of permafrost described later in this post.
Mean annual snow cover in Alaska calculated from ECMWF ERA5
The data we have put together shows that snow cover has decreased rapidly over the last two decades. Alaskan long term mean (40 years, green line) snow cover percent is 68.4%, however this value hasn’t been exceeded for over 15 years. From the graph, we can see a deeply decreasing trend (green dotted line). This strong downward trend is verified when comparing the mean snow cover till 2000 (including) with the data from 2016. While annual snow cover used to be over 70 %, it was only at 60 % in 2016.
In order to analyse and compare climate and corresponding indicators such as precipitation, average, maximum and minimum temperature or snow cover in a global context, a data-based approach is necessary. With the Climatology feature, View2020 from Intertrust offers the necessary tools to analyse and compare climate indicators quickly and easily on a global level. To better understand our changing environment, casual observers as well as industry professionals can access View2020, which is built on the Planet OS Datahub, by clicking here.
IMPACT ON NATIVE POPULATION
The most impacted counties have been the North Slope, Northwest Arctic and Nome. All three are located in Northwest Alaska.
Although the consequences of climate change can be seen all over the world, the natives in Alaska are amongst those hit the hardest. While most of us are experiencing climate change only peripherally, Alaskan natives are living a life not defined by substance, but by a thriving culture empowered through a strong bond and dependence on their immediate environment. Through the disruptive change of their environment, the Alaskan native community is facing a loss of cultural identity while making them the first American climate refugees.
There are multiple problems that Alaskan natives have due to climate change.
EROSION AND FLOODS
Because of the steadily increasing temperature, drastic changes of the landscape are being experienced. Most notably, the Alaskan permafrost is thawing leading to erosion of the land. This erosion can particularly be seen on the western shore along the pacific or along the Ninglick River, making land uninhabitable for the natives.
Although the weather has always been extreme and unsettled, the permafrost, a thick subsurface layer of soil that remained frozen throughout the year, gives the ground the necessary stability to prevent it from being washed away from tides or the river. However due to the increase of temperature in Alaska , permafrost has thawed, causing the ground to soften, leading to extreme forms of erosion, floods and destruction of infrastructure.
On average, each year 70 ft of ground are lost to the sea. This slowly ongoing process has forced the Yupik people of Newtok to resettle to higher and firmer grounds in Mertarvik. While part of the village has already lost its fight against the inexorable surf, two thirds of the village are still inhabited. Although funding is a major problem, the relocation of Newtok should be finished by 2023, making it a forerunner for what many other villages are facing.
Maximum rate of historical erosion (feet per year) at or near community locations. Data was created by DGGS, USGS, and NPS using orthoimagery or topography through time.
Source: Overbeck, J.R., ed., 2018, Alaska coastal mapping gaps & priorities: Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys Information Circula
WILDFIRES
Another big threat fueled by record high temperatures is a longer and more severe wildfire season. Through climate change winter is ending sooner, letting the snow melt earlier in the season. This leaves plant material out to dry causing devastating fires. Additionally fires now tend to last longer due to delayed rain in late summer. The devastating effect rising temperatures have on wildfire seasons is shown by data recorded by the IARC.
The Data shows the amount of wildfire seasons, with the red bars highlighting wildfires with more than one million acres burned. It can be seen that those devastating wildfires have increased by 50 percent since 1990, compared to the previously recorded data.
The Alaskan wildfires are not only destroying the habitat and therefore the hunting grounds of the natives, but also pose a threat to their direct health. This is due to the particular matters emitted by the fires, which can have lethal effects on one’s bloodstream and respiratory system. More information about particulate matter, their origin and effects can be found on Planet OS View2020
With ever rising temperatures wildfire seasons are expected to stretch over even longer periods in the future. The problem Alaska is facing with fires can also be seen in other parts of the world, like previously in Australia. If you are interested in gaining a closer insight on this matter, we recommend you checking out Chase Walz’s Post covering the Australian Fires.
FOOD SUPPLY STRUGGLES
A majority of the Native Alaskan diet relies on fish, a food source that typically was available in abundance in the past. However warming waters, the oil industry and mining companies are putting natives’ food security at risk.
Bristol Bay in Alaska typically accounts for two-thirds of the state’s total salmon fishery value per year. This is possible because of the yearly migration of about 50 million salmon, however the number of salmon in Bristol bay has decreased radically last year. The main reason this has happened is due to an accumulation of warmer water in the region. In the future however a further increase in water temperature could result in a huge decline of salmon population, since warmer water makes the fish more susceptible to predators, parasites and disease.
Additionally expanded industrial activity is harming salmon’s key habitat by destroying salmon streams and important wetlands.
GOVERNMENTAL REFUSALS AND LOSS OF TRIBAL CULTURE
Although there have been sporadic initiatives mainly regarding resettlements by the US government, it has failed to help Alaskan native tribes adapt to climate change. While big businesses, which depend on Alaska’s natural resources, are taking control over the county, natives aren’t given a voice in most decision making procedures.
Due to the current climatic developments, the indigenous people are on the verge of losing their unique way of life. This results from the consequences of our actions, which ultimately push the indigenous society more and more into a western economic system, making them lose their cultural identity. In addition, the bureaucratic framework often makes it difficult to provide state aid to indigenous communities, as socially tangible consequences as a result of the generally slow rise in temperature are unprecedented.
Native alaskan culture is at a turning point. Its future is determined by whether we are able to reduce our carbon footprint, increase global environmental consciousness and therefore stop and partly reverse global warming. A culture that defines itself by the resources and the environment they have always lived with and in, will not be able to flourish in another setting.
We should therefore all take advantage of the digital revolution we are finding ourselves in and, in the context of our shared global responsibility, act on a personal and corporate level to counter climate change.
Many of the datasets made available through the Planet OS Datahub have been at the request of our users. For those who require a consolidated, easy to use, resource for accessing large and complex material that the Datahub does not already offer, please reach out to the team and we will work toward bringing it onboard. For more information check out the Planet OS Datahub. | https://medium.com/planet-os/how-climate-change-is-threatening-native-alaskan-culture-5b2f9e5ff214 | ['Arthur Kaspar'] | 2020-11-12 11:25:14.719000+00:00 | ['Alaska', 'Climate Change', 'Data Science', 'Weather', 'Climate'] |
Santa Is at Capacity This Christmas | Photo: Rebecca Cook / Reuters
Santa Is at Capacity This Christmas
Perhaps the busiest time of the year for e-commerce shopping (and shipping) just got another shipment added to the backlog. Vaccines being shipped out starting this week add more complexity to an already stressed distribution network.
Shopping from home
This is a historic week. The first COVID-19 vaccinations were administered on Monday and have since been shipped out across the country. The potential product of the decade is causing headaches to the national supply chain. A September survey conducted by Pharma.Aero and The International Air Cargo Association showed that only 28 percent of organizations involved in global air transportation felt prepared to handle COVID-19 vaccines.
Photo: Amazon
This year has already been tough for freight and delivery companies; Amazon customers experienced delays early in the pandemic as the e-commerce giant prioritized shipments of cleanings supplies, toilet paper, etc. and delayed shipping nonessential items.
Amazon wasn’t the only company with heavier-than-usual activity. E-commerce as a whole had a banner year and 2020 will mark a pivotal shift to services like online grocery shopping and food delivery apps, which are now seen as necessary aids rather than novel conveniences. U.S. Q3 e-commerce sales jumped 37.1 percent this year compared to Q3 2019.
The giving season
The Washington Post reported on the expected struggles that shipping companies are having, even refusing deliveries for some retailers because they’re simply not able to fulfill them: “Postal employees are reporting mail and package backlogs across the country, and working vast amounts of overtime hours that have depleted morale during another surge of coronavirus infections nationwide… ‘UPS and FedEx have shut us off. Nobody can keep up right now, but we don’t have the luxury of turning people down.’”
As good as the news of the vaccination may be, it is certainly arriving at an inopportune time for smaller brands hoping to gain new customers by completing orders by Christmas morning. Customers have taken to Twitter to let companies like Shutterfly and Crate and Barrel know that their orders are late:
Product review site The Quality Edit recently published a helpful guide to the best holiday gifts along with their shipping deadlines. | https://medium.com/@joeniehaus/santa-is-at-capacity-this-christmas-1c69889d30f0 | ['Joe Niehaus'] | 2020-12-17 01:46:02.967000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Supply Chain', 'Ecommerce', 'Startup', 'Business'] |
Our 7 Favourite Modular Eco-Homes | Modular construction is on the rise. This is our list of seven companies on the cutting edge of eco-friendly modular housing.
(Photo: Noem)
Modular buildings have long transcended their image as monotonous and low-quality solutions to housing shortages. Events like the Solar Decathlon have made developers think about the future of living. Today, a wide variety of buildings are prefabricated as separate modules in a factory-setting and assembled onsite: hospitals, schools, student apartments, and even normal homes, where the difference to conventional construction is pretty much impossible to tell.
Because of its affordability and green footprint, modular construction is especially popular for creating so-called eco-homes, environmentally low-impact houses for temporary or permanent living. Prefabricated houses use less energy during construction and are typically built with environmentally friendly and recyclable materials like wood and steel. Many of these buildings can also be relocated, making modular construction very appealing to homeowners who want to have a sustainable footprint and keep the option of easily moving to another location.
Here is a list of eco-friendly modular homes that we find especially innovative:
1. Wikkelhouse (Netherlands)
When we speak about cardboard, we tend to think of Amazon deliveries and storage boxes. The Dutch company Wikkelhouse shows, that there is much more to this material than we think. The team from Amsterdam has created a completely reusable modular house made almost entirely from recycled cardboard that is three times more eco-friendly than traditional housing and expected to last up to 100 years.
The Wikkelhouse (which translates to “wrap house”) is built by tightly wrapping 24 layers of cardboard around a 1,2-meter-wide core segment and covering it with a protective, waterproof film. These modular units are then combined with each other to form the full structure. Since the segments can be added (almost) indefinitely, the length of the house can vary according to the project. Wikkelhouse currently builds only 20 pieces per year, making this home a true rarity.
(Photo: Wikkelhouse)
2. KODA (Estonia)
As a response to housing shortages in European cities, KODA developed a micro-home that is the embodiment of minimalism and efficiency. Built from maintenance-free concrete, the floor plan of this house measures just 25m² but contains everything needed for daily life, including a bathroom, shower, a separate bedroom area, and even a small terrace.
The cube takes only one day to build and can be disassembled for moving to another site in seven hours. It is equipped with solar panels on the roof and boasts the latest smart-home technology such as a digital door lock and adjustable LED lighting. Prices start at just 85.000€ and Koda is planning to release a stackable model in 2018.
(Photo: KODA)
3. Coodo (Germany)
Another home packing the latest tech is Coodo out of Germany. Almost all electronic devices in this prefab house made of wood and glass are connected to a smart home system and can be controlled via mobile or tablet. Smart features include movement sensors, cameras, smoke detectors, and temperature sensors.
A Coodo is movable at any time and can be ordered with a unique feature: a pontoon that turns the home into a houseboat. The company is currently developing a self-sustaining unit and is planning to make solar cells, electric generators and small wind turbines available soon.
(Photo: Coodo)
4. Muji (Japan)
Several big corporations typically known for other products have ventured into housing construction, among them Ikea and Toyota. One company to make a particularly big splash in the prefab housing market is the Japanese retail giant Muji, otherwise known for its simplistic clothing. In 2015, they revealed prototypes for three affordable micro homes, made out of wood, cork, and aluminum respectively.
Its most basic model — the Muji Hut — measures just 9m² and comes at a price of approximately 26.000€. The hut contains no toilet or kitchen so that residents rely on public facilities nearby. Unfortunately for tiny-home-lovers worldwide, the hut is only available in Japan for now, with no international release date known.
(Photo: Muji)
5. Noem (Spain)
The homes of Barcelona-based architecture firm NOEM illustrate how much creativity and individuality are achievable in modular construction. All houses consist of prefabricated wooden modules but are highly customizable, allowing the firm to realize a range of different designs and functions.
Sustainability is a key consideration in each project — in fact, the name NOEM stems from “no emissions.” All homes are built with natural materials, kept free of any toxic components like glue or paint and collect rainwater for WC use. NOEM also designs under the standards of a passive house, meaning that they apply rigorous criteria for energy efficiency, claiming that their homes have only 5% CO2 emissions compared to a traditional home.
(Photo: Noem)
6. Finch (Netherlands)
Another Dutch entry on our list. Finch from Amsterdam creates rectangular and energy-efficient modules made almost entirely from wood that can be stacked horizontally and vertically to form larger building blocks. The units are stackable up to 7 stories high and can contain a balcony and solar power on the roof if requested.
Finch is also involved in an exciting project to build floatable homes for overpopulated areas that experience flooding, such as the Philippines. They have finished the design of the “Finch Floating Home” and completed a successful crowdfunding campaign to create the first prototype, planning to build and deliver the first series of floatable homes in 2019.
(Photo: Finch)
7. New Frontier Tiny Homes (USA)
In the US, the desire for a more simplistic and sustainable way of life has become so popular that it was coined into the term “Tiny House Movement”. There even exists an American Tiny House Association.
Inspired by this movement, New Frontier Tiny Homes wanted to create a home that is efficient and luxurious at the same time. The Scandinavian-themed house comes on wheels, making it the most mobile on our list. One of the side-walls can be folded down to create a porch area and to increase the size of the floor plan. This tiny house is also highly customizable — some of the extra features can include solar panels on the roof, a mini-dishwasher, and even a hot tub.
(Photo: New Frontier Tiny Homes) | https://medium.com/blue-future-partners/our-7-favourite-modular-eco-homes-4d19a91e2bd2 | ['Blue Future Partners'] | 2020-02-07 10:15:38.785000+00:00 | ['Architecture', 'Real Estate', 'Modular Homes', 'Sustainable Living', 'Articles'] |
You Don’t Need Another New Notebook | You Don’t Need Another New Notebook
Image by the author.
A long time ago, I stopped being seduced by brand new notebooks. People who write make all kinds of financially irresponsible notebook decisions, so this is a pretty big feat.
You know what I’m talking about, right? You’re at the bookstore you Yelped while on a three-day vacation (it’s so quirky how you always manage to find a bookstore wherever you go), and you’re thinking, “Man. I already have all the books I need. A holiday or my birthday recently passed. Five people I admire gifted me books. Plus I have that best-of-list-topping-novel I FINALLY got on hold from the library. Plus there’s no room in my suitcase right now for another book. I simply can’t justify buying even one more book to read.
“But lo! What’s this? A rack of kitschy, neatly stacked BLANK books? Well, this is a horse of a different color! Wow. Look at all these journals, alluringly wrapped in Japanese-seeming cellophane. If only I had a notebook like this. But I should really save my money. I HAVE a notebook. I’ve gotta stop buying new notebooks.
“Wait. Hold the phone. Take a look at THIS specific notebook. THIS one is so UNBELIEVABLY MY EXACT AESTHETIC. I’m recently into mushroom taxonomy, and, incredibly, unbelievably, HERE is a notebook that has, ON ITS COVER, a whimsically illustrated chart of mushroom taxonomy!I mean, this has got to be a SIGN, right? Who else is this notebook FOR, if not for me?
“And besides, I think my old notebook isn’t working for me anymore. At first I wrote in it a lot, but I was taking notes for that short story about the strangers in the coffee shop, and I’m not sure I want to write that, the more I think about it. I had this different and better idea, connecting whale song to human longing. The coffee shop idea was trash. So maybe that old notebook will just be for the coffee shop idea, and this new one will be for my REAL writing ideas. The good ones. The ones that are going to start this year.
“Because I think what I really need is a fresh slate. Yeah. A fresh slate, because I’m in a rut. A new notebook is the perfect platform to declare that THIS is the first day of the rest of my life. Those old notebooks (plural because, I guess if we’re being honest, there’s also the dream journal I haven’t really done much with; and then that nature / prose book I was going to do little watercolors in) represented a past self. A WORSE self. A self who knew nothing of mushrooms and their vast mycelial networks and the true metaphorical ways of the soul. I DESERVE to start again. Let’s just check the price of this thing, shall we?
“OK. Hmm. Fifteen dollars. Well, sure, you know, fifteen dollars is kind of expensive for what is essentially just a pile of paper. But then again, I was at that horrible sandwich place last week — what was that place called? Something awful with an ampersand in the middle. Something like ‘bone & carrot.’ I don’t think that was it but something like that — and they had a sandwich that was TWENTY dollars. For a SANDWICH. And that place was popular, and so I know tons of people are buying twenty dollar sandwiches all willy nilly like it’s no big deal at all. And let’s be honest: that sandwich was pretty horrible. The bread was damp? THAT DAMP SANDWICH cost more than this BRAND NEW SPIRITUALLY SATISFYING NOTEBOOK.
“Also, I have been meaning to watch that Marie Kondo show about getting rid of all of your hats or whatever, and I imagine she’ll convince me to ‘release’ a bunch of my stuff. She will convince me that at least fifteen dollars worth of the stuff I currently own is ‘no longer serving me.’ I could probably sell that potential stuff if I really wanted to, and then I’m essentially MAKING money by buying this notebook.
“Plus, look at that bookseller. She’s gazing at me with a grimace, like she feels like I’ve been spending too long here without buying anything. And I did read half of that graphic novel about ghosts, and I decided I’m not going to buy that. It’s just not that good. The drawings are medium-good and the writing is medium-bad and altogether it doesn’t merit a purchase. I could get it at the library if I’m still thinking about it in a week. I like the idea of a ghosts graphic novel, but in practice it’s kind of a hit and a miss. But I’ll say this about that book: it makes me see how easy it really is to get a book published. Publishers will put out all kinds of crap. Most books aren’t as good as the book that I am going to begin in the notebook I hold in my hands right now.”
And then it’s settled and you go to the counter and you buy the notebook, and the bookstore is one of those places that also sells candles, so they have a really cute bag with raffia handles to put it in, and you feel no regrets for a little while about this decision to buy this notebook.
But then a week passes. The notebook is still in its painfully cute little bag that maybe has a sparrow on it or a type-written phrase like, “books are my lifeblood.” And now you’re sitting at your desk side-eyeing the bag and you’re thinking, “I guess I don’t really know about this whale songs essay after all. I mean, this notebook is just SO NICE. I don’t want to fuck it up by writing something dumb in it. Maybe I should save it? I want to make sure I get the writing that is going to go in this notebook right. I’ll just take it out of the bag. I’ll just take another look at it.”
And you take it out of the bag and you’re thinking, “Wow, it’s even prettier than I remembered. Do I dare write in this beautiful thing? Here. I’ll stick it in a drawer with all the other lovely thing I own but am not ready to use yet.” And in it goes with the cardboard box of kitsch watercolor greeting cards you got at an art market, and the as-of-yet unstamped rubber stamp of a fern, and the set of five brush pens from France that your aunt gave you as a graduation gift like twelve years ago. The new notebook becomes one in a museum of things you own that are too nice to actually use; things you should save for when they “really count.”
But then ten years pass. You still haven’t unwrapped the notebook (or the clock movement set, or the sun print paper, or the little vial of ink for a special dip pen, or the special dip pen itself). You’re not all that into mushrooms anymore, even. And you’ve started (but not finished) plenty of other, less interesting notebooks on other quests to do something new and different and exciting with your writing this time. And then you think that maybe you should just give this notebook away as a present. But who would want it? So you close the drawer and move on with your life, and you buy ever-more notebooks, and you never send off that manuscript for the book that is going to be better than the graphic novel about ghosts like you always swore you would.
You’ve made a few crucial, but understandable mistakes. Don’t despair! They’re easily fixable. As you move forward in life, simply follow the following rules about notebooks: | https://medium.com/@sophielucidojohnson/you-dont-need-another-new-notebook-d82d051ae79a | ['Sophie Lucido Johnson'] | 2021-05-07 14:12:38.924000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'Journaling', 'Self Help', 'Writing', 'Writers'] |
Themeable react native (Part 2) — Changing themes | In Part one, we created a theme with base themes and various colour themes. We were able to serve the theme through redux and use styled-components to apply the theme.
Here, we are going to use redux to change the theme of the app to bring the app full-circle.
We will make changes to the login page to allow the user to select the theme they prefer. We will add two Pickers, one for the base theme and another for the colour options.
Actions
We first set up two action creators. The first receives a base theme object and sends a dispatch of type “CHANGE BASE THEME”. The second receives a colour theme object and also fires a dispatch of type “CHANGE COLOR THEME”
Reducer
The reducer discards the current theme object in the initial state and combines the theme object in the action payload with the parts of the theme that do not change
Login
Now we need to tweak the login page to allow the user to change the theme.
We import the theme objects from the store and the two action creators as well. Using mapDispatchToProps, we can access the functions from the Login Component.
We now add two selection inputs and populate them with the base theme and colour theme options respectively. When the user taps any option, we trigger a function that invokes the relevant action creator.
Conclusion
Users love products that they can make their own. Small customizations such as colour can go a really long way | https://medium.com/vorane-studios/themeable-react-native-part-2-changing-themes-61cef67cdf23 | ['Munene Evans'] | 2021-01-18 16:12:01.806000+00:00 | ['React Native', 'Styled Components', 'React', 'Redux'] |
DOTA 2 Winner Prediction using Logistic Regression | Maligayang pagdating, ako si Nikunj (Welcome guys, I’m Nikunj). In this blog, I will be discussing about one of the most played MOBA games i.e. DOTA 2 (Defense of the Ancients). First of all, I will brief you about DOTA 2 and some basics related to the game.
The next part of the blog will be about predicting the winner of a DOTA 2 match based on the stats available in the first 5 minutes of the game using Machine Learning. I will be using Logistic Regression algorithm for the same. Let’s begin.
The Basics
Never heard about DOTA 2 before? Well don’t worry, here’s a small clip that explains the basics of the game. For those who have already played DOTA before, you may skip this part.
So, now as you already know the basics, I will just mention a couple of things which I think are important to mention before we hop into the main topic.
DOTA 2 (Defense of the Ancients) is a real time strategic game, where there are ten players in a game, five on both sides. These ten players choose a unique “hero” at the starting of the game from a pool of 119 playable heroes. Each “heroes” have their unique attributes like strength, armor, attack range with a predefined set of unique abilities. Every time a hero dies, he re-spawns after around 40–50 secs depending on the timings of the game. The role of each player in the game is different, some are “Core” players whose task is to initiate the team fights and basically carry the game, while some are “Support” players who lack ability to deal heavy damage unlike the cores and they provide assistance to the core players.
Dota 2 Mini map
DOTA 2 is a very complex game. When I say you need at least 1000 hrs of play to just learn the game, I literally mean it. During a game, player needs to focus on many things like itemization, gold, experience, enemy moves and a lot more than that. This game actually resembles to Chess, where you need to anticipate your opponent's next move and plan your moves accordingly.
Here’s a quick video of Team OG vs PSG.LGD from The International Championship 2018 Grand Final(one of my favorites) which shows how complicated DOTA can be at times. | https://medium.com/@nikegondha987/dota-2-winner-prediction-using-logistic-regression-e98a63f40e91 | ['Nikunj Gondha'] | 2020-11-13 03:57:14.360000+00:00 | ['Logistic Regression', 'Dota 2', 'Machine Learning'] |
Several writers publishing Shortform have experienced difficulty with their story being displayed… | Several writers publishing Shortform have experienced difficulty with their story being displayed in full on their profile page or in publications even though they are 150 words or less, and I am investigating why this occurs. We need to understand why Medium does not recognize the format we’re presenting. One of my Shortform Publishing stories was not displaying properly, and I don’t know why.
Writers here become very frustrated the second an issue appears with our stories. I believe it’s important for us to manage our expectations of Medium and from ourselves. When we think Medium is purposely out to get us, I think we must consider the reasoning behind our blaming. Do they really want to hurt us? Why would they waste their energy and productivity on any writer in such a manner?
For me, it is better to understand the reason for my error and correct my behavior. | https://medium.com/everything-shortform/several-writers-publishing-shortform-have-experienced-difficulty-with-their-story-being-displayed-3134654453a1 | ['Greg Prince'] | 2020-12-17 04:23:46.759000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'Mindset', 'Publishing', 'Marketing Strategies', 'Short Form'] |
Todays(25–12–2020) XAZAB Report-Happy Christmas | XAZAB Daily Report
27–12–2020
Number of Masternodes: 168
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 168,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 954,440 XAZAB
Block height: 94,115
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab
28–12–2020
Number of Masternodes: 170
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 170,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 960,060 XAZAB
Block height: 95,519
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab
31–12–2020
Number of Masternodes: 177
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 177,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 976,656 XAZAB
Block height: 99,668
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab
06–01–2021
Number of Masternodes: 192
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 192,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 1,009,932 XAZAB
Block height: 107,991
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab
11–01–2021
Number of Masternodes: 203
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 203,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 1,037,048 XAZAB
Block height: 114,768
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab
15–01–2021
Number of Masternodes: 228
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 228,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 1,057,948 XAZAB
Block height: 119,991
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab
01–02–2021
Number of Masternodes: 304
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 304,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 1,148,688 XAZAB
Block height: 142,676
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab
16–02–2021
Number of Masternodes: 321
Number of Xazab Held In Masternode: 321,000 XAZAB
Number of XAZAB in circulation: 1,230,396 XAZAB
Block height: 163,103
see XAZAB pool list here https://miningpoolstats.stream/xazab | https://medium.com/@xazab/todays-25-12-2020-xazab-report-happy-christmas-a3cf1acf1681 | [] | 2021-02-15 23:58:28.281000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Xazab'] |
In Talk with… Pacific Waves. | In Talk with… Pacific Waves.
The drummer Sebastian spoke about influences that are being introduced on the further release, how the band emerged and the passion for Brazil. Paulo Menezes Mar 5, 2019·4 min read
Sweden is responsible for export many of the greatest things in the world. I’m not referring to IKEA, but musicians. A quick list can include Abba, Avicii, The Hives, Roxette, Yngwie Malmsteen, Peter Bjorn and John, The Hellacopters, Opeth. In a world that phonographic industry is the USA and UK since the last century (and lately South Korea), the underrated Scandinavian country should be considered as the third power of the music.
Maybe, the same world that would agree with my quick list someday includes Pacific Waves in that. The prolific quartet based in Gothenburg, it’s been walking through their full-length debut against the traditional ways: writing, recording, producing, mixing all by themselves without a label behind of it, that outcome the latest single Backward / Forward released on 11 January, accompanied with a video directed by Mattias Larson.
In a year of high expectations, the drummer Sebastian spoke about influences that are being introduced on the further release, how the band emerged and the passion for Brazil.
On 10 June of 2016, the single debut Everlasting Morning came out to the public. But, when did the band started? And, would you like to present yourselves?
Actually, myself, Johan (vocals & guitar) and Simon (guitar) played together in another band. And sometimes we jammed on some ideas that we’ve had.
We talked about doing something else with those ideas because they didn’t really fit into the sound of the band that we were playing in at the time.
When that band split up we decided to form a new band with those ideas as a starting point.
Then we found Henrik who plays the bass guitar, and Pacific Waves was formed. That was at the end of 2015.
Can you tell us your main influences?
Our main influences right now are mainly older music. Mainly what we find in our parents' record collections. A lot of 60’s pop such as The Kinks, and The Beatles of course.
But we also like some modern acts, for example, Mac DeMarco and Twin Peaks.
The single Backward / Forward recalls the old city past memories. Is that a real life experience from you guys? What is the lyrics influence?
That is correct, all four of us come from small cities here in Sweden. Three of us are actually from the same city in the northern part of Sweden, Luleå. The song is about moving away from a small city to try to outrun your problems.
And since none of us still lives in a small city it’s a personal experience to some degree. Everyone can use a fresh start sometime!
How is the Swedish music scene? Do you feel that they embrace your music purposes and ambitions or it’s challenging?
I guess the Swedish music scene is alright, we produce a lot of good artists and songs for being a small country. And a lot of cities have an interesting underground/indie scene.
I guess that we consider ourselves as a group of loners in the sense that we do our thing in the periphery.
We record our music in our rehearsal space, we are not signed to a label and we don’t go to parties with other musicians and so on.
But I guess that it could be nice to be more involved in the music scene, it’s always fun to collaborate with others and meet new people.
What countries, places would you like to play someday?
We would love to come to Brazil and play! I’ve been to Brazil once and I loved it. I went to the northeastern part (Fortaleza, Jericoacoara, Pipa, Salvador, Morro de Sao Paulo) and it was beautiful. I would love to go back!
What is the purpose of Pacific Waves?
The purpose is to write songs that we would like to listen to ourselves. I think that if you try to write to please others, you can’t reach your full potential, you have to like it yourself.
Of course, we want a lot of people to listen to and enjoy our music, but we don’t do this to make a lot of money.
I would probably go crazy if I didn’t play music, it’s a great way to collaborate with others and to express yourself.
Can you talk about the plans for the future? Do you have any detail of the new record to share with us?
We will release another single called “Bagel Boy” soon, probably in a few weeks. Right now we are writing and recordings songs to our album which we hope to release later this year.
We have recorded almost 4 songs right now, so it’s pretty hard to predict what the album is gonna sound like.
But it will have a 60’s vibe to it if you compare it to our older songs!
Pacific Waves can be found on Instagram and Facebook. | https://medium.com/@paulohenriquee/in-talk-with-pacific-waves-dc43ca5f78c6 | ['Paulo Menezes'] | 2019-03-07 02:44:23.929000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Interview', 'Indie', 'Sweden', 'Rock'] |
Get SalezShark Sales Force Automation System For Your Business | What is Sales Force Automation?
Sales Force Automation (SFA) can be referred to as the process in which any software is used to automate and streamline various sales activities that primarily involves managing leads, accounts, opportunities, sales funnel, sales forecasting, inventory control, sales executives’ performance, and so on. Hence, sales force automation in CRM enables businesses to automate multiple sales activities in no time allowing their sales executives to focus more on building strong relationships with promising leads & existing customers
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How SalezShark Sales Force Automation Benefits You?
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SIGN UP FOR FREE | https://medium.com/@talha.nasim/get-salezshark-sales-force-automation-system-for-your-business-b7965480bd05 | [] | 2021-12-28 10:24:51.250000+00:00 | ['CRM'] |
Learning From My Mistakes | My Github woes started a few weeks ago, after I updated my iPhone 11 to iOS 14. I had been running the iOS 14 public betas for a few weeks prior with absolutely no issues. Naturally, as soon as Apple released the production version of iOS 14, I updated to it and deleted my public beta profile. However, I started to experience two issues that I had not previously experienced while running the public betas — my phone ran a little hotter than normal, and the battery life was substantially worse. Since my battery health/capacity still showed 100%, I decided to wipe the phone and completely reset to factory settings. The factory rest resolved both issues.
Two-factor authentication is beautiful thing. It is one of the easiest ways to keep your accounts from being compromised. For those who might not be aware, two-factor authentication is something you know (like your username and password) combined with something you either “are” (bio-metrics) or “possess” (like a YubiKey or an authentication code in an app like Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator). Once a rare feature to be offered, most services, such as GMail, iCloud, Outlook.com, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and AWS, along with most banks, Amazon, etc., now offer two-factor authentication, and Github is no exception.
However, two-factor authentication is a two-edged sword. On one hand, if implemented correctly (i.e. not using SMS (text message codes) unless you just absolutely have to, since SIM swapping is a real thing) it can keep the bad guys out of your account. On the other hand, if you don’t take the necessary precautions (i.e. back ups), you can quite easily get permanently locked out of your account. That’s what happened to me.
Before wiping my iPhone, I took the necessary steps to ensure that I would not be locked out of my iCloud account, my work related accounts, my Google account, and my Microsoft account. However, with Github, I believe that a mistake that I may have made when I switched to the iPhone 11 from my old iPhone SE, came back to haunt me. When I originally set up the SE, I made the decision to use the Google Authenticator app for my Github account. I had been using it on my previous phone, a Nextbit Robin, and it made sense to keep using the Google app. When I got my iPhone 11, I also took the necessary steps to correctly set up the Google Authenticator app on this new iPhone, and I made sure that all the accounts successfully transitioned over, including Github. However, I think I forgot to make a copy of my backup codes when making this change.
After wiping my iPhone 11 and freshly installing iOS 14, I quickly realized that I was locked out of Github. I still had the Google Authenticator app on my old iPhone SE, but those codes no longer worked. I unfortunately did not have any active sessions in any browsers, and for some reason, my connectivity to Github through Visual Studio Code was no longer working. I did find some backup codes, which I had saved and stored in an AES 256 bit encrypted .zip file. However, none of those codes worked. This means that they were probably the backup codes originally generated when I originally set up two-factor back when I switched to the iPhone SE. After a few emails with Github support, I realized that there was nothing that can be done. That was that. They offered to remove my email address from that Github account, but there was nothing that they could do on their end. The Art Directed Journal is no more. Well, it’s still there, but will certainly never be contributed to again.
Lessons Learned
Always have a backup, and don’t skip steps.
If I had made sure that I had the right backup codes for my Github account before wiping my phone, this would never have been an issue. I thought that I had them, but they turned out to be the wrong ones. I will not make this mistake again.
Nothing is Permanent
When it’s time to move on, it’s time to move on. All good things eventually come to an end. I may rebuild it later, but right now I have no appetite to do so.
Maybe I should do better about abiding by an Amish approach to technology.
My internet friend Patrick Rhone abides by an “Amish approach to technology”. I try to do the same. My daily driver laptop runs a long term support version of Ubuntu. I don’t download every new app or try every new service that comes along. I generally stick with what is tried and true, as long as what is tried and true continues to get the job done. I had made a stout resolution not to upgrade to iOS 14, and even though the betas were stable (I only installed the public beta profile well into the public beta process — I think it was like beta 5), the production version burned me for some reason. Lesson learned.
What Now?
I created another Github account, and contemplated setting up everything again, just as it was, just with a new Github account and URL. I also contemplated setting up a more “traditional” blog using Github pages with Jekyll. Since you are here reading this, you’ll know that I decided upon Medium. I did this for a few reasons:
There is already a huge built-in reader base.
While they have a pay wall model, I can write as much as I want to and make my content free if I want to. (This is just a hobby. I’m not trying to monetize right now, but it gives me the option should I want to in the future.)
I can export my content and take it with me if I ever want to leave.
The UI is nice. There is a nice iPhone app, and posting is basically friction-less. I plan to start writing more, but time and convenience were the main contributing factors in why I did not post more to the old blog.
Medium provides a great platform that solves these problems.
More to come in future posts. | https://medium.com/swlh/learning-from-my-mistakes-342d38c856b3 | ['Steve Best'] | 2020-10-07 20:00:28.956000+00:00 | ['Github Pages', 'Security', 'Learning From Mistakes', 'iOS', 'Multi Factor Auth'] |
Learn The 9 Acts Of The Wise To Reign Your Destiny | 1. TRUTH — See the world as it is.
Philosophy — The universe exists as it is. Every phoneme exists neutrally. Everything is neutral until you perceive them with the 5 senses and label in light of your mental programming. Everyone has a different meaning and perceive the same object in a different way. Something that makes you angry may not make another person feel the same. Your mental programming is the source of your responses to external stimuli.
Truth is the non-changeable reality of the existence in the cosmos, while the reality is a personal perception of the Truth.
Actions
Never ever make assumptions. Instead, ask to learn more.
Listen to various ideas and points of views before making a final decision
Be ready to challenge what you know in light of new facts and pieces of evidence
Listen to your heart as the mind cannot discern the Truth at all times.
2. REALITY
Philosophy — Now that you are aware of how mental programming creates your meaning, it will not be early to say that there is one ABSOLUTE REALITY, called the Truth, and our perceptions create our personal reality.
Actions
Accept and embrace the differences and diversity in life
Listen to and learn from different people from different cultures to expand your consciousness
Travel the world to leave your comfort zones
Have a positive doubt to challenge everything you think you know.
Never ever accept dogma and bigotry
Read philosophy to stretch your mental limits
3. GOOD JUDGMENT
Philosophy — The existence of duality and rhythm force everything in the cosmos to change and evolve — everything changes. Nothing stays the same. The mind labels external stimuli coming from situations and people around us and make a judgment to determine a course of action. Judgment is vital to take action because you want to survive. Survival is about being successful against resistance and obstacles. Even the animals make decisions to survive, but humans take into account values, ethics, and virtues when making decisions because that is what makes us a true human.
Actions
Never ever judge anyone with your strong emotions. Look at things from multiple perspectives
Try to understand the process behind what happened. See the cause and effect instead of judging
Never generalize. People change. Situations change. Life cannot be formulated with a list of controllable factors
Ask probing questions in a compassionate way to unveil the truth behind the veils of reality
Even when you find an answer you do not like, accept it with compassion
Accept the existence of good and evil, right and wrong in the world, and do not get stuck with what you see. What you see may not be the hidden Truth
4. RIGHT DECISION
Philosophy — A decision is an idea or a strategy to take action. It is the seed of action.
Actions
Find out the things that fall within your span of control and the ones inside your span of influence. Focus on the first one
Define what is urgent and important
Prioritize
Know your values and decide accordingly
Always strive to do the right thing. Never compromise
Know your goals and targets. Develop a mission, vision, and values list
Evaluate your resources and reprioritize if needed
Never make fast decisions in times of major changes
If you get stuck among conflicting priorities, make sure you refer to your heart
Develop a contingency plan
5. RIGHT ACTION
Philosophy — The principle of cause & effect in the cosmos requires action to any stimuli. Action requires a brave step to realize an action. It is the flower of a decision.
Actions
Know your limits as well as your strengths.
Act with the courage to realize your plans and dreams.
Manage your strong emotions
Remember that everyone fears but the brave are the ones who control their fears
Do not rely solely on strength and power. Blend power and compassion like a bird using the two wings to fly
6. RIGHT EXECUTION
Philosophy — You need to know how to surf the harsh waters of life to steer towards your destination. It requires a strategy and a tactical plan with the right leaders and followers in charge, ready to do whatever it takes to succeed while doing the right thing at all times.
Actions
Translate goals into S.M.A.R.T. deliverables and align with any stakeholders with mutual consent and consensus
Make sure you have a plan showing the resources, milestones, and deliverables
Develop a sensitivity analysis of your plan to cope with changing factors.
Establish a work-life balance to keep your mind calm and serene
Trust the process and the people
Empower and delegate so that you can have time to monitor and steer
Let mistakes happen but learn from them to avoid future mistakes
Have common problem-solving tools in your toolkit
7. SUSTAINABILITY
Philosophy — nothing lasts forever in the world, and every action is subject to many tests. The spirit of time will call for change, and you have to be ready to adapt.
Actions
Spend time every day to learn by reading, watching podcasts and etc.
Have a coach and a mentor
Surround yourself with people who will speak the Truth at your face no matter how angry you may get
Surround yourself with people better than you. Learn from them,
Establish a speaking culture where the idea of everyone counts and is rewarded
Learn from your mistakes and integrate lessons learned to your actions
Benchmark the best around you and adapt
Watch the trends
boost innovation by setting the minds free and empowering others
Let people make mistakes and learn from them.
Let people be extraordinary
Communicate the vision, mission, and value frequently and have champions around you who will carry the flag without you.
invest in human capital and train them to be ready
develop agility
Establish great systems and procedures but be flexible to change them as well
8. ADAPTABILITY
Philosophy — Adaptability is the ability to make rapid changes in our course. It is beyond sustainability. Lack of adaptability was the reason why Titanic hit the iceberg and sunk
Actions
Create self-reliant teams and organizations in your company
Train yourself every day
Have rituals to remind you of your vision, mission, values, personality, strengths, weaknesses, pains, and improvement actions.
Focus on evolution not revolution
Be ready for the ambiguity.
9. HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSE
Philosophy — Life is bigger than all of us. We make plans, and God laughs at that. We cannot plan for things in life, no matter how perfect we thought our strategy was. Earthquakes, cosmic events, economic shocks, pandemics, and more are only a few examples from a long list of things that may happen beyond our control. No matter how good a system, people will always find new ways to penetrate through just like water infiltrating through the cracks and blowing the rocks.
Actions
Develop SQ — spiritual quotient. Know the meaning of life and cosmos so that you can embrace and accept the unexpected
Remember the one that makes plans beyond all worldly plans.
Have faith in life. It will show you the way.
Believe that there is always a better version of you, and whatever is happening is to help you reach it.
Have faith in divine justice. It is there and works in miraculous ways beyond human understanding.
Be with the flow and stop trying to control everything. Plan less, live more.
Know and act by your values and virtue.
Follow those, and you will attract happiness and success to your life.
Cheers,
Kenan | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/learn-the-9-acts-of-the-wise-to-reign-your-destiny-b25d1e9807bb | ['Kenan Kolday'] | 2020-09-30 02:15:44.742000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Spirituality', 'Personal Development', 'Leadership'] |
We’re Looking at Putin’s Russia Wrong | The American narrative on Russia has rarely been one of cooperation and friendship. Especially recently, though, attitudes have shifted towards competition and global power politics on a new level. Among academic, public, and political spheres, it seems a near consensus has been reached that Russia’s posture towards the United States and its interference in US elections seeks at best to challenge the United States’ place in the world, and at worst to engage in a new cold war. Even as concerns about Russia seem to take a back seat to those about China, it remains clear that America perceives Russia as an adversary.
A Gallup News poll in February of 2019 found that “a record high 73% of Americans view Russia unfavorably and 32% say it is the United States’ greatest enemy” (Gallup News). Furthermore, Washington Post Columnist Katrina Heuvel is one of many voices in the foreign policy analysis community who feel that “The United States and Russia are now locked in a new cold war that represents a grave danger to humanity” (Heuvel). Within the US Government, policy towards Russia has remained relatively constant since the Cold War, and has consistently failed to establish a solid US-Russian relationship. As Council on Foreign Relations fellow and regional Russia expert Thomas Graham wrote in his recent Foreign Affairs piece, “since the end of the Cold War, every US president has come into office promising to build better relations with Russia — and each one has watched that vision evaporate” (Graham).
While prior to 1991, the US-USSR conflict was certainly more pronounced than that between the US and the Russian Federation today, many of the same attitudes exist that Russia is a scheming global power seeking hegemonic dominance. These perceptions have been fueled by a number of recent flashpoints: the 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, the disinformation campaign run by the Kremlin in 2016, and allegations of the Russian government paying bounties to the Taliban for the killing of US soldiers.
The foreign policy practices of Putin are undoubtedly problematic for threatening sovereignty and expanding illiberalism, however, they must be understood for what they are, and the temptation to misinterpret them must be resisted. Putin does not seek the creation of a new Soviet Union, rather, his goal is to re-assert Russia’s international position as one of strength, leadership, and respect. He is well known for viewing the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the century” which had caused “tens of millions of […][Russian] citizens and countrymen […][to find] themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory”(Putin). This is the central narrative for Putin’s policy.
And it is this central narrative that is widely misinterpreted in the west, and especially in the United States. The annexation of Crimea was seen in the west as an aggressive move of expansionism, while in Russia, its intention, at least as was the governmental narrative, was to repatriate Russians into Russia. The election interference, too, has been described as a “foreign policy coup” by credible policy analysts like Center for European Policy Analysis president Alina Polyakova.
Putin’s goal is not only to re-assert Russian strength, as he has shown with moves like annexation, but also to respond to what he perceives as threats to Russia from the United States and its NATO allies. The motive of Russian interference in foreign elections is, as Russian-American writer Anna Arutunyan has stated, “a series of uncoordinated and often opportunistic responses to a paranoid belief that Russia is under attack from the United States and must do everything it can do to defend itself. Every single thing that Russia stands accused of doing in the United States from 2016 onward it has previously accused the United States of doing” (Arutunyan).
So, then, if Russia is not trying to destroy the United States’ democracy and eliminate the liberal democratic model from the world, what is an appropriate posture for the US to take towards Russia?
Firstly, the view of Russia as a nation misled by Putin away from democracy and liberalism; one that could be guided back on the right track and integrated into the liberal world order with the right delicate US approach is a flawed one. It is flawed because, as Thomas Graham writes, the hope for the right US strategy to bring liberal democracy to Russia fails to see that nothing the United States can do will change “Russia’s sense of its own interests and basic worldview” (Graham). US Russian policy consistently fails to bring about changes in the Russian model because US attempts to encourage those shifts only serve to fuel the narrative of Putin the strongman, resistant to encroachment from the west. Instead, the United States should work to promote democracy, human rights, and transparency in Eastern Bloc nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Belarus, all of whom have motivated democratic activists and opportunities for democratic futures; the US should further seek grounds of cooperation with Russia as an essential partner in many realms, including technological development, nuclear proliferation, trade and transportation, and regional security concerns, all while continuing to denounce practices such as the targeting of journalists and political opponents by Moscow.
The main action step for Washington is not only policy revision. At the end of the day, the first step needs to be a fundamental reframing of the way US policy addresses Russia in order to more assuredly counter its harmful actions, but more importantly, develop for the first time a truly stable, strong, and resilient relationship that, despite ideological differences, can work towards solutions for many of the world’s most pressing issues.
Bibliography
Arutunyan, Anna. There Is No Russian Plot Against America. 7 Aug. 2020, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-08-05/there-no-russian-plot-against-america.
Gallup News. A Record High 73% of Americans View Russia Unfavorably and 32% Say It Is the United States’ Greatest Enemy. Https://T.co/snr0eN7zzp Pic.twitter.com/xtwuv0asDs. 27 Feb. 2019, twitter.com/GallupNews/status/1100785145811030016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1100785145811030016%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3.
Graham, Thomas. Let Russia Be Russia. 23 Nov. 2019, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2019-10-15/let-russia-be-russia.
Heuvel, Katrina vanden. “Opinion | From the Hope of 1989 to a New Cold War.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 12 Nov. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/12/hope-new-cold-war/
Putin: Soviet collapse a ‘genuine tragedy’. (2005, April 25). Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057
Polyakova, Alina. The Kremlin’s Plot Against Democracy. 11 Sept. 2020, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2020-08-11/putin-kremlins-plot-against-democracy
Image: Zemlianichenko, Alexander. 2019, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/12/analysts-discuss-the-20-year-rule-of-vladimir-putin/. Accessed 2019. | https://medium.com/@roberthansell/were-looking-at-putin-s-russia-wrong-41260ec649e7 | ['Robert Hansell'] | 2020-11-23 22:28:33.684000+00:00 | ['Putin', 'Foreign Policy', 'Russia', 'Election 2020'] |
General Manager A.J. Preller discusses Padres’ progress, spring training | General Manager A.J. Preller discusses Padres’ progress, spring training
Padres GM A.J. Preller
Padres General Manager A.J. Preller met with the media Thursday for the first time during spring training:
His thoughts on some points:
— On his first impressions of the Padres’ camp: “We’re excited about the group we have. Conversations about the roster pick up as we get closer to the end of spring training. Just seeing guys come into camp in shape and ready to go, attitude-wise it has been very positive. You always want to get through this part of camp without any health questions. Some of the guys coming back from injuries have looked good and ready to go.
“This time of the year is always a ton of fun. All the scouts and coaches are here. We’ve put so much prep work into the off-season. Seeing it on the field is the most exciting part. We spent the last three or four years, knowing the build was to get us to this season with a base that we think is going to help us move up the standings. Going along with the fans base . . . it’s pretty exciting.”
— On Padres goals: “We’ll look forward to the team having better results in the standings. We want to win. We’ve been working the last three or four seasons for a reason . . . to win at the Major League level. The goal over the past few years was to get to a point where competition reaches a point where we look up and we have Major League caliber players at Triple-A. We’re definitely getting closer to that. We’re not all the way there. That’s what good teams have. As we move up the standings, we hope that’s a sign that we’re getting better.”
— On manager Jayce Tingler: “He’s very comfortable on the field, very comfortable interacting with our players. Behind the scenes, he’s done a lot of prep work the last few months. He’s built a lot of relationships with the guys already. I’m excited to see the new staff come together and see Jayce continue to do his thing on the field with those guys. Tingler is at the park very early every day. He’s a guy I have a ton of respect for and love being around. It’s been a lot of fun the past few months getting back with him. Most importantly, he’s done a good job.”
— On Associate Manager Skip Schumaker: “He brings a lot. He’s not that far removed from being in the clubhouse as an active member of our roster. In the last few years, he’s had the ability to do a lot of different roles in the organization. He’s seen the minor leagues. He has great relationships with the guys in the minor leagues and the front office. Again, he has a lot of knowledge and content for Jayce as an extension of Jayce. Skip is seen as a future manager. It’s a really good deal for Jayce to lean on him.”
— On the coaching staff as a whole: “All staffs, you want to have a blend of experience and guys who bring a lot of different areas of expertise to the group. We have former managers in there who can help, guys who just came off the field, some guys who have been around the organization and know our players really well. All those things. The manager gets a lot of the attention, but it’s the coaching staff along with the manager. Great coaches around the game impact players as much as any manager at times.”
— On outfielder Tommy Pham: “A lot of it is what he brings to the table on the field, part of it is coming from a winning program. He had to fight his way to get to the big leagues and got there at a little later stage in his career. He appreciates the work that went into getting him to the big leagues. He’s seen winning with the Cardinals and last year and a half with the Rays. That’s a nice element to add to the group we have.”
— On right-handed starter Dinelson Lamet: “We’re going to let him pitch. We expect him to pitch every five days.”
— On left-handed pitching prospect MacKenzie Gore: “Give credit to MacKenzie. He’s a very mature young pitcher. He was that way when we were scouting him before the draft. He has a lot of ability and a lot of talent. He’s the first to tell you he has a lot to learn and a lot in front of him. The challenge is for him to get better and he’s the guy who challenges himself the most.” | https://padres.mlblogs.com/general-manager-a-j-preller-discusses-padres-progress-spring-training-e177be3440ea | [] | 2020-02-20 20:43:00.869000+00:00 | ['Major League Baseball', 'AJ Preller', 'MLB', 'Spring Training', 'San Diego Padres'] |
5 reasons to consider your organisation’s enterprise risk management (ERM) approach — YakTrak | As we’ve seen this year businesses need to be ready for the unexpected. COVID-19 has shown how organisations can be vulnerable to external threats, and, perhaps more importantly, how an organisation’s ability to respond to changed circumstances can mean survival. The businesses that have been able to swiftly shift operational models, ‘pivot’, or even reinvent their business strategy have been better placed to withstand the impacts of the pandemic.
While a tactical reinvention or pivot might be the best response, it’s not always easy to implement. The ability to be agile requires planning and preparation. Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a process that can help businesses make plans for a range of future events and risks.
ERM takes a holistic look at risks and allows organisations to identify, assess and prepare for events that can impact a range of business operations and strategies.
ERM looks at all types of potential threats and dangers, from the internal through to external and physical factors. Once a risk is assessed businesses can then look at what they need to do to prepare for those future risks and threats.
Prepare for the unexpected
If there’s one thing that 2020’s shown us, it’s that businesses need to be prepared for the unexpected. This year we’ve seen the impacts of external factors like enforced lockdowns and changes to consumer behaviour, and the ways businesses can be forced to quickly enact plans to mitigate, transfer or tolerate a wide range of risks. While the global pandemic meant that workforces quickly shifted to remote working, the impacts were felt across all areas of organisations:
* Financial — e.g. loss of revenue or a need to unexpectedly finance investment in new technology or operating models
* Strategic — e.g. the inability to progress growth, expansion and workforce plans
* Operational — e.g. reinvention of workforce, logistical and supply models that were impacted by lockdowns
* Environmental — e.g. changes to demand, customer expectations and competition
* Reputational — e.g. ability to meet customers’ changed circumstances and not be seen to capitalise on events
* Human resources — e.g. management of outputs, behaviours and performance objectives with a workforce at home
* Technological — e.g. while the ‘zoom-bombs’ by kids and pets were generally warmly received, hacks and security threats involved with a workforce at home needed to be taken seriously.
Be able to respond to regulatory requirements
Kenneth Hayne delivered his final report into the banking royal commission in 2019. The report listed 76 recommendations with an estimated $10 billion expected to be returned to customers in compensation. Businesses, especially those in highly regulated industries, are now addressing the need for increased governance and compliance.
While legal and regulatory requirements are changing constantly, businesses exposed to reputational and conduct risk need to be able to quickly respond. By being in a position to appropriately respond to conduct risks and conduct breaches, with monitoring systems in place to detect breaches, businesses in highly regulated industries will be better positioned to manage and mitigate risk. With legislation still being introduced, businesses that have set up risk monitoring systems and processes will be well positioned for future changes.
Improve your business’s strategic decision making
Businesses grow and thrive when strategic-decision making is holistic. ERM can also become a tool for strategic decision-making, because risk is being assessed through the lens of strategy. The process of looking at the internal and external elements of your business strategy with an eye for risk management means you’ll be able to develop plans that focus on current state, future state and potential threats.
Assess your business’s appetite for risk
21st century businesses are being defined by entrepreneurs who are disrupting traditional business models. Taking risks is inherent to some of these businesses, however not all organisations know how much risk they are able to tolerate. Strategic risks can improve growth outcomes, and an ERM process can help to work out where a business’s line is.
