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Predicting mRNA Degradation using GNNs and RNNs in the Search for a COVID-19 Vaccine | Predicting mRNA Degradation using GNNs and RNNs in the Search for a COVID-19 Vaccine
The current COVID-19 pandemic requires an effective vaccine in order to win the fight against this virus. Researchers from Stanford University are studying mRNA vaccines as these could quickly provide a candidate solution. One challenge to these types of vaccines is their stability: they tend to spontaneously degrade unless kept under intense refrigeration. In order to find a stable mRNA sequence, the people from Stanford University reached out to the Kaggle community in the OpenVaccine: COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Degradation Prediction competition. The competition launched on 11 September and lasted for only 26 days, which is unusually short for Kaggle due to its urgency. There was a prize-pool of $25,000 for the top three competitors. Bram Steenwinckel, Michele Tinti and I were able to achieve the fourth position, missing out on the money by an inch! In the hope that we could even have the slightest contribution in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine, we are publishing this blog post that discusses our solution.
Our team “FromTheWheel & Dyed & StoneShop” got fourth place! Our team name consists of our family names translated (quite literally) from our native languages (Dutch and Italian) to English. This image is a screenshot of the Kaggle Leaderboard.
Problem statement
The goal of this competition was to predict, for each of the bases (A, C, G or U) in the provided RNA sequences, the reactivity and degradation under certain circumstances such as incubation with or without magnesium in high temperatures or high pH. In summary, we have to predict three continuous values (i.e. regression) for each of the bases in the sequence (i.e. sequence-to-sequence).
The training set consists of 2400 sequences of length 107, the public test set contains 629 sequences of length 107 and the private test set consists of 3005 sequences of length 130. There is thus a difference in the sequence length in the private test data. It is therefore of great importance that the model has built-in invariance to the sequence length. Moreover, the sequences are only partially scored. For the train and public test set, only the first 68 of 107 bases are scored while for the private test set, the first 91 out of 130 bases are scored. An example of the targets for one of the training sequences is provided below:
The time series of target values for one of the training sequences. Image by Author.
We can also display these target values on the RNA sequence graph directly as done for the reactivity in the example below:
One of the possible foldings of a RNA sequence. The node colors depict the reactivity values (red = high, blue = low). Notice that 107–68 nodes are not colored as no targets are specified for the tail of the sequence. Image by Author.
High-level solution overview
By looking at the targets, it is clear that a certain value is correlated with its neighbouring values in the time series. Recurrent Neural Networks are a perfect fit for these kinds of situations, as their built-in memory takes into account the nearby predicted values. We learn a representation for each of the bases in our sequence and pass these through 2 (bi-directional) RNN layers. The representation for each node is learned by using both information of the node itself and relationship or edge information. As can be seen in the introduction, the RNA sequence can be represented by a graph, and relations between certain bases in the sequence are present. We use Graph Layers to aggregate this relationship information. Our final solution consists of a blend of 4 different models, in which we vary the RNN layers (LSTM+LSTM, LSTM+GRU, GRU+LSTM and GRU+GRU). Some details are left out from this high-level overview. One important detail is that we pre-trained the network until the RNN layers as an Auto-Encoder. This allowed us to train on the unlabeled test data as well.
A high-level overview of our solution. Image by Author.
Generating extra information with ARNIE
ARNIE is a software package that wraps around 6 different libraries which can be used to generate extra information for each of the sequences:
For a provided RNA sequence, ARNIE is able to calculate a Base Pairing Probability (BPP) matrix. Based on that BPP, a potential structure can be predicted and from these structures, the loop type can be inferred for each of the bases in the sequence.
We used different libraries in ARNIE to generate extra information. This often required a bit of bash magic in order to get everything installed. We provide a notebook to demonstrate how to generate this information. We experimented with all 6 libraries, but only found CONTRAfold to be the most useful, followed by RNAsoft, RNAstructure and Vienna.
Node features
From our high-level overview, we can see 2 types of inputs are required for our network: node information and edge information. The node information is a NxLxV matrix with N the number of RNA sequences, L the length of the sequences and V the number of features per node. We use V=25 features in total:
One-hot-encoded base (‘A’, ‘G’, ‘C’ or ‘U’) (4 features)
(‘A’, ‘G’, ‘C’ or ‘U’) (4 features) One-hot-encoded loop type (provided: ‘S’: paired Stem, ‘M’: Multiloop, ‘I’: Internal loop, ‘B’: Bulge, ‘H’: Hairpin loop, ‘E’: dangling End or ‘X’: eXternal loop) (7 features)
(provided: ‘S’: paired Stem, ‘M’: Multiloop, ‘I’: Internal loop, ‘B’: Bulge, ‘H’: Hairpin loop, ‘E’: dangling End or ‘X’: eXternal loop) (7 features) one-hot-encoded positional feature (index % 3) (3 features)
feature (index % 3) (3 features) certainty : fraction of packages (3 different ones: Vienna, CONTRAfold and RNAstructure) that predict ( , ) or . (3 features).
: fraction of packages (3 different ones: Vienna, CONTRAfold and RNAstructure) that predict , or (3 features). CapR loop type probabilities (6 features)
probabilities (6 features) BPP sum and number of zeroes (2 features)
Edge features
The edge information is captured in a NxLxLxE matrix, with N the number of RNA sequences, L the length of the sequences and E the number of edge features. In total, we have E=5 features for each edge:
3 different BPPs : the provided ones, generated with RNAsoft (ARNIE) and generated with contrafold (ARNIE)
: the provided ones, generated with RNAsoft (ARNIE) and generated with contrafold (ARNIE) whether there is a base pairing indicated in the structure ( ( and ) )
indicated in the structure ( and ) the distances (manhattan) between bases, normalized by sequence length
The model
Our pipeline was an adaptation from this great notebook by mrmakr. Make sure to give that notebook an upvote! We did make a few modifications to the original notebook:
Corrected the loss function of the classification part of the network.
Changed the loss function of the auto-encoder, which was tailored for binary representations (it was a variant of binary cross-entropy). We simply used Reconstruction Loss/MAE (|y — y_hat|).
Added 2 RNN layers after the Encoder. As was illustrated during the competition (by @tuckerarrants and others), blending a GRU+GRU, LSTM+GRU, GRU+LSTM and LSTM+LSTM model results in a slight boost. We generated models in 10-fold CV for each of these 4 combinations (so 40 models in total) and blended those with uniform weights.
Tuned some hyper-parameters. The epochs of AE, Classification part, the number of units in the GCN layers, …
Adding augmented data, from the notebook made by @its7171.
Training on all the samples but using different sample weights based on their signal_to_noise. Again a shout out to @its7171 for this! Evaluation was only performed on data with SN_filter=1. Because we expected the private LB to do that as well ;)
Things that did not work
We tried many things that did not work:
We got 3D foldings of all the RNA and calculated 3D (euclidean) distances between the RNA bases. We also tried to use angle information (binned and then categorically encoded): this boosted our simple LSTM architecture but deteriorated the performance of the AE+LSTM. There’s definitely some potential in these features, but they require some more thorough experimentation. A dataset to allow for such experimentation can be found here.
Many software packages that give some RNA features were not informative. Some of these include RNAup, Shaker, MXFold, …
All of the spectral representations discussed in this paper.
Richer graph representations (e.g. including amino-acid information)
Entropy features
Atom information
Concluding words
I really enjoyed this competition. I especially liked the fact that it only lasted for a rather short period of time. It was a neck-to-neck race on the public leaderboard for the course of the entire competition. Very stressful, but fun! This kind of “blitz” competitions could perhaps be considered as a separate format by Kaggle?
While we just missed out on the money (by 1 position), we are still very proud of our result! With this result, my two teammates: Bram and Michele have also become Kaggle Competition Masters. So a huge congratulations to them!
We provide the code of our solution on both Kaggle and Github.
As usual, if anything is unclear or requires some more explanation: do not hesitate to leave a comment or contact me!
Keep an eye open on this post, as it may receive some updates in the nearby future!
See you in the next competition!
Gilles, Bram and Michele | https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-mrna-degradation-using-gnns-and-rnns-in-the-search-for-a-covid-19-vaccine-b3070d20b2e5 | ['Gilles Vandewiele'] | 2020-10-22 06:47:18.945000+00:00 | ['Kaggle', 'Covid 19', 'Graph Neural Networks', 'Rna', 'Recurrent Neural Network'] |
The Heel of the Woman | “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; She will crush your head, while you strike at her heel.”-Genesis 3:15
When you look back on the book of Genesis and reflect on the way the giant, horrible serpent snuck behind Adam’s back in order to destroy the dignity of mankind, what stands out to you? Have you ever reflected on why this massive, terrifying snake was such a coward? Why didn’t he confront Adam first and directly with his so-called wisdom? Why did he go after the little women, Eve, alone?
I believe that the answer is this; God protects and guides the authority of men over women when they are brave enough to take it, and I think Adam would have faced this demon with a lot more courage if his wife had respected his authority. I think Eve would have respected Adam’s authority if the serpent had addressed them both at the same time. I imagine that Adam would have spoken up against the serpent in favor of the power and love of the Almighty God, long before she had the chance to consider taking that fatal bite, and she would have followed his lead. Instead she emasculated her husband and picked a dangerous fight for him, all at once. Satan knows how the order of nature works, and so slithered his way in between them.
Fortunately, there was one woman so pure, and with such a massive respect for God’s authority as the Author of Life, that she caught His eye like no other in all the vastness of time and space. She would be the mother of all the children of God because even standing alone, she would give her “fiat” so that the Word might become Flesh. There in her poverty and helplessness, she was given the choice to either give birth to a Child whose destiny and mission was to suffer in order to give testimony to the truth, or to say no and turn her back on the restoration of the dignity of mankind.
Yesterday in Colorado, an extremely reasonable proposal to end late-term abortion, in which a 22-week-old-baby has its head stabbed, its brain sucked out and its body chopped to pieces and pulled out from what should be the safest place in the universe for such a creature- this proposition was shot down. What is the most understandable reason a woman can give for supporting a woman’s right to murder a fully developed baby human in this grizzly way? Suffering. The child who is destined to suffer is fair to murder in the eyes of our modern Eve. And why is she Eve? I call her Eve because she has decided that this authority to take or give life is her right. She gives man no authority and no say, or does so only as an afterthought, once the man is already emasculated and weakened, standing before this horror while beside his already compromised woman, and thus, again, Satan finds the way to slither through and destroy.
I was born in this time, I believe, to be the heel that will crush the head of this filthy snake. I have the audacity to make that claim because I am a nothing and a nobody. I have not one single worldly title of esteem, unless you are one of the few people who still regards motherhood with any respect. I am a mother, indeed. I am the mother of five precious children, and I bore these children in the midst of an abusive “marriage” in which their father forced me into isolation, depression, and blind obedience through gaslighting, physical abuse and humiliation, and a great deal of fear. If anyone has been hidden and trodden upon as a heel, I am one. I believe there are many more hidden, brave women out there, fighting hard to defend the dignity and authority of motherhood through the action of choosing to be open to life; Women who look to the Virgin Mother of God as their role-model, and not to Eve.
The authority of motherhood is what feminists hate above all things. I used to look to the feminists for answers, when I wanted to escape from the abuse and when I caught my ex-husband cheating. The feminists claim that they believe women should have the “right to choose”, but in reality, if a woman chooses life for her child in spite of the possible suffering at hand, she is ridiculed, scoffed at and treated with spiteful contempt. It was frequently implied that my children should have been aborted- that my kids should be dead. Nothing could have given me more anxiety and it made me view my abusive man as my only ally!
I often felt like a lone, cornered lioness being attacked by cackling hyenas. How dare I believe that my motherhood was something of value? Who was I to want my own babies when they would cause me so much trouble on top of a horrible marriage? How foolish I was, to think that there was something noble in respecting fatherhood even though the father of my children had no respect for me!
Their advice was to stop this determined desire I had to breastfeed. They told me to put my little ones in daycare, get a job, pursue an education, and find my independence through financial gain. They seemed oblivious to the fact that babies have astonishing brain development taking place in the first three years of life, and that a mother’s presence and caretaking is vastly superior to any other available option. There was no encouragement whatsoever in favor of me staying with my little ones. I was mocked for saying that it mattered to me.
Twelve years later, I find myself understanding that what they wanted me to do was create order by embracing a masculine role and stifling my feminine nature. I am so grateful that I refused that shameful advice. I found my strength by embracing my feminine nature with full force, and respecting the masculine nature of the father of my children in spite of his many faults. I forgave him, and I forgive him today, and that is why I am free of him physically, mentally and emotionally only a year after our official divorce.
The father of my children had many faults and bad habits when I met him, but I was under the feminist illusion that if I married him and bullied him, he would eventually change. He was too strong for that, thank God. However, he made the vows of marriage with uncertainty and out of some strange pity for me and a sense of obligation. He was not ready for a wife- not even close. I regret that I played any part; that I pulled him into it, and I understand exactly why it turned him into the monster he became. I hope he regrets it, and I hope he will learn from it and heal, but it is not my business and not my problem whether he does or does not.
What is my business is this: can I stay home with my babies until they are old enough to go to school, even through divorce? I’d like to be able to stay home even longer than that and continue to focus on my children. I’m no longer able to call myself a “housewife”, as I rebelliously used to do. I am still a mother, however, and should I not have the choice to make motherhood my priority?
Due to my determination to cling to my feminine nature, and because I made the effort to respect the authority of the father of my children and to demand that he step up and provide, I stay home with my fifth child who is three years old, to this day. He still prides himself in his ability to provide for me, and just recently we have had some major breakthroughs in co-parenting that I would have never believed possible with a “toxic, narcissistic ex”. It seems that since I have cut off every other tie he has to me so indisputably, he is grateful to at least share parenthood with me. He has been extremely cooperative ever since I got a permanent restraining order.
I am thriving, growing, relishing every single day. My healing has happened at an astonishing rate, and somehow due to the fact that I suffered so much trauma and yet have also healed, my creativity is flourishing, almost as if I were quite young.
Feminism will not heal your pain. Feminism will not make men respect women. It will never create equality, but it will create massive chaos as so many women ignore their small children’s needs in the pursuit of creating order as if they were men. Embrace the chaos of your feminine life. Let that baby be your clock and guide. Hide and pray and wait, and keep all of this “in your heart,” as did the Mother, Mary. Look to her for your guide, lest you fail your people like the first feminist, Eve, failed us all. The world will see plenty of you when the time is right. Lay up your treasures in heaven by being the mother you were created to be, relentlessly and without any compromise. This is the way you will find yourself. The Virgin Mary gives you her Word. | https://medium.com/@hailholyqueen716/the-heel-of-the-woman-aba60b8c5a4e | ['Felicity Dark'] | 2021-02-14 16:57:16.012000+00:00 | ['Catholic', 'Abortion', 'Equality', 'Motherhood', 'Feminism'] |
Magicbit -An Easy IoT Platform for Everyone | Magicbit is coming on Kickstarter
Are you ready for what’s coming?
Internet of Things or IoT is the Internet-connected smart devices. From home to industries, IoT is revolutionizing the entire world, connecting the unconnected.
IoT and the technologies involved in it are indeed quite complex. Electronics, programming, web development, communication — there are lots of topics combined. With all these, creating a simple IoT application is not easy.
But don’t give up just yet! Because we have the perfect solution.
You might be a student, tech geek, professional, IoT developer, or learner. You might also like to learn IoT, but do not know where to start. Whoever you are, whatever level you are at, we’ll help you learn how to make your home devices “talk” to each other via an easy IoT platform.
Introducing you — Magicbit; an all-in-one platform for coding, prototyping, electronics, robotics, IoT, and solution designing. It’s an award-winning electronic product designed and assembled in Sri Lanka with the highest quality standards in the industry.
Magicbit Core
With Magicbit, you can make that brilliant IoT concept of yours a reality! All you need is some magic! | https://medium.com/@magicbit0/magicbit-an-easy-iot-platform-for-everyone-46b17e049130 | [] | 2021-04-14 08:20:24.256000+00:00 | ['Internet of Things', 'Arduino', 'STEM', 'Esp32', 'Kickstarter'] |
How to market an estate agency business | Estate agency has a long history of stereotyped presumptions. From the money-grabbing agents who will try and sell you any property that gives them a large chunk of commission, to the offices cluttered with paperwork, deafening phone calls and irate workers. We imagine an office-scene similar to that of Wolf of Wall Street when thinking of estate agency. All these stereotypes paint a dark picture of what potential buyers/sellers will encounter when coming face to face with an agent. Will they meet with a slimy agent who’s a posed pick-pocketer? or will they be bombarded with key phrases like “This property is extremely popular, so if you want it you need to sign the papers now” or “This home is perfect for your young family” as you and the agent stand in what can only be defined as a dilapidated barn.
Like most stereotypes, however, this vision we have been given time and time again is quite far from the truth and, as a marketer, it’s your job to destroy these stereotypes for the benefit of your company. A quick Google search reveals very little about the type of marketing company marketers perform that go beyond the basics when working in estate agency. Instead, there are hundreds of marketing branded talks, tool kits and courses that look at marketing from the agent’s profile-building perspective. This doesn’t help company marketers at all.
Aside from the general marketing basics of getting on social media, posting reviews and be consistently active, company estate agency marketing is a marketing type that hasn’t been truly explored yet. Estate agency marketers are starving for the in-depth knowledge we all crave about our specific industry. We want to know best practices, tips on how to increase engagement and what new trends are taking over. This process of weaving through the maze is made even more complex when adding on top the stereotypes that follow estate agency.
Who does it best?
Zoopla is one of the best (in my opinion) marketers for this industry, why? Because they don’t focus on the people in suits. Like many top-of-their-league marketing teams, Zoopla’s produces content that platforms the end result, i.e a happy home. They do this through max 30 second long clips which are beautifully shot and featuring up to two people enjoying their new home. Zoopla gives us the fairy tale result we dream of when buying or selling a home. We are fed home-ownership hope and we, the audience, eat it up.
This isn’t a new concept of course. Since selling and buying began, companies have been giving us a dream of how our lives will change after purchasing/selling a product and we believe it wholeheartedly.
Lucky Strike advert
Unfortunately, though not all companies have the time or money to spend on ultra high-quality video-focused campaigns, and instead we make do with what we have. This is in no way means our marketing is not as effective. After all, in everyone’s pocket, we hold a camera, a microphone and any editing tool compacted into one little mobile phone. As a marketer, your phone is your greatest tool.
All marketers know of the power of social media and video. Trending data is bombarding us the power of these two superheroes every day, but how can we as estate agency marketers make use of them?
The problems
Firstly, we need to know our audience and their pain points. Unluckily for estate agent marketers, our audience is pretty big and so the option to specify and focus is almost impossible. We have first-time-buyers, growing families, buy-to-let owners, landlords and those looking to move to a smaller home in their old age to name a few. With all these people you have a lot of choices, almost too many choices on how to market to your audience. So, we go onto our next basic marketing step, understanding our audience’s pain points. These pain points can include buying/selling novices who feel overwhelmed, agency stereotypes, bias and other factors that we aren’t even aware of yet. Perhaps one of the biggest set backs is the weight of stress. Moving is one of the most stressful processes we go through during our lives and this is our greatest enemy as marketers. We don’t want our audience to feel stressed. We want them to trust us and think of our business first when wishing to move.
As all these different issues swirl above our heads, it can be overwhelming and some marketers may choose to take the safe route, posting property pictures on Facebook, setting up reviewing tools and generally sticking to a safe and easy way of gaining traction. Marketing basics are important but they won’t be winning you any industry awards or potential clients anytime soon. Your marketing needs to stand out and meet your audience halfway.
Best practices
Here they are, the best practices we all have been waiting for. Let’s start off with something very obvious. Use video. My god use video. Use you phone and start recording. Though estate agency has a wide audience to cater to, most people would prefer video and picture together compared to just pictures.
Record a property viewing, walk through the property and feed into the dream of living at this property. Mention how the property would be great for growing families and add your personal touch as a marketer, not as an estate agent. You want to garner attention for your brand, not necessarily sell the property so do what you do best and market.
Next, remember it’s not all about the properties, it’s about the people. The perception of estate agency isn’t great so break the stereotype. Ask your staff to post about themselves outside of the office. What are they interested in? What are their hidden talents? Essentially, who are they?
Obviously, keep it professional but a bit of fun here and there adds some humanity to your company and this is what your audience will remember.
Finally, dare to be different. Be that bridge that not only helps potential clients resonate with your brand but also b the bridge that finds new, creative ways of overcoming audience pain points. For example, buying a house is full of terminology that we don’t encounter outside of the estate agency world so overcome this linguistic issue through guides, slideshows, whatever you want. This type of content is ever-green and so the option to redesign is always there. The benefit of ever-green content is it is continuously helpful to your audience and can cater to many audience types.
Mic drop
Estate agency company marketing is difficult but it’s also an open book. There isn’t a big book outlining how to market to this type of industry so stick to your basics but explore. Try out new trends, lead the industry. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-to-market-an-estate-agency-business-ed2633a4c619 | ['Amy Montague'] | 2020-08-22 18:11:01.148000+00:00 | ['Real Estate', 'Best Practices', 'Marketing', 'Estate Agency', 'Marketing Strategies'] |
Leave Your Subconscious at Home | I know what confuses you; the fact that I’m kind, and I always say “good morning” with a smile.
But, this doesn’t mean I wanna get laid …now …with you.
We just run into each other 4-5 times a week, while walking our dogs.
Since when the smiley “good morning” equals consensus to having sex?
Don’t you listen to me? Don’t you observe the whole body language?
Did you see any non-verbal I want you signaling that I missed?
I don’t think so.
Haven’t you realized that when our dogs finish with their “hey”, my feet are already turned away from you as I stand, in a kind of I’m ready to leave thing? Don’t you feel the almost-movement I manifest about 10-14 seconds before my “goodbye”?
Haven’t you noticed I remain strictly typical when you make a compliment? Do you hear me purring like a cat who wants to smoothly rub its face on your neck?
Did I unconsciously lick my lips 3–4 times during any of our two-minute chats? No.
— I know when I do that. I’m aware of it within seconds —
Did I touch my hair 2–3 times while listening to you about your dog’s accident? Did I make my naughty yes,I ate all the honey from the honey pot and I would do it again face during our conversation?
No, I didn’t.
I didn’t even detect that slowly closing of the eyes I’ve seen myself doing — to whom I wanted to —a few times; a “slow-motion blinking” of 4 seconds that usually comes with a smile, and then the I can’t resist you and I’m glad for it look.
I’m also sure that the pupils of my eyes aren’t dilated when I look at you
— Yours are — .
So, on which evidence is your case based?
I’m not guilty — as charged in your mind — .
You know what?
I don’t think it’s my politeness that confuses you, after all.
It’s your subconscious, and the fact that you take it with you to the dog-walk, being programmed by it to make specific projections on any woman, even if she just says a smiley “good morning”.
It’s OK. I’m not gonna tell you how to behave. This is your business, not mine.
But, I’m gonna keep signaling about my position and my limits.
And, if signaling keeps remaining “un-captured” by you, I’ll find my self in the unpleasant position of telling you that you’re a pathetic, “blind” idiot, who unconsciously touches his dick 2-3 times within a 2-minute conversation with a woman, to prove to himself that he has it.
— You see? I observe the body language — | https://medium.com/scuzzbucket/leave-your-subconscious-at-home-a9017f635797 | ['Anthi Psomiadou'] | 2020-12-12 05:02:32.693000+00:00 | ['Limits', 'Behavior', 'Body Language', 'Scuzzbucket', 'Communication'] |
Clasificación de imágenes con mapas autorganizados. | desareca/SOM-MINST-Clasification
You can’t perform that action at this time. You signed in with another tab or window. You signed out in another tab or… | https://medium.com/@carlos.saquel/clasificaci%C3%B3n-de-im%C3%A1genes-con-mapas-autorganizados-599340f08278 | [] | 2020-10-14 04:47:23.159000+00:00 | ['Image Classification', 'Rstudio', 'Clustering', 'Neural Networks', 'Self Organizing Map'] |
ApeSwap BUIDL Freshmen Class 🎓 | ApeSwap BUIDL Freshmen Class 🎓
We cannot be more excited to announce our initial cohort of accepted applicants to the BUIDL program. These fine projects have been hard at work in the Binance Smart Chain space and have great potential! 🚀
Remember Apes, still DYOR, only upon graduating will these projects become official ApeSwap partners. We have faith these will become great projects, but as noted in the original medium article, our final due diligence check is the last step before graduation.
Now, onto the introductions!
Koala DeFi 🐨
These cute creatures have actually already worked to migrate liquidity over to ApeSwap. Koala Defi takes a different approach to farming with their Bush vaults that reward in BUSD, WBNB & BANANA! Bush Vaults V1 are out, with V2 soon to follow!
With Koala building out various vault strategies and innovating how normal pools and farms are built, we believe this will be a great project to join the ApeSwap ecosystem.
Defy.Farm 👩🌾
These devs are defying the normal approach to DeFi. By combining reflect mechanics with reward distribution, Defy Farm flips the normal farming script. They have introduced high yield farming with fast deflation, making them a completely unique project on BSC. They also are cooking up a new product called Defy.Credit, which aims to provide interest-free loans against crypto assets. Can’t wait to see how that works!
Defy Farm will be working to migrate liquidity to ApeSwap. With their new loan product coming out, there is tons of potential for Defy Farm. We are excited to support them, and honored to have their products routing through ApeSwap and supporting their liquidity.
MEMEX.Exchange 🤩
Looking for the best new memecoin? Well you officially have to look no further than Memex.exchange. These devs are going to be building out the go to spot for all memecoins. You will now be able to trade all your favorite coins in a single location. Plus they will have a dedicated Mememarketcap website and build an entire ecosystem around memes on BSC, ETH and Polkadot chains.
Whats even better is they are collaborating with ApeSwap to use our router. This will be a great strategic alliance since ApeSwap and Memex.exchange will have different appetites for the tokens they list. We will work to push business leads to each other, but grow the same ecosystem.
Magikarp Finance 🐟
Magikarp started out as a memecoin, but don’t underestimate them. Recently launching their platform, they are looking to become a platform for trying out different DeFi experiments. Think advanced lottery games, BNB vaults, NFT-augmented farms and more!
Magikarp Finance will also be migrating liquidity to ApeSwap. The benefit here is all you Apes will be able to ape into new DeFi experiments, and all these projects will be based on ApeSwap LPs when applicable. Who knows, maybe $BANANA will get used in one of these experiments!
And thats a warp! Join us in welcoming this first class 👏 | https://medium.com/@ape-swap/apeswap-buidl-freshmen-class-7be7e95ff406 | [] | 2021-04-09 18:00:50.019000+00:00 | ['Buidl', 'Defi', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Decentralized Exchange', 'Binance Smart Chain'] |
Design Notes 25: Rob Giampietro, Design Director — MoMA | Transcript
Liam Spradlin: Rob, welcome to Design Notes.
Rob Giampietro: Thank you so much.
Liam: I wanna start off by hearing about your journey, both to design, and to design directorship.
Rob: I started, um … I was a … a designer, and running my own business very young, I think, relatively speaking. So I started a … a design studio at 23, with a partner, called Giampietro and Smith. And very quickly we kind of have had two main focuses to our business. One was design for culture, and for arts, so we had a lot of art galleries, like Gagosian, and White Cube, and Luhring Augustine, and things that we did a lotta work for. And that was a passion.
And then we fell into a lot of work in doing global nonprofit work. So we worked for, like, the World Health Organization doing annual reports, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria was another one of our big clients. So our, kind of, money jobs were actually feeling really good in terms of, like, our own values and things like that.
At a certain point, we went separate ways, but I was still really passionate about working in design and culture, and partnered with a studio called Project Projects that was run by some friends of mine, who were doing similar work. Brought some of my clients over there. Joined them as a partner for five years. We started at around four, and we grew to about 18.
Did museum rebrandings. I made about, hm, 20 websites during that time, for clients in architecture, fashion, different things like that.
So I think that was actually the beginning of my time scaling myself from being kind of an individual designer, or a design lead, to being more of a manager of a team. And also manager of an interdisciplinary team. Like, not just designers, but, you know, project managers, developers, different things like that.
About right around 2014, I was kind of encouraged to apply for a fellowship called the Rome Prize, which lets a designer spend a few months in Rome doing independent research.
And I was at a point in my career where I was trying to figure out what was next, whether my future was to continue to grow Project Projects, or whether it was something else. And a lot of our technology projects there were getting a little bit repetitive, like a lot of architecture portfolios and things like that. They were wonderful, they were for important architects. I was proud of bringing their histories, and the work of their practice, online. But I was also a little bit like: “What is it like to make real tech?” You know?
And so, when I was in Rome, my project was around mobility, and using mobile devices in an ancient city. And it was during that time, that … I think just sometimes your headspace moves you in a certain direction, but it was during that time that Google reached out with an opportunity to kinda help lead the New York site for Material Design, and grow the design advocacy program that became Google Design and SPAN.
And I think that was actually a conscious moment of transition where, when I was interviewing for the role, I remember there was … Jonathan Lee at Google said to me, “You know, this is not a designer role, it’s a design manager role. They’re different.” It was the first time I’d ever really consciously thought of the difference, and, I think, tried to learn a lot about how Google thinks about that difference, and conceives that difference, and, you know, try to be the best design manager I could be.
Liam: What was that transition like, in terms of the work you were doing, and how you were feeling about it?
Rob: I was never the fastest designer, so I was always a very detailed designer. Really sweated things like baseline grids and kerning, and things like that. But I also was never quite the fastest designer. Like, sometimes it would take me a little longer to come up with a … an idea, or an approach. And, yet, I was always really good at communicating design, at evangelizing design, at being an ambassador for an ambitious idea, to help it reach a public, and make it through all those levels of review and things that design has to go through.
So I think I had started to get a sense, as I was running my business, that my role was shifting from just actually making the work, which is what I was hiring people to do with me, and actually advocating for the work, or showing work and talking about how it could be indicative of how we could solve another new problem for a client. So growing business, and things like that.
So I think I could sense my role starting to shift there, but then I think any designer that’s in that transition goes through an identity crisis, or an impostor crisis, where you sort of say: “Well, if I’m not making design every day, all day, am I still a designer? You know, what does this mean?” And I think that, actually, was, for me, like a multi-year transition. It was not, like, an overnight thing where I just woke up one morning and said,
“Okay, I’m okay with not designing any more.”
Liam: (laughs)
Rob: You know? (laughs)
But I feel like the vision that I help bring to my team, and the way that I help digest problems and frame opportunities for them, or encourage them to bring me solutions, and have me help them move forward in the organization. Like those kinda things. It’s a different kind of design process. It’s a little bit more of an editing process, of a selection process, of knowing organizationally, like, where the most important bets are that you can place with your team’s time, or those kinda things.
I like to quote Rem Koolhaas, he talks about himself being an editor in the studio at OMA. Like, he’s not making the models, but he’s refining the selection process, and helping frame the goals of the project, and continually reinforcing those goals to his team, and you know …
That makes him more an editor or curator than a kind of pure designer, but he’s a very important element of the design process, especially in terms of bringing that process to excellence. So.
Liam: So maybe that’s a characteristic that all designers should strive for.
Rob: Excellence?
Liam: Well-
Rob: (laughs)
Liam: (laughs) Well, I think remaining critical, and thinking as an editor, even as you’re making things.
Rob: I was actually just reading John Maeda’s Design in Tech Report, and he was talking about designers that are a very special kind of introvert. Like, designers are introverted. We’re not the life of the party often. But we’re, like, social introverts. So it’s like we want to be quiet together. And I do think that there … A lot of times, when you’re working visually, the, the transition to words, or to describing what you’re doing, isn’t necessarily easy or seamless.
And so when you have someone there, like, whether it’s another designer or a manager or someone like that, to help discuss an idea, and, uh, help you … give you words to describe what you’re doing that is making visual sense, but maybe not verbal or strategic sense yet, I think that can be very powerful.
And so a lot of my job is to really just be available in the studio, to be that sounding board for people as they’re making work, to say, “What do you think of this? Like, what is working about this? What is not working about this?”
And for me to have a muscle that’s much more a quick critical reflex, rather than that kind of slow, visual development reflex.
Liam: And just staying on this topic of remaining critical, and kind of having an editorial eye, and, like, identifying these opportunities: you’re a senior critic for the Rhode Island School of Design’s MFA Graphic Design Department, and I’m interested in the ways in which that sort of criticism compares to the kind in the studio. The kind where you are involved in the process of making the work, and the one where you’re not.
Rob: Hm. Yeah. It’s really fun. I would say that, like, when you’re working on a team, everyone has a lot of the context for what a design solution is trying to do. But when you’re in the classroom, students are bringing a lot more of their own context. So there’s no better way to get really good at being a design critic, than to be a design teacher, I think. Because particularly for the work that I do with my MFA students at RISD, I’m a thesis at critic. So each of them is working on their own thesis research, and presenting that to me.
So if I have 14 students a year, I’m switching context 14 times. Each time I do a review. And that actually is really good at building that critical muscle, and it lets me do a lotta different things.
One of the things it lets me do is bring lessons from my practitionership, and the world that I’m practicing in, to the students. So I’m constantly able to apply things that I’m learning at Google, things that I’m learning at MoMA, in new ways in the classroom, that I can’t necessarily apply within the organization I’m working in.
And then, I think, the other thing that it helps me do is, as …. Uh, I’ve been teaching there for 13 years now. I start to spot patterns of: where is the design thinking here sound? Where is it going off-track? This student is making this kind of project, and other parallel projects to that have been successful by doing these critical things. And so I have to be there for them, to be interested in it with them.
And that’s been a learning process for me, very often. Like, exposing me to areas of design that I wasn’t drawn to naturally. So I really get a lot out of teaching, and I think a lot of my role as a manager as a kind of teacher or coach. So it also has helped me not be, I think, a micromanager, or someone who is wishing they were designing but just doesn’t have time. You know, it’s a different level of support, when you’re there for someone else, and for them to be successful, and to grow.
So I think there’s a lot of parallels. There’s also some distinctions.
Liam: But I feel like we would be too easily glossing over something if I didn’t talk about the fact that we actually met at Google. When I started back in 2017, there was some overlap between us, and … and I always wished that I could have you on the show, and it’s so convenient now that … (laughs)
Rob: Oh, I’m so … I’m so honored.
Liam: Now that you’re at MoMA, we have-
Rob: I always wished I could be on the show.
Liam: (laughs)
Rob: (laughs)
Liam: We have, uh …
Rob: Wishes come true.
Liam: Yeah, we have so much more to talk about.
But I wanna get into some of the initiatives that you worked on at Google around Material Design, and the sort of idea of design outreach.
First of all, how do you conceptualize design outreach?
Rob: So, I mean, I think when I arrived at Google, Material Design had launched v1, and I think it was really incredible to me, as an outsider, both as an educator and as a designer making websites and projects … Just in terms of the education that it brought to my students who were maybe just becoming familiar with patterns on the web. Like radio buttons, and drop-down menus, and usability best practices and things like that.
I think the academy actually hasn’t quite caught up to the self-education that’s happening by people all over the place, especially at that moment. So I was really inspired by the educational mission of Material, as well as the kind of incredible way that it let you build on top of it. And I thought that that was something that … Often we were, you know, building our own frameworks at Project Projects, and then to have someone come along and give us those frameworks so we could focus more on the design and the design expression for our clients, was just incredible.
So I was really inspired by that, but I think there was a moment to say: “Okay, we’ve put this amazing thing into the world, and now do we continue to help that community around it?” And I think that that was a moment that I was really interested in when I got to Google.
We approached that in a lot of different ways. You know, one of them was we launched the Google Design website, which had been started before I arrived, but I was part of the team that launched that, and also part of its new design iteration. I think, you know, working closely with Amber Bravo, and a lot of the content team … Just talked about, like, “What is our voice when we talk about projects? How do we help make someone who is maybe working on a team of one or two understand what it’s like to work on a team of 30 or 40, and that there are parallel problems there, but there are also very different types of problems that are maybe interesting for Google to talk about when it talks about its own work.”
And I think we felt, like, always worried about monopolizing the conversation, or having our voice be too dominant. And we feel like design is made of many voices at many different scales and positions within a community. So SPAN, I think, became very important as the kind of corollary to Google Design, where, you know, if Google Design is where Google speaks and talks about what it’s proud of, SPAN is a place for Google to create a platform for other people to speak and talk about what they’re proud of.
And I think one metaphor we used while we were developing SPAN was the idea that it should be as good as a Google search in any market. So it’s like if you go into Tokyo, Google should know, just like it knows the great restaurants and can help you find them … It should know the best designers, and it should help you hear from them.
So this idea of, like, the hyper-local really came from that. And, you know, that involved a lot of boots-on-the-ground research to find those people, and hear their stories, and help them draw those stories out and make connections to those stories.
Liam: So we’ve talked now about remaining critical of design, understanding the context of the design, existing in the context of the design, and also involving the kind of place, either geographically or culturally, of the design. But you’ve also spoken about designing in one’s own time, and that’s a concept that I’m really interested in. Could you explain that a little bit?
Rob: Yeah, definitely.
I mean, this was an idea that I’ve had with me throughout my career for many years. But I think the origin of it was that … Before I taught at RISD, I taught at Parsons, and one of the nice things about teaching at Parsons was that if you taught a class you could take a class for free. And my mom is an educator … And just like we say design is never done, her idea is education is never done, you know? So lifelong learning was something that I was really interested in, and wanted to take a web design class. ’Cause I could see that that was training that was important, and growing, in terms of design impact.
And at the time, a number of designers who were trained, as I was, mostly in print and some kind of identity design, were kind of asking me, like: “Why would you wanna make websites? You know, you don’t really control them. They’re impermanent. They change all the time. You know, why not make a book that’s gonna be on a shelf for 50 years, and be durable, and be very much controlled by the designer from end to end?”
And, you know, that was something I really had to wrestle with, as I began to work more and more on the web, and the way I kind of anchored myself to that was to be a designer is to be of your time, and this is an emerging form of our time that needs designers, and where designers can have a greater impact than in so many other forms.
I mean, the form of the book is incredible, but very slow in terms of its evolution, and that’s what’s wonderful about it, is it’s so deliberate and enduring. But if you are someone like me who’s really interested in dabbling in lots of things, and super curious in lots of areas, websites had a different texture and quality, and rhythm to them. I loved the democracy of them, and that you could send a URL to a friend when a project launched, and they didn’t have to go buy the book, or fly to see the show, or something like that. They could actually directly experience that thing.
And yet their experience of it would be super variable. Like, depending on the device that they had, or the moment that they hit refresh on the URL, or whatever. And I just … I thought that dynamism was so amazing.
And I think that was sort of a part of becoming more comfortable with design leadership, was also learning that I was beginning to make a type of design that I couldn’t make completely by myself. There was gonna be different sets of experts, and different types of people that were all gonna be involved in this project. And my goal, as a designer, was to keep reinforcing what the intent of the design was, and how it was solving the problems, or it could solve the problems better.
So I guess I see that as being what that means to me, and, you know, at Google it took a sort of second turn. Because I had opportunity to work on a team here that was under the research and development part of Google, called Google AI, in my last few months at Google, and, you know, that was another amazing opportunity to be part of the design of our time, you know. And to learn about AI systems, and things that were not fully understood by designers in a lotta ways, and to try to both help designers understand that, as a designer, and also begin to learn how to think about those things, and the ways that they could be more ethical, increase liberty, be more inclusive. And where the levers of that would be within a design process.
Liam: So in contrast to designers getting to know technology, there’s a new show opening at MoMA, New Order, that asks how art pushes the boundaries of technology. In the opposite direction. And that’s something that I’ve been really interested in lately, so I’d like to get your thoughts on that question, and also the relationship between art, design, and technology.
Rob: You know, I think the show, New Order, which is curated by my colleague Michelle Kuo, is, uh, using all works from our permanent collection at MoMA, to look at the present moment. And it’s interesting, because a number of different art museums and different institution have done quote unquote “internet shows,” art in the age of the internet, you know, Painting 2.0. These sorts of things.
I think it’s been really interesting to see those efforts come about. I think, particularly … You know, I was able to attend Painting 2.0 in Munich, and just seeing the way that the art world was drawing metaphors from the technology world to talk about painting as a social network, or these different things, almost is the reverse, in some ways, of thinking about the internet as a highway, or something. Like, where instead of metaphors going from the real world to a virtual world, they’re coming back from a virtual world, back to the real.
And I think one of the things that is really important to understand about the show at MoMA right now, is that it’s very, very interested in the real, in materiality. There are a lot of metaphors, but it’s actually very much about the materials as much as the metaphors. And I think that’s an important next step in the critical understanding of art right now, is that it’s actually made of stuff, it’s made of bits. And when you go to an art museum you experience those bits, as stuff, not just as bits.
And so there’s tubs that are filled with ultrasound jelly. There’s a vending machine that not just has Soylent, but has cocaine and blended up dollar bills, and crazy things, by Joshua Klein. Anika Yee did these incredible tubs of ultrasound jelly with things growing in them. There’s a piece by Ian Cheng that uses AI and a gaming engine to create an ambient virtual world.
So there are all these things that really help us to reimagine, and understand differently, what stuff is in today’s world. What a world is in today’s world. What human agency is in today’s world. What a human can make by themselves, and what they can make with other technology, in today’s world.
And I think artists are often at their best when they’re talking about those types of questions, and helping us understand those types of limits, as well. And not directly critiquing society, maybe, but placing objects in society that help us have a debate with one another.
So I think those are all good reasons to see the show.
Liam: So throughout our discussion, it’s become clear that your career has touched on a lot of design disciplines, from typography, to machine learning, to art criticism, to the kinds of meta-design that you do as a design director.
And we’ve touched on the patterns that start building up as you encounter all of these things, but I’m curious if you’ve found any sort of through-lines that intersect all of these things, or, like, commonalities that bring them all together in any way?
Rob: It’s so interesting to hear that.
I think one of the things that I’ve stayed truest to is that I love making culture, as a designer. So, you know, even if I’m working on a branding project, or an app, or something like that, you’re still making a thing that’s going in the world and is part of culture.
And I think one of the very powerful ideas that drew me to Google was that Google is a kind of a cultural institution as much as it’s a technology company. And it has a responsibility … Its public wants it to make good culture. And I think I felt a real connection to the mission of that drive. And I think it does make very good culture. But I think it was fun to be a part of that.
And I think at MoMA, it’s even more present for me, to have the importance of culture, and the way that culture shapes our understanding of who we are, and what is meaningful in life, and … You know.
I remember hearing a philosopher talk a lot about whether or not you should go to an art museum. (laughs) That is seems like an obvious thing that, like, everyone should go to art museums, but, you know, assuming that you’re in mid-life, and maybe you have a family, and you only have so many weekends left in your life, why should you go to an art museum and not go for a walk outside, or something like that?
And I think it … It actually just helped frame for me the kind of scarce resource that time, leisure time, time with ourselves, really is in our world right now. And as someone who is sort of a cultural producer, I really think a lot about that, in terms of: are we asking people to spend time with culture that’s of value to them, and that is really gonna make their lives richer and more thoughtful and more … Maybe even spiritual, you know? To … To use that word. I think people have very spiritual experiences at an art museum that are different from experiences they can have in other parts of life.
So I think the thing that’s fun about working at MoMA in particular, but also I think I experienced this as Google too, is just: in order to get culture right, you’ve gotta sweat the details. You know, it’s all execution at the end of the day, and whether it’s a corner radius on a button for Google Material, or, uh, making the shadow a little bluer, so that it feels a little brighter on-screen, and more connected to the colors of Google’s brand. Or it is the positioning of a wall label, or even removing the label and silk-screening right it on the wall so that it almost becomes invisible, so that you can focus on the art.
Those sort of subtle decisions, when you make them serially, build up to something that is difficult to say why it’s working, but it’s beautiful, and it’s incredible, and it’s not something that someone has the time to conceive of themselves, which is why they’re paying the ticket price for a museum, or the price for an app, or whatever it might be.
So to answer your question in, in a very looped way, I would say: I’ve always been drawn to making culture as a designer, and the thing that’s connected that for me is how detailed it is to make culture, and how sophisticated it is to get culture right.
Liam: Right, and I think someone would argue that, given that most of the physical environment around us every day is designed on some level, anyone who touches that is creating culture, in the same way, since-
Rob: Absolutely, yeah.
Liam: Perhaps about the intent that you mentioned, and really being observant of that, and respectful of it.
Rob: I think often designers are overwhelmed by what they have to produce, but it’s such a privilege to get to make the world. Like, the interface for the world. Whether you’re working virtually, or with materials in the real world. You’re deciding when someone should turn the page. You’re deciding how heavy their phone is that they left up every day. You’re telling them whether they need to swipe to get more information, or they can have it right on the screen.
All of those things are ways that you’re actually changing someone’s experience of their life, and the fabric of their life, through design. And I don’t think there could be a more transformative discipline than that.
I think it creates an even greater imperative for designers to be really good listeners, and I think that that’s something that is another learning, maybe, from my life, is just like: as you go, as a designer, initially you struggle to have your skills, and once you start to master your skills, you wanna show off how great you are at them, and so then you’re very eager to show that you’re capable, and that you have the answers.
And I would say that’s, like … For me, that was, like, a six-year arc, to getting to a place where I no longer felt like I needed to show off what I knew. I could actually have confidence in that of myself, and be patient enough to listen to the problem, and really understand it, before I applied those skills, or made suggestions to people.
And I think the better I’ve gotten at listening, the easier leadership has become, too. Because often you think, like, a leader is there to have ideas, and … and make declarations about what should be done in a certain situation, but really, I … uh, most of the problems that arrive to me, like, no one really has the answer. And it’s sort of just about listening to what everyone thinks the answer could be, and trying to help guide the team through the confusion and the ambiguity of that, to get to something that everyone is excited about executing.
If I just said what I thought without having a lot of context, I think I would make a lot of very bad decisions. (laughs) You know?
Liam: Yeah, maybe after the point when you think you have all the answers, it turns out that the answers are just questions.
Rob: (laughs) Exactly.
Liam: (laughs)
Rob: Yes.
Liam: All right, well, thank you again for joining me today, Rob.
Rob: Thank you so much for having me. | https://medium.com/design-notes-podcast/design-notes-25-rob-giampietro-design-director-moma-7e8a5f732932 | ['Liam Spradlin'] | 2019-07-19 17:22:04.858000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Interview', 'Design', 'Museums', 'Art'] |
Zoom Into Apache Zeppelin | Zoom Into Apache Zeppelin
Everything you Need to Get Started and More …
This blog is written and maintained by students in the Professional Master’s Program in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University as part of their course credit. To learn more about this unique program, please visit here.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Did you know? Over 2.5 Quintillion bytes of data are created every single day from the toothpaste we use every morning to the routine coffee we drink, and it will only grow exponentially. With the evolution of Big Data and its applications, effective and efficient handling of the large amounts of data generated every day has become imperative. This has led to the explosion of several open-source applications and frameworks for handling Big Data. One such extremely versatile tool is Apache Zeppelin.
Apache Zeppelin is an interactive web-based Data Analytics notebook that is making the everyday lives of Data Engineers, Analysts and Data Scientists smoother. It increases productivity by letting you develop, execute, organize, share data code and visualize results in a single platform, i.e. no trouble of invoking different shells or recalling the cluster details.