Competitive edge
ERM can provide businesses with a competitive edge, by helping businesses:
* Improve decision making
* Prepare for external events outside of a business’s control — businesses with plans in place are more likely to be able to reinvent their operating models
* Manage risks that can impact reputation or draw the attention of regulators.
YakTrak’s software system provides modules for people development, quality assurance, and conduct risk, as well as provision for data leakage protection. Customised dashboards and reporting provides improved visibility across individual, team and company performance.
Developing an ongoing enterprise risk management (ERM) system and using YakTrak to provide support for your people management and conduct risk activities can provide robust insurance against the unexpected.
Read more about how we can support your enterprise risk management initiatives. | https://medium.com/yaktrak/5-reasons-to-consider-your-organisations-enterprise-risk-management-erm-approach-yaktrak-1b6befa819dd | ['Brad Thomas'] | 2020-12-16 00:30:13.570000+00:00 | ['Employee Engagement', 'Erm', 'Employee Coaching', 'Compliance', 'Conduct Risk'] |
Organizational Agility: Why is it so important? | Organizational Agility: Why is it so important?
Photo by Murilo Viviani on Unsplash
Recently, innovation and business model reconfiguration are well-known concepts. As we know, when we are talking about an organization that was born based on digital assets and digital processes it’s easier to put these topics in place, but for most organizations operating for a long time, and they make up most of the market, it is not so simple.
One of the main challenges for solid companies is how to manage their capabilities to keep their business rhythm while adapting themselves or integrating into new business models. Keep in mind that traditional model companies pay the bills until new models become feasible and profitable.
When we attend a dozen talks, read strategy books, or even review business cases, everything seems to be effortless and it looks like an act of courage and willingness, but believe me, it is not.
The fact is that successful companies in this approach developed something called Organizational Ambidextry, which are nothing more than, are their abilities to explore their current business model and exploit new paths for the business alongside. Developing this ability is not simple, losing business focus and scarce resources, and even the strong cultural impact are some of the risks.
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
However, in a very challenging business scene, these abilities show how agile the organizations are in terms of adjusting and keeping in the high incipient and dynamic market. The buzzword “Organizational Agility” defines these capabilities as “keep playing the game” when the rules changes or “new players” get in, and the rules are ever-changing and faster.
A 5-year strategic plan probably will not be feasible at the end of the first execution, so it is better to develop the abilities adjusting and adapting it than plan something that we want.
The concept is not new and a lot of studies have already deep-dived and identified how it affects the Advantage Competitiveness and Performance for modern companies. In the past Harvard Business Review, in 2004, Tushman and O'Reilly III compared the company's performance with these abilities, and it turned out that 90% of them are better assertive in their objectives.
And then? Is your Organization Agile enough to survive in this dynamic new world? | https://medium.com/digitalforbusiness/organizational-agility-why-is-it-so-important-872c1ead4ad4 | ['Adriano L. Candido'] | 2021-01-06 15:44:28.118000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Digital Transformation', 'Organizational Ambidextry', 'Organizational Agility'] |
The Blinking House of Sycamore Street | pexels.com
Blink, Blink, Blink. Always three blinks of the attic light. Always three blinks at 3 a.m. never seen by the sleeping people on Sycamore Street.
If the people on Sycamore Street had seen the light, they would have just thought it was a weird quirk of the old house. The people of Sycamore Street always looked askance at the old house. Even the neighborhood bully, Reggie, who claimed to not be afraid of anything, quickened his steps as he walked past the house.
The old house, with its soulful windows and gaping doorway, had been empty as long as most of the residents could remember. This made the house sad and lonely. The house was so lonely it wished it had a spirit to keep it company. Unfortunately, no one had ever died within his walls, so that was just wishful thinking. At times, the thought of taking the life of one of the drifters that sometimes spent the night curled up in the corner of his basement flitted through his mind, but he could never do that. A live person would bring much more sustenance to his soul. Besides, that would be wrong and having someone curled up next to him to get warm brought warmth to his walls.
One day, a family showed up to look him over. They walked from room to room as the realtor told all his secrets.
“You can see the floors and walls need some attention. Also, there are some windows that have cracked. Of course, the picture window up front is in one piece. I understand if you want to replace it, though. The etchings are a little disturbing,” she shuddered.
She also said good things about him, so he withheld judgment.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” said the man who the realtor called Mr. Stein.
“Are you certain, Winston?” asked his wife, Muriel.
pexels.com
“Certainly. I think that with a little work, this will be a good place to raise Millie and a good place for me to write. I need a quiet place like this to finish my first book. You know I edit by reading aloud,” he winked.
The house was disappointed when they left, but he grew hopeful when the workmen showed up to refurbish his floors and rewire his electricity. They even rehung the antique door next to his picture window with the etched glass. It was wonderful how youthful the old house began to feel.
In a month, all the work was done, and the young family moved in. The house enjoyed so much love and laughter for many years until things slowly began to change.
The first change was Millie. She had grown and gone off to college, only returning for short visits. After a few years, the visits became less often. Winston wrote about Millie going off to college and getting a career in the big city. None of that made sense to the old house. All he knew was he missed the sound of her happy, little feet running on his floors.
As the years passed, the house grew used to Millie visiting only occasionally. Later, she would visit with her new husband. Later still, they would bring their son, and the house once again rang with the sound of a child’s feet. The old house relished those days when the little family visited but was otherwise content with the love that Winston and Muriel used to fill his rooms.
“Winston, I’m so glad you chose this house. It has served us well all these years,” yawned Muriel. “I know you want to write, so I will see you later.”
pexels.com
One day, Winston began to write about Muriel being sick. The house wasn’t certain what that meant, but he could tell by Winston’s tears that it was something bad. The house wished that it had tears to cry with Winston.
“Why, Muriel? Why do you have to leave me?” sobbed Winston. “What will I do without you to love?”
The day came that Millie arrived. There were no happy feet that day. All the feet were somber, even the littlest ones. A week and many tears later and new somber feet came to carry Muriel away.
After Millie and her family left, Winston walked in the study and sighed, “I guess it’s just you and me, old house. What do we do now?”
The house didn’t know how to answer that, but he was glad that Winston seemed to figure it out. The house missed Muriel, but Winston kept the old house company and continued to read his writing to him.
Winston grew quiet as the years passed by. Millie and her family got busy and came around less often. It was just Winston, the house, and the clacking of the keyboard most days. The only interruption was the weekly grocery delivery. Winston didn’t leave the house anymore, and that was fine. The house enjoyed his company.
The one thing the house didn’t care for was that, with no one around to complain, Winston began to smoke more, and he began to smoke in the house. The house didn’t like the smell or the yellowed walls, but what he really didn’t like was when Winston began to cough. They were long, deep coughs that sounded as though they would tear Winston apart. There were days the house thought it would be torn apart by the sound alone.
“Muriel, I miss you so much, and I’m growing sick. I know that I will see you soon. I hope you waited for me, “said Winston into the emptiness of his study.
Winston didn’t have time to finish his last book before he felt the need to reunite with Muriel.
One day the somber feet returned. This time, they carried Winston away.
pixabay.com
Millie came to empty the house of the family’s belongings, but the house wasn’t sad. The family’s love had permeated his walls.
Besides, how could he be sad? The spirits of Winston and Muriel assured the old house they would never leave him. He would never have to be alone again.
Through it all, his attic light blinked three times every morning at three o’clock, and it continues until this very day. Blink, Blink, Blink. | https://pauladotsonfrew.medium.com/the-blinking-house-of-sycamore-street-6fe0376430d4 | ['Paula Dotson Frew'] | 2019-03-28 01:05:43.141000+00:00 | ['House', 'Family', 'Fiction', 'Love', 'Writer'] |
Visual Studio Code & C programming on Linux | I have been playing with Visual Studio Code(VSCode) to develop C code on Linux. Lately, I have became a fan of Visual Studio Code which I believe is a great free product from Microsoft for developers in a long time.
I will show how to setup a Visual Studio Code on Linux CentOS and setup debugging C programming so that developers can step through the breakpoints in code. Please keep in mind that support for C/C++ on Visual Studio Code(VSCode) is still in preview so some things might not work as expected. The VSCode team is working hard to weed out some of the issues and release new features.
Disclaimer: I am not part of the Visual Studio Code team at the time of this writing.
Installing VSCode on CentOS
Microsoft has fallen in love with Linux since May 2015. That strategy helps them attract and become more developer friendly organization. That’s why the VSCode is available across Linux, macOS and Windows environments.
The details and most up-to-date steps are described here https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux. I will show you a quick start guide for CentOS.
Open terminal instance and run following two commands:
sudo rpm --import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[code]
name=Visual Studio Code
baseurl=https://packages.microsoft.com/yumrepos/vscode
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc" > /etc/yum.repos.d/vscode.repo'
Update the package and install the VSCode:
yum check-update
sudo yum install code
Installing VSCode was easy…
Installing C/C++ Extensions
VSCode needs special extension to provide rich code editing options for C. The extension is developed by Microsoft. Click on Extensions icon on the sidebar and search for “c”. The first search result, “c/c++” by Microsoft is the popular extension I used. Install it. | https://medium.com/@tarangnpatel/visual-studio-code-c-programming-on-linux-c990b9705314 | ['Tarang Patel'] | 2019-08-09 15:36:34.653000+00:00 | ['Visual Studio Code', 'Centos', 'C Programming', 'Debugging', 'Linux'] |
Forms are Empty, Emptiness is Form | This essay is about one of the most disconcerting, and possibly debilitating, meditative experiences that occurs while meditating, and it is almost a sure thing that you will find yourself suddenly and directly experiencing the lack of a real self in anything — if you seriously meditate long enough, both in frequency and duration.
Boy looking at Xmas toys in shop window, public domain. Creator: Bain News Service. Courtesy of US Library of Congress.
In a non-secular setting in which the teacher has no exposure to this advanced meditative experience, you may find yourself unsupported and abandoned — neither knowing how to make sense of the experience, nor how to move forward in your life. Stopping your meditation permanently may even make it worse in such a non-secular context.
In a spiritual setting, such as that of Buddhism in a traditional context, you are not vulnerable in that way — having access to competent teachers and millennia of accumulated experience with such advanced meditative experiences.
The purpose of this essay, however, is not to teach you anything about Emptiness — the Buddhist concept of the universal absence of any intrinsic self — it is simply a pointing out of the source of our common misunderstanding about this direct meditative experience, and the misuse, and misapplication of the derived concept.
Children quickly learn that they have a mind. This is the name that we give to the source from which, and the venue in which, our thoughts occur. Later, children learn that this mind is where perceptions and feelings occur too. And they begin to call it “my self.”
When the self is seen to have no place, no identity, and no enduring qualities at all, this mind is sometimes elevated to “Mind,” in order to escape the orphanage of parentless thought, and the error of a “greater Self” occurs.
Because if the self has no true reality, how can it be a place or thing from which, and in which, thoughts, perceptions, and feelings occur? Yet even though we may understand this intellectually, we still call it mind, or Mind, because our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto — we simply cannot understand what we cannot grasp (hold of), so even just a name suffices. And so, we keep referring to mind (or Mind) as if it is some thing, tenaciously holding onto it.
Similarly, when all things are seen to lack an intrinsic reality, we say they are empty of, or lack, an intrinsic self as well.
It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?” The Buddha replied, “Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty.¹
Unfortunately, we call this lack of a self: “emptiness,” because (again) the discerning faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto, even if it is only a name.
— Because an absence named is just such a positive thing.
Look closely at this. We notice that something we thought was there, is not there, and rather than say nothing, or like the Buddha, just say it is not there, we ‘extract’ this quality of being absent from the thing (neither of which is truly possible²) and make it a thing-in-itself, marking this ‘fact’ with a word that ends in “ness.” Our faculty of reason then has something positive to think about — “Emptiness.”
Yet even though there is no mind, your thoughts, perceptions, and feelings still occur. We can call their occurrence whatever we like — we can still call it mind, as many do — but we should realize we are no longer talking about a thing or a place, but rather, just activity.
An activity is understood to not have a self, as verbs are not considered to be nouns or names. Even so, we are taught early in life that all actions have an actor that is responsible for them, because we need to place our praise or blame on someone for everything that occurs.
Pay attention here, because this error carries over into our predilection to over-think the lack of an intrinsic self by applying it to activities that occur, saying that they too are empty of an intrinsic self, as we do in the case of all our phenomenal experiences. But, (and in the vernacular): Duh! Even in a physicalist understanding of reality, actions do not have an intrinsic self. Instead, they have an actor that is the cause of the activity.
But we’ve already done away with that erroneous construction, once we realized that there is nothing with an intrinsic self, Right?
Our faculty of reason is well-trained to always hold an actor responsible for activities that occur. But there is no actor, no ground, no nature, no source. That’s what the insight of “no intrinsic self” reminds us of, and that is all it means.
Yet our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto, and “Emptiness” (the concept) is like a super weapon obliterating everything in its path. Besides we’re kids and love our toys, so “Emptiness” becomes, not just the destroyer of all things (“thinghood” actually), but the source of all things too.
What? The absence of something is not the presence of something else. “Emptiness” is a place-holder for what we used to assume was there, but isn’t, and nothing more.
But notice that thoughts, feelings, and perceptions still occur. Amazing. It is as if words have no sway over them!
This activity (thoughts arising, feelings manifesting, and perceptions arriving) should be called something other than “Emptiness” though, because that word marks the absence of an intrinsic self, not the presence of activity. It is called “suchness” by some in order to mark this presencing (arising, manifesting, arriving, appearing, showing up, etc.) of these things, thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. But “suchness” is a noun, and specifically one created by abstracting some aspect or characteristic from something (it’s the “ness” suffix that gives that away again). It therefore still suffers from our habit of needing to point our fingers at things — even if they aren’t there!
If we are attentive, we quickly realize that there is no mind-thing, no perceiver-thing, and no other-things, yet even so, we still call these occurrences mind, although technically they should be called “minding.” I prefer to use the verb “naturing” myself, to indicate nature in an active sense, much like Spinoza’s natura naturans (but dropping the “nature” thing because there is nothing with an intrinsic self). But most people just stare blankly at me when I do that.
All too many fall into the trap of immediately forgetting what they recently knew, and see suchness as some thing(s), and reactively apply their secret weapon, Emptiness, to suchness, in order to make the things go away. But there are no things, and no need to bring out the big gun anymore. Our old habits of mentation are leading us astray.
Suchness has no positive source, nor even an absence of source. There is no ground, no place, and no time for suchness, and no need for any of that. There is no emptiness for suchness either, because it doesn’t apply — doing so is a “category error” in philosophical parlance.
This groundless, baseless, reality,
Just left alone, is utterly awesome;
This unmoving pure presence,
With no destination, is utterly awesome;
This immediately available awareness of the now,
Irrepressible, is utterly awesome.³
It’s unfortunate that we had to make a noun out of this activity, calling it “Suchness,” just because our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto, and something to blame. Since suchness — or naturing as I like to say because that’s a verb, not a noun — is not a thing, and not even a collection of things — it can only be activity — which is more truly called presencing. Remember what was done here.
Where would “it” occur? Where does that which shows up appear? When we talk about the “space-like” expanse of appearances, we are not affirming the existence of Space. Go sit by a Buddhist Stupa and learn the lesson it presents in the form of the Bindu-Nada that is placed atop it.
The Bindu is the non-dimensional point from which all appearances manifest. Note its specific denial of spatial characteristics (non-dimensionality) — it isn’t anything at all. The Nada, the vibrations, or reverberations, are the appearances emanating from that non-manifest point. I call it an event horizon. You can say what you will about the appearances, but say nothing about how they show up. But how could you possibly know?
So please note that Emptiness is not Suchness, and is not the nature of anything — because then suchness wouldn’t be empty of an intrinsic self. We can say it is the essence of Suchness, elevating the absence of what we thought was there in the appearances to the stature of the absolute source of all, but that is just overkill and so wrong. It’s useful for a while, but it has the nasty effect of retarding our progress.
Know that pointing out appearances as mind and mind’s nature as emptiness (thus making the duality of appearances and emptiness into a unity) is not the method of Nyingtik pith instruction. Such instruction may be given occasionally, but only as a provisional means to elevate the mind of an individual initiate, certainly not as a definitive truth.⁴ Neither existence nor nonexistence nor space-time is to be found here. Appearances and emptiness are indistinguishable, so that neither eternity nor the void are anywhere perceptible.⁵
Suchness is the presencing of forms (otherwise there would be no distinguishing anything), and forms are empty of any intrinsic self. Yet we can discern the inherent essence of each form. Where we get lost is in confusing the “nature” (inherent essence) of a form, which sets it apart from other forms, with an intrinsic self. Our problem lies in the confusing multiplicity of meanings for the word “nature.” If we just thought of it as “intrinsic self-naturing” versus “essential character,” we’d be on our way to lessening our confusion.
Thus, “Emptiness” (note the capitalization) is a form also — it’s a thought form, called a “concept.”
So repeat after me: “Forms (suchness) are empty, Emptiness is form.” This will remind us that “Emptiness” is just an idea that took hold when we noticed we were originally wrong about everything.
The essential character of Suchness is Pure Spontaneous Presencing. And I feel the need to again remind you that suchness is not a thing, it’s the name we give to this activity — ”presenting as form.”
And the nature of this is not something else, it’s the activity. So Pure Spontaneous Presencing is not a thing. It’s simply a description of the salient characteristics of the activity that is our phenomenal existence — of suchness.
Thus, it defines nothing, because there is nothing to define. As Garab Dorje said:
Transcending all discrimination in its arising, Transcending all discrimination in its release.
And as Jigme Lingpa said:
While safeguarding the continuity of the wonderful intrinsic perfection of our existential presence, if the thought “the nature of pure presence is empty” springs up in the rational mind, by ascribing an objective focus of emptiness to pure presence, buddha is precluded.
Forms are empty, Emptiness is form.
ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།
Footnotes:
¹ Suñña Sutta
² If something is not there, it really can’t be said to have a quality. But even worse, we are in the process of noting that the ‘thing’ really isn’t a thing at all, so how can ‘it’ even be imagined to have a quality?
³ The Heap of Jewels
⁴ Quote attributed to Longchenpa in the “Yeshe Lama,” Jingme Lingpa
⁵ “Yeshe Lama,” Jingme Lingpa | https://medium.com/tranquillitys-secret/forms-are-empty-emptiness-is-form-13bf7e5eac6a | [] | 2020-05-10 12:19:49.217000+00:00 | ['Emptiness', 'Philosophy', 'Mind', 'Meditation', 'Self'] |
Plotting football data on goal-scoring with the help of GoalBusters | Table of Contents
Introduction Describing the data Exploratory data analysis Summary
Introduction
I started following football in 2004 after the memorable win of Greece in the UEFA Euro tournament. It was fascinating to see how 22 players running around with a ball can make people feel such deep emotions. Fans know the names, the tactics, the errors; they enjoy the attacks, blame the referees when their teams are penalized — it’s a huge mix of affections and I slowly fell for it. When I developed my appreciation for data, football naturally became one of my favorite fields to experiment with, but I always struggled to get anywhere because of the lack of publicly available data. This is when I met GoalBusters who gave me the opportunity to work with them on a short while who gave me access to their rich database.
In this article, I will work with a data set on football matches as part of my University Capstone project. I wish to show a few plots about goal-scoring probabilities using the seaborn package and to give a glimpse into what GoalBusters has at their disposal. I also embedded some Python codes that I used for analysis may it help for the others in similar matters.
If you share my passion for football and wish to see an amazing analytics site, make sure you hit up GoalBusters website on BetAlertPro.com . You can sign-up for a free subscription and with that the doors will open to you not only to some intra-match statistics but also to their sophisticated analytics as well.
Describing the data
Okay so let’s see what we are dealing with. I received 2 datasets from them dated between 2020 November and December, with tons of data on:
— Match statistics: This is a dataset with historic match statistics with minute granularity, so one can track the development of a game pretty easily. Most sites offer aggregate match statistics with end-of-match results only, so this one is truly a wonderful source to be analyzed. The dataset has a stunning 52 variables that include not only the core characteristics like shots on goal, number of corners, etc… but to mention a few, we have the number of dangerous attacks, attacking scores, substitutions even odds data.
— Team statistics: This dataset has historic data on teams from 23 different leagues (main leagues like La Liga, Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A included) with 72 variables. Other than standard information like how many goals given team has scored or how many times they suffered defeat, information like how many times given team equalized or how many own goals they scored is there as well.
This is plenty of data that allows GoalBusters to provide subscribers with plenty of accurate predictions using cutting-edge technology. I will concentrate only on answering two simple questions that I had in mind when I received this big chunk of data. I will also reduce the scope to some important variables only.
EDA
First I needed to do some transformations on my match stats data as extra times were encoded in a way that it was not easy to order my observations. I then filtered out a few variables to concentrate on the most important ones. The below screenshot shows the structure of the table used for the analysis.
It’s important to note that each observation corresponds to one minute of a match. Let’s see how the numeric variables correlate with each other if we look at the whole dataset.
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns #df is read from disk df = df.astype({
'league_id':'object',
'home_shots': 'int32',
'away_shots': 'int32',
'home_corner': 'int32',
'away_corner': 'int32',
'home_rc' : 'int32',
'away_rc': 'int32'
}) qual = ['status', 'league_id']
quant = ['away_shots', 'home_corner', 'away_corner', 'home_rc', 'away_rc'] sns.heatmap(df[quant+Y].corr(), annot=True)
I think there are two interesting factors here. On the one hand, nothing seems to be correlated to the goal_event dummy variable. This is probably due to goals not occurring very often in the data (only 3 % of the observations have goals, so a goal on average occurs every 33 minutes), but it also signals that it is not easy to predict with these variables only when a goal will occur. On the other hand, it’s interesting to see how corners and shots correlate, but it shouldn’t fool us. Higher correlation is probably partly due to how these variables are represented in the data — they are positive numbers with monotonous increases so of course, they will move together. But there might be some causality there as well since shots and headers many times occur after a corner is kicked.
Staying on the subject of correlation, let’s see what the pairplot function can show us:
sns.pairplot(df[quant+ ['goal_event']], hue='goal_event', vars=quant);
pairplot s are great even for such discrete variables as the ones we have here. Blue dots correspond to data points where no goal happened, while orange ones represent the goals. These plots are just to further show that there are no clear patterns in the data neither for minutes where goal occurred or minutes without goals.
Now that we saw this let’s answer a simple question — when is it most likely that a goal will occur. A match is 90 minutes, but more minutes might come in extra time after min 45 and min 90. They will be encoded with decimals e.g. 1st minute of extra time is going to be 45.01 now. Let’s see what we can see in the data.
# Set up a grid to plot goal probability against several variables
g = sns.PairGrid(df, y_vars="goal_event",
x_vars=['status'],
height=9, aspect = 2) # Draw a seaborn pointplot onto each Axes
g.map(sns.pointplot, scale=1.3, errwidth=4, color="xkcd:gray")
g.set(ylim=(0, .2))
plt.xticks(rotation=45)
sns.despine(fig=g.fig, left=True
This is not very informative is it? Maybe grouping variables by 10 minute frequencies can show a more comprehensible picture? Let’s see about that:
def encode_status(status):
status = np.where(status < 10, 'first 10 minutes',
np.where(status < 20, '10-20 minutes',
np.where(status < 30, '20-30 minutes',
np.where(status < 40, '30-40 minutes',
np.where(status<45,'40-45 minutes',
np.where(status<46,'first half extratime',
np.where(status < 50, '45-50 minutes',
np.where(status < 60, '50-60 minutes',
np.where(status < 70, '60-70 minutes',
np.where(status < 80, '70-80 minutes',
np.where(status < 90,'80-90 minutes','second half extra time')))))))))))
return status df['encoded_status'] = encode_status(df['status']) fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12,6))
plt.rcParams.update({'font.size': 50}) sns.set_context("paper")
sns.set_style("ticks")
sns.pointplot(data= df, x = 'encoded_status', y = 'goal_event', join=True)
ax.set_ylabel('Goal frequency', fontsize = 14)
ax.set_xlabel('')
ax.tick_params(axis = 'x', labelsize = 12)
ax.tick_params(axis = 'y', labelsize = 12)
plt.xticks(rotation=45)
This is much nicer and it is quite informative. In my sample, goals occured more times in the second half of the match, but they had the highest frequency in extra times. I really like to use seaborn’s pinpoint s as they also show the confidence intervals (in our case this is 95%) — they also show that the highest frequency is not simply a coincidence but it is significantly higher than in other minute categories. Teams should withstand the pressure the most when they probably are the most tired, at the very end of each half.
Let’s answer the second simple question — are goal frequency similar for every league?
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12,8))
sns.set_context("paper")
sns.set_style("ticks")
sns.pointplot(data= df, x = 'goal_event', y = 'league_name', orient = 'h', join=False)
ax.set_ylabel('')
ax.set_xlabel('Goal frequency', fontsize = 14)
ax.tick_params(axis = 'x', labelsize = 12)
ax.tick_params(axis = 'y', labelsize = 12)
As quoted earlier goal frequency is on average 3%, or we can say that on average goals occur every 33 minutes. But we still see some differences between leagues that are notable — for example, if someone prefers matches with a lot of goals, they should watch the Bundesliga, the Brasilian league. Something interesting is going on with the Finish first league as it has a huge confidence interval around an average that is twice the size of the others. After giving it a closer look it turns out I had only two matches out of which one had a massive goal count.
Summary
In this article I wanted to give a quick tour and showcase some visualisation from the aggregates of the data that I received from GoalBusters. I only used a very narrow set of variables to answer two simple questions related to goal scoring probabilities. Seaborn has great visual elements as demonstrated in this article that could show meaningful results with a few lines of code. If you want to know more, don’t forget to check out BetAlertPro.com. | https://medium.com/@zsomborhegedus/plotting-football-data-on-goal-scorng-with-the-help-of-goalbusters-10b4e4d43fb3 | ['Zsombor Hegedus'] | 2021-06-08 10:07:34.008000+00:00 | ['Football', 'Seaborn', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Football Analytics', 'Goalbuster'] |
Books That Foster Personal Growth: Range | Do we need to specialize to succeed? Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein throws cold water on the specialization movement we are witnessing in the sports world. This does not mean deliberate practice and homing specific skills is unnecessary or a waste of time, they are necessary to excel in a given arena. But there is great value in processing a range of skills.
When starting a new endeavor, whether it be organized sports or a new career, we benefit from a “sampling period.” Range uses research to show the benefits of developing a range of skills and experiences to excel in your career endeavors.
“Highly credentialed experts can become so narrow-minded that they actually get worse with experience, even while becoming more confident — a dangerous combination.”
Find more recommendations at zacharywalston.com
*Book link is an Amazon Affiliate Link | https://medium.com/curious/books-that-foster-personal-growth-range-cd660d677453 | ['Zachary Walston'] | 2020-12-22 17:21:16.455000+00:00 | ['Growth', 'Personal Development', 'Personal Grow', 'Reading', 'Books'] |
The Boston View — Data, architecture and the (new?) working age | A column by Paolo Ciuccarelli
Invisible digital infrastructures are constantly mapping people’s connections and their behavior: from IP communication to the sensors that check occupancy or ensure indoor climate quality, offices and other working spaces especially are equipped with an intricate network of devices and cables. Analyzing the data they produce and visualizing them — within the boundaries of laws and norms (a.k.a. privacy) — can reveal the impact of the forced changes in working dynamics. And eventually lead to (re)consider the role and the value of space and physical-social relationships in productivity.
This was the topic of a short seminar by Carlo Ratti and Martina Mazzarello at MIT Senseable City Lab earlier in May, it’s worth reconsidering it now as we are going to be back — sooner or later — to our workplaces. Or maybe not?
The talk, available here, summarizes the first results of a broader research based on data collected from MIT students, professors, and administrators during the pandemic. The researchers built two models of the same social network, analyzing people’s interactions before access to campus was banned and during the shutdown.
One key emerging point is the (ir)reproducibility of the serendipitous encounters that randomly happen in a physical space — often leading to interesting conversations, unplanned knowledge sharing and ultimately new ideas and innovation. That’s something that seems to be hard to replicate online, where every activity is tight to a schedule, everything is — and needs to be — planned, and we usually connect for a specific purpose. Within these conditions one more luckily cultivates the closer circle of solid relationships and gets less exposed to the ‘weak ties’ of the broader unplanned network that usually grows through the random connections we build in public spaces, or in the transit between the private and the public. So depending on your business domain and the importance of leveraging on the unexpected, the decision on whether to come back to the physical working habits or not might be even more difficult. Adding competences related to analysis and visualization could help make sense of all the data produced by the sensors and the processes that silently capture indoor activities and the ‘behavior’ of buildings and spaces. That’s also where information designers can aim at having a more direct impact on people’s wellbeing and more broadly on sustainability.
Paolo Ciuccarelli
Center for Design, Northeastern University | https://medium.com/the-visual-agency/the-boston-view-data-architecture-and-the-new-working-age-b9c18e3e492f | ['Paolo Ciuccarelli'] | 2020-07-20 07:21:41.525000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Data Visualization', 'Office', 'Data', 'Architecture'] |
Burning Up | 50 WORDS
Burning Up
Image by Hans on Pixabay
You are dripping with sweat, rivulets leaving trails on your skin. The sheets are damp. Your skin is flushed from your cheeks to your chest. Hot to the touch, heat radiates from you. I can feel it. You press your lips into mine. I have the cure for your fever. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/burning-up-6742cf878f74 | ['Edward Riley'] | 2020-12-03 13:12:29.811000+00:00 | ['Passion', '50 Words', 'The Bad Influence', 'Heat', 'Fever'] |
6 important events in Europe that changed history | Europe. The second smallest continent in the world in terms of size. This continent consists of only 2 parts of the earth’s surface. The continent of Eurasia extends around Europe. Europe is the third-most populous continent with 9.75% percent of the world’s population. The history of this continent consisting of 50 countries is ancient. Even Greek mythology tells the story of the creation of this Europe. And so there are many myths and legends that have developed around Europe. Is that just so? Is there less in the history of the world about Europe? It is impossible to say how many incidents this Europe has witnessed.
Europe has long carried the seeds of political, cultural, and economic influence. There are many countries on this continent whose power extends to every corner of the globe. Europe is not only known for war; Europe is also famous for renaissance and revolution. Even these events in Europe changed the history of the world. Today’s discussion is about eight such important histories of the eventful continent of Europe. These events are considered to be a very important chapter in the history of not only Europe but the whole of mankind. Even these eight events changed the course of world history.
1. Renaissance
photos by Lucas Schifres/Getty Images
The Renaissance was an important renaissance not only in Europe but also in world history. This renaissance brought about a change in the whole field including cultural, social, and political. The Renaissance was a way of rediscovering the antiquity of classical literature and art. Constantinople was overthrown by Turkish forces in 1453, and a new Italy was born. Because at that time there was a subtle change in the way people think. From the state system to social, political, economic, education, art, and literature, a groundbreaking change took place in all fields. This change is what scholars call the New Age or Renaissance.
Although the winds of change began to blow in the fifteenth century, their effects continued for the next nineteenth century, about four hundred years. The Renaissance began in the Middle Ages with the breakdown of Europe’s classification and political structure. Although it started in Italy, it soon took over the whole of Europe as a novelty. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael — these are the successful artists of the early Renaissance. The Renaissance revolutionized thought, science, and art, as well as world exploration. The Renaissance was a cultural renaissance that touched all of Europe.
It was mainly through art that the Renaissance touched the whole of Europe and even the whole world, except Italy. In ancient times art was religious and God-centered. This remnant remained in the field of art even in the Middle Ages. So, the content of the art was Jesus Christ, church, and the teenage Mary or Mother Mary. During the Renaissance, artists, freed from religious and heavenly influences, approached to express the fertility of their own thinking. The Renaissance fireman, who was simultaneously an artist, scientist, and engineer — began a new trend when the physiology of Leonardo da Vinci was revealed.
This physiology is considered to be a text not only in science but also in all fields including art and literature. Dev characters gradually begin to attain perfection in human expression. And the industry gets a new direction. Vinci’s The Last Supper, Rafael’s The Madonna, or Michelangelo’s David are proof of that. The triumph of humanism in literature began soon after this trend of art. Literature begins to be written with new values.
02. Colonialism and imperialism
Colonialism is a system by which a rich or powerful country dominates a weak country. The Europeans also ruled over most of the world’s landmass by establishing their own colonies and establishing empires. Through colonization, a nation puts pressure on another nation, rules and exploits its people, and imposes its own language and cultural values on the people of that nation. In this way, the values of the exploited nation were removed and the values of the colonized nation were established.
Ancient history shows that the practice of establishing empires was prevalent among ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, and the Phoenicians. These civilizations spread their empires around themselves and even in non-adjacent areas. This has been the case since 1550, with the aim of expanding their power and ruling the world. The era of discovery marked the beginning of modern colonialism.
From the beginning of the 1500s, Portugal set out on a worldwide journey outside Europe in search of new trade routes and new civilizations. Earlier, the Portuguese discovered the North American coastal city of Siena in 1415 and ruled it unilaterally until 1999. Initially, the Portuguese, as well as the Spaniards, were on the path to empire, but later the Netherlands, France, Germany, and England followed suit. Although colonialism began to break down in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was re-established through the First World War.
Imperialism is the system by which one nation is forced to establish its own rule. It resorted to all forms of violence, from genocide to dictatorship. But not so much in imperialism as in colonialism they themselves think of settling there. Rather than settling here, the main point is to permanently cripple that nation and keep it under its control. Imperialism is also mentioned in ancient civilizations. However, the establishment of modern imperialism is close to the establishment of modern colonies. The occupation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States was one of the great proofs of this.
03. Reform
Reformation; Or the Protestant Reform movement began in the sixteenth century. One of the divisive movements of the Christian community in the Western world is called the Reformation. Conflicts between multiple popes and them, the monopoly power and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church; With these the new knowledge gained through the Renaissance and the rejection of ancient thought; With the rise of nationalism and humanism — all these are considered to be the driving forces of this reform movement.
This reform movement began in Germany in 1517. The movement was started by the German clergyman Martin Luther. With the publication of his book Ninety Five Thesis, the issues of reform were brought to the notice of the people. Even before Martin Luther, many initiated this movement, that is, reform.
Photos by Sean Gallup/Staff/Getty Images
However, most historians and scholars believe that Luther’s book was the beginning of the Reformation. Annoyed by the Catholic Church’s religious inconsistencies and dissatisfaction with the church’s preaching, his appealing statements quickly spread throughout Europe with a touch of reformism. Protestants exerted great influence, both spiritually and politically. He also assisted in the formation of modern government and religious institutions.
04. Enlightened age
The Enlightenment or The Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Enlightenment is an intellectual and cultural movement in Europe. The period of this movement was throughout the whole of the 17th and 18th centuries. The establishment of individual freedom, individuality, human freedom, human tradition, and rationalism was the predominant theme of this movement. Emphasis was placed on judging blind faith and superstition.
Photos by Hulton Archive / Getty Images
This movement was influenced by educated writers and contemporary thinkers for many years. They were the ones who led this movement. The philosophy of people like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Voltaire led to new thinking about society, government, and education. Which introduced the whole world to new thinking. Many thinkers and philosophers had to endure unspeakable persecution for such new thinking and philosophy. Yet their influence was truly undeniable.
05. The French Revolution
The French Revolution, which began in 1789 and greatly influenced and reformed the whole of Europe, was essentially the French Revolution. This revolution was so influential that the French Revolution is widely regarded as the beginning of the modern age. The revolution started because of an economic crisis. And later it also directly points to the imposition of additional taxes on the people by the monarchy and the imposition of the monarchy. The initial uprising began with the chaos that spread throughout France. And that challenged every tradition and custom of the government.
Photos by Corbis via Getty Images / Getty Images
Just as the French Revolution educated the people to be aware and vocal, so did a great hero who ruled the world through dictatorships through this revolution. Napoleon Benoport rose to prominence in 1802 with the French Revolution. This great war pushed not only France but the whole of Europe to the brink of war and forced a new history of the continent and the world.
06. Nazi forces and World War II
With the end of the First World War, Imperial Germany collapsed from all sides. Germany then went through a tumultuous and tumultuous period. Which led to the rise of Nazi forces and World War II. After World War I, the Weimar Republic took the helm of Germany and renewed the system of government. This unique government structure lasted for 15 years. Then, with the rise of the Nazi Party, this structure collapsed again.
Photos by Getty Images
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, Germany rose to prominence on the map of the world. Hitler of Germany, Mussolini of Italy and Japan formed a military alliance and called for world war. As a result, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union declared war on them as allies. The world witnessed the destruction of Hitler and his forces. In the battle, the Axis powers are defeated and the Allies are victorious. And the Germans collapsed politically, socially, economically, and even diplomatically.
References: 6 important events in Europe that changed history | https://medium.com/@mahirnur2k17/6-important-events-in-europe-that-changed-history-b3b71236a321 | [] | 2020-12-11 16:15:38.184000+00:00 | ['Europe', 'Enlightened Age', 'World War II', 'French Revolution', 'Germany'] |
Caelis Poetry | You can read more here: Caeliswords.com. http://caeliswords.com/2020/06/01/daydreaming-of-poetry/
Some quotes “ I wonder how you sleep at night
knowing the world
is dying
one by one”
Do you know who this quote is about? I bet you can guess?
WICKED WINDS OF THE WEST-http://caeliswords.com/2020/05/28/wicked-winds/
http://caeliswords.com/2020/05/25/im-glad-im-alive-video/
Living is much harder than giving up. Keep your eyes open, just for today. Decide tomorrow.
Chapter from my book, http://caeliswords.com/2020/05/25/caelis-book-chapter-2weight-growing-up/
“I lost 10 pounds a week from not being able to stop moving and not liking the taste of food. Not wanting to eat?! That is NOT me! Something must be up”
My resume just in case you need a writer. If this does not convince you,
MAY 15, 2020WORDS FOR THE SOULEDIT “I LOVE YOU LITTLE MOON, A POEM REPRESENTING HOW HONEST LOVE FEELS IN EACH MOMENT”
I want to be close to you again
cradling me in the moon
thoughts dance in our sky
like language
warmth of tenderness
scribe of my heart
take me across your planets
tell me why you made us our home
and remind me
i love you little moon | https://medium.com/@caelimckamey/caelis-poetry-f8b183571ba5 | ['Caeli Mckamey'] | 2020-06-01 21:39:37.483000+00:00 | ['Writer', 'Poet', 'Poetry', 'Poem'] |
Cantonese Translation | Cantonese Translation
The Cantonese Language:
Cantonese is a variety of Chinese and is primarily spoken in China, Hong Kong, and Macau. It has nearly 80 million native speakers. Although Mandarin is the language of the majority of the Chinese population, Cantonese is still one of the popular languages of Asia. When people are traveling to Hong Kong, whether for business or pleasure, they need the help of linguistic experts to get Cantonese translation of their documents. But only the most qualified professionals can provide you with accurate language solutions. You cannot turn to Google Translate or a bilingual friend when you need help with Cantonese.
Who Can Provide You with Cantonese Translations?
If you require language services, there are a lot of things that you have to keep in mind. Not every agency will be able to provide you with accurate results. If you hire a freelancer, you might get overcharged. There are also different subject matter experts in the language industry, so it is better not to go to a medical translator when you need help with business documents.
In order to find the right agency, you will have to check out their Google rating and the reviews their previous clients have left. Reading reviews will give you an idea of the kind of services they can provide. A service provider should not just deliver quality translations to you but also make sure that you get the results on time and you are not overcharged. They should have native experts on their team so they can deliver a hundred percent accurate content every time.
How to Order Cantonese Translation?
If you have found the right agency, ordering their services will be super easy. But before you can hire an agency, it is best to get a quote from them. This way, you will know how much you will be charged for a project. Here are the steps you can take to get linguistic assistance from an agency:
1. Get a Quote:
Visit the website of the agency and click on the “get a free quote” button. You will have to upload the text that you need to get translated, select the names of source and target languages, and hit enter. You will also be asked to choose the delivery method. If you want to get the project delivered to your inbox, you won’t be charged for it. But if you opt for delivery by post, then you will have to pay for the postage. Once you have entered all the information, you will get the quote.
2. Place Your Order:
Review the bill, and if you are okay with it, then you can place your order. Once you do that, the project will be handed over to an expert. You can sit back and relax while linguistic experts work on your documents. When the Cantonese translation is complete, it will be handed over to you. You will have the option to ask for a revision if you are not satisfied with the translation. | https://medium.com/@universaltranslation4/cantonese-translation-6167587501e7 | [] | 2021-06-17 09:05:18.599000+00:00 | ['Certification', 'Translators', 'Translation Services', 'Translation Agency', 'Translation'] |
Frank’s Mood | Frank’s Mood
Frank’s Mood
Frank was not happy with his rental car. He had to take a Chevy Malibu. It was the same model and model of the Midwest Supply that was made for him at every airport, but according to the working agent, a Mitsubishi Mirage was ordered instead. Frank told the agent he liked Malibu and he gladly paid the difference, but the agent told him he couldn’t split the bill.
However, he can cancel the Mirage and use his credit card to book Malibu, but it takes 15 minutes to process everything. Frank glanced at the crowd behind him. It was long, and he didn’t want to smell. He thanked the agent and took the keys. The agent told him to have a great day.
It was not difficult to find a mirage. It took only half of the parking lot. Frank always got Malibu because he got mixed up and took you there. The mirage seemed to rise to a steep ceiling. He unlocked the door, went inside, and put the bracket on the passenger seat. The interior is bare — the locks and windows are handmade, there is no radio and upholstered furniture.
It didn’t seem like Frank needed massage chairs and a panoramic sunroof, but Mirage didn’t even come with air conditioning. It was November, so it was not necessary, but still. He turned on the fire, and the engine had to try to turn before it came to life. He shook his head and hoped it was a one-time event.
As Frank was leaving the rental area, he searched for the passenger plane he had boarded. He learned from experience that it would be the same as returning to Chicago that afternoon, and the plane always reassured him. Like anyone born and raised in the anonymity of a large metropolis, he was wary of small towns. Bent Creek may have been Iowa’s second largest city, but Frank was a bodyguard wherever people treated you well for no reason.
It didn’t seem like Frank needed massage chairs and a panoramic sunroof, but Mirage didn’t even come with air conditioning. It was November, so it was not necessary, but still.
He did not stop there, because he could not hold an ice cream party. He was there to do the work he had been doing for 22 years and he would come home in time for dinner at his sushi restaurant, where he was well treated because he was well advised. Then his vacation may begin.
Frank ran hundreds of times in the same direction as before — Airport Street. 580 business turns to the east, three miles to the north, from 5A to Olinda Avenue, turn left, cross eight blocks, turn right on 18th Street and go to the back room of L&L Liquors and take the first one. Bent Creek was the last of four cities on Frank’s weekly route, and it consisted of two stops.
The first city had three stops, the other two had five stops, and he had to memorize the directions of each. Frank is not allowed to use GPS, map applications or other tracking objects. He had a personal smartphone, but left it at home. Instead, he carried a torch offered by Midwest Supply over the phone, which he only connected to call Chicago again.
Each week, he received four new SIM cards, and when he returned to the airport in each city on his route, he split the day’s card in two and threw it in the toilet before going through security.
580 cycles became the center of Bent Creek. Its architecture is surrounded by colorful skyscrapers for the garden, which was built during the heyday of the 90s. The tallest building was built in the last century as the headquarters of a regional bank levied on locals.
Starting with the ’88 bust, the sign at the top changed from savings and loans in Chippeva to the Bank of America. Such a change was inevitable. Frank knew it, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
The road to Olinda Avenue was approaching, so he turned the turn signal and started walking along the road, but then the oven was cut right in front of him. Frank released the brakes hard, the van missed him with his mustache, and he breathed a sigh of relief while on a cruise on the exit ramp.
Mirage didn’t have a chance to win the fight with the six-ton truck, but even worse, the crash could mean an unscheduled call to Chicago, and Frank didn’t like the unscheduled call.
Starting with the ’88 bust, the sign at the top changed from savings and loans in Chippeva to the Bank of America.
He also didn’t like to worry. Something moved in the trunk during the brakes, so he tied up everything that was empty. Frank ran the engine, carried the trunk, and gave the area once before going outside.
Rows of old Victorian homes lined both sides of the service road under the elevated highway. Some of the houses are tiled and none of them are preserved. It may have been a beautiful boulevard a few years ago, with some civilian planners taking a six-lane detour along it, so people in the suburbs could fall 15 minutes off their routes. Frank didn’t stop there either.
He just wanted to make sure he didn’t jump. Whether small or small, they each had rough parts. He went out and walked to the back of the Mirage and lifted the trunk lid, only to close it again when he saw what was inside. He checked twice to make sure no one was around and got back in the car.
Frank took several deep breaths in and out to correct himself. There was no need to ask if what he had seen before was really new. He knew what it was. The real question is, what was he doing there? Was this an installation? And if so, why? Frank took a few more breaths. He began to panic, and when people panicked, he made mistakes.
Experience told him that first of all he had to find a safe place and register with Midwest Supply. He walked five miles on the odometer, turning several times to avoid being tracked until he entered the church’s fried chicken and reached the back with no other vehicles behind him. He took a few more deep breaths.
When he was hired more than 20 years ago, Frank was told three things — do your job, do it right, and then you will have everything.
“Do your job” was quite simple. Frank collected money from local guys at every stop on the route, called numbers to Chicago, and distributed deposits to several local banks in each city. From the first day he was told everything he had done so far.
He would never go up, but Midwest Supply would never ask him to do anything else. These two issues were very obvious to him for very practical reasons, and the company never gave him a reason to ask a question.
“Do what is right” means not doing foolish things. At all stops along the route, Frank had to count the money and call the numbers in front of the local guys. Thus, its number may correspond to deposits in local banks — and they correspond. The company didn’t twist, and Frank knew that someone who thought differently was deceiving himself.
“Do what is right” means not doing foolish things. At all stops along the route, Frank had to count the money and call the numbers in front of the local guys.
After 22 years at work, “You will be taken care of”, which took him. Frank’s numbers were never turned off, he always did what he said and never said anything. In turn, he was paid well, worked only four days a week, and even took a month off a year. But more importantly, Frank knew that if something went wrong and sometimes it happened, the company could be trusted. Every time.
He turned on the phone and dialed. The other end was raised after three rings. They always climbed after three rings.
“Delivery to the Midwest”.
Frank followed the coded scenario he was instructed to do in the event of an emergency.
“Hello, this is Frank Kuvas in dealing with customers. There is something wrong with the engine. Then I could use a tug. “
“Thank you for coming in” On the other hand, his voice was pleasant and dry, somewhat embarrassed by the recording. “We appreciate the superior. Are you ok?”
“It’s amazing. At some point, someone will be with you. “
After the canned music on the piano, the click began. The music was familiar, and Frank realized it was the same song he had sung while the cable company was waiting for him. While waiting, he recalled that he had had to make several such calls over the past 22 years. There were three. One day he saw the body under the sheet rolled away from his stops.
One day, one of the local guys stabbed another with a screwdriver in the back of the earl. One day, Frank was robbed with a gun on his way to the bank. Each time, he called her as soon as he could. Soon someone returns to the line and tells him where to take Mirage. Then someone else takes him to the airport to get to Chicago on the first flight.
The company does not want it anywhere in the situation, and they will notify it when it is safe to restore its direction. No one would ever tell Frank what had happened, and he would never ask, because that’s how it all worked. In the meantime, he just had to be cool.
“Francis. Hailey is here from the staff. Are you doing well? He asked.
“I’m fine thank you.”
“It’s very good. Just to stop — when you have a problem with the engine, it shuts off, so you can drag. “
“How are you now?”
“I’ve found a safe place to park, and I’m waiting for help.”
“Well done. Therefore, we think that you should miss both meetings scheduled for today. “
“That’s right.”
“And we re-booked you on another flight.”
“Thank you for doing this”
“Do not worry. He will leave tomorrow just like today. “
Frank wasn’t sure he heard right. — Did you say tomorrow?
“Yes. We will send your two meetings until Friday. We have warned your customers that they know about the change. We have also booked you a room from the Quality Inn Hotel on Jefferson Street for 580 cycles. Do you need instructions? He asked.
“But what about”
Frank was sure he got the script right, and even heard Haley bring it back to him, but he had to say it again. “The engine. He was taken out. I need to be towed. ”
“Yes, it is. We think you should manage the situation yourself. “
Frank Mirage felt as if all the air had been sucked out. He tried to form a word, but nothing came out of his mouth.
“Are you there, Francis?”
“Yes. Yes. I mean, do you want me to deal with this? »
“It simply came to our notice then. We’ve discussed it here, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. We think you can solve it yourself. “
“But -”
“Yes, Francis?”
“It’s amazing. Call us as soon as things are back to normal. ”
“Hooray!”
The line died, and Frank threw the torch into the passenger seat. He took a few deep breaths, but they did not help. He got another pair, but it still didn’t go well.
“Mother!”
He stepped back to punch the dashboard, but took another breath and slowly pulled his fist out. The car smelled of old fried chicken and the windows were foggy, so he picked up the AC button and remembered that it wasn’t. Frank squeezed the window down, started the Mirage, and knew where the best place in Bent Creek could be was to dump the corpse.
*****
An hour later he was sitting on the bed in the motel room. Next to him was an open map of Bent Creek he had taken from the foyer and Quiznos turkey meat on the way there. Frank glanced out the window. He left the curtains open to see the Mirage, which he placed in the parking lot outside his room. At the time, he didn’t care about the unit — if he had, he would be in jail now — but he still wanted to keep an eye on his luggage.
Frank scanned the map and found a good location — Bent Creek Forest Reserve, a southeastern part of the famous waterway.
The body was on its way to the riverbank where it could be dumped, and I hope the current would carry it to Mississippi. The reserve was also outside the city limits, so the local police did not guard it, but it was surrounded by units, so it had to wait until dark. He didn’t want to meet dog walkers after dinner or a fool who thought it was a good idea to run alone in the woods at night.
Frank folded the card, put the pillows on the headboard, and sat down to wait. He turned on the TV, but it was just after noon, so his choice was a talk show, a trial, or a reality show. He turned it off and tried not to think about things that reminded him of the time he was kidnapped.
The gunmen were wearing masks, but he immediately recognized them as two local men from a pickup truck they had made 10 minutes earlier. Both have always been low in the chain and it was clear that they would never go up, which made them think — it’s like all the intensified times and the past; All the money and juice should have belonged to them, but it did not happen.
After thinking about it for a while, these two yoo decided that there was only one way to get what they deserved, and when they started to make a decision, they couldn’t get it back. Frank kept his cool during the arrest. He gave her the money, pretended not to know who they were, and called her safely. When he resumed the route the following week, he found the two guys missing. Puff, that’s right.
Don’t think.
Frank goes back to the show where the famous chef went to a failed restaurant and shouted at his owners before he became a show business. He could not understand why someone would insult him. Did you really need free advertising to get this bastard insult? He wished her to return to Chicago and have dinner at his local sushi restaurant.
Takahachi did not need any help. He would come back every night because Mr. Takahachi knew how to treat his customers, but Frank was also able to tell the staff that he was happy that their boss respected them. His usual waiter, Akiko, always knew what he wanted — sashimi suite with brown rice, salad and a cool Kurosawa saka.
When the salad was over, Akiko shook the cup when her sashimi arrived. If he spilled soy sauce on the table, it was with a towel. As his luck dwindled, he overtook him. When the check arrived, Frank always presented it well. Each Christmas, he added an extra 100 bucks and even put it on the card, as Akiko was an example of efficiency, compassion and kindness.
But did Mr. Takahashi tell him to go behind the bar and start cutting the fish? No, he didn’t, because he did his job, he did it right, and there’s no reason to interact with him.
Frank turned off the TV. He was allowed to bring books on his route, and he usually ran twice a week. For 22 years he collected the library. Recently, he has become involved in one-word topics, in which the author puts an everyday object under a microscope to show his daily history. His current book is called The Flush, but after reading and re-reading that Thomas Craiper did not invent the modern toilet, Frank closed it and hid it in his bag.
He tried to start his own book, Qwerty, but he too quickly gave up. He turned on the TV again and tried to find the Discovery channel. Maybe it would be a success, and it would be a MythBusters marathon, they wanted to see how getting rid of a dead body with an episode was as easy as the movies seemed — but it didn’t work out. He turned off the TV and looked up at the ceiling.
Frank glanced at the crack in the curtain. Cursed body. When he opened the trunk, he was facing her, so he did not know if it was a man or a woman. He could not remember how she was dressed. But he could not remember any blood and there was no stench, so he could not die for long. But why was he there?
Maybe it’s a coincidence. Probably, the employee of the rental agency was looking for a place to sleep on the bench, so they climbed into the trunk, fell into the trap and crouched down. Frank shook his head. This was no accident. He knew who he was working for, and he never told himself otherwise.
The body in the trunk depended on something or someone connected to it in any way. It was not a device, but it was not revenge. Frank was convinced that he had not deceived anyone. He never messed with the guys on his route, but he was never friendly.
He was like a FedEx guy or a meter reader. So he had to be linked to someone higher up, someone in Chicago. Then, like a prolonged round of applause, he remembered Haley telling him on the phone.
We think you should manage the situation yourself.
About a year ago, Frank and his former boss, Mike, had a weekly meeting. They have always met at Diverssey and Elston’s Golden Nugget Pancake House. As he did every Friday, Mike gave Frank a Manila envelope with four new SIM cards, four plane tickets, and half of Frank’s salary from Midwest Supply with all the correct IRS transfers and half cash.
Mike had some news that day. He retired early. The company was optimized, and they offered him a package, so he thought it was a good time to continue. Don’t worry — he said to Frank as he touched the envelope — the time will come when you will have to wait.
The two shook hands, patted each other on the back and said they would keep in touch. On the way home, Frank checked the envelope and realized that he would never see Mike again.
Midwest Supply called later in the day and said Frank’s salary would now be credited to his account and part of the cash would be credited to an offshore account they had set up for them. The company told him he would not be contacted again. They rented him a U-Post-It mailbox in Lincoln Square, and sent him new SIM cards and plane tickets to FedEx every Friday.
As far as Frank knew, the change was inevitable and it didn’t take long to get used to the new setup, but he still missed Mike. They were never close. Frank knew that his old boss had a wife and four children in Wilmett, but he never met them, and directed Mike Frank to the Lakewie condom, which he bought a few years ago, but he never stopped.
The two had never met anyone but Golden Nugget, and Frank didn’t even know Mike’s last name. But every week his old boss forced him to check things out. Is everything all right? he asked. Of course, Frank would tell him. Do you have anything you need? No, everything is fine.
There was someone who told Mike Frank that he had done his job and that he had done it right and that he would be taken care of. For 22 years, Frank followed these simple guidelines and the company stood by the end of the deal.
We think you should manage the situation yourself.
Frank couldn’t stop thinking, and he knew he was close to crossing a dangerous line like the two yoyos that caught him. But come on! He worked for the company for twenty-two years, but never once. He was never counted. He was never arrested. Mike even joked that Frank needed to create an employee club of the month.
He hired her because she was young, clean and unwritten, unrelated, and Frank never got promoted or demanded anything higher than her salary because the company wanted her to be clean. If he is caught, it will protect everyone.
He could not name anyone from above, so nothing could be used as leverage. Frank may have to spend some time, and when he left, the company couldn’t hire him, but Mike assured him that he would leave with a generous bonus as a thank you.
Now everything was out the window. Frank became a tool to help with the death penalty after trying to commit another serious crime. He is no longer clean and I am sure he will not avoid anything, never think of a bonus. He can throw everything and run, but he can’t go far. The company tracked his offshore bank account and all his credit cards. It didn’t matter if he could name them or not. One day he was there, and the next day he was not. Puff, that’s right.
*****
On a normal working day, Frank had to return to Chicago for dinner. He usually ate at home, watched a movie, or read a book before going to bed. He had no close friends, and his large family moved out of the city. He met, but nothing stuck. This is the only but convenient procedure he has decided on for several years. As it passed through Bent Creek after dark, he said he would miss it, get home, and finish the job to get back to normal.
He will soon go to the forest reserve. Although there was no other traffic at one point in the night, Frank turned the turn signal and double-checked all lanes before easing on the highway. He went through the sections marked on the map. At the entrance to the reserve, Frank checked the cars in front and behind him, but no, so he turned home.
Fifty yards below, the road is surrounded by forest. Frank saw the cracks of the branches among the trees that had lost all their leaves so far. The moon was full, so he killed the headlights and walked one lane. It ended with gravel struggling under the wheels near the water, so Frank stopped the Mirage as the sounds could be heard in the cold, especially when the trees were bare.
He made a slow, two-point turn, killed the engine, and turned off the dome light to keep it from burning when he opened the door. Frank opened the trunk, went outside, and left the door open, as people remembered the loud banging on the car door at night. He held his breath and listened to any other car or the creaking of the leaves on the leaves, but his voice was only a slight click of the tree branches when the wind blew.
She trembled. He was not wearing an overcoat, but he was wearing gloves and was warned to throw it away with all his other clothes when he returned to Chicago. He stopped at a gas station on his way to protect the forest and decided to buy work gloves and a cheap windbreaker, but the gas stations had security cameras.
Frank opened the back door and pulled the flat bed of the motel out of the chair. His plan was to wrap his body like a blanket so that clothes or skin would not come in contact with him. He didn’t bother to paint the sheet because he didn’t see the blood.
Later he put it back on the bed, the servant took it off, it was washed, bleached, and mixed with all the other cloths. On the way back to the motel, Frank planned to park in the car wash, thinking it was not important for the owners to install security cameras and vacuum the trunk.
All his precautions were a bit. He knew it. He also knew that they could be meaningless. If the company wants to catch him, he will catch him. All he had to do was slide his name to the right person, send it to the right people, and he would be in jail. Still, his efforts made him feel like he was in control of the moment, and that’s what he had right now.
Frank lifted the trunk lid, half-hoping the body was gone, but it didn’t. It was a man. Although her hair is blonde and curly, her body is a bit like a joke.
It’s even bigger and may not fit in Mirage’s luggage. In the moonlight he seemed to be able to sleep, and Frank wondered if he could even breathe, but as he wrapped the sheet around the body’s wooden cooler, there was no question that he was holding the corpse, and he was about to jerk.
Don’t think.
Frank took a deep breath and let it out. He slides his arm under his body and turns his bent knee upwards. The arms are folded inwards, and everything fits neatly into the curved part of the elbow. He was amazed at how easy it felt.
He expected the weight of death to add a few pounds to the body, but then he did not consider the idea to be nonsense. At the edge of the river, he is relieved to see that it looks like a small river. The current was fast and dark, absorbing the reflection of the moon above.
Frank noticed a chain of aluminum boats overturned in the winter, wondering how to remove the body to get it out without entering it. Frank lay down on the ground and walked toward the boats. A steel cable was passed through all their handles, twisted at both ends and locked to the ring in the cement block.
He expected the weight of death to add a few pounds to the body, but then he did not consider the idea to be nonsense.
He broke the lock, but he was caught. Then he got out of the boat, pulled out the handles, and found some to give. He ran back to the Mirage and put the carpet back in the trunk, praying that the rental company would not try to save on tools.
They did not exist. He unscrewed the key on the side of the wheel and ran to the boat, where he hid the bar behind the handle and swung it back and forth, feeling that each time the rivets gave a little more until one end was released. . He turned the boat over and dragged it to the shore. Then he took the body, put it in the boat, and removed the sheet.
Frank saw the guy’s face for the first time. Fortunately, his eyes were closed. It is white and has small features that match its frame. There were no moles or scars or birthmarks, which were considered to be its distinctive features. Frank also didn’t notice any bruises, cuts, or scars that would give him an idea of how he was killed. He was a normal guy, and Frank didn’t know what to think.
Then don’t worry.
The guy was wearing an undressed polo shirt, so Frank put it back inside. He didn’t press too hard, because he knew from MythBusters that dead bodies could sag as a result of the decaying gases, and I’m sure he could. She picked up rocks from the beach and carefully stuffed them into the guy’s shirt and up under the jeans cuffs to weigh the body.
He then pushed the oar to the edge of the water and pulled the drain plug from the back of the bottom. He let the boat run in the middle of the current, let it flow, and slowly spun as it flowed.
Frank felt a soft emotion around his heart. He tried to deny it. The feeling of work was there, panic and thinking about things.
But then he took a deep breath and held it for a moment to the boat, and then the body sank under Bent Creek. She even said goodbye to the guy in silence. Frank picked up the motel sheet and shook it well before returning to the car. For the first time that day, he felt right.
*****
After a surprisingly deep sleep, Frank turned on the TV. The highlight of all the local morning shows was the high school’s change of band name from Mohawks to Mustangs in honor of Native Americans.
Frank put the burner on the bedside table and took the top sheet off the floor. He had not slept under her last night. That was wrong.
Each speech began with a half-finished demonstration by the Mongols protesting. Then came a voice from an Mesquaki tribal elder who said the change was long before the Mohawks even said they were not native to Iowa.
“Delivery to the Midwest”.
“It’s Frank Kuvass and customer relations. Haley is waiting for my call. “
- Wait a minute, please.
There was still canned music on the piano. Less than a minute later, another click began.
“Francis”.
Haley.
“Good morning. Do I believe that the situation has improved? »
“There it is.”
“It’s great to hear that, and thank you so much for managing it. Your art has not gone unnoticed. I hope you can do both of today’s meetings? ».
“Hooray!”
Frank put the burner on the bedside table and took the top sheet off the floor. He had not slept under her last night. That was wrong. He spread the sheet on the bed and checked the marks. Several pairs of shoes appeared at the bottom of the place where the guy’s sneakers were loose, but they were not visible, so he repaired the bed and then damaged the blankets. After the shower, Frank left the motel room for a final manage check to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.
His pickups went well, and no one said he was a day late. He then made his contributions without incident. Another day at work. Frank drove back to the airport and couldn’t smile when he saw a jet plane waiting on the asphalt. He set up the Mirage, went into the bathroom of the terminal, split the SIM card in two and flushed it down the toilet. At the rental desk, he handed over the keys to the former agent the day before.
“Thanks a lot!” Agent Frank shines. “I hope you enjoyed the mirage.”
“It worked.”
“You have a great flight!”
After his plane took off, Frank agreed to consider what would happen next. He was, of course, in charge of the situation, and according to Hailey, his product did not go unnoticed. He thought he knew what it meant, but he didn’t like it.
He might have had to push his body under one of the boats and throw his legs out, so he would be found by a dog walker the next day. Hailey may scold him for disappointing him, but then he may allow him to do what he is hired to do. Mike Frank was adopted 22 years ago. He knew he could always be trusted to do his job and do it right, so his old boss would take care of him, even now
What everyone at Hailey and Midwest Supply didn’t know — a year ago Mike Frank put something extra in his last Manila envelope — was a picture of him, but a new passport with someone’s name on it. He was waiting in a wall safe that Frank had set up behind the bookshelves in his living room, where he also kept the cash he had saved for the past twenty years.
He would not leave immediately. They would be watching him. It may take weeks, months, or even years, but if Frank had anything he knew in the last 22 years, it would be patience. He didn’t come out like the two yogi who tried to catch him, and he was sure he wouldn’t wrap up in hell like a poor juicer halfway to Mississippi. One day Frank will be there, and the next day he will be gone. Puff, that’s right. But it would be on its terms.
He pulled his chair bag from under the chair. A few hours later, he returns home, where he is treated to an additional Kurosawa in Takahachi, and Akiko finds an additional 20 on his tip. He took out his book, opened it where he had stopped, and did not look up until his plane landed at O’Hara.
If you liked this piece why not check out some of my other pieces here. | https://medium.com/@everythingcj/franks-mood-8c3a399d4842 | ['Everything Cj'] | 2021-02-07 16:18:32.649000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Short Fiction', 'Short Read', 'Read', 'Fiction'] |
Africa In The Face Of Global Warming | “We must face up to an inescapable reality: the challenges of sustainability simply overwhelm the adequacy of our responses. With some honourable exceptions, our responses are too few, too little, and too late.” — Kofi A. Annan
Farmers planting during a rainy season in Dali, North Darfur, Sudan. Credit: UN Photo / Albert Farran
To think that we can understand the gruesome implications that are impending as a result of our irresponsibility is absolutely subpar. Science has never been precise when it comes to nature, and now we are certainly not any closer in understanding the apparent extent to the damage we’re incurring and the problems that follow, we might think we’re close but are only very far.
As a Less Economically Developed Country (LEDC) like most countries in Africa (if not all), the level of vulnerability heightens in the wake of global warming. For instance globally, 820 million people are experiencing starvation, in Africa the situation is dire as 20% of its population suffer (20 out of 30 most affected by hunger come from Africa), and this is predicted to worsen in a continent where food and survival is largely dependent on the climate system and the environment, so when climate catastrophe strikes most people in these countries will find it extremely difficult to cope and that could resort to a cascade of crises. Already with so much deficiency recorded, Africa’s chances in the face of an impending disaster is minimized and reasons for this can be credited to the impotent climate change policies and lack of resources accessibility, priorities of governments are often short term, and corruption as well as lack of qualified persons in strategic positions.
Now with global pollution still unpruned, limiting warming below 1.5°C will pose a big challenge but still possible only however requiring several unprecedented changes, which of course are not loved by everyone even though it is for the greater good. One of the major reasons decarbonization or reducing carbon emission is difficult and challenging is largely due to our overdependence on fossil fuels. Now, mostly anything that requires energy implies burning of fossils, in 2017 81% of fossil fuel consumption came from oil, coal and natural gas, and that of course must be dealt with if we want a good chance at this.
But let’s assume we’ve crossed the global temperature of 1.5
and have opened a portal of climate catastrophe with over 50% of the population being undernourished, what plan and strategy should Africa put in place to maximize survival and reduce further uncertain climate impact? Basically, how can Africa adapt to global warming?
The reason adaptation is pivotal is because debatably, putting more effort on strategies that might reduce impacts on a substantial scale over a long period of time (mitigating) might not be the ideal approach for some countries especially those in vulnerable countries like most in Africa, simply because they don’t have that much luxury of time to spend, and Africa must begin to adapt quickly.
This is however not to downplay mitigation plans and strategies, as a matter of fact different approaches apply to different countries based on their level of buffering in the face of impact. But for Africa, it is best we started implementing strategies that would secure foods, and other survival needs even in the face of climate change (adaptation) primarily before mitigation can take place. And to defend this standpoint, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)defines adaptation as “the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects.” It’s basically doing what we can to live with and minimize the destruction and suffering that comes from climate change. We need to think and act like it’s already here which of course is.
What many do not recognize is that mitigation is a priority in the energy, transportation industry and waste management sectors but for adaptation it is a priority in the food, water and health sectors and in coastal or low-lying areas which are mostly vulnerable. That is just the kind Africa requires first before mitigation can then be focused on. Failing to adapt to a reality that we already know is coming (or already here) is just plainly irresponsible and dangerous because impacts as they always are have greater effect on poorer populations which largely makes up Africa and some LEDC.
Now, thinking of adaptation strategies, plans must be put in place that would be climate impact proof, resilient, and able to harness some of the impact that occurs, although yet uncertain. For instance, in African countries and LEDC there could be:
New environmental practices as a response to climate change e.g. controlled environment agriculture, ecosystems based adaptation, etc.
Preservation and harvesting of water in highlands for marginalised communities.
Relocation of homes and essential buildings from coastal areas.
Harnessing and adjusting some of the impacts for our benefit.
These are ways Africa can adapt quickly to the impact of global warming.
We must make sure that whatever fate we find ourselves in we must not be extremely impacted, now we must live everyday adapting and trying as much as possible to not fall short and be irresponsible. Like many other things that have been delayed this is not a political issue that it can be stalled, it’s a moral issue and we’re on a race against time. Africa cannot continue to prioritise the present for too long because in little time the future will become the present, and only when that happens will we be sure if we failed or not.
Written by Lekwa Hope Anya, a climate and sustainability experts | https://medium.com/climatewed/africa-in-the-face-of-global-warming-6f2817a95ac4 | ['Iccdi Africa'] | 2020-05-17 23:26:38.326000+00:00 | ['Global Warming', 'Climate Change', 'Agriculture', 'Sustainability', 'Women'] |
How Can User Feedback Improve Your Mobile App? — Zesium | Source: thefinancialbrand.com
Bill Gates Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Mobile apps always tend to earn high average app store ratings but where many fail is using the qualitative feedback.
The best way for a mobile app to thrive is through user feedback as it is one of the main elements in improving user satisfaction and growing your business.
Although a high average rating can be really great, it can also shift your focus from quality customer feedback behind each star. Businesses also need qualitative data to provide context and insight — ratings are important but reviews are even more so as they help to maintain the health of your app.
Ratings don’t provide valuable information but only show whether your users like your app or not — in other words, you cannot identify the features for improvement or modify your product roadmap to make the changes quickly.
When used together, brands can really understand their customers’ needs and pain points.
Why is User Feedback Essential?
Gathering user feedback is the best method to understand what your users want and to improve the same in the app.
As competition is tough, it is vital for you to develop an app that provides value to its users and that is functional and engaging.
Once you receive the feedback from your users, you must act upon it otherwise, the users will feel like you’re not interested in creating a better experience for them.
Let’s list some reasons why it is essential to regularly receive feedback from your users.
Locates Features for Improvement
You know your product as each feature has been thoroughly thought and discussed. However, sometimes you cannot see all the imperfections.
It is extremely important to get insight into what your users like and what are their preferred functionalities.
Show that you truly listen to your users’ opinions since the app is made for them, so it should be as close to their preferences as possible.
However, take care to listen only to the most relevant feedback. Create a feedback system where users can express their concerns or opinions so that you can understand and decide which features to keep, which ones aren’t so relevant and which new features should be created.
Once you receive the feedback, don’t put everything into a feature backlog but rather in a ‘feedback bank’ — no matter how much you love the users for sharing their opinions, you have to be careful about applying them to product management. Each feature has a lifetime cost that includes maintenance, debugging, additional server load etc.
Stop and ask yourself: Can I afford this?
For example, a bug could sometimes take days to fix or adding a new feature could take a month to implement — investing your resources into something that is not relevant for your app could turn out to be a waste of time.
That’s why it is essential to filter the feedback and sort your priorities — only then implement a new feature and stay assured that your company will produce the app that meets users expectations.
Source: onlinetherapyinstitute.com
Makes Users Feel Involved
Taking feedback into account and asking for users’ opinion shows them they are valued.
By asking your users to provide feedback, you show them they are an active participant in making the app better for them. When users feel appreciated and heard, they start having positive connotations to your brand which they show by sharing their good experience to other potential users — the result could be more ‘sales’ in the future.
Make sure that you use collected opinions to make decisions about your app and communicate it to your users to keep them engaged. Not doing so, you risk your users to feel neglected or ignored.
A good try is to implement a customer feedback loop which is a strategy for constant product improvement based on users’ feedback.
Remember, communication should always be a two-way street — try to create in-app surveys and specifically ask about their pain points within an app — this way, users can state the issues they face in the app or rate certain services thus giving further understanding to developers what is needed in the app.
Such method provides a feeling of direct involvement of users within upgrading your app.
Source: companyfounder.com
Produces Personal Recommendation
Personal recommendations are the top reason for purchase decisions within users. Referrals are the most effective yet free way of advertising and it resembles word-of-mouth type of advertising.
Some other factors like advertising or price comparison influence users’ decision at some point, but referrals remain important during each stage of the purchase process.
It is said that over 8-in-10 purchases are influenced by a recommendation or word-of-mouth.
That means that on average, the majority of people who would make purchases with your company, would have received a personal recommendation from someone. Such face-to-face referrals usually come from trusted people like friends or family and it can be the most convincing tool.
If you wish to get users through referrals, first make sure that users’ feedback is positive. Do not forget to thank your users for making a referral — a good idea is to consider some appropriate way to reward them, through a discount for an upgraded package or unlocking a certain premium feature for them etc.
Source: zesium.com
Bad Feedback Will Do You Well
Do not worry if you receive some bad feedback — instead of being frustrated, try to see unhappy customers as a chance.
Bad feedback should be valued even more than the good ones ( as my colleague says, ‘I don’t want to hear good stuff. Tell me what’s bugging you?’) as those users stepped out to share their bad experience expecting from you to act on it.
Firstly, it is highly important to create an action plan to deal with the bad feedback. Contact the users, address the issue and advise them on the exact date when you will follow them up. If the problem is more complex to resolve, make sure to compensate the user for the unhappy experience.
You do not have to give your app for free, but a certain discount for premium upgrade or unlocking some features for the specific user can look much more positive to them.
In such cases, the user will give you another chance and treat your oversight as a minor mistake.
In case you don’t have such a plan, things can go sideways and turn out badly for you.
Helps with New and Existing Users
Whenever someone wants to download your app, the first thing they do is reading reviews and checking ratings. Although personal recommendations are more powerful than online reviews, the latter should not be underestimated.
You would be surprised that 90% of users read online reviews before deciding whether to purchase and 88% of users trust these opinions as if they are personal recommendations.
You should care about your online reviews — track the situation, ask your users for their opinions and react appropriately. This way, you can even prevent any surprises before appearing on the Internet.
Even when a user downloads your mobile app and tries it, it does not ensure they will come back. You can monitor various analytics and the market but keep in mind that there are some things that ONLY a user can bring your attention to.
Feedback may address some things you have not considered before, like free shipping, available customer support or a user-friendly website.
Even if you don’t get only positive reviews, such unique insight will help you to understand the concept of the users’ desired approach and result in regular users.
Source: insights.un.ga
Builds Loyalty for Your Brand
Asking for feedback from your users and responding to their opinions create a relationship that will make the whole experience more personal. Users will start to personalize your business and see it as a ( group of people) who care about their experience.
User-generated content (UGC) can be in the form of user reviews, testimonials or other visual content crucial to building your brand loyalty. Placing such content on your social media will make you more visible to the rest of the audience.
User reviews can be a potential goldmine of ideas on how you can separate yourself from competitors. For example, maybe your app is ‘ faster when loading’ or ‘ more reliable ‘ — the sooner you find your angle, the better.
One of the key things of building brand loyalty is being ‘real’ to your users — meaning, don’t be afraid to show the human side of your business. Not only to have a distinct tone but also try to be able to respond to callouts not because you ‘ have to’ but because you WANT TO.
Creating and maintaining such relationships will pay off — instead of being just an impersonal company (or an app), you create a connection between the users and your brand by becoming their favourite choice.
Source: digitaltechnology.institute
Combines Data for Better Results
You should combine data analytics and user feedback for developers to have a clearer picture on what caused the issues.
However, analytics can locate some issues like short sessions but you cannot know why the users are logging out unless we have users’ feedback. Users will be able to advise on too many ads popping out or if the app closes upon clicking on a certain button etc.
When you combine feedback with analytic data, you can gain deeper insight into a users’ app experience. It can help you answer some complex questions like: why are users abandoning my app after only one usage or why users leave from a specific app screen?
If you utilize your data analysis together with user feedback, you can improve your app easier than working on your own.
When talking about metrics, you should always track the right metrics:
Growth — the number of downloads
— the number of downloads Retention — monthly actives out of the total number of downloads
— monthly actives out of the total number of downloads Engagement (or stickiness) — how frequently users use your app
Source: datapine.com
How to Gather User Feedback
How you will ask the feedback from your users is one of the most important things — you should consider different ways to gather user feedback and decide which one can fits your app the best:
Contact Forms and In-App Surveys — this method is direct yet effective. Make sure for a form or survey to be located in an accessible area of your app not taking up too much space
— this method is direct yet effective. Make sure for a form or survey to be located in an accessible area of your app not taking up too much space Module Spots — they include in-page headers, footers or in the ‘About Us’ section within the menu. They are considered as low-effort and high-value options.
— they include in-page headers, footers or in the ‘About Us’ section within the menu. They are considered as low-effort and high-value options. Ratings — you can also ask a question (or a few) where your user can rank various aspects of your app with up to five stars. Try not to bother your users and make this feature optional.
— you can also ask a question (or a few) where your user can rank various aspects of your app with up to five stars. Try not to bother your users and make this feature optional. App Pop-Up — this method provides a pop-up on your app to users. It can be an option for gathering feedback, but keep in mind that pop-ups block the screen preventing users from whatever they were doing so some users can find them irritating.
— this method provides a pop-up on your app to users. It can be an option for gathering feedback, but keep in mind that pop-ups block the screen preventing users from whatever they were doing so some users can find them irritating. Targeted Questions — segment your users by functionalities they use the most in your app — ask them targeted questions about that certain section of your app. It will ensure your users are familiar with the questions you are asking them.
Source: tweakyourbiz.com
There are more ways to create successful feedback but how will you approach your users really depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
First, consider the type of app you develop to determine the appropriate method of collecting feedback, then make sure that your feedback request is not irritating or pushy.
Sticking by these principles will help you to find the balance between not bothering users and compiling the necessary data to determine which elements of your app need improvement.
FINAL WORD
Before starting with user feedback, define your objective clearly and take into account functions and costs to create a feedback form you need. Upon collected user feedback, make sure to conduct wide data analysis on your results and adequately adjust your mobile app roadmap.
Don’t forget to thank your users for their feedback and inform them on recent improvements.
If you try to follow these steps, the feedback automation will perform its magic and let users help in improving your mobile application. | https://medium.com/dataseries/how-can-user-feedback-improve-your-mobile-app-zesium-559b583cdc54 | ['Maja Dakić'] | 2020-12-03 10:58:41.752000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Feedback', 'User Experience', 'Mobile Apps'] |
This Is Plato’s Most Powerful Argument Ever | This Is Plato’s Most Powerful Argument Ever
The Cave, the Sun, and the Divided Line Are Metaphors, but this Is His Neutron Bomb
Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash
Everyone laments the current polarization on political, cultural, and epidemiological issues in America and the world, but since people have different experiences in life, a certain degree of polarization is to be expected. And, it is nothing new.
The questions surrounding what we know in general, and how we know it, have proved to be polarizing since before Plato. Just as there are, broadly speaking, two general approaches to politics represented by the Democrats and the Republicans in this country, there are two general answers to questions concerning what we know and how we know it: Rationalism and empiricism.
Rationalism emphasizes certain innate mental abilities that seem to separate Homo sapiens from essentially all other known species. It posits a category of knowledge that is objective, immutable, and known a priori or before experience. The subject matter of plane geometry or much of mathematics would be examples of this kind of knowledge. We know that a triangle has three sides because of our knowledge of the nature of triangles. We know that 2+2=4 because of our knowledge of the meanings of the constituents of the equation.
Photo by Bosco Shots on Unsplash
Empiricism, in contrast, emphasizes the role of experience in knowledge. We know things, according to empiricists, because we can see, hear, smell, and touch them. We know that a quarter is larger than a penny because we can set them side by side and observe the respective dimensions.
Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash
There are many nuances and complications to these two positions, but as I am a limited being, I will let these sketches stand.
What Epistemological Team Does Plato Play For?
Plato is the captain of the rationalist team. Some would name Descartes for that role, and he is a great choice, but I will stick with Plato for reasons of seniority.
Anyway, Plato is known chiefly for positing a world of Forms that serves as the perfect template from which the world we walk around in was created. He claims that the Forms are the only proper objects of knowledge. They are uncreated, immutable, indestructible, and perfect; unlike everything we see around us.
Plato writes that our “knowledge” of the objects around us does not qualify as knowledge because it changes with time and point of view. The banana, for instance, that I “know” is green today will be yellow some days hence. So, for Plato, I cannot meaningfully claim that I know that the banana is green. It is only my current opinion.
Photo by Goutham Ganesh Sivanandam on Unsplash
Tastes Great, or Less Filling?
The seemingly fundamental disagreement between the rationalists and the empiricists was already old in Plato’s time, and the dialogue that he wrote about it, Theaetetus, is considered by some to be his greatest work.
The Theatetus has a very long interpolated narrative in which Socrates asks the bright young student, Theaetetus, to define “knowledge.” Theaetetus fails to satisfy Socrates with his first attempt and is invited to make a second. He answers that knowledge is sensation, and the two of them, with Theodorus, Theaetetus’ teacher, are off on a ninety-page discussion of empiricism in which Socrates offers argument after argument to dispute it.
The arguments range from the simply hilarious to some of the most profound modeling of consciousness offered perhaps to this day. I would love to review them all, but I will fast forward to the coup de grace: the neutron bomb as I call it above.
In English, we call this argument the table-turning argument, but its Greek cognomen is the peritrope, and it has applications beyond the empiricist claims that inspired it.
How Does Socrates Use the Table-Turning Argument?
Socrates tells Theaetetus that the sophist Protagoras has written a book called Truth in which he claims that man is the measure of all things and also that things are as they seem. This book, according to Socrates contains the fullest version of the empiricist theory of knowledge, and he recounts it at length for the edification of Theatetus and Theodorus.
Socrates disagrees with almost every aspect of the theory, but he considers it a matter of principle to present Protagoras’ arguments fully and in their strongest forms.
After exhaustive recounting and elenctic questioning of Theatetus, Socrates seems to have shown that empirical claims to knowledge are incorrigible to all but the individual making them; i.e., when I claim that the room is cold, no one is in a position to refute that because my real claim is “My senses tell me that the room is cold,” and I am the only one who can know that for sure.
Socrates gets Theaeteus and Theodorus to agree that empiricist claims are relative, and they are always true for the one making them. It is at this point that Socrates presents what has become known as the table-turning argument, which I will break out into individual propositions as philosophers do.
Protagoras claims that every claim is true for the one who makes it. Some people claim that Protagoras’ claim is true. Some people claim that Protagoras’ claim is not true. Ergo, Protagoras’ claim is true and not true.
The law of noncontradiction does not allow a proposition to be true and not true at the same time, so the conclusion of the argument (proposition #4 above) cannot be true. Since the argument is valid, the implication is that one or more of the premisses is false, and the argument fails.
Socrates believes that he has shown that Protagoras’ claims that man is the measure, and things are as they seem are incoherent: empiricism is self-contradictory and cannot be true.
Photo by ANIRUDH on Unsplash
What Else Can the Table-Turning Argument Do?
While Plato created the table-turning argument to confute empiricist claims, it can be used to show problems with other kinds of general propositions or universal claims. Such claims are often made about God.
Many people claim, for instance, that God is omnipotent: There is nothing he cannot do. The table-turning argument can be applied thus:
God is omnipotent (God can do anything). God can make a massive rock. Ergo, God can make a rock that is so massive that He cannot lift it.
If premiss #1 is true, then premisses #2 (not technically needed in this argument) and #3 must be true. But, premiss #3 implies a dilemma: Either God cannot make a rock so massive that He cannot lift it, or he can make a rock so massive that He cannot lift it. In either case, God’s power is shown to have a limit, and premiss #1 is false: God is not omnipotent.
Another common claim about God is that He is omniscient: He knows everything. The table-turning argument can be used to refute such a claim as follows:
God is omniscient (God knows everything). That there is something that God does not know is a thing whether it be true or false. Ergo, God knows that there is something that God does not know.
The conclusion asserts a contradiction and cannot be true due to the law of noncontradiction. Since the argument is valid, there must be a problem with one of the premisses, and the better candidate is premiss #1.
One last case takes us out of the religious realm. Many people claim that, due to the presumed infinite size or duration of the universe, anything is possible.
Anything is possible (Everything is possible). That something is impossible is a thing whether it be true or false. Ergo, it is possible for something to be impossible.
As in the previous case, the conclusion asserts a contradiction and cannot be true, so the argument appears to be flawed.
Photo by Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash
Wouldn’t David Hume Call All of this Sophistry and Illusion?
Yeah; he probably would. It’s very similar to the problem facing the polarized camps in our current political and cultural conflicts: Both sides are sure that the other is talking manifest nonsense because both sides reject one or more of the basic ontological assumptions made by the other.
Well, as the great Yogi Berra once said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” He also said, “It gets late early out there.” And so it does. | https://medium.com/the-academy-of-you/this-is-platos-most-powerful-argument-ever-578f52bb1696 | ['Charles Gray'] | 2020-05-25 18:09:15.731000+00:00 | ['Logic', 'Arguments', 'God', 'Plato', 'Philosophy'] |
Darkman Haiku | Photo: Universal Pictures
Darkman Haiku
A salute to Sam Raimi’s 1990 cult classic, written in the style of the traditional Japanese poetry form
My name is Darkman
I’m scarred inside and out!
Yeah, I’m depressed
I’m like Batman
Shadowy vigilante
Why are you laughing?
I don’t have any lips
Once, I looked like Liam Neeson
A fire ate my face
I fight crime at night
They call me “superhero”
No, really they do
I’m a scientist
Who can make synthetic skin
(An audible sigh)
I have super strength
I don’t feel physical pain
Emotional? Yes
I wear fedoras
Bandages cover a skull face
Grandmas point and scream
I love musicals:
Phantom of the Opera…
Actually, just that
My secret HQ:
A rat-infested warehouse,
real fixer-upper
I get really mad
Then I fight evil gangsters
And I feel better
Hello Punisher?
Nobody returns my calls
Rorschach are you there? | https://medium.com/humungus/darkman-haiku-21823744e295 | ['John Devore'] | 2020-08-18 21:43:23.691000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Horror', '90s', 'Poetry', 'Superheroes'] |
Integrate Watson Assistant With Just About Anything | Additional credit to Laksh Krishnamurthy for his contributions to the content and diagram
Watson services on IBM Cloud are a set of REST APIs. This makes them quite simple to be used as a piece of a solution within an application. It also means they need to be integrated with various other parts of the solution to allow your users to interact with your instance of Watson. With the launch of Watson Assistant, integrating with other channels (Facebook, Slack, Intercom) has never been easier. Building a skill for Alexa is possible with Watson. While we have published a number of assets to assist in this effort, like the Watson SDKs, API reference, sample applications, and other users have contributed GitHub repos as well, many of our users still ask how to integrate with other channels or specific external systems. If you are not familiar with the Watson APIs, you can sign up for IBM Cloud here.
While it would be physically impossible for us to provide instructions on how to integrate with every single possible integration point on the planet, there is a general outline that nearly all integrations follow that I hope sets our developers up for success when they need to integrate with something new.
There are essentially 3 major components to a solution.
Sample Architecture Diagram for Integrations
The left hand side of the solution typically is the front end or channel. This could be a web page or an application window where the user types their questions, responses are shown, images are displayed, etc. It may be a messaging channel, an embedded chat widget, a mobile app or even SMS messaging.
The brains behind the interaction would be a Watson Assistant service. Watson Assistant is taking the inputs, understanding them, and driving what happens next. Whether it is simply displaying a response, disambiguating what’s being asked, using a multi modal interaction like showing a map, playing a video, or something more complex like reading/writing to a database or even calling an enterprise service.
These first two pieces are typically pretty standard. The left side can be customized if you are using your own website, but existing messaging channels like Slack or Facebook can’t be customized, you can only connect to them. The right hand side can be trained on your content, but the interaction follows some structure. Depending upon the content source or type you may have to use some data transformation or connectivity patterns.
The middle layer is the application layer and is typically the piece that can vary the most. If you take a look at any of our sample applications, you will see that there is one job that the middle layer must accomplish — passing information from the left side to the right side, including system context, and passing it back right to left to carry the conversation. It’s simply a translation layer taking data from one side to the other and back. Where this gets the most complex is when you have additional integrations you want to work with. Let’s say you want to add Tone Analyzer, so you have an empathetic chatbot. We typically call this pre-processing because it happens before calling Watson Assistant. Your application would take the user input, run it through this pre-processor, in this case to get the tone of the user statement, attach that as context for Assistant, and then pass it on to Watson.
The third layer is a post-processing step where logic necessary to respond to the user query resides, meaning it happens after calling Watson Assistant but before returning a response to the front end. In the Assistant With Discovery example, we show using Watson Discovery Service as a post processed service. Another use case for this might be writing information to a database. Let’s say a user orders a ‘large pepperoni pizza’. Your application would potentially need to make two callouts. The first would place the order in your POS system to actually get them the pizza, and the second might write their order to a database. This way, next time the user logs in they could simply say ‘order my usual’ or something similar. Watson Assistant would typically return an ‘action’ tag as documented here and also return some text. Your application could take action and do the activities as defined, and then also show a message like “I’ll remember that’s your favorite, and it’s on the way. Thank you for your order.”
Get started with your own customized bot, IBM has created samples and developer patterns so you can build quickly. We publish various samples for things like connecting to channels using Botkit, or using our new Serverless Architecture built on IBM Cloud Functions. Or start by creating an Alexa skill using Watson Assistant via the Apache OpenWhisk serverless framework.
We have demos for connecting to Tone, NLU, and Discovery, but these are just samples. You will probably find more unique and powerful things to integrate to your virtual agent. Use the pattern established above to swap in a new front end or messaging channel that we may not support out of the box. Using Actions, you can now call out to other services to enrich your conversation or allow users to actually complete activities using post processing. You can also add additional pieces along with Assistant in order to make your Watson more powerful. | https://medium.com/ibm-watson/integrate-watson-assistant-with-just-about-anything-695bc1d29875 | ['Mitchell Mason'] | 2018-05-10 18:58:40.801000+00:00 | ['Wa Editorial', 'Watson Conversation', 'Editorial', 'Bots', 'Watson Assistant'] |
Introducing the Pinterest Developers Platform | Josh Inkenbrandt | Pinterest product manager, Developer Platform
Every day, millions of people use Pinterest to save creative ideas for recipes, articles, places to travel, products and more. Today we’re announcing the beta version of the Pinterest Developers Platform, a suite of APIs for developers to build apps and integrations that bring Pins to life.
On Pinterest, people have saved over 50 billion Pins. As a developer, you’ll have the chance to build something that makes those Pins a reality, like apps for ordering ingredients from a recipe Pin or booking trips based on travel Pins.
When Pinners sign in to your app with Pinterest, you can:
Build a personalized, curated experience based on their boards and Pins
Let people easily create multiple Pins or boards to get more of your content distributed across Pinterest
We’d love to hear your app ideas — take a look at our technical overview and apply for beta access. We’re looking forward to working with developers (only in the U.S. to start).
Josh Inkenbrandt is a product manager on the Developer Platform team. | https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/introducing-the-pinterest-developers-platform-b7cc0f66fb1e | ['Pinterest Engineering'] | 2017-02-21 20:58:02.464000+00:00 | ['Platform', 'Developer', 'Pinterest', 'API'] |
How to Create Threads Seamlessly on Twitter | How to Create Threads Seamlessly on Twitter
A (non-sponsored) review of the Typefully App
If you’ve been puzzled by Twitter threads for a long time, I’ve just discovered a thread-making app for Twitter that might make it easier for you! It’s relatively new so there are a few things to be desired, but already has some solid functionality that I’m excited to use on a more regular basis!
Get the scoop from the gal who has over 127 threads and at one point programmed her own in-house app (named Lucy’s Microwave) to automate some of the boring parts of creating threads!
screenshot of typefully app by author
Minimalist aesthetic: It’s split into two sides, with a left side that appears as a seamless document and a right side that shows you what the thread looks like in thread view. The familiarity of the document side might work best for writers like you (and I) who get frustrated by the ticking word count timer when creating Twitter threads on the platform itself. Seamless login: One-click via Twitter authentication. Took about 5-seconds. Easy to use: The platform is mostly intuitive, with the user interface clearly showing you where to start writing because of how closely it mirrors standard document/ writing apps. Multimedia is the weak point: It’s not immediately apparent nor apparent after some more extensive search (5-minutes, shh, I’m an impatient consumer) whether this app supports multimedia uploads like gifs, photos, videos. The text-based editor is optimized to serve a subset of Twitter users, but not all. Diverse potential uses: Medium publication daily digests? Lists? Reviews? Rants? The thread format supports a lot of potential options.
The Twitter thread version of this review pictured in the cover photo is available here: | https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-create-threads-seamlessly-on-twitter-54009627639a | ['Lucy The Eggcademic', 'She Her'] | 2020-12-25 18:15:13.868000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Twitter', 'Twitter Threads', 'Social Media', 'Innovation'] |
Investment Pack: A product for your long term investment journey | Paytm Money launched a marquee product “Investment Packs” in March 2019. These packs have provided a one-stop solution to both new and experienced investors, for their long term investment journey. Be it wealth creation or wealth preservation, over the last year, Investment packs have delivered returns in line with your investment objective while maintaining volatility as per your risk profile. We reflect closely on the return and volatility profile of each pack in this article.
Why did we create Investment Packs?
Investment packs are constructed by our in-house advisory team of experts based on rigorous and in-depth research. The aim behind investment packs is to help you invest as per your risk profile. This enables you to stay invested for the longer term by tiding over volatile markets. Remember the famous saying:
“ Time in the market is more important that timing the market”
Let us understand this with an example. It is Jan 2018 and you are a “moderate” risk investor. But just because the past performance of Midcap and Small cap oriented funds (having a high risk) have been spectacular you decide to invest all your money in these funds. Unfortunately for you, these categories started to fall massively in the months to come. Most likely, you would have panicked seeing the sharp fall and exited at a loss. Or you are at best holding on to your investments/SIP but are constantly worried about the poor returns over the last 18 months.
The point is that you need to stick to your investments only if you invest in-line with your risk profile. That is why it is compulsory for you take a free risk assessment questionnaire before putting in your hard earned money in investment packs. Risk profile and asset allocation are important but often overlooked aspects of investing, that we hope to set right through investment packs.
How did we create Investment Packs?
Each investment packs has 3–5 mutual fund schemes, diversified across asset classes (Equity/Debt), AMCs, Fund Managers, etc. We follow a three step process while constructing the investment packs (Read a detailed article on construction of investment packs):
1. Investor Risk Assessment:
A detailed questionnaire that defines the risk appetite of the investor across 5 risk profiles starting from ‘Aggressive’ to ‘Low Risk’.
2. Suitable Asset Allocation:
Splitting your investment between Equity and Debt in-line with your risk profile as well as choosing the subcategories to invest in.
3. Fund Selection:
Select suitable funds for each asset class based on a robust internally developed methodology
Based on the minimum investment amount, we have two investment packs for each risk profile.
Broad overview of Investment Pack performance:
The asset allocation for each pack is based on the risk profile. Higher the level of risk you are willing to take on, the higher will be the allocation to equity vis-à-vis debt. You can read in-depth about the asset allocation for each pack in this article.
Let us now take a look at how an investment of INR 1 lakh, made 5 years ago, would have grown. We focus not just on the final investment value today but also on the path it has taken (volatility) to reach today’s value.
Aggressive pack, as you can see from the above graph, has generated the maximum returns while the Low Risk pack has given the least return. Does this mean everyone should invest in Aggressive packs? The answer lies in the path or the way investments have grown or volatility over the 5 year period!
The higher returns in the Aggressive pack comes with higher volatility i.e. investments tend to go up and down as per the market cycle. Thus it will be suitable only for ‘Aggressive’ investors who are looking for long term wealth creation and are ready to accept short term losses.
The ‘Low Risk’ pack in contrast, has little volatility and hence best suited for people looking to primarily protect invested capital. Investing is not about chasing returns, but doing it according to your risk profile which will surely help in reaching your financial goals — the major focus of investment packs.
Individual Pack Performance:
For Aggressive Investors:
These packs are meant for high risk takers and focus on long term wealth creation. Hence these packs have higher exposure to mid and small caps. This can lead to short term losses but can beat the benchmark by a considerable margin over the 5+ years investment period.
For Growth Investors:
A Growth investor is willing to take on lesser risk compared to an Aggressive investor. Hence the portfolio has higher exposure to Multicaps that enables benchmark beating performance over the 5Y period at comparatively lesser volatility, but the outperformance is also lower vs pack for “Aggressive” investor.
For Moderate Investors:
A Moderate investor seeks consistent investment growth and hence has portfolio that has equal allocation to Equity (mostly Large caps) and Debt. The pack has beaten its benchmark in 3–5 year investment horizon with medium volatility.
For Conservative Investors:
A conservative investor seeks capital preservation with little fluctuations in growth, hence this portfolio has suitable debt funds with shorter duration. Debt market has faced a series of issues over the past year and a half. However, our robust in-house debt mutual fund selection methodology has ensured that none of the debt funds in our packs faced any sharp and permanent NAV drops due to defaults of underlying paper. Hence conservative pack beats the benchmark over the 3Y period with low volatility as shown:
For Low Risk Investors:
A Low Risk investor wants to take on the least risk and his/her primary goal is to protect the invested capital. Hence debt funds chosen here are most conservative in terms of mitigating interest rate and credit risk. Thus a Low Risk investor has a smooth investment journey as seen in the graph below.
For Tax Saving:
This is a Goal/Solution-oriented pack that is available to all investors and helps in tax saving under 80C. These funds have a 3 year lock in period but we suggest you hold them at least for 5 years. The pack has significantly outperformed the benchmark in the 3–5 year investment horizon.
The way forward:
The advisory team will continue to closely monitor the performance of investment packs. If required, the advisory team will also change the pack composition (% allocation to equity/debt), sub-asset allocation and selected funds. This will ensure that your investments are up to date and you keep getting the best out of your investments, requiring no effort at your end!
If you have already invested in Investment Packs, continue investing through the SIP route to benefit from rupee cost averaging. If you haven’t invested yet, do check them out and invest today on Paytm Money. | https://medium.com/@paytmmoney/investment-packs-product-for-patient-long-term-investment-journey-54e28f5283ed | ['Paytm Money'] | 2019-12-06 08:51:08.686000+00:00 | ['Mutual Funds', 'Wealth', 'Risk', 'Investing', 'Financial Planning'] |
‘Regeneration’ — the new gentrification | From the 100% housing series: Ten things we should know about the housing crisis
The 100% Housing crew asks Jasmine Taankink, Porirua East community member, and Housing Action Porirua coordinator why we should be wary of housing regeneration projects.
Porirua East
Kia ora Jasmine, you’ve spent most of your life in Porirua East. What do you love most about the place?
Porirua East is a beautiful, diverse community. Through the manaakitanga of mana whenua, Ngāti Toarangatira and the work of mātā waka, Tagata Pasifika, working class Pākehā and more recently whānau from Syria, Myanmar, Columbia among others, strong communities have been built and thrive here. Some families, including my children’s family, have five generations living in Porirua East. Porirua is their home, where their children have been born and raised, and for some it’s where the bones of their tūpuna rest.
Currently home to a mosque, sikh temple, kohanga reo, churches built by the communities that live here, the best library, a’oga amata, Te Akapuanga Kuki Airani hall, Matauala Hall, Maraeroa Marae (ngā hau e whā), Horouta Marae ( Ngāti Porou), to name a few significant places. There’s a place for everyone here.
Sounds amazing! But there’s some issues with housing right?
Yes, Porirua East is also known for its cold damp housing, both state and private which has led to high rates of respiratory issues and at times, the highest rates of rheumatic fever in the world.
Many families live in overcrowded conditions due to the rapidly escalating cost of housing, and houses are not designed for accessibility. One of our elders only has one exit from his home, there are rooms he’s unable to enter and he fears the floor isn’t strong enough to hold his wheelchair.
Wow, but there’s new houses on the way? Surely that’s a good thing?
Yes and no.
In November 2018, Prime Minister Jacinda Adern, with ministers Kelvin Davis (Minister for Māori Crown Relations), Kris Faafoi (MP for Mana) and Phil Twyford (Housing and Urban Development Minister at the time) announced a new housing development at Russell School that was at that point welcomed by the community.
They promised that thousands of state houses would be refurbished making them warmer and drier for the families that live in them, 2000 affordable Kiwibuild houses would be built with the community given priority for these homes, and that the state housing stock would be increased by 150.
On the surface the plan looked great. An increase in warm dry state houses and brand new affordable houses for those who aspire to home ownership.
But there’s more to it?
Definitely. Ministers and the development team have failed to mention publicly that houses for purchase will be built on Crown land that will be sold to developers in mega lots.
Once this land is sold it can never again be used for much needed state housing or returned to iwi and hapū. It’s only through the experience of others in Tāmaki, Pomare, Maraenui, Marfell and other areas, that the community knew that it was not as good as it sounded.
Can you explain more about the process? What’s happened in Tāmaki and other areas?
The term used is “regeneration.” The Government retains around ⅓ of Crown land to rebuild state housing and sells around ⅔ of the land to developers to build housing to be sold.
These developers want a clean slate, they don’t want to build around existing houses so private homes both owner-occupied and tenanted are acquired also, so the land can be used for the development.
In Tāmaki hundreds of people have been evicted from their homes in an ongoing regeneration project which was meant to benefit the community. Farmers Cres in Pomare suffered a 75% loss in state housing and the local school’s roll declined significantly. The plan for Porirua is the same, with 1300 or so houses set to be demolished to make way for the same amount of state houses and 2000 houses to be sold.
That doesn’t sound good — how are people feeling? What are the major concerns?
People are concerned about being displaced, either directly through evictions or indirectly through rapidly escalating housing prices. We don’t know how much weight is given to anything we ask for, we aren’t seeing commitments from Kāinga Ora or our city council who initiated the project.
There’s a desperate need for warm, dry, secure, accessible housing and we just can’t see how this development is going to ensure everyone has that.
Instead of regenerating our housing and environment to make it better for our communities to live in, we are actually seeing something called gentrification. Basically, the improvements are for wealthier homebuyers, instead of the people who already call this place home.
It’s really hurtful to know that our community wasn’t ‘worth investing in’ until our area became profitable to developers and appealing to richer people.
And when this process starts happening, it will push many in our community out. This has happened already to some of us already, in places like Ponsonby in Auckland, where peoples’ parents were slowly priced out.
Gentrification and regeneration causes house prices to increase, it drives rents up, services and schools become more expensive and catered to a wealthier community. Before you know it, the place has changed, and a new community makes it their home instead.
We know our area is beautiful, close to the city and the sea, and with the link road to transmission gully coming in, it’s prime real estate for property developers and an opportunity for first home buyers who can’t afford to live in the heart of Wellington.
But where will our community go? Where are our opportunities when we can no longer afford to live in our own home?
When you say it like that, regeneration sounds really sad and scary.
Yeah. For many of our families, we don’t have another option. And we love our home and community. Yes, it can be improved. But it’s sad that it only feels worth improving to make way for other people to move in.
Are these regeneration projects happening elsewhere?
Absolutely. The projects are a particular ‘style’ of development that the Government is championing right now. Kāinga Ora has multiple regeneration projects on the go, mainly in Auckland, in areas like Māngere and Ōwairaka. They are almost always taking place where lower-paid communities live, and especially Māori, Pacific, and migrant communities. Glen Innes was a model for the style, and the communities there are still feeling the effects to this day.
We hear a lot about ‘consultation.’ Do existing communities have a say in what is happening?
Not really. While developers and councils might hold ‘community engagement’ meetings and ‘consultations’, it often seems like it is more about making the changes seem friendly and acceptable to the existing community than truly listening to us. We have lots of ideas about how to improve our communities, but that’s not really why they are meeting us. At the end of the day, it feels like they have the final say.
The stink thing is that some of our families believe that they will be getting a brand new, beautiful home. But Kāinga Ora have not said that the existing community will be a priority for the houses built for purchase. We are being sold a dream, but there is no guarantee we will have a place in it.
Yeesh. It just sounds like wealthy people freeing up land and homes for other wealthy people.
That’s what it feels like too.
So, where are things at now for Porirua East?
The first lot of state tenants are in the process of being moved to make way for the first stage of the building. It’s concerning because the advisory group for the development has only just been announced. There’s no clear path for advocacy or challenging the process for these tenants. The goal of home ownership seems to be moving further and further out of reach for most, as house values in the area sky rocket, and there are no plans by the Government to change their regeneration model.
How do you feel about all of this? I mean, we’re talking about your community and intergenerational family home.
I started out feeling angry. Angry at HLC (now part of Kāinga Ora) for coming in like some sort of marketing company, not answering any questions properly, going into our schools and getting kids that may end up being pushed out of our community all amped about the project. Finding “community champions” to promote the project without explaining it properly. I still feel that anger, as the plan progresses and they’re yet to announce prices for supposedly affordable houses, or products to assist those on lower incomes, or engage in meaningful consultation. There’s also sadness, at the thought that people I love may be pushed out of our community and that we may loose some of our much needed state housing stock at a time we need it most.
What needs to happen to ensure positive housing outcomes for all?
We do need to push back on the gentrification of our communities and the displacement of our whānau. There’s too much to lose. Once land goes into private hands, it is almost impossible to return it back to iwi and hapū or public housing.
Groups like Tāmaki Housing Group and Housing Action Porirua are doing this work, but it’s not easy when you’re up against massive property developers, and councils who think they are doing the right thing. We need dry, warm, affordable and accessible housing and all our whānau to remain living near their schools, jobs and support systems.
We can’t do this work alone. We need to push the government away from this model of private development which drives up land values and will always leave displacement in its wake. We need campaigns for universal state housing that is fit for purpose. And we need our Government and councils to commit to looking after the incredible people and communities that already exist in our country.
Thank you, Jasmine. Thank you for looking out for your community, and for sharing your thoughts with us today. It sounds like we have an important job ahead of us.
Take action | https://medium.com/@100percent-housing/regeneration-the-new-gentrification-69e997a713ad | [] | 2020-12-02 02:20:34.699000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Aotearoa', 'New Zealand'] |
ESSENCE OF FESTIVITY | As a child, celebrations are implied just as holidays. We were never amped up for new garments or individuals. We were excited about things that we would buy for the festivals, playing with our siblings, and sweets. Celebrations additionally signify gift-giving and sharing. Interchange of gifts encourages youngsters to share delights during celebrations. This educates children about generosity and humbleness and the proverb “Sharing is caring”.