There’s more. With Zeppelin, you can:
Integrate a wide variety of interpreters from NoSQL to Relational Databases within a single notebook.
Use multiple interactive cells for executing scripts in programming languages like Python and R with a built-in version control system.
Perform one-click visualization for almost everything with the flexibility of choosing what comes on the axes and what needs to be aggregated.
Here’s how you install Zeppelin
There are multiple ways of running Zeppelin in your system.
Let’s start with Docker
Zeppelin can be effortlessly installed through a docker. We created our docker image which can be used to install Zeppelin.
First and foremost, install Docker.
To install Docker on Mac refer to this quick tutorial: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/install/
To install Docker on Linux:
sudo apt install docker.io
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl enable docker
docker — version
Now that you have your docker set, just run this command. Use sudo if required:
docker run -it --rm -p 8181:8080 akshat4916/basic_ml_zeppelin:latest
Once the server has started successfully, go to http://localhost:8181 in your web browser. And Done!
If you are having trouble accessing the main page, please clear browser cache.
By default, the docker container doesn’t persist any file. As a result, you will lose all the notebooks that you were working on. To persist notes and logs, we can set the docker volume option.
docker run -p 8181:8080 --rm -v $PWD/logs:/logs -v $PWD/notebook:/notebook -e ZEPPELIN_LOG_DIR='/logs' -e ZEPPELIN_NOTEBOOK_DIR='/notebook' --name akshat4916/basic_ml_zeppelin:latest
Installation through Zeppelin Binaries
Even without a docker, you can install Zeppelin with minimal effort. Follow these steps and you’ll be good to go!
Download the all-interpreter binary package of the latest release of Apache Zeppelin from this page.
Extract all files from the compressed package in your desired path in a folder say ‘zeppelin’.
On Unix based platforms, run:
zeppelin/bin/zeppelin-daemon.sh start
On Windows, run:
zeppelin\bin\zeppelin.cmd
Once the server has started successfully, go to http://localhost:8080 in your web browser. And Done!
To stop the Zeppelin server, run:
zeppelin/bin/zeppelin-daemon.sh stop
For more details about the download instructions and for other ways of installing Zeppelin, refer to this page.
PS — You may face certain issues with basic python libraries(pandas, numpy,etc) while working on Zeppelin Notebook if installed using the Binary Package or while building using Maven. Use our docker for smooth installation and use!
Zeppelin Zones: The multi-language back-end Zeppelin Interpreter
Apache Zeppelin comes with some default set of interpreters which enables the users to choose their desired language/data-processing-backend. At present, the latest version of Zeppelin supports interpreters such as Scala and Python (with Apache Spark), SparkSQL, CQL, Hive, Shell, Markdown and plenty more. For more information on Supported Interpreters, refer to this page.
To initialize any interpreter, precede it with %. To change font size and other visual properties, click on the gear at the right corner of a cell and make changes as required. To run the code, hit Shift+Enter.
Apart from the above-mentioned Interpreters, Zeppelin lets you add a custom interpreter without much hassle. For example, if you want to use document-search platform Apache Solr in Zeppelin, you can add Solr Interpreter and you are ready to roll!
For step-by-step instructions on how to add a Solr interpreter to Zeppelin, refer to this page.
Features of Zeppelin
Zeppelin’s main weapon in its arsenal is its ability to allow multiple interpreters to run concurrently. So you can perform EDA on data using spark in one paragraph and produce visualizations in another paragraph. All this can be done without switching between different windows.
Again, Zeppelin is a web-based interactive data analytics tool — so we make the most use of the features available. One such remarkable feature is its inbuilt tutorials, making use of Zeppelin’s visualizations. The default pre-loaded ones include a Line/Scatter/Bar/Pie chart and any other type of visualization can be added as well. Here you can see how the embedded tutorials are accessed and executed. Notice the ease of visualization!
Handy Zeppelin Visualization. Beautiful too!
This sort of automated, making sense from columnar data is a quintessential feature of tools such as Microsoft’s Power BI or Tableau. While these tools and Zeppelin provide similar functionalities, Zeppelin has more interactive data analytics features.
As mentioned above, Zeppelin allows you to add visualizations apart from the default ones. Let’s see how we can add a new visualization, say geographical maps to Zeppelin.
At the top right corner on the Zeppelin home page, click on ‘anonymous’
Select Helium
Choose the ‘Zeppelin Leaflet’ package and click on the green ‘enable’ button.
You might have to restart the notebook for the Visualization button to appear.
Cassandra table used
For this example, we imported data stored in Cassandra table having latitude and longitude values from different locations. We exploited the Zeppelin Leaflet plugin — which asks for the columns that contain the latitude, longitude and tool-tip values. If you want to use the same dataset, download data from here and upload data to Cassandra.
After running the Cassandra SQL, you’ll see the result data in tabular format.
Change the visualization type from the buttons below the query.
Select the one with the globe icon.
Now, drag latitude and longitude columns to specific regions and specify tooltip values.
You’ll be able to see the map with tooltip on specified latitude and longitude, like the one below.
Now let’s try some Machine Learning with Zeppelin
Let’s walk through some prominent Machine Learning algorithms and how to use them with Zeppelin.
Supervised machine learning can be broadly classified into two types: Regression and Classification. The similarity between them is that both make use of some known data in a dataset to make predictions on the unknown data. While the output of a regression algorithm is continuous (or numerical value), the output of a classification algorithm is discrete (or categorical values). The algorithms below explain this in more detail along with the examples to build these machine learning models on Zeppelin:
Regression algorithms
Linear/Polynomial Regression: Linear Regression is used to predict the value of a dependent variable using one or more independent variables when the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables is linear. If there is only one independent variable affecting the dependent variable, it is called Simple Linear Regression whereas if the value of the dependent variable is affected by more than one independent variable, it is called Multiple Linear Regression. If the relationship between the dependent and the independent variable is not linear but can be represented as a polynomial equation, it is called Polynomial regression.
For more details on Linear/Polynomial Regression, refer to this page.
Support Vector Regression: The ultimate goal of a machine learning algorithm is to make the best predictions on the unknown data. In simple regression models, we try to minimize the error in predictions on our training data whereas in the case of Support Vector Regression, we try to fit the error within a certain threshold.
For more details on SVR, refer to this page.
Classification algorithms
Logistic Regression: Although the name gives you an intuition of regression, Logistic Regression is one of the most widely recognized classification algorithms. Based on the concept of probability, Logistic Regression is a predictive analysis algorithm that classifies the dependent variable into a discrete set of values.
For more details on Logistic Regression, refer to this page.
Random Forest Classification: Random Forest Classification algorithm selects a random subset of training sets and creates multiple Decision Trees. The final class of the dependent variable is decided by aggregating the votes from all decision trees.
For more details on Random Forest Classifier, refer to this page.
You can find sample Zeppelin notebooks for each of the above algorithms here. You can simply Import these notebooks in your Zeppelin and you are all set! Here is a quick tutorial on how to import these notebooks.
Is this all that Zeppelin can offer?
One of the key features of Zeppelin is its real-time Notebook sharing with your team. This makes Zeppelin a highly collaborative tool, perfect for corporate use. For detailed instructions on how to share your notebook, refer to this article.
Our Experience with Zeppelin
After spending some considerable amount of time exploring and understanding the features of Zeppelin, we realized there are a few areas of improvement. As of now, the most noticeable drawback is its stability. While using pyspark interpreter, it sometimes hangs or stops working with some random errors if there are multiple users in parallel. When using separate interpreter mode, the time for which the interpreter process is live after code was executed last time is unpredictable. This implies that you cannot predict if your dynamic objects in the interpreter’s context are still alive after some inactivity.
While these are just minute issues you might come across, it is just a matter of time that Zeppelin will resolve all these drawbacks to become one of the most powerful tools for Big Data Analytics in the near future.
We hope this blog helps. Let us know your feedback.
Cheers!
References:
[1] http://bigdatums.net/2017/02/26/running-apache-zeppelin-on-docker
[2] https://runnable.com/docker/rails/manage-share-docker-images
[3] https://www.zepl.com/viewer/notebooks/bm90ZTovLzFhbWJkYS85MjcyZjk5ZTk1NTI0YTdhYmU1M2Q1YTA0ZWZlZmUxNS9ub3RlLmpzb24
[4] https://www.superdatascience.com/pages/machine-learning | https://medium.com/sfu-cspmp/zoom-into-apache-zeppelin-47190c228225 | ['Akshat Bhargava'] | 2020-02-04 07:05:46.104000+00:00 | ['Apache Zeppelin', 'Docker', 'Blog Post', 'Zeppelin Docker', 'Big Data'] |
5 Top Reasons Why You Should Learn JavaScript in 2020 | No one can deny that today the whole world is going toward digitalization especially after the COVID-19 crisis. This fact yields automatically to the increased demand in the tech field, in particular, web development.
In this context, the question always comes to which programming language is better? Here are the 5 top reasons why JavaScript is perfect to learn in 2020.
Photo by Nathan da Silva on Unsplash
1. JavaScript is beginner-friendly
Due to the simple syntax that JavaScript uses, it is considered one of the easiest languages to learn, unlike C++, C#, Java, etc,...
For example, to print a text you need only to use the console.log() method instead of weird and complex syntax in other languages. You can see the difference between printing a simple text in C++, Java, and JavaScript in the following images :
Hello World in C++
Hello World in Java
Hello World in JavaScript
As you can see JavaScript not only uses simple words but also saves you some lines of code.
2. It is Free to use
To run JavaScript code, you only need your browser to begin or a simple text editor like VSCode to write projects. You don’t need to buy any license like for example MatLab, SAS, SPSS, …
Besides, in your journey of learning, you will find tons of free sources such as articles, websites, Youtube channels, which provide you with well-structured context, courses, and exercises.
3. It has a large community
If in case you got stuck or you have some bugs in your code and you don’t know what to do, just go to Google and type in your question, 90% of the time you will find another person went through the same issue before you and you will find many developers who answered him. Just read the answers and try to figure it out.
Otherwise, you can publish your question on StackOverflow (a platform for developers where they can learn, share their knowledge, collaborate, and build their careers) or on any similar website and you will find big support from the community.
4. It is highly in demand and well paid
In this section, I will let the numbers speak for themselves.
According to DevSkiller, JavaScript is the most in-demand IT skill of 2020.
According to Glassdoor, the average salary of a JavaScript developer is $79,137 per year in 2020.
5. It is versatile
This is my favorite point. With JavaScript, you can do multiple exciting things. You can for example become a front-end developer, back-end developer, or best of all a full-stack developer.
Besides web development, you can also make mobile apps using frameworks built on JavaScript like React Native, Ionic, AngularJS, to name a few.
Also, you can build desktop applications using Electron, NodeGUI, NW.js,…
If you are interested in learning artificial intelligence, you can do it with TensorFlow.js, Brain.js, Deeplearn.js, and many other libraries.
And the list goes on. | https://medium.com/@cywarhkimi/5-top-reasons-why-you-should-learn-javascript-in-2020-6f3823ca0a10 | ['Siwar Hkimi'] | 2020-11-12 22:33:59.705000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Javascript Development', 'Javascript Tips', 'Development', 'JavaScript'] |
Relationship, Love and SEX | she pushed a patient he was treating for depression and sexual anxiety to have sex with her husband while she watchedthem to “analyze behaviors“. For this a psychiatrist was sanctioned with a fine of 25 thousand dollars.
The story comes from Australia, where the Queensland civil and administrative court sentenced the doctor to a fine and also to undertake a journey with a psychiatrist assigned to her, as reported by the Daily Mail.
According to what was reconstructed during the procedure, the young patient had worked for a few months at the doctor’s home as an au pair: this is how she revealed her ailments, explaining that she had been suffering from sexual anxiety since 2013.
Then the psychiatrist took her in treatment, prescribing antidepressants and proposing a course of sexual therapy with her husband, so as to deal with the problem under his supervision.
The doctor has the pretext of being an observer of the relationship between her and her husband to analyze behavior and give advice. Not only that, he also invited the woman to attend the embraces between her and her spouse to show her the correct way to proceed.
“The defendant considered her actions simply as helping a friend and not as a professional activity,” the court documents read, which held that by doing so the limits of professional ethics were crossed.
The judges explained in fact that, since she was prescribing drugs, the psychiatrist should have considered the woman a full-fledged patient and acted accordingly.
Amnesty Italia is launching a new campaign called #iolochiedo for Italy to change the legislation on rape and make any sexual act without consent a criminal offense.
The fundamental objective of the campaign is to increase the awareness of young people regarding rape, understanding the multiplicity of stereotypes connected to it, with the specific intent of clarifying the concept of “consent“.
Promote, therefore, a culture of consent that is equivalent to a sexuality made up of sharing and respect, a positive sexuality that promotes well-being and does not favor discrimination and violence.
Sexual violence is a phenomenon widespread all over the world that takes various forms, it can be perpetrated on the street or at home, it can be done by a single individual or by a group of people, it can be committed on a woman or on a man, on a girl or a boy but a common element remains: the lack of consent.
Victims often experience a second trauma that follows the sexual violence suffered as they are crushed by the weight of stereotypes, by misconceptions about sexual violence, by accusations of guilt, by doubts about their credibility, by inadequate support, even at the time of reporting .
In Italy, in particular, the prejudice that blames the victim for the sexual violence suffered persists. It is not conceived how a man can be a victim of sexual violence, as it is wrongly believed that it is physically impossible to rape a man.
In fact, many studies on the sexual physiology of men suggest that it is possible to have an erection and / or an ejaculation even in a non-consensual situation, such as anal sex, or it has been shown that it is possible for an erection to occur. erection or ejaculation in situations of extreme stress.
Understanding this is of enormous importance for sexually abused men so that they can better accept themselves and seek the psychological and legal support they need.
Furthermore, according to a recent Istat survey, 39.3% of the population believes that a woman is able to escape sexual intercourseif she really does not want to. The percentage of those who think that women can provoke sexual violence with their way of dressing is also high (23.9%). Furthermore, 15.1% are of the opinion that a woman who suffers sexual violence when drunk or under the influence of drugs is at least partly responsible.
A further datum of social interest with respect to the persistence of violent stereotypes related to rape is the “Denim day” campaign born among the users of the new social media Tik Tok, which sees young boys, victims of sexual violence, wearing clothes, often in tatters, which bore the day they were raped.
They show jeans, skirts, sweatshirts, overalls, dramatically emphasizing that a certain type of clothing does not expose violence more than others. The campaign was born as a sign of protest and solidarity, in the hope of helping those in the same situation to report.
It seems clear that consent is everything when it comes to sex. It is always necessary to respect the wishes of the partners involved in sexual activity. To have sex, you need to know that the person you want to have sex with wants the same thing.
Consent must be a voluntary and free choice, not the signing of a contract, but the recognition of human dignity. Amnesty Italia suggests the general rule for consent: “If in doubt about consent, ask for it expressly. If you are still in doubt, stop “. It sounds trivial, but it is a culture of respect that must start from everyone’s mind. Each of us. Nobody excluded.
Porn Has Helped Over 8 Million Italians To Overcome The Quarantine
Italians in lockdown saved by porn. This is explained by a research on sexual habits during the blocking of travel and attendance in spring 2020 carried out by Pornhub in collaboration with Eumetra.
Over half of the respondents said they missed at least one moment of conviviality, tenderness or intimacy during the anti-Covid quarantine. Specifically, there is talk of a lack of “festive and recreational” moments for 81% of the sample (especially in the South), followed by sharing moments of tenderness (52%, found above all among young people and those who live alone), finally always between very young and single 37% said they felt the lack of sexual intercourse.
So if the meeting and contact between non-relatives was imposed by law, during the lockdown in Italy Pornhub had an average daily increase in traffic of 30%, including 8% of new contacts due to neophyte couples of sites of entertainment for adults.
10% of respondents said they had discovered new genres of pornographic content, while 47% of couples new to online porn will continue to follow his “discoveries” even in the post quarantine. If we talk about sentiment, about two out of ten Italians (17%)claim that adult entertainment sites have helped them overcome the lockdown period.
The investigation also reveals other rather delicate data on the effects of this new fear of contact with the other due to the containment measures of Covid. According to 61% of respondents for singles it is now more difficult to meet a new potential partner and the fear of the virus has substantially affected the way they live their sex and love life.
Finally, the study analyzed the frequency of sexual practices in our country: it emerges that 23% carry them out two or three times a week, 28% one to two times, 49% less frequently. | https://medium.com/@beuyet/relationship-love-and-sex-a5552a4d5456 | [] | 2020-11-20 02:23:18.095000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Music', 'Sex', 'Love', 'Pornography'] |
I Meditated Daily For 30 Days — Here Are The 5 Lessons I Learnt | It started again — my anxiety attacks. I knew what (read: who) was the reason, but… I had to deal with my sweaty palms before I deal with anyone else.
This has happened in the past too — this kind of heartbreak, this kind of anxiety, this kind of helplessness.
So, this time I gave up.
I gave up on being helpless.
Because I knew if I don’t change, nothing else will change. I can’t be expecting different results when I am putting in the same kind of effort.
Like any other time, I decided to brainwash myself with peace and calmness.
I started reading up books and blogs about “how to become peaceful”.
And one thing that was the most common in all the blogs and books I read — it was meditation.
I bought the paid version of the “Insight Timer” app and decided I’ll meditate for 30 straight days, without any break.
So, I Meditated Daily For 30 Days — Here Are The 4 Lessons I Learnt -
It’s TOUGH.
Anyone who’s telling you otherwise is just fooling you.
Meditation is tough, and it demands a lot of effort.
Also not to forget, anything that is worth having, never comes easy.
You need consistency.
When I don’t meditate for a week, I need to start it over. Like anything else, you need to be consistent with meditation. That’s why I made this commitment of meditating daily for straight 30 days.
It’s better if we put this in our routine, and make it a habit.
You need patience.
The first day I meditated, while going through an anxiety attack, I cried. With tears rolling down my cheeks, I couldn’t meditate. But then I did anyway.
A lot of people cry when they meditate, initially.
And that’s why it requires a lot of patience. And persistence. And practice too.
You need practice.
There was a time when I was meditating for one-hour straight on a daily basis. But then for some reason, I quit meditating, and when I resumed it after a few weeks — the maximum I could meditate in one sitting was only for a few minutes.
You need practice. I know this because when I started meditating, doing it for 1 minute was tough. But then I practiced doing it more and more. And I could do it for an hour.
The result of all this?
I changed.
And it was probably the best change in me so far.
I slowed down. I became patient. I became calm. I started seeing things clearly. And I became peaceful.
All this — just because I meditated for continuous 30 days without a break.
You may also like to read - | https://byrslf.co/i-meditated-daily-for-30-days-here-are-the-5-lessons-i-learnt-3c54457bd50a | ['Dipanshu Rawal'] | 2019-10-11 19:44:02.533000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Life Lessons', 'Productivity', 'Meditation', 'Beyourself'] |
Writer Success Spotlight: Chuck Radke | Q: What is your favorite passage from the book?
On the north side of Bullard, just a few hundred yards from our house, stood long, neat rows of fig trees, which at one time covered most of Fresno’s city limits. They arrived as cuttings and seeds, left in the earth by mission-building Spaniards looking to colonize the Pacific Coast and convert Native Americans into devoted Christians and Spanish citizens. But the fig trees of my youth reach back in time even further, to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve are said to have sewn garments from fig leaves to hide their nakedness. Fig trees grew in the Promised Land, in the gardens of ancient kings, where just one of them was a symbol of wealth and prosperity. Fig trees meant full tables and households that lacked nothing, and from our front doorstep, we could see acres of them. By such a measure, then, we should have lived a life of comfort and ease.
But there is a counter-narrative, one that cannot be ignored: On the day Jesus left Bethany, just before he entered the temple courts and overturned the tables of moneychangers and the benches of those selling doves, he sought nourishment from a fig tree, then rebuked it when he found nothing but leaves. “May no one ever eat from you again,” he said. And there, before his disciples, the fig tree withered and died.
The land where I grew up, then, was as holy as it was cursed. | https://medium.com/no-blank-pages/writer-success-spotlight-chuck-radke-a881bd6a2a9f | ['Terri M. Leblanc'] | 2020-12-15 22:42:10.546000+00:00 | ['Authors', 'Publishing', 'Writers On Writing', 'Success Story', 'Writing'] |
7 Signs a Life Lessons 2020 Revolution Is Coming | 7 Signs a Life Lessons 2020 Revolution Is Coming Rohat ·Dec 22, 2020
It has a been a testing year for all of us no one has been spared from it. Here is the list of 7 things I wish I knew on 1st January 2020. | https://medium.com/@ourvoices/7-things-i-learnt-in-2020-52d67c08cae4 | [] | 2021-01-23 21:05:49.277000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Life', 'Life Lessons', 'Love', 'Lessons Learned'] |
Why Blockchains Need Cosmos Proof-of-Stake for a Sustainable Environment | The energy debate surrounding Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum is nothing new. While the world’s wealthiest man might have rekindled the flames with his sudden about-turn on Bitcoin, Elon Musk is hardly the first person to be concerned over the high amount of energy that Bitcoin mining and other similar POW chains require.
In fact, Tendermint co-founders and the authors of the Cosmos Network whitepaper, Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman recognized this problem in 2014 when their research into Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and blockchain consensus mechanisms led them to develop Tendermint Core — the first and most widely used implementation of a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus engine and PoS crypto-economics to date.
At the very heart of their mission was the need to address the throughput, scalability, and, most importantly, environmental issues associated with Proof of Work blockchains. As Jae tweeted out on May 20:
“We solved this first in 2014, so we were ahead of the curve by 7 years. @cosmos was among the first chains built on Tendermint BFT, and today Tendermint powers many of the world’s top blockchains.”
Ethan corroborated his point, in a reply to Musk’s now-infamous tweet:
“Cosmos pioneered energy efficient Proof-of-Stake. We’re the Tesla of blockchains.”
But let’s back this up a little for the uninitiated. In this article, we’ll take a look at the environmental issues surrounding Proof-of-Work blockchains, the dramatically reduced carbon footprint of Proof-of-Stake networks, and how Cosmos fits into it all.
Proof of Work
Blockchains need to come to a consensus over how to validate new blocks that are added to the chain. This means that, in order to prevent fraudulent transactions, double spends, or other errors, there must be a mechanism in place that allows network nodes to agree on the accuracy of each new block before it is added to the chain.
Proof-of-Work is the original consensus method adopted by the Bitcoin blockchain in order to achieve this. In a Proof-of-Work system, miners compete to solve complex mathematical equations to add new blocks to the chain. The first miner to solve the equation receives a block reward which consists of freshly minted Bitcoins (BTC) and a share of the transaction fees generated by the network. Once the answer is found by a miner, it can be easily verified by the rest of the network, and the new block is then added to the existing chain of previous blocks.
In order to ensure the sustainability of such a system, the equations that miners have to solve are extraordinarily difficult and must be done by using a very high amount of computational power — and energy. The Bitcoin network also periodically adjusts the difficulty of the equations every 2,016 blocks (around every 14 days) based on the average block production intervals throughout the period.
If the average interval is less than 10 minutes, that means that more hash rate than usual has been plugged in and the network increases the difficulty rate. If the average block interval is longer than 10 minutes, then the difficulty rate is reduced. In just over 12 years, the Proof-of-Work system has kept the Bitcoin network autonomous, decentralized, and secure. So, what’s the problem?
The Problem with Proof-of-Work
The (main) problem with Proof-of-Work is the high amount of computational power required to solve the mathematical equations and secure the network. For some perspective, running the Bitcoin network for one year uses approximately the same amount of energy as the Netherlands or Argentina. That’s an awful lot. And it’s caused Bitcoin to fall afoul of many environmentalists, with Elon Musk being just the latest in a long line.
However, their statements about “boiling the oceans” may not be entirely accurate. Bitcoin mining gets a substantial amount of its energy from renewable sources. In fact, many of its supporters were quick to point out that some 75% of BTC is mined using renewable energy. Others still, including the likes of Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and (rather curiously) Elon Musk himself, have claimed that Bitcoin incentivizes renewable energy. A recent article by Nasdaq even suggests that Bitcoin adoption may speed up the green transition as it can be mined from anywhere — and using any source.
Moreover, when you consider the constant attack on Bitcoin for its energy consumption, you have to ask whether the argument is really fair. After all, if you compare the energy spent on Bitcoin mining to gold mining or the existing banking system, it’s barely a drop in the bucket. And while we’re on the subject of comparing apples and oranges, North Americans consume more energy lighting up their Christmas decorations every year than Bitcoin consumes in mining.
All these arguments are certainly valid yet they do not detract from the fact that this high energy consumption is a problem — especially if you share the Cosmos vision of a multichain future. Bitcoin may be able to inspire a shift toward renewable energy, but what about a million blockchains with a yearly energy output similar to that of a medium-sized country?
Proof of Stake and Cosmos
Proof-of-Stake, the consensus method that Cosmos is built on, is a different blockchain consensus model that is infinitely more energy-efficient than Proof-of-Work. Proof-of-Stake uses validators rather than miners to validate transactions and verify the accuracy of new blocks to be added to the existing chain. Rather than having to solve mathematical puzzles by lending the most computational power to the network, in a Proof-of-Stake model, validators (rather than miners) validate based on how much of the cryptocurrency they own (their ‘stake’).
The more of a cryptocurrency the validator stakes, the more mining capacity they have. This means that, in Proof-of-Stake, validators validate the percentage of transactions equal to the stake of their holdings. So, for example, if a validator has 2% of crypto assets staked or delegated to them on a network, they can only validate 2% of the blocks, keeping the system distributed and, at the same time, removing the need for vast amounts of energy to solve equations.
Unlike Proof of Work-based consensus blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum, a Proof-of-Stake blockchain like Cosmos Hub uses a different method for thwarting potential attackers that relies on economic incentives rather than energy. The validator receives a block reward, just like miners, but, if any potentially fraudulent behavior is detected, like a double signing, they are “slashed” and removed from the network.
How Cosmos Proof-of-Stake Solves the Energy Issue
Cosmos solves the problem of high energy consumption by using a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism that relies on our Tendermint Core engine that achieves high performance with a low carbon footprint. We also enable blockchains to scale and connect through our groundbreaking IBC protocol.
The current estimated annual energy consumption (measured in TWh) of running the Bitcoin network for a year is 121.86 TWh, while Ethereum consumes around 52.27 TWh per year. By comparison, the estimated yearly consumption of a Cosmos-based blockchain is less than the energy consumed by Bitcoin and Ethereum in a single day (0.00046647 TWh).
Now, consider Cosmos as an expanding ecosystem of blockchains. Even 100,000 Cosmos blockchains combined would still use less energy than Ethereum per year (46.647 TWh). That’s not a subtle difference. We’re talking about 5–6 orders of magnitude of difference across multiple energy-efficient blockchains.
These approximations are based on the energy consumption of SSDs and single-socket servers. However, some Cosmos validators run cloud-only setups, which reduces the numbers even further.
When faced with clear comparisons like this, it’s hard to justify the energy-guzzling Proof-of-Work consensus method, particularly in a multichain future. Ethereum developers realized this early on and have been on a lengthy path to transition to Proof-of-Stake for some years now. Evidence suggests that the switch will pay dividends as far as the environment is concerned. According to recent research from the Ethereum Foundation, ETH 2.0 will consume more than 99.95% less energy than its current PoW consensus.
In addition to the low-energy and greenhouse gas requirements of running a Cosmos Proof-of-Stake chain, participants in the Cosmos network can offset their much smaller carbon impacts to become climate-positive blockchains using Regen Network. CEO and co-founder of Regen Network Development, Gregory Landua, explains, “The Cosmos ecosystem offers the opportunity for automatically offsetting validator and even protocol-level emissions with Regen Network’s carbon offsetting protocol. This power is unlocked by the Inter Blockchain Communication protocol and the interoperable nature of the Cosmos ecosystem.”
The future development of blockchains is clear. If we want a greener environment while fostering innovative technology, we must adopt sustainable solutions like Cosmos Proof of Stake, blockchain interoperability, and carbon offsetting.
Cosmos makes it easy for blockchain developers to build a chain in minutes and connect to a vast network of interconnected chains that includes some of the world’s largest blockchains like Binance, Crypto.com, Cosmos Hub, and Terra. Our vision is for a sustainable future multichain that doesn’t compromise the environment to achieve its goals. Will you join us? | https://blog.cosmos.network/why-blockchains-need-cosmos-proof-of-stake-for-a-sustainable-environment-878b3edd2e85 | ['Christina Cosmos'] | 2021-09-09 19:59:15.173000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin Mining', 'Proof Of Stake', 'Cosmos'] |
JavaScript Basic Concept. Overview | JavaScript is an open and cross-platform scripting or programming language that allows you to implement complex features on web pages. JavaScript is easy to implement because it is combined with HTML.
Number
First of all, the number is a primitive data type in JavaScript. Number type represents integer, float, hexadecimal, octal value. The Number type introduces some default properties. Since JavaScript uses primitive values as an object, so all the properties and methods apply to both primitive number values and number objects. We can convert a string to an integer using a built-in function called parseInt(). We can also convert a string to floating-point numbers using a built-in function called parseFloat() in JavaScript.
Example:
JavaScript Number
String
In JavaScript string is zero or more characters written inside quotes. It stores a series of characters like “Ahmed Reza Shah”. Strings are used for storing and managing text. String indexes are zero-based. Here the first character is in position 0, the second in 1, and so on.
Example:
JavaScript String
Variable
Variable is something that can vary. Variables hold the data value. You can change a variable as it changed anytime. Generally, we declare a variable with the var keyword in JavaScript. After that, the variable has no value. But technically it has an undefined value.
Example:
JavaScript Variable
Conditional Statement
JavaScript includes if-else conditional statements to control the program flow like other programming languages. There are three types of conditions: if condition, if-else condition, and else-if condition. When we need to execute something based on some condition, then we can use if condition. When we want to execute the code whenever if condition evaluates to false, we use else condition. When we want to apply the second level condition after the if statement, we use the else-if condition.
Conditional Statement
Operators
The operator produces some operation on single or multiple operands then produces a result. For example: 7 + 5 , where + sign is an operator. 7 is a left operand & 5 is the right operand. ‘+’ operator adds two numeric values and produces a result which is 13 in this case.
Example:
Assign values to variables and add them together
Objects
In JavaScript, an object is like any other variable. The only difference is that an object holds multiple values in terms of properties and methods. JavaScript is designed on a simple object-based paradigm. Here Values can be passed to a function, and the function will return a value. So you can say, In JavaScript, functions are first-class objects. Because they have properties and methods just like all other objects. That’s why they are Function objects.
Example:
JavaScript object
Function
A function is a block of code designed to perform a particular task in JavaScript. A function is a group of reusable code which can be called anywhere in the program. This removes the need of writing the same code again and again. Functions let a programmer split a big program into a number of small and manageable functions.
Example:
JavaScript Function
Arrays
An array is a special type of variable, which can able to store multiple values using a special syntax. Every value is connected with a numeric index starting with 0. Array is used to store a collection of data. But it is more useful to think that an array is a collection of variables of the same type.
Example:
JavaScript Array
Some important methods of array are:
pop() method removes the last element from an array.
push() method adds a new element to an array (at the end).
shift() method removes the first array element.
unshift() method adds a new element to an array (at the beginning).
splice() method can be used to add new items to an array.
slice() method slices out a piece of an array into a new array.
Math
Math is a built-in object that allows you to perform mathematical tasks in JavaScript. It works with the number only.
Some important methods of math are:
math.round() method returns the nearest integer number.
math.sqrt() method returns the square root of a number.
math.ceil() method returns rounded up to its nearest integer.
math.floor() method returns rounded down to its nearest integer.
math.random() method returns a random number.
Null & Undefined
In JavaScript, you can say null represents a value which is “empty” or “undefined”. It’s a primitive value of javaScript. Undefined is also a primitive value in JavaScript. A variable or an object has an undefined value when no value is assigned before using it. So you can say that undefined means lack of value or unknown value. | https://rezafset.medium.com/re-introduction-to-javascript-ba38269f7197 | ['Ahmed Reza Shah'] | 2020-11-04 18:19:28.027000+00:00 | ['String', 'JavaScript', 'Arrays', 'Function', 'Variables'] |
Google Trends, Part 1: Beware those underestimating Democratic primary campaigns by Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders | A Google Trends analysis of five big names considering runs for the Democratic nomination suggests that Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders have been able to distinguish themselves vs. other major unannounced candidates.
Google Trends, 12/15/18 to 2/16/19
Google Trends indexes search interest on a relative scale from 1 to 100, comparing the interest between the terms or topics in a given analysis.
Former Georgia state legislature minority leader and gubernatorial nominee Abrams was the clear leader in this group hitting 100 on this index when she gave the official Democratic State of the Union response.
Former Texas U.S. Representative and senatorial nominee O’Rourke was in second place in this time period with a score of 47 when he counter-programmed President Trump in El Paso, Texas.
Current U.S. Senator Sanders twice broke out with scores of 43 during news around his likely presidential bid in late January and 30 for his alternate State of the Union response. Also, looked at in aggregate, Sanders had the most overall search interest over the whole time period — just a little lower at peak times than O’Rourke and Abrams.
Former Vice-President Joe Biden, who leads in many public opinion polls nationally and in early states, has not broken through in the same way during this period. His highest index was 10 out of 100 during this period.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced similar hurdles, topping out at 4 out of 100.
There are too many great Democrats considering the 2020 presidential campaign to include everyone in a single analysis — and of course this is only looking at search traffic and is a single snapshot in time.
Update: Read Part 2 on geography here. And Part 3 here! | https://andreweldredgemartin.medium.com/dont-underestimate-democratic-primary-campaigns-by-stacey-abrams-beto-o-rourke-and-bernie-sanders-c6cce5591670 | ['Andrew Eldredge-Martin'] | 2019-02-21 22:29:22.097000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Stacey Abrams', 'Bernie Sanders', 'Presidential Campaign', 'Beto Orourke'] |
iSelf: Chapter 0 — I’m a Constant Introduction To Myself | iSelf: A Quantum (auto)Biography
Life is a constant addendum to the past
The child divulges, these are all things he was too afraid to express growing up. The disclosing of a secret inner world believed to be impossible to articulate. Considered to be totally separate from the world he inhabited.
I am breaking the fourth wall of my own mind.
The strike of a lighter. A flame burns atop.
Overwhelming feeling with nowhere to go. With nobody to share it with, the feeling has nowhere to move but in itself. Amplified and chaotic, it longs to be let out. Given all the energy of the universe in proof, how does a body handle amplified feeling?
It all jumbles together into the whole experience of life in the moment. The mind does not need it. The body has nowhere to put it but to everywhere plus some. Sharing and expressing seems to be the only avenues to free the body of the monumental feeling of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ at the same time.
The imagination classifies it as overwhelming love.
At times how could something this painful, be love. It is all energy feeding the Being from passion. A direct line of energy from nature. A candid perception of all-pervasive love from the environment. Unaware, unconscious, or asleep to reality and this ‘excess energy’ will be translated to fear, struggle and stress because the imagination forgets how the child tells an energetic story of love and possibilities without words, but only chronicles a mind-self birth and death storyline of a single lifetime. I am focussing on one thing, watching the mind do infinite things with imagination. A jolt into nature, a syncing experience of mind, body, and universe.
“Some make their temporary self last a lifetime, others will invent many lifetimes to un-contain an immortal Self.” — Jeremy Lasman
A mind trained not to look back, and a mind unknowing to the existence of future. When all the moments are special, the bigger time-aware moment becomes the only way to differentiate the sameness. When sadness befalls the mind-space, the aggregated groups of time remembering become more attuned to the mistakes, regrets, imperfections, and what’s absent from life. What I could change, what I fear. How I’m wasting my time. How I could better use the moment.
Someplace better to be other than here.
What you remember has meaning to the mind. What you forget you loved perfectly. I’m exactly the person who I need to be in each moment. There is nothing missing, or imperfect about the simplicities of the present moment, environment, and self.
“What you choose to remember is that which has meaning behind the meaninglessness.” — Jeremy Lasman
What is The Matrix?
The matrix is whatever the system of control is. The matrix can be the whole of reality in certain perceptions. Even aware that television is a part of the program. A part of the system of control, I indulge and sometimes judge myself for how much I do watch. I try not to watch as much, but then also feel like I’m losing a love. I love some of these shows, yet in putting them in the matrix, they become what I detest. The dark sides of seeking the rabbit holes of the matrix are the illusion becomes everything. Layers and layers of illusion. Answers solved tear the illusion down. What you strive to see stricken from the program, the control, is also what you rely on for happiness. We love being slaves to it. I love being a slave to it. It is not about taking down the system, no. It is about loving the system in a freer way. To have full freedom inside of it, while enjoying the spoils of the dream. Reimagined. Once the narrative of the moment is not about good vs bad or taking ‘out’ evil, what will the mind focus on? Do imperfections become evil? Does the self become evil? Does the self become self-centered as it is within the universe?
Escaping the mind-program of the human experience is a double-edged sword.
You are revealed ultimate and powerful truths about the illusion, but the growing pains of Spirit will still happen because you go back to being a child to the environment, fully experiencing the gamut of both love and fear, sometimes at the same time, how it was designed before a mind got self-identified.
Nature, evolution, and quantum mathematics.
When the awareness is projected outside the system, there is a surrender to newly evolved whims of consciousness. You give up the mind-controlled, dull-drum familiar for chaotic, brilliant, fantastic newness.
You are given a focus within an attention hyperactive system of complex, highly intelligent minds couriered through life unknowing of their true selves.
Focus in a world of suffering is a hard thing to wield sometimes.
Surrendering to a chaotic program in higher trust, and a new relationship with good and bad gets understood. Deeper and deeper temporariness is realized. A new scope and freshness to the stark duality of the mind. They both are embraced because it is what you are without anything, as nothing.
To get to open imagination is to empty the mind of all contents and self.
Regardless of a non-existent self, a signature in quantum time seems to have always been creating and I can see it through infinite future.
“You can be the greater power you surrender to.” — Jeremy Lasman
Understanding the Puzzle to Enjoy the Game
The puzzle is escaping out of self-consciousness, to reveal the game of self-awareness. The prize: peace, love, joy, freedom, unity. To see the dream for what it is. To wake up. Then to be free to create your own destiny moment by moment.
“When we do not consider ourselves to be the mind or the body, we are free to create our own joyful story about a human existing in this time and space. There is an infinite newness of experience ready to manifest when we step outside the body of identity and old human evolution.” — Jeremy Lasman
I am not scholarly by book standards. I am not well-read. I may not be a Ph.D. I am not your normal writer. I am writing from a different intelligence than is measured by that of society consciousness. I am postulating the world of my individual imagination to understand a common reality. I see myself as a child, discovering things about consciousness every single day. Realizations without past and future become new thoughts in themselves.
I have a Bachelor of Sciences, Business degree with a specialty in entrepreneurship. If I could aim my specialty in regards to the goal of my writing, it is the big picture thinking needed to hold a business (self) under conceptual understanding. Abstractly interpreting many labels from the construct of the imagination, and grasping meanings of experiences that usually blend together unconsciously. Hopefully shedding some light on the magic of the illusion of the human mind and the human experience from a child’s perspective.
What is the story one tells when one is given an eternity of free time in an imagined present existence free of past and future constraints?
This is the story of a mind. This story has multiple quantum timelines. These timelines represent characters of the mind. Within a timeline there consists multiple temporary selfs at the invention of the author. The timelines are quantum, in that, they run parallel, perpendicular, layered anywhere in space-time imagined inside the brain of a body in the third dimension.
How you make sense out of the universe of chaos, is how the child first perceived reality with a new mind.
The evolution of the mind is the evolution of the program above the environmental program translating light information with logic and emotion. Old evolution has the belief that contained within the brain is a mind. Invented in this mind is an identity to fit in with society, so humanity can run properly. Program the individual to stay within the bounds of ‘good’ and society will run properly.
A child thinks he is immortal, and then a program is inserted between the heart and infinite imagination. This program tells him otherwise. It is counter, doubt, and disbelief. This program is self-conscious fear. This is the human experience. In new evolution, I’m postulating a theory that the mind can be reprogrammed to understand immortality in imagination while the mind-self can play within the third-dimensional world in infinite play. To manifest the world of your dreams by seeing the moment as it is. To understand the puzzle of the mind, to enjoy the game of the human experience to its fullest extent. To upgrade the program of suffering in a temporary, evolving process inline with love and Spirit.
Philosophical Science Fiction
“It is when an individual human mind and the collective human species step outside of the human experience, will we see the next stage of universal evolutionary intelligence here on Earth.” — Jeremy Lasman
Mind, Body, Spirit. Utilizing both sides of the brain in connected concert with left(logic, computer) and right(emotion, child) brains obscuring the line between reality and make-believe. Using my mind as the baseline of experience, I scientifically theorize elements of my imagination to perceive reality converse to the way self-conscious fear will have you believe is the only way to exist.
By connecting the logic through time back to the pure child, evidence for Spirit can be observed through fluctuating time relativity and forgetting.
Immortality can be understood, the temporary nature of the self can be felt, and You can have freedom from the mind. Freedom from the useless, antiquated mind-identification of scarcity, fear, and identity worries of stress plaguing the human condition keeping it from evolving to the next stage of consciousness evolution already happening on Earth.
“The secret magic of the universe can be truthfully proven through the loving, open, creative, inventive combination and quantum connection of philosophy, science, and spirituality. This will manifest a perception of total freedom.” — Jeremy Lasman
Daybook Journal Entry — August 2013 — self-awareness vs self-conscious | https://medium.com/@jeremyalasman/iself-chapter-0-e1cbdcd7437c | ['Jeremy Lasman'] | 2020-12-18 21:27:46.110000+00:00 | ['Imagination', 'Technology', 'Self-awareness', 'Consciousness', 'Personal Development'] |
Important Distributions in Probability & Statistics | Random Variables follow different types of distribution in probability space which decides their behaviour and helps in predictions.
Table of contents:
Introduction
Gaussian/Normal Distribution
Binomial Distribution
Bernoulli Distribution
Log Normal Distribution
Power Law Distribution
Uses of Distributions
Introduction
Whenever we come across any experiment in probability, we talk about random variable which is nothing but the variable which takes the expected outcomes of that experiment. For example, when we roll a dice, we expect a value from the set {1,2,3,4,5,6}. So we define a random variable X which takes these values every time we roll.
Depending upon the experiment, the random variable can take either discrete values or continuous values. So this dice example is of discrete random variable as it takes a discrete value. But suppose we are talking about the price of houses of a particular town then the associated random variable can take continuous values (e.g. $550,000, $1,200,523.54, etc).
When we plot these expected values of random variable vs. the frequency of there appearance in an experiment, we get a frequency distribution plot in form of histograms. After using kernel Density Estimation for smoothing these histograms, we get a fine curve. This curve is referred as “Distribution”.
The orange smoothed curve is the probability distribution
Gaussian/Normal Distribution
Gaussian/Normal distribution is a continuous probability distribution function where random variable lies symmetrically around a mean (μ) and Variance (σ²).
general expression for Gaussian distribution curve
Mean (μ): It decides the position of the peak on X-axis. Also, all the data are symmetrically located on either side of the the line X = μ. As you can observe in the image shown, the Blue, Red and Yellow curves are spread either side of X=0 but Green curve is having its center at X= -2. So by looking these curves, we can easily say that mean of Blue, Red and Yellow is 0 whereas that of Green is -2.
Variance (σ²): It decides the spread and height of the curve. Variance is nothing but the square of the standard deviation. Notice here in the image, σ² values for all the four curves are given. Now without looking at the values, we can easily say that the yellow curve has the lowest height and maximum spread and spread can be intuitively understood as standard deviation. So we can say that Yellow curve has maximum variance out of the four. Similarly Blue curve has minimum.
If we put μ = 0 and σ = 1, the Normal distribution is then called Standard Normal Distribution or Standard Normal Variate and the general expression changes to:
Standard Normal Distribution expression
Now one can imagine, what does the denominator signify? Its’s there to ensure that the area under curve for Normal distribution is always equal to 1.
We get a lot of useful information about segmentation of data from Normal Distribution. Look at the image:
Values segmentation diagram for Normal Distribution
As you can see, this distribution stores 34.1% of total mass if we move one standard deviation right from mean, (34.1 + 13.6) = 47.7% of mass if we move 2 standard deviations right from mean and 49.8% when 3 standard deviation right. Since this curve is symmetrical, it holds for either sides.
So, now we know if any property follows a Normal distribution, e.g. weights of population in a town, we can easily estimate a lot of values without actually performing extensive analysis. This is the power of Normal Distribution.
Binomial Distribution
As we can see in the name, there is a “Bi”. So, this ‘Bi’ stands for 2 outcomes of an experiment, either Yes or No, either Pass or Fail, either 1 or 0 etc. In most simple terms this distribution is the distribution of multiple repeated experiments and their probabilities where the expected outcome is either “Success” or “Failure”.
Binomial Distribution
As you can observe from image, it is a discrete probability distribution function. Main parameters are n (number of trials) and p (probability of success).
Now suppose we have a probability p of SUCCESS of an event, then the probability of FAILURE is (1-p) and let us say you repeat the experiment n times (number of trials = n). Then probability of getting k successes in n independent Bernoulli trials is:
Probability Mass Function of Binomial Distribution
where k belongs in range [0,n] and:
Note: We will see what is Bernoulli trial in next section.
Let me ask a simple question. Suppose there is cricket match going on between India and Australia. Rohit Sharma has already scored 151* and by your experience you know that after 150 Rohit has a probability 0.3 of hitting a six. It’s the last over and your father asks you what are the chances that Rohit will hit 4 sixes. Then how would you find out?
This is a typical example of Binomial trials. So, the solution is:
Note: The 6 and 4 in big bracket is nothing but 6C4 which is combinations of 4 sixes in 6 balls.
Bernoulli Distribution:
In Binomial Distribution, we have a special case knows as Bernoulli Distribution where n=1 which means just a single trial is conducted in that binomial experiment. When we put n=1 in PMF (Probability Mass Function) of Binomial, the nCk will be equal to 1 and function becomes:
PMF of Bernoulli Distribution
where k = {0,1}.
Now let’s take the India vs Australia match. Let’s say when Rohit hits a ton then chances of India winning is 0.7. So you can simply tell your father that there is a 70% chance that India will win.It was nothing but a very basic Bernoulli trial.
Log Normal Distribution
We have seen the nature of Normal distribution and in first glance many would say that Log normal curve also somewhat gives a glimpse of Normal distribution which is right skewed.
Suppose there is a random variable X which follows Log Normal distribution with mean = μ and Variance = σ². X has a total n possible values (x1,x2,x3…..xn). Now take natural Log over all X values and create a new random variable Y = [log(x1),log(x2),log(x3)……log(xn)]. This random variable Y will be Normally distributed.
In other words if there is a Normal Distribution Y, and we take it’s exponential function X = exp(Y) then X will follow Log Normal distribution. In simple language as name suggests Log Normal distribution is the distribution of a random variable whose natural log is Normally distributed.
It has also the same parameters as Gaussian: mean (μ) and Variance (σ²).
Power Law/Pareto Distribution
Power Law is a relationship between two quantities in which changes in one quantity will proportionally change the other quantity. It follows a 80–20 rule which says: in top 20% of values, we will find roughly 80% of mass density. As you can see in the image, the slightly darker left portion is 80% of mass and the right bright yellow is 20%.