As we grew older we realized that a significant number of these things don’t bring us joy any longer. Being a grown-up, presently we find satisfaction in gathering companions and conversing with them for long periods of time, going through celebrations with family, and calm festivals. We crave the presence of humans who matter to us the most and make our celebrations jubilant. Growing up friends became distant and occupied with their lives yet celebrations give the chance to reconnect with them. A few events are very close to our hearts because of past memories, rejoicing in special moments and emotions, respect for our culture, feeling of connection with our roots, and spending time with our loved ones.
Festivals come around and suddenly we remember that we are alive. Lights, laughter, and celebration all around. For few people, festivity is just about creating an unhygienic environment and noise, eating food, gambling, and air pollution. Having fun at the cost of natural resources is not the right thing. We have to follow the right grounds of festivity. “We are diverting from the essence of festivity and rather we are centralized only towards entertainment.”
Before the pandemic, we used to go on excursions with my family. Due to the epidemic, long journeys were not possible. We celebrated almost every function at our home with family which might not be a usual thing for adults. When we celebrate the new year, we feel like entering this new phase of our life. We noticed a few things we have not seen previously. To exemplify, people having a job can enjoy fewer days for Diwali get-away. As an undergrad, it isn’t a big deal to skip a day of classes. However, as a grown-up you have liabilities so you can’t simply take a break whenever you want. Still, celebrations are crucial for having time off from our hectic schedules and simply spending time with loved ones. These are the days when we recall pitiful days and carry a grin to our face. | https://medium.com/@phoenix.flame.blog/essence-of-festivity-c68e0c05b476 | ['Phoenix Flame'] | 2021-11-11 04:45:30.761000+00:00 | ['India', 'Sharing', 'Festivals', 'Indian Culture', 'Diwali'] |
Ornikar: the art of disruption, the talent of execution | By Philippe Gire & Louisa Mesnard
As Ornikar announces a new round of funding, we figured it was the right time to look back on how they mastered the art of disruption these past 7 years and to share some insights about their astonishing execution.
Let’s start by defining the “art of disruption”. According to Cambridge Dictionary, disruption is “the action of completely changing the traditional way that an industry or market operates by using new methods or technology”. It consists of imagining an innovation, confronting it with reality and overcoming all the obstacles it is bound to raise and finally finding a product-market fit. It is an art in the sense that there is no proven method to achieve it, it cannot be learned from textbooks, but it is the initial dispositions of the “artist” and the determined practice of his/her art that allows it to emerge. Let us see how Benjamin Gaignault and Flavien Le Rendu have practiced this art of disruption at Ornikar.
I — 2014–2016 The bumpy road & the art of disruption
The Ornikar-Elaia relationship started off in summer 2014 when we first met the management team and led their first cheque a couple of months later. The company had just been created and the founders were strong believers in their ambition. They convinced us to follow it: disrupting the driving school profession by offering a cheaper, uncomplicated and faster offer. Their addressable market was the kind we love: huge with recurring demand! France alone had 1.3 million candidates which represents a 1.8 billion euro market, but it was also a very fragmented market with 12 000 driving schools and 20 000 teachers.
Neither the founders nor their first investors (us) had anticipated the difficulties and hurdles that Ornikar would have to overcome. Competing with traditional driving schools in France with an online marketplace of students and teachers also meant that they would face regulatory challenges (spoiler alert: which they did).
Back in August 2014, the New York Times wrote an article, “A driving school in France hits a wall of regulations” in which Benjamin Gaignault, the CEO shares: “It seems like the idea is to wait us out until we run out of money. There is an effort to just destroy us.”
These two years without their operator’s license were tough. They fought many lobbying and legal battles as well as testing partial and/or alternative models that were more or less successful. The good news with such a long and painful period of disruption was to give the founders a fantastic opportunity to practice, at length, the “art of disruption” and it gave them the opportunity to understand its dynamics. We were impressed by the resilience we witnessed.
Many entrepreneurs, who either take this first step too quickly or give up along the way, don’t have the resilience to pursue their initial idea with such perseverance and therefore do not benefit from such a long period to “master” the art of disruption. (Note, however, that this is still very reasonable compared to the many famous artists who have only been recognized posthumously!)
III — 2016–2020 Expansion: Disruption rather than execution
After years of hope, on March 31st, 2016, we popped the champagne as Ornikar finally got the agreement and could start operating. This was the beginning of the driving school marketplace we know today.
2016 to 2020 were all about the growing momentum and the strong expansion. Ornikar became profitable in 2018 and at the same time announced a new fundraise of 10M€. In 2019, Ornikar was a network of 700 state-qualified teachers (vs. 1600 today) and managed 70,000 hours of driving lessons a month via its marketplace.
Many entrepreneurs, when they succeed in their first disruption, do not necessarily get the opportunity to practice this art again, at least in the same startup. Benjamin and Flavien had this opportunity twice and, as first investors, we were delighted to witness them succeed again thanks to their initial long period of training!
According to the similarity of the geographical markets, internationalizing a successful disruption in a first market is often more of an execution than a new disruption; but not for Ornikar. The driver’s license situation is so different from one country to another (especially in terms of price optimization opportunities and local regulations) that entering a new country is more about disruption again than execution. It is necessary to choose the target countries with great care according to their specific situation, and in particular their readiness to disrupt and to commit with the same strength as the team in France. It’s vital to adapt the proposal to the local market and to shake up the established habits and rules.
Thanks to the experience acquired in the art of disruption in France, the team was able to cross it throughout Europe and the results obtained now allow it to forecast the same successful results in their first foreign country: Spain this year as those obtained in 2017 in France.
III — 2020 A new product, a new disruption
A third disruptive opportunity arose in the insurance market, which Ornikar initially considered only very partially, as a complement to its driving instruction offering to increase average revenue per customer. But as the team explored this market (€17 billion in France), it became clear that its digitalization offered tremendous disruptive potential, far greater than Ornikar’s initial market of young drivers. So the team once again practiced its art and came up with a first product, Ornikar Assurance, its fit was proven far beyond the new drivers from Ornikar since only 20% of the first customers were from this origin.
As investors, this hat trick moment is often only dreamed of. To be able to see Ornikar diversify and extend past their original market and throughout their newly acquired markets with new offers was extremely fulfilling and a milestone we would dream to see for all our portfolio startups.
And more to come! On a mission to become a global leader in road safety
The transformation of these three identified and proven disruptions is now a matter of execution. This execution has already been successful in France, where Ornikar is now the undisputed leader in driving schools as it prepares over 35% of drivers for the French Code de la Route driving tests.
This first execution experience has proven the talent of the founders in this field: they have been able to progressively optimize their product, develop the most efficient processes and surround themselves with recognized specialists in various fields. They have helped over 1.5 million people learn the rules of the road.
Execution is more of a talent than an art and the best way to challenge such a talent is to go through difficult times. This happened with Covid which strongly hit driving schools as they were closed during the first lockdown. The Ornikar team reacted admirably by reconfiguring itself within only a few days to preserve the short term and by taking advantage of the following months to prepare for the restart and emerge stronger from the crisis. Beyond their sole activity, they protected their entire ecosystem by setting up a support fund for their network of self employed teachers. At the end of the crisis, their figures validate their talent of execution and their ability to replicate this success abroad in the insurance industry and this is what convinced the investors of their Series C of €100M (led by KKR). | https://medium.com/elaia/ornikar-the-art-of-disruption-the-talent-of-execution-70776528199 | ['Louisa Mesnard'] | 2021-04-22 06:29:38.210000+00:00 | ['Disruption', 'Fundraise', 'Execution', 'Venture Capital'] |
Full-stack software (FSS): Why StackPie is called a full-stack software and why should we prefer a full-stack software over a mere CRM? | Full-stack software (FSS): Why StackPie is called a full-stack software and why should we prefer a full-stack software over a mere CRM? Sadia Sharmin Nov 15, 2019·3 min read
What do we mean by full-stack software? As you all might know that full-stack developers refer to developers that have knowledge and expertise in both front-end and back-end development. Just like that, we developed a full-stack software that has the capabilities to develop both front-end and back-end of a business, but you might think how? Let’s give an example, with StackPie’s built-in CMS you can create a professional website for your business in no time.
Besides, as full-stack software, we also refer to stacking all the modules of business software such as accounting, marketing, help desk, etc. in a single platform. Therefore, as front-end, StackPie will design your website, online store, client portal. and as a back-end, Stackpie will actually make the entire website and also give you full functionalities a business management software should have such as an accounting tool, email marketing tool, support desk, etc.
Let’s look into two key groundbreaking reasons you should consider using a full-stack software than a mere CRM or tons of other business management tools.
To bring the best out of your business data and save time:
It is no more a secret that data is worthier than gold. Did you realize that you are losing valuable data regarding your business as those are scattered on different platforms and most of the platforms are incompatible with each other? So your gold is basically roaming around in tiny particles and you are not being able to make something useful out of it. Also, did you know data analysts take more time in sorting data than to actually analyze that? So, cleaning data takes more time than analyzing. Hence, full-stack software will help save time and those data will help you to automate your business to the next level by making use of those data to implement AI(artificial intelligence).
When you will manage your entire business in a single full-stack platform, all of your data will remain in a single platform that can help you make business decisions efficiently and accurately. Therefore, you will actually be saving a lot of valuable time on data analysis, even built-in analytics or AI(artificial intelligence) can help you project the future and take your next big decision based on the past success or failure patterns. Thus, You will be able to see how close you are to meet your goal. What is a better feeling than that?
2. Getting the full benefit of what you pay and save money:
If you can manage your whole business in a single platform, why would you pay for dozens? For example, if you use a platform for creating an online store and another for billing and another for accounting and another for customer support. You end up paying for 4 software and that software might have clashing features that you do not use, still pay for it. What is worse than that?
In conclusion, it is wise to use a single full-stack business management platform that has all the essential tools for running and growing your business, as you can save both time and money. | https://medium.com/@sadia.sharmin.se/full-stack-software-fss-why-stackpie-is-called-a-full-stack-software-and-why-should-we-consider-ac1eb9cfcd1f | ['Sadia Sharmin'] | 2019-11-17 10:04:07.386000+00:00 | ['CRM', 'Full Stack', 'Software', 'Startup'] |
Privilege escalation in the Cloud: From SSRF to Global Account Administrator | In my previous stories, I explored different techniques for exploiting Server-Side Request Forgeries (SSRF), which can lead to unauthorized access to various resources within the internal network of a Web server. In some circumstances, SSRFs can event lead to API keys or database credentials getting compromised. In this story, I wish to show you that in the context of a Cloud application, the consequences of successful attack that uses this technique are decoupled. An attacker that can effectively leverage an SSRF on the right resource could gain complete access to one’s AWS account, and the only limit of what you can do from there is bound by your imagination. Spin a couple of c5.xlarge to harvest Bitcoins? Host a malware delivery network over S3? Your choice…
The DVCA Lab Environment
For this experiment, I have developed the DVCA (Damn Vulnerable Cloud Application), which is available on GitHub and has been inspired by the Damn Vulnerable Web Application project. DO NOT deploy this in your environment if you haven’t hardened it by restraining security groups to your own IP and/or change the IAM Roles given in the project. At the moment of writing, it is made of a static S3-hosted website delivered over SSL by CloudFront. You can choose wether you want a serverless backend using an API Gateway and a Lambda function, an ECS Fargate backend running a Flask container or a Classic EC2 backend running this same container. For the purpose of this article, I will concentrate on the Fargate backend.
The Damn Vulnerable Cloud Application architecture
From the outside, it all seems fair, HTTPS is active on both the frontend and the backends, the website is static and therefore protected from classic attacks like SQL Injections or Wordpress plugin vulnerabilities…
The DVCA interface
The SSRF is done through a Webhook tester, like in my first story about the subject. All backends are coded in the way that they receive an URL, read it using urllib and returns the result to the frontend, which displays it in the “debugger” frame.
Roles and Permissions in AWS EC2/ECS
In order to assume a role and effectively gain permissions relative to AWS resources, you will need three pieces of information: An AccessKey , a SecretKey , and a SessionToken , in the case that the credentials were issued by the Security Token Service (STS). In an EC2 or ECS infrastructure, each VM/Task can have a particular set of permission; For example, if your Web application needs to upload files to an S3 Bucket, you will need to assign it the s3:PutObject permission over the bucket. This means that our Fargate containers also need to get credentials from STS in order to do their job, if it implies calling AWS resources.
In a classic EC2 scenario, the credentials for a particular instance can be fetched by the EC2 instance (and only from there, since the endpoint is not public) from the Metadata URL: http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/ . Note that you can also fetch quite a lot of sensitive informations from this IP, like UserData scripts that are likely to contain API keys and other secrets.
In the case of an ECS Task, the credentials can be retrieved from a different endpoint: http://169.254.170.2/v2/credentials/<SOME_UUID> . The UUID in question can be found in the environment variables of the container, more specifically the AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_RELATIVE_URI variable.
Abusing the IAM Services through SSRFs
Since the STS service is available through normal HTTP endpoints, we can trick the Fargate backend into making arbitrary requests to these endpoints, and the Frontend will happily display the result to us. But how could-we find the credentials UUID needed for the request? Well, in my other SSRF story, I showed that you can read a file using the file:// scheme. So assuming the backend is a Linux-based server, you can read the environment variables by pointing your request to file:///proc/self/environ .
The relative URL for retrieving the credentials, including the UUID, can be found in /proc/self/environ
Yay! Now, we can use this URI to retrieve credentials:
Credentials retrieved from an SSRF request
Using the credentials
In order to use these credentials in a creative manner, I would suggest to use boto3 , the Python SDK for interacting with the AWS Api. Upon creating the boto3 client object, the constructor accepts credentials as parameters, so we can pass it those received from our SSRF:
sts_client = boto3.client(
'sts',
aws_access_key_id=access_key,
aws_secret_access_key=secret_key,
aws_session_token=session_token,
)
Now, to be sure that our credentials work and that we have effectively elevated privileges, the STS service has an AWS equivalent to the whoami command: get-caller-identity . Let’s verify:
> print(sts_client.get_caller_identity()['Arn'])
> arn:aws:sts::0123456789:assumed-role/DVCA-Fargate-Backend-DVCATaskRole-CLOUDFORMATION_ID/SOME_UUID
Bingo! Now my laptop is considered by AWS like the Fargate backend of my application, meaning I have access to everything it has access. Reagarding S3 for example, the backend ECS Task has this set of permissions defined:
- Effect: Allow
Action:
- s3:GetObject
- s3:PutObject
- s3:ListBucket
Resource: '*' # Tip: Try to never wildcard access to resources
Now, if the domain name of the DVCA is a “root” domain (that has no subdomain), chances are that the underlying S3 Bucket name is the same as the domain name, because of the way Route53 Alias Records makes it just easier to work this way. We can use this to modify the static website and inject a rogue mining script in it (for example), effectively defacing the static S3 website!
s3_client = boto3.client(
's3',
aws_access_key_id=access_key,
aws_secret_access_key=secret_key,
aws_session_token=session_token,
)
s3_client.put_object(Body=rogue_bytes, Bucket='domain.name', Key='index.html')
Also note that s3:ListBucket permission which also enables the serverless equivalent of directory listing…
Taking over
Let’s say your Web Application has the right to create roles (a role for each customer, for example) and that this permission was implemented as
- Effect: Allow
Action:
- iam:* # Living dangerously
Resource: '*'
(Very dangerous, but I am sure there are plenty of way too permissive implementations of this in the wild) for the sake of simplicity. Using the credentials retrieved through our SSRF technique and passing them to boto3 we are able to create a new Global Administrator user and create him Access Keys in just a few lines of python:
iam_client = boto3.client(
'iam',
aws_access_key_id=access_key,
aws_secret_access_key=secret_key,
aws_session_token=session_token,
)
iam_client.create_user(
UserName='DVCA-RogueUser'
)
iam_client.attach_user_policy(
PolicyArn='arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AdministratorAccess',
UserName='DVCA-RogueUser',
)
key_response = iam_client.create_access_key(UserName='DVCA-RogueUser')
In this example, the keys will be in the key_response object, which you can just print-out.
At this point, you won. You basically own everything in this account.
A rogue administrator user created using the backend’s credentials
Future work: The Lambda Backend
Even though I included a serverless Lambda backend in DVCA, I was not able to exploit it yet. In this case, the credentials are injected directly in Python's os.environ , but are not part of /proc/self/environ or /proc/self/task/1/environ . I know that they are injected at the bootstrap using lambda_runtime.receive_start() , but I am not sure they are anywhere to be found on the filesystem. AWS Lambdas also do not have a metadata endpoint from which we could fetch them. My next hypothesis would be to try to retrieve them from memory, by looking at /proc/self/map* files.
So if you have an idea, drop a comment below!
Happy hacking! :-) | https://medium.com/poka-techblog/privilege-escalation-in-the-cloud-from-ssrf-to-global-account-administrator-fd943cf5a2f6 | ['Maxime Leblanc'] | 2018-09-01 13:01:01.509000+00:00 | ['Information Security', 'Hacking', 'AWS', 'Cloud Computing', 'Cloudformation'] |
La ventana de Overton | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/ehenriquezlc/la-ventana-de-overton-37b9af02cbb0 | ['Edgar Henríquez'] | 2019-02-13 10:26:30.986000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Política', 'Ideas', 'Overton', 'Mundo'] |
Analysis Paralysis & A Perpetuating Perfectionist | This week I have been working with a fantastic group of unique people preparing some exciting new material and events for next year. More will be revealed in January 2021.
However, it was not an easy decision to get here!
It has been more of a combination of years of analysis paralysis plus a petulant perfectionist.
Before I explain more, I should explain what is meant by these two phrases.
The phrase ‘analysis paralysis’, describes a situation where an individual overanalyses or overthinking a situation so much that they find no solution or take no course of action and thereby becomes “paralysed”, i.e. ceases to progress forward.
And let’s discuss what I mean by Perfectionism.
Perfectionism can be an admiral characteristic admired much in many people for many particular acts.
Yet if combined with other elements like overanalysis, Perfectionism can become draining, overwhelming, and spiralling downwards into fear of failure, criticism, and of course, making any form of mistake.
Like a line of dominoes falling down, that perpetuates into experiencing anxiety, sadness, feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem.
So Perfectionism in moderation can be a good thing as long as it is in balance with other parts.
But not when it develops a mind of its own and seeks no relief from the endless, “This is just not quite good enough” mantra.
So after years of analysis paralysis on many fronts, and recognising what to do when it happens (journal, meditate and take counsel), I made a brave decision to step forward and out to help more women with endometriosis globally.
Inviting external teams to assist me was a big step.
It is a big leap in terms of investing further in my business (to get this vital message of hope and healing out) but also my broader expansion and exposure into the world personally. (I may have mentioned in the past how a part of me still resists this at times and seeks to remain in the shadows).
Yet, I am continually compelled, to keep progressing forward to inspire women with endometriosis, as too many women still believe endometriosis is a life sentence.
And that is one of the biggest falsehoods and fallacies in the medical field.
Yet women don’t know what they don’t know. Therefore I will forever feel obligated to share there is another way too as many women as I can.
Even this week, as another group of women, competed the EndoBoss® Academy, I felt such delight for them as they had come so far and become a boss of their endometriosis — an official EndoBoss®.
I feel incredibly proud of them all as I know how hard they have worked and how ill they were at the start.
To see their growth and healing is phenomenal.
My EndoBoss® students have been brilliant furthermore dedicated and uber resilient even during the sad days, bad days and the days they felt like giving up.
Although, we have a tremendous EndoBoss® Team who provide the all-round support to ensure that does not happen!
These awesome women persevered despite Covid, despite toxic people and despite ‘life’ trying to divert and interfere with their desire for a new path.
I love working with women who have this steely resolve, dedication and determination.
And that’s why I pride myself by creating something unique to allow women to progress, grow and of course, heal physically, emotionally and spiritually. It’s an honour and a privilege to watch the growth and transformation that can occur over 6–9 months.
The right environment must be created to allow the safe, secure and sensitive passage to a pain-free body by establishing the root causes of the pain and inflammation and hormonal imbalance.
One of the favourite phrases I can hear myself say often is “This journey is not easy, but it is definitely worth it to get to the other side”.
I promise you that!
So, my incredible EndoBoss® team and I celebrated, and we all gave thanks for having the honour of partnering these awesome women to the other side — ceasing of pain, health and peace.
So it is results like those that keep me motivated to keep moving forward and outward. I have to keep sharing these success stories and messages of hope and healing.
My brilliant business coach is always encouraging me to put myself out there, and I admit to having resisted it as much as I could.
That is until now.
For over the past five years, I have created, produced, and been carefully testing my many online programs and pathways to ensure improvements and results are achieved for every single woman.
There is no point of promoting empty, heartless programs that achieve zero results like some people without a moral conscience do.
Recently I was accused by some toxic troll that I was only helping women ‘for money’.
These people are ridiculous with the projections of their internal motivator.
How could that be true when I have calculated that I have ploughed over 6 figures of my own money into this business over the past 5 years. And I also make a loss every time a woman takes advantage of my Free Paperback book offer.
But I’m prepared to take the hit if it gets my book into women’s hands, that I get the message out to many and it helps them heal their bodies.
My message to millions.
That’s my mission.
That is the legacy I wish to leave behind.
A legacy where words like ‘natural or naturally’ are not scoffed at or ridiculed by the medical profession any more.
One day, I would like to be someone who stands in front of medical students at the very beginning of their decade’s long training and share all of my Endometriosis success stories.
(And you will be able to read all the EndoBoss® Success Stories in my new paperback book due out early 2021).
If money were my motivator, I would have reopened my property business many years ago after I put the condition into remission.
But that business did not nurture my soul, feed my spirit or fulfilled my purpose.
Those who tout about money and make it out that it is somehow evil, miss the point.
Money is just a promise of exchange of services or goods.
Money is just a tool.
And money is always replenishable.
But time isn’t.
And time, for many women with endometriosis, is wasted in torment in their beds, hugging hot water bottles and being plied with pharmaceutical poisons that only worsen their symptoms.
You may know my story well by now, but for those who don’t, the old medical machine pathway had me ending up disabled and bedridden for 2.5 years.
What I came to realise at that time was my organs were nearly failing me.
I was knocking on heaven’s door.
The physical, mental, emotional and spiritual anguish I experienced during this time was devastating.
Thoughts of ending my life frequently occupied and swam through my mind.
Doctors didn’t know what to do with me and called me an enigma.
So now, when toxic toads and trolls question my motives for why I do what I do now, I ask them in return, “So let me get this right — what you are proposing is I should have kept all of this vital information to myself and selfishly disregarded all the women suffering in the world who might benefit from this information? Is that what you are telling me?”
This invariably this silences them and they scurry back under their stone.
Motives.
It’s essential to understand and question someone’s motives.
To establish their ‘why’.
(Actually, when I coach online entrepreneurs at the beginning of their journey, I actually come in a bit deeper and start with the ‘who’ before their why but more on that another time).
From your basic instincts comes the resounding confirmation that the person marketing to you is genuine or not from their motives.
It saddens me to see the increased number of charlatans, vagabonds and predators who have moved into the Endometriosis field and are marketing to women with endometriosis.
Some of these people (and yes some are men!) are very misleading and feed into the despair of women who have had their hopes raised and dashed so many times it makes them feel like giving up.
There are a few genuine people in the space, although I do remember feeling a little perturbed when some have shared that they do still suffer from pain and symptoms of endometriosis every month, yet masquerade that they don’t.
Let’s be super clear; I don’t.
I do NOT suffer a gripe or a niggle or any symptom of endometriosis or any other of the many conditions and symptoms I had before.
I hope that you find that inspiring for you to achieve too.
If I can do it, then I know you can too (with the right support and direction)
That is my point.
Many people masquerading in the Endometriosis field have not ‘cracked the code’ (although I wish I could also help them to be completely pain-free to).
I heard one of them the other day was promoting the ‘flushing’ a female body part to heal.
I was in shock.
This is highly inaccurate and misleading advice. It is a ludicrous approach that many women may fall for (feeding into the quick-fix that we are addicted too) and then feel let down and then be left upset when another thing doesn’t work’!
I used to be drawn to those ideas many times on my journey.
It is essential on this journey to always ask questions of the person you seek support.
If these people have not managed to put their own condition into remission, then how could they possibly guide you?
Equally, if it is a non-medical man who is offering guidance on endometriosis, yet he has never experienced a monthly cycle, then you have to seriously question his motives.
It’s the age-old misconception of the snake-oil salesperson. He would stand on his cardboard box, professing a miracle cure, reinforcing this belief that ‘one single product or treatment is the magic cure’.
Again, let’s be super clear; It’s not.
There is no magic cure.
What works with endometriosis is systematically working with what God and nature gave us.
I dentifying the toxins and poisons that come in their many forms and slowly swapping them out to let the body heal.
It’s the multi-modal approach called the Laidlaw Protocols and The 5 P’s, that deals with the whole body and whole person. By supporting the whole body to do what it always wants to do — which is heal itself.
If ending endometriosis was a ‘quick fix’ then there would not be 175 million women suffering from it. There would not be millions every year having multiple, repeated and damaging surgeries that fail them time and time again.
So this is my motive. My motivator.
My deep motive is to share that there is ANOTHER way, other than what we are brought up and conditioned to believe about painkillers, drugs or surgery.
I want to ensure that a woman hears that there is an alternative option so that her instincts immediately sit up and take notice.
For it is pure common sense that a human body heals itself, it has been doing so for millions and millions of years, well before the ‘medical machine’ had been created just a little over a 100 years ago.
So I admit that I struggle to relax fully and not be working on sharing this message every, single, day.
There is always this small voice at the back of my head that is saying; “Wendy what about all these women out there in deep pain and despair? Keep going and get this message out to millions. Time is ticking away.”
So this step of employing the services of these external teams of people is a giant leap forward for me.
I made a pact with myself that the analysis paralysis had to stop and my Perfectionist had to have faith that I was being supported by the right people.
As the title of Susan Jeffers book says “I felt the fear and did it anyway”.
Psychologists say that normal children are born with only two natural fears — the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises — and that all others are environmentally acquired.
Sigmund Freud, the famous psychologist, spoke of a person who was genuinely afraid of snakes, who lived in the heart of an African jungle. Yet of another person who neurotically feared that snakes were under the carpet in his city apartment.
Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us.
Most of these acquired fears are snakes under the carpet…
An acronym of fear is ‘False evidence appearing real’.
Martin Luther King Jr said “Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and mutual well-being; abnormal fear always poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but rather to harness and master it.”
So I decided to master this fear!
Yet the fear of the unknown also brought to the forefront; my Perfectionist.
Perfectionism is an admirable quality but not when exercised to extremes and combined with fear!
Perfectionism, in psychological terms, is a personality style defined by a person’s concern with striving for flawlessness and perfection and may be accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.
Perfectionism drives people to be concerned with achieving unattainable ideals or unrealistic goals.
Welcome to a very big part that has dominated my life.
Which is not really surprising given my conditioning and heritage.
Yet so much hard to separate from, respect and allow it to merge with other parts.
I realised this about myself late in life when it led to chronic depression and lowering self-esteem.
I believe that within each of our psyches, we have an array of parts or characters that have their individual needs and personalities.
Sigmond Fraud also mentioned we had shadow parts and others have followed in his footsteps to discuss parts like the internal critic, pusher and people pleaser, etc.
But the Perfectionist dominates many people who have grown up with constant criticism and fear of getting anything wrong.
Many of the women I get the pleasure of working with have a strong perfectionist part.
And of course, I love them for it because the Perfectionist has its place and wants to get it right!
But sometimes the Perfectionist can be a bit pesky, petulant and inhibit progress.
What I mean is, it has its clear and apparent strengths, and we do not want that perfectionist element to disappear, but more come into balance to allow the more, and dare I say, fun and creative ‘parts’ to get a little light.
So much of my encouragement to my EndoBoss® Beginners is to start to learn how to have fun and let a little play and relaxation into their bodies and life.
Although, this is where my pesky Perfectionist part is still in training too.
So I wanted to share my transformative experience of managing my Perfectionist part as I continue on this journey.
So, my new external teams were instructed to embark on a broader range of marketing.
The marketing campaign is designed to reach more women with endometriosis, and the support on offer and that endometriosis is not a life sentence.
So as a result, I was asked to record some video material.
One of the tasks was to make a recording of a script that had been written for me by the scriptwriter after our last meeting.
“Simple,” I said, “Looking forward to it”.
No problem, I had thought. I host webinars and online meetings every week and have done for years. This will be easy and might even be fun.
Famous last words.
Oh, my goodness!
But my Perfectionist went into overdrive.
So the past ten days have been an enormous challenge for me.
My thinking had been that I would print off the script without giving it much of a glance and anticipated that I would just get it all bashed out in one take.
Not a chance.
The first take was awful.
I had a total brain freeze.
The second take was hilarious as my son blinked both eyes as an indicator the video was recording and for some reason, I thought this was hilarious, and it made me laugh out loud time and time again.
Then, as we stood in the Park, the wind whipped up, and the Scottish rain made its regular appearance and drove down in bucketloads.
We were both drenched but still in good spirits.
No problem I said as we ran into our apartment to take cover from the rain. I will go out tomorrow and try again.
“This will be super easy,” I said. “How hard can this be?” I laughed heartily again.
Well, over the next four days, I stumbled and stuttered and struggled to get even a full sentence out my mouth in one fell swoop.
Delivering this script word perfect was becoming like a nightmare.
Slowly, over the days I was developing a newfound respect for actors and actresses on TV and in the movies.
Logically, the words made sense, they were mine, (just redrafted a little by the writer) and so simple a child in Kindergarten could read them.
Then started to get embarrassing and I could feel the stress mounting.
I messaged the team several times and apologised for the delay and explained that something was going wrong and I couldn’t figure it out.
I got lots of advice from many sources. I concluded that it might be best to have a day off to break the pattern and then retackle this brain block from a few different angles at the end of the week.
It was suggested to speak the script super fast and then speak it slowly and then to even sing it, and then finally, not to stop speaking the script no matter how many mistakes were made or how many words were fluffed.
My Perfectionist went overdrive and became even more petulant.
What if it wasn’t perfect? What if I was a laughing stock? What if I was a total disaster!?
So after my day’s break, the recording started again in day 5.
I stood in the Park determined to get this done in one take, yet I had somehow thought it was a good idea to also bring my enthusiastic 12 weeks puppy out with me too.
Big mistake!
Huge!
I was plagued with Poppy, my pup, frantically running round and round my legs, tying me up in knots the lead around my legs meaning I almost had a face plant fall to the grassy ground.
When recording recommenced again, she started to chew her squeaky toy and enjoyed exercising her enthusiastic jaws up and down so vigorously that no words could be heard on the video playback.
Perhaps trying to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ as the saying goes, meaning I had tried to achieve two aims with one action, i.e. take Poppy for a walk, and record videos together was not the best idea after all.
Take 3 of the day was interrupted when another dog in the Park decided to bound across to greet Poppy and bring its owner. The owner seemed oblivious to the fact, despite obvious signs of recording and filming equipment, then proceeded to ask what I was doing.
Take 9 was disturbed by a dishevelled young man playing his motorised toy car at high speed back and forth in the background.
Take 11 was ceased by young children involved in a screaming competition.
Take 17 interrupted by Ambulance sirens passing by.
By this point, I was cold and miserable and feeling a fat failure and close to tears!
“How hard can this be?”. I shouted to myself.
I had envisioned this recording to be a simple and even fun task.
But I was struggling, and I was getting increasing daily reminders and messages from the teams asking me where the videos were.
I could feel the pressure.
So never one to be defeated, I came up with the inspired idea of downloading a teleprompter.
Yes.
“That will do the trick!” I said with glee.
Ahh, wrong
Teleprompter provided the words, but they either moved too fast or too slow or were too small or too big. And still, I had taken after take, after take, of muck up and fluffing words and continual brain freezes.
Nearly at the point of admitting defeat and feeling like giving up, I went for a walk in nature and then had a meditation and ‘bingo’ it occurred to me that what was preventing progress was my pesky Perfectionist.
Yes, of course, I still wanted it to look good and be professional, but my Perfectionist was a huge problem and needed to be reigned in and needed help.
So I called my amazing daughter Maxine and asked her to come round and assist.
I admit to feeling dazed, confused and down founded by what had been going on over the past six days.
Yes, there was the usual nonsense and irritancy of the everyday work issues, but I’d had a successful week in many areas.
Yes, there was a ‘real reveal’ of an angry abusive and toxic person whom I had once previously thought of as close (more on that in a future podcast), but my EndoBoss team were dealing with that.
So what on Earth was going on!?
Maxine zoomed round like a superhero with her cape on.
A big beaming smile greeted me as I opened my front door.
Despite having spent 12 hours with 26 children aged 7–8 years old, her spirits were open, kind and generous.
“We can do this, Mum!” She said with glee.
And I believed her.
I had too.
I had no choice.
The clock was ticking very loudly, and I was feeling the deadline pressure mounting.
So after a quick debrief of all the shenanigans, some amusing and some not so, we started to brainstorm more ideas to appease the Perfectionist and allow filming to proceed.
Maxine had very sweetly printed off all of my scripts onto paper for me, so I was filled with a newfound optimism.
“I can do this,” I said with greater enthusiasm than I felt.
I had to be positive and optimistic.
I couldn’t fluff in front of my daughter. I wanted her to be proud of me and not see me mess it up again.
I couldn’t fall to the ground weeping and wailing and banging my fists on the ground in frustration (as much as I wanted too).
“I can do this”. I repeated out loud over and over.
So with some new tools including a microphone to defeat the Scottish easterly wind and a wide-angle lens, so I could keep focused on looking down the ‘barrel of the lens’ rather than have wondering eyes, off we trotted (without darling Poppy this time) across to the Park.
We were optimistic despite the failing light of day, which was disappearing fast and bringing with it a damp cold weather front.
It took longer than expected to get the equipment set up, and Maxine had to improvise by putting some equipment down the front of her scarf so she could leave her hands free to sift through the script pages for me as I spoke.
The first few takes resulted in stomach clasping laughter as the camera slipped down her scarf and sloped to the right. Then I unexpectedly and energetically jolted the microphone out of the video, forgetting I was attached as I walked away.
So, as the daylight dimmed and the street lights glistened, we did a good, decent take — albeit in with a dull background.
My optimism was renewed!
We laughed our way back home and reviewed the filming over a delightful gluten-free pizza and prepared for the next day.
I woke feeling more encouraged than I had done all week, so we were up bright and early to set off again to the Park with determination.
I decision was made — We were not returning until the filming had been done.
So take 4 had Maxine’s fur trim coat showing on the edge of the film.
Take 7 had the script pages entering into camera shot as she dropped each one in line with my speaking.
By take 11 we were exhausted and close to hyperthermia. The Scottish weather had turned into a bitingly cold wind and although sunny temperatures had felt near freezing.
By this time, we had been outdoors standing still in what felt like subzero temperatures with only two layers of clothing for over 90 minutes.
Our fingers were almost blue with the cold, and my nose started to stream.
At the last minute, my pesky Perfectionist relinquished its tight control and agreed to have some fun with the script and to present it in a different way.
Maxine also decided to throw the printed paper script into the bucket and instead hold her mobile phone as a homemade teleprompter which worked a treat.
We laughed some more at all that we were doing to get this to work.
Such fun memories!
Maxine’s poor arm ached as she diligently and determinedly kept her phone in the perfect position so my Perfectionist could relax and for the first time in 6 days, read the script and, wait for it, complete it in one take!
Maxine and I were in shock!
It was done!
It was perfect!
And it was a wrap! (As they say in the movies).
So what had changed?
We looked in shock at each other.
What just happened?
How could I have struggled for six days yet deliver the result in under 20 minutes?
My Perfectionist.
My fearfully Perfectionist has stepped to the side to allow me to have fun with the filming, and without the pressure, something had shifted and relaxed.
There’s clearly a time and place for Perfectionism, but I’ve learned on this journey there’s also a time and a place for fun too.
Sometimes we put such pressure on ourselves to be perfect that it inhibits us from progress and completion.
I reflected about how much time I had spent trying to ‘get it right’.
Trying to get it ‘just perfect’.
How distressed I had got, yet accomplished the square root of nothing but yet more distress.
So it’s a lesson.
It was the same when I self-published the first edition of my book “Heal Endometriosis Naturally Without Painkillers, Drugs or Surgery”.
Was it 100% perfect with spelling and grammar etc?
No!
But did it help women have hope and heal?
Yes!!
It helped thousands of women.
It was then when my finger hovered over the ‘publish’ button that my Perfectionist went into a cold sweat.
But Perfectionism was not an option then.
I did not have the money to edit it in the way I wanted, but I hoped that the women would forgive me and read my heartfelt message and feel inspired by my success story instead.
Now, as the 2nd edition of my book is about to be launched in January 2021, my Perfectionist has had some time to come out in delve deep into this edition.
All parts are proud of all that I have produced because I have had to overcome tremendous fear and trepidation in doing so.
I recognise that my Perfectionist part is just trying to protect me from toxic, critical and nasty toads which would pick holes in a Picasso.
But as time, as gone by, I keep focused on my mission.
I’m thankful for my pesky Perfectionist and that when it relaxes and allows creative parts some light, I get to help share my message and help other women with Endo shine and become an EndoBoss®.
So, another reminder to embrace your emotions and parts.
So my special thanks to Maxine for coming to my rescue and enabling a super compilation of amusing videos for our memory banks.
And the filming of the script?
Well, you will hear more about what exciting things I have planned for you in the next few weeks.
So how is your Perfectionist preventing progress or causing fear?
Remember to write in your journal, go out into nature and consider mindfulness or meditation to connect back it to what is happening inside.
For all the answers you seek, lie within you.
Next week we finish the year as I talk more about the Endometriosis Secrets and 5 P’s (poisons) but until then…
To your health!
To download your FREE Top 5 Quick-Start Tips go to https://HealEndometriosisNaturally.com | https://medium.com/@wendyklaidlaw/analysis-paralysis-a-perpetuating-perfectionist-ca8f900bb8fe | ['Wendy K Laidlaw'] | 2020-12-09 00:36:10.459000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Anxiety', 'Overcoming Obstacles', 'Perfectionism', 'Endometriosis'] |
Josep Borrell: A History Of Anti-Semitism | Josep Borrell, the disgraceful High Representative of the European Union strikes once again with his extreme anti-Semitism.
Borrell has threatened Israel that if they follow the United States’ Middle East Peace Plan that includes annexing 30% of the West Bank then “it could not pass unchallenged,” even though:
It is part of the Biblical promised land.
Israel won it in a war of self-defense against multiple attacking Arab armies in 1967.
It is recognized as absolutely strategically necessary to Israel’s peace and security.
Understanding that this is not an isolated incident, Borrell has an anti-Israel and pro-Iranian track record that includes his stating:
Borrell’s Jew hate apparently goes all the way back to when he was a child and participated in a sickening pogrom in the 1950s where he yelled “To Kill Jews.”
Can you imagine that this is who the European Union selects to be their High Representative AND what does this say about the EU after all the atrocities they committed against the Jews: the Holocaust, Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, expulsions and pogroms?
The EU should very publicly dump this anti-Semite Borrell and place him in the trash bin of history where this type of disgusting behavior and hateful sentiment belongs. ;-) | https://medium.com/@andyblumenthal/josep-borrell-a-history-of-anti-semitism-dbc5d7e9c04c | ['Andrew', 'Avraham'] | 2020-04-23 22:24:34.232000+00:00 | ['Holocaust', 'European Union', 'Anti Semitism', 'Spain', 'Josep Borrell'] |
Slashare Fulfillment Standards: How We Sacrifice Our Profit Margins for the Well-being of our Employees. | Max Barringer and Kelly Laible Wearing Slashare’s Newest Yoga Tee Bundle
I’m in San Francisco and always on the go! Everyone on my team has the exact same experience. So, you have to be curious about how we get this stuff boxed and shipped as quickly as we do. (BTW! Do you see your order # being packed here?)
Slashare fulfillment operations. First one thousand five hundreds headed through the mail!
Primarily, Slashare is a human first company. We sell everyday products, adding experience, personality, and savings for our customers. Our warehouse staff is paid wages 2.5x higher than comparable operations, and they work in toxic-free waste environments where health and safety is the number one priority. The coronavirus pandemic has unquestionably fueled our business, however, we are just as aware of the health concerns associated with operating a business amidst a pandemic and take precautionary measures to ensure the safety of all.
Five days after launch, we sold over 1500 boxes with nearly 1,000 unique items making up the contents of these boxes. Slashare staff is working diligently and aggressively to ensure our first customers will receive the best possible product. We are hiring new employees daily to keep up with our spikes in demand. We are consistently increasing our revenues week after week — and actively trying to reduce our delivery times. We are so excited to fulfill our initial orders, and WOW our customers, so we can move our warehouse operations to our new state-of-the-art facility early next month.
All Slashare bundles arrive at your doorstep in our custom box, curated for an unreal unboxing experience that is meant to spark a smile. We’re so thankful for the team that ultimately helps you have an amazing unboxing experience.
Slashare team crafting new bundles for new markets!
Next month, we’re scaling up! We’re moving our fulfillment operations to a world-class fulfillment center that all of your favorite brands use! Tomorrow — We’re moving into our 5,000 square foot HQ office in Palo Alto, CA! My childhood dreams are coming true! We are two doors down from the birthplace of PayPal and the works of Peter Thiel! | https://medium.com/@slashare/slashare-fulfillment-standards-how-we-sacrifice-our-profit-margins-for-the-well-being-of-our-59bae5dd66f9 | [] | 2020-11-17 23:31:09.687000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Palo Alto', 'Venture Capital', 'Silicon Valley'] |
15toGO's team will attend the biggest blockchain conference in NYC — Consensus | 15toGO will have its representation in one of the biggest blockchain conferences Consensus in New York.
The CEO of the company Peter Lozanov and one of our early investors and supporters Simeon Naydenov are heading to the Big Apple to meet people from the industry and grow its network. They will attend the blockchain week and be in New York between 10th and 18th of May. The event will take place from the 14th to the 16th of May 2018 in New York. You can contact 15toGO’ team here and schedule a meeting during our stay in NYC.
The host is a big digital media which is well known in the cryptocurrency world — CoinDesk. This is the fourth consecutive year in which it is taking place. Every year the growth that this event sees is impressive.
It started in 2015 with only 400 people attending and now it will have more than 4000 attendees.
This year there will be more than 250 speakers. Last year they were around 200, mainly (90%+) from the startup community with an emphasis on blockchain.
Big names will be part of the event as speakers or just attendees. Some of the key figures this year will be Charlie Lee — creator of Litecoin, Ned Scott — CEO of Steemit, Jesse Powel — CEO of Kraken, also executives and representatives of many well-known projects.
The leading forces in the industry will be there. The event presents an incredible opportunity to get exposure and gives an opportunity to meet people from the industry, visit networking events during the conference, exchange ideas and make new contacts.
The worldwide exposure that the summit presents is also immense. Excluding all of the people attending, there were also more than 80 media partners and more than 80 sponsors last year.
Comparing the number of attendees last year and this one, imagine what will be the increase in the percentage of the presence of media partners.
Consensus represents a big event for the cryptocurrency world. Everyone is anticipating a rise in the overall market capitalization. Last year the market cap rose from 36 to 90 billion dollars from the 1st of May until the 24th which was the last day of the event.
This year the capitalization of the market crashed from 830 billion on the 7th of January, which was the highest this market has ever seen to 244 billion on the 1st of April which is the lowest since the all-time high. The market was in a major downturn but recently there was a sigh of relief as the capitalization is rising, hitting 440 billion on the 29th of April and people hope it will continue to do so in anticipation of Consensus.
References:
https://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2018/ | https://medium.com/15togo/15togo-at-consensus-98b306591124 | [] | 2018-05-01 13:11:45.329000+00:00 | ['Traveling', 'Startup', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Group Travel'] |
Easy Home Decor Ideas | A big part of the home decoration is to revive the goodness of the place by installing the most fitted furniture and accessories.
here are some super simple home decorating tips to help you create a home you’ll love.
Decorating with Mirror and frames
bone inlay mirrors
Give your place a regal makeover and adorn it with the very attractive bone inlay mirrors. Skillfully crafted furnishing items, coming in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, with beautiful designs and patterning engraved upon them. A wonderful way to bring a modernistic vibe to your interior setting.
Brace Your space with Gemstone Table
Gemstone Table
Semi-precious gemstones are a source of utter beauty and elegance. A streak of light when flows into the gemstone and is reflected creates an empyreal scenario that is a surreal mixture of opulence and luminosity. Beautifully crafted semi-precious gemstone tabletops at Krystilo are finely curated. Add a charismatic charm to your interiors with the modern and exquisite range of gemstone Tables. available exclusively at Krystilo.
Decorative Stone Wall Cladding
Brighten your space with the unique “Gemstone Wall Claddings” turning out your place to be alluring. Installing Gemstone Wall Cladding is one of the most creative home decorating ideas.
Thinking of reviving your home decor? Think no more! Explore via our latest blog, 6 easy home decorating ideas and elevate the beauty of your living space. Hit the link below: | https://medium.com/@krystilodecor/easy-home-decor-ideas-3097af02471c | [] | 2020-02-20 11:49:07.032000+00:00 | ['Gemstone', 'Tabletop', 'Interior Design', 'Interior', 'Home Decor'] |
From Graphite To Prometheus — Things I’ve Learned | For a long time, the StatsD + Graphite stack was the go-to solution when considering backend stacks for time-series collection and storage.
In recent years, with the increased adoption of Kubernetes, Prometheus has been gaining more and more attention as an alternative solution for the classic Graphite + StatsD stack. As a matter of fact, Prometheus was initially developed by SoundCloud exactly for that purpose — to replace their Graphite + StatsD stack they used for monitoring. Later on, in July 2016, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the organization responsible for Kubernetes and multiple other related projects (Helm for example), has adopted Prometheus as an official project of the foundation.
As many other companies in the industry, we’ve been using the Graphite stack for almost 4 years now. Since we are long time users of Kubernetes (used on production since 2015, ~ v1.3) it was only natural for us to evaluate Prometheus as a more modern, community driven and well maintained monitoring stack. Listed below are the main differences between the two monitoring stacks and mainly how Prometheus provides solutions to situations where Graphite might have difficulties in.
Notes:
This post refers to Prometheus’s stable helm chart installation on Kubernetes We’re using Grafana for visualization and alerting so I didn’t cover visualization capabilities or Prometheus’s alert manager here.
Pull vs. Push
The first and most notable difference between Graphite and Prometheus is the way they receive metrics.
Graphite: metrics arrive to StatsD usually by sending UDP packets from the clients. StatsD aggregates the metrics for a time period called “flush interval” and at the end sends them to Graphite for persistence. Graphite has “push” semantics — the client is the one pushing the data into the backend.
Prometheus: metrics arrive to the backend by “scraping”. The Prometheus server issues an HTTP call once every scrape_interval (which is configurable of course). Prometheus “pulls” the metrics directly from its clients. There is no aggregation component in the middle similar to StatsD.
Note: While you could use push semantics to push metrics to Prometheus via PushGateway, it is not the recommended way to go so it isn’t presented here as an option.
Client Setup
StatsD clients require almost zero setup: all you need is a UDP socket to start sending metrics to the backend. It’s so easy, that a simple bash one-liner is a valid StatsD client. For example, the following will increase a counter:
echo “auth_service.login.200.count:1|c” | nc -w 1 -u statsd.example.com 8125
Prometheus, on the other hand, requires a more complicated setup on the client side. Clients should run an HTTP server and serve the metrics on an exposed port and path. It means that even if your application is a simple, offline queue consumer, you’ll have to go through the hassle of importing HTTP capabilities into your project, configuring the server and setting up the networking needed for that server to be able to serve the metrics to Prometheus.
Another requirement of Prometheus is the registry — an object that must be initialized on the client with the type, name and label set of all metrics it would like to report. Reporting a metric that does not exist in the registry might even throw a runtime exception in some Prometheus clients.
Graphite requires almost zero setup on the client, while Prometheus’s client setup is a lot more complicated.
Discovery
Graphite: To be able to send metrics all your clients need is your StatsD host — there’s no client discovery taking place.
Prometheus: Prometheus has to be aware of all clients it would like to pull metrics from. That complicates things a bit since it means the Prometheus server must have discovery capabilities as well as scrape job configurations to be able to properly identify clients and fetch data from them.
Specifically for Kubernetes the default Prometheus installation includes a job that scrapes all pods with the following annotation:
prometheus.io/scrape: “true”
You can also specify the path and port to scrape data from with the following annotations:
prometheus.io/path: “/internal/metrics”
prometheus.io/port: “3000”
so while it is an additional setup, most of the work is done by Prometheus’s kubernetes service discovery plugins and default scrape job configurations.
Graphite requires no discovery since it is not aware of its clients, while Prometheus requires discovery capabilities and scrape jobs configurations to be able to fetch data.
Monitoring Ephemeral Processes
Graphite: short running jobs can open a UDP socket and start sending metrics to StatsD. The fact that the process does not live for a long time does not affect its ability to send metrics.
Prometheus: As we’ve already learned, Prometheus requires a scrapable HTTP endpoint to pull data from which makes getting metrics from short running jobs problematic since they might not be available at the time Prometheus runs its scrape loop. Prometheus’s solution to this is the push gateway. Short running processes can push metrics to the gateway which is a stable process that acts as a metrics cache and provides an endpoint for Prometheus server to scrape. Communication with the push gateway is done via HTTP requests.
Reporting metrics from ephemeral processes is very easy on Graphite. Prometheus requires a more complicated setup in the form of the push gateway.
Metrics Naming
Graphite’s metrics are dot-oriented, for example
<myservice>.<request_type>.200.count
specific example:
auth_service.login.200.count
is a typical counter of HTTP 200 responses for a specific request.
Prometheus has label-based metric names so the same metric as above would look like
http_requests{service="myservice",request="request_type",response_code="200"}
specific example: http_requests{service="auth_service",request="login",response_code="200"}
Prometheus’s naming system is a lot better in my opinion for the following reasons:
Graphite’s metrics naming system imply hierarchy which is not always intuitive. For example, let’s say we have a service located on different AWS regions we would like to monitor — would we name the metric region.service.metric_name or service.region.metric_name ? Graphite’s naming convention also makes querying more difficult on since it requires complete knowledge of the metric structure. A good example would be summing all 200 responses for all services in our system:
Graphite query: sumSeries(*.*.200.count) pay attention how we’re completely aware of the metric structure — we know it has 4 period separated parts, that the service name is on the first part and the request type is on the second.
Prometheus query: sum(rate(http_requests{response_code=”200"}[1m]))
Notice how we’re completely unaware of other labels the metric has like service and request type. Querying does not require any knowledge on a metric structure, except for the names of the labels we would like to perform the query on. Graphite’s strict metrics naming convention becomes very cumbersome when metric structure changes. Let’s assume we’re going multi-region and want to add the region in the beginning of the metric name so instead of service.request.response_code.count we now have region.service.request.response_code.count
As a consequence, we have to change all existing queries to reflect the new metric structure. sumSeries(*.*.200.count) isn’t a valid query anymore since the metric now has 5 parts and not 4 as before. This makes adding data to existing metrics near impossible when the system is large and there are thousands of queries that requires changing.
Prometheus, on the other hand, has no such problem. Adding a region label to the metric does not invalidate existing queries. It means that as long as we don’t change existing label names, we’re free to add data to our metrics without fearing of breaking existing queries.
Prometheus metrics naming system is more concise, flexible and tolerant for changes.
Note: We haven’t used Graphite’s tagging ability which was only added on 1.1.x version so it is not covered in this section
Query Language
Graphite has a set of functions you can use while Prometheus came up with PromQL. It might be a matter of taste but I feel PromQL is a bit more modern and conveys the intent of the query better than Graphite’s functions and I’ll try to demonstrate with an example: lets take the classic case of per-service error rate — for each service we would like to divide the total number of errors by the total number of requests. We define an error as a response with a status code ≥ 499.
Graphite: assuming metrics would be of the form
<service_name>.<request_type>.<response_code>.count
This is how the query would look like
applyByNode(*.*.*.count, 0, “asPercent(sumSeries(%.*.{499,5*}.count), sumSeries(%.*.*.count))”, “%”)
It looks a bit cryptic and very hard to reason about. This is one of these queries you write once and never touch again.
Prometheus: assuming we have metrics of the form
http_requests{service=<service>,request=<request>,response_code=<code>}
The PromQL version of per-service error rates would look like that:
sum(rate(http_requests{response_code=~"499|5.."}[1m])) by (service) /
sum(rate(http_requests[1m])) by (service)
In my opinion, the PromQL version of the query is a lot cleaner and conveys the purpose of the calculation in a more readable and manageble way.
This is just a single example of course but it demonstrates the power and simplicity of PromQL which is reflected in other cases as well.
Aggregations
StatsD is Graphite’s aggregator: it aggregates all metrics received in a flush interval and writes a single point to graphite with the aggregated value. If 100 different processes report a single increment on a counter service.errors to StatsD, StatsD sums all the increments every flush interval and writes to Graphite a single point with the value 100 and series name service.errors . The same goes for timings, so percentiles are calculated over all of the data received in a flush interval. This also means, that if we would like to have per-instance data on Graphite, we would have to explicitly put an instance identifier inside the metric name.
Prometheus works differently: since it pulls data from all of the instances, it can easily add a label with the instance id (pod name in kubernetes) to every scraped metric. This means that Prometheus has per-instance metrics by default. Aggregations are done on the server side at query time via PromQL operators such as sum , avg and quantile . In the example above, we would have had a series errors{kubernetes_pod_name=”<pod_name>”} for each of the pods being scraped. To get the total error rate we would run the PromQL query sum(rate(errors[1m)) .
Another subtlety worth mentioning is the way percentiles are calculated: StatsD percentiles calculation is very straight forward since it has all the data points available at hand to calculate the accurate percentile. The percentiles themselves have to be set when the metrics are received and can’t be calculated backwards so if we decide at some point that we want the 99th percentile of some metric retroactively we can’t have it unless it was already configured to record the 99th percentile.
Prometheus has two means to calculate statistical aggregations: Histograms and Summaries. I strongly recommend reading this blog post and this one to get a better understanding of how both works but the important points for our discussion are, assuming the use of Histograms:
Histograms are a set of counters. Each counter has a preset value (buckets) and will be incremented for any observation with a value lower than the counter value. For example, if we have a Histogram with 3 buckets — 10ms 50ms and 100ms, a 5ms observations increments all counters and a 40ms observation increments both 50ms and 100ms counters. There are two additional counters — one for the number of observations and one for the total sum of observations value.
Calculating percentiles does not require specifying them beforehand and can be calculated retroactively
Since all Prometheus keeps are bucketed observations, percentiles can only be statistically approximated
To sum this section up:
1. Graphite’s datapoints are usually already aggregated on all clients while Prometheus saves per client data and aggregations are done via PromQL.
2. Graphite’s statistical aggregations are accurate but less flexible since the percentiles we would like to track have to be set beforehand. Prometheus’s statistical aggregations are less accurate, but more flexible since aggregation is done via PromQL and allows us to retroactively calculate different percentiles without specifying them anywhere.
Measuring Client Uptime
Uptime is a strong KPI in every monitoring system. Let’s assume we have a pod and would like to get alerted if it is not responsive.
Graphite: We would have to run an infinite loop on a dedicated thread on the client side to report a heartbeat to StatsD. The heartbeat metric could be a simple counter incremented to 1 on every cycle. We could then form a query to get the number of heartbeats in the last minute: summarize(service.pod_name.heartbeats, '1min', 'sum)
Prometheus has pull mechanics so it is already sampling the client in an infinite loop to fetch metrics which makes discovering downtimes very natural. Every Prometheus scrape job produces an up series that will be set to 0 if an instance did not reply to Prometheus’s HTTP request. This means that with zero effort we could just get all instances that failed to reply with a simple PromQL query: up == 0 and set up an alert.
Prometheus’s uptime monitoring requires zero setup because of its pull mechanics, while Graphite requires us to set an infinite report loop on the client and query it.
Missing Data Points
As with any monitoring system, both Prometheus and Graphite are subject to data retrieval errors. It could be because the Prometheus/Graphite server itself is down or because of a network error that prevents the server from receiving metrics from the client. As we are going to see, Prometheus is designed to be fault tolerant (as much as possible of course) to missing data points.
Graphite: StatsD writes a data point to Graphite every flush interval and resets its stored statistics. If a data point was not persisted to Graphite that data point is forever lost. Let’s take an example data set of an errors counter assuming StatsD flushes metrics to Graphite every 1 minute:
Time: 08:01 08:02 08:03 08:04 08:05 08:06
Errors Counter: 2 5 100 170 2 1
Until 08:01 StatsD received 2 increments for the errors counter, wrote it to Graphite and reset it to 0. In the minute between 08:01 and 08:02 StatsD received 5 increments for the errors counter, wrote it to Graphite, reset it to 0 and so on.
If the data points of 08:03 and 08:04 could not be persisted for any reason this is how the final data set on Graphite would look like:
Time: 08:01 08:02 08:03 08:04 08:05 08:06
Graphite: 2 5 NULL NULL 2 1
The knowledge that we had an error spike of 270 errors from 08:02 to 08:04 is lost and won’t be reflected in any way. The graph would look pretty low with data points at 2, 5, 2 and 1. We completely lost the occurrence of an error spike.
Prometheus: Prometheus is designed to handle missing data points, be it because of Prometheus downtime or a scrape failure, very well:
Metrics are saved on the client side and are never reset. Counters, for example, are an ever increasing value.
Counters, for example, are an ever increasing value. Metrics and PromQL functions are designed around counters to allow extrapolation of missing data points.
Let’s take the same scenario described above and see how Prometheus handles it better:
Time: 08:01 08:02 08:03 08:04 08:05 08:06
Num. Errors: 2 5 100 170 2 1
Prometheus counter: 2 7 107 277 279 280
Notice how the counter, which is saved on the client side, is ever increasing and does not reflect a point-in-time value.
Assuming the scrapes at 08:03 and 08:04 have failed and the next one, at 08:05 has succeeded, we end up with the following data set persisted on the Prometheus server:
Time: 08:01 08:02 08:03 08:04 08:05 08:06
Prometheus counter: 2 7 NULL NULL 279 280
We still know that there were 272 errors between 08:02 and 08:05 because 279 — 7 = 272 . We won’t know exactly in which minute we had the error surge but it is easy to identify that the rate of errors during these minutes is higher than the rest of the period.
To properly draw the graph of this counter we use the PromQL rate function which approximates the rate during a time period by dividing the subtraction of the values by the period of time: the rate between 08:01 and 08:02 is calculated as
(7 — 2) / (08:02 — 08:01) = 5/60 = 0.083 errors/sec
The rate for 08:02 to 08:05 would be
(279 — 7) / (08:05 — 08:02) = 272 / 180 = 1.51 errors/sec
An alert on error rate would have been triggered here even though we missed the data points of the event itself.
Now, this might look like a very specific case but the fact is that all of Prometheus’s ecosystem is built around counters to provide fault tolerant metrics. Another great example of counters usage is CPU utilization: In every other metric system CPU utilization would be persisted the following way:
Time: 08:01 08:02 08:03 08:04 08:05 08:06
CPU%: 5% 10% 95% 95% 30% 5%
But here again, we are subject for data loss: if the data points of 08:03 and 08:04 are missing we are unaware of the CPU surge we had in that period.
Prometheus takes another approach for measuring CPU utilization: it does not persist the CPU% for every point in time but has a counter for the total number of seconds a process used the CPU. If a process had 10% utilization during a 60 seconds period it means it used the CPU for 6 seconds. The same data set above would look on Prometheus as:
Time: 08:01 08:02 08:03 08:04 08:05 08:06
CPU%: 5% 10% 95% 95% 30% 5%
Seconds Used: 3 6 57 57 18 3
Prometheus Counter: 3 9 66 123 141 144
To go from Prometheus counter to CPU% we use again the rate function: between 08:01 and 08:02 the rate was (9-3) / 60 = 6/60 = 0.1 (10%)
If we lose the data points at 08:03 and 08:04 (the CPU surge of 95%), we can still see the CPU surge because the data point at 08:05 is 141 so we get: (141-9)/180 = 132/180 = 0.73 = 73%
We won’t have the original 95% CPU usage but we will still see a significant increase in CPU usage during that interval.
Prometheus use of ever increasing counters, saved on the client, makes it more fault tolerant to missing data points than Graphite.
Exporters
This is where Prometheus really shines in my opinion and is one of the strongest incentives for migrating from Graphite. Exporters are components that fetch data from applications and expose Prometheus compatible metrics. There are exporters for almost every application you can think of — RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kubernetes and the list goes on.
Exporters are usually plug and play — you provide them an address of the application you’d like to fetch metrics from (Redis host, RabbitMQ host etc) and they fetch the data and expose it to Prometheus for scraping. This is awesome because:
it spares you the time of writing a component that will fetch the data from each application and organize it there are many community driven Grafana dashboards around these exporters’ metrics that creates very useful visualizations and KPIs for your applications since applications now have conventional metrics, there is a lot of knowledge sharing and blog posts about creating alerts from these metrics
An excellent example of exporter usage is the way we monitored RabbitMQ with Graphite and the way we do it with Prometheus:
Graphite: We had a Jenkins job that ran every minute. The job had a ruby script that used RabbitMQ’s HTTP API to fetch metadata on queues, exchanges and consumers. The script parsed the data, formed Graphite compatible metrics out of it and shipped them to StatsD using a UDP socket. On Grafana, we built a dashboard around these metrics to visualize the data and set alerts.
Prometheus: There is an exporter ready to be used. We added it as a sidecar container to our RabbitMQ pod and added the proper annotations to flag Prometheus this pod should be scraped. We imported an existing Grafana dashboard to visualize the data. All we were left to do ourselves is to set alerts according to our monitoring needs.
The exporters ecosystem that grew around Prometheus provides an (almost) end-to-end monitoring solution: from fetching the data, organizing it, serving to Prometheus, visualizing it on Grafana and setting alerts. If a few years ago every company would have its custom RabbitMQ monitoring stack, today there’s a widely used and community driven exporter and Grafana dashboard. With almost zero knowledge of how RabbitMQ works we already have great visibility on our cluster.
Some applications, RabbitMQ among them, took this approach even further and started exposing a Prometheus metrics endpoint from the core app so there’s even no need for exporter — Prometheus can just scrape the application itself.
The idea of exporters could be also implemented with Graphite — there is no reason preventing applications from pushing metrics to a provided StatsD/Graphite host. In fact there were some Graphite exporters around — collectd for example. collectd serves a purpose similar to Prometheus’s node exporter: it exports node metrics and had a great Graphite integration. But collectd was an exception as most applications have never had an easy solution for exporting metrics the way exporters do with Prometheus today.
Conclusion
If I had to choose a monitoring stack today I would probably go with Prometheus. Its flexible metric naming system, ability to handle missing data points and the vast exporter ecosystem that grew around it are good enough reasons to overcome its client setup complexity. In addition to that, the fact that Prometheus has been adopted and is being developed by the CNCF makes me feel the project is in good hands and has a very bright future ahead of it. | https://engineering.nanit.com/from-graphite-to-prometheus-things-ive-learned-e1d1e4b97fc | ['Erez Rabih'] | 2019-12-09 06:03:07.253000+00:00 | ['Grafana', 'Graphite', 'Monitoring', 'Prometheus', 'Kubernetes'] |
Face Detection with Haar Cascade — Part II | Load the Face Model
Okay, we imported the image files. Now we bring in the Haar models for the detection part. The Haar Cascade will be read through the OpenCV library from the GitHub repository. Looking at the repository once, it has a number of models available. It includes models for face detector, upper and lower body detector, eye detector, license place detectors etc. We, in this article, will use the models for face and eye both.
The models are simple XML files with all the data stored in them. OpenCV provides a CascadeClassifier method which imports the model from its GitHub repository. Then we write a method which will accept an image, and uses the model to detect the faces in the image. The method first converts the image to GrayScale format, as ML models generally work on GrayScale data as they consist of a single layer.
Then we use the GrayScale data with the model imported. It produces a list of coordinates for all the faces found in the photo. We iterate on each of the entries in the coordinate list, it contains the x and the y coordinates and the width and the height. Then we create a rectangle with these values and fill in with a random color. We then display the image with the face coordinates in the colored rectangles.
Let’s not see the images now, and wait for the eye model to get done with its detection also. | https://towardsdatascience.com/face-detection-with-haar-cascade-part-ii-50120fd1700 | ['Girija Shankar Behera'] | 2020-12-24 22:18:05.650000+00:00 | ['Face Detection', 'Haar Cascades'] |
heaHeat Pump vs. Furnace: Which Should You Choose | originally published here
It’s a good time to consider your heating options, now that summer beach weather is paused. We are often asked for input on if whether it’s better to warm a Florida home using a heat pump or furnace. The answer to this requires examining a few aspects of your home and gain more insight into the differences of a heat pump and furnace. Here’s what the experts from Reynold’s Air and Heat use to determine the best recommendation for our customers.
How Is a Furnace Different From a Heat Pump?
A heat pump collects heat from the air, water, or ground and transfers it inside your home. In Florida, most residents use an air source version of the pump, whereas a furnace makes heat. This heat is then dispersed throughout your home using ductwork, fans and other measures. A heat pump is ideal for areas who experience mild winters.
Should You Purchase a Heat Pump or Furnace?
Most cities in Florida only endure a handful of days that go below freezing (32 C), According to the Southeast Regional Climate Center. Tallahassee sees an average of over 30 days below freezing. Heat pumps work best in temperatures between 40–50 C, so the question is where do you live in Florida; how well you can handle a few cold days in your home?
Cost of a Heat Pump and Fuel Costs
Another factor is the cost of fuel compared to the cost of electricity. Heat pump systems cost more initially
compared to a furnace, but the lower cost of electricity as compared to gas saves utility expenses and helps recoup some of the upfront costs over time. If you live in an area that typically stays above freezing, then a heat pump can adequately warm your home.
Other Factors to Decide on Purchasing a Heat Pump or Furnace:
Is your home in Florida your main residence?
Does your home already have a furnace or heat pump?
Are you building a new home or updating an older home?
If you have a furnace, what type of fuel does it use?
There are always ways to save energy and reduce the monthly heating bill. Discover energy tips that apply to all homes, regardless of whether you use a heat pump or furnace. If you are looking to install a heat pump in your Florida home give us a call. Reynolds Air and Heat, located in Brevard County, FL offers free estimates and military discounts. | https://medium.com/@brevardctybest/heat-pump-vs-furnace-which-should-you-choose-54ff1c94bb0d | ['Brevard Countyfl'] | 2019-06-17 22:19:48.917000+00:00 | ['Heat Pumps', 'Florida', 'Hvac', 'Furnace'] |
Using TypeScript — Object Types and Intersections | Photo by Jenni Miska on Unsplash
TypeScript is a natural extension of JavaScript that’s used in many projects in place of JavaScript.
However, not everyone knows how it actually works.
In this article, we’ll look at how to work with objects in TypeScript by creating intersection types and checking object structures.
Checking Properties
This means that we can’t use the typeof operator to check the type of objects.
Instead, we must find better alternatives.
One way is to check if a property is in the object.
For instance, we can use the in operator:
arr.forEach(a => {
if ("breed" in a) {
console.log("animal");
} else {
console.log("person");
}
});
The in operator checks if the 'breed' property is in an object.
It checks both its own and inherited properties.
And it returns true if a property is found in any of those places and false otherwise.
However, this doesn’t help us if a property is in both types.
Type Predicate Function
We can also check if a property is undefined to check if an object is of a certain type.
For instance, we can write:
arr.forEach(a => {
if (typeof a.breed !== "undefined") {
console.log("animal");
} else {
console.log("person");
}
});
This is similar to in except that we used typeof to check for a property instead of using the in operator.
Type Intersections
We can use type intersections to define 2 object types that are combined together.
A variable assigned to an object type should have all the properties from both types rather than some of them like union types.
For instance, we can create an intersection type and assign it to a value by writing:
type Thing = { name: string };
type Animal = { breed: string }; const animal: Thing & Animal = {
name: "james",
breed: "dog"
};
We defined a Thing type and an Animal and combined them into an intersection type by using the & operator.
This means that animal must have properties from both Thing and Animal included.
If we skip one or more of them, then the TypeScript compiler will give us an error.
For instance, if we have:
const animal: Thing & Animal = {
name: "jame"
};
Then we’ll get ‘Type ‘{ name: string; }’ is not assignable to type ‘Thing & Animal’. Property ‘breed’ is missing in type ‘{ name: string; }’
We can use intersection types for introducing new properties to existing objects.
For instance, if we have:
type Thing = { name: string };
type Animal = { breed: string }; const thing: Thing = {
name: "james"
}; const animal: Animal = {
breed: "cat"
}; const cat: Thing & Animal = {
...thing,
...animal
};
Then TypeScript compiler won’t throw an error because it recognizes that name and breed are part of the Thing & Animal type.
As long as the property names and the corresponding data type match, the TypeScript compiler can figure out that it matches the structure of an intersection type.
Merging Properties with the Same Type
We can also merge types with overlapping properties.
For instance, if we have:
type Thing = { name: string };
type Animal = { name: string };
Then anything assigned to the Thing & Animal type variable would have the string property called name .
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
Merging Properties with Different Types
If there are properties with different types, then both properties will be merged together as an intersection.
For instance, if we have:
type Thing = { age: string };
type Animal = { age: number }; const thing: Thing = {
age: "1"
}; const animal: Animal = {
age: 1
}; const cat: Thing & Animal = {
...thing,
...animal
};
Then we would get an error from the compiler since age has type string & number which no value matches.
Therefore, we shouldn’t have properties with different types in the object types that we intersect.
Conclusion
We can create intersection types to merge object types into one type.
Then when a variable or parameter has the intersection type, it must include all the properties of both types, and the data type of the property must be an intersection of data types from both types. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/using-typescript-object-types-and-intersections-23cc4dbe3b92 | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-06-14 19:47:22.684000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Software Development', 'JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
Patient Motivation | Bolinas-Fairfax Rd, Marin County — A place where I learned to appreciate the patience and earn motivation.
When I was in the first grade, my teacher read us Aesop’s fable, The Hare and the Tortoise. The moral of this story is somewhat nuanced, especially for a first-grader. For me, it was puzzling to imagine how a slow tortoise could have possibly beaten the much quicker, hare. What my teacher tried to explain to us from the phrase “slow and steady wins the race,” was the idea that the results we seek do not always come instantly. And that perseverance, as well as resilience, are both needed when faced with a challenging objective. The small message I was able to grasp at age six was that I would have to try harder when things didn’t go my way rather than giving up.
In the following years, in trying to apply the mindset of the tortoise to my daily life, I struggled because I identified much more as a hare. Each time I was faced with a challenge, I told myself to “keep going”, to “hold on”, to “stand my ground and never give up”. There were many times when I did give up. I simply didn’t have the grit I needed. I lacked motivation. And worse, I lacked the patience to cultivate motivation.
It wasn’t until I was injured over the majority of the past year that my views changed. It all began last June with a pothole. In a weak moment, I hadn’t looked where I was about to land my right foot. The edge of my Nike caught the edge of the pothole. I heard a loud “POP,” and found myself on the ground in excruciating pain. I went to the emergency room and was told it was a bad sprain. My fast-paced life, like the hare, had been, by chance and without deliberate choice, slowed to the speed of a tortoise’s. If I wanted to play sports ever again, I would have to do physical therapy for the next year. To heal I would have to harness the qualities of the slow-yet-steady animal and persist. Twelve long months later, despite all the physical therapy, I was told that I had actually severed a major tendon in my ankle, the ATFL, and fractured my fibula. The fix for both would require surgery and three-month recovery time. I was devastated, and just about ready to give up. The dedication I had given to recovery the last year went to waste in the short hour it took to complete the surgery. But here we are now, six weeks post-op, in a walking boot, and back at physical therapy once again.
One of the biggest motivating factors about needing to develop patience is that there is no alternative. It’s not an option for me to live my life without a functioning ankle, one that can support my weight and moves on the tennis court. Giving up, and accepting a lack of motivation only makes things worse. Instead, I have learned to celebrate life’s incremental successes, fueling my motivation. | https://medium.com/the-ma-voice/patient-motivation-6e032c39c04e | ['Keenan Goldin'] | 2019-09-10 17:12:51.754000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Personal Essay'] |
Things Migrant Must Know About Working Abroad Before Their Departure | Every year, millions of people around the world choose to migrate to other countries. During recent decades, global migration has reached a considerably high level. Surveys conducted by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs show that the number of international migrants around the world reached an estimated 272 million in 2019, an increase of 51 million since 2010. One of the main reasons for migration among this huge and ever-increasing number of people is employment. That is, most people migrate to foreign countries to find a good and well-paid job, one which is better than their job in their home country. Therefore, it is of great importance for migrants who look for a job abroad to have up-to-date and accurate information regarding migration-friendly countries, jobs that are the most demanding ones for migrants, how to expand businesses abroad and other basic information on the requirements of finding a job in a foreign country.
Where Do They Mostly Move to?
As of 2019, Europe hosts the largest number of international migrants (82 million), followed by Northern America (59 million) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (49 million). At the country level, about half of all international migrants reside in just 10 countries, with the United States of America hosting the largest number of international migrants (51 million), equal to about 19 percent of the world’s total. Germany and Saudi Arabia host the second and third largest numbers of migrants (13 million each), followed by the Russian Federation (12 million), the United Kingdom (10 million), the United Arab Emirates (9 million), France, Canada and Australia (around 8 million each) and Italy (6 million).
Which Countries Have Best Job Opportunities for Migrants?
When it comes to job opportunities, there are a good many countries that have boosting economies and they need professionals to help them fill their needs. The top 5 countries for migrants are Canada, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden.
a. Canada
Canada is a high-tech industrial society with a high standard of living. While the service sector is Canada’s biggest economic driver, the country is a significant exporter of energy, food and minerals. The latest edition of the World Economic League Table places Canada as the world’s 10th-largest economy based on its GDP of $1.731 trillion in 2019.
In addition to having a growing economy, Canada is also very much reputed for welcoming immigrants and accepting people from all around the world with various cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Canada is indeed one of the most successful countries in the world for attracting migrants.
b. Australia
Australia, the largest island in the world, is also one of the most welcoming countries for skilled and professional workers who intend to migrate to a country of their dreams. The country has one of the fastest growing populations in the developed world — over the past five years, the population has grown by a 1.5% per annum, driven by immigration. Migration also has made a substantial contribution to Australia’ economy with almost 7 million out of Australia’s population. Australia is a high-income country with a GDP per capita of $53,379 in 2019. As a boosting economy, the country is highly in need of attracting skilled migrants for certain professionals.
c. The United States
The US, the third largest and third most populous country in the world, is another attractive choice for migrants. This country is the world’s largest economy with one of the strongest currencies worldwide. In 2019 its share of world GDP rose to 24.8% from 24.2% in 2018. This was indeed the US highest share of the world economy since 2007.
Considered as the country of political and social freedom, the United States is one of the most popular destinations for migrants. However, due to some restrictive migration laws issued by the Trump administration since the year 2017, the country has been somewhat not welcoming as it used to be. But. with Trump’s presidency coming to an end in January 2021, it is also very much anticipated that the new president, Joe Biden, will reverse most of Trump’s migration orders.
d. Germany
Germany, the largest economy in the European Union, is yet another most popular destination for migration. Germany is the most populous country in the European Union and has seen its role in the international community grow steadily since reunification back in 1989.
In 2019, the country’s GDP per capita stood at $53,567 in international dollars making it a high-income economy. Like in most advanced economies, the services sector accounts for the largest share of economic output at just under 70% of GDP. Germany is a great country to work in, especially if you’re looking to work in Europe. Quality of work is what is focused on rather than quantity.
e. Sweden
Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrants from different corners of the world are attracted to this country mostly because of Sweden’s social welfare state and high quality of life is outstanding among European countries. Swiss economy performed very well in recent years, with growth of 2.7% in 2019. Looking ahead, Sweden’s GDP growth is projected to stand at 2.9 % in 2025. There in Sweden, skilled workforce who choose to migrate to this country are provided not only a well-paid job in consistency with their professions, but they can also benefit from amazingly high-quality housing, health care and education.
What Are Mostly Demanding Jobs for Migrants?
According to the World Migration Report 2019, migrant workers (total) are mainly engaged in:
• Services: 72.2%
• Manufacturing and construction: 16.6%
• Agriculture: 11.2% [6].
Therefore, occupations such as mechanics, lawyer, dentist, carpenter, electrician, plumber, welder, tutors, etc. are among the most demanding jobs in the top migration-friendly countries.
Among the most demanding and well-paid jobs, Australia offers a higher salary for electricians, with the average income of $109,536 and Sydney and Canberra amongst the top earning cities. The USA also offers a high salary, an average income of $98,910 for electricians. The average electrician salary in Canada is $98,041, which is considered a high salary. Welders in some European countries like Switzerland can make as much as $118,000 and over $120,000 for a plumber working in Germany. In the United States, the plumber appears to have taken home the highest wage, with an annual salary of $121,810, ranking among the highest wages in the US for jobs related to the basic services.
What Are the Benefits of Working in a Foreign Country?
a. You will have a better career resume
Working abroad can improve your curriculum vitae, especially if you plan to eventually go back to your home country. In fact, having international job experience is a very strong vantage point on your CV and will help your application stand out when you apply for new jobs in today’s competitive job market.
b. You will earn in foreign currency
Working abroad gives you the perfect chance to earn in the currency of your second country. The benefit here is that the top countries for migrants usually have the strongest currencies in the world and if you earn in dollars or in euros for example, it means that you have earned more when you exchange that currency into the currency of your home country.
c. You can travel around the world
Working abroad allows you to earn income and travel to other countries as well. Every year, millions of people from around the world spend a lot of money to travel to a foreign country as tourists and make their best memories of their lives there. Traveling abroad isn’t just fun and exciting, it is in fact very much beneficial for your physical, mental and emotional health as well.
d. You can raise your cultural awareness
Becoming familiar with new cultures different from your own is yet another advantage of working in a foreign country. With every culture comes many beautiful and unique features and developing an understanding and awareness of different cultures can help you interact more effectively with your colleagues, your employers, and other people around you.
e. You can expand your network with professionals internationally
Another undisputed benefit of working in a foreign country is that it helps you to form and expand your network of connection with professionals in your area of expertise. Working abroad gives you the opportunity to build relationships with other people in your field on an international level and benefit from it both in your career and your personal life.
f. You can learn a new language
Working abroad and living in a foreign country will bring you the advantage of acquiring a new language and adding it to your CV as a distinguishing feature of yours. After all, being a bilingual skilled worker is a splendid quality that can be advantageous both for your career and your everyday life.
What Are the Requirements of Finding a Job in a Foreign Country?
First of all, you should know that the more skilled and trained you are in your profession, the higher the chance will be for you to find a proper job in a foreign country. The significance of career networking is also crucial here and can raise your chance of finding your favorite job very much. Knowing to speak and understand the language of the foreign country you intend to go is another important requirement for your success in finding a good job abroad. Having enough information on the economic and political situation of your target country is also of great importance before migration. And before you go anywhere, of course, you also need to make sure that your formal documents are all in order and easy to access.
6- How to Expand Your Business as a Migrant?
Advertising is the first word that might come to your mind for expanding your business abrod. However, advertising in the usual ways is costly. In addition, it may not be really to the point in addressing the real customers of a business. This means that usual ways of advertising are not really customized. There fore, you will need a cheap and customized platform, through which a you, as a migrant, can advertise whatever goods and services you provide.
What makes the advertising mechanism in Trustply.com unique and efficient is that this platform is totally customized and categorizes your potential customers based on nationality. This means that once you register your business on the website, we in Trustply inform people of your own nationality, who live in the same foreign country as you, of the products and services that you can provide for them, making your compatriots become your first customers.
Read the full version of this article in the Trustply weblog: Things Migrant Must Know About Working Abroad Before Their Departure | https://medium.com/@trustply/things-migrant-must-know-about-working-abroad-before-their-departure-64399cb311d5 | [] | 2020-12-21 10:54:55.550000+00:00 | ['Migrants', 'Working Abroad', 'Migration', 'Abroad'] |
Design rounds make the world go round — XR Design/Devlog | This year the PHORIA XR team developed the app that delivered the latest PHORIA stereo 180 project, ‘ecosphere’.
‘ecosphere’ is a VR nature documentary that uses world first cameras to shoot at 60 frames per second. We knew we had a big responsibility to do this content justice, creating context to guide the user into these experiences.
Initial mock ups by our creative director Ray
Design considerations
We started with the basic template of the video player that dynamically loaded from tiles. We’d already created a few custom video player apps, and learnt a responsive front end made it possible to update content on the fly. Then we decided to have some fun with it. What if the tiles were volumetric, becoming portals that opened up, or even spilled out into the users world?
Initial concepts. Be careful what you draw …
… because you’ll have to make it.
Know when to fold ‘em
Our idea was that the tile should expand into a portal and blend one reality with another — but what we found was that the ‘realistic style’ just didn’t actually feel that good at human scale. We couldn’t cross the uncanny valley. After receiving feedback that the users just didn’t connect with the environment, we changed tack. Despite the fact that we’d taken the idea pretty far, we decided it was time to go back to the drawing board.
Wait until people go wow
We spent a week or so playing around with a tonne of different art styles and compositions. No holds barred experiment city. We were building out cartoon words, electro-tron worlds. We were putting monkeys and elephants every which way. Then all of a sudden we stumbled into Narnia.
The breakthrough moment was when we tried taking our previous environment and making it ‘miniature’. Everyone we showed immediately had a smile on their face or reached out longingly. The ‘wow’ moment. It worked because the size added a layer of abstraction, so while it was semi realistic it wasn’t judged as harshly. Plus people just love miniatures.
Look at that tiny monkey.
From here we started developing the idea of the ‘platform’ — a 3D space that would anchor the user, and also be the source of the content. We had this idea of ‘matter’ being generated by (and maybe also being the source of) the platform.
Mock ups and finished product from the design team
This matter acted as a great anchor to then play around with 2D/3D UI paradigms. What we realised is that we really had mocked up the future of desktop, where we were combining a 3D ‘workspace’ with a 2D ‘display space’.
From nothin’ to somethin’.
We realised that by miniaturising we could actually use the home planet geometry as the control panel. Then by making room for 2D content alongside it we could leverage all the incredible stills and film from the shoot. The ‘desktop’ of the future might end up with some combination of proximate 3D interactive zones and 2D displays in this way.
Initially the ‘interaction layer’ was in the foreground, with static content in the background. However, we realised that having the action and content in the same space was easier to parse. This process sped up when design and development sat together and quickly prototyped the compositions, and iterated. We made more progress in a day than we had in the weeks prior!
Doing the art justice
With this concept in place, we knew now that we could be more detailed and ambitious with our ‘terrariums’ as we started calling them. Our artists worked with the content team to create worlds that were visually compelling, and matched the native flora and fauna with each featured location in the series. We also had the chance to bring in native animals. When they were tiny they were just so cute!
More concept art from Cindy our amazing artist!
Look at these tiny fish! They’re just like in the picture — Cindy is a wizard.
Bringing it together
It was a big task to get all these disparate elements to come together. Here we had the idea of a spark of ‘matter’ — a spirit guide through the experience, that also seemed to construct things. It would lead the users gaze and actually build and deconstruct each element like a 3D printer. It was a hint of sci-fi and a hint of magic, and it acted as the golden thread throughout it all. For this we actually repurposed the compute shader we’d used for the initial portal concept. Waste not, want not!
For the final front end we used a reactive framework, where every object listened to user selections and took actions independently. This made it really easy to integrate and add new art, while also creating a port to the GO version with lighter shaders. All the metadata for each episode, including preview content, is actually held in DLC and reconstructed at runtime. This means that in the future we can add new content. All the content needs is a GPS coordinate it’ll add itself to the globe!
Final reflections
The thing that we really learnt was how far you can push an experience if you have a clear design ethos in mind. We wanted to create a gradient of detail that would take people from 3D to stereo. We knew we needed 3D content that supported and guided the user into the video content. With these north stars we pushed and didn’t settle, and we were all so happy with the final result.
With ‘ecosphere’ we have a truly engaging platform where people can visit and experience stories of the world. We have a whole suite of behind the scenes and additional footage that users will soon be able to unlock. We hope that as we release new episodes, we find new ways to connect people with our beautiful earth, and the stories of those preserving it.
Make sure you go try it out on Go or Quest, and as homework, see how fast you can get the world to spin! | https://medium.com/the-phoria-project/design-rounds-make-the-world-go-round-xr-design-devlog-1f201a7ebc1c | ['Samuel Tate'] | 2020-07-27 03:27:27.966000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Spatial Computing', 'Nature', 'VR', 'Design'] |
Embrace Thyself: Everyone Else is Already Taken | Give up to thy soul — –
Let it have its way — –
It is, I tell thee, God himself,
The selfsame One that rules the Whole,
Tho’ he speaks thro’ thee with a stifled voice,
And looks through thee, shorn of his beams.
But if thou listen to his voice,
If thou obey the royal thought,
It will grow clearer to thine ear,
More glorious to thine eye.
The clouds will burst that veil him now
And thou shalt see the Lord. – Stanza IV, ‘Gnothi Seauton’, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each of us has a unique identity, a unique blueprint, a soul, and consequently, a unique set of gifts that we can bring into this world.
We were born into this world to stand apart from everyone else and stand out, expressing our uniqueness in all that we do.
In this way, we get to add to the cacophony of creations of humankind in a way that harnesses our innate joys and talents.
Where does our uniqueness come from, though, and why does a slightly or radically different calling stir within each one of us?
My personal take on this is that not only do we each have souls, a sort of deeper personality or identity than our mind-based egos…
… but that each of our souls has existed in different incarnations for a very long time, perhaps longer than we can even imagine.
What I’m saying here is that I believe in reincarnation, that each of us has passed through countless lifetimes to reach our present incarnations, and that through each lifetime, we acquired and distilled an infinitude of lessons, culminating in who we are today.
I believe that it is — to some extent — those past life experiences and karmic proclivities which give voice to the calling in our hearts, the unique and specific calling that leads us on to act and to create in a given direction in this lifetime.
That calling that we feel within, I believe, is our soul’s genius and intuition leading us to the places and the experiences in this lifetime which will bear the most personally fulfilling and expansive fruits possible, and lead us to where we are to go next.
The universe as a whole — and you could say on the deepest level, God — is in a process of continuous growth and expansion.
You could almost say that God, the Source of All That Is, revels in growth and expansion, it’s where all its joy derives from.
The process of creation, growth, and beauty is a continuous one for all of life.
In the previous essay I published, I spoke of how we are “made in the image and likeness of God”, meaning that, in essence, a spark of God, of the divine (and therefore all of its qualities) lies within us at our deepest core, imbuing our material selves with divinity.
What this means is that we, as individuals, and as souls first and foremost, also derive immense joy from growth and expansion.
In this way, you could surmise, that all of our past lifetimes, as well as our calling in this one, are leading and guiding us forth in a beautiful and fulfilling (albeit sometimes daunting and challenging) journey of growth, and ultimately, a gradual and ever more enjoyable return to the Most High.
So, that is the context of our personal, unique callings and soul expressions in this lifetime.
We are here to embrace who we are to the fullest extent that we can, and not suppress our greatness to fit in with or appease the crowd.
What does society teach us though, and what trends of behaviour are most prevalent within the collective human consciousness?
This is where the challenge, the resistance — and, you could say — the negative impetus for growth comes in.
“Pain pushes until the vision pulls.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith
Society trains us to fit in, to keep our heads down, to conform, to not rock the boat, to play it safe, to seek security.
Society encourages us to blend in with the crowd and stifle our greatness.
This makes sense, because this kind of mentality is most conducive to mass society and the functioning of a collective, at least the kind of collectives in which humanity has found itself to date (who knows what kind of societies could emerge in the near future?).
Limiting beliefs are trained into us from a very young age, through education, the media, our parents, family, friends, and authorities.
“Society attacks early when the individual is helpless.” – B. F. Skinner
While these beliefs and social conditioning may contribute to a stable, well-functioning society with minimal chaos and unpredictability, they are largely anathema to individuality, creative expression, and even to growth, expansion, and finding lasting personal fulfilment in life.
The temptation to conform our identities and behaviours to others is great, but the dangers and repercussions of doing so are equally as great.
There is a kind of false sense of security that comes with conforming ourselves to others, with suppressing our innate gifts to (feel we) appease others.
By hiding our uniqueness from the world, we blend in, and we are not like the whack-a-mole with its head above ground, bringing a feeling of security.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau
We also intuit (correctly) that putting ourselves out there in the world will polarise people in response to our creations, some will love us and what we do, while others will hate us or think what we produce is rubbish, that our unique expression is not of value.
However, there is a great price to be paid for embracing conformity and security over the vulnerability of growth and embracing our unique selves to enact our gifts and follow our heart’s calling: a quiet discontent stirs within us, growing louder and louder with age.
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” Helen Keller
This is the struggle of the human condition, in one respect, to overcome resistance external and internalised with us, to surpass our fears and doubts in order to express our unique blueprint, our gifts to the world, and follow our calling as best as we can muster.
The struggle to be ourselves in a world on making us into something else sometimes feels like this.
Why is it so important that we do this, though?
On the one hand, as previously outlined, yes, we are partaking in growth and paying homage to God through our creativity.
We are using the talents that God gave us and doing a righteous thing, as expressed in ‘The Parable of the Talents’ in the Bible:
“So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Excerpt from ‘The Parable of the Talents’, Matthew 25:28–30 (NIV)
On the other hand, we can only ever achieve true greatness in our lives, large or small, overt or humble, by staying true to ourselves.
What do I mean by this? Let me share a story with you to illustrate the point…
Two years ago, I joined an online business mastermind with the aim of creating a digital marketing agency serving businesses online.
I had some initial successes with the venture, some early sales, and I learned a lot like how to sell a service, how to market myself, build a website, etc. and am grateful for the experience, those who provided it, coached me in it, as well as those who walked some of the path with me along the way.
However, the initial enthusiasm I felt starting out with the venture quickly gave way to feelings of listlessness, resistance, and of wearing a mask.
I felt like I was being someone I wasn’t and doing things I wasn’t put here on Earth to do…
I wasn’t put here on Earth to sell advertising services to businesses.
I wasn’t put here on Earth to help businesses grow their bottom line.
I wasn’t put here on Earth to feign an interest in marketing (beyond what it could help me achieve in building a personal brand).
I wasn’t put here on Earth to be a hotshot marketer who keeps up with the latest trends and thought leaders in that field with great fervour.
And I wasn’t put here on Earth to salivate over sales for the sake of sales, growth for the sake of growth, and to be a hard-ass, cold-blooded hustler.
That whole environment and mindset is anathema to who I am as an intuitive, empathic, right-brain-leaning, creative person.
That is NOT to say that there is better or worse in this context, beyond my personal preferences (which is all that I’m expressing here).
Many of the guys I met in that space, the leaders, the coaches, the students are doing phenomenal work, and it is clearly for many of them a passion and their rightful role and service in this world to give, their life purpose, what their souls call them to partake in at this time (and that’s awesome!)
I will say what I was put here on Earth for, things I came to learn more deeply through the experience of burying them, only to appreciate them more.
I was put here on Earth to share my insights and unique perspective with the world.
I was put here on Earth to shine a light in many areas, to dispel falsehood, and to spread truth, humbly and to the best of my abilities.
I was put here on Earth to help others grow, to lift others up out of darkness and despair, and to help them grow.
I was put here on Earth to spend my time exactly as I want to, to be where I want to be, and to create what and how I want to create.
I was put here on Earth to embody authenticity to the greatest extent that I can.
I was put here on Earth to help usher in a more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible.
‘We Choose Paradise’ by George Atherton, the kind of world I envisage humanity moving towards.
Perhaps you resonate with some of the ideas about what I wasn’t and was put here to do?
The truth is that we were all put here on Earth to make a positive contribution in our own unique way.
But as long as we wear a mask, try to be something we’re not, hide or suppress our innate gifts, we do a disservice not only to ourselves but the whole world, and even to God, to that which gave us the gift of life to begin with and imbued us with a calling and capacity to follow it.
I’ve been learning some of these lessons the hard way, and it’s something I still struggle with, but I feel I am beginning to step more fully and authentically and courageously into my heart’s calling, my unique self-expression, and enacting my gifts more fully for the world to benefit from.
It’s also important to note when creating to be aware of and avoid as best as possible the temptation to model the work of others in your field.
I feel this temptation within myself when creating YouTube videos or when positioning myself as a personal coach.
I feel the temptation to focus on video topics that I feel will be acceptable or popular or well received.
I feel the temptation, also, to choose a specific coaching niche, when my heart tells me to just share authentically and helps whoever needs it.
My intention is to remain aware of these feelings within myself, to just observe them, and then to act in spite of them.
I am learning from personal experience that it is when you radically embrace your intuition, speak to whatever you are most passionate about, and embody authenticity (even if it means following the path less travelled), that that is where your true power lies in every respect.
Acting from that tender yet incredibly powerful place is also where you will receive the greatest reception, and offer your greatest service to others.
Why? In a world built on limiting beliefs, conformity, and social conditioning, the greatest gift you have to offer is yourself.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Embrace thyself, friend… Everyone else is already taken. | https://medium.com/@thewaywithinus/embrace-thyself-everyone-else-is-already-taken-e7fd1e4b3c3 | ['The Way Within'] | 2020-07-28 13:08:04.415000+00:00 | ['Creative Process', 'Be Yourself', 'Authenticity', 'Self-awareness', 'Personal Growth'] |
#Charles eugene hill | Community talk talk | Charles Eugene Hill Born 11–17–1983 Nationality Other names Known for Education Salary Net worth Height Weight Political party Signature Website | https://medium.com/@charleseugenehill/charles-eugene-hill-community-talk-talk-7deb29303934 | ['Charles Eugene Hill'] | 2020-12-25 16:37:48.653000+00:00 | ['Cities'] |
How can pedometers help improve your fitness | How many steps do you take per day? How many should you take? If you use a pedometer application, it will really motivate you.
Using a pedometer, unless you lie in bed the whole day, you will record some level of activity. This will give some positive feedback and encourage you to do more, because you will find that you actually are active all the day. The goal of 10,000 steps per day is usually listed as standard; there has been evidence that there are health benefits for getting any amount of physical activity compared with being inactive.
Being accountable is also a powerful motivator and using a pedometer is a great way of monitoring and making you accountable. You may think you had a pretty active day but that might not be the case. A pedometer will provide the correct data to hold you accountable. So if you see that you are a few steps short after doing walk, you will be more likely to convince yourself for another walk.
The most important advantage of using a pedometer app is the fact that it is a great encouragement tool for advertising physical activity and fitness awareness. In an analysis of 26 studies published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, pedometer users added 2,000 more steps daily than those who did not use a pedometer. The pedometer users experienced a 27% increase in overall physical activity level.
How to choose the best pedometer application. Don’t worry about it, there are best pedometer apps are listed below.
Pedometer free
This Pedometer app is easy to use and free of cost. This Pedometer use built-in sensor to track and count your steps. It can also track your burned calories, distance and how much time you spend. All this data is clearly displayed on graphs.
The app requires no GPS tracking and no cloud service, so it can save your mobile battery service.
It records steps accurately even when the screen is locked, whether your phone is in your hand, your pocket or in your bag. All you have to do just start the button.
Key features of this application
Ø incredibly accurate in counting your steps
Ø Very easy on your phone’s battery
Ø Estimates calorie burnt per hour, distance and active time
Ø No wearable required, just your phone
Ø 100% free and private
Step Counter
Another free of cost and easy to use Step Counter Application. Step Counter is a small app that counts your daily steps and how much your calories burned. It also tracks your activity, distance, and duration of your walks. Very easy to use and battery savor and display accurate data of your activity. Just keep your Android phone with you when you are walking and get motivated!
Step Counter Free & Calorie Counter
Now track your walking steps and check your burned calories are easy. Step Counter uses the built-in sensor to count and track your steps.
A calorie is calculated based on an individual height, width, age and steps walked. You can check that how much you burned calories at the end of your walk.
You can track your daily activities like cycling, running, travelling etc using this tracker. It can be turned on/off when needed. Just tap the start button and it starts counting your steps whether your phone is in your pocket or hand. All features are 100% FREE. You can use all features without having to pay for them.
Pacer Pedometer: Walking, Running, Step Challenges
The Pacer App tracks your step, walking & weight loss with free health counter. You can lose your weight and track your steps that how much you walk and burned calories using 24/7 step counting from Step counter & health tracker app.
You can download it for free to turn your phone into your personal health and weight loss tracker, lose weight with calorie burning guided fitness plans, step counting and activity tracking.
Step Counter — Calorie Counter
Step Counter — Calorie Counter is a free of cost app, your way to perfect health! Ideal for tracking your fitness progress!
This is simple and easy to use Step Counter app. It records and displays not only the number of steps walked but also the number of calories burned. How much time you spent on walking and distance covered.
All you have to do is push the play button and start walking.
View graphs displaying the number of steps, calories burned, time, distance by touching on each icon respectively.
For accurate number of calories burned, you will need to enter your height and weight values. | https://medium.com/@shafiq-rehman193/best-free-pedometer-apps-for-android-2021-f0c02383ec44 | ['Shafiq Rehman'] | 2020-12-30 10:54:13.774000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Apps', 'Google', 'Mobile App Development', 'Mobile'] |
It Should’ve Rained That Night | Pour some cheap Ragu into a non-microwave-safe bowl, then microwave it. That’s how Wesley felt as he sat across from a rose wrapped in loud plastic that he hoped would be crumpled by other, softer hands. The can of fat tire melting along his fingertips wasn’t part of the plan. He was surrounded by people talking to people, yet the empty chair across from him looked natural in this sea of communication. Wait a little longer. She’ll come. Wait a little longer. You weren’t wrong. Wait a little longer. You were drunk. Wait a little longer. Life is all about second chances. He holds back tears because he’s in public. She holds back tears because she knows Wesley can do better, until she realizes better is butter on a hot pan that turns black during Monday Night Football.
Wesley drank more than he smoked last night, and if the ratio were different, the night’d be different. He looked out, while she looked deep into the crevices of her brain as her dreams began to form like clouds over the sea. The phone buzzed, she stirred. Would God text Wesley this late? Her arm glided over his chest like a trail of skating ants and fell over the side of the bed. Does the devil move this late? The screen lit his face white and blanketed the walls jet black with his shadow. He floated to the door, palms and chest to the sky. He looked back and saw his heart pounding on the pillow, spewing blood onto her soft cheeks. By the time he left, his pillow was covered in brown blood. He shut the door and forgot to watch the light close like a wind-shield wiper. Thank God. How that image would’ve been seared into his mind.
Wesley beeped 3C and heard the buzz open hell’s gates. People say hell is hot, but hell it’s cold. Colder than frozen sausages in a freezer with a broken gauge. The door to 3C was open before he reached the last step on the rug stairs. Hell muffles all your footsteps so you think no one knows where you are. God trusts you enough to leave you alone, but the devil does not. He saw a hand with long fingers and even longer nails flutter over his crotch. An old Asian woman down the hall was stirring soup with a pig’s head swirling in the broth. He paid no attention to the ghastly smell or her constant muttering that would’ve spelled out, “Betrayal is worse than death.” The door closed behind him and she took off his shoes. The floor was colder than the air, and he could feel thick worms with thicker heads curling between his toes. A black blanket wrapped around his lungs and his breaths turned old. Steam floated down to his balls, led by balloons made of dead helium. Her lips were the same color as the brown blood on his pillow. She whispered words he did not know, as she moved like an elevator in space. Seconds before it was over, she asked him if she should stop. He cried yes, but it sounded like no. His ship’s wood began to spoil, and just before it reached the shore, it sunk on a pile of pirate bones. Wesley left with the sweat of her palm drying on his neck. The old Asian woman was still stirring her soup, but the pig’s head had disintegrated into the broth. She smiled at him and said, “Betrayal is worse than death” as if she had taken English lessons while he danced with the devil.
She hadn’t moved since he left, although her breathing was slower now. Her right rib cage was like a piston pushing up and down under the comforter. Wesley slid under the remaining piece of blanket that hung over the bed frame like a fat slice of brisket. He laid there like a plank, as the hurricane of guilt formed in his heart. His dick was sore and covered in a thin film of mixed fluids, which distracted him from the nauseous feeling of having hurt a human being.
The next morning, she put her head on his chest and kissed his chin. Nothing had changed in their chemistry until that night when they fucked. It wasn’t the same. Where he felt shame, she felt a dagger ripping her insides. She couldn’t explain it and Wesley wasn’t willing to explain it. She knew, like all people who have scars on their hearts, that betrayal is a story told by the body.
Wesley watched the rose lie on the table. Its pedals folded inward with the wind, going into a deep sleep. She would never come and he would never stay, and they both knew that. They would both jump from snow globe to snow globe, like all lost lovers, trying to find it before the heart goes black with intolerance. | https://shawnzylberberg.medium.com/it-shouldve-rained-that-night-86a73143aef7 | ['Shawn Zylberberg'] | 2019-09-26 04:11:52.489000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Love', 'Betrayal', 'Roses'] |
Sleep Meditation for Insomnia | Tonight’s sleep meditation will help melt away your insomnia and fall asleep.
Surrender to the soft blue energy of sleep tonight,
As the insomnia melts away,
And peaceful rest covers you.
So Let’s Begin…
RELAX INTO THE STILLNESS SLEEP MEDITATION SCRIPT
Allow yourself to settle,
Snuggling into your favorite sleeping position,
And close your eyes.
Take a deep breath in, letting your body expand with fresh air,
And exhale, allowing your body to melt deeper into comfort.
It’s time to rest, beautiful.
There’s nowhere you need to be, nothing you need to do.
So come with me into dreamland.
PAUSE…
Feel the heaviness of your eyes.
Feel your cheeks soften,
Dropping your tongue from the roof of your mouth as your jaw releases.
Let your shoulders soften and lower,
Let your arms feel heavy,
Your fingers melt.
Feel your chest rising and falling as you breathe in just a little longer, and exhale just a little more.
Relax your stomach,
Let your legs let go and get heavier with relaxation.
Let your feet release.
And feel the cool air on your nose as you breathe in,
And the warm air on your nose as you breathe out.
Breathe,
Just breathe.
LONG PAUSE…
Now imagine that there’s a soft, blue energy floating above you.
Like a soothing cloud of mist, this soft blue energy hovers above you.
You feel safe and calm, so you invite it in.
Now imagine that soft, blue energy pouring over your head slowly.
You immediately feel it soften you, relax you, nourish you…release you.
Feel the soft, blue energy on your head, relaxing your face, your shoulders, your chest.
Melting your arms, fingers, stomach, hips, thighs, legs and toes.
Imagine the soft, blue energy is now at your feet, patiently waiting.
As you breathe in, let your breath search for any areas of unrest, any thoughts or discomforts that may be keeping you awake.
Let every inhale help you find them within your body.
LONG PAUSE…
And now imagine that with every breath out,
you release them all to the soft, blue energy at your feet.
Breathing those thoughts or discomforts down to your feet and out of your body.
And watch as the soft, blue energy absorbs them all.
Breathe in,
Breathe out.
Breathe in,
Breathe out.
LONG PAUSE…
Take one more look inside and release all that unrest on your outbreath.
LONG PAUSE…
Feel the heaviness of your body.
Feel the lightness of your mind.
And notice the deep, relaxed comfort you feel.
LONG PAUSE…
Now see that soft, blue cloud of energy at your feet.
You can see all your thoughts and feelings of unrest swirling inside of it.
They’re not yours to hold onto anymore.
And every time you breathe out,
You notice the soft, blue energy dissolve away.
Bit by bit.
Every time you exhale.
A bit more disappears.
Until you look down and see…nothing.
Notice the relief you feel.
Notice the lightness.
Notice the freedom.
Breathe with ease, my love,
You are free to fall asleep.
So let your body relax,
And surrender into the arms of the night.
Sweet Dreams, Beautiful. | https://medium.com/@katiekrimitsos/sleep-meditation-for-insomnia-93a26f535412 | ['Katie Krimitsos'] | 2021-06-17 21:00:39.762000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Stress And Anxiety', 'Rest'] |
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Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/prolog-app/nossos-padr%C3%B5es-de-nomenclatura-para-branches-e-commits-fade8fd17106 | ['Luiz Felipe'] | 2020-12-23 15:56:12.553000+00:00 | ['Github', 'Programação', 'Desenvolvimento Software', 'Git', 'Prologapp'] |
Energy, Productivity & Debt — Inescapable Realities of Prosperity | “The determinants of economic health are timeless and universal” — Ray Dalio, How the Economic Machine Works, 2017
Summary
Over the long-term productivity is what matters most for economic growth (and development)[1].
Traditionally, we tended to look at production as a function of how efficient (productive) labour and capital are employed — this relationship has been the bedrock of our understanding of economic development and growth for centuries. However, by seeing production as the output of only labour and capital, we risk ignoring a fundamental component of development and growth: energy; more specifically, energy efficiency.
Prior to the industrial revolution, economies around the world functioned on ‘above land energy’ — solar (photosynthesis that helped grow food and trees for wood supplies), wind (which enabled maritime transport) and water (e.g. through irrigation systems and water mills). Things have changed with the adaptations made to the steam engine by Thomas Savery, Thomas Newcomen and James Watt throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
Their combined breakthroughs eventually enabled countries to tap into fossil fuels (such as coal, oil and natural gas) on unprecedented scales. This led to incredible technological innovations and advancements that finally freed a large proportion of people, on a global level, from the life’s necessities.
Fossil fuels represent energy from ancient photosynthesis stored over millions of years, sometimes exceeding 650 million years[2]. Therefore, once consumed, it is impossible to be regenerated during a human lifetime.