When a probability distribution follows a power law we say it is a Pareto Distribution.
Pareto distribution is controlled by two parameters: x_m and α.
x_m can be thought of as mean which controls scale of curve and α can be thought of as σ which controls the shape of curve. (Note: x_m is not mean and α is not σ. I am speaking intuitively for understanding.)
Now as we can see in the image, all four curves have their peak located at x=1. So, we can say that x_m = 1 for all the curves.
As we can observe from the image, as α increases the peak also goes up and and in extreme case of α tending to infinity, the curve transforms into merely a vertical line. This is called a Dirac Delta Function.
As α reduces, the flatness of curve increases.
PDF of Pareto Distribution
Uses of Distributions
If we know a particular property follows a certain dist then we can take a sample and find the parameters involved and then can plot the Probability Distribution function to answer lot of question.
For ex: In a town of 100,000 people, we have to do height analysis, but we cannot do a survey for such a large population. So, we select a random sample and find it sample mean and sample standard deviation.
Now suppose a doctor or expert tells us height follows a Normal distribution. Then we can easily answer many questions.
References: | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/important-distributions-in-probability-statistics-a868283fa127 | ['Saurabh Raj'] | 2020-08-07 06:10:11.992000+00:00 | ['Probability', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Statistics', 'Data Visualization'] |
I’ll Have What I Want | You keep the cape.
I do not want
it all.
I will not
run myself down
to a slow crawl
looking forward to
another tired day.
I will not work myself
to exhaustion
so I can prove that
I deserve equality.
I am not going to do
all the things
to convince the world
that I am capable of
doing things.
discernment should not
disqualify me.
how did men manage
to “have it all”
for generations?
the family, career
the idle time
to kick back in their socks
body supported by a soft give
did they plan every
meticulous detail
of their days?
the children who need caring
the career which needs focus
the spouse who must not be neglected
giving from the cracks of an empty fountain.
Please.
the plan’s not so opaque
having it all
serves us
the very least. | https://medium.com/meri-shayari/ill-have-what-i-want-235c22d7b595 | ['Rebeca Ansar'] | 2020-07-11 12:38:16.808000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Equality', 'Feminism', 'Poem', 'Women'] |
My Trip To Santorini — Steve Gosling — The Fernweh Blog | Blog By: Steve Gosling
If you are planning a trip to the whitewashed Greek island, make sure Santorini is the name that should be on top of your list. Your greek travel can no less be a dream come true once you visit and experience its prepossessing views. Being an adventurous traveler, my Santorini travel was one relishing the journey and an unforgettable experience. The daily working schedule was getting tough and I both my wife and I so wanted a break from our work stress. We were looking for a place to rejuvenate our minds and have a delightful time together. Without any second thought, Santorini was the place that came to my mind as I have heard a lot about this place. Well, the packing was done and the destination was a surprise for my wife. I knew she would like the place as I was more excited about our trip to Santorini. I am a person who loves to write about my travel and share my experience with the world just to let them know about the place and also at the same time try to ease out their planning. Check out my travel blog about Santorini that will convince you to book the tickets right away to this alluring place.
When to Visit?
If you are flexible with the dates, the best time to visit Santorini is April-May and Sep-Oct. I went in mid-May and it warmly welcomed us. Since the place receives more tourists at the beginning of June to early September, it wasn’t that crowded. The prices of the hotels, activities, accommodations, tourist attractions, etc were also at affordable rates. as they tend to increase as soon as the high season is about to start. Santorini is not ideal for winters much as a dip in a quick Mediterranean beach will not be a good idea. Also, most of the hotels, shops & businesses, restaurants are closed mostly.
Where to Stay?
Since I am an adventurous traveler, no matter how the place is, I am always looking for a room with a view. But unfortunately, my wife is a bit different and likes to go for a luxurious stay. Keeping the budget and her wish in mind, we decided to go for Dreams Luxury Suites in Imerovigli. It is one hotel that came out to be a complete package for us. With a quiet & peaceful environment, lavish bedrooms with impeccable views, we undoubtedly made a great choice. Having a fine dining restaurant, a huge outdoor swimming pool with a splendid view, refreshing spa, sauna, and beauty center, it is just perfect for a stay. Also, their incredible services were really appreciable and worked like a cherry on the cake.
What to do?
Santorini is not just about the views and sightseeing, rather it has a lot more to offer. My top recommendations for what all things are there and you should definitely not miss are both for adventure and not so adventurous kinda people. We started our day with a Wine tour, headed to cruise to Nea Kameni, and then it was time for ATV Tour and we ended our day with a magical sunset.
Wine Tour
For all the wine lovers, this is the place not to be missed. It took us almost half-day to explore it all and it was immensely satisfying. Since Santorini wines are considered to be the best wine in Greece, where we got a chance to taste the 12 different samples of wine styles that were served with cheese, salami and the Greek olives making your day the best of all.
Cruise to Nea Kameni
After the wine tasting, there headed to a boat cruise to Nea Kameni. Since the island was formed via a volcano, a visit to Nea Kameni was a must. It was an enjoyable experience altogether and we had a great time up there.
ATV Tour
I was super excited when we finally came to the ATV Tour. We rented an ATV (quad) to explore the island. Places that should be there on your checklist while you are on your ATV would surely include the Red Beach, Oia and Perissa Beach. I really enjoyed my day to the fullest on my ATV and surely the picture says it all. Look how happy I am when it comes to such adventures.
There were many more activities that we experienced like a footpath hike from Fira to Oia, scuba diving, and the Santorini cooking class.
Recommended Read: Explore the Tropical Paradise: MaldivesWhat to Eat and where?
Apart from exploring the place, serving your taste buds is also an important task. Once we were done with the activities, it was the delectable food that was missing and in Santorini it was bliss. I would personally recommend restaurants that are my favorite and serve the best food are Mezzo, Argo, Athenian House. For a perfect coffee date, Passaggio in Oia and Pure in Fira are the two places you should try out at least once.
Dishes that I am still struggling to get over were the Greek Salad, Roasted Greek Lamb, Moussaka, Saganaki, Spanakopita (try only if you like spinach), Tomato Gefthedes and the list will never end.
Clearly, it was one memorable trip and Santorini made our journey a memorable one. The surprising Santorini without any doubt really surprised my wife and she just loved the place and my decision as well. Get your bags packed, Greek is just a ticket away. | https://medium.com/@flightsbank.marketing/my-trip-to-santorini-steve-gosling-the-fernweh-blog-74fb1fdea9a7 | [] | 2019-08-01 07:46:43.692000+00:00 | ['Destination', 'Santorini', 'Places', 'Greece', 'Travel'] |
Choose your Spiritual Teacher Wisely | Power corrupts — even in Spirituality
One of my teachers always said: ‘The only way to see someone's true color is to give them power!’. And this applies to politics as it applies to spirituality.
On the yogic path, there are many deeply enlightening and valid insights one gain through dedicated practice. These usually come in small bits and pieces after years of discipline and focus. It’s like training, where you achieve certain milestones the further you go. You’ll get a certain skill set of understanding how the mind works at its core and how to control the mechanisms of perception — both your own and that of others.
Even psychic powers, also known as siddhis, are said to be attained through mastering the body and mind.
However, that does not mean that even advanced practitioners have reached the ultimate goal of enlightenment, everlasting peace, and selfless compassion. Along with the milestones, the egoic self still exists, and in some cases, it might even grow through the temptations that come with understanding people better than they understand themselves.
Ramana Maharishi said, “The greatest form of ego for an individual is to present himself as a teacher and become a guru.”
This is why the guru-disciple relationship is so delicate. Devoting yourself to someone who is spiritually more advanced than you automatically puts you at risk of being exploited by that other. Devotion needs trust.
Patrick Paul Garlinger: “ In a teacher and student relationship, differences in power render consent problematic and allow the teacher to manipulate the spiritual meaning of the sexual experience.”
For someone who has understood the mechanics of the mind, it is easy to play with the perception of someone who hasn’t. Gaslighting is a horrific way of manipulation, and in spiritual circles, where students make a conscious effort to overcome their mind — their safety system — this phenomenon becomes a whole lot creepier.
We’ve all heard of those cases of cult members coming forward after decades of abuse reporting that they didn’t resist the abuse simply because they weren’t aware of it for so long. The same goes for yoga communities, where victims of sexual abuse sometimes take years to defog their minds and even realize they had been abused.
So when it comes to the question, are there narcissists in the spiritual community? For sure! Simply because it is such a playground for someone who likes to have power over others. If you’ve come in contact with such an individual, it doesn’t mean everything has been a lie and spirituality is just a concept used by them to lure victims into their trap. Any powerful knowledge can be used for both healing and harmful purposes. The knowledge itself is always neutral. | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/choose-your-spiritual-teacher-wisely-639e054d09a3 | ['Jasmine Soumana'] | 2020-12-15 17:11:33.382000+00:00 | ['Narcissism', 'Spiritual Teachers', 'Abuse', 'Advice', 'Spirituality'] |
Classification of phylum platyhelminthes | Platyhelminthes have 4 classes.
Classification of platyhelminthes (Flat worms)
PHYLUM PLATYHELMINTHES
Flatworms, bilateral ,and aceolomates ,
Class turbellaria (3000 species)
Flatworms of this class are mostly free living and aquatic .
External surface of body is usually ciliated ,
they are predaceous
They have rhabdites.
They have proboscis
Frontal gland and mucous glands are also present
They are mostly hermaphrodite
EXAMPLES
Convoluta
Notoplana
Dugesia
Convoluta ,Notoplana ,Dugesia
Class Monogenea (1,100 species)
Monogenetic flukes
Most of them are ectoparasite on vertebrates including (Fishes, Turtles, frogs, Copepods, squids)
Copepod
Squid
One life cycle is present in one host
Have opisthaptor(posterior and usually complex adhesive organ of a monogenetic trematode).
Examples.
Gyrodactylus
Disocotyle , Gyrodactylus , Polystoma .
Polystoma
Class Trematoda (10,000 species)
Trematodes all are parasitic .
Holdfast is present.
Have complicated life cycles have both sexual and asexual reproduction.
Subclass Apidogastrea (32 species)
Most of them are endoparasite of mollusks .
Have large opisthapter .
They don’t have oral suckers
Examples.
Apidogaster
Cotylaspis
Apidogaster , Cotylaspis , Multicotyl
Subclass Digenea (1350 species)
All adult forms are endoparasites in vertebrates
They have two life cycles in two or more hosts
Have oral sucker and acetabulum(any cup-shaped structure, especially a sucker).
Examples
Schistosoma
Schistosoma,
Fasciola
Fasciola , Clonorchis .
Clonorchis
Class cestoidea (3500 species)
All worms of this group are parasitic having no digestive tract.
Have great reproductive potential (Tape worms)
Subclass Cestodaria ( 15 species)
Body is not divided into proglottids .
proglottids
Larval form live in crustaceans
Adult form is present in fishes.
Examples
Amphilina
Amphilina , Gyrocotyle .
Subclass Eucestoda ( 1000 species)
True tapeworms
Body parts
1 head
Scolex
Neck
Strobila( consist of many proglottids )
Both male and female reproductive systems are present In each proglottids.
Adult forms live in digestive tract of vertebrates
Examples
Protocephalus
Protocephalus ,Taenia , Echinococcus , Taeniarhynchus ,Diphylobothrium
Taenia
Echinococcus | https://medium.com/@qandeel-alam150/classification-of-phylum-platyhelminthes-efb201e8b8e2 | ['Universe Of Zoology'] | 2020-12-08 15:00:38.354000+00:00 | ['Animals', 'Biology', 'Worms', 'Science', 'Zoology'] |
x Eighty Swift | Understanding the low level behavior of our applications is one of the most useful skills for working on high throughput systems at AppNexus. We currently process around 4 million requests per second with extremely strict latency requirements, so being able to identify and correct inefficiencies at the instruction level can yield significant performance gains. More importantly, being able to work in assembly engenders feelings of supreme confidence and consummate pride (citation needed).
Here are some of our team’s favorite (and/or least favorite) x86 instructions described through comparisons to Taylor Swift songs.
The Story Of CLFLUSH
#### Looks a lot like a tragedy now #### CLFLUSH evicts any data associated with an address from caches; i.e., it lets programs tell the CPU that it doesn’t want that data anymore. It’s an interesting instruction, in that it’s not clear how a program would use it… except exploiting RAM to break systems. It could be useful for things like self-modifying code, except x86 doesn’t need explicit instruction cache flushes. It might also be interesting when interfacing with memory mapped devices or non-standard memory types, but that’s what memory fences are for. It could also ensure a consistent initial state for microbenchmarks, but, in our experience, filling the caches by reading clean data is more representative of real performance. In the end, we really don’t know why that’s not a privileged instruction: it’s bound to be nothing but trouble, with attacks like Rowhammer or covert communication channels via cache timings. Would not try again. Just like us. Sniff
All You Had To Do Was Stay In CPU Cache
PREFETCH is the opposite of CLFLUSH in functionality and is sometimes useful. The instruction lets a program signal to the CPU that it’ll need a piece of data soonish, and also whether it will likely need that data for a short or long amount of time. Similarly to how it’s easy to imagine that all your ex had to do was stay for the relationship to work, it is tempting to believe that “just” PREFETCHing will reduce access times. However even with known access patterns, such as walking down an array of pointers, it can be surprisingly difficult to use PREFETCH correctly. There are obvious challenges like ensuring that you prefetch with enough lead time for the data to hit cache, but not so much that it leaves cache again. The hardware might already be prefetching correctly, in which case sprinkling prefetches around only creates more instructions to decode. There are also non-obvious issues, like the fact that prefetching NULL or another unmapped address won’t result in a fault, but will still cause a pipeline stall due to the TLB miss. Of course, Jonathan Corbet has a fantastic writeup on “The Problem with Prefetch:” prefetching instructions can improve performance, but using them indiscriminately is a simple pessimisation.
That said, PREFETCHW, prefetch with intent to write, is pretty much a no-brainer. This extension was introduced by AMD with 3DNow! (TM) in 1998, and only adopted by Intel with Broadwell, last year (!). PREFETCHW essentially loads the data in cache, but pre-emptively marks the cache line as written. This is useful in multi-core systems for reducing the number of cache coherency messages. The core acquires the line exclusively when it is loaded, as opposed to having to load the line and subsequently confirm that no other threads are using it. This is a common scenario for locks where we know that we’ll write to the cache line to acquire the lock and typically first have to wait until the lock is free. We can sometimes perform an eager compare-and-swap to acquire the cache line with a write, but not every lock is amenable to this technique. PREFETCHW is a general solution to this performance problem for synchronization primitives. On another note, it is possible that some songs would simply not exist if Ms. Swift also had more options for establishing exclusivity.
Got A Long List Of Ex-Dependencies
The execution model for contemporary out of order machines is closer to dataflow machines than to the von Neumann architecture exposed by typical instruction sets. This is particularly salient on x86 and x86–64, with their relative paucity of architectural general purpose registers (GPR). Program express operations by manipulating values in a set of 6 or 15 GPRs, and 8 or 16 SSE registers. However, hardware has many more registers and may perform multiple operations at the same time, so hardware scheduling logic transforms the instruction stream into a dependency graph, on the fly.
For that transformation to uncover maximal instruction-level parallelism and fully exploit our superscalar chips, we need as many independent subgraphs as possible. Loading a value from memory is a natural way to seed an independent subgraph, but it’s counter productive to hit the cache (or worse, memory) to load a common constant like 0 or a mask full of 1, and literals use a lot of instruction cache space.
This is where dependency breaking idioms come in and show us incredible things: early in the execution pipeline, the result of these instructions is marked as independent of the input, as if they had loaded a constant, only with fewer instruction bytes. For example, XOR x, x always results in 0; same with PXOR for SSE. PCMPEQD compares its inputs for equality; PCMPEQD x, x will thus always fill x with 1s, as x == x (bitwise).
As hardware designers get increased gates to work with, they add hardware to detect additional cases more quickly: the earlier we can detect these special case, the more execution resources are left for real work. Some microarchitectures even added support for XCHG at the rename stage of the pipeline: exchanging two registers is handled when transforming to a dependency graph, without any real data movement.
This is fortuitous. As contemporary compilers push static single assignment form further in the compilation pipeline, including register allocation, we need something like XCHG to implement Phi functions (page 5 of this comprehensive PDF) without causing register spillage.
So we’re gonna be using register renaming instructions forever, or our performance is gonna go down in flames.
Everything Will Be Alright If We Just Keep Computing Like We’re 22
The Pentium is turning 22 this year, and we’re happy, free, confused, and a little lonely. Our favorite instruction introduced in the 586 is RDTSC (PDF), which gives unprivileged programs efficient access to a high precision timer: the chip’s cycle counter (it literally increments for every cycle of the processor’s clock). By itself, RDTSC can be used for timestamping or, with cooperation from the operating system, to pull operations like gettimeofday(2) into userspace. However, RDTSC can’t be used by itself reliably: it doesn’t act as a processor barrier that prevents possible reordering of the instructions you want to benchmark! That’s where CPUID (LFENCE also works) comes in. By some interesting twist, the instruction set architects decided that CPUID could be a handy instruction which they could use to guarantee no reordering (on top of its normal duties telling you what kind of processor you’re running). Combined with fully serializing instructions like CPUID, RDTSC(P) is the most reliable tool at our disposal to gauge the performance of microbenchmarks. The *P variant is a fully serializing instruction in its own right, so you don’t need CPUID.
High performance processors have grown so ridiculously complicated that it’s likely no one has a complete and accurate mental model of their performance; at some point, we all have to double check with experiments, and the low overhead of RDTSC enables us to time very short code sequences, on the order of 100 cycles per iteration or less. In step with that complexity growth, variable frequency clocks became popular. Understandably, a deviation from wall-clock syntony can screw up your cycle-counting benchmarks, so recently RDTSC has been defined to increment at the rate of the fastest frequency the processor will run, constantly. Of course, this introduces skew of its own, but hopefully only while your processor comes up to speed at the start of your benchmark, and your benchmark is taking stats across millions of runs anyway, right? :)
With its superscalar execution, the Pentium sounded the end of the naïve “cycle counting” static performance model; it’s a good thing that, as they took away that performance model, Intel gave us tools to better understand how chips behave, like their not-sure-how-it’s-free code analyzer to go with classical sampling utilities like perf and VTune.
I Knew You Were Trouble When I Ran Perf
#### So shame on GCC #### Flew me to branches I shouldn’t go #### Now my IPC is on the cold hard ground #### [screaming]
Branch misprediction can be less of an issue now that systems are so heavily bottlenecked on memory, but it still regularly hurts the performance in what would otherwise be tight code. The Pentium 4, with 20 to 31 pipeline stages (depending on the iteration), was a particularly bad example. On earlier Pentiums, pretty much any program would get performance improvements compared to the previous generation. That wasn’t the case for the P4: initially it wasn’t clear that higher-clocked P4s were actually quicker than lower-clocked Athlons or even older and cheaper P III, at least for real code in the wild! Developers had to learn all sorts of branch elimination tricks to extract good performance out of the P4. That includes adopting a coding style that let compilers emit CMOVcc (conditional move) or SETcc (convert a flag bit to a one-byte boolean), but also other tricks like using arithmetic shifts to propagate the sign bit, or SBB (subtract with borrow) a register from itself to convert the carry flag into a mask. The amazing part is that none of these instructions were well supported by the original P4!
Agner Fog’s tables of instruction latencies (PDF) quantify this badness:
As Linus Torvalds points out, this sad situation meant that we couldn’t simply convert simple branches to branch-free code: if the branch was easily predictable, the branch-free alternative would be markedly slower. Thankfully, processors are getting better, and it looks like, even on Westmere, it’s always safe to convert simple branches to conditional moves, regardless of probabilities.
The Cache Hits are John Wittrock and Aaron Dornbrand-Lo
Written by Dr. Paul khuong | https://medium.com/xandr-tech/x-eighty-swift-d50f7683f6f8 | ['Xandr Engineering'] | 2017-06-14 19:17:41.020000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'X86', 'Backend', 'Cache'] |
Kotlin Nedir ? | 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/developer-student-clubs/kotlin-nedir-b4a380ec042 | ['Yusuf Anber'] | 2020-12-10 10:26:46.114000+00:00 | ['Google', 'Kotlin', 'Android', 'Developer Student Club', 'Turkey'] |
Augmented Analytics: The future of data analytics | One of the latest data and analytics trends that has gained considerable traction these days is Augmented Analytics. The term was coined by Gartner in 2017, goes well beyond the world of data and analytics, bringing in the wave of disruption in the market. By leveraging AI/ML techniques, it transforms how analytics content is developed, consumed, and shared.
There are compelling reasons why organizations must adopt augmented analytics technology. Many organizations have realized the importance of Big Data and its role in decision making across the business. However, this sheer volume of data available to organizations is making effective interpretation a real challenge. According to Forrester Research, less than 0.5% of all data is ever analyzed and used. While a mere 12% of enterprise data is used to make decisions. This will only make it worse with the growth in IoT connected devices which is expected to generate 79.4 Zeta Bytes (ZB) of data across 41.6 billion devices, according to IDC Forecast.
To date, many processes remain largely manual and prone to bias across the data value chain. This includes managing and preparing the data for analysis, building ML/AI models, interpreting the results and making insights actionable.
Using the current analytics approach, business users find their own patterns, and data scientists build and manage their own models. This results in exploring their own hypotheses, missing key findings, and interpreting incorrect conclusions. This will adversely affect decisions, actions, and outcomes. According to Forrester Research, only 29% of organizations are successful at connecting analytics to action.
Augmented Analytics promises to ease this bottleneck. It democratizes AI across the data value chain. It automates the data preparation process, key aspects of data science, and ML/AI modeling using ML ( AutoML) techniques and narrate relevant insights using NLP and conversational analytics. It includes:
Augmented data preparation uses AI/ML automation to accelerate manual data preparation tasks like data profiling and quality, enrichment, metadata development, and data cataloging, and various aspects of data management like data integration and database administration.
uses AI/ML automation to accelerate manual data preparation tasks like data profiling and quality, enrichment, metadata development, and data cataloging, and various aspects of data management like data integration and database administration. Augmented data science and machine learning use AI/ML techniques to automate key aspects of data science such as feature engineering and model selection (AutoML), as well as model operationalization, model explanation, and model tuning.
and machine learning use AI/ML techniques to automate key aspects of data science such as feature engineering and model selection (AutoML), as well as model operationalization, model explanation, and model tuning. Augmented analytics as a part of BI platforms embed AI/ML techniques to automatically find, visualize the data and narrate the relevant findings via conversational interfaces, including natural language query (NLQ) technologies, supported by natural language generation (NLG).
This leads to an increase in productivity, efficiency, and smart decision-making across the organization. One of the greatest benefits of augmented analytics is that it democratizes data analytics for less business-savvy users i.e., Citizen Data Scientists without any specialized training or skills in data science or analysis. Augmented Analytics also enables the adoption of actionable insights for the executive team across the organization.
So, every organization will need an augmented analytics platform to connect disparate and live data sources, find relationships within the data, create visualizations, and help human users effortlessly share their findings across the entire organization. It will change how users experience analytics and BI and the world by serving up insights that humans could ever imagine.
Did your organization adopt Augmented Analytics? If yes, how it has benefited the organization? Feel free to share your thoughts and some interesting statistics about augmented analytics in the comments section.
Author: Payal Paranjape | https://medium.com/@subex/augmented-analytics-the-future-of-data-analytics-807b44f3f283 | [] | 2021-01-04 05:14:24.829000+00:00 | ['Platform', 'Analytics', 'Augmented Analytics', 'Business Intelligence', 'Data Management'] |
How To Increase Your Business Profit With Effective Customer Retention Strategy | Customer retention is the key aspect of a successful business. According to research, increasing retention rates by only 5% increases a company’s profits by 25–95%. Cost of acquiring new clients is always higher than retaining an existing client.
Small business usually considers spending less when they first interact with new brands. Later on, they spend more with companies they’ve already done business with. Also, they will refer to others. It also found that most businesses need to retain clients for at least 12 to 18 months to break even on their investment.
Why You Should Focus On Retention Rate
Affordability: It is more expensive to acquire a new client than to retain the old one.
ROI: An increase in retention rate can increase your company’s profit by 25–95%
Loyalty: Retained clients buy more often and refer their friends and family as they know the value of your service or products.
So a business needs to focus on retention strategy.
Keep Your Customer Happy
You should understand that everyone is busy in this busy world. You should value your customer time and value them. Always make sure your client feel important, listen to them carefully and understand their needs.
Make sure to keep your promises to your customers and thank them whenever possible.
91% of unhappy customers will never buy from you again. So it is your responsibility to keep them happy to increase your retention rate.
Conduct An Effective Exit Interview
An exit interview is one of the powerful ways to understand why your customer leaves to improve and prevent your future consumer from leaving your service.
It is a known fact that 90% of consumers use online reviews before visiting a business and 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
There is an endless reason why your client leaves you. Some of them are
1. They found your competitors that better matches their needs
2. Their business has a financial problem
3. Your service charge is too expensive.
4. Lack of customer service.
Here are some of the sample question to ask in a client exit interview :
1. Why did you initially signup our product or service?
2. What did you like about our service or products?
3. Did we meet your expectation?
4. What could we have done differently?
5. What would it take for you to reconsider our services?
Take your first step to improve your services or product by collecting client feedback. By taking the necessary steps to improvise your services you can increase your retention rate.
Stay In Touch With Your Customer
It is important to stay in touch with them to build a strong and long-lasting relationship. Get involved in their blog and social media post.
Plan to do a regular newsletter to your existing client to stay connected.
Surprise Your Customer
Scientists say that surprise is good for the brain. Surprise your existing client on their birthday and special occasion that build a strong relationship.
Know Your Customer Expectation
The first step in exceeding your client’s expectations to know those expectations.
Yes, you should understand their expectation to deliver it. To understand their expectations you should communicate regularly. Regular communication increase trust which increases retention rate.
Train Them With Educational Emails
Email marketing is a great tool that converts prospect. It is important to educate your prospect and tell them about a unique selling point.
Nurture your existing client with a loyalty program. Use personal experience to feel that they are part of your business.
Address Customer’s Complaints On Time
In this busy world, business is busy to chase new leads, but it is equally important to listen to their complaint and solve it fast.
Client’s reviews, testimonials and star rating are important factors that you should integrate into retention rate.
Why client reviews, testimonials and star ratings are essential for every brand :
1. Reviews make you more visible
2. Social proof drive more business
3. They influence your client’s decision making and many more.
Make sure to make your consumer realize that you care for them and show them that you will better your services. Your client doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yes, none of this retention strategy will give you an overnight result. But you should be patient and consistent to get the result. | https://medium.com/@pavivasa/how-to-increase-your-business-profit-with-effective-customer-retention-strategy-61ee926b887a | ['Pavi Vasa'] | 2020-12-15 07:42:03.909000+00:00 | ['Customer Experience', 'Customer', 'Customer Engagement', 'Customer Success', 'Customer Service'] |
Cupcake Girls Pt. 2 — Final Thoughts and Personal Experiences | Now I’d like to share some more experiences people have had with The Cupcake Girls. These are stories people reached out to me with after seeing my original article just two days ago.
A counselor who worked for Gender Justice Nevada that I talked to said “they [GJNV] had this idea that the CCG should get training to be more informed to handle trans clients that come to them, since so many sex workers are trans.” One member of GJNV reached out to the CCG to schedule this meeting and was never contacted back. The Cupcake Girls article proudly says that 60% of their clients are LGBTQ+.
The same licensed counselor said Cupcake Girls has referred clients to her as a resource for mental health, but that the CCG do not help pay for it, leaving her to either work for free or not see the client.
One client says the Cupcake Girls were uninterested in what she had to say on sex work being empowering for her, but “perked tf up” when she told them about taking a year long break from sex work — due to a stalker. They asked for a copy of her resume to give as an example to “Sex workers looking to leave the industry.”
One struggling sex worker reach out to the Cupcake Girls for food assistance and they gave her what was supposed to be a $100 grocery gift card. When she went to the store to use it the balance was instead $0. Imagine getting all your groceries in your cart and getting rung up only to find the money you thought you had to pay for it didn’t exist.
One brothel worker and porn performer I spoke to said (edited for conciseness and clarity):
“I went to them after pineapple [support] let me down. I needed resources because I took a really hard hit earlier this year […] and then my bank account was hacked and I was facing eviction. They had me jump through hoops and then told me I was approved for the full amount I needed and all checks were sent out but they only sent a check to my cheapest utility bill and they received it really late. […] I ended up just getting really lucky with the universe having my back and the courts let me stay until my lease was up and a local grant covered part of my utility bills I had. Now I’m unfortunately but gratefully stuck back with my toxic family because I couldn’t come up with F/L/S and cover all the debt from my utilities. Had they been honest in the first place I could have just avoided all the stress and moved on to find another resource instead of thinking I was actually being helped.”
The Cupcake Girls posted private info of this person on twitter in response to a message because “Our director isn’t super familiar with twitter and made the mistake wanting to make sure the msg was received”
The Cupcake Girls talked to her about a financial grant they could offer repeatedly before giving her the application, which they then denied, and referred her to the services she had already reached out to and been denied by.
Another performer and brothel worker I spoke with told me about her experience when the Cupcake Girls wanted to hire her as their community outreach person (emphasis mine).
“I sat with them to talk about being basically their community outreach person (a brand ambassador), and my duties were to be mainly being their cheerleader. Introducing my sex working peers to CCG, and speaking of them in only positive ways. At the time, I had a vanilla job, and at the end of my meeting, they asked if they could have my resume for vanilla work to show other sex workers that you could in fact write about your sex working skills on a resume to get out of sex work. I both declined the position and declined to let them use my resume. I just knew it would be shoved down the throats of sex workers who were not looking to get out of sex work. I declined the position to be their community outreach person because the paper work essentially said I could not be honest. I had to be a lap dog and preach to the online sex worker community about their respect, resources, and relationship bullshit. And you can bet, I was not going to be compensated in any way for being their cheerleader. It was a volunteer position. This was years after I went to them for help several times. The first time I needed help finding a therapist and transportation. I was told transportation wasn’t possible, even though it was listed on their website as a service offered. But they did find a therapist for me. I found a way to transport myself. But walking into an office completely covered with crosses and religious quotes on the wall, I promptly walked out. Then later, my partner and I both had similar experiences. We needed help finding a therapist to help with past trauma. They sent us to a life coach. Life coaches and therapists are not the same. Therapists work with past trauma and healing. Life coaches help you form a game plan for current life goals. Our life coaches were not at all prepared to help us with what we needed help with. So we both stopped seeing them. When I asked for dental assistance, they referred me out to a dentist who was not at all offering free or even discounted services to CCG clients as I was told. I had to pay full price and CCG informed me they could not give monetary help for this. I could not afford to go to the dentist, and my health suffered for years before I was able to afford it myself. The only true help I ever received from CCG was a $50 Albertsons card and a $50 Amazon card. In my 7 years of on and off reaching out to them for help, this is all I ever received. Oh, and they’ve curled my hair a few times. That’s it. This year for my birthday, they sent me nearly expired beauty items that leaked all over the package that was clear were meant to be handed out at their AVN suite.”
Multiple sex workers have told me stories like the last part, where the CCG sent them a birthday gift that was actually leftover goodies from their AVN suite, between 2 and 10 months after the expo happened.
One sex worker said she requested to be in their intensive case management program to meet with an advocate weekly to make S.M.A.R.T. goals. Instead of doing that they kept referring her out to different services. Intensive case management and resource referral are listed as two separate services on their website and literature, and she says she was specific about needing the former.
One performer said (emphasis mine):
“When my partner and I got rent and bill assistance from them earlier this year, we were told those were once in a lifetime grants, and we even had to sign paperwork acknowledging that we could never get financial assistance from the Cupcake Girls again. The money didn’t even come from them, it came from the Salvation Army, and when I told my case worker that I took issue and was uncomfortable with putting my legal name and info on a piece of paper and stating that I was referred by Cupcake Girls on the Salvation Army application, a notoriously anti-sex work anti-queer organization, she first told me that I had to put my legal name on there because that was on my lease. After I was approved, they told me they couldn’t write me a check and that it had to be made out to my landlord. Not only did I not have a proper landlord, (the building I lived in was owned by a corporation), but the front office didn’t accept checks. So I had to drive to the cupcake girl’s office, meet with someone in person, log into my resident portal account, and then have my rent paid via a Cupcake Girls company credit card.”
The limit for that grant is reportedly $500.
When sex workers have asked the Cupcake Girls for rent assistance the CCG tells them that they can send a check to their landlord. This tells the landlord you are in a precarious financial situation which you probably don’t want them to know, and possibly reveals to your landlord that you are a sex worker.
The performer quoted above said “why do I have to risk being outed to my leasing office/landlord to receive rental assistance that isn’t even coming from you, it’s coming from a religious, anti-sex work, anti-queer organization?”
Another performer says “I don’t like being promised things that I was never going to receive (like the life time grant) when I was apparently never applicable. I ended up foolishly wasting time I could have used to track down some other means of help before I ended up technically homeless.”
One sex worker says “I had a friend before covid that they helped out with groceries, and they sent a shopper with them to make sure that that’s what they bought….” Not trusting the sex worker to actually spend the money on food. I think this is why they like giving out gift cards so much.
Another sex worker “They sent my rent thing directly to my landlord, but it took over a month and the check got lost (a maintenance guy found it on the ground). So I ended up having to pay my own rent anyways. They could have just given it directly to me and saved me the trouble of waiting almost 2 months.”
And another sex worker “When I needed help with a lawyer for my restraining order, they didn’t get back to me until after my hearing.”
As I was getting ready to publish this article I received yet another email. | https://medium.com/@sophieladder/cupcake-girls-pt-2-final-thoughts-and-personal-experiences-c896e4798e77 | ['Sophie Ladder'] | 2021-01-27 14:25:15.023000+00:00 | ['Cupcake Girls', 'Sex Work', 'Charity'] |
The Social Construction Series Part 7: The Social Construction of Difference | Questioning The Concepts We Hold And The Habits We Have As An Act Of Social Resistance
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Have you ever thought about the word difference? And, maybe also considered, how that one word connotes a ton of power through the use of language? Hm.
Alright, well, whether you’ve ever considered that question or not, we are going to consider it, together, here. Ready? Good, let’s go.
Let’s define, as we always do, our key term. Here we go.
difference
noun /ˈdɪfrəns/ /ˈdɪfrəns/
[countable, uncountable] the way in which two people or things are not like each other; the way in which somebody/something has changed
Now, let’s reset quickly a social construction, shall we? Here we go.
social construct
noun /ˌsəʊʃl ˈkɒnstrʌkt/
A concept or perception of something based on the collective views developed and maintained within a society or social group; a social phenomenon or convention originating within and cultivated by society or a particular social group, as opposed to existing inherently or naturally.
Here’s what we’ve got thus far.
Difference, then, is a concept or perception based on the collective views of a society or social group, which does not exist naturally.
Right, so difference does not occur naturally. However, the word difference is used constantly. Really. Think about how often you say that word. Now, think about how often you hear that word utilized. Often, I’m sure.
Yet, according to social constructionism difference is all created in language. All of it. Meaning that difference is only as real as long as we continue to create it as real. Think about that for a minute.
Difference is only as real as long as we continue to create it as real.
Phew, that’s pretty powerful. Why? Well, before we get to that question, there are two new aspects to social constructionism to introduce here. Ready? Good. Here we go.
The first? Yep.
Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash
Habitualization
Habitualization describes how “any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be … performed again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort” (Berger and Luckmann 1966). Not only do we construct our own society but we also accept it as it is because others have created it before us. Society is, in fact, “habit.”
And?
Institutionalization
For example, your school exists as a school and not just as a building because you and others agree that it is a school. If your school is older than you are, it was created by the agreement of others before you. In a sense, it exists by consensus, both prior and current. This is an example of the process of institutionalization, the act of implanting a convention or norm into society. Bear in mind that the institution, while socially constructed, is still quite real.
Now, why are habitualization and institutionalization important to the discussion of difference? Good question.
Because, essentially, society is in a pattern of continuously creating difference, which has thus become institutionalized and generally accepted as fact.
Even though difference is not a naturally occurring phenomenon or fact. Difference is still real in accord with the consequences that stem from such socially constructed differences.
Yep, that last part, that these social constructions are real in their consequences is another sociological theory. Here you go.
Thomas Theorem
Another way of looking at this concept is through W.I. Thomas’s notable Thomas theorem which states, “If [people] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928). That is, people’s behavior can be determined by their subjective construction of reality rather than by objective reality. For example, a teenager who is repeatedly given a label — overachiever, player, bum — might live up to the term even though it initially wasn’t a part of [their] character.
Photo by Helena Hertz on Unsplash
Now, what happens when you take a concept such as difference, defined as separate and not the same, and you habitulize and institutionalize that concept? You get the Thomas Theorem. Meaning?
That now you have a socially constructed concept, difference, and have created a reality that continuously creates difference each and every day. Yep. And, who does this you ask?
Well, everyone does. Remember, based on the definition, a social construct is a concept that is agreed upon in a society.
There is, of course, a spectrum here. Meaning, that some people are aware of how difference operates, and some are not. The former people may have noble intentions, and might not.
And, the latter, well, they are in habitualization without awareness. And, that happens too. It’s not a judgment, or justification, it just occurs that way.
And, what does this mean to individuals? Right, another good question. Here we go.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Like Berger and Luckmann in their description of habitualization, Thomas states that our moral codes and social norms are created by “successive definitions of the situation.” This concept is defined by sociologist Robert K. Merton as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Merton explains that with a self-fulfilling prophecy, even a false idea can become true if it is acted upon.
Now you have a society that has habituzlied and institutionalized difference, and when people internalize that social construct as truth, which is common, they act on that difference. Why?
Because that is what they are told, and that is what they are shown.
Right. That is just so. However, before our short analysis is complete, we must introduce one more important concept. Here we go.
Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash
Power
(noun) The ability of an individual, group, or institution to influence or exercise control over other people and achieve their goals despite possible opposition or resistance.
There we go. And, let’s have one more important quote here to assist in our discussion.
“Most (and probably all) societies exist with systems of social division and social stratification, through which entire categories of people are elevated above others, providing one segment of the population with a disproportionate amount of money, power and prestige” (Macionis and Plummer 2012:232).
Right. Why is power important? Yep. Here we go.
Because difference is not wielded within a vacuum. Nope. Difference is wielded though very distinct power structures, which continue to perpetuate that difference. Important.
Yet, what is really different? Not much in fact. Facts? Sure.
People are more similar to each other than they are different. Biologically, we are more homogenous than we are heterogeneous. That is the bottom line. Biologically we are very much alike. Almost identical, in fact.
What does this mean?
That all of the difference we ascribe to individuals and groups of people are created in language and acted out through socialization, creating habits that are continuously repeated, which are then institutionalized as factual, and affected to and by each and every one of us on some level.
Phew, that was a lot. Hm. Right, so where do we go from here?
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
Awareness and Resistance
Yep, awareness and resistance. And? Well, awareness is first.
When we are aware of how these concepts function in language and are codified in social structures, we can choose to let them go and create a new way of thinking and acting. Truth. And?
It all starts with us disrupting our patterns and habits. Really. All of them. Questioning why we do the things we do, and then looking internally to find out if those habits or patterns make sense any more.
If they do? Okay, keep doing them. If they don’t? Let them go and create something new.
Every time we create a new pattern or habit, we are actively releasing the continuation of what was, or the status quo, and that? Well, that is an act of resistance. Social resistance, if you will. And?
Well, often people mistakenly believe that the only social resistance that leads to social change must happen on a grand scale right away. There was a time I thought this way. Really. And?
It’s just not so. Social change more often happens within small actions that lead to larger actions that then lead to large-scale social change.
Just take a look around the United States right now, and you will see a legacy of active social resistance in the streets right now. Yep.
And, that started with various individuals actively disrupting and then releasing an old pattern or habit, and creating a new one. Just like that. Beautiful to see, and even more beautiful to be a part of.
Now, I have more to say, however, this is a series, therefore we will get to continue our discussion of social constructionism in the near future. Until then?
Question.
Question the concepts you hold and the habits you have and see if they still work for you. And, if not, release them, and create something new. That’s pretty much it, and that is powerful. You are powerful. | https://medium.com/curious/the-social-construction-series-part-7-the-social-construction-of-difference-35397e91288d | ['Jeffrey Flesch'] | 2020-11-01 20:25:44.720000+00:00 | ['Social Construct', 'Social Justice', 'Resistance', 'Sociology', 'Difference'] |
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The journey of becoming (stumbling..) a Software Tester. | The journey of becoming (stumbling..) a Software Tester.
Well, to be more accurate, formally my title is Quality Assurance Engineer (or QA). Things is, Software Tester is what makes people goes “Ahhhhh Software Tester then Software Tester lah….” Sooo, yup.
Quick! What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you saw “Software Tester”? Most probably it will end up as something below.
Play with the systems? Clicking the application here and there to see if any error pops up.
Understand requirement and check is the software meet the requirement.
A job for me? Can I get excitement from it as I just interact with system all day long?
This is what I thought of when I first go to interview as a QA. In fact, I don’t even set out to be a Software Tester, I just happened to stumbled upon it in a job fair in my college, apply to try it out and… whoosh, almost 2 years spent in the industry.
Role as a QA
For me, the essence of QA is about improving a software so that it meet the users requirement as close as possible. This require answering questions like:
Does the software meet the users / client requirement and expectations?
Does it help them to solve their usage and business problems?
It is ease to use?
And so on…
Some of the items, like the bullet point #3, is impossible to lay out the complete extensive requirement on this that nothing falls through the cracks! User might not even know the ease of usage can be possibly improved unless we suggest to them.
The daily task of QA can varies a lot, for example, testing developer fixes, understand user requirement, summary report on the software status, creating test data for developer, facilitate discussion among team member to discuss an issue, maintain automation script and many more.
Challenges of being a QA
Being a QA is not as easy as it seems. For starters, QA has very little influence on what will be developed in the system. Why do I say so? I like to imagine that QA functions similarly to an investigator of the system, akin to the detective in a crime scene. A detective can’t control how a judge deliver his judgement, but can provide evidence that leans toward a side of judgement.
This means that as a QA, a lot of things is out of our sphere of control. The bugs reported that we feel important might not seem so in the project leader eyes. At best, we can come up with convincing arguments that it is essential. But it is something that we have to keep reminding ourselves in order to not go insane.
Another thing is the timing of task that is delivered to QA. We often can’t control what developer needs to be worked on now, as the priority of the task can be change in a whiff of notice. The development time may eat up a lot of testing time, and in the end, the build that is ready for test may be passed to QA at a very late stage, and oh boy, it is a stressful one. There is only so much we can do, that we just have to make do with what is given to us, for example OT all night to complete the task. And it is such a dreadful feeling to find a bug in this timing and the process has to go over again while we are racing to a release deadline.
And also, it feels very bad when a severe bug is leaked to production environment (software version deployed for user usage) and user found out about it. I’m currently working with banking industry, hence the stakes is much higher than say, normal Android App. Any bugs that may have a business implication require quick hot-fix and negotiations with bank on the release schedule. In severe cases, it might impose a penalty on us. I understand that catching bugs is a team effort, but sometimes when it is leaked, you just can’t stop asking yourself “How could I missed that?”
Is QA rewarding?
Despite the shortcoming, I liked QA as it can be very rewarding if you done your job well and your team really appreciate. One of the best thing becoming a QA is you get to feel good when you caught something really obscure but really important, and explain it to BA and Tech in a way that they completely understand it and came out a way to do a fix for it.
I also liked the variety of people I get to know when I’m working with them. Everyone comes from different background on their technical skills and analyzing skills, that I feel that I can learn a lot from them. It is not to be said that I can’t do this with other jobs, but I feel that one of the QA main task is to communicate communicate communicate, and facilitate communications, so naturally the opportunities presents more of itself that you can learn from others.
Closing thoughts
I think that is all on my surface observation as being a QA. Of course that is more but it will take way to long to write about it. After went in to the job, I just can’t be helped but feel appreciated on the service as a QA provides to others, that I cant fathom how more stressful is it to work on other big software that is used by millions of user around the world, or very critical industry such as aviation or healthcare.
Do connect with me if you are a Software Tester as well! | https://medium.com/@viktorng/the-journey-of-becoming-stumbling-a-software-tester-a448acf481e8 | ['Viktor Ng'] | 2020-12-21 03:33:43.140000+00:00 | ['Software Testing', 'Software Development', 'Blog'] |
OK you want love — but which type? | At times we all feel our life would be improved if there was more love in it.
By ‘love’ we usually mean the western ideal of mutual passion and respect, often leading to some form of coupling or exclusivity. Endlessly promoted, this romantic love makes Valentines Day a lucrative time for florists, jewellers, restaurateurs and — yes — greetings card manufacturers.
But that’s just one type of love. Concepts of love vary widely across the world and between cultures.
‘Love’ was similar to ‘duty’ for Chinese philosopher Confucius, to be expressed through a close respectful relationship with your family or clan and through loyalty to your king.
In Hinduism the closest equivalent of western ‘love’ is ‘kama’ (named after Kamadeva, the dashing bow and arrow wielding god of human love) — a word which encapsulates all emotional attraction and sensory and aesthetic pleasure, including the appreciation of nature and the arts as well as sexual desire.
Plato (centre left) and Aristotle (centre right) split love into six distinct types
But the Greeks have the most clearly defined concepts of love, thanks to philosophers Plato and Aristotle. They split love into six distinct types, which have been refined and expanded over time. According to these guys, we are most fulfilled when we have an abundance of each type of Greek love in our life.
These definitions of love remain completely relevant today. As such, they can help to explain the often painful mismatch in what we’re looking for, what we need and what we actually find, when searching for ‘love’.
So turn the lights down low, slip into something more comfortable and dive in:
Philia — deep friendship
When I went to my first family wedding as a kid in the 80s, my mum explained that it was also a sad occasion — because while the bride and groom were joining their lives together, they were officially saying goodbye to all their friends. I didn’t like the sound of that.
Thankfully ‘philia’ has none of this. This type of love recognises the enduring importance and strength of deep friendship. It includes feelings of loyalty among friends and feelings of camaraderie among colleagues.
Aristotle believed there were three reasons why we become friends with someone: either because they are useful to us, because they are pleasant company or because they are ‘good’ (defined as being rational and virtuous). Friendships founded on ‘goodness’ were the most valued by Aristotle because they were linked to companionship, dependability and trust, as well as mutual benefit.
Bjork’s 1997 single Joga was inspired by (and named after) her best friend
Aristotle saw philia as a dispassionate and virtuous love but for Plato, friendship did not conflict with sexual love (known as ‘eros’ — see below). Plato felt that friendship (philia) was sometimes a stage toward sexual love (eros) which in turn could transform the sexual relationship into a shared desire for a higher level of understanding (a better understanding of the self, each other and the world). This echoes priestess Diotima’s concept of a progressive Ladder of Love, which is described below.
So it’s fair to say the love we feel for our friends is a big deal. Don’t give up your place in the friend zone without good reason.
Philia anthem: Joga by Bjork — “Coincidence makes sense only with you.”
Eros — passionate love
Named after the god of love and fertility, eros is sexual or passionate love — the type of Greek love that’s closest to our modern romantic love.
We see love as a largely positive force but in Greek myth, eros is a form of madness that sets in once you’ve been pierced by one of Cupid’s arrows.