By looking at changes in GDP over timeframes that do not account for this massive change in production and prosperity, capital allocators concerned with the long-term destiny of the world risk building an incomplete picture of the main drivers of past, current and future economic development and growth.
That is not to say that we should account for thousands of years of economic change — but only for a period that goes back long enough into the past to capture the pre-industrial revolution world (for example 100–150 years before), while also capturing the period since then. In this way, we account for the transition between what we can call ‘energy cycles’, enabling us to appreciate the importance of energy in driving economic development and growth.
Just as there are debt cycles, which result from debt levels growing to a point that overburdens the economy, there are also energy cycles. The chart below illustrates this.
During each of these energy cycles, people make use of certain energy sources in the most efficient way possible. This energy harvesting happens up to the point at which using that energy source is no longer productive — at this point economic development stagnates and consequently, economic growth also comes to a halt. Indeed, if we look at history, we see that there can be prolonged periods of very little-to-no economic development and therefore, mute economic growth[3].
Seen in this context, the period of economic prosperity achieved over the past 200 years or so, especially since the end of WWII is truly unique in human history and we should not take it for granted — rather, we should look to understand what has made it possible. A key ingredient has been our capacity to put to work dense, cheap and finite forms of energy — fossil fuels.
Not accounting for this factor, while also supporting with more and more debt an economic system that seems to value consumption over long-term investment can have negative consequences for the future prosperity of the world and consequently, for investment returns.
Before we get into it, please note that I do not claim to be an expert on this topic — it is however something that I find quite interesting. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how I see things coming together, which may be different than how things are in reality; so feel free to comment and question whatever you think is not convincing or doesn’t make sense. Also, this paper was published first on LinkedIn.
What determines economic growth?
Before we try and answer this…
…we need to make the difference between economic development and economic growth. These two processes, in my mind, are different in what they are but overlap in how they manifest. I will discuss this in more detail in a future paper. For now, suffice to say that economic development requires innovation.
Meanwhile, innovation requires a certain mix of cultural values, legal / regulatory system flexibility and access to resources which enables creative people to a) imagine new products / services, b) put their imagination to work (i.e. execute their ideas), c) bring their final work to market (should they be successful in executing their ideas) and d) be remunerated for the risks taken in creating something new. Where economic growth and development overlap is in the final two parts (c ) and (d).
Growth means to consume something that was produced — the more consumption there is, the more demand there is and therefore, the more production there is. However, growth, in the absence of innovation which is a key driver of improving productivity, reaches a point where it becomes an unproductive endeavour. In other words, consumption, which is the remuneration of producers, no longer is enough to justify itself and the processes of production need to be improved or new ones developed — this is done through innovation, i.e. economic development.
Now, back to economic growth…
There are several factors that determine economic growth but, at a big picture level, economic growth, or GDP, is a function of an economy’s workforce and the productivity of its workers. As such, GDP equals the number of workers times the output per worker. Transformed into growth rates this equation becomes: ∆GDP = ∆Workforce + ∆Productivity.
Over the long-term productivity is what matters most[4] for economic growth. Productivity is a measure of how cost-effective one can produce something — a key way to quantitatively look at productivity is as output per hour. Some (random) examples below. All data is from OECD.
An individual (or a company, a sector, a country) can increase their productivity by either working more or working smarter (i.e. more efficient). Working more simply means spending more of your time doing your job (or jobs). Working smarter however entails investment into researching and developing new technologies, methods and production processes, i.e. it requires innovation[5].
Ray Dalio, in his Economic Principles, breaks down productivity into three main and interconnected factors: a) the country’s cost-effectiveness of labour, b) the country’s investment level and c) cultural values. To this list, I would add a fourth ingredient — exergy; this can be viewed as the capacity of energy to do physical work.
Energy and economic productivity
I was first introduced to the field of exergy economics while working at Woodford Investment Management, where I had the opportunity to read the interesting research work from the MacroStrategy Partnership.
As it can be seen below, the exergy economic model puts the economy into this wider context of energy flows. Chart source can be found here.
The key idea is that all interactions of matter involve energy flows. “This is true whether they have to do with earthquakes, the movement of the planets, or the various biological and industrial processes at work anywhere in the world.”[6]
Instead of looking at economic growth as a function of how productive the capital and labour employed are, the exergy economic model explains GDP as a function of labour, capital and exergy. In other words, productivity is equivalent with the energy’s capacity to be converted into physical work. As Niels Jensen writes in his book — “Think of exergy as productivity.”[7]
The reason you can think of exergy as productivity is because they are both measures of the same concept: cost-effective work; albeit from slightly different angles. Building on Ray Dalio’s definition of productivity, take the following example.
Suppose that the workers from country A are equally as educated and produce the same amount of output per hour as the workers from country B. If the workers from country A cost less than the workers from country B, then the country A is more competitive (i.e. it is more productive relative to country B). This is the same thing as saying that if workers of country A use less resources, both financial (money or credit) and physical (energy) than workers from country B, given that the output is equal in both cases, employing workers from country A will provide you with more value above the cost of employing them.
From an exergy economics perspective this can be stated as: the capacity of energy to produce physical work through the thoughts and actions of workers from country A is more cost-efficient because that work uses a lower quantity of energy to produce the same output as the greater quantity of energy utilised in the case of workers from country B. Therefore, between two workers, with the same level of education that produce the same amount of output per hour, more productive (and thus, more competitive) will be the one that costs the economy less resources (not just financial ones but energy too).
This productivity-exergy equivalence also holds true for the process of “producing” energy[8], particularly from fossil fuels — oil, coal and natural gas remain by far the most important sources of energy worldwide, with 85% of energy supplies coming from fossil fuels in 2017[9]. Therefore, when producing energy is not a productive endeavour (i.e. it is cost inefficient), the production of energy declines, threatening to drag down with it economic development and growth.
Energy production can decline either if demand falls (i.e. consumers find energy prices unaffordable), leading to lower levels of production to meet a lower level of demand, or if supply is cut (i.e. energy producers find it unaffordable to provide the economy with energy or there are political reasons to reduce supply). Finding the equilibrium between these two price levels is what we can call the ‘economic affordability’ of energy.
The role of affordable energy in economic growth
The role of energy has been largely neglected from economic growth models primarily because the models that we are using today have been developed during a time when the world didn’t need to worry about the role of energy too much — until the 1970s oil shocks.
During the Arab-Israeli conflict in the early 1970s, OPEC’s Arab members, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed an oil embargo as retaliation for the support showed to Israel by the US. The embargo involved production cuts and the suspension of exports to the US, as well as other nations that backed Israel. As a result, the price of oil, measured by the spot price of WTI, increased by about 260% above the long-run average in 1974. From 1946 to the end of 1973, the average spot crude oil price was $2.8 per barrel. In 1974 it jumped to $10.1 per barrel, crippling the economy.
This sudden and extreme price increase was a major contributor to the US economic recession during 1973–1975 (the final grey line in the chart below).
We can easily underestimate the important role that affordable energy, tapped into on a massive scale, has played and continues to play in fuelling technological development (i.e. innovation) as well as economic growth (i.e. consumption).
If we look at history, and we do not have to go too far back, we can see that prior to the improvements to the steam engine, which enabled the extraction and transport of oil[10], the world was advancing much slower than we are today[11].
An important factor that was holding progress back was the [natural] limit on growth imposed by the sources of energy used: mostly wind (throughout windmills and boats), hydro (through waterwheels and maritime transport) and solar (through food, wood and animal muscle power). These sources of energy were more or less contained by ‘land’ — hence, it is understandable why the classic economists (such as Adam Smith) thought about factors of production as land, capital and labour.
Things changed during the industrial revolution. It was 1859, when the first oil well was drilled in Western Pennsylvania, which was producing 15–25 barrels of oil per day — that was the entire oil production worldwide[12]. In 2017, the world extracted 92.6 million barrels per day[13]. The cost-efficiency of this massive production is paramount for economic development to happen and for economic growth to accelerate (or even to be sustained).
From the perspective of the oil producer, affordability means that it can sell the oil barrel at a price high enough not only to compensate for the cost of discovering the well, extracting, refining and transporting the oil but which also enables future investment in this process as well as in other life endeavours, i.e. the producer must sell oil at a price above the breakeven point, which makes a profit. For example, the average cost of producing one barrel of shale oil in the US is about $60[14] — if the shale oil price drops below this for a sustained period of time, all things being equal, the producers will have to cut production so the price can reach a new equilibrium at which they make a profit[15].
From the perspective of the consumer, affordability means that the price of oil is low enough that it doesn’t absorb too much of their income, so that they can pay for their mortgage / rent, other utilities, food etc. If the price is too high for the consumer, then demand for oil will go down, lowering the price of the commodity which, in turn, can make oil production uneconomical. This then can result in more cuts to production, meaning that industries won’t have enough energy to sustain the past level of production of goods and/or services. As a result, economic growth comes under pressure.
In my view, unaffordable oil prices, or energy prices in general act as a tightening of resources in the economy — akin to how tighter monetary policy acts for the financial markets. Not high enough prices to justify the cost of energy production means that more resources (labour, finance, technology) are tied up in producing the same (or an increasingly lower) quantity of energy[16]. Not low enough prices to enable consumption to pick up (and this includes deferred consumption, i.e. savings) or be maintained means that more income (and / or credit borrowed against future income streams that can also diminish if energy prices remain too high) go towards paying for energy instead of going into savings (pensions and other investments)[17] or other goods / services. Either way, the economy needs affordable energy to develop and grow.
Energy’s cost-efficiency can also be eroded if the energy itself does not do the amount of physical work needed to pay for itself. In other words, as exergy decreases, energy production becomes an unproductive endeavour, eventually rendering it unaffordable. Exergy deteriorates in the process of transforming energy from its raw (or primary) form (e.g. fossil fuel, solar, wind, water) into useful form (e.g. motion, heat, light).
Data on exergy and economic growth and / or development is difficult to come by because this is an area of economics that is not studied enough. However, we can create a rough proxy for energy efficiency by looking at how much GDP we get per energy consumed.
At the first glance it would appear that the world is highly productive in allocating energy resources — for 1 Btoe of energy consumed in 2017 the global GDP produced was c.40% higher than that produced for the same amount of energy consumed in 1980. However, my intuition tells me that there is more to this than meets the eye.
For example, from 1980 to 2017, US total debt (public + private business debt) increased by 20x while US GDP increased only by 7x. In fact, the US GDP per US total debt continued to decrease since 1966. In the chart below, the LH shows the fed funds rate and the RH shows the GDP per Debt.
If the world (overall) would have been allocating energy resources efficiently then would the economy be so dependent on monetary policy remaining accommodative?
The alchemy of credit, productivity and energy
When faced with an unproductive economic process, we have three choices:
a) we invest in R&D and new technology to try and improve the cost-efficiency of that process (i.e. make it better)
b) we do nothing and continue with the unproductive process as it is (in this case resource consumption will eventually deliver a net negative benefit to the economy)
c) we do nothing but pretend that we do (which is to keep the process alive through debt — an unproductive process is uneconomic by definition and will eventually stop delivering cash flows; these cash flows can be artificially sustained through debt).
Debt in itself is not a bad thing for the economy. In fact, the economy wouldn’t function without debt. As such, we cannot separate the importance of credit cycles from our analysis of productivity and, as we will see shortly, debt has direct consequences on the physical resources that power the economy, not just on the flow of financial capital — this relationship between credit and physical resources is what links debt growth with productivity and thus with exergy.
In A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises, Ray Dalio outlined the pattern of the archetypical debt cycle — to keep things short, I will not make the difference between an inflationary and a deflationary deleveraging (which happens in the second half of the debt cycle).
Debt cycles start in benign economic times when there is enough slack in the economy and productivity and growth pick up; in this part of the cycle debt doesn’t grow faster than income as it finances productive endeavours that more than pay for themselves (i.e. generate cash flows that can support the credit interest payments and also provide further investment to other parts of the economy).
As the economy continues to do well, incomes grow, the stock market rises and people and businesses become more creditworthy — as such, more credit is extended to them by willing lenders. At some point in the cycle productive allocation of debt starts to turn into an unproductive endeavour — the hallmark of this shift is when credit payments start to grow faster than incomes.
This process can continue for some time as it is kept alive by easy monetary policy (such as low interest rates which makes debt servicing cheap enough). This was also observed by Austrian economist, Knut Wicksell who argued that the danger with credit is that, as the cycle progresses, it will fund more and more enterprises that can only stay alive while credit expands (i.e. zombie businesses).
Eventually however, the unproductive allocation of debt capital stops, usually because monetary policy is tightened in an attempt to fight off inflation; monetary policy tightening increases the cost of debt and adds more and more strain on the cash flows of businesses and households until the economy goes into the deleveraging phase. During this part of the debt cycle, the economy should be cleared of unproductively allocated capital and, if done right, meaning that the policymakers find the appropriate balance between the debt write offs, debt monetisation and redistribution of wealth, the transition towards the recovery phase will be smooth.
However, if the misallocated capital that has been building up during the debt cycle is not cleaned up enough to enable productivity to pick up, the recovery will be a mere mirage. This can happen towards the end of a long-term debt cycle, which usually lasts several decades. Part of the reason is that each time we go through a short-term debt cycle (i.e. a business cycle) we end up with a little bit more debt at the start of the recovery (i.e. at the start of the next business cycle). Eventually, these ‘leftover’ amounts of debt add up to the point that when the ‘final’ deleveraging comes (the end of the long-term debt cycle), orthodox monetary policy is rendered useless[18].
It is with this part of the long-term debt cycle that we are concerned today, as we find ourselves close towards its reversal. Interest rates remain very low compared to history across many developed nations and quantitative easing has had a more pronounced impact on boosting financial assets rather than productive economic activity. At this point, credit creation is highly likely to be misallocated.
As I wrote in The Wealth Illusion, there are at least two ways to assess whether or not credit has been allocated productively — the growth of debt relative to GDP and the Wicksell spread. Both measures continue to suggest that debt is being misallocated.
The link between debt creation, productivity and exergy has been illustrated by the excellent work done by the MacroStrategy Partnership. Succinctly, once credit starts to be misallocated, if this process is kept alive by easy monetary policy long enough, then, eventually, the economy will reach a point at which any credit creation depletes physical resources — in essence borrowing output from the future.
What this does is lowering productivity, both from the perspective explained by Ray Dalio (see above) and from the point of view of the exergy model. From the perspective of the creditor, debt is a claim on future cash flows[19]. If the debt is used productively, i.e. in a way in which the value of what you get (goods/services) is higher than the cost of producing it (cost of capital and of transforming energy from its primary form to its useful form), then future cash flows are safe.
If that value drops below the cost of production, then, all else being equal, future cash flows will diminish. However, they can be artificially sustained through more borrowing (remember, we are talking about an environment where momentary policy is accommodative, i.e. borrowing is cheap). These artificially sustained cash flows mean that credit creation enables physical resources (such as land, machinery, labour etc.) to be tied in unproductive processes of production.
Viewed from the angle of the exergy model, this is equivalent with saying that the energy used by these processes sees a diminished return on its ability to do physical work (i.e. its exergy declines). Human capital, machinery and natural resources employed in these processes, in reality, produce a diminished (and eventually negative) return, which is masked by the credit subsidised cash flows[20]. The ultimate result of this process, if it is not reversed by somehow reducing the debt burden (which when it grows too big it doesn’t happen without a lot of economic pain and potentially social unrest) is negative growth in the future.
We are now at a point in which we need to consider both the credit cycle and the energy conversion cycle — there are arguments which suggest that the world has already reached peak oil. The challenge with these types of analysis is that the data is subjected to the uncertainty of undiscovered oil resources. However, what is certain is the finite nature of fossil fuels.
The natural limit to growth
Unproductive allocation of resources cannot be sustained. Eventually, either the burden of debt or the depletion of fossil fuels will put the brakes on economic development and growth.
There is analysis that suggests that this is already happening[21].
The chart above shows that the world’s economic growth is returning to its historic trend. Since 1970 both debt and energy consumption have been increasing across the world, while economic output per capita has been declining. There are other factors at play here, which are beyond the scope of this paper. One of them are the values that underpin our society (e.g. how much we value getting a new pair of Gucci shoes for £600 over saving that money).
Renewables could play a more prominent role in our economy but, for now, they are not as efficient as fossil fuels to support the level of production that we have become accustomed to. So we either invest more in R&D to look for alternative sources of energy, or at least to improve the technologies that capture, transform and transmit renewable energy or we cut our consumption.
What prompted me to write this paper?
Two factors contributed to my decision to write this paper. The first one was Ray Dalio’s incredible work on the debt cycle and productivity. Ray’s detailed analysis of what drives economic growth convinced me that the world works in a cause-effect like fashion, akin to a machine — this means that if we understand how the building blocks of this machine interact and what brings these building blocks about, we can form a much more complete picture of how this machine is likely to perform in the future, what may be in need of repairing and what may need upgrading.
The second factor was the work of Gail Tverberg, who put the concept of exergy into the broader context for me and made me realise the importance of finding alternative sources of energy that can enable the world to become less dependent on fossil fuels (due to both their finite nature and their polluting nature).
References and Comments
[1] The difference between these two concepts, as well as the need to make such difference, is discussed in a future paper that I aim to publish soon
[2] Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade, 1990–1999
[3] For a short but sweet account of economic growth and development in human history, see here: https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth
[4] See Ray Dalio’s Economic Principles
[5] In a future paper I will discuss why not all innovation is ‘true’ innovation (i.e. not all that is new brings about an improvement, be it social or economic; in other words, new things and processes must create a return above their cost or production)
[6] Linking Energy Efficiency to Economic Productivity: Recommendations for Improving the Robustness of the U.S. Economy, 2013 — https://aceee.org/sites/default/files/publications/researchreports/e13f.pdf
[7] The End of Indexing, page 123
[8] It is more accurate to say the process of energy transformation
[9] BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2018 (elaborated here https://ourfiniteworld.com/2018/06/22/eight-insights-based-on-december-2017-energy-data/)
[10] Peak Oil, Energy Descent, and the Fate of Consumerism, Dr. Samuel Alexander, 2011
[11] The Industrial Revolution, Gregory Clark, University of California, 2007
[12] Peak Oil, Energy Descent, and the Fate of Consumerism, Dr. Samuel Alexander, 2011
[13] BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2018
[14] Absolute Return Partners, Addicted to Oil?, May 2019
[15] In reality, all is never equal — as Niels Jensen shows in “Addicted to Oil?”, the US legal system (Chapter 11) enabled US shale oil producers to restructure and continue production even when the oil price was $30 per barrel between 2014–2015. But not all oil producers around the world benefit from the flexible American legal system.
[16] The quality of this energy (i.e. its exergy, or capacity to perform physical work) is also an important factor in determining the productivity of the process of producing that energy.
[17] Even if money and credit are not limited resources, unlike fossil fuels which are finite, they are limited by trust — when the laws of this world do not have a source in an Absolute (such as God’s Ten Commandments) and are therefore the product of men, the most important element that upholds these laws is not the coercive power of the state for this can shatter under political events, such as the revolution. Rather, it is the conscious agreement between each one of us that we shall respect and abide by these rules. Such agreement is backed by trust. Consequently, money and credit, although they can be created ad infinitum by the central bank, the risk of breaking the trust in the rules that hold not just the institution of central banking but the whole economy together tends to prevent such an action, although not always.
[18] Dalio pointed out that there are three types of monetary policy through which the economy goes when trying to deleverage — the first is the lowering of interest rates; once interest rates hit zero, policymakers move to the second type of monetary policy which is the monetisation of debt (quantitative easing); and finally, once the impact of quantitative easing on stimulating economic activity diminishes, policymakers move to what it is known as ‘helicopter money’, which is essentially quantitative easing for Main Street.
[19] Here is another interesting way to view debt, from the perspective of the debtor: “A debt is a short cash position — i.e., a commitment to deliver cash that one doesn’t have. Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, and because of the dollar surplus recycling that has taken place over the past few years…lots of dollar denominated debt has been built up around the world. So, as dollar liquidity has become tight, there has been a dollar squeeze. This squeeze…is hitting dollar-indebted emerging markets (particularly those of commodity exporters) and is supporting the dollar. When this short squeeze ends, which will happen when either the debtors default or get the liquidity to prevent their default, the US dollar will decline. Until then, we expect to remain long the USD against the euro and emerging market currencies.” Source: A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises, Ray Dalio, 2018
[20] All of this is made possible by monetary policy kept accommodative for too long — too long means that interests rates are low and central banks keep buying assets (or keep reinvesting the proceeds from these assets, i.e. maintain their inflated balance sheet) after economic activity has recovered as demonstrated by various indicators such as bank lending revival, healthy employment indicators and business confidence levels.
[21] http://peak-oil.org/peak-oil-review-22-apr-2019/ | https://balintanton92.medium.com/energy-productivity-debt-inescapable-realities-of-prosperity-5deeee00c48e | ['A Balint'] | 2019-05-11 12:23:57.931000+00:00 | ['Debt', 'Economics', 'Energy', 'Investing', 'Productivity'] |
Emeralds | Top Writer in Poetry. I am a writer, photographer, psychic, medium, and spiritual guide.I have an M.A. in Environmental Sociology.
Follow | https://medium.com/dead-poets-society/emeralds-1c8721dc7bd1 | ['Anna Rozwadowska'] | 2020-06-02 05:58:59.772000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Natural World', 'Haiku', 'Generation', 'Existence'] |
Disney princesses reimagined as Young Black Girls | I was just hopelessly and aimlessly cruising Instagram when I found these beyond gorgeous photographs.😍 Initially I thought they were just really cool until i did some digging around.
These absolutely fabulous photos were thanks to the collaboration between Lachanda Gatson, the awesomely talented makeup artist and hairstylist that came up with what you see before you. Concept and all. And CreativeSoul Photography.
The stunning portraits are called Princess series beautifully and creatively reimagine Disney princess as young black girls. Not only just putting the photo out there as just a reimagine of the famous and beloved characters but also putting essence into it. Capturing that of the characters and that of the reimagination. A perfect blend. Not too over the top and not to bland either.
Personally as a African girl these photos really appeal to me because I get to see some of my favorite and beloved Disney princesses look like me and actually carry the essence of Africa. And that was kinda the goal.The Princess Series was created with the goal of inspiring more girls to start seeing themselves as regal princesses.
The idea, according to what Lachanda Gatson told My Modern Net, was developed early on in childhood from the consistent lack of representation of Black children in almost all forms of media where children play a significant role. She would often reimagine the characters as more relatable to her and her culture.
Gatson reimagined a collection of fictional princesses and global fairytales. Ones she she grew up with as Black Urban Royalty. Choosing a team of talented Black creatives, creating what she wanted to see. Showing the rewards of teamwork, hardwork, determination and will. And quite frankly I couldn’t be happier.
Gatson hopes that the series helps to inspire change. Also hoping that the series is just a beginning of endless opportunities for inclusion and more black creativity in fantasy. She wants everyone to continue the conversation and understand that our children matter too.
Not that I have any kids yet. I guess my siblings kinda are but for now I can guess the word ‘children’ still applies to me too.😁
Princess Jade inspired by Cinderella
I feel like excessively gushing over these. The fashion, the style, the hair the jewelry, all so beautiful. I have never been the one with the fashion sense in the family. I don’t really get what the hoopla is about sometimes. Same with makeup. But slather anything with a good glob of fantasy, culture and reimagination I’ll be face down in it.😂
Princess Tigers Eye inspired by Nala from “The Lion King”
Princess Rose Quartz inspired by Aurora from “Sleeping Beauty”
Princess Onyx inspired by Pocahontas
Princess Emerald inspired by Tiana from “The Princess and the frog”
Princess Garnet inspired by Snow White
Princess Moonstone inspired by Elsa from “Frozen”
Princess Diamond inspired by Anna from “Frozen”
Princess Obsidian inspired by Shuri from “Black Panther”
Princess Citrine inspired by Belle from “Beauty and the Beast”
Princess Aquamarine inspired by Ariel from “The Little Mermaid”
Princess Amber inspired by Moana
Princess Turquoise inspired by Jasmine from “Aladdin”
Princess Amethyst inspired by Rapunzel
The prints are being sold by CreativeSoul Photography and are available on their website. They are all under copyright.You can find these gorgeous photos and more on their Instagram pages
https://instagram.com/lachandagartistry?igshid=14rxzul232k70
https://instagram.com/creativesoulphoto?igshid=vtdk6snsnpjo
And websites. Links in bio. | https://medium.com/@chelseauzomah/i-was-just-hopelessly-and-aimlessly-cruising-instagram-when-i-found-these-beyond-gorgeous-77e58378401a | ['Chelsea Uzomah'] | 2020-12-23 02:24:30.660000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Disney', 'Black Women', 'Reimagination', 'Black'] |
Save 10% Off At Editors Keys With These Discount Codes | There is no need to pay the full value of the order, get 10% discount for all orders online at Editors Keys with the discount code below
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Hope this article is useful to you. See you in other articles.
Update (May 20th, 2019) | https://medium.com/@lee.snart1994/save-10-off-at-editors-keys-with-these-discount-codes-821a01fbcb13 | ['Leonard Snart'] | 2019-05-20 11:08:52.953000+00:00 | ['Discount Code', 'Editors Keys C', 'Coupon', 'Editors Keys Discount', 'Editors Keys'] |
I probably won’t get married until my mid 30s and I’m fine with that | I probably won’t get married until my mid 30s and I’m fine with that
Reflections on love, life, relationships and getting married
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
Growing up, marriage was the end goal of every little girl I knew. I always thought it was kind of weird. Or maybe I was just a progressive 10 year old.
Boys, crushes and dreams of Prince Charming was not really my thing but over time, through the gentle subconscious conditioning of everyone around me, I began to believe that I had to get married before I turned 30.
By the time I hit my twenties and still haven’t had a boyfriend, I began to panic. I did the math — 3 years in a relationship, then a year of engagement with an end of year wedding — that’s at least 4–5 years. If I wanted to get married before I hit the old maid’s age, I’ll need to find Mr Right before I turned a certain age (with a bit of a buffer zone of 1–2 years).
I stayed with the first guy that asked me out for 3 years — 2 months shy of being 4 years. We were just waiting for me to finish my University degree and do all of the typical things like getting a job, moving out and all that stuff before getting married. It was on everyone’s mind. His mom was even starting to have dreams about the wedding.
But at 22 years old, I knew I didn’t want it — not with him — so I broke it off. My mother had a mental breakdown. | https://medium.com/prototyping-a-year/i-probably-wont-get-married-until-my-mid-30s-and-i-m-fine-with-that-42bb1e4eb67d | ['Aphinya Dechalert'] | 2019-03-26 01:38:38.912000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Love', 'Marriage', 'Life'] |
Cyberpunk 2077 — Life Paths. In the second part of my “How to… | In the second part of my “How to Improve Cyberpunk 2077” series, I’ll delve into Life Paths. Please be warned that the article may contain spoilers. You can find the full list of articles in the above link as well.
The Situation
Here is what I said in summary about Life Paths in the original article:
The starting experience is too brief and while there are a lot of dialogue options, see (1)* and once our life in the streets start, our old life is never relevant. *(1) was Mission Choices not being as existing or as impactful as previously promised by CDPR
For those unfamiliar, Cyberpunk 2077 allows players to choose between one of the three Life Paths, which determine the past of V before the game starts:
Street Kid, meaning V has pretty much always been working on the street for fixers, gangs and so on Nomad, meaning V has/had been part of one of the nomad clans (not Aldecados though) Corpo, meaning V has been working for a Corporate (in V’s case, Arasaka)
These life paths are similar to the Roles from the TTRPG. There are many more roles but considering they aren’t exactly the same and how some roles might have been hard to properly reflect, I think these three were chosen well. They reflect very distinct lifestyles. If I could add more, maybe I’d consider something “gov’t-y” such as a MaxTac/City Force/Netwatch agent.
The Life Paths have completely different introduction episodes, which last until the point where Jackie Welles and V become buddies and work together, which is shown to the player in a video (which is same for all three). Additionally, each life path gets its own unique dialogues in the game for both “yellow choices” (ie an option that progresses the dialogue) and “blue” (ie an optional dialogue line.) For example, a Street Kid V knows that Wakako lost family to Arasaka, while a Corpo V knows how to press Netwatch agent Meredith’s buttons.
Sounds cool, right? And it is… kind of. I have one disappointment, one problem that is not directly due to the system and one point of improvement. My disappointment is the length of the introductions. They are way too short. Corpo especially feels bad since you stay Corpo for about 15 minutes. My indirect problem is the first article I wrote about: Quests not changing enough with the dialogues. Look, I do appreciate the role-play element. I value that. But a game of this size, combined with the promises from CDPR, there has got to be more than my imagination here. My point improvement? Adding solid effects of your background other than these. You feel me choom? Preem, let’s dive into it.
The Solution
Let’s start with introductions. Here is an alternative plot for Corpo:
V is called by their boss, Jenkins, who sends them on a mission to take out his rival, Abernathy. On her way back to her station, V feels weak, overwhelmed, as Jenkins is clearly placing V at great risk. They take some supplements to keep them up but having had too much drugs, V only ends up getting worse. They then leave the office and meet their trusted childhood friend Jackie Welles, who always helps them relax. V bounces some ideas of Jackie and realizes that they have 3 options: Obey the order, ignore the order or sell out Jenkins. For the first one, they have to dig about Abernathy via stealth, brute force or tech from her office or her reports. They’ll find out that she frequents Clouds and will find a way to kill Abernathy there. Once this is done, Jenkins will refuse any ties and V survive an assassin attack only thanks to Jackie. Ignoring the order means not taking any action, which gets Jenkins fired, followed by V. Selling out means having a face to face with Abernathy, then another one with Jenkins, where V records the conversation. Abernathy will thank V in person and transfer funds but then fire her, claiming V can’t be trusted. Either way, V is now out of Arasaka and in a situation where she won’t be hired by any Corpo. So she teams up with Jackie.
Here is an alternative plot for Street Kid:
V receives a call from Padre, who is the first proper fixer V talks to. V is excited, expecting a proper job. Instead, Padre wants to use V in a distraction role for another rising street kid, someone from his community: Jackie Welles. V then gets a call from the actual job-provider. He says he can offer the job to V for a lower fee, which would still be more than what Jackie gets due to lack of Fixer cut. V has three choices once more: Do as Padre asked, act as if they will but then try to take it over from Jackie or try to solo it. In either way, the best timing for the job (which will be stealing the car same as the regular intro) will be a certain day and time and Jackie will be present there and they’ll get caught and thrown to jail. There, they will get into a fight and broken up by the police. Then a cyberpsycho will be thrown to the same cell (on purpose, for fun, by the cops) and they’ll defend themselves together. They’ll start bonding and when Mama Welles comes to bail out Jackie, she bails out V as well, assuming they are friends. V being thankful and already cooled down; Jackie being the big-hearted oaf that he is and both being indebted to Padre, they will start working together.
Here is an alternative plot for Nomad:
V takes on a smuggling job with one of the clan, called C from now on. C says a couple of suspicious things but all looks good. Most things in the original intro happen, except the part after they leave the border. C asks V to drive to a particular spot, somewhere V has no idea about but C tells V to trust him. They manage to shake off or kill the cops, except one. They enter a small settlement, where a few people show up and shot down the police car with an emp turret. Turns out that C has decided to leave the clan and join a band of Raffen Shiv. The Raffen plan to torture Jackie for the password to the box and kill him. C tells V to join him and tells V that this can be his initiation. V and Jackie are in a room, Jackie tied up. During the convo, V informs Jackie that they won’t join Raffen and that they value the Nomad values. But also that his clan is extremely paranoid about Raffen and even if V gets away and returns, the clan wouldn’t believe them, assuming they joined the Raffen and are up to no good. Jackie tells V about how Heywood is also family-like and that V is a good guy and invites V to Night City. Left with no choice, V accepts. They can’t overpower the enemy as there are too many. Luckily, they are in the garage, with the damaged border-cop jeep. V can fix the engine but the EMP turret is a problem. Depending on V’s abilities, they can fix more systems to safely drive away and/or turn off the emp turret and/or shoot some people for distraction and let Jackie drive the jeep out and let V join him as they drive away.
I believe scripts such as these not only will create a better “I am X” feeling by being a bit longer and more importantly, by showing more sides to that background.
The second part I mentioned was dialogues being more impactful but honestly, I think my article about mission choices already talks about that so I won’t get into that.
The last part was the “solid effects” other than the intro and dialogue choices. Consider the following:
Street Kid effects:
You get more payment from all Gigs, proportional to your street cred. You get a special “redemption” mission from Padre to steal the car from the introduction. You need to complete this to receive any Padre gigs. Ripperdoc prices are 10% cheaper You start with the standard car.
Corpo effects:
You get a mission to get back some of your drained cash. You can track it yourself or try to steal back some cash with Int or Tech, you can scare an ex-employee with Body or you can call some favours will Cool. It is possible to mix and match these for better results. You have tax-return shenanigans going on. Every purchase over 1K is cheaper, discount rates increasing with base price. You are focused and determined, gaining 10% more experience. You start with a stylish sports car that is faster but has worse handling than the standard car.
Nomad effects:
You have a special mission that brings you together with an ex-clan member. They can be called as if calling a vehicle. Once they arrive, they can be used as a fast-travel point. You start with a modified jeep that has better handling and speed than the standard car You can complete another mission for your ex-clan to connect them to smuggling rings. They now act as a vendor that has two types of items: The first group are fully random at a very high discount. The second group are picked depending on your abilities, perks and equipped items but very expensive.
With such changes, I think there will be a better distinction of V’s life path.
Conclusion
I don’t think Cyberpunk did Life Paths “bad” per se, but this is more or less the minimum. If they had less than what they had now, they might as well have not added it at all. That’s why I think it’s better to shine these to diversify player experience. In fact, the “solid” effects can be even less conservative; but if dialogue choices impact is better felt, the distinction will be felt stronger overall anyway. | https://medium.com/@ekrematamer/cyberpunk-2077-life-paths-5f61a925a927 | ['Ekrem Atamer'] | 2020-12-27 00:58:58.069000+00:00 | ['Analysis', 'Cyberpunk', 'Videogames', 'Design', 'Gaming'] |
2020’s Top Ten Stories: Better to die than be a coward | 2020’s Top Ten Stories: Better to die than be a coward
In at number 3 is all you need to know about The Gurkha Brigade. As we countdown to 2021, we are taking a look at some of our most-read stories from the last year.
Each day in the run-up to New Year’s Day we will be reposting our most-read stories from 2020
So far we’ve had;
10–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Inside Strategic Command
9–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Airborne soldiers make history
8–2020’s Top Ten Stories: What kit does an Apache Pilot carry?
7–2020’s Top Ten Stories: 5 things to know about the Poseidon
6–2020’s Top Ten Stories: a couple on the frontline
5–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Military Aid to Civil Authorities (MACA)
4–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Poseidon protects UK waters against Russian warship
Better to die than be a coward: The Gurkha Brigade
For over 200 years now, individuals from Nepal have been recruited into the British Army. The Gurkhas have supported operations worldwide with a range of skills ever since.
Here is everything you need to know 👇
The Gurkhas are soldiers from Nepal who have been recruited into the British Army.
They have served the British Crown for more than 200 years and have a rich heritage marked by excellence and sacrifice.
They are known for being as fearless in combat as they are good-natured in their day-to-day life.
“Better to die than be a coward” is the motto of these world-famous soldiers.
The bravery of these Nepalese soldiers has not gone unnoticed. To date, the regiment has received 26 Victoria Crosses — Britain’s highest award for bravery.
A soldier from 2 Royal Gurkha Regiment during Exercise Pacific Kukri in Brunei.
The Gurkhas’ mission
“To serve as an integral part of the British Army whilst retaining its Nepalese identity and culture, and adhering to the terms and conditions of Gurkha service”.
A member of the Royal Gurkha Regiment guarding the Cenotaph during the Armistice Day Event at the Cenotaph.
Modern-day Gurkhas
Today the Brigade of Gurkhas remain an important part of the British Army. Providing well-trained and adaptable units, who are deployable across a range of operations and environments.
For the last 200 years, the Gurkhas have served the British Crown in more than 30 major conflicts. This commitment remains to date.
There are currently Gurkhas deployed worldwide on operations and exercises, from operations in Afghanistan to Short Term Training Teams (STTT) in Kenya.
Pictured are soldiers from 2 Royal Gurkha Regiment leading a STTT (Short Term Training Team) mission at the Kenyan School of Infantry, Isiolo, Kenya.
Doko race
There are many unique aspects of the Gurkhas, but one that stands them apart is the doko race.
The doko race is the final test in the Gurkha selection process, which involves running up a mountain in the Himalayan foothills with 25kg of sand in a basket.
The basket is strapped around the forehead and the potential recruits must run with it for 5km uphill.
The day before the race, the sand is carefully weighed and the doko baskets are laid out. Each recruit is responsible for their own basket.
Once the young men have reached the top they are rewarded with a well-deserved breakfast. Then it’s just a short interview and then they wait to find out if they are going to be the British Army’s newest trainee Gurkhas.
As the final test in the selection process, the potential recruits are expected to complete the gruelling challenge in just 46 minutes, if they fail to do so then that is the end of their Gurkha selection process.
History of the Brigade 🇳🇵
The history of the Brigade from its inception during the early wars between the Honourable East India Company and the city-state of Gorkha, through the early Afghan wars, the two World Wars, the almost continuous post-war conflicts to modern-day Afghanistan. | https://medium.com/voices-of-the-armed-forces/2020s-top-ten-stories-better-to-die-than-be-a-coward-acecaab4df23 | ['Ministry Of Defence'] | 2020-12-22 13:45:09.047000+00:00 | ['Gurkha', 'Nepal', 'Military', 'UK', 'Soldier'] |
Az104 — Application Gateway | · Application Gateway manages the requests that client applications can send to a web app.
· Application Gateway routes traffic to a pool of web servers based on the URL of a request.
· This is known as application layer routing
· Clients send requests to your web apps to the IP address or DNS name of the gateway.
· The gateway routes requests to a selected web server in the back-end pool, using a set of rules configured for the gateway to determine where the request should go.
· There are two primary methods of routing traffic, path-based routing and multiple site hosting.
· Path-based routing enables you to send requests with different paths in the URL to a different pool of back-end servers.
· For example, you could direct requests with the path /video/* to a back-end pool containing servers that are optimized to handle video streaming, and direct /images/* requests to a pool of servers that handle image retrieval.
· Multiple site hosting enables you to configure more than one web application on the same application gateway instance.
· In a multi-site configuration, you register multiple DNS names (CNAMEs) for the IP address of the Application Gateway, specifying the name of each site.
· Client requests are received through a front-end IP address.
· You can configure Application Gateway to have a public IP address, a private IP address, or both.
· Application Gateway can’t have more than one public and one private IP address.
· Application Gateway uses one or more listeners to receive incoming requests.
· A listener accepts traffic arriving on a specified combination of protocol, port, host, and IP address.
· A routing rule also has an associated set of HTTP settings.
· These settings indicate whether (and how) traffic is encrypted between Application Gateway and the back-end servers, and other configuration information such as:
Protocol (HTTP or HTTPS).
Session stickiness, to pass all requests in a client session to the same web server rather than distributing them across servers with load balancing.
Connection draining, to enable the graceful removal of servers from a back-end pool.
Request timeout period, in seconds.
Health probes, specifying a probe URL, time out periods, and other parameters used to determine whether a server in the back-end pool is available.
· The Web Application Firewall (WAF) is an optional component that handles incoming requests before they reach a listener.
· The web application firewall checks each request for many common threats, based on the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).
· These include:
SQL-injection
Cross-site scripting
Command injection
HTTP request smuggling
HTTP response splitting
Remote file inclusion
Bots, crawlers, and scanners
HTTP protocol violations and anomalies
· Application Gateway requires a virtual network in which to operate.
· You must create this virtual network and a dedicated subnet before setting up Application Gateway.
· You can create an Application Gateway on the Standard tier or the WAF tier.
· You also have a choice of three sizes with varying performance, pricing, and scalability: Small, Medium, and Large. | https://medium.com/@setumo/az104-application-gateway-fac3e7aad721 | ['Setumo Raphela'] | 2020-12-22 17:52:00.723000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Application Gateway', 'Az104', 'Cloud Computing', 'Azure'] |
The Satellite Watcher of Negative Bond Rates, Environmental Havoc & Jobless Worshipers | The Satellite Watcher of Negative Bond Rates, Environmental Havoc & Jobless Worshipers
The truth of our condition is bleak. The rates which we pay are dismal. The watcher of worlds sits atop a mighty throne pondering the outcome. Chris Knight Follow Dec 5, 2020 · 5 min read
Source: Self Created Image with Canva.
THE SATELLITE
Winds push through a ruined landscape. The ruins form chasms which channel the winds. Upon closer inspection, we see these ruins contain people. What appears ruined buildings are the latest Economic Opportunity Zones in America.
Poverty rates hovered just above ten percent prior to the COVID pestilence. Now poverty extends its borders. The air blowing through the landscape has voices. The air’s voice is for the people living on the ground.
The wind composes its tune.
W — — A — — I — -LLLllll….
Long painful wails cry from the earth. It sends chills down the spines of those that hear.
Across the horizon a feint light moves. The body moves at abnormal speeds.
It is too fast to be a star.
It is too slow to be a shooting star.
It is too permanent to be a celestial body.
Its path is the same every day. It tracks the same orbit every week. Every month it comes to view the landscape from the same position. The seasons do not change its orbit. The faces on the ground always look up. From ruins eyes glisten despair.
American eyes.
These eyes appear to pray to God, but the remainder of their faces know things. There is no god to be found in these faces. These faces want work and the false god above does not deliver their wants.
The April 15 percent unemployment rate decreased to 6.9% in November.
Despite this reality no one recognizes the 3.7 million faces who do not receive their old pay. Old lifestyles were put to death. Former positions were retired out of existence.
These trade jobs were executed on the block. Their bodies torn asunder. Heads put on pikes. Everyone sees their decay.
The stench lingers.
Ewwhhh.
Job death blankets the lands. Atop the feint light people look. Hands raise in the form of worship. Fingers point. They know who is atop there.
Someone peers down.
THE WATCHER
“These people cannot see their lives will never come back.”
An aged man stands atop a satellite circling the globe. He is surrounded by sliver grey steel in all directions. Charts read numbers. Hologram looking images fade in and out of the glass he uses to look down at the planet.
He stands on a cane. The cane is strong to bear the brunt of his weight. His weight is heavy with worry not fat. He is a slender man. This slender man presses down as if he is a gram of black hole. The pressure he exerts on the cane creaks the steel floor.
He moves his hands to his chin. He rubs through his grey stubbles.
“Temporary layoffs declined from nearly 80 percent in April to about 40 percent in September. The fraction of the unemployed whose previous jobs were permanently eliminated has increased from 10 percent to about 40 percent. Gradually all the previous jobs will be lost.”
The man’s face shows worry. He looks away from the planet and fixes his eye on the center of the room. In the room’s center sits a platform elevated. A pulsing light softly illuminates the room.
The man stares at the light as he speaks.
“The policies they are creating do not favor the planet. They will industrialize to band aid the problem. This will be problematic.”
The light calls back to him. The man begins to move towards its calling.
The man steps to the center of the platform. His hand moves towards the pulsing light. He grips a rotation ball. His hand spins it clockwise.
“Show me the future of these people. Show me how savings will preserve their value when inflation is greater than treasury rates and the abandonment of their ecosystem eminent.”
The man watches the rotation ball for a moment. The rotation ball begins to spin a new reality. Around him new images begin to take shape. He can see the ground of the planet. He can feel the heat of the cities.
Amidst the city he stands in the bustle of people. This bustle starts to accelerate. Cars go from driving to light speed. The images change to a blur.
STOP.
FIFTY YEARS LATER
Most of the densely populated areas of the globe are too hot to live in. 3 billion people find drought, spotty electricity and massive dust storms roaring through their streets.
700 million people now live in poverty due to a change in economic policy favoring money over climate.
Children starve with pop bellies. The parasites living in them cause them to bloat. Bad water is what is available. These are white, brown, and yellow children. The African commercials of the 2000’s is now reality for the Americas. People beg in the streets for water. Soldiers patrol for looters in areas once considered a bastion of wealth.
Hollywood has collapsed. There is no more entertainment in these lands. There is only the disdain for the former wealthy’s complacency.
The image cuts off.
“I cannot watch anymore.”
The man looks away from the center of the room. His eyes fix on the planet.
“I will rise again tomorrow. Hopefully not the rise of failed economic policy.”
To your knowledge success!
***
About Christopher: Christopher Knight Lopez is a Professional Entrepreneur. Christopher has opened over 7 businesses in his 14-year career. Christopher’s purpose is to take advantage of various market-driven opportunities. Christopher is a certified Master Project Manager (MPM), Master Financial Planner (MFP) and Accredited Financial Analyst (AFA). Christopher previously held his Series 65 securities license examination. Christopher also has his General Lines — Life, Accident, Health & HMO. Christopher has managed a combined 286mm USD in reported Assets Under Management & Assets Under Advisement. Christopher has work experience in 29 countries, raised over 50mm USD for various businesses, and grossed over 8.0mm in his personal career. Christopher worked in the highly technical industries of: biotechnology, finance, securities, manufacturing, real estate, and residential mortgages. Christopher is a United States Air Force Veteran. Christopher has a passion for family, competitive sports, fishing, martial arts and advocacy for entrepreneurs. Christopher provides self-help classes for up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Christopher’s passion to mentor comes from belief that entrepreneurs need guidance. The world is full of conflicting information about entrepreneur identity. See more at www.christopherklopez.com.
Disclaimer: This information is not meant to be a form of investment advice or financial advice. Do not apply this situation to your own personal circumstance. Various risks include: business risk, investment risk, political risk, and other risks. This information is for informational and educational purposes only. Please do not reach out to the author for any investment strategies or philosophies. Please consult your own financial advisor or legal advisor for your own circumstance. Not a recommendation or endorsement of any kind.
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/the-satellite-watcher-of-negative-bond-rates-environmental-havoc-jobless-worshipers-2d7ce7d57ccd | ['Chris Knight'] | 2020-12-06 15:27:24.931000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Money', 'Climate', 'Economics', 'Economy'] |
My Winter Skincare Routine 2021 | For a quick overview, I have oily, acne prone skin. All of these products have really helped me out over the past year. As always, I accompany this routine with drinking lots of water! Enjoy.
Morning
The first thing I do in the mornings is wash my face. This one does the job. It’s not my favorite, but it’s decent.
Next, I apply this serum. I’ve been using this product for the past 6 months and it’s truly changed my skin. I have fewer acne scars and it has smoothed out my overall skin tone. I don’t use it every day, but it is really amazing.
I will lock in all of these products with this moisturizer. I used to apply more hyaluronic acid in the mornings but I found that it dried out my skin so I am sticking to just this moisturizer.
Lastly, I apply my SPF. Very important, even in the winter time. This one is really nice and doesn’t leave a white cast. Cocokind has become one of my favorite brands in this past year.
Evening
If I workout, I use this cleanser right after and lock it with my moisturizer and call it a night. This cleanser is as good as the reviews say. It doesn’t leave my skin feeling dry like a lot of other cleansers. The smell is also fresh and makes me feel super clean after working out.
If I don’t workout, I use this cleanser. This is one of the highest doses of benzoyl peroxide (10%) you can get over the counter. I’ve used this product for around 8 years and it really works. I try to use it only twice a week, as it is very strong and drying.
Once a week, I use this mandelic acid chemical exfoliator right after cleansing my face. It leaves somewhat of a brown residue, but it’s a nice way to exfoliate your face. It also leaves the skin looking extra glowy the next morning.
To lock this all in, I use the Cocokind matcha moisturizer. To be honest, it’s not my favorite moisturizer of all times, but it is very dense and it smells just like matcha! | https://medium.com/@ruchulya/my-winter-skincare-routine-2021-a3a86c9c4f88 | [] | 2021-01-21 22:07:48.852000+00:00 | ['Routine', 'The Ordinary', 'Winter Skincare', 'Skincare', 'Skincare Routine'] |
3 Mistakes Writers Make in Their Writing | As a writer, your job is to impress the reader. Just as a manufacturer designs a product in a such way as to appeal to the buyer, you as a writer should write in a way that appeals to the reader. That means your writing needs to be clear, spotless, and easy to read.
Here are three mistakes to avoid.
Write in a complicated language
If your writing style is too flowery or technical, you need to simplify it a little to attract a broader readership. Writing that is too complicated will turn off the reader, and they won’t read your work.
Think of ways you can get your message across in a simple way. Aim for clear and concise language and eliminate unnecessary words from your text.
To check if your writing falls within those parameters, copy and paste your text in Hemingway editor — it’s free and easy to use.
Skip editing
Before you hit publish or submit your piece to any publication, edit your work thoroughly. If you do it right, it will transform your writing from good to great.
Check for redundant words, phrases, spelling, and grammar mistakes. See if you can cut out unnecessary sections from your paragraphs. You can use Grammarly’s free features to help you.
It’s also best to put your work aside and let it sit for a day or a few hours and get back to it later. This way, you can look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and spot errors you may have missed the first time.
Quote too much
If you decide to quote text, don’t overdo it. First, it takes away originality from you as a writer; second, reading paragraphs full of quotations is tiring for eyes. I’d say do it within a 25% limit.
Also, follow a quoted section with enough text before you quote another section. This way you balance out quotes with text. | https://medium.com/illumination/3-mistakes-writers-make-in-their-writing-8db0cc3039c6 | ['Kristina Segarra'] | 2020-12-27 17:33:55.679000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing Advice', 'Writing'] |
My Bias Statement | My Bias Statement
What is Bias?
If you Google the word “bias”, you’ll be met with the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, which is as follows
Bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief. In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error. Statistical bias results from an unfair sampling of a population, or from an estimation process that does not give accurate results on average.
Basically, a bias is any existing predisposition that skews our thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors. While we often describe it as a negative thing, it’s mostly a human thing. Our backgrounds and experiences shape the way we see the world. These subconscious associations and assumptions come out in how we talk about the things that happen to and around us.
We’re all biased in one way or another. This helps our brain process our world quickly and helps us communicate to people who are like us. The problem comes when we don’t recognize and examine our biases or assume everyone thinks the same way.
Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash
My Bias(es)
I am married to a man who shares my values but not my worldview or background. This means we sometimes have heated discussions because we approach life differently. We usually want the same things, but we disagree on how best to get there.
Fundamental Thoughts About the World
We hear a lot about different stances in politics, faith, etc. but some of our core beliefs are actually responsible. Here are some things I believe about the world that you may not agree with.
People are fundamentally flawed.
I believe that people are capable of amazing things, but naturally respond in a self-centered manner. Everyone will fail at some point. Similarly… Things created or run by people are fundamentally flawed.
Any system or organization built or run by human beings is inherently flawed. Churches, businesses, the government — nothing is going to work perfectly, and we should expect that and account for it. 90% of things in the world have no “right” answer.
There are very few things that I believe to be absolutes in the world. Even things that are absolute (murder is wrong) may have multiple “right” solutions (how do we prevent murder?). The ends don’t justify the means. But means to no ends are just as unjustifiable.
Results matter. I think a lot of energy is wasted on things that don’t produce the actual desired outcomes. But if we throw away our morals to get the results we want, is the end result even valid? It is easier to change people’s behavior than their minds.
Our brains are making unconscious decisions all day long. It is easier to guide subconscious behavior through signals than *to try to reshape deep-seated thought patterns.
*Here’s an example of bias in action: I could just say “than to reshape…” but I wrote “to try to reshape…” because I think it’s incredibly difficult (maybe even impossible) to reshape a lot of core beliefs. I almost took out this sentence in editing, but left it to prove a point. Bias can be subtle, but that doesn’t make it less powerful. It takes time and energy to see when bias is influencing our thoughts or behavior. | https://medium.com/an-us-point-of-view/my-bias-statement-533d8d1a5c69 | ['Wei Styer'] | 2020-11-05 03:52:28.248000+00:00 | ['Perspective', 'Bias', 'Statement', 'Belief', 'Thoughts'] |
Katrina, Karen, and Me: A Eulogy | Karen T. Rhodes, born Sylvia Karen Trigg, was a teacher.
She taught first grade in public school for 30 years.
Before public kindergarten, she was a lot of kids’ first contact with any education — first, sometimes, with the world outside their families.
If you say she had only 30 students per class — and no public-school teacher ever has only 30 students per class — that’s nearly 1,000 kids for whom she laid out the essentials for lifelong learning, work and career, starting an auto repair business, and enjoying a richer, more fulfilling life of imagination and art, breakthrough science and math, and anything that must be dreamed before you make it real and right in front of you.
She taught kids how to read, write, and count.
Jerome was one of her students, gone on to middle school, but he loved to take his friends back to Pass Road Elementary to check out Ms. Rhodes’s own little first-grader. He’d hand me one of his textbooks and he’d nod “go ahead” and I’d start reading middle-school-sized words and sentences and whole paragraphs. They jumped back like they’d seen magic.
She taught her students more than ABCs and 1–2–3s. She taught them to appreciate learning and value it when they saw it.
You probably have a favorite book you flip through or a movie you re-watch every now and then. You may have one or two. One of the reasons you have a favorite story is because you’re a different person from the first time you read it or saw it. The world is different. You’ve had new experiences and you see things you may not have noticed a dozen times before. Willy Wonka delights in torturing children, you realize, and comes close to murdering three of them, and the kid’s parents in Home Alone should be arrested by Child Protective Services once they return to the states.
Years later, you have a different understanding of what made you sad or terrified or dizzy with dumb laughter.
Some of you have heard the following story before. When I cast about for what I might prepare for today — what you might enjoy, what she might want if she were here — I recall how much Mom, too, loved hearing me read. | https://medium.com/@AndrewBryanSmith/katrina-karen-and-me-a-eulogy-a229f88eebf | ['Andy Smith'] | 2019-01-02 21:37:05.052000+00:00 | ['Mothers', 'Comedy', 'Funny', 'Moms', 'Humor'] |
Towards an improved UX for mathematical modelling: symphonies locked away from the world, painting fences & where is ‘technical concepts’ Hendrix? | [Cover image taken from: https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-orange-and-black-abstract-painting-3418325/ ]
“The ultimate goal here is however not art itself. It is to curate this tiny world of obscure artists with the power to liberate the source code of reality & directly communicate the underlying truth without use of jargon or symbols w/ beauty the vehicle and reality its payload.” — Eric Weinstein (Tweet lifted from: https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1200964277399478272 01/12/2019).
In my previous article I gave an overview of the different elements required for building a simulation model, integrating in with data and presenting the output in and an accessible manner. I referred to this as a “simulation intelligence pipeline”. I outlined areas where good design and communication might play roles at every stage in creating a simulation model and integrating it with data. In this article I focus on the first element: mathematical modelling.
In a 2019 medium article Stephanie Evergreen argues that the next big challenge for designers is data visualisation. She discusses the need for design in data driven enterprises and how those who traditionally work either in data or design would benefit from learning the basics of the other side’s craft. Data visualisation is a rapidly growing field with many people doing a lot of good work (some great examples can be found on Andy Kirk’s website. Therefore, I would argue that this battle may have already been won (or at least substantial progress has been made). I get the impression that many individuals with a background in design (or related disciplines) are flocking to get involved in representing data in various guises (I admit my viewpoint is biased as a data scientist who has attended data visualisation conferences). One area that has received less attention, as far as I can tell, is mathematical modelling. Various mathematical models underpin our understanding of climate change, the dynamics of populations in biology, the behaviour of fluids, economics, social behaviour and numerous other phenomena. Therefore, being able to communicate how these models work is clearly useful.
A common misconception about mathematical modelling is it proceeds purely through solving equations and arranging mathematical expressions. This is one method mathematicians use, however, there are numerous visual tools and other approaches used to gain intuition. For example, in the domain of dynamical systems visual representations such as phase portraits and bifurcation diagrams are used to examine the properties of systems which evolve with time. Complex systems and network science also tend to be relatively visual domains. These visual ways of representing mathematical models of systems are often useful and sometimes aesthetically pleasing. However, they are still mostly tools developed by specialists for specialists. As I noted in my previous article, failure in communicating the details of a mathematical model can lead to issues. These might include failure to understand the assumptions behind a model and its limitations.
In many enterprises the technical details underpinning mathematical models are not communicated to the end users. Why is this? The underlying answer is likely to be a complex mix of educational factors, economic incentives and research culture. However, I would argue that two of the key factors are:
Education. The way that mathematics is presented to students focuses on rules, techniques and formal notation. This (and other factors) encourages many people to stray away from mathematics from an early age due to it being “too abstract” and only understandable to people who put in the time to learn the symbolic language. Research dissemination. Research in technical subjects is predominantly presented in academic journals. The presentation in journals generally includes a large amount of technical jargon and heavy usage of formal notation. There are some brilliant counter examples (presented below), however, journals still seem to be the dominant medium used for research communication.
In both cases we are not fully utilising technologies and known methods for communicating ideas to full effect. The second point above is discussed in more detail in this article on “research debt” in the Distil journal. This more recent article on argues how we can use web based technologies and other methods to improve our level of communication in research, education, journalism and policy making. I would strongly recommend looking at some of the articles in the journal itself as they provide some great counterexamples to my points above.
In this article I have collected together some analogies which make clear where we fail at communicating mathematical content in education and research based settings. I believe they form the basis of some good “intuition pumps” (as philosopher Danial Dennet calls them) which can be used broadly in the context of designing processes to make technical subjects understandable. I summarise these analogies in the table below, however, I will go into more detail in the sections below.
Table 1: Three some analogies for poor exposition and teaching of technical concepts.
Symphonies locked away in sheet music
In Episode 14 of his podcast “The Portal” mathematician Eric Weinstein sits down with the artist London Tsai in order to discuss how poorly we do at visualising the most important concepts in mathematics and theoretical physics. I’d recommend listening to the whole clip, however, I’ve pulled out a few highlights. Eric likens the way mathematics is currently treated in society as if music were kept locked away as sheet music which is rarely performed:
“My belief is that we have the most beautiful symphonies in the world locked inside of our journals and our math libraries, lets say, as text, and you know you can ask well, if you have a symphony of Brahm’s: is it a symphony if it only residues in sheet music and is never performed? That’s a very disturbing question because the instructions for its performance are present and it may be that a tiny number of people can actually read a sheet of sheet music and say oh my god that’s gorgeous because they can hear it in their head but the rest of us actually need the thing to be performed and yet there is no orchestra or analogue of an orchestra that performs works of great mathematical of physical beauty.” [Transcribed from ~7 min 30s of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVYCqK19-ww&t=237s ]
I love this analogy and think it can be more generally applied to mathematical modelling and technical concepts in general (rather than just maths and physics as they primarily discuss in the podcast). It also made me think: if “traditional” mathematicians or scientists play the role of arcane classical composers: who would the musicians who never learnt to read sheet music be? Some of the most acclaimed musicians in history (e.g. Jimi Henrix and Eddie Van Halen) are well known for their lack of ability to read sheet music. Granted, transcribing their music later on provides a great way for musicians to replay their classics. However, this demonstrates that knowledge of the notation was not necessary during the creation process. I cannot say exactly who these new iconoclasts of math communication will be. However, based on the above we might expect that they might not have learnt mathematics through traditional channels such as university education. Maybe we’ll know when these new individuals have arrived as we will see the existing establishment playing the cliche role of 20th century teenagers’ parents reacting with disgust at the next “non-classical” genre of music arriving on the scene.
One element of Eric’s analogy is the idea of a performance. What might this look like in the context of mathematical modelling? One domain where we are arguably seeing mathematical ideas played out is in the machine learning algorithms controlling many real world systems and even influencing people’s behaviour via social media. The huge impact of these algorithms on society has a knock on effect of encouraging more interest in maths and statistics. Machine learning is not “just statistics” (as academics in technical subjects won’t tire of snarkily remarking — see this article for a discussion), however, its widespread use does make the understanding of maths and algorithms relevant than it has perhaps been previously. The rise of ML has coincided with that of browser based visualisation technologies. Consequently, there are numerous great web based visual explanations of machine learning concepts (see: http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/, https://playground.tensorflow.org/ and https://distill.pub/2020/communicating-with-interactive-articles/ for some examples).
It is great that web based visualisation technologies are being used to disseminate technical ideas in this fashion. However, I think it is worth not to just privilege the currently “fashionable” areas of applied mathematics & statistics such as machine learning. Firstly, we arguably have a “research debt” in subjects such as mathematics and physics which extends back at least 100 years or so. Many of the deep ideas in mathematics and theoretical physics still have relatively little exposure. Secondly, as Peter Rowlett discusses in this article, there are many cases where abstract mathematical techniques have completely unexpected applications. Therefore, exposing niche abstract ideas that have little application is likely to have some payoff. I should say here that applicability of abstract mathematical ideas should not be our sole criteria for exposing them. Works in mathematics are cultural artefacts just like pieces of music and art. Therefore, there is room for taste (i.e. different people may prefer different genres) and appreciation of the content itself. The latter becomes easier given an effective way to “perform” pieces of mathematics.
Later on in the podcast, London goes on to say how he does not think of his art as mathematical art as he does not want his work to simply be considered part of mathematics outreach:
“That’s partially why I don’t think of my art as mathematical art because I don’t want it to be associated with this kind of like “oh bring math to the people” that kind of thing. It has to be somehow something… I mean look, the wonder of math we experience studying it, that is not… I don’t feel that when I go and look at these kinda displays of mathematical art.”
[Transcribed from ~57:22 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVYCqK19-ww&t=237s]
I agree with London’s perspective on this: seeing mathematics as something obscure which needs its own artists and outreach specialists can help people understand but it may not necessarily lead to people actually being ultimately more involved. Going back to the sheet music based analogy above: there is a huge difference between creating accessible educational tools for people to appreciate sheet music and actually performing the music.
This point leads Eric and London on to discuss how well known “mathematical artists’’, such as, M.C Escher may have some great work, but that this work only ends up illustrating a small subset of the ideas from the numerous of mathematical disciplines (e.g. tessellations and tilings on the plane). Broader communication of all of the different areas (especially those which get less exposure) is to be encouraged. As an aside, Quanta Magazine’s maps of mathematics is a nice well designed illustration of several of the different concepts in mathematics and how they fit together. Another recent article tells the story of some of the unsung female heroes in applied mathematics. Championing both less represented groups in mathematics and less well published disciplines gives us the combined bonus of encouraging more different people to get involved in more completely different activities.
London’s quote above demonstrates how existing mathematical art does not necessarily allow people to experience the same emotions as someone actually practising it. We cannot truly know what is going on inside someone’s head, however, effective communication techniques can get us much further than we currently are. The idea of connecting emotion to technical subjects is something discussed in the context of data art. For example, Kirell Benzi defines data art as:
“Data Art or data-driven art is an artistic practice that relies on the usage of a dataset to convey emotions to the audience.”
The idea of having an emotional connection to mathematics (or data) is so foreign to people that it may strike many as either an oxymoron or a pathology. Even as someone familiar with mathematics, I’m not quite sure what it means to express mathematics emotionally. This may be because I’m not used to talking about it in these terms. Perhaps those wishing to communicate the workings of mathematical modelling techniques must keep an eye on the techniques developing in disciplines such as data art (at least until technologies like Neuralink allow us to realy see what is going on inside someone’s head).
Work by artists such as London Tsai and journals such as Distil do a great job at exposing some of the most technical ideas in a fresh manner. There is certainly a cultural shift required in academic research to make these methods of exposition more standard. Arguably, this is work for the practitioners in technical disciplines. In the next sections below I focus on how changes in how we educate people about technical subjects might make things easier for those on the receiving end of research dissemination.
Painting the fence
Aside from the poor communication of technical research, another underlying cause of people’s lack of engagement with mathematical models (and keeping them as the reserve for the specialist) has its root cause in education. Suggesting how to revamp the education system is not the purpose of this article (and certainly not something I am qualified or informed enough about to discuss). However, the two analogies I introduce here provide a framing of the issues which could be useful for designers aiming at creating more accessible interfaces for mathematical models.
In his book “Love and Math” Edward Frenkel imagines how people would react to art if it were taught in the same way as mathematics:
“What if at school you had to take an “art class” in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it. You would probably say something like this: “Learning art at school was a waste of my time. If I even need to have my fence painted, I’ll just hire people to do this for me.” Of course, this sounds ridiculous, but this is how math is taught, and so in the eyes of most of us it becomes the equivalent of watching paint dry. While the paintings of the great masters are readily available, the math of the great masters is locked away”.
-Quoted from preface of Frenkel, Edward. Love and math: The heart of hidden reality. Basic Books, 2013.
This analogy has some themes common to the sheet music analogy above. However, it emphasises how the thing taught at school referred to as “maths” is not necessarily what practitioners of maths actually do. That is, there is only a small overlap between what research mathematicians think about all day and what people get taught in school. A cynic might claim that mathematics education is designed to only provide the most basic ability to keep the economy going whilst deliberately excluding any content which might risk children actually becoming inspired (there are of course some brilliant teachers who manage to successfully inspire their pupils, however, I get the impression that they have the odds stacked against them).
I may be exaggerating above, however, there is evidence that pupils’ perception of technical subjects can vary drastically from practitioners. Research presented in this study shows how students of mathematics and physics perceive words completely differently to researchers in those areas. The authors found that researchers generally have a positive perception of mathematics and physics related concepts, whilst students associate maths and physics with words which have a “negative emotional aura”. For example, they show how researchers identify physics with positive words, such as, “adventure” and “creative”. In contrast, for students, the negative perception of mathematics comes from negative association to specific tools such as “derivative”, “test” and “integral”. How can we be expected to communicate technical concepts to people when the words we use have completely different associations?
Given the way that research is usually presented (discussed above), it is no surprise that the majority of teachers do not regularly discuss research level mathematics or the details of what famous historical mathematicians worked on. Whereas, it is comparatively easy for them to exhibit or discuss recent work by artists. Exhibiting works of “great mathematics” to people will become significantly easier given the appropriate communication tools. I believe there is a role for practitioners in interaction design to develop the frameworks which will allow people to have a frictionless experience of mathematics rather than unnecessary frustration with jargon and formality.
Teaching people how to speak
It is not just the lack of inspiration provided in mathematics education which puts people off. The dry and formal way which the subject is traditionally taught also disaudes many from becoming involved. In his foreword to Alexander Bogomolny’s Probability Riddles Nassim Taleb compares learning mathematics to learning a language:
“How do you learn a language? There are two routes; the first is to memorize imperfect verbs, grammatical rules, future vs. past tenses, recite boring context-free sentences, and pass an exam. The second approach consists in going to a bar, struggling a little bit and, out of the need to blend-in and integrate with a fun group of people, then suddenly find yourself able to communicate. In other words, by playing, by being alive as a human being. I personally have never seen anyone learn to speak a language properly by the first route. Also, I have never seen anyone fail to do so by the second one.
It is a not well-known fact that mathematics can also be learned by playing –just watch the private correspondence, discussions and pranks of the members of the august Bourbaki circle. Some of us (and it includes this author) do not perform well on tasks via “cold” approaches, unable to muster the motivation to do boring things. But, somehow we upregulate when stimulated or when there is play (or money) involved. This may disturb many people married to cookie-cutter pedagogical methods that require things to be drab, boring, and bureaucratic for them to be effective –but that’s reality.”
He encourages a playful and pragmatic way for people to learn mathematics which differs from the standard teaching methodology. In my reading of this, being able to do mathematics might be less about ability and knowledge but more about encouraging people to develop the courage to get involved and try and speak the language.
What might playing with mathematics actually look like? Traditionally this might mean solving problem sets with pencil and paper. This can be an effective way to learn maths, however, going back to the sheet music introduced above, this might not be effective for people who struggle with the notational side of things. As an example, it’s possible for me to pick up the bass guitar behind me and have a quick strum along (without the requirement for sheet music), however, there is no analogous instrument to “interact” with mathematics. Software tools such as Mathematica and interactive environments like observable allow us to go further with code and playfully interact with mathematical ideas (though the current versions do tend to require some experience with mathematics or programming to be able to operator effectively). Furthermore, developing mathematical diagramming frameworks such as Penrose promise to make it easier for people to translate between formal notation and intuitive visualisations. As they put it in their paper:
“…the ability to translate abstract concepts into concrete illustrations is often limited to the select few individuals who have both a deep understanding of mathematics and an intimate knowledge of graphical tools.”
These tools and the communities formed around them are all fantastic. However, there is surely scope to go much further than this. We could imagine that combining ideas from interaction design, electronics, and mathematics might allow us to create technologies which will allow groups of individuals to discuss and “play” with mathematics in a social setting. Trained mathematicians can do this at ease in the presence of a chalkboard (which retains its nostalgic allure within academia), however, one might hope that we can go further and use technology to communicate mathematical concepts with no need for notation.
Taleb also makes the point that the natural way to learn mathematics is through more of a recreational approach rather than a classroom setting. The idea of learning through play rather than a formal setting should perhaps encourage people to stop taking mathematics so seriously. Granted, the world of formal institutions and rigour does have its own appeal and serves an important function for filtering out and refining the most important ideas. However, as I’ve tried to argue above, the current approach fails at providing a vehicle for widespread dissemination and frictionless consumption of mathematical content.
Summary
The common theme between the analogies presented above is that there is a huge gap in our ability to communicate technical concepts to a general audience. The difficulty that people have in communicating technical concepts generally means that we choose to not communicate at all. In the context of simulation models this hinders our ability to make all of the consumers of the output aware of both the scope and the limitations of the chosen modelling approach. In some cases this might lead people to blindly trust models which only work given a strict set of assumptions, while in others it may lead people to remain sceptical about well established results. Climate change is a good example of the latter, we have massive confidence about the existence of climate change, however, the complexity of the system hinders us from making a precise prediction about exactly where the system will end up. People tend to conflate scientists’ lack of ability to make an exact prediction with lack of any knowledge of the system at all.
In this article I have tried to portray mathematics as some kind of avant-garde art form which is worthy of more attention. Some may argue that this comes at the expense of emphasizing its place as a crisp, logical and rigorous way of thinking about problems. However, I believe that if we can do the former and make it easier to surface ideas without difficulty in communication, then the latter will naturally follow. | https://medium.com/the-synth/towards-an-improved-ux-for-mathematical-modelling-symphonies-locked-away-from-the-world-painting-620cffb39b70 | ['Matt Garrod'] | 2020-12-03 16:13:03.429000+00:00 | ['Mathematics Education', 'Pedagogy', 'Visual Design', 'Interaction Design', 'Mathematics'] |
A reflection on the presidency of Donald Trump | The full-length video uploaded by ABC News, as of writing, has 4.9 million views and approximately 48,000 likes versus 29,000 dislikes, a clear reflection of the division in public opinion that has surrounded Trump from day one of his candidacy. Ultimately, neither those who hate him nor those who worship him are entirely right; though they tend to have at least some basis for their feelings about this president. Ultimately, receiving the second highest number of votes in history – aided by both population growth and, more notably, the highest rate of voter turnout since 1900 – wasn’t enough to grant him a second term. As for his average approval rating, it has been typical of recent presidents, though its consistency has been notable.
His presidency has been unprecedented in several ways, though many of his policies were fairly standard of conservative politicians. For instance, he pursued tax cuts, deregulation and restrictions on illegal & humanitarian immigration. In other aspects, he’s broken with mainstream conservative and Republican tradition, for better or worse. He has pursued protectionist policies and has reformed criminal justice through the First Step Act, something which earned him credit in mastheads that tend not to lend it to him, such as in this largely unfavourable editorial from the Washington Post.
President Trump’s most widely-recognised successes relate to economic policy. RealClearPolitics has generally tracked his economic job approval as being generally in excess of fifty percent, with a comfortable margin of approval versus disapproval. A major component of Trumponomics has been his deregulatory agenda. Trump ordered two regulations to be cut for every one implemented, a goal that has been exceeded and has reversed the persistent trend of the federal register to grow dramatically and incessantly in size. According to the Council of Economic Advisors in July 2020, “this pro-growth approach to Federal regulation will raise real incomes by upwards of $3,100 per household per year. In fact, 20 of these actions alone are expected to save American consumers and businesses over $220 billion per year. Moreover, the CEA estimates that, by 2026, Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles will reduce the quality-adjusted price of a new vehicle by $2,200.”
Trump’s foreign policy differs from that of prior presidents, including Republicans. He has simultaneously adopted a largely non-interventionist approach (with the United States becoming involved in no new campaigns nor wars during his presidency), with a commitment to core American allies and a strong stance against the influence of the Chinese Communist Party that has grown considerably over the last decade. Israel has been a major benefactor of his administration, with Trump recognising Jerusalem as its capital and moving the United States’ embassy there, something Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama promised to do but failed to deliver on. Hong Kong, a city whose freedoms (derived from the days of British rule and the ensuing Sino-British Joint Declaration) have been progressively eroded by the CCP, has likewise been a place where Trump has gained considerable support. Many Hong Kongers who are anxious about their fading liberties wished for him to be the victor in 2020.
Putting aside his policies, where his protectionist tendencies have been a considerable drawback, Trump’s greatest failing comes from a quality that helped propel him to the White House – his stubbornness. Following his election defeat, he made or backed erroneous and outlandish claims about widespread fraud. Such claims tended to be utterly wrong and were in many cases immediately rejected by the courts. Whilst certain specific claims about insufficient oversight or improper procedure turned out to hold weight, such as in Pennsylvania, these relatively minor victories paled in comparison to the sheer number of lawsuits filled. Where recounts took place, the change in totals was generally minimal and within what may be reasonably expected. What Trump should’ve done, had he felt that there were irregularities, would be to take those issues to court whilst simultaneously underscoring the fundamental goodness of American democratic institutions, which have worked without fail since their inception. These false claims fuelled the sentiment behind the riot at the Capitol.
Ultimately, Trump is a president who will be remembered in his own party with mixed sentiments, with his primary failing (one that is difficult to understate) being his reckless conduct in the final months of his presidency. Other than that, his pre-election policies have been mostly defensible. Trump has indicated he continues to hold political ambitions, and rumour has it that he has even considered founding his own party. As such, the saga may yet continue.
This article was unlisted in January 2021 and revised following Biden’s inauguration. | https://medium.com/@thorpewilliam/a-reflection-on-the-presidency-of-donald-trump-67c326f2ddbd | ['William Thorpe'] | 2021-02-14 11:23:05.600000+00:00 | ['Trump Administration', 'GOP', 'Trumpism', 'Trump', 'Republican Party'] |
Building A Better Community, Together | We have published more than 50 exceptional stories on the World Traveler’s Blog since the 1st. December 2020 and not a single one has been deleted or removed from the blog ever since.
The stories accepted and uploaded are here to stay and earn money every day! Every story earned its spot!
Cody and I are incredibly proud of our travel community and acknowledge the commitment and energy that went into creating those astonishing stories.
Cody James Howell PhD (Raiden) and Marcus | https://medium.com/@marcusfranke/building-a-better-community-together-7c590fbd97b0 | ['Marcus Franke'] | 2020-12-27 17:22:37.179000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Notes', 'Publication', 'Travel', 'Community'] |
Return to Miller Park: Lineup & Game Notes for April 12, 2019 | I will never get tired of this view!
Game time against Quad Cities is 7:05pm tonight. The pregame show starts at 6:50pm on AM1280, WNAM and on the TuneIn Radio App.
Starting Pitchers:
QC: Cody Deason
WIS: Drew Rasmussen
Game Notes:
ABOUT LAST NIGHT: Wisconsin’s final game of a series at Dozer Park against the Peoria Chiefs was rained out. The teams will make up the game during one of the two series Peoria will visit Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium in the first half.
LAST ACTION FOR THE RATTLERS: The Peoria Chiefs defeated the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers 4–2 at Dozer Park on Wednesday afternoon. The Chiefs scored two runs in the first inning and two more runs in the third inning to take a 4–0 lead. Wisconsin scored single runs in the eighth and ninth innings to get close. The Rattlers got the tying runs on base and the lead run at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, but wound up on the short end of the score for the second game in a row.
ON THE BOARD: Yeison Coca knocked in the Rattlers first run of the game on Wednesday with a two-out single in the eighth. Coca is on a three-game hitting streak and is 7-for-10 during the streak.
GET ON. GET OVER. GET IN: Je’Von Ward reached base three times on Wednesday with two singles and a walk. Ward reached base seven times (three walks and four singles) and scored three runs in the series with the Chiefs.
WELCOME BACK: The Timber Rattlers are playing their ninth game at Miller Park tonight. This is their seventh game at Miller Park as an affiliate of the Brewers.
Here are the dates and results of the past eight Miller Park Games for the Timber Rattlers:
8/14/03: Beloit 4, Wisconsin 2 (ATTN: 14,447)
8/12/04: Beloit 5, Wisconsin 0 (ATTN: 5,127)
4/24/09: Wisconsin 5, Peoria 3 (ATTN: 17,880)
5/7/10: Cedar Rapids 6, Wisconsin 1 (ATTN: 12,667)
6/29/11: Wisconsin 5, Peoria 1 (ATTN: 11,335)
4/27/12: Wisconsin 3, Dayton 0 (ATTN: 6,616)
5/24/14: Beloit 4, Wisconsin 2 (ATTN: 5,301)
6/19/15: Wisconsin 5, Beloit 1 (ATTN: 4,507) | https://rattlerradio.mlblogs.com/return-to-miller-park-lineup-game-notes-for-april-12-2019-542441f648cd | ['Christopher J Mehring'] | 2019-04-12 20:48:18.230000+00:00 | ['Game Notes', 'Baseball', 'Minor League Baseball', 'Brewers Prospects', '2019 Timber Rattlers'] |
Statistical Foundations of Election Poll | Statistical Foundations of Election Poll
Photo by Wojciech Portnicki on Unsplash
In this blog, I try to answer the question,
“How can a poll from a sample of, say, 1,000 likely votes, estimate the support of a candidate in a nationwide race?”
by discussing the following topics,
The crucial goal/assumption of a poll of being able to select a random sample of voters, From the concepts of a binomial experiment to the final equations that describe the sampling distribution of the sample proportion, and finally, The adequate interpretations of a poll’s results with confidence level and its associated margin of error.
I will go through and explain all the concepts above and derive all relevant equations if appropriate.
A crucial assumption of a binomial experiment (or Bernoulli experiment) is that the chance of something happening is a constant in an experiment. For example, the flip of a fair coin has a 50% chance of landing on the head as well as on the tail. And this chance does not change between flips. If we perform a test consisting of 1,000 trials (flips), we could expect that close to half of the coins would land on the head. In a test, we may see 482 times a coin on the head, and the other 518 times on the tail (with a head proportion of 0.482). If we repeat the test again the result may be a little different, say, with 505 times on the head and the other 495 times on the tail (with a head proportion of 0.505). Let’s ask a question:
“How can we figure out the true chance of a coin landing on the head in a single flip (=0.5) by the results of the above flipping tests?”
The answer is, as long as the chance of landing on the head in each flip is a constant (= 50%), the more the number of tests (each test consisting of 1,000 flips) we perform, although the head proportion of each test will be different, we could expect that the mean of the head proportions of all tests will approach the true chance of 0.5 when the number of tests increases to a very large number (this is an example of the so-called central limit theorem). On the other hand, we could also expect that, if we only perform one test but increase the number of flips to a very, very large number, the head proportion could also approach the true chance of 0.5 (this is the so-called law of large numbers).
Ok, but how is the above relevant to a poll? Let us look at an analogy between the test of flipping a fair coin and that of withdrawing a ball from a bag that contains a large number of white balls (= coins landing on the head) and red balls (= coins landing on the tail) whose numbers are equal. The task now is to estimate the true white-ball proportion (= 0.5) by sticking your hand inside this imaginary bag that cannot be seen through and picking one ball out at a time (= flip a coin) to reveal its color until certain sample size (= the total number of flips in a test) is reached. Ideally, we are supposed to put the ball back to the bag after a pick so that the ball proportion is not changed by a pick. However, if the number of balls that are taken out from the bag (= sample size) is much smaller than the total number of balls in the bag this requirement can be relaxed.
In order for the statistics of the flipping of a fair coin to be fully applicable in the case of withdrawing a ball from the bag, a crucial assumption is that the balls in the bag need to be completely and randomly mixed so that a random ball can be chosen each time from the bag. In another word, no matter which portion of the bag you stick your hand to, the balls surrounding your hand available for choice are always 50% white and 50% red, which corresponds to the true white-ball proportion of 50% in the bag.
Here, estimating the true white-ball proportion in a bag by withdrawing one ball at a time is just like estimating the true support proportion of a candidate in the entire body of eligible voters by polling one voter at a time.
We assume that a voter has made up her/his mind to either support or not support a candidate, so the outcome is binary. If we were to be able to select a random sample of voters in a poll, the chance of any voter in this poll who supports a candidate would be a constant, which is equal to the true support proportion of this candidate in the entire body of eligible voters.
It can be seen that, if the balls in the bag are completely and randomly mixed, the random sample assumption is always valid regardless of the total number of balls in the bag, may it be 10,000, or 100,000, or one million, etc. This is the reason why, if a random sample of voters can be selected, a poll conducted on 1,000 voters will be able to estimate a candidate’s support in a nationwide election with, say, 240 million eligible voters.
With the random sample assumption in mind, let’s examine the statistical foundations of a poll by first looking into a binomial experiment (Bernoulli experiment) in detail.
As discussed earlier, a binomial experiment has only two possible outcomes, e.g., a coin can only land on the head or on the tail after a flip, or a voter in an election can either support or not support a certain candidate. Another property of a binomial experiment is that the outcome of one trial does not affect the outcome of another trial, i.e., the chance of a specific outcome of a trial is a constant. For example, for a fair coin, the chance of landing on the head (a success) as well as on the tail (a failure) after a flip is 50% (p = 0.5), and this chance is the same for each flip. In the case of a poll, there is a true support proportion (= p) of a candidate in the entire population of eligible voters that we hope to estimate by a poll. Let’s assume p = 0.6 just for the sake of discussions. As was mentioned earlier, if we were to be able to randomly sample a voter from the entire population of voters, then the chance of this voter supporting a candidate (a success) is 60% (since p = 0.6). We also assume that the number of voters we select for a poll is much smaller than the total number of eligible voters so that this support proportion of 60% does not change when we poll another voter.
Let’s define a random variable Y that represents the outcome of a single binomial trial. If a coin lands on the head (chance = p) after a flip then Y = 1 and if it lands on the tail (chance = 1-p) then Y = 0. Or if a voter supports a candidate (chance = p) then Y = 1 and if a voter does not support the candidate (chance = 1-p) then Y = 0. From the earlier discussions, we know that if the trial is repeated many, many times the long-term proportion of success would approach the true chance of p. The mean of Y (= μ, the long-term expected value of Y), can be calculated using the chance of happening of each outcome as,
where yi is the possible outcomes of Y (y1 = 1 and y2= 0) and p1 the chance of y1 happening (= p) and p2 the chances of y2 happening (= 1-p). Here again, μ is the long-term expected value of Y after many trials.
The spread, or variance, of Y (Y = 1 or Y = 0) is defined as the expected value of the squared deviation of Y from its mean μ (= p), which can be expressed as,
where yi is the possible outcomes of Y (y1 = 1 and y2= 0) and p1 the chance of y1 happening (= p) and p2 the chances of y2 happening (= 1-p). The variance of Y expressed by Equation 2 is, again, the long-term expected value of the spread of Y after many trials.
As can be seen in Figure 1 below, which shows the variance of Y as a function of p, the variance is the largest when p = 0.5 and decreases symmetrically when p is away from this value.
Figure 1: Variance of Y as a function of p
So far we have discussed the repetition of one Bernoulli trial many times. Let’s now expand it to the repetition of, say, n Bernoulli trials as a group, many times. We are interested in the number of successes (defined here as a new random variable X) after a total of n Bernoulli trial. X could be the number of heads after a coin-flipping test that consists of n flips or the number of voters who support a candidate after polling a voter sample of size n. For example, if a coin is flipped 2 times (n = 2), then the number of heads (= X) could be either 0 (= no head), 1 (= one head and one tail), or 2 (= two heads) after a single test of 2 flips.
How about the mean of X? That is, what is the long-term expected value of X after a great number of tests or samples (each test/sample comprising n Bernoulli trials)? Since each Bernoulli trial is independent of each other, the expected value of X is just the sum of all the expected value of Y in n Bernoulli trials,
where E[Y] = μ = p from Equation 1.
Similarly, since the variance of a sum of independent random variables is the sum of the individual variances, the variance of X (= Var(X)) can simply be expressed as,
where Var[Y] = p(1-p) from Equation 2. Let’s check the validity of Equation 4 using a simple example of flipping 2 fair coins A and B as a group (n = 2) many times. When A = Head and B = Head then X = 2, and the long-term probability of this happening is 0.25 (=0.5 * 0.5). There are two cases when X could be 1, where A = Head and B = Tail, or A = Tail and B = Head, and the long-term probability of this happening is 0.5 (= 0.5 * 0.5 + 0.5 * 0.5). Lastly, X = 0 when A and B are both on the tail with a long-term probability of 0.25 (=0.5 * 0.5). As a result, Var[Y] can be calculated from the first principle as,
where Xi = 2, 1, and 0 and pi = 0.25, 0.5, and 0.25 when i =1, 2, and 3, respectively, n = 2, and p = 0.5. It can be seen that the Var(X) of 0.5 calculated using Equation 5 is the same as the one calculated using Equation 4, which is also 0.5 (= 2 * 0.5 *(1–0.5)).
The measure of X’s actual spread from its mean (= np), i.e., its standard deviation (= SD), which has the same unit as the number of trials, can be expressed as,
where Var(X) = np(1-p) from Equation 4.
Now we know the mean and standard deviation of X after a great number of tests/samples, each with a test/sample size of n. But what does this discrete binomial distribution of X actually look like? It is safe to assume that, when n is not small or p is not close to 0 or 1, a normal distribution, with the same mean and standard deviation derived in Equations 3 and 6, respectively, describes quite precisely the binomial distribution of X. For example, if p = 0.6, we can safely describe the discrete binomial distribution of X as a normal distribution when the n value is equal to or larger than 13. The n is derived by the criteria equations np ≧ 5 and n(1-p) ≧ 5. If p = 0.5 then the threshold value of n = 10. Since the number of likely voters in a poll is much larger than the above n values it is safe to use a continuous normal distribution to approximate the discrete binomial distribution of X in our discussions.
Photo by Jaime Dantas on Unsplash
So far we have treated the distribution as a function of X, the total number of successes after n trials. What if our interest is to know the mean and standard deviation of the proportion of successes rather than the total number of successes? For example, we are interested in the proportion of voters who support a candidate rather than the total number of these voters in a poll. Quite simply, we just need to rescale the x-axis of the distribution by dividing X by the sample size of n to get a new proportion axis Xp (= X/n). Similarly, the mean in Equation 3 and the standard deviation in Equation 6, since they have the same unit as X, can be rescaled as,
where μp is the mean and σp the standard deviation of the proportion of likely voters that support a candidate in a poll. We can call this new distribution the sampling distribution of the sample proportion.
Let’s look at an example of this new distribution. First, let’s assume that we somehow know that 60% of the voters among the entire population of registered voters support a certain candidate (p = 0.6). Second, we assume that we were to be able to randomly select a sample with a sample size of 1,000 voters in a poll from which a value of the random variable Xp can be calculated. We then (using the same polling method) repeat the poll for, say, 10,000 times, to obtain many different values of Xp so that a trace of relative frequency, i.e., probability (= frequency of occurrence at Xp divided by 10,000), as a function of Xp can be plotted. From Equation 7 we know that the mean (= μp) of this plot is 0.6 and the standard deviation (= σp) is 0.015 (= sqrt(0.6 * 0.4 / 1000)) and the distribution can be approximated using a normal distribution. The plot would look somewhat like the one shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Sampling distribution of the sample proportion
For a normal distribution, we know that there is a 95% chance (we call this probability the confidence level, that is, we are 95% confident) that a sample (= Xp) will be within ± 2 standard deviations (= σp) from the center at p, that is,
If we multiply Equation 8 by -1 and rearrange the order of the terms, Equation 8 can be expressed as,
Equation 9 implies that we can interpret the statement “There is a 95% chance that a sample (= Xp) will be within ± 2 σp from the true population proportion p.” as “There is a 95% chance that the true population proportion p will be within ± 2σp (= margin of error) from the Xp of a single sample.” The new interpretation is great since as long as we have some way of estimating the value of σp without first knowing p, we will be able to state, with a certain degree of confidence, the location of true p relative to the Xp from a single random sample we collect.
Now, how do we estimate σp using Equation 7 without first knowing the true proportion value of p? In fact, we can safely replace the true proportion of p in Equation 7 with the proportion from a single sample we collect (= Xp) to approximate σp as,
where SExp is called the Standard Error (SE) we calculate using the proportion Xp from a single sample. When n is large enough, the SExp calculated using the above Equation approximates the actual standard deviation σp calculated using Equation 7 quite nicely.
Let’s look at an example (using the trace in Figure 2) to compare the SE calculated using Equation 10 and the σp calculated using Equation 7 when two quite extreme values of Xp at ± 3 standard deviations (= σp) are used. We know that for a normal distribution there is a 99.7% chance that a sample (= Xp) will be within ± 3 standard deviations (= σp) from the center at p (= 0.6). That is, there is only a 0.3% chance that Xp is either smaller than 0.555 (= 0.6 – 3 * 0.0155) or greater than 0.645 (= 0.6 + 3 * 0.0155). With Xp at the lower limit of 0.555 the SExp calculated using Equation 10 is 0.0157 (= ± 2 SExp error margin of ± 3.14%) and with Xp at the upper limit of 0.645 the SExp is 0.0151 (= ± 2 SExp error margin of ± 3.02%), which are both quite close to the real σp value of 0.0155 (= ± 2 σp error margin of ± 3.10%).
The confidence level of 95% in the statement “There is a 95% chance that the true population p will be within ± 2 SExp from the Xp of a single random sample.” basically states that if we repeat the poll for, say, 100 times, this method produces margin-of-error intervals (= ± 2 SExp) that capture the true population proportion (= p) in 95% of the samples, i.e., in 95 polls. Figure 3 below visualizes this concept of confidence level.
Figure 3: Visualization of the confidence level where the margin of error of a sample that either capture or miss the true population proportion of p = 0.60
In Figure 3, a dot represents the Xp value of a single random sample and its associated bar represents the interval that corresponds to the 95% confidence level margin of error (= ± 2 SExp, where SExp is calculated using Equation 10 with the Xp of the sample). The true population proportion at p (= 0.6) is what we want to estimate.
There are two colors of dots and their associated error bars, i.e., green and red. As can be seen in Figure 3, most of the error bars, which are all in green, do capture p, while there are only two bars in red that miss p.
95% confidence level says that we are confident that if we repeat the sampling for, say, 100 times, in about 95 samples the error bars (the green bars) will capture p, while only in about 5 samples the error bars (the red bars) will miss p.
Whether an error bar capture p or not, we do not have any confidence about the exact location of p with respect to the error bar. For example, if in a random sample of 1,000 likely voters we found that a candidate has a 57% support proportion (Xp = 0.57). Then using Equation 10 we can calculate the SExp as 0.0157. If we choose a confidence level of 95%, then the margin of error (= ± 2SExp) can be calculated to be ± 3.14%. So, we are 95% confident that the true support proportion (= p) of this candidate is between about 53.9% (= 57-3.14 %) and 60.1% (= 57+3.14 %). On the other hand, there is a 5% chance that the candidate’s true support (= p) is either less than 53.9% or greater than 60.1%. In any of the above cases, we really do not have any confidence of the exact location of the true support of this candidate (= p) with respect to this single random sample of Xp (= 57%) or the confidence interval from 53.9% to 60.1%.
In conclusion, the closer the sample of a poll to a random one, the more applicable the statistical interpretations derived from Binomial trials. With only one random sample of, say, 1,000 voters, we could have a certain degree of confidence that the true support proportion of this candidate among the entire body of eligible voters, regardless of how big the body is, is within a margin of error that is calculated using the support proportion from the sample of this single poll alone.
In this blog, the concept of “sample proportion” is discussed. If you are also interested in its counterpart “sample mean” you can found the discussions here.
I learn a lot by writing this blog and I hope it benefits you too. | https://towardsdatascience.com/statistical-foundations-of-election-poll-c1fade2dce2e | ['Tony Peng'] | 2020-12-28 15:55:34.756000+00:00 | ['Binomial Distribution', 'Confidence', 'Poll', 'Statistics', 'Data Science'] |
6 Ways to Speed Up Your Vue.js Application | 1. Update Only What’s Needed
One of the nastiest issues you can run into with VueJS is rendering the same elements or list of elements more times than needed. To understand why or how this can happen we have to understand reactivity in Vue.
This example is from the official Vue.js documentation and it shows which properties are reactive and which are not. There are many reactive elements in Vue: properties assigned to the data object, computed properties, or methods that rely on reactive properties.
But a plain JavaScript code, such as {{ 'value' }} or {{ new Date() }} , is not tracked by Vue as a reactive property.
So what does reactivity have to do with duplicate rendering?
Let’s say you have an array of objects like this in your data object:
values: [{id: 1, t: 'a'}, {id: 2, t: 'b'}]
And you’re rendering it using v-for :
<div v-for="value in values" :key="value.id">{{ value.t }}</div>
When a new element is added to the list Vue will re-render the whole list. Not convinced? Try writing it like this:
<div v-for="value in values" :key="value.id">
{{ value.t }}
{{ new Date() }}
</div>
The JavaScript Date object is not reactive so it doesn’t affect rendering. It will only be called if the element has to be rendered again. What you will see in this example, is that every time a value is added or removed from values a new Date will pop up on all rendered elements.
What should you expect in a more optimized page? You should expect only the new or changed elements to show a new Date , while the others should not be rendered at all.
So, what does key do and why are we passing it? The key property helps Vue understand which element is which. If the order of the array changes, key helps Vue shuffle the elements into place, rather than going through them one-by-one again.
Specifying a key is important, but it’s not enough. In order to make sure you’re getting the best performance, you need to create Child components. That’s right — the solution is pretty simple. You just have to divide your Vue app into small, lightweight components.
<item :itemValue="value" v-for="item in items" :key="item.id"></item>
This item component will only update if the specific item has a reactive change (for example with Vue.set)
The performance gain of using components to render lists is tremendous. If an element is added or removed from the array, Vue won’t render all the components one-by-one again. If the array is sorted, Vue just shuffles the elements by relying on the provided key . | https://medium.com/better-programming/6-ways-to-speed-up-your-vue-js-application-2673a6f1cde4 | ['Aris Pattakos'] | 2020-09-26 09:18:52.915000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Vue', 'Vuejs', 'Programming'] |
Top 4 Recycling Tips for University Students | It’s difficult to pass judgment on recycling efforts and which people do the best job of reducing the amount of waste they generate. It’s nearly impossible to live one’s life without generating some amount of waste, and unfortunately, most of us will never end up having a net positive impact on the environment. The trick is to minimize the negative impact that we do have. Certain phases of our lives place greater pressure on the environment, and our university years, while frugal, are some of the worst in certain respects. Below are 4 tips to help you, as a university student, manage and improve your recycling habits.
Plastic Bottles
All of the running around and minute-to-minute living on campus is tiring. Add to that the importance of staying hydrated and no one is going to blame you for carrying water around with you at all times. But, it’s the container that you carry it in that makes the difference. Instead of buying a new bottle of water every day, or even reusing a disposable plastic bottle multiple days in a row, you would be better served, both in terms of your environmental footprint, as well as financially, investing in a high quality metal, or hard plastic water bottle. Find something that you can take to and from class because disposable bottles are terrible!
Use the Back of Handouts to Take Notes
The amount of paper that your average university student is given and asked to print is startling. Not everyone has a laptop that they can take to class, meaning that many students still have to handwrite notes, and some may even find it more effective. When you are given a series of one-sided, hard copy handouts, use the back to take notes. It will let you keep track of what notes correspond to which handouts, and you decrease the amount of new paper you are using.
Plastic Bags
If you are a university student who brings a packed lunch with them every day, make sure that you are getting the longest life possible out of the plastic bags that you are bringing the food in. That plastic grocery store bag, if you take care of it, should last many, many lunches. When disposing of the bag, find out whether or not your campus has plastic bag recycling bins. Keeping plastic bags out of landfills, and out of the earth’s ecosystems (particularly oceans) is paramount.
Buy Second Hand When you can
This is not something that most frugal university students need to be told twice, but it is worth reiterating. Buying a book second hand not only saves you money, but it decreases the demand for new books and new paper. The more you can get out of the “used” economy during your university career, the smaller your environmental footprint will be by the end of it.
While it is certainly near impossible to completely eliminate waste from your life, there is no reason why, with a conscientious effort, you can’t get it down to the lowest level possible. While many universities have made considerable efforts to make their operations more green, university life is still far from it. Incorporate the above 4 tips into your daily life as a university student, and do your part for the environment and save money. Want to live an even more greener life? Visit our blog to learn about the top 6 foods you can eat for optimal brain function and productivity.
References:
(2010). “Waste Prevention Tips for Students.” University of Michigan. Retrieved from: http://plantops.umich.edu/grounds/recycle/student_waste_prevention.php
(2017). “The Importance of Staying Hydrated.” Harvard Health Publications. Retrieved from: http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-importance-of-staying-hydrated | https://medium.com/the-homework-help-global-blog/4-recycling-tips-for-the-university-student-e50a713e837e | ['Homework Help Global'] | 2017-04-24 18:55:28.083000+00:00 | ['Recycling', 'University', 'Sustainability', 'College', 'Environment'] |
Twitter is Increasing Unemployment | Image by Robin Higgins
By Victor Adams
Twitter might cost you your job, but not for the reason you think. Not a lot of people would disagree that Twitter is a giant time-suck. But is that time worse than just wasted?
Sure, you might lose your job if you post against the grain. That’s nothing Earth shattering. But if you aren’t savvy enough to govern your emotions on social media, you were a dead-man-walking anyway. You might lose your job because you’re spending work-time on the service. But pretty much everyone can hide their use. Besides, if your boss spends his day time-stamping your posts, well, you probably don’t want to be there either.
But that isn’t the biggest risk. Twitter is going to cost you your jobs because it can distort how you interact with others. Specifically, clients and co-workers. Social Media is the land of sarcasm. And its capital city, Twitter, is the Manhattan of repercussion-less snark. Snark is that nasty half-sentence in which you imply both that you’re right, and that the other person is dumb.
It’s a soliloquy, not a dialogue.
For some reason, success on social media appears to lend credibility to people. That’s a leftover from the pre-social media meaning of the word. In the Old English of 1999, to follow someone meant to be some level of a devotee; agreeing in part, if not whole, to their views or beliefs. For someone to have a lot of followers, they had to conduct a dialogue and convince people of something. Not necessarily at the Moses or Jonestown level, but certainly you held a general agreement.
In 2020, if you follow a person’s Twitter account, their writings as it were, you aren’t a disciple of theirs. Generally, that person made a sarcastic comment you found funny. That’s it! And yet, the snarky comments from a person with millions of followers are often viewed as internet Gospel. Or business wisdom. Or worse, pure truth. Moses, but sarcastic Moses. If only the Charlemagne had it so easy. Giving credence to a person with a following is a remnant of the old usage. It probably shouldn’t apply today.
But it does, so to build that audience for credibility, you need not only content but time. Lots and lots of time on the network. You also have to communicate in the language of the network; sarcastic snark. So when you add the language of the network to the time spent on it, you become fluent in a language the real world hates.
At some point, you’re going to be dealing with a client who has a problem. You will, through sheer habit, respond with snark to prove you are right. Why? Because proving you are right is a main point of the network, and you’re fluent.
Then you’re going to learn a lesson. Real human beings, the clients paying your wages, they don’t live on Twitter. They don’t do snark. They want their problem fixed. They don’t want to hear why you’re right.
That’s the point where the client forwards your snark to your boss, along with a string of hostility. You’re going to lose your job over that behavior. Your boss isn’t going to risk their family’s future for your half-clever tongue.
You’ll catch another job maybe, but the outcome will be the same. According to Omnicore research, 22% of US adults use Twitter. Less than half use it daily. That means most people don’t speak snark. It makes you unemployable in the real world, which means you’ll just spend more time on the social network reinforcing the behavior.
As the former owner of multiple businesses, would I hire someone with 90,000 followers? Absolutely not.
Maybe things will change. Maybe people will learn to ignore snark. Maybe someone will remove the network’s litigation shield and snark, as a language, disappears. Until then, do yourself a favor and focus on the paying job at hand.
Victor Adams is a retired franchisee, independent business owner, and Siberian husky breed snob. He is the author of the satirical adventure, The Last One Out, available on Amazon. | https://medium.com/@vicadams/twitter-is-increasing-unemployment-662a5c1fef71 | ['Victor Adams'] | 2020-12-15 15:38:14.899000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Social Media', 'Management And Leadership', 'Comedy', 'Human Resource Management'] |
10 Ideas to Host a Virtual Holiday Party That Your Team Will Never Forget | ‘Tis the holiday season!
And after the rather “ eventful” year, it is time to end it with a BANG!
But if you are thinking of giving this year’s celebrations a pass, think again…
Just because your team is working remotely and there are restrictions on social gatherings, doesn’t mean your company’s favorite holiday traditions have to be wiped out of the annual agenda.
Be mindful that now, more than ever, your team needs their morale boosted. So, use this holiday season as an opportunity to express gratitude for their contribution and to celebrate togetherness.
That being said, don’t limit your celebration to a simple Zoom or Skype call, rather make it extravagant and show your employees that come rain or Coronavirus, you will always stand by them and for them.
And that’s where a virtual event platform will come as your savior.
So if you are planning to celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s with your team, consider these 10 ideas to host the most fantastic virtual holiday party of the season:
1. Pick the Digital Location
Instead of worrying about finding and booking a physical venue, choose a good virtual event platform.
Keep in mind that not everyone on your team will be tech-savvy, so pick a platform that provides a seamless experience to users. Something that has an interface as user-friendly as Facebook.
Also consult with your technology provider regarding the attendee bandwidth (the best players in the market usually don’t have limitations on these numbers) and the features that you want to incorporate in your event, for e.g. event feed, session-streaming/agenda page, virtual booths, breakout rooms, chatting and polling.
2. Narrow Down on an Event Theme
Set up a virtual theme for the party and customize each aspect of the event accordingly, to set the holiday mood right!
Speak to your event-tech provider regarding the platform skins that they can offer and give your event a complete holiday makeover.
Similarly add customized green screens to each of the sessions with elements to highlight the holiday you are celebrating for e.g. snowflakes, Christmas-themed colors and candy canes. This will definitely add to that holiday vibe and build excitement in the employees.
3. Build Your Virtual Party Agenda
Just like with any party, you need to really plan each session and activity thoughtfully, so things don’t go haywire, nor do attendees experience virtual fatigue.
Keep each session short and the overall agenda length minimized. You don’t want to have an office party that feels like a boring conference.
Include items like:
i) Introductory session by the host
ii) Quick platform walk-through
iii) Message from the CEO or Team Lead
iv) Concurrent sessions and workshops running on multiple tracks
v) Virtual Awards Night featuring a video with the year’s highlights
vi) Closing remarks with a toast to the holiday season
4. Select the Dress Code
Send out an online poll prior to the event and narrow down on the costume for the party, in line with the event theme. Encourage everyone to dress for the occasion or hold a “who wore the ugliest sweater” competition to add some laughter.
You could even mail your team members some fun props and accessories that they can don at the event, like Santa hats, colored wigs or funky party goggles.
5. Think About Food and Drinks
Switch from planning on-site catering to pre-scheduling food delivery using services like Uber Eats and Grubhub. You could also allot a budget to each individual or give them a dinner gift card so they can order their own meals and eat them with their friends and family.
Similarly, you can send them a bottle of wine or DIY mocktail and cocktail kits, to cover the party’s drinks aspect.
6. Send Out the Invitations
Build excitement with festive invitations that your HR can send out digitally to everyone in your team. In the invite, include a holiday message along with the link to the online community, the event timing, date, agenda and other relevant details such as the dress code and activities your team can expect at the event.
Consider going an extra mile by also sending out a pre-event hamper consisting of props/accessories for the event, branded items (for e.g. a branded mug everyone can use to raise a toast), box of cookies and chocolates, cocoa mix, candy cane and the like. Your team members will absolutely love this special treatment.
7. Host Interactive Virtual Sessions and Workshops
Give your employees something to remember by giving them a chance to learn a new skill in a fun and festive way.
For this you can either add a session on the agenda page or host each workshop in a separate breakout room.
i) Mixology Session
Feature a mixology session in your agenda. Invite an expert to share insider tips for creating signature cocktails and mocktails. Often experts who offer such services also take charge of sending out the mixology kits along with savory nibbles to the attendees, so you have one less aspect to worry about.
ii) Cooking / Baking Session
Similar to the mixology session, you could give your employees the chance to take a live session with top chefs and culinary experts, to learn a new recipe for the holiday season. An experience they can take away to prepare something for their family and friends.
iii) Holiday Crafts Workshop
You can add a session wherein an expert teaches the employees how to make a certain holiday craft. For e.g. creating some decorative items for their Christmas tree, ornament painting or making holiday-themed origami. These will act like good keepsakes for everyone.
Another option is to add a session wherein employees are taught how to knit a scarf for the cold season. The final products can then be sent out to a charity that the company supports, in line with the organization’s values.
iv) Tarot Card Reading
Another way to engage your team is by inviting a tarot card reader, who they can meet 1:1 or in small groups via the networking lounge.
v) Other Sessions
You can host various other interactive sessions, such as a virtual interactive magic show, virtual juggling, a comedy or roasting session.
To add to the fun factor, include a short raffle draw session, wherein the host can use a random online name generator to pick the top three winners of the raffle draw, live.