Just ask Prince Paris, who fell madly in love with Helen of Troy then stole her from her husband (Menelaus, the king of Sparta) which started the Trojan War. This in turn led to the Greek army’s defeat and the downfall of Troy.
So love and madness are intertwined, which won’t come as news to most of us, silently raging as the guy we’ve been dating has clearly read our message but not yet bothered to respond.
“Love is merely a madness and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do, and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love, too.”
Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It
Nevertheless it’s necessary for us to each to experience sexual or passionate love at some point in our lives because it is the essential first rung on Diotima’s Ladder of Love. Diotima was a priestess who in Plato’s Symposium described six rungs or stages of love that we must each ascend in order to truly appreciate beauty and to be fulfilled:
Stage 1) Love for one person
Stage 2) Love for all people
Stage 3) Love for souls — moving beyond appearance to appreciate our beautiful minds
Stage 4) Love for laws and institutions (bit of a tricky one this)
Stage 5) Love of knowledge
Stage 6) Love for love itself — an appreciation of beauty in the abstract, experienced as a vision.
Diotima saw love for one person as a step on the way to love for many (pic: BBC Radio 4’s History of Ideas)
So as long as your heart’s in it, even the messiest love affair could set you on course for enlightenment. Thanks Diotima.
Eros anthem: Love Hangover by Diana Ross — “If there’s a cure for this I don’t want it.”
Ludus — playful love
Sometimes overlooked, ‘ludus’ is the playful no strings attached kind of love that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever swiped left or right on a dating app.
Described as purely fun, ludus relationships are casual, undemanding and uncomplicated, and often accompanied by flirting, sex, music, dancing and laughter.
For all their simplicity, ludus relationships can be very long-lasting and are said to work best when both partners are self-sufficient.
Problems arise when one partner mistakes ludus (playful love) for eros (passionate love). Tell me about it. In fact, ludus has much more in common with the friendly love of philia.
Thankfully the enlightened Greeks did not regard ludus as simply an early stage of development to pass through en route to a more committed relationship. They regard this fun playfulness as an essential part of any relationship that aims to be long lasting — after all, where’s the enjoyment in love if there’s no sex, music, dancing or laughter?
Ludus anthem: Darling Nikki by Prince — “Thank U 4 a funky time, call me up whenever U want 2 grind.”
Storge — love for family
Maybe you don’t want to introduce your ludus hookups to your mum and dad (’so how did you guys meet?’) but the Greeks place a lot of significance upon family love, known as ’storge’.
Storge (pronounced ‘store-gae’) is the common empathy felt by most parents towards their children, and vice versa. Physical characteristics are irrelevant here. And as counsellors the world over will testify, a deficit of storge could be psychologically damaging.
The type of fondness that results from familiarity or dependency also falls under this category.
Like it or not, over time the sexual or passionate love known as ‘eros’ does tend to mutate into storge. I think ‘mutate’ is exactly the right word there.
Storge anthem: Keep it Together by Madonna — “Don’t forget that your family is gold.”
Pragma — love as a transaction
Let’s take a brief interlude here. Pragma is not one of the essential six types of Greek love. Instead it is a word used to describe a more practical and less emotional type of love that you may experience in your life.
Pragmatic love is a rich source of material for songwriter Lana Del Rey
Founded on reason or duty, pragma is love within a transactional relationship in the long-term interests of one or both partners.
An arranged marriage would be seen as pragmatic, as would a relationship where the attraction is purely financial. Hopefully they’ll order in a little ludus on the side.
Unhappy couples who decide to stay together out of a sense of duty to their family would also fall under this category.
Pragma anthem: Off to the Races by Lana Del Rey — “Tell me you want me, gimme them coins.”
Agape — love of all mankind
OK, back to the six essential types of Greek love: ‘Agape’ is love in its broadest sense — the love of all mankind.
Agape is selfless, unconditional and showing boundless compassion, so it’s also sometimes described as being charitable or altruistic.
In David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, FBI Special Agent Albert Rosenfield (played by the late Miguel Ferrer) demonstrates agape. Brought in to help find Laura Palmer’s killer, Rosenfield’s hilarious “attitude of general unpleasantness” rubs everyone up the wrong way. But as Sheriff Harry S Truman grabs him by the scruff of the neck, Rosenfield surprises everyone by saying:
“My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method… is love. I love you Sheriff Truman.”
Special Agent Albert Rosenfield, Twin Peaks Season 2
In Christianity, ‘agape’ is adapted to express the unconditional love of God for man.
Agape also has a Buddhist equivalent: ‘metta’ or ‘universal loving kindness’. This is said to be the purest form of love, in that it’s free from desire or expectation, and loves regardless of the flaws or shortcomings of others.
Agape anthem: Caravan of Love by Isley Jasper Isley — “I’m your brother, don’t you know.”
Philautia — self love
Finally we have the greatest love of all (thanks Whitney) — ‘philautia’ or self love.
Broadly defined as ‘regard for one’s own happiness or advantage’, the Ancient Greeks were quick to realise that philautia could be either a positive or negative force.
Positive self love is linked to our self esteem: the confidence and self belief seen as necessary if we want to help others.
“All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man’s feelings for himself.”
Aristotle
Negative self love is to be self absorbed or to show hubris, an excessive pride that in Ancient Greece would have been seen as an affront to the Gods.
Nowadays excessive self love may be revealed in an inflated sense of one’s abilities or achievements, revealing a disregard for truth that could prove dangerous. Come on through Mr Trump.
So we have to ration philautia carefully. Nevertheless like eros, ludus, philia, storge and agape, it is seen as an essential part of our emotional wellbeing.
As the Greeks have known for centuries, a life well lived is a life spent seeking and nurturing a rich variety of love.
Philautia anthem — I Touch Myself by Divinyls — “I love myself, I want you to love me.”
Source material: Psychology Today; BBC Radio 4: A History of Ideas; The School of Life; Thought Catalog; Lonerwolf
7 Ways To Love is now on Spotify. Show your ears some love. | https://medium.com/@tombishop72/ok-you-want-love-but-which-type-d3f35901f2bb | ['Tom Bishop'] | 2020-02-10 21:41:58.592000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Sex', 'Greece', 'Relationships', 'Love'] |
The Movies and My Son with Autism | Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash
My eleven-year-old son with autism absolutely loves to go to the movies. So a few years ago, as a reward for some really terrific behavior, we planned a trip to see Spider-Man — on the day the movie opened. I know . . . but let me explain.
Usually, we take advantage of AMC Theater’s Autism-Friendly Movies, which allow people on the spectrum to enjoy a movie without the bondage of sensory overload or the worry of disrupting others. Attendees are not ushered out for loud outbursts or stimming, and the volume in the theater is slightly lower than the usual deafening decibels. But the main attraction of attending these screenings is that the auditorium is full of other autism families, people who “get it.”
On this particular Saturday, there were no autism-friendly performances scheduled, and without thinking ahead, I had promised my son a trip to the movies. Since his behavior had recently been so impressive, so improved, so (I know, that word) normal, I figured that he was ready for a trip to the regular movies, with the general public. After all, isn’t that what all these past visits were for? To acclimate and ready him for involvement in the community?
“Yes,” I thought. “We’ll do it!” But I planned to sit on the aisle near the back, just in case.
As it was opening day, we waited in a very long line to enter, then another long line for popcorn. But he was great! I complimented myself on my stellar parenting through all of this, “This was a great idea,” I thought, “He can handle this. We have come so far.”
Popcorn in hand, we sat next to each other — me in the aisle seat and him right next to me in the second-to-last row of the theater. We chomped our popcorn through what felt like an endless series of long, loud previews. Still — he was an angel.
When the movie started, it was very loud, very stimulating. I reflected on the fact that it had been eleven years since I’d seen a non-autism friendly movie. I’d nearly forgotten the deafening surround-sound levels, and the pitch-black theater experience. On top of that, people were reacting loudly; This was opening day, and the theater was FULL.
Nonetheless, my son was terrific. He was quiet and engaged, actually paying attention. I whispered in his ear, “You are doing a great job!”
That’s when everything changed.
As if lightning struck, he stood up, darting out of his seat. I reflexively reached with my one free hand to grab him (my other hand occupied with a super-size Diet Coke), but I was too late. He zoomed past me, his eleven-year-old body much faster than mine on a regular day, but energized by the stimulation of this experience he was The Flash. By the time I stood up, my son was running full speed down the aisle toward the front of the movie theater — straight for the Emergency Exit.
Our bucket of popcorn went flying as I kicked it in haste, scrambling down the aisle. I was no match for his speed. He made it to the front of the theater, and began to descend a little staircase of about five steps toward a door with a big red “Alarm Will Sound” bar across it.
Full of adrenaline and with more eyes on me than on Spidey, I raced ahead with superhuman speed. My mom-bionic arm grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and pulled him away from his escape with no time to spare.
My son was thrilled! Now the adventure was ON. Giggling loudly, manically, he squirmed his way out of my grasp, then jumped under the stair handrail, and crawled BEHIND THE MOVIE SCREEN.
Elated with himself, the maniacal laughing developed a scream-like quality, like the Joker, only we were watching Spiderman. I whisper-yell, “Get out of there RIGHT NOW!!!” (Thanks to my MFA in acting, I have perfected the stage whisper.)
This set him off even more. He howled again with delight. This was his best day ever.
I whisper-yelled more and more. He laughed louder and louder.
By then, I was all too familiar with this attention-seeking behavior. Even still, I was defeated. It was clear that my adult-sized body would never fit into the tiny crevice he had crawled into.
I had no other choice. With every disgruntled eye in that opening-day movie theater directly on me . . . I walked all the way back up the aisle to the second-to-the-last row, and sat back down in my seat.
And I waited.
From my seat I could hear him giggling like a madman. EVERYONE COULD. Three separate people got up and exited the theater, and I was certain they went to find an usher to escort us out of the theater.
“I wonder if any of the ushers will fit in the crawl space behind the movie screen?” I thought.
The audience sat in silence, as everyone stared not at Spider-Man, but at the Emergency Exit, waiting to see if that kid was ever going to come back out.
A minute passed. Another minute passed.
Suddenly the giggling stopped. By then I had gathered all of our things and sat perched and ready on the edge of my seat.
Having discovered that he was no longer getting any attention, and that no one was crawling in after him, my eleven-year-old emerged, headfirst, and with some effort he soldier-crawled out of his hiding place.
By the time his feet hit the ground, I was waiting to grab him up by the armpit as only a mother can do. I escorted him up the aisle, the walk of shame, as my son wore a victorious smile while I donned a practiced expression of stern disinterest.
And as we got close to the lobby, every eye still on us, I saw two ushers standing by the door, waiting to wield their weighty authority. At the sight of their eager, pimply faces, the panicky tightness in my chest unexpectedly shifted.
I ranted to myself, “I dare you to kick us out of here. What you witnessed here today is called life. Thanks for watching. You don’t get to kick us out, this is us kicking YOU out — of MY MIND. We have every right to be here. In fact, we’ll be back next week.”
I may not fit into the crawl space behind a movie screen, but I know how to steal a show. Raising a child with pervasive sensory and behavior challenges is an adventure and a gift, and we’re not gonna hide away from the world. That day I grew a little more courageous, more bulletproof, and gave some Spider-Fans something to talk about. . . so, you’re welcome. | https://medium.com/@caterpillardream/autism-life-a-movie-trip-to-remember-82d8bb92216 | ['Caterpillar Talk'] | 2020-12-15 12:41:08.951000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Autism', 'Special Needs', 'Storytelling', 'Real Life'] |
Useful New Features in ES2016 and 2017 | ES2017 Features
Object.values
The Object.values lets us get an array with the values of an object in an array. The values are returned in the same order as it is provided by the for...in loop, except that Object.values do not return values that are in the prototype chain.
For example, we can write:
const obj = { a: 1, b: 2 };
console.log(Object.values(obj)); // [1, 2]
const obj = { 0: 'd', 1: 'e', 2: 'f' };
console.log(Object.values(obj)); // ['d', 'e', 'f']
const obj2 = { 100: 'd', 2: 'e', 7: 'f' };
console.log(Object.values(obj2)); // ['e', 'f', 'd']
console.log(Object.values('abc')); // ['a', 'b', 'c']
As we can see, Object.values works with objects and strings. If the keys are numbers, then they are returned in with the keys in increasing order, like in the obj2 example above. For strings, it returns an array of the individual characters of the string.
Object.entries()
The Object.entries function returns an array with each entry being the key-value pairs in their individual arrays. The entries are returned in the same order as it is provided by the for...in loop, except that Object.values do not return values that are in the prototype chain. As with any object, we can sort the array to get the entries in the order we want with the sort function.
For example, we can write:
const obj = { foo: 1, bar: 2 };
console.log(Object.entries(obj)); // [ ['foo', 1], ['bar', 2] ]
const obj = { 0: 'x', 1: 'y', 2: 'z' };
console.log(Object.entries(obj)); // [ ['0', 'x'], ['1', 'y'], ['2', 'z'] ]
const obj2 = { 100: 'x', 2: 'y', 7: 'z' };
console.log(Object.entries(obj2)); // [ ['2', 'x'], ['7', 'y'], ['100', 'z'] ]
console.log(Object.entries('abc')); // [ ['0', 'a'], ['1', 'b'], ['2', 'c'] ]
console.log(Object.entries(100)); // [ ]
const obj = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3};
for (const [key, value] of Object.entries(obj)) {
console.log(`${key} ${value}`); // "a 1", "b 2", "c 3"
}
Object.entries(obj).forEach(([key, value]) => {
console.log(`${key} ${value}`); // "a 1", "b 2", "c 3"
});
In the above examples, we can see that Object.entries return an array of key-value pairs with each entry as an array with the key being the first element and the value being the second element. If the keys are integers, then they are sorted in ascending numerical order. So Object.entries(obj2) returns [ ['2', 'x'], ['7', 'y'], ['100', 'z'] ] . It also works with strings with the individual characters return with the index of the characters as the key, so the key is the index of the string, which is the first element of each entry, and the individual character is the value of the string, which is returned as the second character. For objects that have no properties, like numbers and booleans, Object.entries returns an empty array.
The array returned by Object.entries can be converted to a Map object. It can be used like in the following example:
const obj = { a: 1, b: 2 };
const map = new Map(Object.entries(obj));
console.log(map); // Map { a: 1, b: 2 }
String.padStart()
The padStart() function adds a string the number of times before a string until it reaches the length that you specify. The function takes two parameters. The first is the target length of your string. If the target length is less than the length of your string, then the string is returned as is. The second parameter sis the string that you want to add the padding with. It’s an optional parameter and it defaults to ' ' is nothing is specified.
For example, we can write the following:
' def '.padStart(10); // " def "
' def '.padStart(10, "123"); // " 1231231def "
' def '.padStart(6,"123465"); // " abcdef "
' def '.padStart(8, "0"); // " 00000def "
' def '.padStart(1); // " def "
Note that each string is filled up to the target length with the string in the second argument. The whole string in the second argument may not always be included. Only the part that lets the function fill the string up to the target length is included.
String.padEnd()
The padEnd() function adds a string the number of times after a string until it reaches the length that you specify. The function takes 2 parameters. The first is the target length of your string. If the target length is less than the length of your string, then the string is returned as is. The second parameter is the string that you want to add the padding with. It’s an optional parameter, and it defaults to ' ' is nothing is specified.
For example, we can write the following:
' def '. padEnd (10); // " def "
' def '. padEnd (10, "123"); // " def1231231 "
' def '. padEnd (6,"123465"); // " defabc "
' def '. padEnd (8, "0"); // " def00000 "
' def '. padEnd (1); // " def "
Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors()
The Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors() function returns all the property descriptors of an object.
For example, we can use it like the following code:
const obj = {
a: 1
}; const descriptors = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors(obj);
The descriptors object should have:
{
a: {
configurable: true,
enumerable: true,
value: 1,
writable: true
}
}
Async and Await
With async and await , we can shorten promise code. Before async and await , we have to use the then function, we make to put callback functions as an argument of all of our then functions. This makes the code long is we have lots of promises. Instead, we can use the async and await syntax to replace the then and its associated callbacks as follows. For example, we have the code to make requests to the back end with the Fetch API:
const APIURL = " http://localhost:3000 "; const subscribe = async data => {
const response = await fetch(`${APIURL}/subscribers`, {
method: "POST",
mode: "cors",
cache: "no-cache",
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify(data)
});
return response.json();
}; window.onload = () => {
nameForm.method = "post";
nameForm.target = "_blank";
nameForm.action = "";
nameForm.addEventListener("submit", async e => {
e.preventDefault();
const firstName = document.getElementById("firstName").value;
const lastName = document.getElementById("lastName").value;
const email = document.getElementById("email").value;
let errors = [];
if (!firstName) {
errors.push("First name is required.");
} if (!lastName) {
errors.push("Last name is required.");
} if (!email) {
errors.push("Email is required.");
} if (!/[^@]+@[^\.]+\..+/.test(email)) {
errors.push("Email is invalid.");
} if (errors.length > 0) {
alert(errors.join(" "));
return;
}
try {
const response = await subscribe({
firstName,
lastName,
email
});
alert(`${response.firstName} ${response.lastName} has subscribed`);
} catch (error) {
alert(error.toString());
}
});
};
We replaced the then and callbacks with await . Then we can assign the resolved values of each promise as variables. Note that if we use await for our promise code then we have to put async in the function signature like we did in the above example. To catch errors, instead of chaining the catch function at the end, we use the catch clause to do it instead. Also, instead of chaining the finally function at the bottom to run code when a promise ends, we use the finally clause after the catch clause to do that instead.
In the code above, we got the resolved value of the promise assigned to a variable instead of getting the value in the callback of the then function, like in the const response = await subscribe({...}) line above.
async functions always return promises and cannot return anything else like any other function that uses promises. In the example above, we used the promised based Fetch API and async and await syntax, we showed that we can chain promises in a much shorter way than with the then function with callbacks passed in as an argument.
ES2016 and 2017 gave us convenient features that enhance the already great syntactic sugar and functions that were added to ES2015, which was a significant improvement over its predecessor. These two versions of JavaScript make JavaScript development even better with new Object, string, and Array methods and shorthand for chaining promises. | https://betterprogramming.pub/useful-new-features-in-es2016-and-2017-3df7b29cc503 | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2019-11-21 15:22:15.042000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Programming', 'JavaScript', 'Arrays', 'Software Development'] |
My Experience Collaborating With InfoSec Institute | Summary: I found working with InfoSec Institute to be a great pleasure. They were polite, timely, professional, compensated fairly, clear communicators and friendly.
Our Collaboration: I published my learning paths “Cybersecurity Data Science” and “Machine Learning for Red Team Hackers” with InfoSec, as well as several blog posts, which you can find at these links:
How deep learning is changing cybersecurity: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/blog/how-deep-learning-is-changing-cybersecurity/
Using data science to combat deepfakes, malware and social engineering: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/blog/using-data-science-to-combat-deepfakes-malware-and-social-engineering/
How to catch malware with artificial intelligence: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/blog/how-to-catch-malware-with-artificial-intelligence/
The Good: I found working with Jeff Peters, Cindy Borch, Bill O’Dea and Andrei Antipov from InfoSec Institute to be a great pleasure. They were polite, timely, professional, compensated fairly, clear communicators and friendly. All of our collaboration was smooth and pleasant.
The Bad: None.
The Ugly: Nada.
I look forward to collaborating with InfoSec in the future.
— Dr. Emmanuel Tsukerman
P.S. I’m not compensated for this post in any way. Just my honest opinion for the benefit of anyone who is interested. | https://medium.com/@emmanueltsukerman/my-experience-working-with-infosec-institute-991ee5b47f66 | ['Dr. Emmanuel Tsukerman'] | 2020-02-25 16:42:00.329000+00:00 | ['Authors', 'Review', 'Collaboration', 'Infosec'] |
What I learned exhibiting our last-mile tracking solution at Merck’s Digital Expo | The Merck Digital Expo in Darmstadt is a two day exhibition featuring 48 innovations built from within Merck, a 350 year old science & technology company started here in Darmstadt. This event hosted over 1,500 visitors in the past two days — all Merck employees from around the world who came to check out the next big thing in digital innovations. There were booths featuring robots (so many robots!), 3D printers that can print livers (yep, human livers), augmented reality that allows you to work in a medicine manufacturing facility without actually being in the manufacturing facility, and more. Our booth featuring NTDeliver’s end-to-end medicine donation tracking platform was different. Amongst the sea of really cool flashy high tech gadgets, we highlighted our simple SMS chat-bot that helps Merck keep track of the numbers of children treated for schistosomiasis (a gnarly parasitic worm disease) with praziquantel (the pill that kills the gnarly worms) donated through Merck’s donation program.
Our booth featured simple photos to illustrate the 7-step process of treating school-aged children for schistosomiasis.
As I reflect on the past two days spent discussing this technology and the purpose behind it, I have 3 main things in my head:
The simpler the better. Tracking medicine donations all the way through the last mile is a big problem that we could have easily engineered a super complex high-tech solution for. Instead, we went with the simplest way forward — text messaging. While a text message chat-bot may not be the flashiest thing at a digital expo, it works.NTDeliver texted over 9,000 Kenyan teachers asking them a series of questions about the distribution of praziquantel during Kenya’s national school-based deworming day, and we saw a response rate over 70%. This simple use of basic technology allows us to learn how many kids were treated for schistosomiasis in near-real time, immediately following each deworming, as opposed to the 12–18 month timeline required by the previous paper-based process. Technology should never be the sole focus. The info I threw out in point #1 was cool and all, but what really matters is that kids are being cured of schistosomiasis, a disease that threatens their shot at a long healthy life. And they’re not being treated by the technology we built, they’re be treated due to the massive collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, shipping providers, global health organizations, ministries of health and education, teachers and a bunch of dorky developers (that’s us). Technology enables us to do great things, but none of it would happen without the people. The importance of understanding the ‘why’ behind what you do. While our booth had big ‘competition’ sitting right between a robot and a virtual reality manufacturing facility, we noticed something unique about the crowd our booth attracted — they stayed. Since this event was hosting only Merck employees, many of these individuals played some part — big or small, direct or indirect — in the development of this medicine. When they learned about the impact their efforts were making they lit up and wanted to know more. The conversations that followed showed their understanding of the technology, how impressed they were at the magnitude of collaboration enabling all the moving pieces to come together, and pride learning that the work they do is making a real difference in the world.
Since 2007, Merck’s donation program has donated 800 million tablets of praziquantel to treat 320 million patients through the World Health Organization. They now commit to donating 250 million tablets per year until this disease has been eliminated throughout all of Africa. NTDeliver, a supply chain information system built on top of the Secure Data Kit platform, has tracked 400 million of these tablets in the past 2 years, 2 million of which were tracked all the way to the mouth of the child during Kenya’s national deworming days in 2018. We plan on expanding this last mile tracking technology into other African countries by building strong relationships with those in-country to pave the way for another successful collaboration. | https://medium.com/securedatakit/what-i-learned-exhibiting-our-last-mile-tracking-solution-at-mercks-digital-expo-2334a8030c88 | ['Emily Tunggala'] | 2018-10-17 20:46:51.195000+00:00 | ['Nomorentds', 'Makingschistory', 'Supplychain', 'Globalhealth', 'Lastmile'] |
An easy tutorial to make impressive topological maps with R & Rayshader. | Within the R community, there are some pretty clever people making pretty clever packages. By far one of the most impressive packages is the ‘Rayshader’ package developed by Tyler Morgan-Wall.
This package enables users to create 2d and 3d visualisations using elevation data. Through a clever combination of “ raytracing, spherical texture mapping, overlays, and ambient occlusion” users can produce stunning topological maps and animations. For those familiar with R, users are now able to convert ggplot2 plots into 3d visualisations … but I’ll get into that in another tutorial.
Now, while Rayshader is super impressive, it is also pretty daunting in its application. So here is a simple tutorial for you to impress your cartography friends with.
Firstly you need to install and load the following packages
install.packages("rayshader", repos = "
require(rayshader)
}
if (!require(geoviz)) {
install.packages("geoviz", repos = "
require(geoviz)
}
if (!require(tibble)) {
install.packages("tibble", repos = "
require(tibble)
}
if (!require(dplyr)) {
install.packages("dplyr", repos = "
require(dplyr)
}
if (!require(ggplot2)) {
install.packages("ggplot2", repos = "
require(ggplot2)
}
if (!require(raster)) {
install.packages("raster", repos = "
require(raster)
}
if (!require(Magick)) {
install.packages("Magick", repos = "
require(Magick)
} if (!require(rayshader)) {install.packages("rayshader", repos = " http://cran.us.r-project.org ")require(rayshader)if (!require(geoviz)) {install.packages("geoviz", repos = " http://cran.us.r-project.org ")require(geoviz)if (!require(tibble)) {install.packages("tibble", repos = " http://cran.us.r-project.org ")require(tibble)if (!require(dplyr)) {install.packages("dplyr", repos = " http://cran.us.r-project.org ")require(dplyr)if (!require(ggplot2)) {install.packages("ggplot2", repos = " http://cran.us.r-project.org ")require(ggplot2)if (!require(raster)) {install.packages("raster", repos = " http://cran.us.r-project.org ")require(raster)if (!require(Magick)) {install.packages("Magick", repos = " http://cran.us.r-project.org ")require(Magick)
Next, you need to set some parameters for the area you would like to visualise. In this example, I use coordinates for Cornwall (mostly because I miss my family farm down there).
# Set lat long for area you would like to rayshade - this example looks at Plymouth to Cornwall lat = 50.3755
lon = -4.1427 # Set the km2 radius of the area
square_km = 80 # Max tiles request fron 'mapzen' and 'stamen' - Increasing max_tiles results in a high res image (but will take more time) max_tiles = 40
Following this, you will need to fetch the elevation data based on your pre-determined parameters. (This may take a few moments depending on the size of your area)
dem <- mapzen_dem(lat, lon, square_km, max_tiles = max_tiles)
You have two options as a map overlay. In this example, I use a Stamen terrain overlay, as I wanna show off the natural vegetation of Cornwall’s landscape. If the terrain overlay is not for you, check out the other range of stamen overlays here -> http://maps.stamen.com/#toner/12/37.7706/-122.3782).
Alternatively, you can use a Mapbox overlay, however, in doing so you will also need to remember to add your API key into this request.
# Get a stamen overlay
overlay_image <-
slippy_overlay(dem,
image_source = "stamen",
image_type = "terrain",
png_opacity = 0.3,
max_tiles = max_tiles)
Once this is completed we want to render the ray shader scene into a base R matrix.
# Render the 'rayshader' scene
heightmap = matrix(
raster::extract(dem, raster::extent(dem), method = 'bilinear'),
nrow = ncol(dem),
ncol = nrow(dem)
)
Next, you need to add some shading. Typically I go for a sun angle of 270, yet depending on the map I am creating I will vary the texture I use. Rayshader comes with seven built-in styles “imhof1”, “imhof2”, “imhof3”, imhof4“,”desert“,”bw“ and ”unicorn”.
sunshade <- heightmap %>%
sphere_shade(sunangle = 270, texture = "imhof1") %>%
add_overlay(overlay_image)
Now you’re ready to plot. We add the sunshade and heightmap into the plot3d function along with a few other variables. It is important to note, if your visualisation is of a landlocked area there is no need add any of the water variables to the function. However, if you love the sea as much as I do, Rayshader has some pretty awesome features to display water.
rayshader::plot_3d(
sunshade,
heightmap,
zscale = raster_zscale(dem) / 3,
solid = TRUE,
shadow = FALSE,
soliddepth = -raster_zscale(dem),
water=TRUE,
waterdepth = 0.5,
wateralpha = 0.5,
watercolor = "lightblue",
waterlinecolor = "white",
waterlinealpha = 0.5
)
As my wise GIS teacher always taught me, if you’re publishing these maps in a journal or report its useful to include a scale bar and north arrow. Rayshader can do this in two simple lines of code 💥
#add scale bar to plot
render_scalebar(limits=c(0, 5, 10),label_unit = "km",position = "W", y=50,scale_length = c(0.33,1))
(position = "E") #add north arrow to plot render_compass (position = "E")
Finally, you can render the plot in high quality and export to png
render_highquality(samples=200, scale_text_size = 24,clear=TRUE) rayshader::render_depth(
filename = "cornwall.png")
And there you have it. A simple way to make super impressive topological maps with Rayshader. A massive shout out to the mind-boggling work of Tyler, and if you wish to learn more yourself checkout the Rayshaer documentation https://www.rayshader.com/index.html | https://medium.com/@nathanaelsheehan/an-easy-way-to-make-impressive-topological-maps-with-rayshader-66b257dc1e02 | ['Nathanael Sheehan'] | 2020-09-01 11:00:25.002000+00:00 | ['GIS', 'Maps', 'Cartography', 'R', 'Rayshader'] |
Autonomous Lights With Raspberry Pi | Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
I began this year like most other people, anticipating another typical year of my life. I had my goals at work, and I planned to ski every weekend of the winter, and rock climb my hardest.
2020 had different plans, and I got none of those goals done properly much like most of us. Quarantining and isolating is still miserable, but one good thing came from it. I decided to try my first Raspberry Pi project!
What I Built
Autonomous lights for my home office!
An LED light strip under my desk adds ambient light.
When people walk into the room, the lights under my desk turn on. When the last person leaves, the lights turn off.
This involves two laser circuits running off a wall socket, with the lasers pointing at horizontally aligned light sensors across a walkway. The light sensors are connected to a Raspberry Pi, which continuously monitors fluctuations from these sensors.
Why are there two sensors? Because a direction of travel is established based on which of the two sensors is triggered as being “dark” first. Triggering the sensors in one direction is understood by the service as a person entering the room, and triggering them in the other direction is understood as a person leaving.
This directional triggering is tracked as a count of people in the room, which then triggers an action from the lights if there is a need.
GitHub repo
What I Used
Philips Hue Lightstrip
Philips Hue Hub
Raspberry Pi 3
1 Multimeter
Voltage regulator
2 laser diodes, 5V 650nm 5mW
Capacitors
3 Breadboards
A bunch of breadboard wires
A bunch of resistors
2 light resistors
1 Micro-USB breadboard adapter
Micro-USB to wall plug charger
Waiting for all that to arrive during a pandemic took way too long!
Fixing The Lights
I love soft, ambient lighting. I stuck the Philips Hue light strip under my desk to provide a glow to the room when it turns on.
The light strip is stuck in an arching shape around the bottom of my L-shaped desk.
Philips provides an app to toggle your lights, but I decided that was too much work. It would be vastly better if the lights could turn themselves on and off.
Phase 1: Building The Circuits
As a software engineer, this was the hardest part for me. Building a basic circuit is a hilarious ordeal when you’ve only ever had to think about electricity in conceptual terms. Many steps of the process induce reactions like “Whoa! That works, look how cool it is!”
Why couldn’t my college professors teach us to build basic circuits in all those physics classes? Strange.
Lasers hiding in plain sight, sensors not so much yet.
The Laser Circuits
I followed this guide to build my laser circuits. I made two separate circuits for each laser diode and connected them in parallel to a power source. I stuck the breadboard on my wall where it would be hidden from plain sight positioned the lasers pointing across the walkway..
What a mess!
The Sensor Circuits
I followed this guide on creating the light sensor circuit and connecting it to the Raspberry Pi.
I used the same breadboard to create two separate light sensor circuits.
I hid the Raspberry Pi and light sensor breadboard away from plain sight. I extended the wires to sensors to position them exactly where the LED lights fell on the other side of the walkway.
I know, it’s a bit of a mess. But that can be improved or hidden easily.
And that finished the hardware rigging part.
Phase 2: The Programming
I setup my Raspberry Pi in a “headless” mode using this guide, meaning I didn’t set up a GUI on it and ran it through terminal instead. In my case, I felt that this project was simple enough to accomplish through the terminal.
First things first, there needed to be a way to connect to the Philips Hue lights from the Raspberry Pi. There’s an excellent guide on how to do this here.
After setting it up and messing around with HTTP requests, I hooked up the code to the light sensors connected to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins. All this brought me to the code shared in my GitHub repo here. These two files together detect triggers from the sensors and toggle my desk lights correspondingly.
I placed these files inside a folder in the Raspberry Pi directory system. But this code won’t run itself. Something needs to run it to keep track of people entering and exiting the room.
After weighing my options on what I needed, I decided to use the systemd approach to set up a service that runs the entire time the Raspyberry Pi is on. The code for this service is in the same GitHub repo here.
Done!
Final product
Problems
Okay, so the project is technically done but it’s not perfect. There are some basic things that became very annoying in practice:
The laser beams keep moving over time because my condo is made of wooden construction, which slightly adjusts with traffic and temperature changes. It’s enough movement that the beams fall off the sensors, which then requires re-adjustment. The light sensors are unreliable. Watching their output on my Pi logs reveal that they incorrectly report darkness at random intervals. I adjusted the values as much as I could, but I was only able to mitigate the issue instead of eliminating it.
For technical context: The Raspberry Pi API allows you to set a threshold for what value is considered dark between 0.0 and 1.0. If the average value of the last few reported values drops below the threshold, the Pi considers it to be dark.
My light sensors were incorrectly reporting low average values. To combat this problem, I set the darkness threshold to 0.01. The sensors are set at waist height because we have a dog who should not be able to trigger the lights. So it turns out that hand movement while walking causes some significant chance of error with the sensors. A hand that goes in front while entering can block the father sensor first, making the system flip the direction of travel.
This combination of issues leads to mild chaos.
I’ve woken up on many nights to see the lights on. So now I disconnect the system every night and turn it back on in the morning.
The sensors misjudging my direction of travel even once in a day undermines the usefulness of the system altogether.
And I’m tired of adjusting the sensors.
Conclusion
Great project, not yet great in practice.
I may need to rethink the tools I’m using for detection. Or maybe the way I’ve connected the wires at length is the reason the sensors glitch.
I could also try out a machine learning model and hook up a camera on the room to detect presence.
I loved making this system and I learned a good amount. I’d love questions, feedback, or suggestions on this. If you know what I did wrong, help me! Please reach out to me through any means listed on my website. | https://medium.com/@vikram1092/autonomous-lights-with-raspberry-pi-8a78b38c1531 | ['Vikram Ramkumar'] | 2020-11-23 15:58:56.396000+00:00 | ['Raspberry Pi', 'Software Development', 'Philips', 'Autonomous Lights', 'Philips Hue'] |
What’s the Tempo of Your Start-up? | What’s the Tempo of Your Start-up?
We’ve recently had a number of amazing new team members come on board which is always a good opportunity to get a fresh perspective on your company culture¹. One comment that keeps coming up is how fast we move and the sense of urgency we operate with. This is partially driven by exciting external events that demand it but it’s also our default internal state. If something non-urgent can be done next week or today, we always default to today. As our partner, Tony Robbins, often playfully says, “when would now be a good time?” This is certainly not a surprise to anyone who knows our founding GP, Dakin Sloss, as speed is one of his hallmarks.
It’s well understood that startups need to move fast². I think Reid Hoffman distills it best by explaining that speed is one of the only strengths a startup has against incumbents with orders of magnitude more resources. In the early stages, speed is critical because almost all startups start Default Dead, as Paul Graham would say.
Assuming their expenses remain constant and their revenue growth is what it has been over the last several months, do they [the startup] make it to profitability on the money they have left? Or to put it more dramatically, by default do they live or die? -Paul Graham
The way to escape death is by iterating your product or service until you reach product-market fit. As a result, the faster you can iterate, the greater your likelihood of success. In the later stages, post-product-market fit, you’re much more likely to face competitors and speed is critical to scale and capture market share.
However, it can be hard to know when you’re heads-down running a startup if you’re moving fast enough — there are no standardized benchmarks to compare yourself to. I certainly didn’t know when I was running Asseta. Now as an investor, it’s much easier to compare the relative tempos of many startups. From this perspective, it becomes quite obvious to see the correlation between speed and results.
This topic reminded me of one of the first podcasts I ever listened to, a wonderful Radiolab episode on cities³. It opens with psychology professor Bob Levine from California State University discussing his theory on how speed is a major factor in what gives cities their unique feel. He ran an experiment where he measured the average time that it took citizens in a given city to walk 60 feet at a certain time of day. It turns out that each city has its own unique pace or rhythm and Levine posits that this rhythm accounts for a large part of how a city feels.
Average time for citizens to cover 60 feet: Copenhagen: 10.1 seconds Dublin: 10.76 seconds Oslo: 12.2 seconds Mumbai: 14.4 seconds Liberia: 27 seconds
Whether the city conforms to its citizens or vice versa is an open question but I think it’s safe to assume that someone that moves from Liberia to Cophengan will get a bit of a pep in their step. The corollary is that companies also have their own rhythm but the difference is that they have control over what it is.
I believe that the strongest lever to shift the speed of a startup is the pace and urgency of the founder/CEO. Like most parts of company culture, it defaults to the DNA of the founders unless set otherwise. If you’re not happy with how fast your company is moving, I would suggest reflecting on how you can increase your own urgency in a productive way. I’ve seen first hand how that can cascade throughout an organization.
Footnotes | https://medium.com/prime-movers-lab/whats-the-tempo-of-your-start-up-35980c7f9b38 | ['Anton Brevde'] | 2020-12-18 12:40:29.562000+00:00 | ['Company Culture', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Founders', 'Startup', 'Venture Capital'] |
Taking A Global Perspective | Neal said that right next to the square is the capitol building, known as the Great Hall of the People, and close by, the Forbidden City, which they were able to walk through.
Day two, the group visited Wenhui Middle School in Beijing. Neal said one of the top priorities of the trip was to get the teachers into schools to talk to students. She said it’s broken down like an American school system (grades 6–8) with the students immersed in an English language program. She said the students spoke excellent English.
Part of Amy Neal’s trip to China involved a visit to the Wenhui Middle School in Beijing.
Neal said that was impressive, but what really caught her attention came after a visit with the vice principal. “As Americans, we’re asking how she deals with behavior problems and parents. The vice principal honestly just shook her head. They don’t have behavior problems at their school. Their families put education on a pedestal, and teachers in China are on a pedestal,” Neal said.
She said parents there demand excellence and good behavior from their children. Neal visited with one student whose mother was a doctor and father worked in the military. That student got to go home every day, but because the city is so large, Neal said some students lived nearby during the week.
Another wake-up call came after the teachers spent the rest of the day receiving a designed cultural immersion lesson at an open market, bartering for things like water, and later at the mall where they had to try to overcome the language barrier to order lunch. “I went and ordered something, and I ended up walking back to my table with a plate full of tofu. And I can’t return it! How do you return a plate of food? I don’t know how to explain this to someone who doesn’t speak English. My friend who ordered a rice and chicken meal shared it with me so I didn’t go hungry that day,” Neal said with a laugh.
The Great Wall
Neal said visiting the Great Wall of China had been on her bucket list since a college friend had visited. That dream became reality the next day. She said the part of the Wall they visited was about a two-hour bus ride out of Beijing, called the Mutianyu Great Wall, built around 1400 A.D. She said the experience was overwhelming, bringing one teacher to tears. “To stand on the Great Wall and touch some of the rocks, it was honestly like it was alive. You think about how many people built it, and they were slaves or they were peasants who worked for the Chinese government to keep them safe back in the 1400s, and how many people have walked on it since then. It was incredible to me; it was breathtaking,” Neal said.
Amy Neal poses for a picture with the rest of the NEA Global Learning Fellows on the Great Wall of China.
While on the wall, Neal heard another woman speaking English and approached her. The woman ended up being a kindergarten teacher working in Dubai. The two exchanged email addresses and plan to connect their classes this fall so their students can meet.
Neal also realized the Great Wall isn’t one giant wall across China, but a series of pieces of wall built during different eras. In total, it measures over 13,170 miles. The largest portion, the Ming Great Wall, measures just over 5,500 miles.
Terracotta Warriors/Army
Neal’s history lesson continued in central China at the city of Xi’an. She learned it was the original capital of China, and it’s where she experienced the extraordinary story of the Terracota Warriors (built 200 B.C). “After being at the Great Wall, which I thought was the most amazing thing in the world, we go to the Terracotta Warriors, which are 600 years older than the part of the Great Wall that we were on,” Neal said. | https://medium.com/united-voices/taking-a-global-perspective-9a5f28288d4e | ['North Dakota United'] | 2017-07-12 15:04:47.242000+00:00 | ['China', 'Global Learning', 'Education', 'Ndu Member Profiles'] |
New Year Resolution; Yang Selalu Ambyar dan Gagal | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/@iniakutama/new-year-resolution-yang-selalu-ambyar-dan-gagal-e9f1c78d8fe0 | ['Edwin Al Pratama'] | 2020-12-13 22:32:36.080000+00:00 | ['New Year Resolution', 'Goals Objectives', 'Habit Building', 'Membentuk Perilaku', 'Habit'] |
Esports market shows first signs of maturity | Esports market shows first signs of maturity
© Photo Credit: redbull.com
VC ecosystem remains resilient amidst pandemic
2020 will be remembered by many as the year when the world went into a lockdown, faced a global pandemic and coped with economic uncertainty and volatility. As the year comes towards an end, we realise that the venture capital and start-up ecosystem has proven quite resilient. According to Pitchbook, US VC deal activity in Jan-Sept 2020 stands at 223 deals for a total value of $53.2bn vs FY 2019 242 deals for a total value of $55.3bn (Pitchbook Venture Monitor, 2020). Fundraising remained even healthier with US VC funds raising total capital of $56.6 billion across 228 funds in Jan-Sept 2020, already surpassing the $54.9 billion capital raised in FY 2019 (Pitchbook Venture Monitor, 2020). Finally, the year had a slow start in terms of exit opportunities, but quickly recovered in the second half mainly driven by public listings of tech unicorns (examples include Snowflake, Asan, Unity, Palantir and others).
Overall, it is fair to conclude that the recent pandemic situation has not only driven numerous early stage ventures into financial distress, but also created a lot of new opportunities. To name a few, digitalisation across SMEs was accelerated, telemedicine adoption was encouraged by favourable regulation and robotic process automation was rigorously applied to industrial and logistics processes to facilitate business as usual while limiting human contact.
Among all favourable trends, it is hard for one not to mention the esports phenomenon observed in the past year. In 2020 we saw the first three signs of the esports market slowly approaching maturity: i) increased interest from mainstream investors, ii) shift of funding towards business models which target monetisation and iii) increase in mega rounds and exit opportunities.
Esports growth potential attracts investors
It is very difficult to ignore the esports investment opportunity. While previously the sector attracted mainly investments from esports-specific VC funds (Bitkraft, Play Ventures, Makers Fund and London Venture Partners), currently it is common to find an esports target in the portfolio of most VCs. According to Pitchbook, the top 10 VC investors in the mobile gaming industry include some of the most active VCs such as Accel (16 deal counts), Sequoia (15) and Andreessen Horowitz (10) (Pitchbook, 2020).
Source: Newzoo
To quantify the esports investment opportunity, the global gaming market in 2020 is about $159bn ($200bn in 2023), global esports revenues (a subset of the gaming market) in 2020 are about $1.1bn ($1.6bn in 2023), and global esports audience in 2020 is estimated at 495m (646m in 2023) (Newzoo, 2020).
Source: Newzoo
Overall, the global esports market is growing twice faster than the global gaming market, but still represents less than 1% of it, suggesting the industry has a high growth potential. The recent pandemic accelerated esports market growth and we expect tailwinds such as an increase in audience and active streamers to carry over to the next year.
Shift of funding from game developers and publishers to other stakeholders
A few years ago, the investment thesis in esports was always revolving around the next big game developer or publisher. Investors rushed towards funding game developers with the hope of finding the next global game mimicking the success of League of Legends (published by Riot Games), Star Craft (Blizzard Entertainment), Fortnite (Epic Games) or Counter Strike (Valve Games). Therefore, it is no surprise that the most funded esports business models (in terms of total rounds and raised capital) in 2011–13 were game developers of MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) and FPS (first-person shooter) games (Tracxn, 2020). As the esports industry became more mainstream in 2014–17, venture capital was shifted towards funding league organisers and live-streaming broadcasters, which became the new top funded business models (Tracxn, 2020). Once the infrastructure of the industry was created, private capital shifted once again to focus on funding player organisations which employ and train professional teams to complete. Player organisations was the most funded business model in 2018–19 (Tracxn, 2020).
Source: Tracxn
Overall, game developers and publishers have attracted c30% and broadcasters and league organisers c45% of total funding since industry inception (Tracxn, Rocket Capital, 2020). Going forward we expect VC investors to focus on funding companies and business models which target monetisation such as fan engagement, betting, real-money gaming and in-game advertising, which is another sign that the industry is maturing.
Increase in mega rounds and exit opportunities
In the last couple of years, we observed a few trends in esports fundraising, which suggest that the industry is maturing. Based on the latest data in Dealroom, the global gaming industry has seen a significant decrease in funding rounds in 2020 (273 vs 518 in 2019), while the total raised amount almost doubling yoy (€3.8bn raised in 2019 vs €5.6bn in 2020). This is mainly driven by a significant increase in mega rounds (capital of more than €100m) in the last two years (Dealroom, 2020).
Source: Dealroom
Overall, the average funding per deal has increased from €4.7m in 2014 to €20.4m in 2020 (Dealroom, 2020). Among the mega rounds this year are Tencent-led $100m Series B investment in VSPN, MPL’s $90m Series C round and Sony’s $250m investment in Epic Games, followed by another Series E round for undisclosed amount. Naturally, as we see more late stage fundraising, there have been more exit opportunities. Out of the 969 esports companies covered by Tracxn, overall there have been 75 exits in the industry (11 public and 64 acquired) (Tracxn, 2020). Despite the short IPO window in 2020, we have seen some of the biggest esports IPOs — Unity Software ($13.7bn valuation), Corsair Gaming ($1.3bn) and Guild Esports ($52m), with Roblox expected to close by the end of the year (around $8bn). As the industry showcases more successful, viable exit opportunities, we expect to see increase investor interest going forward.
Source: Dealroom
Excited about esports opportunities going forward
We at Rocket Capital believe that esports is only at the infancy of its growth and monetary potential. We expect tailwinds from the current pandemic situation to carry on in the next year, presenting numerous opportunities for investors, as the industry continues its path towards maturity. | https://medium.com/rocket-capital/esports-market-shows-first-signs-of-maturity-328246d266bd | ['Viktoria Oushatova'] | 2021-11-15 08:29:29.619000+00:00 | ['Esport', 'Gaming', 'Venture Capital', 'Investing', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
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Hitachi Vantara Hiring Data Scientist for 2020/21 Pass-out | Hitachi is recruiting freshers as Data Scientist. Applicants from the different clumps are qualified for this job. The point by point qualification and application measure are given underneath.
About Hitachi
Hitachi Vantara, an entirely claimed auxiliary of Hitachi, Ltd., guides our clients based on what’s presently to what’s next by addressing their advanced difficulties. Working close by every client, we apply our unrivaled modern and advanced capacities to their information and applications to profit both business and society. Over 80% of the Fortune 100 trust Hitachi Vantara to assist them with creating income streams, open upper hands, lower costs, improve client encounters, and convey social and natural worth.
also apply for : Salesforce is recruiting freshers as Software Intern 2021 Batch
Job Overview:
Collaborate with clients to comprehend business goals and make logical procedures to help accomplish them.
* Enhancing information assortment methods to incorporate data that is applicable for building logical frameworks.
* Processing, purging, and checking the trustworthiness of information utilized for investigation.
* Analyze and model organized information utilizing progressed factual techniques.
Perform exploratory information examinations, create and test working speculations, get ready and investigate chronicled information and recognize designs.
Organization NameHitachi
Organization website www.Hitachi.com
Employment Role Data Scientist
Batch 2020/21 Pass-out
Location Pune
Salary Best in Industry
Set of working responsibilities:
* Interact with clients to comprehend business destinations and make logical procedures to help accomplish them.
* Enhancing information assortment techniques to incorporate data that is important for building scientific frameworks.
* Processing, purging, and confirming the trustworthiness of information utilized for examination.
* Analyze and model organized information utilizing progressed factual techniques.
* Perform exploratory information examinations, create and test working speculations, plan and investigate recorded information and recognize designs.
* Analyze information utilizing open source bundles and business/undertaking applications
* Perform AI, text investigation, and factual examination strategies, for example, characterization, synergistic sifting, affiliation rules, assumption examination, subject demonstrating, time-arrangement investigation, relapse, measurable derivation, and approval techniques.
* Selecting highlights, assembling and upgrading classifiers utilizing AI methods.
* Implement calculations and programming expected to perform investigations.
* Drive customer commitment zeroed in on Big Data and Advanced Business Analytics.
* Doing specially appointed examination and introducing brings about a reasonable way.
* Communicate results and teach others through reports and introductions. Abilities Required • Expertise in Data Mining, Data fighting, and information munging utilizing at least one of the most regularly utilized information science apparatuses: R, Python, SAS, SPSS, Weka • Experience in start to finish information science and designing exercises.
* Expertise in customer commitment, information science counseling type exercises.
* Must have driven a group of information designers and information researchers in driving information science commitment.
* Experience with investigation in IT and IoT space is an or more.
* Knowledge and involvement with Hadoop (Map Reduce worldview) and so forth
* Must be involved and more likely than not dealt with actualizing AI and information mining calculations.
* Passion for discovering importance in enormous informational collections and recognizing significant outcomes.
* Excellent relational abilities (both composed and verbal) and relational aptitudes.
* Experience working with and changing huge informational collections.
* Understanding of business worth and how this identifies with noteworthy outcomes.
* Ability to distinguish or decipher numerous information sources and necessities at that point changing them into significant plans.
* Ability to take dubiously characterized informational collections and prerequisites at that point proactively distinguish and collaborate with required SMEs to give translations custom fitted to singular customer needs.
* Ability to envision information results into important work processes including diagrams and charts
* Experience in scripting dialects with experience in scripting to coordinate programming arrangements is an or more.
* Additional Skills (discretionary) Scala, Spark, H2O,Mahout, Hive
* Product Knowledge: At least 3 of the accompanying: o R, Python (Scikit-learn, numpy, and so on), Weka, SAS, SPSS, MATLAB/Octave, Hadoop (Map Reduce programming).
* Ability to work in a Linux climate, and cycle a lot of information in a cloud climate.
Knowledge in Search Engine, for example, Elastic, Apache Lucene/Solr
Capabilities
BE/B Tech/ME/M Tech
We are an equivalent open door boss. All candidates will be considered for work without regard for age, race, shading, religion, sex, sexual direction, sex personality, public source, veteran or inability status.
How To Apply for Hitachi Vantara Hiring Recruitment
All candidates who wish to apply for the Recruitment 2021, they may apply for the job post of by clicking on this link: | https://medium.com/@guled-darshan/hitachi-vantara-hiring-data-scientist-for-2020-21-pass-out-a5ed2aab9f59 | ['Darshan Guled'] | 2020-12-27 13:58:37.891000+00:00 | ['Freshers Jobs', 'Jobs', '2021', 'Darshan Guled', 'Ece'] |
A data structure for sorting in linear time | Initially, the article was supposed to have a more artistic title, “A tale of empirical mediocracy from theoretical supremacy”, but it would have been too abstract and maybe even pushed the reader to make false assumptions about the content, which is a commentary on how a nice idea behaves in practice.
The idea for this started as a curiosity. I was curious to see if I can optimize a dear algorithm of mine, Insertion Sort. For those that are not familiar with the algorithm or just need to have their memory refreshed, Insertion Sort is a sorting algorithm that works by computing a sorted partial array from the initial one, by finding the correct position for each element.
Visual description of how Insertion Sort works, credit to: https://www.hackerearth.com/ for the image
As it can be clearly observed, the worst case for this trivial algorithm is O(N²). A trivial optimization is to use binary search to find the correct position for an element in O(log(N)) worst-case time complexity. But the problem is that after finding the correct position, all elements need to be shifted again to make space for the new one, which is again O(N), so the total complexity is still O(N²), but it moves a bit faster.
I was curious to see if I can use some data structure that allows me to use binary search on the partial solution but to make an insertion in O(log(N)) in the worst case. This could have been achieved by using a Skip List, but I wanted to see if I can do it even faster and soon I realized that what I was in fact trying to achieve, is to come up with a data structure that would allow constant-time insertion, constant-time lookup and would keep the data sorted. Sure, this would mean that the total complexity of sorting an array would be O(N) and this is impossible to achieve by using a comparison based algorithm, as seen here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~avrim/451f11/lectures/lect0913.pdf
I was thinking of ways to exploit the natural ordering of the input elements, thinking whether there is some mathematical solution for my wish or a clever trick, but I realized that I can use a Trie, or Suffix Trie, in the same way as using a frequency array, but with the benefit of having all the operations in constant time with regard to the number of elements.
But what is a Trie?
Simply put, a basic Trie is a data structure in the shape of a tree, where keys are represented by the path from the root, which is the empty set, to the corresponding element.
Example of a canonical Trie, credit to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie
For simplicity, I will deviate from the canonical Trie and present the modifications as well as the methods that my version of the data structure supports. Although we can use a Trie to also sort words in lexicographic order, I will present here the simplified version which sorts just numbers. Therefore the edges from any node to another can contain any digit between 0 and 9, this being our vocabulary.
So we can view all numbers as keys and use a Trie to store how many times if any, that number appears. Because at each level, the node has all the possibilities for the next key in sorted order, it means that a preorder traversal of the Trie will return the sorted array of elements. Even more, by storing the number of elements that will end on the level immediately below this one, which I called the “horizon” of each node, we can answer the question “After an arbitrary number of insertions, what element is on position k in the sorted array?” without having to sort the whole array and in fact, as we will see, in constant asymptotic time O(1) with regards to the number of elements.
As an example, the horizon of the root in the photo above is 1, because there is only one number composed of just a letter (“A”). The horizon of “t” is 1 and the horizon of “te” is 2. This notion will be useful when retrieving the number on a certain index.
The algorithm supports the following methods:
-Insert(numberToInsert) → inserts the specified number in the Trie and preserves the “sortedness” of the array
-ReturnOrdered() → returns the whole sorted array
-GetElement(index) → return the input element that is on the position ‘index’ in the sorted array.
Theoretical Analysis
We need to make two assumptions: the size of the alphabet of the input elements, let’s name it V, which denotes of characters that form the input elements, will remain constant and that the maximum size of the input elements is bounded by K. Using these two assumptions, we can easily see that the insertion and lookup processes have constant asymptotic time O(1) with respect to the number of input elements N and that creating the Trie and returning the sorted list of input elements has the asymptotic complexity O(N).
For insertion, the algorithm needs to go from the root of the Trie to the corresponding node which can be a leaf or inside the structure. The maximum number of operations that are done for insertion is O(K) where K is the maximum length of a key, but we assumed the length is bounded, therefore K is constant and the complexity becomes O(1).
The analysis of the lookup procedure is a bit more complicated. It uses the horizon to figure out if the index we are looking for is the immediate child of the current node. If it is not, we just go to the next node. This means that in the worst case (when the index corresponds to the greatest value in our input array) it will go through all the nodes in the Trie until it finds the correct one. The maximum depth of the trie is O(K) and each of the nodes will have V children. Therefore, the worst case will be for a full Trie (we can use lazy update to minimize the number of nodes), where the index corresponds to the greatest element and it has the complexity O(V^K), but as V and K are constants, the final complexity is O(1).
Empiric results
I have compared my python implementation of this algorithm with my own implementations of MergeSort on different tests.
The following are the results on complete, ascending input spaces (the input contains all the elements from 0 to N) for N going from 100 to 10 000 000:
We can clearly see that all times grow linearly.
The following are the results on complete, descending input spaces (the input contains all the elements from N to 0) for N going from 100 to 10 000 000:
The following are the results on sparse, ascending input spaces (the input contains elements from 0 to 1000 which are repeating) for N going from 1000 to 10 000 000:
The following are the results on sparse, descending input spaces (the input contains elements from 1000 to 0 which are repeating) for N going from 1000 to 10 000 000:
As expected, the Trie behaves better on inputs that contain few unique numbers than MergeSort and in all cases, the time taken for inserting a new element and looking up the element on a certain position (all the tests were done by selecting the element on position 1000000) were constantly equal to 0.
As a conclusion, these experiments can show that low theoretical asymptotic complexity can prove to be very cost-inefficient due to constants and that this algorithm can be used for small search spaces that are repeated often or if the use case requires repeated insertions and lookups in a sorted array.
Github link to code: https://github.com/Viktor-Teodor/TrieForSorting/tree/main | https://medium.com/@victor-stoian-ro/a-data-structure-for-sorting-in-linear-time-5a6728c68ed3 | ['Victor-Teodor Stoian'] | 2020-12-28 12:39:15.346000+00:00 | ['Data Structures', 'Algorithms', 'Computer Science', 'Optimization'] |
What Makes Batman Timeless? | What Makes Batman Timeless?
Even after decades in the spotlight, we still can’t get enough of the Caped Crusader
Do you have an alter ego? Where does it hide? Can this alter ego be acted out safely and experimentally through video games? I contemplated this very thought as I looked through some of my old PS4 games. I was looking for something to spark my interest.
I chose to revisit the Batman games for PS4. The gritty, dark textures mixed with a combat system perfectly molded to the Caped Crusader’s style reminded me why I loved those games and why I loved Batman. Both Arkham City and Arkham Asylum perfectly embodied the experience of fighting crime as the Dark Knight.
Revisiting these classics put Batman on my brain, and his mythology dominated my thoughts until well after dinner. I looked for the perfect opportunity to interject Batman into the conversation.
Around 11:30 pm, I found my opening. I sat around my living room having tea with my family when an interesting question arose from the silence:
Why are we so obsessed with Batman?
Yes, we’ve spent the last fifteen years exploring the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and the X-Men, but Batman continues to resurface at the forefront of our minds.
Why?
My house guests and family readily engaged in the conversation. There was a gentle excitement that hung in the air.
My wife made the first two points, “He is a human with no superpowers, and he has cool gadgets.”
I thought these were excellent points. In recent history, we went through a phase of Iron Man. The brilliant performance of Robert Downey Jr., mixed with the reasons listed above, contributed to that fascination. Iron Man was also an ordinary guy who was self-made that created some fantastic gadgets. Yet, I think Iron Man’s time is coming to an end in our minds. The success of Iron Man didn’t convince me that the “normal guy” argument held enough ground.
There must be something more.
The conversation continued.
Another member of the family chimed in, “ Batman has the most memorable villains.”
I felt like we were getting closer to the truth.
What made the villains special?
Everyone cracked out their phones simultaneously as we dug for precious nuggets of information about the most famous adversaries.
I almost immediately came across the perfect article.
There is a beautiful book written by Travis Langley about the entire psychology of Batman fittingly called “Batman and Psychology” (I already bought it on Amazon).
Travis wrote an interesting article about this very subject on August 12th, 2012, in Psychology Today. You can read the whole article here, but for the sake of brevity, his observations about villains were profound and can be summarized as “most of Gotham City’s supervillains are human beings defined by their personalities instead of superpowers.”
Humanizing villains and rooting for them in a real-world back story makes them more relatable. We’ve seen trends of this same strategy with recent films like Venom and X-Men First Class. By adding a deep and relatable back story to Magneto's characters, our emotions only become more complex as the narrative unfolds.
I still felt the answer was not complete because not only was Batman and iconic hero, but Joker was one of, if not the most, iconic villains of all time.
Forty minutes into the conversation, I made my contribution to the analysis.
I believe that the story of Batman and the Joker speaks to the truth of what it means to be a human being. Batman and the Joker are the same. They are on opposite sides of the same coin. In my mind, Batman is about transcendence.
Both characters faced severe trauma in their life. While the Joker's backstory is a bit vaguer, we can reasonably assume that the Joker has had a rough experience. The lack of a stable backstory only adds to the chaos of Joker’s character.
Both Joker and Batman experienced the harshest reality possible, with nothing held back.
The only difference between the two is Batman’s willingness to face his painful experiences over and over again. He then channels this trauma into energy that he uses to try to manifest a safer world. He is complex and not without emotional scars, but at the core of his being, Batman is a force for good.
Joker also channels his trauma into energy, but follows an opposite path, using this energy to disrupt and breakdown every entity around him, a real force for chaos. The following result brings nothing but pain and suffering, as everyone he interacts with contends with his constant chaotic nature.
Batman’s unwillingness to kill the Joker creates a pendulum that swings back and forth forever between order and chaos in Gotham City.
This purposeful channeling and redistribution of energy (whether positive or negative) speaks to the heart of the human experience. What we do with the energy we have affects the world around us, whether we see the results or not.
Batman: Arkham Knight.
Both the Joker and Batman live within us. They are us. They are the subtle choices we make every day, and every day the pendulum swings ever so slightly back and forth.
What path will we choose, and more importantly, what will we do with our energy? | https://medium.com/super-jump/what-makes-batman-timeless-d11a3ee957d9 | ['Phillip Caron'] | 2020-11-21 11:24:19.516000+00:00 | ['Features', 'Gaming', 'Inspiration', 'Batman', 'Self'] |
How to do EOS & Tron Token Swap on Bitbns | Update 21st June: Tron token migration will begin from today till 25th of June. The token are being migrated from ERC20 to Mainnet TRX.
Bitbns is supporting the Tron migration, users can deposit their tokens and can be assured of getting the mainnet token as per the ratio defined by the Tron network.
TRON withdrawals will be paused from 11:30pm, 21st June 2018.
TRON deposits will be paused from 6 pm, 23rd June 2018.
During the swap event, TRON token trading will not be suspended. You can continue to trade TRX on Bitbns exchange.
Update 17th May: TRON and EOS are transitioning from Ethereum protocol to their own blockchain versions.
Mainnet Launch:
Tron will migrate from ERC20 protocol to its own blockchain version, vOdyssey 2.0, on May 31 2018. Also, EOS will migrate to its own blockchain on 2 June 2018.
Token Swap:
Official Tron Swap Date: 21st June — 25th June 2018.
Official EOS Snapshot Date: 3rd June 2018, Swap yet to be announced
We at Bitbns will support this migration and token swap. Users with TRX and EOS holding on Bitbns will receive the migrated tokens. The token swap will be taken care by the Bitbns team. Just follow simple steps to get your token swapped by Bitbns.
Token Swap — What to do?
Tron SWAP — Simple Steps
Deposit your ERC20 based TRX token before 21st June 11:30pm on Bitbns wallet. (Once you are done with this step, you don’t need to worry about the swap) Keep Calm & Trade: You can trade TRX normally post that.
Note:
TRX withdrawals will be paused after 21st June until the token swap is completed. No TRX deposit will be allowed after 24th June.
EOS SWAP — Simple Steps
Deposit your ERC20 based EOS token before 31st May 10:00pm on Bitbns wallet. (Once you are done with this step, you don’t need to worry about the swap) Keep Calm & Trade: You can trade EOS normally post that.
Note:
EOS withdrawals will be paused after 29th May 12:00 Noon until the token swap is completed No EOS deposit will be allowed after 31st May 6:00pm.
Join our Telegram channel for update on token swap. | https://medium.com/bitbns/how-to-do-eos-tron-token-swap-on-bitbns-ac07121e1148 | [] | 2018-07-04 04:43:26.446000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Eos', 'Blockchain', 'Swap', 'Tron'] |
How routing works: 4 simple algorithms | At Omio, we have a vision to help people find the best travel options from any location to any location, regardless of how many travel modes or providers they need to use to get there. Rome2rio, who we recently joined forces with, shares that vision.
In this article we want to outline the basic algorithmic concepts of how we are able to connect almost any transport mode of the world to find possible connections between almost any two locations on the planet, a feature not even Google Maps provides.
For example, let’s search for how to travel from the small city Cáceres in Brazil to the russian city of Tulun, not too far away from the Baikal lake. While Google and other providers are not able to find any connection at all, we can craft up to 6 different travel routes within a few hundred milliseconds. How is that possible?
Traveling from Cáceres in Brazil to Tulun in Russia. Right: Google Maps Routing, Left: Rome2Rio.
With this article, we won’t outline how the overall routing system is designed or implemented. We also won’t talk about how the data is structured and how we connect different sets and sources of data. Let’s rather focus on the most basic and foundational element of how the routing engine works: The algorithm.
R2R uses an optimized version of the so called A* algorithm, which tries to find the best paths between two known locations by travelling from both locations towards the other using heuristics. But before explaining in detail how this works, let’s look into two basic path finding algorithms that are easier to understand and form the foundation for A*: The Depth First Search Algorithm (DFS) and the Breadth First Search Algorithm (BFS).
The scenario
All of these algorithms are so called graph traversal algorithms and also the R2R is based on high dimensional graphs. However, in order to make it easier to understand we will use a simplified view: A two dimensional map with 4x6 positions. This could be thought of as a very simple map, with roads and two cities A and B. We want to find the best (shortest) way to get from city A to city B:
A map representation we’ll use to describe routing concepts.
Let’s say those boxes without highways are called blocked boxes — areas we cannot use for travel:
White boxes won’t be considered as possible locations.
Even if the representation as a map is easier to understand, we still have a graph:
The map described before as a graph
In order to find a path from A to B, all three algorithms (BFS, DFS and A*) basically start form A, look around to find unvisited, unblocked boxes, and then walk towards those unvisited boxes, look again, walk again until B is reached. The decision which box to visit next is the basic differentiator between our three approaches and can lead to different outcomes in terms of path length and performance: DFS chooses one path and walks it all the way to the end, if there is a dead end it takes the next path until the target node was found. BFS walks all paths in parallel by only walking to the next node for each possible direction.
Let’s start with the DFS approach
The aim of DFS algorithm is to traverse the graph in such a way that it tries to go far from the root node. Stack is used in the implementation of the depth first search. Lets see how this works in our scenario using both representations:
DFS to walk from A to B
As you can see, following DFS we would choose one of the three walkable neighbors of A. Let’s say we go “west” to (4,2) and follow that path. At (3,1) there is a crossing and we choose to go “west” again to (3,0). This is a dead end as it has no neighbors. So we go back to (3,1) and follow the second walkable neighbor (2,1) and follow the path all the way to (0,6) — which is our target node.
The algorithm for this is fairly simple:
Step 1 : Push the root node into the Stack.
: Push the root node into the Stack. Step 2 : Loop until Stack is empty.
: Loop until Stack is empty. Step 3 : Pop a node of the Stack
: Pop a node of the Stack Step 4: If the node equals target, finish
If the node equals target, finish Step 5: Mark the node as visited
Mark the node as visited Step 6 : For each unvisited child of the node
: For each unvisited child of the node Step 6.1: push child to the node
The DFS as simple java code:
// a simple implementation of DFS (just pure traversal)
public void dfs(Node source, Node target) {
Stack stack = new Stack();
stack.push(source);
while(!stack.isEmpty()) {
Node n = (Node)stack.pop();
n.setVisited(true)
if(target.equals(n)) return;
for(Node unvisited : n.getUnvistedChildren()) {
stack.push(unvisited);
}
}
}
This does not track the actual path towards the target nor does it return anything, when the target was found as the code shall only outline the different steps needed to traverse the graph.
The benefit of using DFS is that you (most likely) will need less iterations in order to find a valid path to the target. But it is not guaranteed that this path is the optimal one. As you can see in our example: It only takes 12 iterations to find a path, but this path has 10 hops. Using BFS we need 19 iterations to find a path that only has 6 hops. Let’s see how that works.
BFS
The BFS algorithm is more pessimistic about finding a good path on a first try and in a way “investigates” all possible paths at the same time. You can almost think of it as water flowing into a system of different tunnels. It also does not flow tunnel by tunnel but fills everything at the same time.
This is a very different approach for traversing the graph nodes. The goal of the BFS algorithm is to traverse a graph as close as possible to a root node. Queue is used in the implementation of the breadth first search. Let’s see how BFS traversal works with respect to our scenario:
We again start at A (4,3) and look around if there are any unvisited children ((4,2),(3,3),(4,4)). We then visit any of those children and remember all unvisited children of those children, which we then visit to repeat the process until one of the nodes we visit is the target node. Let’s see how those steps are structured, again it is fairly simple:
Step 1 : Push the root node into the Queue.
: Push the root node into the Queue. Step 2 : Loop until the Queue is empty.
: Loop until the Queue is empty. Step 3 : Remove the node from the Queue.
: Remove the node from the Queue. Step 3: If any of the unvisited children of the node is the target, finish
If any of the unvisited children of the node is the target, finish Step 4: Mark the unvisited children of the node as visited and insert the unvisited children of those children in the queue.
A basic implementation of BFS in Java:
// a simple implementation of the BFS algorithm (just pure traversal)
public void bfs(Node source, Node target) {
//BFS uses Queue data structure
Queue queue = new Queue();
queue.add(source);
while(!queue.isEmpty()) {
Node n = (Node)queue.remove();
n.setVisited(true);
if(target.equals(n)) return;
for(Node unvisited : n.getUnvistedChildren()) {
queue.add(unvisited);
}
}
}
As you can see, this is pretty much the same code as we’ve seen for DFS except the data structure is now a queue instead of a Stack. Same like with DFS, this does not track the actual path towards the target nor does it return anything, when the target was found.
The benefit of using BFS is that you will find the best path between the two nodes. But the cost is high, as you might need to check every single node in the graph.
Now, in the real world we have quite some meta-data about the map, the locations, the edges, and most importantly we know about our destination. This is where the A* Algorithm comes to the stage. It finds paths from one location to a known destination based on meta-data (or heuristics) that helps to forecast which next step might be the best towards our destination.
The A* Algorithm
As summarized above the A* algorithm uses heuristics to forecast the final “effort” to get from any location on the map to the target. This can be as simple as the minimal amount of nodes to visit before getting to the target plus the amount of nodes already traveled: At (3,3) in our example, we’ve taken 1 step plus we are at least 6 steps away from B — so the estimated cost at (3,3) is 7. Using this, we would have a clear indication for each location, about how promising it is. So it says something like: Hey I don’t know anything about roads, mountains, rivers etc. but I have a GPS and a compass and can calculate the distance as the crow flies:
With BFS the “frontier” of our search expands in all directions. This is reasonable if you would like to find a path to all or many locations. With A* we let the frontier expand more towards the target then in other directions. Based on the heuristics — as described above- every possible next step gets a priority property, which will be considered within the algorithm. In our example this is just the minimum distance to the target to keep it simple, but in a real implementation you should also take into account the costs that already occured: So for example, if the algorithm visits (2,4) this minimum future distance (or cost) is 4 and the past cost is 3 — so the actual value is 7.
For real routing scenarios, the cost for going from one location to another, and from one location to the target would also not be always the same: You would have highways, small roads, and even dirt roads. Taking into account both the actual cost + the estimated cost, we ‘prefer’ to travel on highways, but we explore dirt roads if they are competitive. That is, if the dirt road cost + estimated super-highway cost is less than all other possible paths, then we will explore the dirt road.
So let’s look at each step:
Step 1 : Push the root node into the prioritized Queue, with a priority of 0 (cost = priority)
: Push the root node into the prioritized Queue, with a priority of 0 (cost = priority) Step 2 : Loop until the Queue is empty.
: Loop until the Queue is empty. Step 3: Get the minimum cost within the queue (highest priority).
Get the minimum cost within the queue (highest priority). Step 4 : Remove that node from the Queue and visit it
: Remove that node from the Queue and visit it Step 3: if the node is the target finish.
if the node is the target finish. Step 4: for any unvisited children of the node, calculate the cost and add to the queue.
A basic implementation of A* in Java:
// a simple implementation of the A* algorithm (just pure traversal)
public void astar(Node source, Node target) {
//A* uses PriorityQueue data structure
PriorityQueue queue = new PriorityQueue();
queue.add(source, 0);
while(!queue.isEmpty()) {
Float c = queue.getMinPriority();
Node n = (Node)queue.removeMin();
n.setVisited(true);
if(target.equals(n)) return;
for(Node unv : n.getUnvistedChildren()) {
queue.add(unv, c+1+estimateCost(unvisited, target));
}
}
}
Let’s meet in between: The bi-directional A* Algorithm
So, one might ask, if you know about where the target is and have access to some data that allows you to forecast costs for going from any location to the target, why don’t you also start at the target and walk towards the start using the same mechanics? You might meet in the middle, combine your experiences (which path you walked) — and voila, you have found an optimal path in collaboration…
Yeah, the software engineer says: This is possible. We just use two queues, iterate both at the same time using the priority approach and check if one of the queues found the target (if started from start) or the start (if started from target) or if both queues contain the same child it is a collision and we can combine both paths into one which is the optimal one.
The first thing we need to do is replicating the heuristics to also work for the other direction. In the picture below we added the estimated costs for going towards A (dotted circle outline):
Then we follow the following steps to find an optimal path between A and B:
Step 1 : Push the root node into the prioritized Queue, with a priority of 0 (cost = priority), Push the target node into a second prioritized Queue, with a priority of 0.
: Push the root node into the prioritized Queue, with a priority of 0 (cost = priority), Push the target node into a second prioritized Queue, with a priority of 0. Step 2: Loop until one of the two Queues is empty.
Forward Step:
Step 3: Get the minimum cost within the first queue.
Get the minimum cost within the first queue. Step 4 : Remove that node from the Queue and visit it
: Remove that node from the Queue and visit it Step 5: if the node is the target finish.
Backward Step:
Step 5: Get the minimum cost within the first queue.
Get the minimum cost within the first queue. Step 6 : Remove that node from the Queue and visit it
: Remove that node from the Queue and visit it Step 7: if the node is the target finish.
if the node is the target finish. Step 8: If node the node from the forward step and the node from the backward step are the same, they collide and you found the best path. End.
If node the node from the forward step and the node from the backward step are the same, they collide and you found the best path. End. Step 9: for any unvisited children of both nodes, calculate the cost and add to one of the queues.
So once again, how does this change the traversal in our scenario?
A basic implementation of bi-directional A* in Java:
// a simple implementation of the A* algorithm (just pure traversal)
public void biastar(Node source, Node target) {
// A* uses two PriorityQueue data structures
PriorityQueue fQueue = new PriorityQueue();
fQueue.add(source, 0);
PriorityQueue bQueue = new PriorityQueue();
bQueue.add(target, 0);
while(!fQueue.isEmpty() && !bQueue.isEmpty()) {
// forwards step
Float fC = fQueue.getMinPriority();
Node fN = (Node)fQueue.removeMin();
fN.setVisited(true);
if(target.equals(fN)) return;
// backwards step
Float bC = bQueue.getMinPriority();
Node bN = (Node)bQueue.removeMin();
bN.setVisited(true);
if(source.equals(bN)) return;
// collision
if(bN.equals(fN)) return;
// enqueue next steps
for(Node unv : fN.getUnvistedChildren()) {
fQueue.add(unv, fC+1+estimateCost(unvisited, target));
}
for(Node unv : bN.getUnvistedParents()) {
bQueue.add(unv, bC+1+ estimateCost(source, unvisited));
}
}
}
This optimized algorithm does not give better results in our scenario. The only difference is that it does not follow any wrong path for more than 1 step while the on-directional A* follows one bad path for two steps. However, the amount of iterations is the same.
For more complex graphs this works quite amazing, because it cuts of paths that are not relevant:
The schema above shows that in order to get from A to B and you would only start at A it might be that you consider all green and orange locations, if you would start from B to get to A you might visit green and blue locations. When you do both at the same time to meet midway, you will only see the green locations.
Summary
Routing Algorithms can be modeled using straight forward graph traversal / graph search algorithms that are fairly simple to implement. We explained the DFS and BFS approach that are pretty different in terms of behavior. The implementation is almost the same. The only difference is that for DFS you use Stack and for BFS you go with Queue. Adding some priority (actual costs + estimated future costs) to each node to be visited that is used to determine the order in which BFS visits nodes brings us to the A* algorithm. This can be optimized by starting the traversal from the Starting and the Target at the same time to detect a collision: This is called bi-directional A*.
Of course this is not the entire truth, as there are a lot of additions that further optimize the system: For example we do not load all modes into the graph but load them on the fly, the cost function for calculating priorities has some assumptions that might or might not work. But in general, that’s how routing works (at least in theory).
~
Enjoyed the read? Omio is hiring! If you would like to be part of our team and solve great problems, make sure you visit our jobs page and follow us on Medium. | https://medium.com/omio-engineering/how-routing-works-4-simple-algorithms-5919a88c3648 | ['Bastian Buch'] | 2019-12-12 09:19:26.326000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Software Development', 'Routing', 'Programming', 'Architecture'] |
Journaling Ritual for New Moon | Art: Ameya Ajay
‘Like a dark steed adorned with pearls, God has decorated the heavens with constellations. The light of the Sun hides them in the day, and all knowledge of them is divined in the darkness of the night.’
~ Rig Veda
The moon mirrors back our emotional body — the feeling layer — it also reflects the ever-changing waves of the mind. When the moon is dark and empty (amavasya) we too empty ourselves.
It’s time for a deep release.
What have you been holding onto that no longer resonates with who you are and who you’re becoming?
Can you make space in the mind and the body by letting go of something that’s no longer for you?
Spare a few precious moments for contemplation and set your new moon intentions.
In which direction does your breath feel expansive and free?
Where can you allow in more gentleness and self-trust?
What does it feel like to be in right relationship with yourself?
Plant your seeds: What would a new beginning look like?
Write the answers down using the present tense. Then, by candlelight or by burning some sage, read out your notes and seal your resolve.
____________________________________
For a deeper manifestation ritual, you may wish to go through my
GUIDED CREATIVE VISUALISATION video.
New Moon Blessings.
Payal
Mind Body Spirit Yoga
Warrior Training for the Sensitive Soul | https://medium.com/@pranaandpoetry/journaling-ritual-for-new-moon-ff45cb5d4348 | ['Payal Patel'] | 2020-04-22 12:10:49.602000+00:00 | ['Yoga', 'Journaling', 'Healing', 'Spiritual Growth', 'Spirituality'] |
Launching Tezos Bounty | Photo by William Bayreuther on Unsplash
A few months ago, I wrote an article about the case of a bakery being sold and the issues related to the private key and the management of the KT addresses delegation.
https://medium.com/hayek-lab/the-tezos-donuts-bakery-inc-case-study-cb8cde5c5916
The fact that delegation can be done anonymously means delegators do not have to reveal their identity or email address. This is certainly a nice feature for a cryptocurrency to have. However, one major downside is the impossibility for a baker to contact their delegators to inform them of important changes related to their baking service. Such important changes can include the need for a baker to move their tz1 address to another one for either security reasons, a merger, an acquisition, or the closing of their business without the need for its delegators to have to constantly keep an eye on official announcements.
The Proposal: a New Smart Contract for Delegation
Currently, only the owner of the KT address (the one who owns its private key) is allowed to change a delegation to a new address. I’d like to propose that a new KT address (Smart Contract for Delegation) be created that allows either the owner of the KT address or the delegate themselves (the baker) to change the tz1 address of a delegation. This means that from the moment you create a KT address (Smart Contract for Delegation) and assign a delegate, your chosen delegate would also be given the power to move your delegation to a new tz1 address whenever needed, just as you can yourself. In a situation (if your baker is ceasing operations for example) where your delegation needs to be moved to a new tz1 address by either yourself (the owner of the KT1 address) or the delegate (baker), then this transferring power would follow and will also be transferred to your new delegate (baker).
Of course, there is a trust component involved. You, as a delegator are trusting your chosen bakery not to point your KT delegation to some no man’s land. But after all, since you already have to trust a bakery, based on their efficiency and reputation, for proper handling of your staking and paying out your corresponding rewards back to you (assuming you have chosen a serious company); this extra layer of trust is minor compared to the benefits it brings. In addition, there could be a 3rd party service that offers an email notification whenever your KT address has been moved to a new delegate. We at Hayek Lab are already considering providing a transaction notification service to our delegators free of charge (if they are interested and willing to provide us with an email address), adding a delegation moving event as well would be a given.
Let’s review with an example:
Imagine John Investor owns KT1John47829 which has selected tz1Bobbaker633 as his delegate (baker) using such New Smart Contract Delegation. A few months later, Bob Baker decides to merge with Alice’s bakery. The tz address of her bakery is tz1Alice4SweetBake7uf8. After the official announcement of the merger, John should go on his tezos wallet and proceed to change his delegation address from tz1Bobbaker633 to tz1Alice4SweetBake7uf8, however John is currently on a boat trip without any internet access. But the good news is that John is using the new smart contract for its delegation. This means since John’s KT address currently has Bob’s tz1Bobbaker633 set as the delegate, Bob also has the transfering power to move John’s KT address to Alice’s bakery. Bob uses his private key associated with tz1Bobbaker633 to change the delegate of John’s KT address to the one of Alice’s bakery. Now that Alice is John’s new delegate, she now has the power to make such a transfer while Bob does not anymore. When John comes back from his trip, he might realize his delegate has changed and then finds out about the announcement. If he doesn’t like Alice’s service, he can then move his delegation to another baker. But at least this way, his KT1 address has always been delegating, even if Bob’s bakery shut down or moved while he was on vacation.
The new delegation smart contract could also begin with “KT1” or it could begin with “KT2”. By default, tezos wallets would ideally use the new KT contract when someone creates a KT address to delegate.
The Reality
With the recent closure of iBakeTezos and its bond pool moving to Hayek Lab, iBakeTezos is currently facing the hard reality of not being able to reach some of the delegators to notify them of these important changes. The use of a New Delegation Smart Contract would have been ideal in this case, preventing the loss of income for the unaware delegators. We can only hope that this important news will reach them in one way or another. Below is the recent article we wrote on this.
====== update ====
I have been made aware that a new protocol upgrade called Burebrot will provide this functionality I am talking about: (Just published a few hours after my article)
Just a heads up, there a 2 ways to fix this situation:
Giving the ability — which requires a protocol upgrade — for baker to change the tz address without affecting existing delegators. This is what Burebrot intends to do. A new KT contract for delegation is created that allows a 1 out of 2 signature to change the delegate, where either the manager of the KT or the delegate itself would be allowed. This is the proposal listed here.
I have been confirmed by Arthur Breitman that this KT contract is feasible. It would have been a quick and easy way to resolved this issue and I wish I had thought about it a few months ago. However, using it would be more a burden to the baker as it would require to make one transaction (with fees) on the blockchain for every delegators it has. So a baker with 200 delegators would have to make 200 such transactions. Although more difficult as it require a protocol upgrade, the first solution is better. We will have to be patient as it will take a few months before it is available through Tezos governance.
===============
Developers Call-To-Action
For that purpose, we at Hayek Lab will be creating a new webpage called TezosBounty.Design that will accept donations to incentivize developers in creating projects.
http://tezosbounty.design/
This website has been created to incentivize developers in creating new Tezos smart contract or new features to be incorporated via Tezos Governance built-in protocol. This will allow for XTZ owners, promoters as well as bakers to fund an account with XTZ that will serve as a bounty or donation to the developer of a specific project.
We will be launching this website within the next few days and will be accepting donations for the “Delegation Smart Contract project” to this tz1 address:
tz1WvPcd8Y5gUdN4K5JTpvUgjnXc3crZWtx2
https://tzscan.io/tz1WvPcd8Y5gUdN4K5JTpvUgjnXc3crZWtx2
The first developer to provide a fully functioning Delegation Smart Contract will be granted the reward. We understand that the built-in Tezos governance provides rewards to developers but this does not apply to smart contracts. Even if this feature was via the governance mechanism, a higher financial incentive will be valuable as the payout might be more satisfying.
I will personally contribute 500 XTZ to this account.
We will require the Delegation Smart Contract to be reviewed for accuracy by experts. Upon satisfaction from code review (remember Michelson is a functional programming language and enables formal verification) and testing, we will then transfer the XTZ in this account to the developer’s account who will be the first to successfully provide this feature.
Stay tuned to this exciting world of Tezos
Regards
Phil Champagne,
Hayek Lab, Inc. | https://medium.com/hayek-lab/launching-tezos-bounty-7565f159cafc | ['Phil Champagne'] | 2019-04-19 22:35:50.531000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Tezos', 'Hayek Lab Announcements', 'Blockchain', 'Smart Contracts'] |
Education adjusting to COVID-19 Crisis and teaching Children AI | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Education adjusting to COVID-19 Crisis and teaching Children AI
Scientific Discovery using AI and UK’s role in development of AI
Everybody is talking about COVID-19 and as the crisis continues, education is adjusting to the new conditions through online programs. Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams are enabling this transition as people take conversations online in accordance with social distancing.
There is optimism about the pandemic subsiding as countries flatten the curve according to WHO. Artificial intelligence adoption is accelerating and COVID-19 outbreak could make the technology widespread as people experience its benefits in detecting infections and predicting the next pandemic.
The United Kingdom has played a role in the development of AI since the days of Alan Turing and the country continues to experience growth of tech start-ups in AI, block chain and IOT. Artificial intelligence is growing with scientific discoveries relying on AI for research, AI powered calling services and real-time noise suppression.
Mark Cuban believes that teaching children AI will educate them about the future of technology and its implications on business. Children need lessons on AI and exposing them according to Mark Cuban will reshape our future as new technologies such as machine learning become part of our lives.
Creating Successful AI Projects
When it comes to being competitive in today’s markets artificial intelligence (AI) is clearly a must-have weapon. But even for some of the world’s top companies implementing this technology has been challenging. Creating models, generating sufficient ROI, getting result-driven data, and finding the right talent have been the common issues faced by the companies.
Many AI projects fail because of it. Only about 35% of organizations succeed in getting models into production successfully- According to IDC.
Santiago Giraldo, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Data Engineering at Cloudera said, “Unlike traditional data analytics, machine learning (ML) models that power AI is not always going to offer clear-cut answers,” It is important to understand that every experiment is not going to drive ROI. A successful AI project¹ is built on top of many failed data science experiments. The approach of taking a portfolio to ML and AI enables greater longevity in projects.
Gus Walker, Senior Director of Product Management at Veritone. said “Often times businesses take on AI projects not realizing that it might have been cheaper to continue a process manually instead of investing large amounts of time and money into building a system that doesn’t save the company time or money,”
How AI is making the world a safer place
AI is making a difference in improving public health and safety as the world adapts to a new normal.
The biggest challenge with this coronavirus has been predicting how quickly it can spread. Social distancing measures and the closure of high-risk facilities are viewed as the best way to control the spread, but many areas have been slow to enact such measures because they don’t have an accurate perception of their risk.
An AI powered survey system developed by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel aims to better predict outbreaks² so authorities can proactively enact measures that will mitigate the virus’s spread. The system uses a questionnaire focusing on key issues like isolation practices and health symptoms then match responses with a location-based algorithm. Moreover, AI analysis can identify potential hotspots in advance to help local authorities enact measures that will slow down the virus.
Hospitals and health organizations are getting more inquiries than ever from patients worried that they might have the coronavirus. AI tools specifically designed to address questions related to COVID19 are being introduced into healthcare apps and websites to adapt to the increased inquiries.
Scientific Discovery using AI
Steve Jobs described personal computing as a “bicycle for the mind.” He thinks that computers can be used as “intelligence amplifiers” that offer an important boost for human creativity and are now being given an immediate test in the face of the coronavirus.
The National Library of Medicine and a group of artificial intelligence research groups announced that they had organized the world’s scientific research papers about Covid19 and the documents include more than 44,000 articles, could be explored in new ways using a machine learning program designed to help scientists see patterns and find relationships to assist research.
Oren Etzioni, the chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, “This is a chance for artificial intelligence.” Allen Institute is a nonprofit research laboratory that was founded in 2014 by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder.
There has long been a dream of using AI to help with scientific discovery³. The new advances in software applications raise questions about whether computer technologies such as artificial intelligence will enhance or even begin to substitute for human creativity. A rapid set of advances based on new language process techniques leading a variety of technology firms and research groups.
AI Powered Calling Service
Duplex, artificial intelligence-powered calling service automated by Google is now available in Australia, Canada, and the UK which was earlier available only in the US and New Zealand.
Google clarified to The Verge that It isn’t a full rollout of the service, and Google using Duplex mainly to reach businesses in those new countries to update business hours for Google Maps and Search.
CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post “In the coming days, we’ll make it possible for businesses to easily mark themselves as ‘temporarily closed’ using Google My Business. We’re also using our artificial intelligence (AI) technology Duplex where possible to contact businesses to confirm their updated business hours, so we can reflect them accurately when people are looking on Search and Maps.”
Duplex launched as an early beta via Google Assistant in 2018 in the US after a splashy yet controversial debut at that year’s Google I/O developer conference. There were concerns about the use of Duplex regarding proper disclosure that the automated call was being handled by a digital voice assistant⁴ and not a human being.
Google tried to address those concerns by adding disclosures at the beginning of calls and giving businesses the option to opt-out of being recording and speak with a human.
Education adjusting to COVID-19 Crisis
Learning for grades K-12 looks very different than a month ago in light of the recent events surrounding COVID19. Turning homes into classrooms may be overwhelming for parents & educators.
A team led by Media Lab Associate Professor Cynthia Breazeal has launched aieducation.mit.edu keeping that in mind to share a variety of online activities for K-12 students to learn about artificial intelligence, with a focus on how to design and use it responsibly.
This website provides learning resources to address the needs of the millions of children, parents, and educators worldwide who are staying at home due to school closures caused by COVID-19 and are looking for free educational activities that support project-based STEM learning⁵ in an exciting and innovative area.
MIT Open Learning and the Media Lab, MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing collaborated the website, serving as a hub to highlight diverse work by faculty, staff, and students across the MIT community at the intersection of AI, learning, and education.
MIT has revolutionized the way children can learn computational thinking with successful platforms such as Scratch and AppInventor.
MIT professor of computer science & engineering Hal Abelson says “MIT has been a world leader in AI since the 1960s.”
Teaching Children AI
Mark Cuban tweeted “Give your kids an edge, have them sign up and learn the basics of Artificial Intelligence.” He also said, “The way to set your children up for success in this day and age is to ensure they learn about artificial intelligence.”
He is a star on the hit ABC show “#SharkTank” and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team. He was promoting a free, one-hour virtual class his foundation is teaching an introduction to artificial intelligence in collaboration with AIForAnyone, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve the literacy of AI⁶ understanding.
He promoted the importance of learning and understanding artificial intelligence using his megaphone. He also talked about how important it is for business owners to understand AI at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, in March 2019.
Cuban told Recode’s Peter Kafka “As big as PCs were an impact, as big as the internet was, AI is just going to dwarf it. And if you don’t understand it, you’re going to fall behind. Particularly if you run a business,” He also told Kafka. “I mean, I get it on Amazon and Microsoft and Google, and I run their tutorials. If you go to my bathroom, there’s a book, ‘Machine Learning for Idiots.’ Whenever I get a break, I’m reading it,”
Real-time Noise Suppression
Microsoft announced last month that Teams, its competitor to @Slack, Facebook’s Workplace, and Google’s Hangouts Chat, had passed 44 million daily active users. The milestone overshadowed its unveiling of a few new features coming later this year.
A hand-raising feature to indicate you have something to say, offline and low-bandwidth support to read chat messages and write responses even if you have poor or no internet connection, and an option to pop chats out into a separate window among the most straightforward features. But one feature stood out, real-time noise suppression Microsoft demoed how the AI minimized distracting background noise during a call.
Thousand of times we have you asked someone to mute themselves or to relocate from a noisy area. Real-time noise suppression⁷ will filter out someone typing on their keyboard while in a meeting, the rustling of a bag of chips, and a vacuum cleaner running in the background. AI will remove the background noise in real-time to ensure you hear only speech on the call.
The coronavirus crisis forces the use of collaboration and video conferencing tools are exploding as millions to learn and work from home. Microsoft is leaning on its machine learning expertise to ensure AI features are one of its big differentiators.
Training Models and AI Learning
Amazon researchers propose an AI approach that greatly improves performance on certain meta-learning tasks (i.e., tasks that involve both accomplishing related goals and learning how to learn to perform them) in a paper scheduled to be presented at the upcoming International Conference on Learning Representations. It can be adapted to new tasks with only a handful of labeled training examples, meaning a large corporation could use it to, for example, extract charts and captions from scanned paperwork.
A model trains on a set of labeled data (a support set) and learns to correlate features with the labels in conventional machine learning. It’s then fed a separate set of test data (a query set) and evaluated based on how well it predicts that set’s labels. An AI model learns⁸ to perform tasks with their own sets of training data and test data and the model sees both by contrast, during meta-learning. AI learns how particular ways of responding to the training data affect performance on the testdata in this way.
The model is trained on tasks that are related but not identical to the tasks it saw during meta learning in a second stage called meta testing. The model once again sees both training and test data, but the labels are unknown and must be predicted for each task.
COVID-19 accelerating adoption of AI
Cloud computing kicked into high gear and started to become a pervasive, transformational technology after the financial crisis of 2008. AI applications could be central during the current COVID-19 crisis. Though the implications of AI continue to be debated on the world stage, the rapid onset of a global health crisis and concomitant recession will accelerate its impact.
AI technologies help to discover new drugs — either vaccine or treatment — have kicked into hyperdrive. Companies are forming partnerships with academia to find a cure and startups are racing to find solutions as well. Companies are also researching existing drugs to identify their potential applicability.
AI is possibly saving years of research proving a useful tool for dramatically reducing the time needed to identify potential drug candidates. AI is already screening for COVID19⁹ symptoms, automating hospital operations, and supporting the decision for CTscans. Robots have started to perform a variety of healthcare functions.
AI will be an even larger part not only for healthcare but also for other technology landscape going forward. “Americans are growing more comfortable shopping for food or electronics without the aid of another human,” according to the March 2020 Automated Retail Tracker.
Secure computation of AI models
A team of researchers from Princeton, Microsoft, the nonprofit Algorand Foundation, and Technion proposes Falcon, an end-to-end framework for secure computation of AI models¹⁰ on distributed systems in an academic paper published this week on the preprint server Arxiv.org.
It’s the first secure C++ framework to support high-capacity AI models and batch normalization, a technique for improving both the speed and stability of models as per their claim. Falcon can outperform existing solutions by up to a factor of 200 and it automatically aborts when it detects the presence of malicious attackers.
Falcon could be a step toward a pipeline tailored to domains where privacy and security are table stakes, such as healthcare. Running machine learning models in a privacy-preserving fashion without computational trade-offs remains an unsolved challenge despite the emergence of techniques like federated learning and homomorphic encryption.
Data holders who own the training data sets, and query users who query the system post-learning in a distributed AI usage scenario as per Falcon’s assumption. A machine learning model of interest is trained on data from the data holders and queried by the query users, such that the data holders share their data securely between servers.