8. Organize Fun Team-Building Activities
To get the excitement level up, host a range of sessions and activities and take advantage of your virtual platform’s agenda page, breakout rooms, networking lounges, virtual booths and gamification features to do so.
Some of the things you can do include:
i) Virtual Secret Santa
Secret Santa is always the highlight of office holiday party celebrations. Gift-giving is one of the best ways to keep the holiday spirit alive. So just because you can’t meet in-person, don’t cancel it out.
Use a random name generator and give everyone the name of the person they will be the Secret Santa for. Inform them well in advance, so they have enough time to send out their presents.
Then use the virtual event platform’s networking lounge to divide your teams into smaller groups, to give everyone a chance to open their presents live and make an attempt at guessing who their Secret Santa is.
You could also add a twist by hosting a ‘white elephant gift exchange’ instead, wherein employees exchange amusing and impractical gifts, fill the virtual room with laughter.
ii) Holiday Karaoke / Caroling
Add a caroling session in your agenda so that everyone can send in song requests via the event feed or chat and sing along to the tunes streamed. For this, you could even consider hiring talented holiday carolers.
Similarly, you could even divide everyone into groups and host a karaoke session in a dedicated breakout room (giving everyone a chance to feature on the screen).
iii) Holiday Trivia
Use the contests feature to set up a holiday quiz. Ask holiday-related questions such as questions related to a famous Christmas movie or book or how traditions are celebrated across the globe.
Another way is to use the breakout rooms feature, wherein the hand-raise option can function like a virtual buzzer, i.e. the 1 st one to raise their hands and give the correct answer wins.
Alternatively, you can use this functionality to host virtual charades, wherein someone acts out a scene from a popular holiday film and others can guess and send in their replies through hand raising or chat.
iv) Friendly Competitions
You can also include different types of competitions in your party, using the virtual event platform’s gamification feature.
A great way is to set up entry-based competitions, wherein everyone gets a limited time to create their entries and then submit it on the platform.
Post this the winner can be announced, on the basis of the highest votes received. And you can offer them e-gift cards and other prizes.
Some examples include:
Best Dressed for the Holidays — Team members can post a selfie of what they are wearing at the party.
— Team members can post a selfie of what they are wearing at the party. How are you celebrating this season? — Everyone can share funny ways in which they are enjoying this year’s holiday season.
— Everyone can share funny ways in which they are enjoying this year’s holiday season. Scavenger Hunt — Share a list of items that everyone has to find in their house and the 1stone to find and upload a picture of all the items, correctly, wins!
— Share a list of items that everyone has to find in their house and the 1stone to find and upload a picture of all the items, correctly, wins! Virtual Card Making Contest — Give a chance to everyone to revive their inner creative child.
— Give a chance to everyone to revive their inner creative child. What are you grateful for? (but with a twist) — Let everyone share what they are grateful for this year and the most unconventional or hilarious responses, win.
— Let everyone share what they are grateful for this year and the most unconventional or hilarious responses, win. Gingerbread House Making Competition — Mail the ingredients needed to create the gingerbread house to everyone, and then find out who creates the best version.
— Mail the ingredients needed to create the gingerbread house to everyone, and then find out who creates the best version. Sugar Cookies Decorating Contest — Again you mail the ingredients and the team members can compete to see who decorates the best set of sugar cookies.
— Again you mail the ingredients and the team members can compete to see who decorates the best set of sugar cookies. Who’s the next Gordon Ramsay? — Host a virtual cook-off in the team and increase the difficulty level by limiting the color options in which the meal has to be presented (say red and green).
— Host a virtual cook-off in the team and increase the difficulty level by limiting the color options in which the meal has to be presented (say red and green). Christmas Tree Décor Competition — Find out who can create the best artifacts for their Christmas Tree or Who has the best decorated Christmas Tree?
9. Have a Holiday Movies Marathon
Dedicate one of the multiple session tracks simply to streaming an array of holiday movies, from rom-coms like “The Holiday” to classics like “Home Alone” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.
Provide your employees a Netflix Party-like experience, as they can use the virtual event platform’s group chat functionality to react and chat with each other in real-time, right from the comfort of their homes.
This line up can be pre-decided through a poll populated before the event.
10. Make Use of Activity Booths
If you want to showcase all the workshops and activities in an organized fashion, a creative way to do this is by repurposing the virtual exhibitor booths into activity booths.
Each booth can have information and guidelines on the activity, along with a CTA button that will link the user to a page within the platform or to an external site where the particular activity is being hosted.
For internal linking, you can embed the link of the particular session or breakout room.
On the other hand, for external linking you can include the website link to a virtual game show hosted on an external provider, a virtual photo booth or mosaic provider, or even a virtual caricature maker.
To Sum Up…
Remember, a lot of the party experience your employees have depends on thorough planning and also the virtual event platform you choose to host your event on.
Make sure you come up with creative ways to leverage each functionality of the virtual event platform and help your employees make new memories in a completely new way.
This season, don’t let the Coronavirus Grinch steal your holidays by creating the best edition of an office party you have ever hosted.
And if you are looking for a virtual event platform partner, drop us an e-mail on sales@hubilo.com.
Wishing you Happy Holidays! | https://medium.com/hubilo-officil-blog/10-ideas-to-host-a-virtual-holiday-party-that-your-team-will-never-forget-833aac563963 | ['Falguni Jain'] | 2020-12-01 11:05:21.493000+00:00 | ['Virtual Holiday', 'Team Building', 'Christmas', 'Virtual Party', 'Virtual Events'] |
WenKFC for Crypto & Junkfood lovers | Launched by the telegram group @junkfoodtoken on July the 3rd, the smart contract WenKFC is mainly created to brings you the same feeling while you order an amazing zinger tower or a bucket full of crispy tenders at KFC. Based on fun memes, brings you happyness as a main goal, this meme token continue is organical growth each day and follow a new target; Create a usefull utility token that brings you something you need to be more efficient on Binance Smart Chain blockchain.
Here is some tokenomics you need to know about WenKFC ($KFC) token: Each transactions takes 20% tax fees, 14% return to liquidity, 6% goes to liquidity, 2% rewards holders (1% burn and other 1% is about reflections).
At this moment few marketing plans are in progress, subscribed on few listing platform dedicated to altcoins, upvoted for coinsniper, a reddit post has been done and a new one coming soon (under CMS section)
Why you should hold it ? At this moment if you take for 2$ of $KFC tokens, you are considered as a participant of the next lottery. They will reveal soon how they turn this meme token into utility token with a usecase you will probably needed.
Follow them on telegram https://t.me/junkfoodtoken
Website is https://junkfood.me | https://medium.com/@wenkfc/wenkfc-for-crypto-junkfood-lovers-6a659ea6830 | [] | 2021-07-07 23:46:21.266000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Utility Tokens', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Memecoins', 'Crypto'] |
How is business intelligence changing the retail industry? | The customer is always right. That’s the first rule of the retail industry, isn’t it? But how do you know what your customer wants, even before they do, and keep them satisfied? After all, customer demand is constantly evolving with new trends emerging every day. That’s where business intelligence (BI) comes in. BI is a small tool for analyzing your business and getting you the results you need. So, how is business intelligence changing the retail industry? And, what can we expect from the future of smart retail?
What is business intelligence?
In a nutshell, business intelligence is a powerful tool used by companies to understand their customers and market better. Otherwise known as BI, this software takes data and turns it into information. This is then transformed into insights. And it is these insights that lead future business decisions.
To understand the value of BI today, we just need to ask one simple question: which of the following is an example of technology’s impact on the wholesale/retail trade industry?
Amazon
Blockbuster
We’ll give you a hint. One is a company with a market cap of over 1.5 trillion USD, and the other is a nostalgic memory from the past. The difference? One was future-focused, the other looked only at the current market. The results speak for themselves.
Today’s business intelligence tools allow companies to take advantage of data not only to predict current sales but to see future potential, trends and understand customer demand on a deeper level. But how does BI work and why is it so effective?
Fuelled by data: how would the retail industry use business intelligence?
One does not simply BI and win. Reaping its benefits can only be achieved when the application of business intelligence in the retail industry forms an integral part of the company’s overall strategy.
From product to sales, to marketing, and beyond, business intelligence should underline everything. It helps develop that closer customer connection essential to dominating the marketing and predicting future trends. Below are some of the crucial techniques that BI has at its core:
Data analysis visualization. This is all about how you see your data. Data analysis visualization presents data in dashboards and uses customized metrics relevant to your business to make smarter decisions, quicker and based on facts.
Reporting. When the bottom line is finance, making sure your business is in the black is vital. BI tools for reporting gather data from all over your company and process it to allow better reporting and financial decision-making with a cool head and rational mind.
Predictive analytics. How do you know a strategy will work? The truth is you can’t, not 100%. However, with BI, you can make an evidence-based decision to drive business further. BI allows you to make a reasonable guess at the latest trends and customer behaviors that impact the company’s future growth.
But, most of all, all that data tells you one important thing — all about your customer and the market. This is what those statistics really mean.
Data tells meaningful stories: benefits of business intelligence in the retail industry
Your customer is an individual. They are not a statistic. Not a market segment. And not a group. In today’s market, they expect to be treated as such. Brands that can tap into personalization and good customer service can deliver 5.7 times more revenue than competitors.
But how do you know who your customer is and what they desire? This is where business analysis steps up to the plate. It allows companies to absorb mass amounts of data about their business — from sales to market trends, customer behaviors and needs, and more — and using BI transforms it to tell meaningful stories.
It is these stories that help you connect with your company’s bottom line — your customers. After all, isn’t how good you think your product or service is. It is how good your client thinks your product or service is.
Here are the 6 advantages of business intelligence in the retail industry
Improve your decision-making
Data isn’t just numbers. It’s behavior. By engaging data in a meaningful way, businesses can better understand their market and capitalize on it. Utilizing all that big data and transforming it into easy-to-digest actionable steps allows companies to plan and strategize more effectively based on actual market need, not presumed ideals.
Optimize your processes
No business strategy is perfect from the start. What’s important is to identify and eliminate those errors early on. BI solutions empower companies to continuously assess how their business operates and if it does so efficiently. By identifying pain points early on, these can be quickly eliminated, and improvements made.
Know your customer
Business is driven by market demand. If no demand exists, what you have is a hobby, not a business. BI allows you to gather data about your customers, like never before. And this applies whether you are a brick and mortar store or an online platform.
BI tools enable your business to take both structured and instructed data and transform it into insights. These tell not only about your sales process and any issues but who your customer is. This allows you to optimize for them and their needs.
Personalize to perfection
As we said, consumers now expect businesses to interact with them on an individual level. This is crucial to client satisfaction. After all, a satisfied customer is four times more likely to refer a friend and five times more likely to make a repeat purchase. But, can a business do so without jeopardizing profit?
Business Intelligence, of course. This solution helps you to identify areas within your business that can be personalized, and cost-effectively. For example, it may be the purchase process on your app or how your staff interacts with clients.
Keep your staff in-the-know
Henry Ford once said, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.” One of the benefits of business intelligence is helping your staff better understand your clients and their needs.
Empowered with knowledge, your team can better trouble-shoot issues, adapt to customer needs and behaviors, and improve sales. For example, this could be as simple as allowing shoppers to shop independently or providing assistance. Knowing that your shoppers prefer home delivery over pick up or having an option to do so. Or even as complicated as offering recommendations based on previous choices.
Connect the right way
Sales and marketing probably make up a significant chunk of your budget. That’s why it’s vital that they’re effective. No longer are sales and marketing campaigns merely targeted to groups or around special occasions, such as the holidays. Your sales and marketing need to directly connect with an individual customer.
BI empowers your business, first to understand what makes your customer tick, and utilize it in a meaningful way to connect on their level. What platforms do they use? Where do they shop? And could will they know about your business? Saving you time, money, and allowing you to plan effectively.
So then, how is business intelligence changing the face of the retail industry?
This is retail, but not as we know it. Data is driving everything, and only those who can lasso the great bull of ones and zeros can hope to control the market. Smart retail is here to stay. It is data-driven, efficient, and, most of all, customer-focused.
In the digital world, the bottom line of business is the ability to adapt, be future-focused, and personal. And the tool to achieving it is business intelligence. BI is changing how retail is done, making it forward-facing and customer-focused in a way unlike ever before.
The article is originally posted on instinctools.com. | https://medium.com/instinctools/how-is-business-intelligence-changing-the-retail-industry-38f524e52387 | [] | 2020-12-23 13:06:04.609000+00:00 | ['Retail', 'Predictive Analytics', 'Business Intelligence', 'Digital Transformation', 'Big Data'] |
The Cost of a Mentor Friendship | Photo created by Arthur Hidden — freepik.com
Get a mentor…
Get a coach…
Get an advisor…
You may heard those advices before, and you may now have a mentor or a coach… or you may not…
But, in any case, what are the pros and cons of having a friendship with your mentor or your coach?
No matter what you do in life or in biz, you always need to talk to someone who you trust and who can redirect you on your path.
Our first mentors in life were our parents, then our teachers… until we started our companies and we started finding mentors who are at the desired situation that we wanted to be at.
You should get a mentor, who has done what you are planning to achieve. No question asked.
Mentors and coaches are two types:
1- Free: good, but they will not dedicate their times all the time for you. You will give you advice on the go… but nothing concrete unless they really spend time with you (which rarely is the case).
2- Highly paid: because they have achieved what you are dreaming to achieve. They will walk you through their method step by step. They will do everything they can to help you become successful. Because When they do, they also become more successful. They also achieve more on their milestone.
But, Have you ever thought what is the cost of a free friendship with your dream mentor or coach on Linkedin or Facebook?
I did an experiment lately, where I sent friendship requests to my dream mentors (or to the ones I like to learn from them). I sent over a hundred request in few weeks.
I thought why also not to get connected to their students in case my dream mentors don’t accept my request. I can still learn from their students.
The astonishing results came where most of my dream mentors and their students accepted my friendship request.
That was a shocking fact to me…
But, then a pattern started to happen…
My messenger got bombarded with an intimate business discussion about my biz challenges, my goals, my revenue target, my desire to hit 7 or 8 figures… you name them.
I said there is something to learn from that 😳
Started to respond to their request, and all of them ended up asking to setup a calendar meeting for a Zoom call 😁
The same happened on Zoom where everybody tried to sell me their stuffs.
The wisdom of what I’m sharing is that you have to pay for a mentor or a coach to get their attention and to get their full help.
There is no free friendship in biz.
Mentors are selective and can only work with few dedicated clients at a time.
Your relationship has a price that you have to pay: either to get to a better place in biz and in life; OR you are going to pay for in pain and struggle.
Paying money gets you faster results and get you faster out of your own pain or problem.
Free, cooks you slowly in your pain…
Choose wisely 🙏🏻
To Your Exponential Growth!
Georges Hanna | https://medium.com/@smartincome/the-cost-of-a-mentor-friendship-96eaa155fcd6 | ['Georges Hanna'] | 2020-12-10 14:03:06.656000+00:00 | ['Mentor', 'Mentorship', 'Human Experience', 'Irresistible Offer', 'Mentoring'] |
Odd “sunrise ritual” burns 2lbs before dinner tonight | 1 Sunrise ritual = 24 HOURS of fat burning?
213,508 people do it every morning.
They wake up...
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==> Odd Sunrise Ritual Burns 2lbs Before Dinnertime
Enjoy! | https://medium.com/@kristoffer.orilla/odd-sunrise-ritual-burns-2lbs-before-dinner-tonight-d172608bd1f9 | ['Kris Orilla'] | 2020-12-22 13:10:38.889000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Yoga', 'Metabolism', 'Meditation', 'Meticore Reviews 2020'] |
7 Sensational Digital Marketing Tips for Brick and Mortar Businesses | Nearly half of all Google searches are looking for local information and 97 percent of Google users use it to find local businesses.
If you operate a brick and mortar business that deals with local clients, you can’t afford to ignore digital marketing. The days of people seeing your ad in a local paper or stopping in because they saw your sign are gone.
How do you reach those local customers online? Let’s look at 7 marketing tips that will get you in front of the right people.
1. Content Marketing and Blogging
The term content marketing means different things to different people but at its core, it’s about writing content that interests people. You might post it on your blog, on Facebook or another social network, or various other places online but it’s all about providing useful information.
When you’re dealing with local customers, you want to become the go-to source for information in your area. You can write blog posts that answer common questions from your customers, provide information about your industry in your local market, and even write about newsworthy events and activities in your town.
2. Build an Email List
One of the most powerful digital marketing tips is to build an email list of prospects and customers. Add an opt-in box to your website and blog, drive traffic from social networks to your opt-in pages, and promote your email list anywhere it makes sense in your business.
Being able to send an email to your clients whenever you have something to share is a powerful marketing tool. You don’t need to worry about whether the Facebook or Twitter algorithm puts your post in people’s newsfeeds or whether your web pages rank at the top of Google.
With an email list, you control the message and the medium.
3. Local Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing the pages on your website so they rank as high as possible in Google and other search engines. Local SEO is a little different beast than organic SEO though.
If you want your listing to rank near the top when someone searches for a local business, you need to optimize several things.
First, create a Google My Business profile for your business. The profile includes your address, contact information, and other details that Google uses to display in its search results.
Next, create profiles on other directories related to your industry and location. Industry directories, Chambers of Commerce websites, and other such places are ideal.
Third, get your customers to write reviews of your business. Google includes a rating in the local results so the more good reviews you get, the higher your review rating will be. If a lower-ranked result has a much better review rating than a top result, more people will likely click on it even though it’s not the first option.
4. Partner With Other Local Businesses
Partnering with complementary businesses in your area is another great way to reach more people online. For example, if you run a plumbing company, you could partner with an electrician or roofing company to refer customers back and forth.
There’s more to it than mutual referrals though. Linking between each other’s websites will help push both your sites higher in the search results.
5. Offer Special Online-Only Discounts
Getting people into your digital space is another important marketing tip for small business. Even if a customer finds you some other way, getting them into your online marketing funnel will help create more activity, which in turn helps you rank higher.
Create online-only special offers that people need to visit your site or sign up for your email list to get. This will keep them in your digital circle, and the activity will help expand your digital footprint.
This is a good social media marketing tip as well. Make special Twitter or Facebook discounts that only your followers will see.
6. Work With Local Press
While newspaper and TV ads don’t have the reach they used to, local press can still be a great way to get your business’s name out in the local market.
Set up Google Alerts for keywords related to your area and watch for stories that you can add something to or comment on. Write a blog post about them as soon as you see the alert and get it up on your blog.
Hitting while the topic is hot will generate traffic from people looking for more information as well as potentially local press. They might contact you for further comment.
7. Provide Great Customer Service
This goes beyond digital marketing but providing great customer service is also important from that perspective. We already mentioned the value in good reviews — good customer service is the foundation for those.
Word of mouth is important online as well as offline. Someone may ask their network of friends on Facebook for a recommendation and you could be the recommended solution.
And good reviews provide social proof for people searching for a solution in Google. Sometimes even bad reviews can work in your favor if you respond to them quickly and resolve the complaint. Showing that you’re listening to your customers and are willing to work out any problems will show potential clients what they can expect as well.
These Digital Marketing Tips Aren’t Complicated
These digital marketing tips might seem simple but you’d be surprised by how few businesses take action on them. With a bit of work, you’ll often be able to outrank your competition and siphon away some of their clients.
While it’s not complicated, it does take some time to implement. But most small business owners are already pressed for time with their own work, let alone adding another part-time job in marketing.
Elite Start is here to help. We offer a range of digital marketing services to help you grow your business online. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you bring more clients through your door. | https://medium.com/@elitestart/7-sensational-digital-marketing-tips-for-brick-and-mortar-businesses-5bcc23623cf8 | [] | 2021-12-27 22:44:03.221000+00:00 | ['Marketing Strategies', 'Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Tips', 'Digital Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
The Rule of Law Works | So what happens when you mix catastrophism with narcissism? Well, you get folks who slay imaginary dragons. Striking at mental apparitions like drunks in alleyways; but in this case, rather than pissing all over themselves, they’re writing headlines and attempting to spread their particular brand of insanity. This kind of thing is quite common, particularly in political writing.
Some of these wankers, like Dean Obeidallah, manage to expose their catastrophism right away. You know you’re dealing with a complete tool when they talk about illegal coups being attempted through legal courts. Institutions have existed to handle legal cases for centuries by now and challenges to election results are a long-standing, American tradition. Refusing to recognize that and opting instead to frame legal challenges as a coup lets you know the writer in question has issues dealing with reality. They are a dead-mind.
Others are more subtle, but by consequence more vague and less specific. They don’t phrase legal challenges as a coup, which is great, since coups are illegal. But they phrase them instead as attempts to erode the legitimacy of democratic institutions. They have more traction here than they do with the idea of an outright coup, to be clear. But only due to referring to something less concrete than tanks and missiles and such. They refer instead to trust in democratic institutions. This is the go-to for anyone who doesn’t have anything specific to say.
Still, there is something to this idea of an erosion of trust. It seems obvious this is in fact going on and one can place a good amount of the blame on catastrophist writers.
Myself, I haven’t trusted writers or news anchors or anyone on television since my late-teens. I saw some things which were then reported inaccurately by people who weren’t there the very same night; perhaps the topic of another story some day.
But those who claim not only was there a coup but they stopped it from occurring? These people are insane and hoping their readers are too. The courts throwing out the various GOP election challenges is part of the legal process, where one presumes the minimum requirements to move those suits forward weren’t met. It seems highly unlikely this was the result of judges reading The Atlantic rather than examining the merit of the cases.
Catastophists in the media don’t deserve credit for preventing a coup they made up. The legal system does, if anything. Of course, a legal coup is a contradiction in terms.
Interestingly, for me anyway, this is just another example of what epistemologists call the problem of induction. I’ve written about this problem in politics before, so if one would like a (hopefully) amusing summary of the thing they can find it linked below. But in brief, it means we have a tendency to assign improper causes to results we see. We fall prey to this problem in political considerations far more often than in others. In scientific inquiry, this problem is understood and we attempt to mitigate it through rigorous testing and observation. In politics, we never even acknowledge it.
Catastrophists of course take this thing to the next level. It is fairly totalitarian, in the sense the totality of the thing is entirely within them. They imagine the problem, they articulate the problem; then they say articulating the problem is itself how the problem is solved. This is also how academic philosophy works, most the time, as well. Some nerd dreams up a problem (like the problem of induction) just so they can solve it in ten chapters or less.
But not all philosophers claim they are the most trusted name in news. That’s just Marx and Engels. | https://medium.com/common-sense-now/the-rule-of-law-works-193bf214e78c | ['R.B. Lamb'] | 2020-12-20 21:26:55.150000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Media Criticism', 'Politics', 'Humor', 'Presidential Election'] |
One Path to the Stars? | Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
Science has proven that we are all made of ‘star stuff,’ that every cell in our bodies is a living microcosm of the cosmos we believe surrounds us in space.
At Gaia’s heart, there burns a living star, and as our bodies are made from Gaia’s elements, our cells are fashioned in that image. This was understood in ancient times, has been theorized by contemporary researchers and is something we all ‘know’ instinctively, in our bones.
The stones are in the stars, and the stars in the stones. ~ Anon
We are finding our way home, through conscious embodiment of our deeply encoded frequencies, assisted by their counterparts in the cosmos. How we believe this happens, unlocks certain structures and specific paths.
The Egyptian path to the stars is documented in stone. The vast structures at Gizeh, Dendera, and other locations, were constructed as representative architectures for ascension. The coded design of these structures was built to withstand many cycles of time, thus insuring that the energetic signatures of specific paths would endure.
Amazingly enough, as these technologies seem long-forgotten, the vibratory alignments of these monuments and others are echoed at various cardinal points of the globe. This network of alignment anchors a holographic reality on the planet.
Most mantras, and other types of chant, build structures in the ether that translate into the physical world. The Atlanteans/Avalonians could both raise and raze walls of stone with sound. Choirs were trained specifically for these tasks, as architecture, alignment and vibration were known to correspond.
Indigenous flute compositions all over the world create specific structures with their melodies within which one experiences specific bandwidths of awareness. The sound creates a vibratory framework for experiencing reality.
In the Essene tradition, bejeweled vestments and sacred space ‘beyond the veil’ were physical representations of alignments necessary to vibrate at divine frequencies. These symbols were meant to be internalized, rather than projected onto something external to be followed. Has that inner knowing been truly lost, or have we been conditioned to misunderstand?
Every serious spiritual tradition in the world has practices that create specific structures within which one can ascend, ‘home to the stars.’
From a quantum perspective, is there one true path, or are we coming closer to understanding that every path loops back to itself, leading us heartward?
It is through the portal of the heart that we find our stars.
What if we are meant to become the tonality of our home vibrations and live that music while here? What if that was the point all along?
There are as many reasons for incarnating as there are incarnations. Look to the stars. As an infinite sea of unique and brilliant points of light, can they not show us what we are and what is possible?
~ Namaste ~ | https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/one-path-to-the-stars-d0f5e7153a98 | ['Nalini Macnab'] | 2020-09-12 18:37:24.142000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Wisdom', 'Philosophy', 'Truth', 'Stars'] |
Does CBD Have Side Effects? | 2020 | Whether you believe CBD is a miracle drug or modern-day snake oil, or you’re one of the majority of people who is somewhere in the middle, keeping close to the facts and science and watching them evolve, there’s a question that must always come up, does CBD have side effects?
There essentially isn’t a drug in the world, medicinal or otherwise, that doesn’t come with a batch of possible effects, and science and anecdotal evidence suggest CBD is indeed the same.
So, what are the possible side effects of CBD?
CBD Quality
Before getting into the general side effects that may occur as a result of taking CBD, we must first take a second to examine an issue with this less than well-regulated industry.
Not all CBD products are created equal, and there are, unfortunately, a few bad eggs who are more concerned with their profit margins than the quality of the products they offer to customers.
As a result, some CBD products do not contain the CBD content they claim to, and can often contain ingredients that aren’t even mentioned on the label.
As a result, to avoid side effects that it’s impossible to predict, ensure that you are getting your CBD products from a trusted source.
The Possible Side Effects of CBD
There are a few side effects that have come up as a result of studies into use of the cannabidiol, but the main one to be aware of is that CBD can interact with existing medications you may be using.
With reports ranging from the effects of other drugs being lessened or increased as a result of combining them with CBD to thinning of the blood in some rare cases, this is something it’s important to be aware of.
If you are using any other medication and are considering trying CBD, be sure to speak to your doctor first to make sure you avoid any unpleasant and potentially harmful interactions that may occur.
For those using CBD alone, the side effects are less severe, with a few people stating they suffered from diarrhoea as a result of CBD use.
In other cases, fatigue and changes in appetite or weight have been reported, which may be due to interactions between CBD and the endocannabinoid system, which controls various bodily functions including appetite and mood.
Other less frequently reported side effects include dry mouth and light headaches, these are usually (but not exclusively) said to be experienced by those who vape CBD.
It is important to keep in mind that if you start experiencing any side effects that you think may be occurring as a result of CBD usage, you should stop using CBD immediately and speak to your doctor.
It’s possible that these issues are not related, or that a switch in product or CBD content could relieve them, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry, and we do not suggest a trial and error approach.
How Common are CBD Side Effects?
It is impossible to know for sure how common CBD side effects are, simply because many people who use CBD choose not to talk about it publicly, due to the stigma that is still attached.
However, it does seem that side effects are not consistent, in that no side effect seems to be particularly common, and there are certainly numerous people who use CBD with no side effects at all.
Obviously, as the science continues, and discussion of CBD becomes more comfortable for people (which is something that is undoubtedly happening) we will continue to update this article and bring new information wherever it is necessary, or we feel it could be useful.
Until then, we repeat the advice from above, if you are experiencing side effects from CBD, or if you are using any other medication, speak to your doctor before either starting or continuing to use CBD products, and as always, if you have any concerns or questions, shoot us a message and we will be more than happy to discuss it with you.
Have you experienced side effects from CBD? Let us know in the comments below. | https://medium.com/@PlantandHemp/does-cbd-have-side-effects-2020-9ffe22409b3b | ['Plant'] | 2020-05-23 19:50:38.972000+00:00 | ['Medical Marijuana', 'Cannabis', 'Weed', 'Cbd', 'Side Effects'] |
Early Check-In | Early Check-In
2020 — the year of the pandemic, threw a lot of things into chaos and uncertainty. Travel and education, jobs and internships being among many many such areas. Even though we have always invested in fresh graduates; the demands of 2020 meant we change our ways of working (suspending our internship program, among other things).
Now we are back — confident that we can spend more time with our interns, share with them — learn and grow with them. | https://medium.com/gommtdesign/early-check-in-e96d9aeba0a1 | ['Go-Mmt Design'] | 2020-12-18 11:53:05.047000+00:00 | ['Case Study', 'Design', 'Internships'] |
Bird 🐦 | Bird 🐦
A bird with new wings is roaming freely in the sky,
She was feeling free and alive as everything she enjoyed was not a lie,
A predator looked at her wings filled with the colors of rainbow,
How cruel someone in this world can be she didn't know.
Predator showed some beans and some love to her
As she indeed in need of love so she went on fly along with him
A fly that will fill her heart with sorrows but she wasn't aware
Predator started clawing her wings but she was in love and didn't move from there
Once the pleasure of eyes, the beauty of her feathers was fading,
Predator is not like he looks, he is cruel; she was getting,
Once with the heart as pure as gold was feeling like lost in the forest floor,
She mended her wings and started flying upwards with the heart that is sad and poor.
--Harshit | https://medium.com/@default_2312/bird-ebb85eaa1370 | ['Harshit Gupta'] | 2020-12-17 18:12:27.585000+00:00 | ['Care', 'Anxiety', 'Love', 'Birds', 'Isolation'] |
Learn the real differences between khojinINDIA Seller Central and Vendor Central? | You’re going to have to address this question once you have agreed to extend your online presence by selling goods on khojinINDIA: do you want to use Vendor Central or Seller Central?
The response depends on how you put your business in the industry.
You will indeed be selling as either a first-party or a third party partner when you sell on khojinINDIA. And between the two forms of accounts, there’s a world of difference.
You’ll use Vendor Central as either a distributor or a retailer if you want to become a first-party vendor. You sell items in bulk to KhojinINDIA, and in exchange, KhojinINDIA sells those items to clients under its own brand name. “You can tell which items are supplied by Vendor Central partners on khojinINDIA because there is usually a blurb in the description which reads: “KhojinINDIA ships from and sells.
But what are the advantages and disadvantages of Vendor Central seller Central?
For the answer to that question, read on.
khojinINDIA Seller Central and Vendor Central
Pricing of Vendor Central Vs. Seller Central
How are you going to set the minimum prices for your products? If that’s the kind of control you’re looking for, then you want to use Seller Central.
khojinINDIA says that any minimum advertised price (MAP) requests will be honoured. Vendor Central partners are, however, known to complain that the business seldom does so. khojinINDIA, note, promises to equal the price of every other vendor.
So if anyone tells khojinINDIA that there is a cheape.
Seller Support — Vendor Central vs. Seller Central
Looking to work with khojinINDIA in a way that you are sponsored by the business when things go wrong?
As a Vendor Central partner, good luck getting that. The truth is that when you sell through khojinINDIA Retail, you are not likely to receive any help unless your brand is a household name (in which case, you either will not be reading this) or you fork to khojinINDIA over hundreds of thousands of dollars.
However, if you use Seller Central, you should expect good help. khojinINDIA provides a Seller Support service that responds to inventory, payments, and listing issues.
There’s nothing that compares to Seller Help on the Vendor Central side. When it comes to updating your listings on khojinINDIA, you also have more options as a khojinINDIA Seller.
Changes to pictures, names, bullet points, and explanations are included. Benefit: Seller Central Partners. Vendor Central accounts offer limited assistance if there is any. Seller Central partners have access to a service for Seller Assistance.
Costs Differences Between khojinINDIA Seller Central and Vendor Central
Are you expert at the art of negotiation? If not, then as a Vendor Central service, you are probably going to fail.
About why?
Since khojinINDIA will negotiate your goods for the best possible wholesale price so that the business can earn a healthy profit margin.
In addition to that, you can also expect the business to apply for a cash payment of 4–10% to cover what it calls “slotting costs.” Also, don’t be surprised if, as sales increase,
khojinINDIA seeks to negotiate the price down even more at a future point in time. If you plan to use Seller Central, none of that would be of any concern. Instead, you can pay a flat fee that is a percentage of the price for each item sold (figure 8–20 percent).
You’ll pay a little more, of course, if you opt for the FBA. Benefit: Seller Central Partners. The flat fee payable by third party vendors makes it easy to account for the expense of marketing.
Profit Margins Differences
KhojinINDIA will try to boost its profit margins, as we have just seen, by bargaining with Vendor Central partners for as low a price as possible.
But what are the partners’ profit margins?
You can expect wholesale margins if you plan to sell to KhojinINDIA as a Vendor Central partner. If you sell as a Seller Central partner, on the other side, then you’ll gain retail margins.
What will be better? Know,
though, if you want to go with a vendor account for khojinINDIA, khojinINDIA will probably try to negotiate your rates even more over time. The company might look for another supplier if you don’t comply. You are free to set the price you want as a Seller Central retailer on khojinINDIA, though. Of course,
you might find that you are pricing yourself out of the market if it’s not competitive. You will probably have to thread a needle that, while still retaining a competitive advantage, gives you a great profit margin. | https://medium.com/@richasinghk/learn-the-real-differences-between-khojinindia-seller-central-and-vendor-central-f9cdb6d68d67 | ['Richa Singh Chauhan'] | 2020-12-25 08:25:19.133000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce', 'Online', 'B2B', 'Suppliers', 'Khojinindia'] |
Welcome to Europe | Adaptated from Welcome to Holland, c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley
For many parents of children with disabilities, Welcome to Holland was a starting point. It helped us understand and describe our experiences in a context that parents of neurotypical children could easily understand. Using poetic metaphor, Welcome to Holland explains that while expectant parents always hope to visit Italy (raise typically developing children), some of us end up in Holland (raising a child with a disability). Italy, the poem maintains, will always be preferred, but Holland is OK too if you have no choice but to be there.
I appreciate the help in Nate’s early years, but Welcome to Holland no longer resonates. My child is not a consolation prize, and he is not second best. With this in mind, I’ve rewritten the poem so it more accurately describes my perspective as Nate’s mom.
***
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability — to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s been a winding road, but today it feels like this……
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous trip — to somewhere in Europe. You buy an array of guide books that describe all the astounding cultures, languages and sights to see across Europe, and you make delightful plans for whichever region you end up visiting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says you have arrived in one of the exciting, complex, beautiful and unique countries of Europe.
“Europe?!?” you say. “I’ve planned and prepared for all the diverse cultures of Europe, and I’m very excited for wherever I’ve landed. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Europe.”
So you exit the plane and start to fall deeply in love with the small corner of Europe you ended up in. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
Not everything about where you’ve landed in Europe is beautiful and exciting, and sometimes being here is nothing like you expected. It might be slower-paced than you like, or flashier than you prefer. Other times, after you’ve been there for a while, you catch your breath, you look around. . . and you notice how exquisitely picturesque your part of Europe is. The sights and sounds and colors that you can’t find anywhere else in the world.
Some people you know, many people, ended up in other parts of Europe. . . and they all have a variety of experiences to share about where they live. And for the rest of your life you will say “Yes, it would have been fun to go to other parts of Europe too, but it seems there are good things and bad things about any place you live.”
And once in a while you find yourself feeling wistful and curious about what it’s like to live somewhere else.
But…you don’t spend your life mourning where you didn’t go, because you are too busy living a wonderful, busy, messy and magnificent life full of all the very special, the very lovely things that you can’t find anywhere else except in your home, in your town, in your very own part of the vast continent of Europe.
Click here to read the original Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley. | https://nemhouse.com/welcome-to-europe-31566101de3 | ['Rachel Levine Nemhauser'] | 2019-02-11 05:12:55.632000+00:00 | ['Parenthood', 'Disability', 'Acceptance', 'Motherhood', 'Parenting'] |
[Day1] 30 days challenge for writing a simple letter | [Sender]
Hi Jack,
I was sorry to hear about the issue with your APP that you received yesterday. However, I’m afraid that we cannot have a responsibility for this matter. From my understanding, the root cause is that the third-party library has some potential issues, so that APP face the bug. On my side, we’d better figure out the alternative solution as soon as possible, otherwise, that APP will crash again. By the way, I saw you book the meeting at 2 pm but I’ll not be able to attend. Could we postpone the meeting to 4 pm?
Best regards, Jeff.
[Replier]
Hello Jeff,
Thank you for your clarification, for the change of the meeting, I think it’s fine to arrange it at 4 pm. By the way, we were supposed to prepare a brief guideline before this meeting. I think that guideline would be helpful to get to know the details quickly.
Thanks, Jack. | https://medium.com/@gotraveltoworld/day1-30-days-challenge-for-writing-a-simple-letter-74f608553022 | [] | 2020-12-15 17:23:35.615000+00:00 | ['English Learning', 'Writing', 'Letters', '30 Day Challenge', '30dayswritingchallenge'] |
Karma Progress 24.Sep-02.Oct. Working Fiat Banking and Detailed Borrowers' Rating | Hello, dear friends!
What Have Been Delivered?
First of all we’ve updated legal documents according to Russian law between borrower and investor and improved their automatic generation.
When investor would like to accept an offer he or she will get a full preliminary document with all necessary data.
We’ve added a tool for work with guarantors (front-end and back office parts). Now investor before making the decision could see and download the surety agreement offer.
The final test of bank connection SOAP interface have been completed.
It helps to:
Track cash flows between accounts of investor and borrower on the Karma platform in real time automatically. Make an automatic payments from borrower account to investor’s account.
All new investments and investors will be displayed on the progress bar of every bid.
A Detailed Explanation on Borrowers' Rating
Some of our subscribes asked to clarify the meaning of rating values which we announced in previous post. So, let's get started!
ААА — Maximum safety level.
High capacity to fulfill debt obligations completely and on time.
АА — High safety level.
Strong security factors. High capacity to fulfill debt obligations completely and on time. The risk level is moderate, but it can change according to economic environment.
А — The safety level is above average.
The protection factors are not very strong, but quite effective. Medium high capacity to fulfill debt obligations completely and on time. Greater sensitivity to the impact of negative changes in commercial, financial and economic conditions.
ВВВ — The safety level is below average.
The protection factors are below average, but it is sufficient for circumspect investments. Adequate capacity to fulfill debt obligations completely and on time, but at the same time there is a high sensitivity to the impact of negative changes in commercial, financial and economic conditions.
ВВ — Speculative level (Not investment).
It is below the level of safe investment, however, principal liabilities are sufficiently protected. There is practically no strong credit quality decline risk in the short term, but there is high sensitivity to the impact of negative changes in commercial, financial and economic conditions. Delays of interest payments and principal of a loan are possible.
В — High speculative level.
It is below the level of safe investment, there is a risk default. The level of financial protection greatly depends on the stage of economic development. There is a higher sensitivity to negative commercial, financial and economic conditions. At the moment, the principal and interest redemption is likely, but it is possible that negative economic situation will lead to a delay in payments. Frequent increase or decrease in the rating may happen.
ССС — Significant risk level, the rating object is hard pressed.
It is significantly below the investment level. There is a great uncertainty whether the principal and interest redemption will be effected on time, or only favorable combination of circumstances will allow to settle the debt on time. By an unlucky train of events, there is a possible suspension of payments.
СС — Super speculative level.
Very low level of credit quality. At the present time, there is a high probability of object’s noncompliance to the rating of debt obligations, payment refusal is possible.
C — Regular delays in principal or interest repayment.
Very low level of credit quality. Bankruptcy procedure or a similar action has been taken with respect to the rating object, but payments or debt obligations accomplishment are still ongoing. Timely debt obligations accomplishment is very unlikely without attracting additional sources of credit quality.
D — Refusal of payment(default).
Principal or interest payments are overdue at the moment.
Cheers ^_^ | https://medium.com/karmared/karma-progress-24-sep-02-oct-working-fiat-banking-and-detailed-borrowers-rating-812392a898a1 | ['Karma Project'] | 2018-10-04 11:25:34.825000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Loans', 'Development', 'Finance', 'Banking'] |
Thanksgiving’s Roots in Colonialism: A Message for Fellow White People | Content warning for descriptions of violence against Indigenous people.
Just a note: I will be eating turkey and green bean casserole next week, like so many Americans across the country. My words are not intended to place a barrier between myself and others. We have choices to make under a continuing colonial system, and one of those choices is to complicate simple narratives that hide fuller truths. Being thankful for the harvest is possible even in spite of exploitation. We can hold both at the same time. You will also see that some of my reflections have white people as their target audience. I speak from my social location because I think that personal understanding lends itself to greater opportunities for dialogue.
A History of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving, as you probably know, is the romanticized notion that colonialism has not harmed us.
While celebrated regionally since before the Revolutionary War, Thanksgiving was named by Abraham Lincoln as a national holiday in 1863. Advocated for by influential New Englander, Sara Josepha Hale, the naming of the holiday was conceived of specifically as a balm to ease North-South tensions. The Civil War raged on; it would ultimately kill 750,000 Americans, the largest death toll of any (named) war in U.S. history.
Of course, the tradition of Thanksgiving begins with a quaint-sounding story of cross-cultural connection. As History.com expresses: “In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.”
While this act of goodwill would be cause for celebration under the course of a different history, the reality is that the colonists, fleeing religious persecution in England, reenacted horrific and ongoing violence on the Indigenous communities with which they came into contact. Colonial settlers were compelled by the lies of Manifest Destiny, which claimed that God had given them the right to claim the land.
Before colonization began in the Americas in 1492, scholars estimate that there were as many as 100 million Indigenous people living on the land (with about 18 million living in the North America). By the time the English colonists arrived on Indigenous land, 90% of the population had already been slaughtered by illness and targeted violence: across the Americas, “More than 50 million Indigenous people perished by 1600.” So many people were murdered, in fact, that the climate cooled.
Due to illness, slavery, sterilization, war, and genocide enacted as an intentional depopulation strategy by white settlers against Indigenous people, there are now only 6.79 million Indigenous people living in the U.S. today, despite massive population increases in other populations.
The original inhabitants of this land now make up less than 2% of the national population.
The Marks of Colonialism
Indigenous people continue to be targeted, as a matter of policy, across the United States and the Americas (see this report for details). While Thanksgiving was founded in an attempt to stop the hatred that permeated this country at the turn of the twentieth century, it masked a longer legacy of hatred, one inherent to the colonial project.
Colonialism, as described by post-colonial scholars, is:
The imperialist expansion of Europe into the rest of the world during the last four hundred years in which a dominant imperium or center carried on a relationship of control and influence over its margins or colonies. This relationship tended to extend to social, pedagogical, economic, political, and broadly culturally exchanges often with a hierarchical European settler class and local, educated (compractor) elite class forming layers between the European “mother” nation and the various Indigenous peoples who were controlled. Such a system carried within it inherent notions of racial inferiority and exotic otherness.
Put another way, colonialism both structures and permeates our daily lives as citizens of a Western colonial country. Colonialism in the setting of the United States was enacted by white European settlers, which means that white people — regardless of their immigration background, country of origin, or economic status — have inherent privileges under colonialism.
These privileges can often seem like basic human rights and not something to celebrate, but the important thing to remember is that people of color — Black people, Indigenous people, and other non-whites — are not afforded basic human rights as a rule. What’s more, white people and Western European culture are seen as normative, and are often used as the yardsticks by which all other people groups are measured.
In a way, white privilege is the ability to opt out of being measured at all.
Even in spite of hundreds of years of agitation for recognition of civil rights, the colonial system and its enablers find creative ways to continue to suppress and oppress those deemed other. There is a brutalizing fear underneath the surface of our social systems that to demolish colonial power structures would be to lose access to what we need. This is not true.
Colonialism Hurts Everyone: A Message to Fellow White People
While whiteness as a cultural-social category is held up as the norm, the reality is that a system of oppression as powerful as colonialism hurts everyone. It is a totalizing system — one that impacts everyone — not just a set of behaviors performed by one party (oppressors) to harm another party (“the oppressed”).
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the very exercise of enforcing belonging and otherness is inherently self-dehumanizing. It is a dangerous practice with violent results, but it is not as if the malicious forces of white colonialism actually benefit white people when the possibilities for flourishing are expanded and reconsidered. Don’t get me wrong: Colonialism and accompanying white power structures brutally impact non-white bodies in a targeted, explicit way. Yet the structure upholds white power at a cost of rampant objectification for all. We are all pawns in this system, playing a part.
White people often feel that we are being benefited because we see that we are avoiding certain types of harm done to people of color and other marginalized groups. But as journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates once suggested (at a talk I went to at UVa), we’ve got the scale all wrong.
There is nothing ultimately beneficial about retaining basic human rights for ourselves at the cost of true abundance for ALL.
We continue to reinforce behaviors that oppress others just to maintain a fledgling sense of control. But the very act of keeping this system alive makes us preoccupied with trying to compete for resources and clout with others. It distracts us from the reality that abundance is available to all. This is why Coates prefers (at least circa 2016) the term white supremacy over white privilege. Rather than seeing the power dynamics as a spectrum of haves and have nots, there’s an embedded norm that whites as a category will always have more power. The colonial system is not focused on living the good life — it is only focused on power.
What Now?
In my view, individual white people are not being called to confess our individual sins before an anonymous public. Colonialism and white supremacy are collective sins that we are complicit in; we were not the first actors, but that doesn’t exclude us from transforming work. That means that we can lay down our defenses, knowing that our call is to see the system as it really is in order to disrupt it. This work is (or should be) life-giving, not life-taking. We can embody it with a sense of conviction, and even joy. In fact, modeling possibilities for an abundant, joyful future are imperative to maintaining the work.
That’s why we cannot afford to spend our time wallowing. We must avoid trying to one-up every white person with our performative anti-racism. White-on-white takedowns on social media are in and of themselves a product of colonial power structures. They are a way for us to try to take back power instead of entering new narratives, where collective abundance is the ultimate goal. Relatedly, activism that demands compensation, likes, or shares is the pernicious product of Capitalism, colonialism’s economic partner. We are tasked, instead, with continually reimagining the world. That means reimagining our responsibility to one another outside of one-to-one economic relationships. The commodification of “activism” ignores the fact that we are ALL called to be engaged in our communities; it’s what we owe each other.
We are being called to see the system in a fuller scope. We are being called to find what was once comfortable deeply uncomfortable. We are being asked to stand up, not as tools of the oppressive system, but instead in defiant recognition of our shared humanity. White people are not being asked to self-annihilate or hide behind BIPOC to disguise our own identities. We are being asked to be coworkers in a project that rejects the story of colonial history as right, good and true, instead making a way for a new story in which all can thrive. This new story is not simply a toppling of one power structure for another; it is a world in which “empowerment” is rooted in shared dignity, not in Empire.
As post-colonial preacher Sara Travis writes:
Instead of confronting others as oppressed or oppressor, the possibility arises for use to become engaged in a common struggle against the structures of oppression and domination that attempt to hold all of us captive — Decolonizing Preaching, 129
In order to fight oppressive power systems, we must first acknowledge them. But we must never forget that our work does not rest in removing ourselves from the story. Rather, we must decolonize our stories, which means letting go of the need to be the loudest voice or have the final say. | https://medium.com/@leahcwise/thanksgivings-roots-in-colonialism-a-message-for-fellow-white-people-cd07e18e04c5 | ['Leah Wise'] | 2020-11-18 14:29:57.211000+00:00 | ['White Privilege', 'Colonialism', 'Social Justice', 'Thanksgiving', 'White Supremacy'] |
I am Healed When… | When the door is knocked on weekend
I am guessing it right. My heart beats faster
I am healed when she comes towards me with her arms open
I am healed when he raises arms to hug me
All the stress is gone, and I am not part of the world when I have hugged
I am healed when I see her crying cutely when I don't let her use my phone
I am healed when I meet, after a week or more
All my stress, all my worries, and all the dark go in the dark and I am healed finally | https://medium.com/illumination/i-am-healed-when-a83922b1d09b | ['Owais Ali'] | 2020-09-11 18:31:10.228000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Meditation', 'Kids', 'Healing', 'Children'] |
Part 6 — Blood: One Down | It was understood Tyler was quick, but no one knew just how lithe he was. In four silent steps, he was behind the Russian giant—the guy threatening Steph from the other side of the tree.
The distance crippled Mark. He couldn’t get over to Steph in time and definitely not without making a commotion.
All he could do was watch.
And hope.
Tyler hopped on the Russian’s back, covered the giant’s mouth, and slit his throat with nary a gurgle from the guy.
Tyler grabbed Steph, looked at Mark, and motioned for him to follow.
Who was this guy? | https://medium.com/etc-magazine/part-6-blood-one-down-3fe53812aeb4 | ['Keith R. Higgons'] | 2020-11-24 11:03:32.600000+00:00 | ['Very Short Story', 'Crime Fiction', 'Series', 'Crime'] |
【iOS】#18 可不可飲料訂購APP Part3: 刪除訂購、新增群組、Loading | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/%E5%BD%BC%E5%BE%97%E6%BD%98%E7%9A%84-swift-ios-app-%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E6%95%99%E5%AE%A4/ios-18-%E5%8F%AF%E4%B8%8D%E5%8F%AF%E9%A3%B2%E6%96%99%E8%A8%82%E8%B3%BCapp-part3-%E5%88%AA%E9%99%A4%E8%A8%82%E8%B3%BC-%E6%96%B0%E5%A2%9E%E7%BE%A4%E7%B5%84-loading-fe3cbad255b2 | ['Leo Kuo'] | 2020-12-20 16:07:53.043000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'App Development', 'iOS'] |
Space Opera | The music achieves a rousing tempo as the noble Erhard, captain of the spaceship Siegfried, sings his defiance to the Martian overlords. The human chorus joins in to support the hero’s bold aria. No longer will the Martians restrain the galactic Human Reich, the chorus sings, no longer will the Martians threaten the universe.
The elderly composer Richard Strauss feels the sweat on his brow. At 84, he has not conducted an orchestra in some time, and regrets doing so on this occasion. But his daughter-in-law and grandchildren needed help, so he had made one final deal with the devil.
Song and music fill the new Grand Opera House, a few miles from the Reich Space Command Center, safely distant from the nearby radioactive ruins of Moscow. The hall is packed with dignitaries. The State Music Bureau had commissioned the opera to honor the upcoming manned Moon launch. The year 1948 would be remembered as the beginning of Mankind’s journey to the stars. Having conquered the world with its atomic rockets, the Reich was eager to focus its subjects’ imaginations on the conquest of space.
The drums beat and the horns blow as the muscular Erhard drives the Martians off stage. The violinists and cellists put their energy into the music as Erhard embraces the beautiful Princess Eva. The attractive couple sing about the future of both their love and the human race. Strauss thinks the opera’s plot is melodramatic science fiction drivel written to meet Goebbels’ specifications, the racist overtones obvious when you substituted the Jew for the green-painted Martian cast.
Goebbels was an enthusiastic sponsor of the opera, active in selecting the cast and costumes. The Reich’s propaganda minister publicly praised the work as a bold “science mythology” for a ‘glorious new age” and was now on site to watch tonight’s debut. The Reich was broadcasting the performance live on all its networks, giving Strauss’ final artistic endeavor a global audience.
Strauss was uncomfortable working with the Nazis, embarrassed by the regard the monsters had for his music. But his daughter-in-law and grandchildren were Jewish, and the only thing saving them was Hitler’s admiration of his operas, so he accepted the Fuhrer’s favor. Few knew of his sacrifice, however, and Strauss regretted that he was perceived as a Nazi supporter.
He had been reluctant to conduct the orchestra, but relented on the condition that his family be allowed to emigrate to the distant and safe regions of South America. For the esteemed Strauss’ cooperation on such an important project, Goebbels was happy to oblige.
As the opera approaches its conclusion, Strauss can feel the weight of the object he conceals in his jacket, and hopes that his resolve will make a difference. He wonders how he will be remembered, for his music or his actions tonight, or if the Reich will allow him to be remembered at all.
Strauss admires the costumes and scenery, the bright gold and green, the smoke and lighting working with his music to create an intoxicating mood. The opera ends, and the audience rises with thunderous applause. The opera is a success.
Strauss, weak, takes his last bow, tearful at his participation in this propaganda, consoling himself that he did so for his family. He takes the small gun he smuggled into the concert hall out of his jacket pocket and puts it in his mouth as members of the audience gasp.
Tomorrow, rockets will lift the Reich’s ambitions to the stars. As Strauss pulls the trigger, his last thought is the horrific notion that Nazi astronauts will hum his music as they plant a swastika flag on the Moon, and he is thankful that the vacuum of space carries no sound. | https://medium.com/short-sci-fi-stories/space-opera-4e185ab6b4c7 | ['Reed Beebe'] | 2017-07-08 16:25:07.107000+00:00 | ['Heavy Metal', 'Alternative History', 'Music', 'Science Fiction', 'Strauss'] |
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