UK’s role in development of AI
An important role played by the UK in the history and development of AI. The greatest British mathematician, Alan Turing is considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and has deep roots in AI as well. Turing envisioned the Turing test to determine a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human to crafting the foundations for modern computing.
The UK was not only heavily involved in AI development from the very first years, but also helped bring about the first AI Winter¹¹ in the industry as well. The UK has been making heavy investments in AI and continues to show its strength in the field. “The United Kingdom has one of the strongest AI strategies in the world with strong government funding for AI, strong research activity in the field, strong VC funding and AI startups, and strong enterprise activity and adoption of AI”-According to a recent report by research firm Cognilytica.
The UK established an All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI to address ethical issues, industrial norms, regulatory options and social impact for AI in Parliament in 2017. We have to change with AI to ensure the future of the use of this technology.
Works Cited:
¹Building AI Projects, ²AI predicting COVID-19 Outbreak, ³Scientific Discovery, ⁴Digital Voice Assistant, ⁵STEM Learning, ⁶AI Literacy, ⁷Real-Time Noise Suppression, ⁸AI Learning, ⁹AI Screening COVID-19, ¹⁰Secure Computation of AI Models, ¹¹AI Winter
More from David Yakobovitch:
Listen to the HumAIn Podcast | Subscribe to my newsletter | https://medium.com/advantages/education-adjusting-to-covid-19-crisis-and-teaching-children-ai-908fd210b618 | ['David Yakobovitch'] | 2020-05-17 13:31:57.186000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Education', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Covid 19'] |
Best smart home systems for a connected domicile | From smart light bulbs and thermostats that think for themselves to Bluetooth door locks, wireless security cameras, and all manner of sensors, today’s home automation technology can sound awfully sophisticated while actually being a messy hodgepodge of gizmos and apps. Installing all this stuff in your house is only half the battle. Getting it to work together smoothly and with a single user interface can be something entirely different.
Here’s the essential gear to get you there, which we’ve separated into two categories: all-around smart home systems, which are designed to coordinate a wide variety of smart home products, and security-focused systems, which are built around sensors and sirens.
You should also note that some of our picks are starter kits, consisting of a smart-home hub and a handful of devices, while others are just the hub. You’ll need to add the components you want to the latter, choosing from products certified by the hub manufacturer.
Updated September 30, 2020 to add our YoSmart YoLink Hub review. This is the heart of a truly different smart home system that relies on LoRa networking technology instead of the more familiar Bluetooth, Zigbee, or Z-Wave protocols that currently dominate this space. LoRa offers the benefit of incredible range without the need for repeaters. We were able to take one of the company’s door sensors nearly 1,000 feet from the hub without losing connection. On the downside, LoRa is the only technology the hub supports, and YoSmart doesn’t have products such as smart locks or security cameras.
[ Further reading: A smart home guide for beginners ]Best all-around smart home system Samsung SmartThings Hub (2018) Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $69.99See itSmartThings remains the easiest path to a DIY smart home, but there’s little to be gained—and a lot of pain to endured—from upgrading from the second-generation hub.
For breadth and depth of supported smart home products, you won’t find a smart home system that handles more than Samsung SmartThings. At its core is a small box that connects to your router (the third-generation Hub offers the option of wireless connectivity, while Samsung’s Connect Home integrates a mesh router with a SmartThings Hub). Through the SmartThings mobile app, you then start adding your various devices through its simple yet intuitive control system. These can be components that Samsung sells directly, or you can choose from a vast number of third-party products that boast “Works with SmartThings” compatibility.
Seemingly every major category is covered, including the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers, numerous smart lighting products (including Philips and Sylvania gear), the Ring Video Doorbell, and smart door locks. SmartThings can also integrate with your Samsung smart appliances. If there’s a gap in SmartThings’ coverage, it’s a lack of support for Nest and August smart home products; otherwise, it’s hard to find a market that SmartThings doesn’t play in. As much as we like the third-generation Samsung SmartThings Hub, we don’t recommend an upgrade from the second-generation hub because of the pain such a migration will inflict on the user.
Best security-focused smart home system Ring Alarm Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $199.00See itRing Alarm is a spectacular DIY home security system with the potential to be much more, but don’t buy one if what you’re really looking for is a smart home solution.
Ring’s long-delayed Ring Alarm home security system is finally here, and wow, was it worth the wait. For just $199, you get a numeric keypad, a base station with a siren, a motion sensor, and one door/window sensor. It is one of the best security-focused systems on the market today, but it has the potential to become one of the best smart home systems period.
That’s because the system has every type of radio you’d want in a smart home system: Z-Wave Plus, Zigbee, LTE, and Wi-Fi. It works with a few third-party products today—including an outboard siren from Dome and a smart smoke/carbon-monoxide detector from First Alert—but the presence of Z-Wave and Zigbee radios enable it to support just about any smart home product on the market. And Ring says it fully intends to go down that path (we are disappointed in the fact that we haven’t heard anything new on the front since its July 2018 launch). The cherry on top of this sundae: You get optional professional monitoring for just $10 per month, with no long-term contract, and that includes unlimited cloud storage for video clips from Ring’s video doorbells and security cameras.
Runner-up Abode Iota Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $229.00See itBy integrating a video camera into its already capable hub, Abode’s Iota makes for a more compelling smart alarm system than ever.
Abode continues to impress us with its security-focused smart home hub. The Abode Iota incorporates a 1080p security camera into an enclosure that’s more compact than the original, yet retains all the features we like, including support for Zigbee and Z-Wave smart home devices and sensors, optional cellular backup for added security, and optional professional monitoring.
Best home security system for privacy Minut Smart Home Alarm Read TechHive's review$129.00MSRP $129.00See iton MinutMinut’s infrared-detecting security system offers best-in-class motion detection; its additional features are just icing on the cake.
The Minut Smart Home Security system is actually pretty limited in terms of its ability to control the other smart devices in your home, but if you’re particularly sensitive about privacy, this system can protect your home without relying on on cameras, microphones, or similar technology that some consider invasive.
What to look for when shoppingAs we mentioned earlier, smart home systems come in a dazzling array of shapes and sizes, from brain-dead simple to vastly complex. Features vary just as widely, so you’ll need to pay more attention than usual when you’re narrowing down the field to find the product that’s right for you. Here’s a look at some of those key decision factors. To see how each system on the market measures up to those promises, drill down into the reviews at the end of the buyers’ guide.
Nest The Nest thermostat is quite popular, but it’s not compatible with every smart home system.
Device support: Some smart hubs support only a small number of devices made by the manufacturer of the hub. Others offer certification programs for third-party devices and/or offer hooks into systems developed by third parties: Amazon (Alexa), Nest (thermostats, cameras, and smoke/CO detectors), and Google (Google Assistant) are the biggies here, but Apple’s HomeKit could become important later. It’s critical to consider all the devices you already have in your home, and whether the hub will support them. If the hub doesn’t support them, you might be looking at a massive upgrade later. As well, you need to think about what devices you plan to add to your network down the line.
IFTTT support: Many top smart home systems support IFTTT (If This Then That), the simple scripting system that lets you connect devices that otherwise wouldn’t be. For example, you could use IFTTT to turn all the lights in the house blue if a water leak is detected by your smart hub—even if it can’t speak directly to the lighting system itself. Stringify is a similar—and perhaps more sophisticated—service, but it has not yet gained as much traction as IFTTT.
Wired vs. wireless hub connection: Many smart hubs must connect to your wireless router via an ethernet cable, which limits your placement and, of course, requires a free ethernet port on your router. That can be an issue with the new generation of puck-like mesh routers that have just two ethernet ports (Eero, Google Wifi, TP-Link Deco M5, et al). A smaller number of hubs are wireless and can be placed anywhere in range of the router, increasing your flexibility.
Fibaro Z-Wave-based sensors, such as this door/window sensor from Fibaro, operate on a low-power mesh network.
Sensor range: If your home is large or spread out, you’ll need to pay attention to the range that the hub’s sensors support. Hubs may support a wide array of connection protocols, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, and Zigbee, all of which have very different ranges. As with a wireless router, smart hub range can also be impacted by interference and device placement, and smart home devices themselves have different specs, as well. Take the time to look into the detailed specs to be sure sensors and third-party devices will actually work with your home’s infrastructure.
Battery backup: If the power goes out, your smart lights might not be useful, but other smart home features, like security sensors, rely on a hub that’s always on. Many smart hubs, even those that aren’t built around security, feature battery backups (either through rechargeable cells or standard AAs). Even a short power outage can cause a significant delay while the hub reconnects, so a battery backup makes sense in many home environments. If you like everything else about a particular hub that lacks a battery backup option, consider investing in an uninterruptible power supply to plug it into.
Christopher Null/TechHive Wink’s app keeps a detailed log of everything that goes on in your smart home.
Mobile app usability: You’ll probably be interacting with your hub primarily through its mobile app, so you’ll want one that’s intuitive and powerful, with all the key features you use front and center. App-store screen shots and, of course, our reviews can help you get a sense of what you’re dealing with on the app side of things.
Overall complexity: This is a companion consideration to the mobile app, relating primarily to the audience for whom the smart home system was developed. Is the system geared at everyday users with limited customization needs? Or is it built with extreme flexibility in mind, to the point where the configuration decisions might overwhelm a novice user? Again, close attention to our reviews can help you gauge how comfortable you’re likely to feel with any system.
In addition to the above, the following considerations are primarily geared at systems with a security focus.
Sensor support: A companion consideration to the device support issue above, if you’re in the market for a security-focused smart hub, you’ll want one that has support for all the sensors you need. Most security hubs only work with the sensors made by the same manufacturer, so you can’t mix and match as you would with a general-use smart hub. Some security systems offer only a very narrow range of sensor types, while others have a wide variety to choose from.
Lowe’s A GSM module ensures your home security system doesn’t fail if a burglar cuts your landline.
Cellular radio backup: If you could simply cut the broadband connection to defeat a security system, it wouldn’t be much good, would it? Any good security system will include a 3G cellular backup that can be used in case your broadband connection drops. You should also carefully consider the battery backup consideration above, which is essential for dealing with power outages and is a standard feature on most security hubs.
Professional monitoring: If you don’t want to monitor your own security system 24/7, you’ll at least want the option to engage with a professional security company that can keep tabs on it for you when you’re out on walkabout. These invariably cost extra, which leads to our final consideration….
Service plan costs: Service plan costs vary widely from system to system, and many vendors offer a range of plans to choose from. Some systems will work without a service plan, allowing you to self-monitor. Some require a plan to function at all. Also note that lower-tier service plans might not include professional monitoring (Ring Alarm has one of the least-expensive plans: $10 per month with no long-term commitment). Price out service plans carefully before you pull the trigger.
Our latest smart home system reviews Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@Nicole76032708/best-smart-home-systems-for-a-connected-domicile-65cb45aaaa28 | [] | 2020-10-27 16:56:03.059000+00:00 | ['Security Cameras', 'Home Tech'] |
🐍Pattern coding challenge with one twist🐍 | I’ve been solving some coding challenges since last few days to improve my coding skill. I’ve came across with one question that seems very simple at first, but before I go ahead read the challenge below
It is very simple challange if you use little logic. I wrote code and got same output but test cases got failed. See the code and output below:
Did you find any difference between my output and expected output?
Output is same but why test cases got failed?
Let’s see the difference
Oh…did you see the difference? One extra spaces causes the test cases to fail.
Now the question is which line of code causes extra spaces. Answer is definitely print statement might have cause extra space. “ end = ‘ ‘ ” parameter of print causes that extra space.
Below is the solution I came up with to solve this problem:
I used list to solve this problem. I make a list of every line and print it using join function.
‘ ‘.join(lst) will print list as space separated value.
I hope you learned something new today.
Do follow to learn and get new tricks in python
https://instagram.com/learn_python_on_scroll | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/pattern-coding-challenge-with-one-twist-34ce94e92341 | ['Keerti Prajapati'] | 2020-12-20 15:00:41.578000+00:00 | ['Coding Challenge', 'Python Programming', 'Competetive Programming', 'Python3', 'Tricks'] |
Aavegotchi July Update | Win Big with NEW Drop Tickets
As outlined in the Litepaper, 20% of Haunt 2 and REALM Presale #1 Parcels will be raffled via our famous VRF Raffles!
Instead of having 6 different ticket types, we have consolidated all of the tickets into a single, new type — the Drop Ticket.
These NEW Drop Tickets are one-time-use Raffle Tickets that offer a single chance at winning a prize in our upcoming raffles. The more Drop Tickets you enter into a raffle, the higher your chances of coming away a winner.
To learn more about our NEW Drop Tickets and how to acquire them click here.
1st Aavegotchi Birthday Paarty!
Aavegotchi celebrated its 1st Birthday with over 500 #GotchiGang in attendance during our ebic B-day Party! We celebrated with a community call, $GHST drops, FREE XP, gifts, a dope DJ and of course, aalpha!
See the full results click here.
First Ever #Bid2Earn Aauction a Huge Success!
Beyond the data, we’re most thrilled with the way this NFT drop succeeded in boosting morale and engagement. Even the most “successful” of typical First Come First Serve NFT drops tend to fail in this regard. They are instead maligned with disappointed fans, gas wars and even bots. This auction had the complete opposite effect, instead feeling more like a celebratory shared experience.
See the full results click here.
DinoSwap GHST-ETH Liquidity Rewards
We’re big believers in the power of DeFi and farming when constructed thoughtfully with all incentives properly aligned. DinoSwap stands out from the crowd with a well crafted DEX aggregator that doesn’t vampire value but actually benefits fellow participants on the network.
Their focus on aligning with quality projects and the success of their AMA in the Aavegotchi discord speaks to the amount of big brains involved.
If you’re a long term believer in the sustainability of decentralized finance, the power of Polygon Network, and of course, the absolute basedness of Aavegotchi then this is a collaboration worthy of your attention.
To learn how to participate click here
Haunt 2 Aavegotchis Arrive This August
Haunt 2 has been CONFIRMED! AavegotchiDAO successfully voted to welcome 15,000 new Aavegotchis to Polygon in August!
This allows frens, old and new, the opportunity to get their hands on a Haunt 2 Portal during our #Bid2Earn auctions and NFT raffles.
To read more about the Haunt 2 Core Prop click here.
Pixelcraft Studios Dev Highlights
To help onboard new frens to Polygon, we’ve added a friendly warning when your MATIC balance is below 0.001, alongside a link to the MATIC faucet!
We’ve introduced a new Claiming system to distribute prizes for the Birthday Party Ticket airdrop.
Visit www.aavegotchi.com/airdrops to see if your address qualifies for the ticket prize!
The list was based on all the respondents to the Birthday Party typeform that was to be filled out during the party. If you’re not on the list, don’t worry, there will be more opportunities in the future!
Venly Wallet Now Integrated and Exclusive NFT Drop
#GotchiGang partnered with Venly, a cross-chain wallet and NFT marketplace on Polygon! Venly’s user frenly custodial wallet is now available to all that access aavegotchi.com aavegotchi.com. Then Venly NFT Marketplace has also verified an official Aavegotchi storefront, expanding the amount of places users can go to trade Aavegotchi wearables.
To celebrate the partnership, we released an exclusive VENLY BIKER set, only available on the Venly Market. Unfortunately, demand overwhelmed Venly’s infrastructure and only 15% of items were distributed before servers ground to a halt. The remaining Biker Set wearables will be available in the upcoming Haunt 2 auction!
Pixelcraft Studios Hires Former CoinMarketCap CTO
Another galaxy brain joins the Aavegotchi development team! Former CTO of CoinMarketCap, Mauvis Ledford, has joined Aavegotchi’s Pixelcraft Studios as Technical Advisor. Mauvis will play a lead role in scaling The Gotchiverse Realm so that tens of thousands of players can simultaneously enjoy the exciting virtual world when it goes live later this year.
To learn more about Mauvis Ledford click here.
Aavegotchi Summer Continues
If you thought July was hott, wait till you see what’s happening in August:
Official GHST Snapshot Proposal to List on Aave Polygon
The second Bid2Earn Aauction for Haunt 2
More Gotchiverse details in the leadup to REALM Presale #1
Stay spooky frens,
Aavegotchi Team | https://medium.com/@aavegotchi/aavegotchi-july-update-ab79bee02b9a | [] | 2021-08-10 16:00:47.190000+00:00 | ['Nft Marketplace', 'Polygon', 'Nft', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Aavegotchi'] |
Spend Less Time Checking Mail and Yet Not Miss a Thing | Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash
I use either my Gmail or Facebook account to signup for new services. It saves me the bother of remembering user accounts. Over a period of time, mails from these services cluttered my mailbox. There was a time when I organised mails using filters, labels or even moved them into folders. But of late, I have not been as diligent. Instead, I comb through the unread mails ever so often. I hate to see an unread mail count. Moreover, I fear that an important mail lies buried, somewhere, in that unholy pile of unread mail.
So, it was with some anticipation, that I signed up for Hey mail.
Right off the bat, Hey mail is quiet, disconcertingly so!
Hey gives me control. That’s what I like most about it.
Senders I haven’t seen before, don’t make it into my mailbox; Unless I screen them in. They wait their turn in the lobby. Waiting for me to show up and usher them in to my work space.
Which, by the way, has only three bins or trays.
A tray called paper trail is the home for all kinds of receipts and statements.
The other tray is the feed, which is the home for all promotional content. True to its name, the feed renders its mail as an infinite wall of information — much like Facebook or Google news.
The superlative touch is that neither Feeds nor Paper Trails show an unread count.
Email receipts are on the rise, but rarely do I check them. I can afford to check feeds once a day. The wall display allows me to scan content without opening individual emails. So not showing counts actually makes great sense.
By the process of elimination, the remaining mails land up in the final tray — the imbox. By definition, these should be the important mails. The ones, I need to look at.
Since, I have signed up, the list of important mails has been embarrassingly tiny. And the time I spend on mail too.
Hey has other mechanisms to tame the attention seeking nature of mail software. For starters, notifications are off by default. The ability to switch on notifications for specific contacts is perfect. Similarly too, is the ability to mute active email threads, where I have lost interest.
The real deal with Hey is the ability to reclaim the lost time and focus.
And that may well justify its steep price tag of 99 USD yearly. | https://medium.com/@dhruvaray/spend-less-time-checking-mail-and-yet-not-miss-a-thing-9d3ea2a9e55c | [] | 2020-07-08 16:01:17.978000+00:00 | ['Email Productivity', 'Email', 'Focus', 'Productivity', 'Habits For Success'] |
My top three Fermi Paradox solutions | It is not easy to dismiss the Fermi paradox. Either technological civilizations or even life are extremely unlikely or too short-lived, or some exotic theory is the case, of which there are many. For instance, aliens may have already conquered the galaxy and are among us, or they retreated in some digital simulated life rather than venturing in space, or perhaps we live in a computer simulation with Earth being the only simulated planet with life. Here, just for the record I briefly go over three I find most likely (at least today).
One important requirement for an explanation is that it should not rely on undue assumptions on other civilizations. “Other civilizations don’t wish to expand like we do” won’t do: some of them may not, but some may. It only takes one civilization with similar mentality to ours to expand across the galaxy. If we are the first, and if we don’t destroy ourselves, most likely we will eventually expand.
So here are my top three explanations:
A technological great filter lies ahead of us. I find it likely that science and technology require a certain free spirit of innovation, exploration, and individuality. Across our history, the leverage of an individual to cause damage is increasing steadily. Back 10,000 years ago, a strong and mean individual could kill a few people and bring down a hut or two. Today, a bad actor can cause much more harm. What if there is a technology that will unavoidably be invented, which gives the ability to anyone to instantly and irreversibly destroy the civilization? For example, an exotic and easily tapped energy source, or downloadable code for grey goo. If such a technology inexorably lies ahead of us, which is plausible, it is difficult to imagine how we could prevent every single individual from deploying it. How about other civilizations, could a collectivist civilization akin to an ant colony avoid such doom? Brains are expensive; in a collectivist civilization that confers no evolutionary advantage to individual intelligence, “free-riders” will get rid of their brains, so it is conceivable that every technological civilization consists of competing individuals and in every single one of them one individual eventually and inexorably triggers the doomsday machine. One catch to this explanation: for “best results” the doomsday machine must be triggered before exponential space exploration commences.
Aliens are among us. The first civilization to develop space travel, if similar to us in mindset, will likely want to expand at least defensively across the galaxy and beyond. If nothing else, to prevent future aggressor civilizations from expanding. Or perhaps because it is aware of destructive abilities of even inferior civilizations (think: grey goo) and wants to monitor the galaxy. A defensive expansion is more likely — a no-brainer — compared to a rapid colonization, which has the downside of creating potential future competitors. A civilization that interconnects into a big internet-brain may have little use of distant colonies and expand at a rate much lower than 1% of the speed of light. In the defensive expansion scenario, the civilization will still rapidly send robot factories to build drones that will monitor all interesting planetary systems, and be ready to unleash destructive force to anything that looks threatening. Incidentally, UFOs are becoming mainstream. If UFO reports are to be believed (OK, a big IF) then the reported UFOs are acting exactly as expected from drones who inspect things, are unconcerned about us, and are ready to engage in case anything they deem threatening appears. Which raises the important question of what they might deem threatening. Or perhaps, aliens are among us in the quantum realm or in some other unexpected physical form. The exponential technological progress has to reach one or a few phase transitions, after which all bets are off. To advanced aliens, components such as neurons or silicon transistors will seem hopelessly bulky and inefficient as computational building blocks. Hence, as a colleague pointed out, SETI is severely outdated using technology and reasoning of the 1950s to search for aliens and should broaden its scope and methods. I bet Carl Sagan — my childhood hero and pioneer of SETI— would agree.
Technological civilizations are unlikely. This is the explanation I find least likely (rather, I leave room for an entirely different explanation, such as a specific and compelling hypothesis of why a sufficiently advanced civilization finds the visible universe uninteresting or explores it invisibly). Intelligence has most likely only evolved once on Earth in terms of nervous system; however, higher intelligence has evolved independently multiple times. Orangutans and chimps, dolphins and whales, elephants, ravens and crows, kea and African Grey parrots, and very independently octopuses and squids, have remarkable intelligence. Many species use tools. We are first to develop technology on Earth, but isn’t it a stretch to assert that if we weren’t around no other species on Earth would develop technology in the next 100 million years? Or 1 billion years? What if life is vanishingly unlikely. Again, I don’t think that’s a robust explanation. The first step of life cannot be unlikely: while liquid water appeared on Earth 4.4 billion years ago, the first evidence of life may date back to 4.3 billion years ago, which hints to life originating quickly in geological terms once conditions are right. If any step in the evolution to intelligence was vanishingly unlikely, that step would most likely have taken a disproportionately long time on Earth. That is not what we observe: the last universal common ancestor appears about 3.5 billion years ago (bya) after a steady evolution of basic biomolecular functions; photosynthesis appears 3 bya; land microbes 2.8 bya; cyanobacteria’s oxygen photosynthesis 2.5 bya; eukaryotes 1.85 bya, land fungi 1.3 bya, sexual reproduction 1.2 bya; marine eukaryotes 1 bya; protozoa 750 million years ago, and so on, steadily evolving into intelligent species in the past few hundred million years. The coarse-grained breakdown of evolution’s steps in the early billions of years reflects our lack of data on the ancient progression of molecular biology rather than any single vanishingly unlikely event.
Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash
Incidentally, I want to urge against jumping to the anthropic principle and stating that there is nothing puzzling about seemingly being alone because the sole intelligent civilization necessarily is puzzled about being alone. The anthropic principle is quite unsatisfying to begin with in cosmology. However, at least in that case we have a single observed event to explain — the universe and its cosmological properties — and no expectation of observing other similar events (i.e., other universes). In the case of the Fermi Paradox, because there may be yet unobserved civilizations lurking around, we have to weigh any theory of us being alone against some prior probability of it being true. Given our observations on Earth, the prior probability we assign to technological civilizations cannot be vanishingly small — everything points to steady biochemical and then organismal evolution from formation of water all the way to intelligent tool-using species — therefore we have to make every effort to completely exclude other explanations before we jump to the conclusion that we are alone.
So where does this leave us? I hope (1) is false. (2) is no good news either. (3) is wishful thinking, or perhaps scary too. I would love to see a better explanation. If you have your favorite explanation in mind, or thoughts to share, please comment below!
Want more stories like this? Be sure to check out more from Mission!🧠 👉 Here! | https://medium.com/the-mission/my-top-three-fermi-paradox-solutions-10d598a86197 | ['Serafim Batzoglou'] | 2019-06-25 03:39:02.577000+00:00 | ['Aliens', 'History', 'Cosmos', 'Science', 'Future'] |
Vertical Movement with vim-columnmove | A reader who was also a fan of Patternjump sent in vim-columnmove, which is by the same author. This is a plugin that helps make vertical movement more convenient by providing vertical equivalents of motions like f and t .
For example, columnmove-f (mapped to <M-f> ) will move the cursor down along the current column to the next matching character. | https://medium.com/usevim/vertical-movement-with-vim-columnmove-3442482fb3fd | ['Alex R. Young'] | 2017-02-15 16:46:15.346000+00:00 | ['Plugins', 'Motions'] |
Where Is Disruptive Technology Taking The Insurance Industry? | The accelerated use of technology in the insurance sector is having both a disruptive and transformative impact on areas including product development, distribution, modeling, underwriting and claims, and administration practice. The result is a new industry, known as InsurTech. But while the insurance market looks to technology for greater efficiency, regulators are beginning to raise concerns about managing potential risks. Is there really a risk when it comes to disrupting insurance? Let’s talk about it in this Inmediate article.
What is InsurTech?
InsurTech, which describes the use of technology in insurance transactions and processes, is now an industry sector in itself. The insurance sector’s use of technologies has accelerated to improve traditional insurance processes and models.
InsurTech is having both disruptive and transformative effect on the retail and commercial parts of the insurance industry. It is leading to a radical change in product development, distribution, modeling, underwriting and claims, and administration practices. Its effects are multifaceted and have the potential to improve the way the market operates, but also result in outcomes that are of a concern to regulators.
Awareness, mitigation, and management of the risks associated with the use of InsurTech are vital in a sector undergoing such rapid change. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the main trends in InsurTech and to consider the potential legal and regulatory issues that accompany them.
Why is it relevant now?
The disruptive impact of the low-cost base, customer-facing FinTech companies have gathered significant momentum in the last few years. Although the insurance market has always been an innovative one, the proliferation of InsurTech companies has lagged slightly behind the changes in the wider financial services sector.
The reasons for this lag include the following:
To bring a new product to market, start-up customer-facing product distributors are typically reliant on incumbent insurers’ licenses to issue policies and their balance sheets.
The comparatively more complex and heavily regulated nature of insurance products when compared to other financial services products.
The barriers to entry for start-up companies that result from the capital and ongoing prudential and supervisory requirements in the insurance industry.
Established insurers are hampered by legacy systems and the investment cost that replacing such systems would involve.
InsurTech’s gathering momentum in recent times reflects a gradual industry-wide shift from a “product-centric” to a “customer-centric” model. This is driven by changing consumer expectations, and concurrent market and regulatory conditions, in tandem with technological advancement.
The industry’s acceptance that it must adapt to these new technologies has significantly accelerated developments in the last 12 months. Unfavorable macroeconomic factors, harsher regulatory capital requirements and a soft market inundated with excess capital have led insurers to look to InsurTech to allow them to price more competitively and reduce administration costs.
The potential opportunities afforded by InsurTech have triggered significant growth in investment in businesses operating in this sphere.
InsurTech in the product life cycle
This article is divided into four distinct sections to examine the latest InsurTech developments and the potential legal and regulatory issues arising from them. We consider:
Products. Smart devices and sensors (such as telematics) and the internet of things (IoT) are being used to launch new products that offer cost savings to consumers and lower risks for underwriters. Mobile technology is allowing products with peer-to-peer (P2P) features and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) insurance. These products are designed to allow the millennial generation to access insurance cover they actually want.
Smart devices and sensors (such as telematics) and the internet of things (IoT) are being used to launch new products that offer cost savings to consumers and lower risks for underwriters. Mobile technology is allowing products with peer-to-peer (P2P) features and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) insurance. These products are designed to allow the millennial generation to access insurance cover they actually want. Distribution. The wider use of technology is having a disintermediating effect, cutting out “the middle man” and creating a more direct relationship between insurers and customers. This has allowed the market to develop and price products at a level more closely aligned to the demands of customers. New distribution platforms are being launched that are wholly automated and self-directional. Digital distribution models are advancing beyond the price comparison website model to encompass the sharing economy, P2P features, artificial intelligence (AI), robot-advice, machine learning and advanced robotic process automation (RPA). These features give customers greater control over what products they can purchase and on what terms, often without human intervention, usually all through their mobile phone.
The wider use of technology is having a disintermediating effect, cutting out “the middle man” and creating a more direct relationship between insurers and customers. This has allowed the market to develop and price products at a level more closely aligned to the demands of customers. New distribution platforms are being launched that are wholly automated and self-directional. Digital distribution models are advancing beyond the price comparison website model to encompass the sharing economy, P2P features, artificial intelligence (AI), robot-advice, machine learning and advanced robotic process automation (RPA). These features give customers greater control over what products they can purchase and on what terms, often without human intervention, usually all through their mobile phone. Underwriting. “Big Data” and data analytics, sometimes in conjunction with technology-based products, are being used to inform increasingly precise and segmented underwriting decisions, including pricing and risk assessment. This is allowing some start-up insurers to offer coverage to individuals on better terms than would have been possible without this data, and in some cases, who would not have been able to purchase coverage without it.
“Big Data” and data analytics, sometimes in conjunction with technology-based products, are being used to inform increasingly precise and segmented underwriting decisions, including pricing and risk assessment. This is allowing some start-up insurers to offer coverage to individuals on better terms than would have been possible without this data, and in some cases, who would not have been able to purchase coverage without it. Administration and Claims. Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) are being used at the proof of concept stage (sometimes in conjunction with smart contracts), and have clear potential application in data sharing, know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud prevention, claims processing and general insurance record keeping. Claims processes are being automated and advanced by AI devices such as fraud software.
Products
Internet of things (IoT) and smart devices
Broadly, IoT refers to the network or system of interconnected computing devices, machines, sensors, people and organisations; “things” that interact with one another without human agency and are capable of collecting, storing and transmitting to intermediaries and insurers vast quantities of data, like how a policyholder drives their car, cares for their health or manages their home.
Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and microinsurance
PAYG and microinsurance offer rapidly underwritten financial protection against specific risks over a relatively short period of time. Start-ups offering these products are beginning to emerge in the US and are often backed (through capacity arrangements or direct investment) by established insurers and reinsurers.
PAYG and microinsurance products are designed largely to cover renters’ insurance, laptops, mobile phones, sporting, and musical equipment through a mobile platform. The mobile phone apps through which these products are sold typically allow the user to upload and see the respective insurance values of various items, offer various insurance pricing and protection models, and allow the insurance to be turned on or off at any time.
These products are aimed particularly at millennials. The proposition assumes that this generation of customers may prefer to rent rather than own assets, might consider risk is only worth covering for a specific period or purpose (for example, a weekend away) and generally want instant access through their mobile phone.
Typically, the claims process for these products will be (near) fully automated and customers will be able to make a simple claim over their mobile phone in minutes through an automated “chat-bot” process, with the claims cash being paid almost instantly straight to their bank account.
Distribution
Peer-to-peer or P2P models
P2P digital platforms aim to reduce the cost of insurance by sharing insurance needs (commonly motor, home, and mobile phone) within a self-selected group of consumers. The group, not the insurer, selects its members, with the result that pooled risk groups usually comprise family members or friends, or both, enabling the cohort to co-manage its own pool of money and claims through relationship influence.
An example of a P2P structure is where the premium for a group is calculated on the basis of the standard underwriting criteria on an individual basis. It is then aggregated and put towards the group’s insurance fees and the group underwriting pool. Claims are paid out from the pool throughout the year, with the group’s insurance fees providing a buffer, should the pool run out of funds. Excess claims money is distributed back to group members at the end of the year in the absence of claims or rolled over to the next year’s pool. If claims exceed the pool monies, the excess is picked up by the insurer sitting behind the arrangement.
The P2P structure is beneficial to insurers as it incentivizes good behavior on the part of the insureds and reduces the risk of fraudulent and low-level claims, as the pool’s premium reduction is linked to group members not making a claim.
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA)
The traditional insurance distribution system has gradually developed over the centuries into one where product sales are largely agency driven and the broker-insurer relationship is the predominant distribution model for the majority of lines.
The proliferation of technological innovation means that primary insurers are able to more efficiently and effectively source insurance and underwrite directly with customers, lessening the dependence on intermediaries; a so-called “disintermediating” effect.
One such advancement has been in the area of AI. AI is the operational processing and analysis of consumer data by sophisticated intelligent automation systems that, together with a series of algorithms, can emulate human behavior and reconstruct human thought processes and intelligence. In other words, AI systems can carry out the work that previously required human intelligence.
AI can be applied across the insurance value chain, particularly in the areas of distribution and claims administration, where defined (and often time-consuming) processes, procedures and actions are commonplace.
Advances in AI could also, over time, affect life insurance, where the tasks of sourcing and constructing life insurance portfolios and monitoring policies are all capable of automation. The need for other professionals, who are often involved in complex life insurance arrangements (such as lawyers and accountants) could be diminished by AI, leading to cost savings that could be passed onto policyholders.
The key short-term effect of increasing automation in insurance distribution is likely to be a decrease in brokerage commission rates across the market as the need for sophisticated broker advice diminishes. In the longer term, there is potential for increasingly sophisticated intelligent automation systems to eradicate the intermediary-based structure altogether through the use of the automated insurance agents (known as chatbots), which are becoming widespread within the administration and claims processes of today.
Underwriting
Big Data in the underwriting process
A feature of InsurTech led underwriting is the paradigm shift from the protection of risk to the prevention of risk.
The traditional underwriting model is based on a combination of policyholder responses to proposal forms, historical claims data and risk studies; data that is used by actuaries to predict consumer behavior and identify patterns in claims losses.
Within the underwriting context specifically, InsurTech seeks to alter traditional models by exploiting the connectivity facilitated by the IoT and the vast amounts of Big Data it unleashes. The majority of products using IoT based smart devices described in the Internet of things (IoT) and smart devices above, for example, are designed to reduce the risk of claims (or at least the amount) on policies either by passively controlling customer behavior or through mitigating losses that may occur.
The aggregation of large amounts of data derived from a variety of exploitable data sources (including IoT devices and social media), is increasingly being applied in the underwriting process to not only analyze but also predict, consumer behavior. This enables insurers to assess risk more precisely, price policies better, reduce losses and estimate necessary reserves accordingly.
While customers may be intrinsically drawn to the prospect of reduced premiums, InsurTech raises a number of legal and regulatory concerns, particularly within the underwriting process.
Administration and Claims
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA)
The abundance of new products, improved capability of IoT devices, innovative distribution platforms and increased gathering and application of Big Data has directed insurers towards operating models that streamline their administration and claims processes.
With this in mind, AI, machine learning and RPA (including chatbots) are increasingly being deployed to aid customer service inquiries, claims administration, payment of claims, fraud detection, profit, and loss analysis and behavioral analysis.
AI’s most tangible impact to date has been in the areas of policy monitoring and claims processing, which are gradually becoming subject to intelligent automation to improve efficiency and produce cost-savings, consequently lowering premiums.
Also known as “Robo-advisors”, chatbots are designed to simulate an intelligent conversation and replace humans in various insurance processes. Chatbots are already being used throughout the mobile banking sector, where basic AI programs interact with and assist human customers.
Chatbots are given human-like names, making them more personal, and engage in natural conversation with the customer. They answer basic queries relating to the policy, such as coverage details, payments due and renewals, and provide contextual information on products and services. A growing number of large insurers are exploring how the use of chatbots might improve efficiency in administrative processes, particularly in the claims process.
Fraud detection software has been used to monitor voice calls for signs of fraud-related stress for some time. The use of AI can also enable earlier and more effective detection of fraudulent claims, as they are capable of discerning human emotions by monitoring facial expressions and natural language.
The effects of AI will be felt in society. Greater automation and advanced AI will inevitably impact the workforce, meaning issues such as redundancies will need to be considered. Additionally, thought will need to be given to customer engagement issues; there are certain interactions that may be more appropriately dealt with by way of human conversation, where a degree of empathy is required.
Blockchain and Smart Contract Technology
Interest in blockchain technology has grown significantly over the past year across financial services, though it remains largely in the experimental phase within insurance. Both InsurTech firms and established insurers are beginning to find applications for distributed ledgers, blockchains and smart contracts in the underwriting and claims system, representing a radical departure from traditional insurance contracting and administration models.
A blockchain is derived from the technology underpinning the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. In simple terms, a blockchain is in effect a database that records each transaction in a “block”. Typically, each block contains a hash that is unique to, and references, the previous block in the “chain”. If any data in any block in the chain are later altered, this is immediately apparent to all participants of that blockchain, as that block’s hash (and that of any subsequent block) will no longer correspond to the later block’s record of that hash. The result is an indelible record that removes the need for a central authority or third party.
Blockchain technologies are known as “distributed ledgers” as they operate on a distributed basis. The record or ledger of all transactions is replicated in full on each participant’s computer. They are highly transparent because each participant has a complete, traceable record of every transaction recorded on the blockchain.
Automated claims payment processes powered by smart contract and blockchain technologies could result in policyholders being paid more quickly and reduce claims administration costs, the risk of fraudulent claims and administrative costs for the insurer. There is also the potential for policy adjustments to be automated.
As well as easing claims administration congestion, blockchains could aid general insurance record keeping by supporting an automated “bordereau” reporting system, with accessible and continuously validated policy and claims data available throughout the policy lifecycle.
Simultaneously recording policyholder and claims details in verified blockchains could also reduce the risk of fraudulent claims, and mitigate the risk of an insurer being unwittingly used as a means to launder money, both at the back end in terms of claims payments, but also at the front end by establishing robust KYC protocols.
Blockchains also hold the ability to share and exploit Big Data to provide more granular risk-analysis.
There is a proliferation of global ideas and concepts within InsurTech that will fundamentally change the market in the next few years. These innovations have the potential to change the way the insurance industry works and alter the relationships between customers and insurers, resulting in insurance products that are more closely aligned to individual preferences and priced more appropriately to the risk. The use of AI and robo-advice technology in new digital platforms will be particularly transformative in changing the way customers purchase insurance and could result in the disintermediation of certain parts of the market. | https://medium.com/@inmediatesg/where-is-disruptive-technology-taking-the-insurance-industry-cb35891eccaf | [] | 2019-06-17 23:49:24.100000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Disruption', 'Technology', 'Insurance', 'Insurtech'] |
The Day I Almost Drowned... | The Day I Almost Drowned...
It was a beautiful summer day in July of '85. I was only 8 years old, I wouldn’t turn 9 until October that year & my sister Alicia and one of her best friends Sheila & I headed off to the beach to go swimming in the brisk Atlantic Ocean. They decided to just swim, but feeling adventurous I grabbed my Fun Tube (affectionately known as FT). I’d later come to see the irony in that name...fun...tube, my little inflatable inner tube...it’s akin to a tire inner tube, but with some extra material for a seat.
We were only kids (my sister & Sheila were only 11), but we knew what the undertow (UT) was & what it could do...it’s raw power...but being nai kids, we definitely underestimated it.
I hopped on FT in what started out as shallow water, but was soon dragged out by UT to much deeper water in a matter of minutes. I was heading away from shore, not looking behind me, with no life jacket on...it was 1985, we barely wore seat belts back then even if your car was fancy/new enough to have them, or ones that worked anyway!
I felt an overwhelming urge to turn around & look back towards the shore and Alicia & Sheila were waving their arms, alerting me that I had gone out too far.
I wasn't a great swimmer then & I'm still not to this day...I know how, I just suck at it & would rather wade in the water & doggy-paddle anywhere I need to get. So, I unwisely decided to jump out of FT into much deeper than anticipated waters.
Yes, I was "in over my head" indeed and drowning...I remember jumping off of FT, flailing about like one of those wacky waving arm tube dudes you see at a used car dealership & then...nothing...just warmth & quiet...it honestly felt like I was back home in my bed dreaming.
The dream continued until Alicia finally made it out to me...she pulled me up out of the water & I started flailing around like ol' tube dude again, pulling her down in the water almost drowning us both in the process...we eventually made it into shore & some guys we knew from around my parents' cabin eventually retrieved FT out near the end of the rocks on one side of the cove...the main lessons learned here: Never go out swimming (in the ocean, if you're 8 & you can't swim!), without a life jacket; and never go out swimming (or fun tubing), in high tide...UT'll get ya'!! | https://medium.com/@matthewwalsh7676/the-day-i-almost-drowned-3af76201112b | ['Matthew Walsh'] | 2021-05-22 14:26:34.158000+00:00 | ['Oceans', 'True Story', 'Family', 'Undertow', 'Drowning'] |
Generate Publication-Ready Plots Using Seaborn Library (Part-1) | Generate Publication-Ready Plots Using Seaborn Library (Part-1)
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay
The visualization is an important part of any data analysis. This helps us present the data in pictorial or graphical format. Data visualization helps in
Grasp information quickly
Understand emerging trends
Understand relationships and pattern
Communicate stories to the audience
I’m a PhD student in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Guwahati. I work in the transportation domain, thus I’m fortunate that I get to work with lots of data. In the data analysis part of the task, I have to often perform exploratory analysis. When comes to visualization my all-time favourite is ggplot2 library (R’s plotting library: R is a statistical programming language) which is one of the popular plotting tools. Recently, I also started implementing the same using python due to recent advancements in this language libraries. I have observed a significant improvement in python data analysis tools specifically, data manipulation, plotting and machine learning. So, I thought let's see whether python visualization tools offer similar flexibility or not like what ggplot2 does. So, I tried several libraries like Matplotlib, Seaborn, Bokeh and Plotly. As per my experience, we could utilize seaborn (static plots) and Plotly (interactive plots) for the majority of exploratory analysis tasks with very few lines of codes and avoiding complexity.
After going through different plotting tools, especially in Python, I have observed that still there are challenges one would face while implementing plots using the Matplotlib and Seaborn library. Especially, when you want it to be publication-ready. During learning, I have gone through these ups and downs. So, let me share my experience here.
The Seaborn library is built on the top of the Matplotlib library and also combined to the data structures from pandas. The Seaborn blog series will be comprised of the following five parts:
Part-1. Different types of plots using seaborn
Part-2. Facet, Pair and Joint plots using seaborn
Part-3. Seaborn’s style guide and colour palettes
Part-4. Seaborn plot modifications (legend, tick, and axis labels etc.)
Part-5. Plot saving and miscellaneous
Aim of the article
The aim of the current article is to get familiar ourself with different types of plots. We will explore various types of plots and also tweak them a little bit to suit our need using Seaborn and Matplotlib library. I have aggregated different plots into the following categories.
Distribution plots Categorical plots Regression Plot Time Series Plots Matrix plots
Importing libraries
The first step of any analysis is to install and load the relevant libraries.
import numpy as np # Array manipulation
import pandas as pd # Data Manipulation
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # Plotting
import seaborn as sns # Statistical plotting
About dataset
In this blog, we primarily going to use the Tips dataset. The data was reported in a collection of case studies for business statistics. The dataset is also available through the Python package Seaborn.
Source:
Bryant, P. G. and Smith, M. A. (1995), Practical Data Analysis: Case Studies in Business Statistics, Richard D. Irwin Publishing, Homewood, IL.
The Tips data contains 244 observations and 7 variables (excluding the index). The variables descriptions are as follows:
bill: Total bill (cost of the meal), including tax, in US dollars
tip: Tip (gratuity) in US dollars
sex: Sex of person paying for the meal (Male, Female)
smoker: Presence of smoker in a party? (No, Yes)
weekday: day of the week (Saturday, Sunday, Thursday and Friday)
time: time of day (Dinner/Lunch)
size: the size of the party
Loading dataset
The first step of any analysis is to load the dataset. Here, we are loading the dataset from Seaborn package using load_dataset( ) function. We can check the first 5 observations using the head( ) function.
tips = sns.load_dataset("tips")
tips.head()
Lets’ explore the shape of the dataset. The dataset contains 244 observations and 7 variables.
tips.shape
(244, 7)
Defining Style and Context
Seaborn offers five preset seaborn themes: darkgrid , whitegrid , dark , white , and ticks . The default theme is darkgrid . Here we will set the white theme to make the plots aesthetically beautiful.
Plot elements can be scaled using set_context( ). The four preset contexts, in order of relative size, are paper , notebook , talk , and poster . The notebook style is the default. Here we are going to set it to paper and scale the font element to 2.
sns.set_style('white')
sns.set_context("paper", font_scale = 2)
1. Distribution Plots
All type of distribution plot can be plotted using displot( ) function. To change the plot type you just need to supply the kind = ` ` argument which supports histogram (hist), Kernel Density Estimate (KDE: kde) and Empirical Cumulative Distribution Function (ECDF: ecdf).
1.1 Histogram
We can plot a histogram using the displot( ) function by supplying kind = “hist”. We can also supply the bins argument as per our requirement. I have set the aspect ratio to 1.5 to make the plot a little bit wider.
sns.displot(data=tips, x="total_bill", kind="hist", bins = 50, aspect = 1.5)
Histogram (Image by Author)
1.2 Histogram + KDE
We can plot a histogram + KDE (overlaid) using the displot( ) function by supplying kind = “hist” and kde = True.
sns.displot(data=tips, x="total_bill", kind="hist", kde = True, bins = 50, aspect=1.5)
Histogram (Image by Author)
1.3 Gaussian Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) Plot
We can plot a KDE using the displot( ) function by supplying kind = “kde”.
sns.displot(data=tips, x="total_bill", kind="kde", aspect=1.5)
KDE (Image by Author)
1.4 ECDF plot
We can plot an ECDF using the displot( ) function by supplying kind = “ecdf”.
sns.displot(data=tips, x="total_bill", kind="ecdf", aspect=1.5)
ECDF (Image by Author)
2. Categorical Plot Types
2.1 Plots that shows every observation
First, we will start with plots which are very helpful in displaying individual observations. These plots are very useful when we have a small dataset.
2.1.1 Stripplot
A strip plot could be a good alternative to box or violin plot when we want to display all observations but this work fine when we have a small dataset.
Let’s see how the tips are distributed over different days.
It comes handy if you have a figure (fig) and axis (ax) object. You could get it by using plt.subplots( ) function obtained from Matplotlib library. Here we fixed the figure size to 10 x 6. We supplied day on the x-axis and tip on the y-axis. You can add little bit randomness using jitter = True so that you could see the observations if they are overlapping. Here, I have added a point size of 8.
To make the plot visually aesthetic, I have removed the top and right spines using: sns.despine(right = True).
You can observe that people tips a big chunk during the weekend (especially Saturdays).
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.stripplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
jitter = True,
ax = ax,
s = 8) sns.despine(right = True)
plt.show()
Stripplot (Image by Author)
2.1.2 Swarmplot
The swarm plot is also known as a bee swarm plot. It is similar to a strip plot, but the points are adjusted along the categorical axis so that they don’t overlap. It provides a better representation of the distribution of values, but not very scalable for a large number of observations.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.swarmplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
s = 8) sns.despine(right = True)
plt.show()
Swarmplot (Image by Author)
2.2 Plots based on abstract representation
Plots with abstract information include boxplot, violin plot, and boxen (letter value plot)
2.2.1 (a) Boxplot
A box and whisker plot (box plot) displays the five-number summary of a set of data. The five-number summary is the minimum, first quartile (Q1), median, third quartile (Q3), and maximum. A vertical line goes through the box at the median. The whiskers go from each quartile to the minimum or maximum.
Box plot showing five number summary
Let’s observe the median tips for each day by gender. Here, we have supplied the sex variable into hue so that it will plot the box separate for male and female with distinct filled colours.
Note: One thing to note that you can see the legend title is small than the labels. We will fix it in the next plot.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.boxplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex") sns.despine(right = True)
plt.show()
Boxplot (Image by Author)
To fix the legend title and to change the legend labels, we could access the legend internals using ax.get_legend_handles_labels() and can save the outputs into handles and labels. To modify the legend we use ax.legend( ), where we supply the handles object and provide new labels string in a list. Additionally, we could increase the font and title font size.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.boxplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex") handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(handles, ["Men", "Woman"], title='Gender', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20)
sns.despine(right = True)
plt.show()
Boxplot (Image by Author)
2.2.1 (b) Boxplot + Stripplot
Sometimes we need to display how the data points are distributed. We can achieve this by overlapping a stripplot on a boxplot.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.stripplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
hue = "sex",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
dodge=True,
s = 8,
marker="D",
palette="Set2",
alpha = 0.7) sns.boxplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex") handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(handles, ["Men", "Woman"], title='Gender', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20) sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
Boxplot + stripplot (Image by Author)
2.2.2 Violin Plot
A violin plot plays a similar role as a box and whisker plot. Unlike a box plot, in the violin plot, it features a kernel density estimation of the underlying distribution across several levels. Here, we have plotted day on the x-axis and tips on the y-axis with hue corresponding to sex using a violin plot.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.violinplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex")
handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(title='Gender', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20)
sns.despine(right = True)
plt.show()
Violine Plot (Image by Author)
2.2.3 Boxenplot (letter-value plot)
The Boxenplot is also known as the letter-value plot is introduced by Heike Hofmann, Karen Kafadar and Hadley Wickham.
Article Title: “Letter-value plots: Boxplots for large data”
The letter-value plot covers the following sort comings of box-plot:
(1) it conveys more detailed information in the tails using letter values, but only to the depths where the letter values are reliable estimates of their corresponding quantiles and (2) outliers are labelled as those observations beyond the most extreme letter value.
Read more on that in the article that introduced the plot [Hofmann et al., (2011)]: link
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.boxenplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex",
palette="pastel") handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(title='Gender', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20) sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
Boxen plot (Image by Author)
2.3 Plots with Statistical Estimates
2.3.1 Count Plot
seaborn.countplot() method is used to illustrate the counts of observations in each categorical bin using bars.
Let’s visualize how many are smoker and non-smoker across two gender groups in the tips dataset.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.countplot(x = "sex",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "smoker",
palette="Set1") handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(handles, ["Yes", "No"], title='Smoker', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20) sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
Count Plot (Image by Author)
2.3.2 Point plot
Point plots can be more useful than bar plots when one need to compare between different levels of one or more categorical variables. It is particularly helpful when one needs to understand how the levels of one categorical variable changes across levels of a second categorical variable. The lines that join each point from the same hue level allows interactions to be judged by differences in slope. The point plot shows only the mean (or other estimator) value. Here, I have added an error bars cap width of 0.1.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.pointplot(x = "day",
y = "total_bill",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex",
capsize = .1,
palette="Set1",
dodge = 0.2) handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(handles, ["Men", "Women"], title='Gender', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20) sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
Point Plot (Image by Author)
2.3.3 Barplot
A bar plot represents an estimate of central tendency for a numeric variable with the height of each rectangle and provides some indication of the uncertainty around that estimate using error bars. The bar plot shows only the mean (or other estimator) value.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.barplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex",
palette="pastel") handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(title='Gender', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20) sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
Barplot (Image by Author)
You can also change the estimator to other estimators to represent the bar hight. Here, in the below plot I have included the np.sum as an estimator so that the bar height will represent the sum in each category. To exclude the error bar I have included the ci = None argument.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.barplot(x = "day",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex",
palette="pastel",
estimator = np.sum,
ci = None) handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
ax.legend(title='Gender', fontsize=16, title_fontsize=20) sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
Barplot (Image by Author)
3. Regression plots
Regression plots are very helpful for illustrating the relationship between two variables. This can be plotted by combining a relational scatterplot and fitting a trend line on that.
3.1 Relational Plot
3.1.1 Scatter Plot
Scatter plot is useful for illustrating the relationship between two continuous variables. To plot a scatterplot we could use the scatterplot( ) function from Seaborn library.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.scatterplot(x = "total_bill",
y = "tip",
data = tips,
ax = ax,
hue = "sex",
s = 50) sns.despine(right = True)
plt.show()
Scatter Plot (Image by Author)
3.2 Regression Plot using regplot( )
A regression plot can be generated using either regplot( ) or lmplot( ). The regplot() performs a simple linear regression model fit while lmplot() combines regplot() and FacetGrid. Inaddition, lmplot( ) offers more customization than the regplot( ).
3.2.1 (a) Linear Regression plot
Here, we want to explore the relationship between the total bill paid and tip. We can plot this by supplying the total bill to x-axis and tip to the y-axis. Here, I have used a diamond marker (“D”) to present the point shape and coloured the points to blue. The trend line (regression line) shows a positive relationship between the total bill and tips.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.regplot(x='total_bill',
y="tip",
data=tips,
marker='D',
color='blue') sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
plt.clf()
Regression Plot (Image by Author)
3.2.1 (b) Adding the Regression Equation
In some case, especially for publication, or presentation, you may want to include the regression equation inside the plot. The regplot( ) or lmplot( ) does not offer this functionality yet. But externally we can compute the regression slope and intercept and supply to the plot object. Here, I have used the scipy package to estimate the regression slope and intercept and added to the plot using line_kws argument.
from scipy import stats fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) # get coeffs of linear fit
slope, intercept, r_value, p_value, std_err = stats.linregress(tips['total_bill'], tips['tip']) sns.regplot(x='total_bill',
y="tip",
data=tips,
marker='D',
color='blue',
line_kws={'label':"tip = {0:.2f} + {1:.2f} * total_bill".format(intercept, slope)}) sns.despine(right = True) # Add legend
ax.legend(fontsize=16) plt.show()
plt.clf()
Regression Plot with Trend Line Equation (Image by Author)
3.2.2 residplot
The residplot helps you visualize the regression residuals which also provide the validity of one of the regression's core assumptions. The residuals should not be either systematically high or low. In the OLS context, random errors are assumed to produce residuals that are normally distributed. Therefore, the residuals should fall in a symmetrical pattern and have a constant spread throughout the range.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.residplot(x = 'total_bill',
y="tip",
data=tips,
color='blue')
sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
plt.clf()
Residual Plot (Image by Author)
3.2.3 Non-Linear Regression Plot
In the above examples, we showed a relationship that is linear. There might be situations when the relationship between variables is non-linear. Here, to illustrate this example, we will be using the auto-mpg dataset from UCI repository.
auto = pd.read_csv("auto-mpg.csv")
auto.head()
First Five Observations (Image by Author)
Here, if we plot the relationship between weight (weight of the vehicle) and mpg (miles per gallons), we can observe the relationship is non-linear. In such cases, a non-linear fit could be much appropriate. So to plot the non-linear relationship you can increase the order argument value from 1 (default) to 2 or more.
Here, we first plotted a scatterplot, then overlayed a linear regression line and over that a regression line of order 2. You could see that the regression line of order 2 provides a better fit to the non-linear trend.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12, 8)) # Generate a scatter plot of 'weight' and 'mpg' using skyblue circles
sns.scatterplot(auto['weight'],
auto['mpg'],
label='data points',
s = 50,
color='skyblue',
marker='o',
ax = ax) # Plot a blue linear regression line of order 1 between 'weight' and 'mpg'
sns.regplot(x='weight',
y='mpg',
data=auto,
scatter=None,
color='blue',
label='order 1') # Plot a red regression line of order 2 between 'weight' and 'mpg'
sns.regplot(x='weight',
y='mpg',
data=auto,
scatter=None,
order=2,
color='red',
label='order 2',
ax = ax) sns.despine(right = True) # Add a legend and display the plot
plt.legend(loc='upper right')
plt.show()
Linear & Non-Linear Fit (Image by Author)
3.3 Rgeression Plot using lmplot( )
lmplot provides more flexibility in generating regression plots. You can supply a categorical variable in hue argument to plot trend line based on the categories. Here, we provided sex into hue argument so that it plots two separate regression line based on the gender category. I also changed the default colour using palette argument.
# Create a regression plot with a categorical variable sns.lmplot(x='total_bill',
y="tip",
data=tips,
hue='sex',
markers=["o", "x"],
palette=dict(Male="blue", Female="red"),
size=7,
legend=None) plt.legend(title='Gender', loc='upper left', labels=['Male', 'Female'], title_fontsize = 20)
sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
plt.clf()
Regression using lmplot (Image by Author)
3.4 Logistic Regression Plot
Let’s plot a binary logistic regression plot. For this, we need a discrete binary variable. Let’s assume that tip amount> 3 dollars is a big tip (1) and tip amount≤ 3 is a small tip (0). We can use numpy libraries np.where( ) function to create a new binary column “big_tip”. Now we can fit a binary logistic regression using lmplot( ) by supplying the logistic = True argument.
tips["big_tip"] = np.where(tips.tip > 3, 1, 0) ax = sns.lmplot(x="total_bill", y="big_tip", data=tips,
logistic=True, n_boot=500, y_jitter=.03, aspect = 1.2)
Binary Logistic Regression Plot (Image by Author)
4. Time Series Plots
Though seaborn package can be used to plot time series data. Though I prefer Matplotlib for time series plotting as it is very convenient to use. One could directly supply date as index column into plots.
Here, we are going to use the sales dataset, which contains sales date, sales value, ads budget and GDP.
sales_data = pd.read_csv("Sales_dataset.csv", parse_dates=True, index_col = 0) sales_data.head()
First Five Observations (Image by Author)
One of the best ways of plotting time series is to make a convenient function. Here I have created a function that takes axes, x, y, color, xlabel and ylabel arguments.
Step1: we use ax.plot( ) to generate a line plot and also supply a line color
Step2: we set the xlabel and ylabel using ax.set( )
Step3: setting the y-tick parameter color
# Define a function called timeseries_plot
def timeseries_plot(axes, x, y, color, xlabel, ylabel): # Plot the inputs x, y in the provided color
axes.plot(x, y, color=color) # Set the x-axis label
axes.set_xlabel(xlabel) # Set the y-axis label
axes.set_ylabel(ylabel, color=color) # Set the colors tick params for y-axis
axes.tick_params('y', colors=color)
Let’s plot the sales values based on different dates
# Define style
sns.set_style('white')
sns.set_context("paper", font_scale = 2) # setting figure and axis objects
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize = (12, 8)) # Plotting sales values
timeseries_plot(ax, sales_data.index, sales_data["Sales"], "blue", "Time (years)", "Sales") sns.despine(right = True) plt.show()
Sales Time Series Plot (Image by Author)
We can plot two variables together with a common x-axis. Here, I have plotted sales and GDP using a common x-axis [by setting ax.twinx( ) ] and left y-axes used for presenting sales and right y-axis used for presenting GDP.
# Define style
sns.set_style('white')
sns.set_context("paper", font_scale = 2) # Create figure and axes object and set the figure size fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize = (12, 8)) # Add first time series based on Sales timeseries_plot(ax, sales_data.index, sales_data["Sales"], "blue", "Time (years)", "Sales") # Create a twin Axes that share the x
ax2 = ax.twinx() # Add second time series based on GDP timeseries_plot(ax2, sales_data.index, sales_data["GDP"], "red", "Time (years)", "GDP") plt.show()
Sales and GDP Time Series Plot (Image by Author)
5. Heat Maps
Sometimes we need to plot rectangular data as a colour-encoded matrix to visualize patterns in a dataset. Heat maps come as a handy tool in such circumstances. But Seaborn’s heatmap only takes data in matrix form. So, first, you need to prepare a matrix that you want to supply in a heatmap. Panda's crosstab( ) function is one of the best tools for this job.
Let’s see mean tips given by male and female over different days. Here, in the crosstab, I’m using a mean aggregate function for calculating mean tips over different days given by male and female.
crosstab1 = pd.crosstab(index=tips['day'],
columns=tips['sex'],
values=tips['tip'],
aggfunc='mean')
crosstab1
Data Matrix (Image by Author)
In addition to highlighting the values with colour using the heatmap( ) function, we could add a text annotation and colour bar by supplying annot = True and cbar = True. Here, I have opted for a “Reds” colour palette with 8 discrete colour mapping. For convenience, I have rotated the x-tick labels to 90 degrees.
You can observe that the highest average tip was given by females on Sunday.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 6)) sns.heatmap(crosstab1,
annot = True,
cbar = True,
cmap = sns.color_palette("Reds", 8),
linewidths=0.3,
ax = ax) # Rotate tick marks for visibility
plt.yticks(rotation=0)
plt.xticks(rotation=90) #Show the plot
plt.show()
Heatmap (Image by Author)
Matplotlib and Seaborn are really awesome plotting libraries. I would like to thank all the contributors of Matplotlib and Seaborn library.
I hope you learned something new!
Code and dataset Link
If you learned something new and liked this article, share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any suggestions, drop a comment.
** Read more by visiting my personal blog website: https://onezero.blog/
Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Github.
This article was first published on onezero.blog, a data science, machine learning and research related blogging platform maintained by me. | https://towardsdatascience.com/generate-publication-ready-plots-using-seaborn-library-part-1-f4c9a6d0489c | ['Rahul Raoniar'] | 2021-02-16 12:19:16.477000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Matplotlib', 'Python', 'Publication', 'Seaborn'] |
From Multimillionaire to FBI’s Most Wanted to Charitable Christian | From nobody to hedge fund elite
Florian Homm grew up in a small and unremarkable town in Germany. He received a scholarship from Harvard University as part of the German basketball youth team. There he learned all about the world of financing. How to be a shark, how to bite, how to chew.
And this scholarship turned him into one of the biggest hedge funds managers to date. He was moving millions of dollars every day. He’d bring his clients huge yields, and in turn, earn tremendous commissions.
He gained notoriety by being just as skilled as a short seller than as a long seller
A long seller bets on rising stocks and earns money by buying low and selling high. Short sellers on the other hand bet on falling prices. They essentially earn money by betting on the collapse of a company.
For Homm, it was a good way to earn more money.
“Everybody wants to earn money when the stocks rise. But why can’t I already make money on the way down? If I can cash in on the way down and on the way back up, that would be really awesome.” — Florian Homm
He later started deliberately making speculations about certain stocks that are about to crash, artificially driving them down, to then profit off the drop.
Since he made a name for himself as an expert, many people paid close attention to his prophecies, thus he was able to influence the market prices with his reports.
In 2005, he co-founded his own hedge fund company, called Absolute Capital Management Holdings (ACMH). This hedge fund leveraged more than $3 billion at its peak. Due to this success, Homm was once curated Hedge Fund Leader of the Year by Alternative Investment News.
He appeared to be as successful as he could want to be. But in 2006, he was confronted with his own mortality for the first time.
A failed robbery or a deliberate assassination attempt?
While traveling through Caracas, Venezuela, Homm, escorted by one of his bodyguards and a driver, fell victim to an armed robbery on the street. Two armed men stopped next to his car and demanded money.
After he gave the men his wallet and mobile phone, they demanded his wristwatch next, which he refused. Then one of the men opened fire.
“In my case, [being shot] didn’t hurt. I lost most of my left lung, my spleen completely. I lost so much blood, my pants and my shirt were completely red. There was even blood in my shoes.” — Florian Homm
Thanks to quick emergency surgery and dialysis of his lost blood, Homm survived the robbery. Though he is convinced that this wasn’t just an armed robbery, but a deliberate assassination attempt.
“The astounding thing about the assassination was that my bodyguard got shot in the knee, my driver was ignored entirely, and I get a shot to the chest? And I’d have gotten another shot to the head if I didn’t struggle for my life with the assailant.”
— Florian Homm
Homm stated that the driver was later interrogated by his private security team regarding possible involvement in the robbery, but he didn’t share any results.
One year later, in 2007, Homm made the decision to leave this life behind for good.
Sudden disappearance
He explained that the life he led wasn’t really his anymore. He’d work 6 and a half days a week, often 16 hours per day. His phone would ring every 20 minutes. And the many toys he was able to afford became useless, as he lacked the time to enjoy them.
A yacht he bought was only used for about 6 days total. So in 2007, when he became increasingly fed up with this lifestyle, he decided to disappear.
“Enough is enough. The chapter ‘finance billionaire, maker & mover, master of the universe’, I was done with. Zero passion left. I was unhappy. So I boarded my private jet, threw away my phone, took a lot of cash with me and then the journey began. Where to exactly and which route I took, that’s nobody’s business.” — Florian Homm
He traveled across more than 50 countries, mainly spending his time sightseeing, sports, and entertainment.
“It was an inner urge to catch up with my life, which completely drowned in my ambition.” — Florian Homm
No one knew where he was. In 2011, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed civil charges against him and another member of his hedge fund for using penny stocks to pump up the volume of his own fund.
Most wanted by the FBI and arrest
In March 2013, the FBI filed criminal charges against Homm for stock market fraud and forwarded the warrant to Interpol.
Just 2 days later, local police officers identified Homm in Italy after being tipped off by the FBI.
“I was together with my ex-wife, my son Conrad and his girlfriend. We were in the Uffizi gallery in Florence — it’s the most beautiful art museum in Italy. Suddenly, 6 people surrounded me and arrested me in front of my ex-wife, son, and his girlfriend. Then they escorted me out of the museum with covered handcuffs like in a James Bond movie and drove me to a villa that was not recognizable as a police station — it’s called a Squadra Mobile — they are the absolute elite unit of the Italian police forces. And then began a real trauma.” — Florian Homm
Homm was taken into extradition custody in Pisa, Italy. If he’d be extradited to the USA, he’d face a sentence of up to 225 years for the charges brought up against him.
Homm describes his time in prison as a time of complete despair.
“Absolute hopelessness, because I felt facing against gigantic state institutions like America — incredibly powerful — and Switzerland. Hopelessness, my life’s over, multiple sclerosis, 260 years of prison, a shitty prospect, no possibility to move around, this was the worst. Your life as you know it, is over.”
— Florian Homm
During his time in prison, he fell into despair and at one point even contemplated suicide. But he found faith in Christianity and regained his will to move on, guided by the holy Mary.
A year later, he was released from custody because the maximum duration for extradition has been exceeded. He immediately moved to Germany. At the time, Germany didn’t investigate against him and does not extradite its own citizens to countries outside the European Union.
A new life
The faith he found during his time in the Italian prison changed Homm from being an ambitious businessman and wanted fugitive to a faithful Christian and philanthropist. His life after prison couldn’t be more different from the man he once was.
“I think I’d have done some things differently. But I’m definitely thankful for this life — for being still alive — and now having been given a second life which is completely different from the first one.” — Florian Homm
Being asked if he’d again become a hedge fund manager, his answer is clear.
I believe it’s been an awesome time because now I can use these resources, these skills in a charitable way too. That’s what feels really exciting, using these abilities in a completely different way. I wouldn’t have those skills if I didn’t move as the absolute top of the pyramid in this hardcore business for two decades.”
— Florian Homm
And it shows. Instead of an expensive luxury car, he’s driving around in an old station wagon. He published a book titled Rogue Financier about the mistakes of his life. The proceedings from the book are donated in full to the Liberia Renaissance Foundation, a Swiss-based charity foundation to support school children in Liberia.
He co-founded the Our Lady’s Message of Mercy to the World Foundation, which focuses on strengthening Christian values and supports children with disabilities.
In 2014, He spoke at the University of Applied Management in Erding, (German video) Germany, about his conversion to Christianity, work ethics, and the reasons for his life change.
Now he’s running his own vlog on Youtube in German, talking about financing and sharing what he learned.
He can also be seen in the 2018 movie Generation Wealth, a documentary about our current culture and society, exploring our need for materialism, social standing, and wealth.
In his prime, he was dubbed the antichrist of the stock exchange. Now he is seeking redemption in the faith of a Christian, using his skills for charity. | https://medium.com/illumination/from-multimillionaire-to-fbis-most-wanted-to-charitable-christian-f16eff89f48c | ['Kevin Buddaeus'] | 2020-11-15 15:21:51.834000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Finance', 'Business', 'Life Lessons', 'Spirituality'] |
Introducing futures spread trading for crypto | Bringing popular derivatives instruments to the digital asset space
What are spreads?
You may have heard the term ‘bid-ask spread’ in the trading context some time or the other. If you haven’t, it simply means the difference between the bid (buying) price and the ask (selling) price of an asset. Trading spreads, however, relates to the trading of futures contracts.
For the entirety of this post, a spread is defined as the simultaneous sale of one or more futures contracts while buying an equivalent number of offsetting futures contracts. This, in effect, means that you are simultaneously long (buying futures) and short (selling futures). Quoting Joe Ross, inventor of the Ross Hook, “A spread tracks the difference between the price of whatever it is you are long and whatever it is you are short. Therefore the risk changes from that of price fluctuation to that of the difference between the two sides of the spread.”
The opposing positions or contracts are also referred to as the legs of the spread.
The futures contracts you trade as the part of trading a spread, can be related or in completed different markets. This brings us to two types of spreads:
Intra-market Spreads: This involves going long and short in the same market but in different months. For instance, if you are trading in the BTC futures market, you can decide that you’ll go short on BTC Mar’19 contract but long on BTC Jun’19 contract. This will constitute an intra-market spread, in this case being traded as a calendar spread . We will touch upon calendar spreads in a later section.
This involves going long and short in the same market but in different months. For instance, if you are trading in the BTC futures market, you can decide that you’ll go short on BTC Mar’19 contract but long on BTC Jun’19 contract. This will constitute an intra-market spread, in this case being traded as a . We will touch upon calendar spreads in a later section. Inter-market Spreads: If you go long in one futures market but short in another, then that is termed as an inter-market spread. As an example, you can go long on BTC perpetual swaps while shorting ETH perpetual swaps or go long on BTC Jun’19 contract while going short on ETH Jun’19 contract.
Why trade spreads?
Spread trading allows capitalizing on market opportunities not provided while trading futures outright. Check out the spreads between BitMex perpetual futures (XBTUSD), March BTC futures (XBTH19) and June BTC futures (XBTM19) on different dates.
On Jan 3, 2019
On January 3rd, 2019 the spread between perpetual futures and March futures was ~$110 while that between perpetual and June futures was ~$170.
On Jan 6, 2019
On January 6th, it became ~$95 between perpetual futures and March futures and ~$125 between perpetual and June futures.
On Jan 14, 2019
On January 14th, it was ~$92 between perpetual futures and March futures and ~$123.5 between perpetual and June futures.
Suppose you sold the perpetual-June futures spread on Jan 3rd at $170, then bought back on the 14th at $123.5, your profit would’ve been $46.5! Let’s examine some details of doing such a trade. To effectively sell the spread on Jan 3rd, you’d need to sell XBTUSD and buy XBTM19. On the 14th, to effectively buy back the same spread, you’d need to buy XBTUSD and sell XBTM19. Now let us compare this with trading the two futures contracts as outrights. If you shorted both XBTUSD and XBTM19, your profits would have been $296 and $250 respectively. Looks more lucrative than the spread, right? However, if you went long, your losses would be $296 and $250 for the respective contracts. In contrast, if you went long on the spread, your loss would have only been $46.5 for the trade. Thus, spread traders are exposed to lower risk.
Experienced traders will note that the role of margins has been excluded in the example presented. Even with margins, the central idea of lowered risk stays true. Furthermore, in traditional markets, spreads are traded at lower margins as compared to futures outrights. We’ll touch upon this in the next section in more detail.
In the context of exchange-traded spreads (currently only available in traditional markets), these are all the advantages spread trading:
Lower risk: As the price of a spread is the price difference between two offsetting positions, it is always less volatile than the price of the underlying outright futures contracts. Thus, as shown in the aforementioned example, the risk is lower when trading spreads.
As the price of a spread is the price difference between two offsetting positions, it is always less volatile than the price of the underlying outright futures contracts. Thus, as shown in the aforementioned example, the risk is lower when trading spreads. Lower margins: Trading on leverage allows traders to take bigger positions via margins when compared to trading without leverage. Margin requirements are usually 1/x*position taken where x is equal to the trader’s leverage. However, as risks are lower in spread trading, margin requirements are lower comparatively. Do note this hold valid only for exchange-traded spreads; taking a spread position via individual contracts will result in margins adding up. (See next section.)
Trading on leverage allows traders to take bigger positions via margins when compared to trading without leverage. Margin requirements are usually 1/x*position taken where x is equal to the trader’s leverage. However, as risks are lower in spread trading, margin requirements are lower comparatively. Do note this hold valid only for exchange-traded spreads; taking a spread position via individual contracts will result in margins adding up. (See next section.) More opportunities: The BitMex futures contracts example was a mere glimpse into the potential of spreads. With futures outrights for numerous coins becoming available, numerous opportunities to trade spreads will spring up for traders.
IDAP instruments: Calendar Spreads and Butterfly
The example of the previous section deliberately skipped the role of margins in the entire trade. Do note, that in order to take that spread position on BitMex, all the individual contracts will have to be bought/sold manually by a trader. With that, we run into a couple of problems:
Margins will pile up: Spread trading is advantageous since margins required are low. However, since on BitMex, the effective trading of the spread will require market buy and sell of all the futures contracts involved, a trader will have to pay margins for all the individual trades. Consider a simple example of taking a spread position by going long on March BTC futures (XBTH19) and short on June BTC futures (XBTM19). Now if you pay X as margin on one contract (or one leg), then overall a trader will end up paying 2X!
Spread trading is advantageous since margins required are low. However, since on BitMex, the effective trading of the spread will require market buy and sell of all the futures contracts involved, a trader will have to pay margins for all the individual trades. Consider a simple example of taking a spread position by going long on March BTC futures (XBTH19) and short on June BTC futures (XBTM19). Now if you pay X as margin on one contract (or one leg), then overall a trader will end up paying 2X! Losses from slippage: Again, since a trader won’t actually be trading an exchange-traded spread, trying to simultaneously buy and sell two offsetting futures to take the spread position will be impossible. The time difference between selling one contract and then buying the other will end up in costing the trader if the market moves significantly while he is executing the two orders in sequence.
Again, since a trader won’t actually be trading an exchange-traded spread, trying to simultaneously buy and sell two offsetting futures to take the spread position will be impossible. The time difference between selling one contract and then buying the other will end up in costing the trader if the market moves significantly while he is executing the two orders in sequence. Spread position unwittingly converting to a naked position: A position taken in the outrights futures market is also popularly called a naked position, as your risk is not hedged (or is in effect naked) as opposed to in the spreads futures market. In the BitMex example, as there is no actual spreads market, there is a chance that one of the legs of your spread liquidates automatically due to the market movement, while the other does not. Unless you manually sell the other contract too, spread position will simply become an outrights position, defeating the whole purpose of the trade.
The problems mentioned above do not occur if spreads are traded on exchanges as derivatives instruments. Thus, to provide low-risk traders with the opportunity to trade spreads easily, IDAP is introducing to the crypto space two exchange-traded spreads: Calendar Spreads and Butterfly!
The price difference between IDAP’s monthly futures contracts will be traded as Calendar Spreads while the difference between two Calendar Spreads will be traded as Butterfly. With a Butterfly spread, a trader will be able to bet on the entire market curve in a given time frame, effectively combining both a bull spreads strategy and a bear spreads strategy to create a neutral spreads strategy. The risk will be even lower than that for Calendar Spreads!
As for margins, we will charge only for one leg of the spread, which, again due to our nominal fee will be quite low. A butterfly spread position, which involves three contracts, will also be charged for a single leg! Going forward as the market matures, we will re-evaluate the margin requirements for spreads and lower them even further!
Trading spreads easily with IDAP Matrix
Not only will IDAP offer traders the above-mentioned derivatives instruments to trade spreads effectively but also provide the necessary tools to enable easy visualization and trading!
IDAP Matrix
With the IDAP Matrix, specially designed to assist derivatives traders, traders will be able to view market data for all contract expirations of an asset as well as market data for exchange-quoted spreads for the underlying asset, all in one window. Traders will have the ease to trade, place, modify and cancel orders directly through the IDAP Matrix.
Furthermore, the IDAP Spreader will serve as another crucial tool for spread traders. The IDAP Spreader will allow traders to create, manage and execute synthetic spreads based on futures contract available on the IDAP exchange. Synthetic spreads are inter-market spreads, whose prices are not quoted on the exchange itself but have to be calculated based on the underlying contracts listed on the exchange. For example, a user can create synthetic spreads of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) through the exchange quoted spreads of BTC and ETH. | https://medium.com/idap-io/introducing-futures-spread-trading-for-crypto-ee6f95013ca | ['Bitfex Exchange'] | 2019-01-31 10:02:15.984000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Exchange'] |
Top 21 Ecommerce Trends to Look Out for in 2021 | Top 21 Ecommerce Trends to Look Out for in 2021
What the industry experts are saying about where the ecommerce industry is headed Mission Follow Dec 18, 2020 · 12 min read
What’s in store for 2021? Tokyo might actually get to host the Olympic games, Top Gun: Maverick will finally hit the big screen, and Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, might make his way to space.
The bad news: The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to reshape the commerce industry. The good news: The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to reshape the commerce industry.
Nothing could have prepared us for 2020, but what we learned is that we can adapt — even faster than we thought. With the world stuck at home, online shopping adoption went through the roof, and companies found innovative ways to stay ahead.
No matter what uncertainty lies ahead, brands need to be prepared for whatever comes next. So, we decided to take a look back on the lessons we’ve learned in 2020 and share some forward-looking trends that our commerce experts (we interviewed almost 70 eCommerce leaders in 2020!) have shared on the Up Next in Commerce podcast.
Enjoy these 21 trends that we are excited to watch unfold in 2021!
1. Opportunities Abroad
People shop differently all over the world, and there are lessons to be learned by looking at economic indicators from around the world. This is especially true when you look at metrics like the GDP per capita, eCommerce penetration, and global shopping trends. Anu Hariharan explained this when she dropped by the Invest Like the Best podcast.
“What’s fascinating about Latin America…Latin America has 650 million people, 70 percent internet penetration, and GDP per capita is the same as China, $9,750,” she said. “In fact, [in] countries like Chile, Argentina [it] was closer to $12,000 to $15,000…. But what’s the ecommerce penetration? Four percent. And the eCommerce penetration of China is twenty-two percent.”
4% eCommerce penetration?! Yes, we know that regulations and other factors may come into play here, but this seems like a huge opportunity for business owners to review their operations, move old processes online, turn storefronts into digital experiences, and find some new D2C opportunities.
Another factor we’ve been looking into lately is how adoption behavior varies so drastically on a country by country basis. According to Dylan Valade, the Head of Global eCommerce Technology at PUMA, the companies and cultures who are comfortable with change will be the ones to benefit most from the digital disruptions we are seeing play out today.
“What I see coming is a digital disruption, or eCommerce digital disruption, where the groups and countries or cultures that have more comfort with change or risk are going to be more successful at transitioning to a lot of these ways of working and buying,” he said.
Keep an eye out for the tech advancements and ever-changing consumer behaviors occurring in different markets, and see how your product, brand, or service could fulfill a need. Are the consumers leapfrogging certain technologies that are crucial to us (like certain parts of Asia did with Point of Sale machines and just went right to mobile)? Or are they using platforms in non-traditional ways (using social media platforms for payments, or payment platforms for community).
Keeping tabs on these trends will be key when it comes to keeping your business ahead of the curve. And beware, an upcoming podcast guest cautions that overseas opportunities my not last forever! Tune in on 1/21/21 to hear why!
2. Old-school strategies are cool again
There is no doubt that we live in a digital-first world. But just because so much of what we do happens online, doesn’t mean that old-school strategies are dead and gone. In fact, there might be more ROI than you think if you go back to the basics.
On this front, Renee Lopes Halvorsen, the VP of Marketing & eCommerce at Marine Layer, was a true advocate. Renee broke down why a print catalog is still one of the best ways to tell your brand story and drive conversions — even in today’s digital world.
“People think of [a catalog] as being super old school,” she said. “But when I look at what’s happening, on sites like Facebook, or within digital marketing generally, it’s the same things that the catalog industry has been doing for 30 years.”
“I don’t think the creative cost needs to be super big. It’s more about making sure that you have the breadth of assortment to support a catalog. In order to send something meaty out there that’s really going to drive results, you want to send out at least a 44-page catalog and you probably want about 100 different styles that you want to market in there.”
According to AP News, part of why catalogs are rebounding is because of Millennials’ deep addiction to nostalgia. Welcome back, vinyl records, flare jeans, and the catalog.
Another reason? People want to find the perfect product that connects with them, not just the practical product that suits a need. (Think of this scene in the classic film, Fight Club.)
In The Startup on Medium, Steve Daniels framed it this way:
“Print magazines are no longer about information; the ones that are have become a commodity that is easily replicated online. Today’s print magazines are lifestyle products.”
The hands-on experience of flipping through a catalog can’t be replicated online. Plus, with more people at home than ever before, the opportunity seems ripe for the picking.
3. B2B wholesale gets the attention it deserves
When talking about eCommerce, the majority of conversations are around B2C. But B2B eCommerce is actually growing twice as fast as B2C.
Here’s another mind-blowing stat. B2B wholesale is a $16T market. Yes, Trillion! And less than 8% of it is online — 49% of transactions still happen via phone or fax (we, too, are shocked that fax is still a thing). Clearly, there are opportunities to penetrate this market, and a few companies have been making a dent. One of those companies is Faire, which Co-founder and CTO Marcelo Cortes has helped build into a marketplace that serves a $670 billion B2B market.
The key to penetrating this B2B market, Cortes says, is always remembering that just because you want to bring these businesses and transactions online, those businesses still are operating brick and mortar shops and dealing with customers face-to-face.
“Even though we are online, our customers are not online,” Cortes says. “We are dealing with offline local retailers, and they love community. That’s one of the initiatives that we’re trying to build, to help them with community, to listen to each other’s stories, to learn from each other’s mistakes, and connect them more. It was especially important to launch it now. People need more information.”
Independent retailers are not going away, but they are trying to adapt just like the rest of us. And 2020 was the catalyst for B2B wholesale businesses to change and start taking eCommerce more seriously to help its retailers.
Wolseley Canada is a leading wholesale distributor of plumbing, HVAC/R, and waterworks products and earns more than $1 billion in revenue each year. Today, the company has one of the industry-leading B2B eCommerce sites, but getting to that point in their digital transformation hasn’t been easy. Gail Kaufman, the Vice President of Marketing & eBusiness at Wolseley Canada, explains how they got there.
“When we were talking about how to get your customers to engage with [eCommerce], when they do engage with it, you better deliver,” she says. “Your pricing has got to be right. They have to have the confidence that when I look online and I see that my branch has 100 copper tees, if I place an order for 50, they actually have them, someone’s actually going to pick up the order and they’re going to actually send it to me. In the early days when shopping online wasn’t that prevalent, there was a lot of, I would say, trepidation. It was kind of easy for customers to talk themselves out of it and just think, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. It sounds interesting, but I think I’ll just call my guy. That way I know I’ll get what I need.’.”
Finding ways to ease B2B customers into a new way of doing things may be difficult, but building up the trust and showcasing the reliability of the platform will put nerves at ease. And the silver lining of 2020? This past year may have just given customers the subtle push they needed that will make the transition that much easier of a sell in 2021.
4. One-Click Checkout Becomes a Real Thing
One-click ordering is the gold standard of frictionless checkout. Although some sites claim to have one-click checkout, in reality you’re still multiple clicks away from actually finalizing an order, especially when you’re visiting for the first time. But there are one-click solutions in the market, including one developed by Domm Holland and the team at Fast.
“Fundamentally what Fast is solving for is actually an identity problem, and payments is just one component of that,” Holland said. “How can we make it fast and easy for people to buy things? And how do we make it fast and easy for people to login? How do we make it fast and easy for people to securely use their data online? It’s a very different value problem and our product strategy differs because we’re out there trying to solve a consumer problem and most other companies aren’t.”
By solving the identity problem for the consumer and by batching orders on the backend for merchants, Fast created a solution that delivers a true one-click checkout experience across the internet. It can be installed directly on product pages — essentially taking away the biggest pain (and click) for customers.
“75 to 80% of every single checkout on Fast is from the product page,” Domm explained.
“So it is absolutely overwhelming the impact that it has to businesses….People are buying more things. So businesses make far more money, can increase their order values, can increase the average items per order, can decrease their shipping cost, can decrease their payment cost, and yet still be increasing conversion rate much higher than they are now.”
Does your eComm shop offer 1-click ordering? If not, that will be a feature you’ll want to add in 2021.
5. Supply Chains Go Vertical
Everyone is competing against the hard-to-match shipping expectations set by Amazon — but it’s not all about fast shipping. Processing returns effectively and managing every step of the supply chain so you are left with margins that actually allow you to grow are the areas that all retailers will continue to focus on.
For Helana Price Hambrecht, the founder of Haus, going completely vertical was the best way she could think to really control everything and ensure success.
“We had a hunch that being fully vertical would give us a huge advantage from a product development standpoint,” she said. “We could be super nimble, we could iterate every day if we wanted to based on customer feedback. We could launch new products quickly. We can kill them quickly. We had a lot of abilities that other companies wouldn’t have. And then we would also be prepared for any sort of supply chain curveball that comes our way.”
Vertically integrated supply chains have long been a force to fear and envy, and that will become even bigger in 2021 as merchants are still trying to recover from out of stock issues, logistical delays, supplier bankruptcies, and realizing they were too reliant on one supplier.
6. Mobile Will be Everything
A few years ago, every chart was mentioning the rise of mobile. Now, it’s here. The majority of online discovery, browsing, and transactions are mobile. In fact, Caila Schwartz, the Senior Manager of Strategy and Insights, Retail and Consumer Goods at Salesforce, shared data from a recent Shopping Index report which clearly shows that mobile needs to be a priority for ecommerce business owners moving forward.
“Mobile is the number one driver of traffic and orders,” Caila said. “And we’ve seen over the past several years mobile really accelerate as the number one device for consumers. So as a business owner, if you’re thinking about what device to prioritize, creating a great mobile experience is going to be the top of your priority list.”
If that’s not convincing enough, BFCM were the biggest days for mobile shopping ever. There was a surge in first-time installs of mobile shopping apps in the U.S., which climbed nearly 8% on Black Friday to reach a new single-day record of approximately 2.8 million, according to early data from Sensor Tower. And the Adobe Analytics report had mobile sales making up 40% of total digital spend on Black Friday and 37% on Cyber Monday.
Now is the time to invest in your mobile strategy. Brands that fail to focus on a mobile-first approach will be missing out on customers and revenue.
7. Influencer Marketing Goes Even More Viral
Because influencer marketing has become so in demand, there are more strategies than ever to try to get the most ROI out of influencers. Understanding the attribution funnel of influencer marketing is a key when looking to determine the ROI of your efforts. Eric Lam, the co-founder of AspireIQ, says influencer marketing has become democratized, which has opened up a lot of opportunities for brands of all shape and size.
“…In 2015 and 2016, the industry kind of evolved to where everybody was trying to work with Kardashians. It was all about working with the biggest fashion bloggers, the biggest celebrities. The bigger, the better. And you’re thinking about these vanity metrics, like how many followers someone has, or how many likes they have, regardless of if they saw meaningful returns on investment. Those were the early cowboy days of influencer marketing. I think because a lot of the mainstream brands got involved there, you started to then see an evolution of how a lot of the DTC and ecommerce brands were starting to think about influencer marketing because they were kind of getting priced out of these big macro celebrities.
So, they started honing in on more specialized micro influencers who might not have as big of a following, but they were a lot more targeted, a lot more focused in the content they created, which meant they were a great fit for more personalized experiences and more authentic content in terms of the segments they were trying to reach among their customers. I think the second thing that was really interesting about the way this evolved is that these same ecommerce brands started using influencers for more than just trying to reach their audiences like in an advertising way, and they started looking at them as holistic content creators, because when you think about what an influencer is, they’re kind of like this studio photographer model all wrapped into one person, whose literal job it is to make engaging content for this generation.” — Eric Lam on Up Next in Commerce
The one thing that Eric wants you to remember? Authenticity matters.
“If you can find people that really match your brand values and are going to be true advocates for you, that really translates into the authenticity, both from what they’re saying, but also the kind of content they make because influencer marketing is pretty mature now and audiences can smell inauthenticity from a mile away.”
Micro-influencers will be big business in 2021, which Ad News investigated by getting the input of a number of industry players. One of the folks the outlet spoke to was Shivani Maharaj:
“My prediction for Influencer marketing in 2021 falls into two halves — the long term and short term,” Maharaj said. “Long-term brand building in influencer marketing comes down to: fewer, bigger, better. Marketers should explore partnerships and long-term commitments with a handful of key mega/macro influencers and content creators. It drives engagement, builds authenticity and lets consumers fully experience the brand….The second half is much more about the short-term impact and ‘buying’ influencers like you would a media buy, based on reach and frequency. Platforms like Tribe, Hypetap and Inca are well placed to deliver this with nano/micro influencers and content creators. I believe we will see a shift into more programmatic buying in this space where the results are the key focus as opposed to who the individual influencer is. For example, a brand might turn to 40 influencers delivering 2.3 million reach over a four-week period for a specific product launch.”
If you haven’t already, start building out your influencer network now with the ones that fit your brand best. These might be people on Twitter with a very engaged following, or Instagrammers who have followers that say things like “where can I buy that shirt?!”, or even on TikTok! Ps- We have had countless people on the show say that TikTok is where it’s at in terms of ROI and marketing arbitrage opportunities.
Want to read the other 14 Trends? Check out the entire post on Mission.org and for more of the best of what’s happening in eCommerce, tune into Up Next in Commerce every Tuesday and Thursday!
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce | https://medium.com/the-mission/top-21-ecommerce-trends-to-look-out-for-in-2021-61f94cedc080 | [] | 2021-01-11 16:47:02.762000+00:00 | ['Trends', 'Business', 'Future', 'Predictions', 'Ecommerce'] |
How AR is reshaping the Travel and Tourism industry? | One of the most underrated technologies, Augmented Reality or AR has potentials that have hardly been harnessed and utilized by diverse industries.
From offering an immersive experience to users to giving them adequate information about services and brands, AR technology makes way for retention like no other. Currently, the value of the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) industry stands at around $18.8bn.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) market size worldwide from 2016 to 2020.
Not just that, over 70% of consumers feel that AR might overtake Virtual Reality or VR in the coming months and years. And by 2022, AR app download counts could number to over 5.5bn.
Though numbers appear promising, not many companies and businesses actually adopt AR technology for their business growth. This is particularly true in the travel and tourism sector, where AR can bring in a wave of revolution through creative apps and experiences.
If you own a hospitality or a travel business and intend to make your venture big in the coming months, here’s our exclusive guide on how AR is impacting the travel and tourism sector. This will give you an idea on how you can go about implementing AR tech for your business.
Let’s get started.
How Augmented Reality is Changing the Travel and Tourism industry?
1. Eliminating Language Barriers
This is the age that is witnessing the rise of digital nomads and global citizens. With them contributing to the majority of travel and tourism revenue, they are a force to be reckoned with. However, one primary hurdle they face is the language barrier. A French traveller finding it hard in Japan to an Australian finding it difficult in Austria, language is simply a barrier. But with AR tech, these barriers can be shattered creatively through real-time translations. An AR-based travel app development can get this job done.
2. Safety of Travellers
Travellers are people who are most probably visiting a destination for the first time. What accompanies the excitement of being in a new place is paranoia surrounding it as well. Safety is a huge concern for such visitors from different parts of the globe, especially solo travellers.
With AR, optimum safety of travellers can be ensured with giving them real-time information on crime-prone areas, emergency services in the vicinity, administrative offices, police stations and more.
Another layer of ensuring safety to travellers is making sure they don’t get lost in a new place. With AR, this can be avoided as users can download AR maps of their destinations on their devices and use immersive navigation systems to navigate through cities and avenues and have a safe yet enthralling city adventure. An effective travel software solution is required to accomplish this.
4. City Tours and Discoveries
For most travellers, public transportation works best to visit local places of interests and spots. When AR is implemented through apps, travellers can have an advanced solution to find out local hidden gems, popular city destinations, public transportation schedules, nearest stations or stops, carpooling facilities and more. They can also experience how a place looked like in the past through AR tech and learn interesting trivia about the place they are in.
5. Enriching Experiences at Museums
Museums are treasure chests of information but most travellers don’t get to experience museums to their fullest because of several barriers such as the lack of a guide, language concerns, crowded museums and more.
But with an AR-powered travel management software, experiences at museums can be more enriching through real-time videos, holograms, stories and more about an exhibit. Through interactive content, visitors can witness wars and floods before their eyes and have a one-of-a-kind experience, letting them appreciate their travel better.
How Augmented Reality is Changing the Hospitality industry?
1. Sales and Marketing of Hotels
With the travel and hospitality industry gradually resurging, sales and marketing is crucial as of now to win back clients and customers. That’s why you should implement tech like AR to creatively connect and engage with your audience, drive them to your website and convert leads to consumers. Immersive visualizations, storytelling, narratives and more could be integrated for this.
For instance, customers can use an AR version of your restaurant’s app to see in real-time the fries or pies they would order and get tempted instantly.
2. Beacon and Push Notifications
Restaurants and hotels can attract potential visitors and customers seamlessly by utilizing the beacon technology. These small Bluetooth devices can transmit messages and push notifications wirelessly to people in its proximity. To attract customers, you can send out AR-based videos, personalized deals and more to them. You can partner with several travel brands for more exposure and conversions.
3. Gamification
Gamification and AR are a match made in heaven. Fun, creative and immensely captivating, gamification can be incorporated with AR for unlimited potential. For instance, hotels could use an AR app to welcome guests with their favourite idols and superheroes. Or better, they can have mini-games for their kids to offer them a memorable experience. Through small treasure hunts, hotels can also offer guests discounts or free meals for uncovering hidden virtual treasures, simultaneously giving them a tour of their premises as well.
Wrapping Up
What do you think? Creative inputs, right?
AR is a fun space but is also a futuristic technology and requires optimum levels of creativity, experience and interaction. That’s why we suggest you approach a trusted travel app development company like us for your travel-based AR app development.
We hire travel mobile app developers who are the best in the industry to deliver a top-notch travel industry software solution. So, reach out to us today. | https://medium.com/techtic-solutions/how-ar-is-reshaping-the-travel-and-tourism-industry-cd559db1416f | ['Techtic Solutions'] | 2020-11-27 17:52:01.182000+00:00 | ['Augmented Reality', 'Ar App Development', 'Travel App Development', 'Augmented Reality App', 'Ar In Travel'] |
Parking Is Key to Unlocking the Smart City | FlashParking’s Mobility Hub Operating System delivers 21st-century parking to transform isolated parking assets into connected mobility hubs
In the last decade, the parking industry has been disrupted from every direction with the launch of ride-sharing services like Uber, the rise of e-commerce with Amazon, the explosion of dockless scooters with Lime, and the emerging shift to electrification driven by Tesla. That level of disruption is the new normal with autonomous vehicles and smart cities set to further change our relationship with parking.
At the beginning of this massive societal shift, FlashParking’s founders set out to build an operating system that could be customized to manage the complexity of a modern parking asset while evolving that asset into a next-generation mobility hub with:
Cloud-based architecture to avoid costly upgrades and instantly deliver new functionality
to avoid costly upgrades and instantly deliver new functionality Mobile-first management to maximize visibility and provide convenient operational control
to maximize visibility and provide convenient operational control Bluetooth communication capability to enable a frictionless consumer experience
communication capability to enable a frictionless consumer experience Simplified USB-based hardware to minimize downtime and service costs
This week we announced a $60 million investment to accelerate our vision and transform the future of parking. By aggressively scaling our parking technology, we will catalyze the evolution of isolated parking assets into connected mobility hubs that are more efficient, intelligent, and adaptable versus garages and surface lots of the past.
Mobility hubs will work in conjunction with other elements of the smart city to ease congestion, organize the cluttered city landscape, and allow all stakeholders to benefit from a new mobility marketplace for business and consumer services. | https://medium.com/@FlashParking/parking-is-key-to-unlocking-the-smart-city-acb706e2dc5e | [] | 2020-01-15 03:26:46.531000+00:00 | ['Parking', 'Smart Cities', 'Transportation', 'Mobility', 'Operating Systems'] |
Why People Lose Money Trading Forex | Forex, the quickest way to lose your hard-earned money…
Forex trading remains the easiest and the quickest way of generating an income or making money. Though it’s a business that is not free of risk like any other investments. How you manage risks determines how long and profitable you remain in the game.
In my early days when I didn’t have much knowledge about trading forex, I invested $200 and I ignorantly turned it to $1000 in less than two weeks. I did this while I was working a day job and it was such an incredible experience for me at that time.
Making money in Forex can be fast and easy, depending on market conditions but also losing money is inevitable. Forex is a game of financial institutional betting on the movement of price to go up or to go down.
Forex is a financial institutional gambling and when you’ve had the taste of the money and how fast it can come, you can get addicted. Greed steps in, you may find yourself taking big risks in the hope of making a million dollars in one day. This is the point traders fail and lose capital plus profit.
Let’s look at the reason people lose money in forex:
Lack Of Forex Education
Like I said earlier about how I turned $200 to $1000 in less than two weeks without knowing what I was doing, I also lost the entire money in one day because I didn’t know to have the knowledge then of what was happening in the market.
I made that money because the market was moving in a range or was consolidating (I didn’t know that then). The day I lost it all, the market made a breakout and kept moving up. I kept opening sell positions with the hope the market will retrace and I would make some bloody cash but it never did! I blew an entire $1000 account in one day due to a lack of knowledge in trading. I made money ignorantly and also lost money ignorantly, what an irony.
So if you’re interested in trading forex, take your time and get a little forex education first. Try babypips.com it’s one of the best sites out there to help beginners have good knowledge about forex trading.
Trading With Large Position Size
When you trade with a large position size with a relatively small account, you can make money real fast and turn that small account into a big one. But it’s very risky, you can also wipe your entire account or take big losses when the trade goes against you. Most times, the market is supposed to go down for instance and you are very sure of it.
You now open a trade with a big position size of 0.10 lot with an account of $100. Instead of the price to go down, it will go up first and your account will be in the red. It may extend in the opposite direction before coming way down. So if you lose if you used a stop-loss or your account may get wiped out if you didn’t. If you had opened with 0.01 lot size and the price went the other way round you will have nothing to be afraid of.
Trading with big position size can make you money fast but can get you killed if the trade goes in the opposite direction. That’s why it is advisable when trading to always keep your risk small so you can sleep well at night.
Selling at Support And Buying At Resistance
I made this mistake so much in my trading days and it cost me a lot. When price makes a sharp move up, it is tempting to jumping and make a quick buck of which you can. But if you don’t know what Support and Resistance are you can get into the trouble of a Pullback.
When the price is going up fast, you open a buy other make a quick buck and exit. You see it’s still going up and you open another and bam! The price pulls back and you are in a loss. Why, because anytime the price goes up it must hit a major resistant zone and pull back.
The same goes when the price goes down and it a support zone. If you sell there, you risk the price pulling back on you and going up.
Trading In Choppy Markets
What’s a Choppy market? This is when the price doesn’t seem to have any direction. This is the time not to trade. If you trade in these types of market conditions, you stand a high risk of running made and losing your entire profit plus capital. It’s one of the most difficult market situations to trade. It’s best not to trade at all and keep your money.
In a Choppy market situation, a trader thinks that the price is going up and he enters a buy order only to see the price goes up a little and sharply goes down. If the trader is scared and doesn’t want to lose, he may decide to quickly close the position at a loss only to see that the price starts going up again.. If the trader gets mad and enters another buy other, it will pull back again!
Trading Choppy markets can make one go nuts! So please if you don’t want to lose the money you must first recognize them, and stay the fuck out. | https://medium.com/@stella-macus-writer/why-people-lose-money-trading-forex-35e3aa0d6def | ['Stella Macus'] | 2020-12-25 09:37:17.443000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Loss', 'Forex', 'Forex Trading', 'Investment'] |
What Influences the Quality of my Life? (Part 2) #3 | How do you test a law to see if it works?
As the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson put it: “As for methods, there may be millions and more, but the principles are few. The man who understands the principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries the methods and ignores the principles is sure to run into problems. »
You may have learned something new and tested it to see if it works, and then you realized that it didn’t work for you. If it’s really a law, it works for everyone –laws are not like humans or animals who can discriminate. If what you have learned is really a law, then the question to ask is not “Does this law really work? ‘’ but rather, ‘’Am I applying this law appropriately to my situation?’’.
You have just attended a conference in which the speaker explained to you how selling solar panels made him financially rich (I specify financially, since not all wealth is necessarily financial). If you don’t understand that the principle is to sell customers what they need, you will go back to your country and order several solar panels in order to start selling too, forgetting that the people in your area already have electricity all the time, so they don’t really need a solar panel. This is what happens when you try methods without understanding the principles behind them. You’re going to have problems with your business, you won’t have any customer, and you’ll say that the principle doesn’t work, whereas it’s rather you who tried to copy a method, without understanding the principle behind it. If you had understood that the principle is to sell customers what they need, you would have inspected your surroundings instead, and you would have realized that these people have electricity, but they may lack a place to recreate. So, you’re going to create one, and be successful in your business.
If you learn a principle or law that works for other people, start by understanding it so that you can apply it appropriately to your situation, instead of just copying even the methods used by others and then complaining after that the principle doesn’t work.
Some people take their personal situations and make them into laws
It is true that there are people who take their personal situations and make laws out of them, when they are not.
Let’s say you’re married to an unfaithful man, and you start telling your daughters that no man is faithful on this earth, then they need to prepare themselves accordingly. Is that true? Of course, no. But still, some people experience common situations and draw hasty conclusions, as if their situation were universal.
The more you know about laws, the easier it will be for you to identify the laws that are really laws, and separate them from those that are just personal experiences that some people have had, and talk about them as if they were laws. Remember: a law applies to everyone, no matter who you are.
The power of a law
If a child jumps from the top of a 10-storey building, do you think he will fly and not be affected by the law of gravity just because he doesn’t know about it? If you go with your vehicle to a country where the law says that the steering wheels must be on the right, and yours is on the left, do you think you won’t be stopped, just because you didn’t know?
Not knowing the existence of a law is no excuse for not being affected by it. A law does not care whether we know it or not — whether we understand it or not. It impacts us, whether we like it or not. In this blog, you will learn several laws that you don’t know yet, but that still affect your life — and you will understand laws that you thought you knew, but don’t really understand because partial knowledge is still ignorance. If you know part of what it takes to get a rocket off the ground and you don’t know the rest, which astronaut is going to get on your rocket? Wouldn’t that be suicide? Partial knowledge is therefore still ignorance, because it will not allow you to achieve the desired goal either.
Partial knowledge is still ignorance
In the next story, we will talk about what motivates the actions of every human being. Although there are universal laws that govern the world, each culture seems to have its own code of ethics, deciding what is right or wrong to do. In the following story, we will therefore see where these codes of ethics come from, and the impact they have in the results we have in our lives, in relation to the different laws. We will see the consequences of living as if the laws do not exist, and much more.
Thank you. | https://medium.com/@mbayabu/what-influences-the-quality-of-my-life-part-2-3-d7e735a18985 | ['Christian B. Mbayabu'] | 2020-12-19 16:46:35.741000+00:00 | ['Influence', 'Quality Of Life', 'Methods', 'Experience', 'Law'] |
‘Wonder Woman 1984’ will be HBO Max’s first 4K title | When we first heard that the new Wonder Woman movie would arrive Christmas Day both on HBO Max and in theaters, our excitement was tinged with disappointment. Why? Because HBO Max is one of the only major streaming video services that doesn’t support 4K playback.
Well, get ready to be happy, because it turns out that those of us watching Wonder Woman 1984 at home will get to stream it in 4K after all.
Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins announced on Twitter that the long-delayed Wonder Woman 1984 will arrive on HBO Max as the service’s first 4K HDR title, complete with Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and Dolby Atmos support.
[ Further reading: Amazon Prime Video vs Hulu vs Netflix ]HBO Max subscribers will be able to stream the movie in 4K on such devices and set-top boxes as Apple TV 4K, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Cube and 4K Fire TV Edition smart TVs, Google’s Chromecast Ultra, AT&T TV, and supported Android TV devices, according to a WarnerMedia press release.
Wonder Woman 1984 will be available to all HBO Max users starting on December 25, and unlike some other Hollywood tentpoles that debuted early online—we’re looking at you, Mulan—viewers won’t have to cough up an extra fee. An HBO Max subscription costs $15 a month.
While Wonder Woman 1984 will be the first 4K title to stream on HBO Max, it won’t be the last. WarnerMedia promises to “expand these capabilities to further films and TV series” next year. No word on which HBO Max shows will get the 4K treatment first, although hopefully Game of Thrones (and particularly that infamous “too dark” episode) will be near the top of the list.
The streaming home of popular HBO shows such as Game of Thrones, Big Little Lies, The Sopranos, Euphoria, Lovecraft County, Watchmen, and Last Week Tonight, as well as such syndicated shows as Friends and The Big Bang Theory, HBO Max first launched back in May.
While the streaming service arrived with an impressive arsenal of TV shows and movies, it conspicuously lacked 4K HDR support. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ already offer 4K HDR streaming. Hulu also supports 4K, but not HDR.
HBO Max has also been slow to land on various streaming platforms, with the service only debuting on Amazon Fire TV devices last month following months of tense negotiations between Amazon and WarnerMedia.
HBO Max still isn’t available on Roku, although you can cast HBO Max videos onto Roku devices via AirPlay.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@jack41316632/wonder-woman-1984-will-be-hbo-max-s-first-4k-title-eb2a5a9df48a | [] | 2020-12-07 20:36:18.991000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Entertainment', 'Chromecast', 'Lighting'] |
Five fantastic underrated action anime series. | Today I’m going to talk about some amazing underrated anime series that you should have watched long ago. These anime series have a lot of actions. If you are an action lover like me you should give them a try. I have watched a lot of action anime which was very popular, unlike these underrated anime. So I decided to make a small list of an underrated action anime series. This list of anime is completely based on my own thoughts if you already watch them and if you think this is not good then it’s completely okay.
But for those who really love action anime series and couldn’t find any better suggestion, this is for you. I am pretty much sure you’re gonna enjoy it. And one thing I wanna say please check out Animemux social pages, don’t forget to comment down and let us know what you think.
1. Blue Exorcist
A father of the church raised two orphan boys who happen to be the son of the devil. However, they didn’t know about their real father until a fateful day when their foster father got killed by the devil. Blue Exorcist is an amazing anime with a lot of action. It has a nice story and great animation.
The two boys of the devil son fight against the devil they have more humanity because of their foster father who loved them so much.
Not only that their mother was also human that’s why they have a human-like body and demons power. However, demons power is hard to control that’s why Rin the elder son joined an academy to become a full-fledge exorcist. When he joined the academy he found out his young brother Yukio is already in the academy. Nonetheless, Yukio couldn’t manifest the satanic power like his elder brother Rin.
2. Black butler
Another great anime series with actions and investigations I really love this anime series. You will get to see the bond of master and butler. Black butler is a fantastic anime series you are absolutely gonna love this series. It is a story about the Phantomhive Lord. A young boy name Ciel who is the current lord of the Phantomhive serves under the direct order of the Queen herself.
Ciel’s family died by a mysterious incident, to avenge his family this came to contract with a demon by offering his soul. The butler does all the things of his master. They have a great bond.
Black Butler is a good anime where you will get to see the loyal butler and how he get rid off of his master’s problems and get the job done in a nice way.
3. Magi: The Adventure of Sinbad
This is a must-watch anime with a lot of adventures and really cool action. This series has total there season make sure to watch all of them because they have different stories and different actions. To be honest I really love the character, Sinbad. You will see how he became so strong during his adventure he did so many great things and accomplished so many.
Sinbad started is journey by questing dunjinns where he captured djinn along with a lot of expensive items. During his adventure, he conquered many dunjinns and captured a lot of o djinns that how he became strong. He is also a really intelligent person. He made so many allies and became a stronger figure.
4. Seraph of the end
This an action-packed dark fantasy anime series. When humanity was its end at Vampires took over the world. As always dark fantasy anime has quite complicated stories. So I’ll interpret a little bit about it.
When human-made a deadly virus it completely wipes out most of the world population except the children and of course a group of people who lead the current generation to fight with vampires. Vampires emerged when they saw humanity is going extinct and took over and enslave humans and made them their livestock.
This anime has pretty amazing actions the MC is considered to be the Seraph of the end. It is basically a human weapon only for killing. When he gets out of control he becomes Seraph of the end. However, he trains to control it and he goes to the mission with his fellow crewmembers to hunts vamps.
5. Blood blockade battlefront
Another action pack anime series with great animation. Blood blockade battlefront is a fantasy anime with a lot of actions and investigations involved in it. The action scene of this anime is mesmerizing to watch. It has a great finish on it. The MC of the anime does not have a lot of powers but he has a special power call the all-seeing eyes of a god, with it he can see anything.
It is pretty much similar to a bungo stray dog where the MC character works with an organization that protects the city from criminals and also prevents criminal activity.
This really a good anime if you are an action lover then it’s a must-watch anime for you. | https://medium.com/@nayeemz/five-fantastic-underrated-action-anime-series-b1a472ec248 | [] | 2020-12-21 08:24:03.135000+00:00 | ['Action Anime', 'Animemux', 'Anime'] |
40 Curious Nuclear Energy Facts You Should Know | Over 450 nuclear power reactors are used around the world. About 31 different countries have operational nuclear reactors. Nuclear energy supplies 11% of the world’s electricity. It is the second-highest provider of low-carbon energy in the U.S., next to hydro energy. Nuclear power plants are safer work environments compared to offices. Enrico Fermi is the father of nuclear energy. He discovered nuclear fission and created the first nuclear power plant, the Chicago Pile-1. The word ‘nuclear’ stems from the nucleus of an atom. Nuclear energy is released from “nuclear fission” or the process of splitting an atom in two. The first commercial nuclear power stations started operating in the 1950s. There have been over 55 tests a year for the last 30 years. Uranium is the most common fuel for nuclear energy. The U.S., France, and Japan are the largest producers of nuclear power. Nuclear waste is radioactive and must be disposed of properly. In the history of nuclear energy, there have been 3 major disasters — Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. Only 2 nuclear weapons have ever been used in warfare, although many weapons have been tested. A rem is a large dose of radiation. Every creature on Earth receives an average of 300–500 mrem (milirems) a year. France uses 80% nuclear energy as an electricity source. Nuclear fusion is the safest way to create power. Uranium was also used to color stained glass in the medieval ages.
Nuclear Energy Facts Infographics
The sun is the largest nuclear reactor.
The sun converts hydrogen into helium through nuclear reactions. Through nuclear fusion, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 606 million metric tons of helium each second in its core. This is similar to how nuclear reactors produce heat, and consequently, energy. The heat created by nuclear fission makes steam that spins a turbine to generate electricity.
Nuclear power isn’t really more dangerous than “traditional” energy.
Over 10 major disasters have been caused by fossil fuel energy in the last 25 years — namely, the BP oil spill. On the other hand, only three have been caused by nuclear power.
Nuclear energy powers the Mars rovers.
Prior Mars expeditions relied on solar panels, but the exploration process was slowed down by dust build-up on the solar panels or days with little sunlight. To solve this, NASA devised the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTP). The MMRTP is an energy source that relies on the heat generated by decaying plutonium dioxide to power the Curiosity rover.
It costs over 6 billion dollars to build one new reactor for a nuclear power plant.
Nuclear power plants may be expensive to build, but they are relatively cheap to run. Nuclear energy competes with fossil fuels as a means of electricity generation. If you consider the environmental and economic consequences of long-term reliance on fossil fuels, nuclear energy shines as an alternative energy source. | https://medium.com/@sahas-dahal/40-curious-nuclear-energy-facts-you-should-know-facts-net-20879a355137 | ['Sahas Dahal'] | 2020-10-13 04:57:33.423000+00:00 | ['Facts', 'Energy', 'Nuclear', 'Energy Efficiency', 'Nuclear Energy'] |
How to achieve Product-Market-Fit | How to achieve Product-Market-Fit
Every startup is looking for product-market-fit. And they do so for a good reason: it makes or breaks the foundation of every business. If you have it — boom — rocket speed. If you don’t, forget about exponential growth. It might still be possible to create a successful business, but you will have to compensate with high advertising expenses. So how do you know you’re there?
This is a question that is super relevant for every founder. It is the kind of question that keeps you up at night, desperately trying to find a way to know for sure. It’s not necessarily something you need to prove to someone else, but rather to yourself. Are we on the right path? Is our idea truly genius or just mediocre? While no one can tell you, there is an easy way to find out yourself. This is how we did it.
Finding a way out of the jungle
Founding a startup feels like being in the jungle. You can see nothing but trees, leaves and bushes. Wherever the thicket opens, a path could lead along. But you can’t clearly see it and even if it is there, each path leads you in a different direction and you have no idea where you might end up.
It is impossible to make long-term-plans in an environment like this and, of course, this is why lean and agile have been invented. They rely on continuous feedback cycles: build, measure, learn, repeat. Fortunately, we no longer feel like we’re deep in the jungle. The barely visible path has turned into a beaten track and then even to something like a bumpy runway.
Our startup alphabeet was growing fast last gardening season, about 8% every week for paid accounts and 11% per week for free accounts. It was very tempting to drastically raise our ad spend next spring, when the next gardening season kicks in, but is it the right time?
Where we came from
We’ve had quite a journey with farmee that lead to our current product. We waded through the cold waters of vertical farming (failed), built an MVP to revolutionise agricultural consulting together with Delphy (failed again) and then decided to focus on hobby gardeners, growing vegetables for themselves and their families. On a curvy path, this lead to alphabeet, a garden planning app for hobby gardeners. It creates the perfect bedding plan for vegetables, provides an extensive library of crop varieties, plants and diseases, loads of valuable content as well as a community of hobby gardeners.
alphabeet is a browser application and native app for iOS and Android
Building a company
Let’s say we did everything right so far: we focused on a clearly defined target audience, spent an awful amount of time to really understand their needs, identified an important problem to solve and found a compelling solution for the problem. Then the only thing we would need to do was prove that our solution was a fit for the problem of the audience. Easy, right?
Hell, no. It is hard as fuck. You might have hundreds of users, but very rarely someone comes and says “Thank you, you really solved my problem”. Fortunately for us, my good friend Philipp of reruption.com pointed me to this excellent blog post by Rahul Vohra, CEO of Superhuman. If you haven’t already, please go read it, even if it is super long, it is that good. Following the bread crumb, we also built on the ideas of Julie Supan and created a persona for a high-expectation customer (HXC). I’ll walk you through how we did that und how we used data to support informed decisions instead of pure gut feeling.
HXC: High-expecation customer
It’s tempting to assume your early adopters are also your HXCs, but that’s not always the case — and failing to make that distinction can prove challenging to a young company. — Julie Supan
We asked ourselves: Who is the customer who needs or wants our app the most? Why is our product important for this person? How do they feel about alphabeet? What is the main benefit they get from the application?
To learn more about our HXC customers we started gathering all available data from our analytics tools. We looked for sheer numbers, but also for patterns and surprises in our data. Here’s what we found:
At the time, we had 22.000 users
~600 of them were paying for a pro subscription
~33.000 garden bed plans had been created in our app
More than 5.000 crop varieties had been created by our users (for comparison: we had about 220 varieties in our database)
The last one came as a surprise and felt a bit like a punch in the face. Creating your own varieties had been developed as a total after-thought. To be honest, the whole experience was a total piece of crap. Time-consuming, cumbersome, fiddly. We already knew we needed to fix this mess, but it became clear how important it was for a lot of people. Someone had created 150 varieties for herself!
My main point is, there were people who spent a lot of time using our app and they invested a lot of time and effort to make it work for them, even if it had glitches and missing features. So we spent some more time searching for people like this. Narrowing down to ~2.000 users with more than 10 logins over the gardening-season, we manually screened their usage data to identify those with the most activity and the greatest number of logins.
We identified 53 people. These are our high-expectation customers.
Our average HXC has the following attributes:
∅ 40 square meters bedding area (~430 square feet)
∅ 14 garden beds or pots
∅ 34 crop varieties in use
∅ 25 own crop varieties, created by themselves
By the way, two thirds of the group are women, a distribution that we’re also seeing among other usage data as well. We used this data, mixed it with a bit of gut feeling, stirred it with a great portion of customer feedback and created the following HXC-persona.
Meet Laura, our high-expection customer
Laura is an enthusiastic hobby gardener. She is in her third gardening season and incredibly proud of her garden. She spends every free minute in the garden, it is her safe space. She wishes she had more time outside and is never one hundred percent satisfied with her results, even if she experiences moments of great satisfaction between her plants. It is difficult for her to simply shed her perfectionism, she still sees herself as a beginner. Whether she wants to or not, she always expects the best of herself and wants to improve continuously – in life as well as in the garden.
Laura likes to try out new, exotic or old-fashioned varieties. She cultivates almost 50 square meters of bedding area and has almost 60 different crop varieties in her bed. Laura finds it incredibly important to create garden plans that reflect how her garden looks in reality. Her plan never feels perfect, there are simply too many factors that need to be taken into account. Something can always be improved.
Boy, this was a relief. Up to this point we always had two target audiences in mind and had a really hard time deciding for one of the two:
Beginning gardeners, eager to learn more, but with very little experience
Experienced gardeners with great enthusiasm and self-catering ambitions
Studying the data and writing the above persona made it crystal clear that we had to focus on the latter only. There was no way beginners had 40 square meters of bedding area and handled 34 crop varieties in a single season.
Why you should narrow your target audience
Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can’t expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. – Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator
It is tempting to think your solution is for everyone. We have very little competition, as there are only a small number of apps for gardeners. So should we build alphabeet to suit all the needs of all gardeners at the same time? Impossible. Studying our main target audience and then purely focus on their needs makes it possible to build a product that is worth their time.
In theory, this narrow target audience might max out at some point, but in reality this never happens, as Paul Graham writes in his excellent blog post startup=growth.
Adapting the framework for product-market-fit
Raul Vohra did an excellent job explaining the “engine” he and his team at Superhuman built to achieve PMF. It is based around four simple questions they had delivered to their users as an email-survey. It all goes back to Sean Ellis and his book Hacking Growth. Ellis proposed to simply ask your users how the would feel if they could no longer use your product.
If 40 percent or more of respondents are “very disappointed”, then the product has achieved sufficient must-have status, which means the green light to move full speed ahead gunning for growth. — Sean Ellis in “Hacking Growth”
We used the exact same four questions Raul used for Superhuman:
1. How would you feel if you could no longer use alphabeet?
A) Very disappointed
B) Somewhat disappointed
C) Not disappointed
A) Very disappointed B) Somewhat disappointed C) Not disappointed 2. What type of people do you think would most benefit from alphabeet?
3. What is the main benefit you receive from alphabeet?
4. How can we improve alphabeet for you?
Our in-app survey (in German)
Rolling out the survey
As we haven’t had great success with email campaigns for our users, we decided to deliver the survey in-app. It looks like this and is really easy to complete in just a couple of minutes.
One of the harder parts is figuring out what a active user actually is and what qualifies him or her to take part in that survey. Ellis proposes to ask people who had recently experienced the product. For us, we decided on a threshold of six log-ins. After they had logged in the sixth time, we showed them the survey on the left, both in-app as well as our browser application.
It took some time, as we conducted the survey during off-season (nobody gardens in the fall). But a couple of days ago our 50th complete survey arrived in our database, posted by a trusty slack bot to a dedicated slack channel. It was a huge moment for our startup.
Have we reached product-market-fit?
The results are astonishing: 44% percent of all complete responses fall into the “very disappointed” category, which feels huge. Of course, we only have 50 returns, so far, so results in the future will vary. Still, people love our app far more than we had imagined. We had run another type of survey in spring and were far away from PMF at that time. We had introduced quite a number of improvements since then, but we were also faced with critical reviews and support mails over the last few months. Not a lot of them, but enough to heat up some self-doubt.
While it can be incredibly rewarding being an entrepreneur, it can also be excruciating. There is this nagging feeling that what you’re offering might not be good enough, irrelevant or unnecessary. As we’re building an app for gardeners, something that has rarely ever been done before, this feeling is a constant companion on our shoulders. It was a great relief to be rid of it for five minutes, until the next pressing question comes to mind. Off to the next season, spring is just around the corner!
As Eric Nohlin, an inspiring ultra-endurance cyclist once put it: It never gets easier, you just get faster.
What now?
Up until now I was just writing about question one of the survey, but there are two more that are especially important to determine our roadmap of new features. Just like Superhuman, we used the answers to questions three (What is the main benefit you receive from alphabeet?) and four (How can we improve alphabeet for you?) to generate word clouds, see if patterns arise. Here is what we saw (sorry if it’s in German, I’ll break it down to English):
What is the main benefit you receive from alphabeet?
The biggest words are Planung (planning) and Übersicht (overview), which makes it pretty clear whats the most important feature of our app. It is a vegetable bed planning app and this is what people take home. Not many surprises here, please move on to the next round. | https://medium.com/farmee/how-to-achieve-product-market-fit-99a7963df555 | ['Flo Haßler'] | 2020-12-09 20:25:47.032000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Lean Startup', 'Product Market Fit', 'Growth Hacking'] |
Exploring Autism Spectrum Disorder from an older female standpoint: | A reflection upon “Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed (2012)”
This is my first time reading a book by an adult female who discovers her own autism symptoms: “Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed: Growing Up with Undiagnosed Autism” (2012), by Jeannie Davide-Rivera.
Upon reading Jeannie D-R’s story, I experienced some “aha” moments in her descriptions of her childhood and young adulthood. I have a habit of marking my personal books, a leftover habit from studying hardcover textbooks. I found myself marking so many passages as “aha” moments that I decided to write down my personal comparisons. She was a carefree toddler but grew into a rattled and confused young woman.
Sensory overload is a running subtext in Jeannie’s makeup. Light bothers her a lot. I am bothered by light sometimes: I am most bothered when my health, specifically my immune system, is poor. For example in 1988, when I had the episode of aplastic anemia, with my White Blood Cell (WBC) in the low 1,000- I was so tired that I could barely open my eyes, and when I opened them, I found light to be very glaring. This has recurred only a handful of times in the past 35 years, not enough for me to track. When I feel well and healthy, I am perfectly fine playing outdoors in the bright summer sun of Texas. I wear sunglasses when driving into the sun, that’s about all I do nowadays. But after thinking about this a lot, I realize that what I react to is the abrupt change. My eyeballs and my brain do not care for the transition shock of having a light turned on in the dark and at times, I have reacted violently with annoyance. I do much better with dimmers!
Loud noises. I don’t like the TV turned out loud in the background. I prefer watching the news, or a documentary, or a movie, then turning off the sound. I like my favorite songs or music and can them in a loop for hours on end. I find music very soothing and a direct path to my emotional soul.
Jeannie talks about her sensory needs, the compulsion to touch things and smell foodstuffs. As a child, she would tear off her clothing if they irritated her or vomit if food disagreed with her. I had no such issues: however, I am slightly bothered by irritating clothes tags or itchy seams or scratchy wool outfits; and I have trouble swallowing some foodstuffs. Jeannie’s tactile sensitivities/sensory issues are very challenging, almost disabling. For myself, I do like very soft things like fur or fleece or silk and satin and very smooth cotton. I am happier if I get it. I suppose I have unthinkingly chosen such items without consciously seeking them? I think clothing is much more soft and stretchy nowadays than in the days I was growing up. I recall the feeling of being in a straight jacket and being very irritated. In the 80’s I discovered rayon, a soft manmade fabric. In the 90’s, stretch came into the clothing industry: I love stretch in fabrics! I used to feel that clothes were rather stiff, even the homemade outfits my mom made to my size. I absolutely hated being stuffed into bulky layers of clothing, which made my arms stick out to the side. I make sure my winter coats are large enough to allow sweaters otherwise I just wear a down vest. I seem to remember my baby girl Roanne crying if she had anything on her feet or legs, so I learned to put her in open footed pajamas at night. Jeannie says that her compulsive habits were explained away as allergies.
Immense need for personal time. Jeannie recalls sitting alone in her own world. I had a habit in childhood and in my teens, of sitting by myself and thinking and being out there somewhere in my head. I still need immense amounts of private time. I tend to withdraw rather than engage in groups. I zone out when I am stressed and I have ignored people on purpose when I just could not be bothered to interact.
She had imaginary friends as a youngster: I never had any. I do not recall having any all-consuming obsessions when I was very young. I always had my younger sister so searching for friends was not an issue.
Verbal prodigy. She was verbal and smart, too verbal and too smart. She consumed books. This is the FIRST FACT that dinged “aha” in my brain. Hey, me too! I remember reading books in French, because from age 3 to age 8, I lived in Paris, France. I read a lot of books. My parents encouraged us to read when we outgrew the evening story reading hour. Books were always available regardless of the family budget! When we moved to Turkey and then to Saudi Arabia, I was so starved for reading material beyond school textbooks that one summer, I read my daddy’s dictionary (Le Petit Larousse) which was like an Encyclopedia. Thereafter, my daddy used to call me “Mademoiselle Je-Sais-Tout”, or Little Miss Know-It-All. Looking back at that age, I must have been a pain in the rear. Jeannie D-R describes the condition as Hyperlexic. Hyperlexia is an ability to read way above what is expected for the child’s age, and is accompanied by a below average ability to comprehend spoken language. I don’t know about that part because no one has ever commented on my ability to comprehend spoken language. This may be due to the fact that I understood my family when we spoke Chinese Mandarin at home; and I understood whichever language (French/Arabic) in the country where we lived, at an elementary school child level. I have always been a champion speller in French or English, I figured that I had nearly a photographic memory of works and pronunciation.
Innate Disposition. Jeannie was not a quiet, withdrawn child. I am not sure about my childhood. My parents remarked that I was a sunny, active and outgoing child until about age 9–10, then I became more quiet, shy and withdrawn. Jeannie says she talked mostly to adults while other children thought she was odd. I really do not recall much of my early childhood: we traveled and changed schools and countries, hence much of my childhood is a blur. The only constant is my sister Fawzia, just a year younger than myself, who was my constant companion and playmate and best friend. I think that our family’s constant moving about may have masked some of my social difficulties on one hand while on the other hand, reinforced my natural tendencies to withdraw and live my own rich inner life. My father was concerned enough about my dour disposition when I was 18–19 and that was one of his primary motives to support my request to attend school in the US even though it was a hardship on the family budget. I owe him his love and insight, this changed my life!
Single mindedness. Jeannie says her mother deemed her stubborn and wanting her own way. Aha! I seem to recall my mother asking me not to be so stubborn and set in my way. That demand always puzzled me and somewhat hurt my feelings because I did not understand why I was wrong and why my mother would sigh from frustration. Why did people think that I was spoiled? just because I was the first born and I was expecting to get my way? Frankly, I have no recollection of what I said or did that would come across as so inflexible. My parents kept saying in Chinese “……” which means “stop being so single-minded!”
Need for routines. Jeannie talks about her compulsion for fixed routines, behaviors, that made no sense to adults. She describes how she likes things placed a certain way in her environment. Well, I would say that most people become set in their ways and resent changes. I have developed my own coping style over the years. On the first day of any new job or situation, I find myself focusing and absorbing information at such a rate that I collapse at the end of the day. It takes up to a week sometimes to adapt to a new situation. Then I develop ways to convert everything into a routine, or a fixed set of steps, which takes much less energy. This organizational sequence leaves my energy available to deal with new things or last-minute emergencies. For example, when I was attending schools that required uniforms, I learned that having a preset outfit saved a lot of hassle getting dressed appropriately in the morning. Over the decades, in the working world, I studied magazines and books on working outfits and mindful of my budged, developed over time a set of matching work outfits with swappable tops and bottoms. I anticipate the weather and the occasion and put everything together the night before. I use my favorite color themes and outfit styles.
I like my personal items set up in a way that makes sense and is pleasing to me, or makes sense to my work flow, for example. 40 years ago, I would see people feeling disoriented when working in other people’s spaces, homes or kitchens. I distinctly recall helping in someone’s kitchen and one bystander commenting on how I seemed comfortable functioning. My reply was that my first step was to open all cabinet doors and drawers so I could figure out the organizational storage. After that it was just easy to work. But in the past 20 years, with the advent of portable laptops, it seems that people are used to just moving around and working wherever they land, so there is less attachment to one’s surroundings. Nowadays we all walk around with a backpack and with our portable electronics. That’s a positive thing.
As a child, Jeannie loved to arrange things, to order them in a satisfactory manner. Yes, I know the feeling. I do notice my innate tendency to re-arrange things everywhere I go, to the extent that I am able to get away with it. At a new work station, I may open a desk drawer and I may start re-arranging items if they are jumbled. Put the pencils and pens together; put the post-it notes together; etc. Line up or push tables and chairs into order. Hang up coats; line up jumbled shoes in the foyer. Stack dirty dishes plates and bowls by size; cups and glasses; eating utensils; wash items in a sequence and stack to dry in order; or load the dishwasher in a way that makes sense to me. I refrain from getting annoyed or commenting on other people’s habits because my style is mine and there is no need to confront others to make them do things my way. I have been in places, other people’s homes, where I see things and I just twitch and have to get up and put things in order. Making order out of chaos. That’s just me.
Jeanie talks about wanting to do things to perfection and the beginnings of a perfectionist. Aha moment there! Yes, I know all about wanting to do things right. Yes, I always thought that there is only one way to do things and never to give less than my best.
Trouble switching activities. Another definitive “Aha” moment comes when she talks about her early childhood when she had trouble switching activities. She said her brain needed time to make the switch. She says that even today, as an adult, when she is absorbed in an activity, she resents and even feels anger at interruptions. Yes! I remember that pervasive annoyed feeling in my growing up years and adulthood! I get very absorbed in my projects and I don’t like interruptions, and I have in the past reacted with hostility and impatience, coming off as irrational and angry. I have learned to empathize with others, so I now thank them for notifying me, and I ask for a little time to wind down my project. Actually, it is a teacher skill we use all the time in classrooms, announcing a transition and spelling out to children how much time and what is expected to put away or concluded. So I think it is just a basic human need for “transitions” as we say in teacher-talk.
Jeannie was very smart but after elementary school, she struggled because she could not find her way around and she refused to attend classes. Yet she was able to read her textbooks and ace her tests. I had no trouble navigating surroundings, I actually think I have excellent skills. Aha! I remember being an excellent student: I could read and comprehend and answer all the questions in class. That must have been very annoying to others! I usually read the textbooks from cover to cover within the first few days of school and managed to make it through the full semester without missing a step, I am not sure why I did not have behavioral issues. School was always easy for me, I was the studious child who applied herself.
Literal Interpretations. Jeannie mentions her difficulties with literal meanings. I vaguely remember taking things literally and having trouble understanding nuances. But that was so long ago. Nowadays I am perfectly able to distinguish and express complex nuances in communications. Actually I respond to youngsters inquiries which are literal and I might give feedback on what I think they are trying to express.
Stimming. Jeannie talks about “stimming”, self-stimulating behaviors or stereotypic behavior. I never did any hand flapping, rocking back and forth, or spinning, or walking on tiptoe. It is a way for autistic people to adapt to the sensory stimuli around them. They are meant to be calming actions which help regulate the overwhelming sensory input that the autistic person is experiencing. (Note: why is the word defined as self-stimulating and self-calming at the same time?) She talks about never sitting still. I can relate to that somewhat. I can stay still for hours when I am absorbed in a project, but at times, I get ants in my seat and I must get up and move around constantly. It is not an obvious thing in me.
No Filter. Jeannie talks about embarrassing behavior when she was not trying to be difficult or rude, her intention was never to make anyone feel bad. Aha moment there! How many times have I done or said something in my youth which my parents would point out, and I would say, “it is not my fault, I did not mean it!” That standard response would make my parents so upset! Apparently, she had no filter. Unfortunately, I cannot remember any single instance of such behavior, only the constant sighing of my frustrated parents. She talks about her autistic brain being stubborn, unyielding and immovable. I never saw myself that way, but I have been asked to be more flexible and willing to compromise… Yes, yes, I can be sharp, cutting, analytical, in my observations, and that comes across as uncaring to my near and dear.
“My One Friend; My Only Friend”. That chapter was a “aha” moment. Much of her chidhood was spent with built-in friends, friends who were present as a result of propinquity. My one and only friend while growing up was my sister Fawzia: she was always there, tagging along as a younger sister and playmate and even classmate at times. I do not recall much about making friends outside of home. I was presumable sociable enough but our constant moving about made it difficult to maintain or cultivate schoolyard friendships. I recall a couple of instances when I decided to make friends with a specific classmate and agonized about how to go about it. One friend I sought out was Marianne Abrams in “cinquieme” (French school), or the US 7th grade . We have now connected again on Facebook in recent years. After a while, I simply let my sister Fawzia lead the friendship forays and enjoy the vicarious fun. I realized that I was comfortable one-on-one and awkward in group settings. I was able to manage working with groups and teams during my professional career until I pursued a teaching career: I found it extremely difficult to follow the students running commentaries across the classroom and frequently fell back on my innate habit to just let the “noise” play out, which is a serious mistake for a teacher! I am learning to tune into the candid back-and-forth, both to attune my ears to the speech syntax and cadence and to track the students topics of interest and tend to them as necessary.
Jeannie recalls very few people, most characters are fuzzy and faded. In my case, I hardly recall much of anything. In comparison with my own sister, she seems to have a sharp recall of people, places and situations and can name names and addresses: I don’t understand how we, as sisters, lived through many of the same situations and I have the haziest recollection of events, if any. However, once I have a friend, I tend to be very loyal and very invested in the relationship.
To be fair, my books were my best friends, and Jeannie relates that as well. She was interested in dance and acting, which are totally outside my interests. She noticed that she was actually a klutz and that has been my own lifelong experience.
Immunity to Peer Pressure. Jeannie mentions immunity to peer pressure as a teenager. Peer pressure is a concept I had trouble grasping. Who cares? I never followed the crowd. I did try to fit in as best as possible to cope and I have become very resourceful at it. During my college years, I learned to socialize as a young adult. On a social aspect, I always answered questions honestly, literally, which took people aback. I remember, at about age 18, thinking that people should not ask me unless they wanted an honest answer. Over the years, I have learned to be more circumspect, more diplomatic; actually I ignore most of what is going on. I don’t say what is on my mind, which does not mean I am not thinking. Actually I feel matter of fact and clinical about many things, and when I speak, which makes it difficult to come across as empathetic.
Inner Life and Empathy. Most of my life, I tend to withdraw into myself. I do recall a candid comment by one of my sisters-in-law. She said when she first met me in my mid-20’s, she thought I was rather “cold”. Then over the years, she discovered that I was actually very warm and loving. Doesn’t that tell you something? Jeannie says she does feel empathy and she craves it. She searched for it all her life until she found the Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis in her late 30’ which reframed her understanding of herself.
Jeannie points out that Asperger’s condition(now Autism Spectrum) includes three core deficits: the lack of theory of mind; executive dysfunction; weak central coherence. Autistic people often have great difficult understanding that other people’s feelings, intentions are different than their own and are described as mind-blind. Autistic people miss cues and may say things that come across as blunt and rude.
Special Interests. Special interests and preoccupations come and go over the years. Jeannie says that one must look at the intensity and focus: one may focus to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, nearly to obsessive level. For the autistic person, an obsession and passion is a soothing and calming activity; a place to decompress and regenerate. One of the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome was a category titled “Restrictive Repetitive and Stereotyped Patterns of Behavior, Interests and Activities” that is abnormal in either “Intensity or Focus”. Hmm. It is an obsession that is essential, positve and empowering for autistic persons. This hyper-focus skill is a gift and should be encouraged and cherished. Well, I do tend to jump into a new subject and try to understand ALL of it. Or explore a new video game for hours on end over any number of weeks, until something else takes my attention. Jeannie states it so well: “Life drains my well. Special interests fill it back up”. Absolute aha! I remember being incredibly depressed 20 years ago and telling my late husband Bob that everything about life wore me out and I just could not work up the energy to deal with it! I think at the time I got into animal rescue big time and that pulled me out of my torpor.
What is central coherence? It is the ability to focus on both details as well as wholes. People with autism appear to have a heightened focus on details rather than wholes. I am not sure about this: I love getting down into details but I usually seem to do okay looking at the whole picture. I would say that I am usually leaving things open-ended because one can start an activity without knowing how and when it might end. Apparently meandering or getting lost into details is a problem.
Executive function is the way people monitor and control their thoughts and actions which requires skills and ability to goal, plan, sequence, prioritize, organize, initiate, pace, self-monitor, and complete. An autistic person might have trouble driving behavior towards some goal, resulting in failure to complete any accomplishments. This is totally NOT ME! I am very good at goals and driving towards accomplishments. I actually worked and excelled in a professional planning career and led teams through complex projects, and was acknowledged a superb visualizer. I am very annoyed at people who do not plan ahead of time using calendar and other project management tools. I will humbly acknowledge that I do have trouble finishing some things, particularly arts and crafts projects. I have knitting and crochet projects which have been lying in wait for years, jewelry bead and macrame projects with all the supplies purchased but never completed.
Being able to hyper-focus on a task and learn very quickly made me an excellent student and worker. I have a habit of absorbing lots of data and acing my tests. Here is where I am confused? How can one focus well, yet have poor executive function? Jeannie learned new computer programs very easily and quickly. Same here. When left by myself with a project in mind, I just get to it and learn the skills on the go. After a while, I become very, very skilled!
Jeannie talks about the rising stress of managing her adult work life creating panic attacks and insomnia. Yes, I have been there! I always attributed my nagging overwhelming anxiety to the stress of raising my son Omar, who had chronic asthma as well as nighttime bedwetting. I was dealing with crisis after crisis on a daily basis; I would fall asleep yet part of me always listened to the sound of his breathing somewhere down the hallway. Many nights I have watched the hours roll by, with no relief in sight. This is a subject I need to self-examine and expand further.
Jeannie did not do well as a waitress which requires performing basic tasks while having incredible people skills. I don’t remember too many waitressing opportunities in my youth, but about 10 years ago, I tried working at a pastry and coffee shop. I failed as a barista: I had trouble remembering how to make specialized coffee orders; I fumbled pastry and sandwich making; I could not remember how to work the cash register. Oh well… Service industry is not my forte. I just don’t seem to make it all come together at the right time. I have even tried some video games duplicating such challenges, putting together food items and delivering to the customers: I get panic attacks beyond the first few levels and crash and burn. Not for me!
Proprioception: the unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation controlled by one’s body nerves. Autistic people tend to have poor proprioception and behave clumsily and may get bruises. Aha! This is me! I was always the one not able to run, or jump or climb in school PE. I had trouble learning anything about catching any ball. Ping Pong! badminton! Tennis! Basketball! I could never catch a ball properly. Dodge ball: a fail, and a huge anxiety situation. On the other hand, when I am able to focus and do it on my own time, I can do quite well: bowling, yes! archery, yes! I think I would do well at shooting targets. Yoga, and walking, and swimming, are my top favorite physical activities: it just requires focus and discipline. I am learning TaiChi and Qigong: it is hard for me to remember the forms and how to flow from one to the other but I find it very good for me when it comes together. Dancing: I am 2 left legs when learning any dance steps, I cannot remember the steps sequence and I trip over my feet again and again. Dancing is very very hard for me, although I love the feeling of moving to music in space. After a while, I decided that I could likely do line dancing better than ballroom or folk dancing, but a couple of hours in the beginner line dance class, and I began having trouble remembering the basic steps.
Disconnection and Depression. In her own words “depression is by far the most painful ailment I have ever faced. It is the thing that slammed into me, ran me over repeatedly, and then kicked me in the head when I was down. I struggled for change, for understanding, to figure out what was “wrong” with me”.
As a young wife and mother, coping with new situations and moving about became overwhelming. She was put on anti-depressants. She felt lost and alone, disconnected and overwhelmed. Then she was diagnosed with racing heart and panic attacks so she took Xanax. Hey, this sounds familiar! This started with me in my 40’s. My doctor at the time told me she suspected I had been depressed most of my whole life. In addition, to cope with her mystifying pains, Jeannie was diagnosed with muscle relaxers and pain medications. Yes, that is how I manage my chronic muscular-skeletal pains! She took so many additional medications that she was in a state of Psychotic Mania and was then diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. She spent a year hardly ever leaving the house. That sounds familiar too! Crash and burn! Now she knows the myriad of complex symptoms are all traits of her Autism Spectrum Disorder. After she was diagnosed as ASD, her life felt acknowledged in this new paradigm and she began the journey to understand herself.
So I can see that her story is a fingerpoint sent to me by the Universe, asking me to start the next stage of my journey. So many items that check yet so many do not seem to resonate. What is next? | https://medium.com/@sm22281/exploring-autism-spectrum-disorder-from-an-older-female-standpoint-273f9a454f5e | ['Saadia Mai'] | 2020-12-13 16:12:03.160000+00:00 | ['Older', 'Autism', 'Spectrum', 'Female'] |
Aphantasia: My Mind’s Eye is Blind, But I Dream in Ideas | My son Nicholas was thirteen when I read Temple Grandin’s autobiography Thinking in Pictures and learned two things that changed my life.
The first was that Nick was autistic. He didn’t have ADHD, which he’d been misdiagnosed with at age six. He didn’t have bipolar disorder, which he’d been misdiagnosed with at age nine, after three months in a mental hospital.
I put down Thinking in Pictures and knew my kid had autism. And that he was going to be okay.
And I also learned that there was something very, very strange about me.
Gradin talks in her book about thinking in pictures to the extent that words are her second language.
I THINK IN PICTURES. Words are like a second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head. When somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures. Language-based thinkers often find this phenomenon difficult to understand, but in my job as an equipment designer for the livestock industry, visual thinking is a tremendous advantage.
— Temple Grandin
I am a language-based thinker, alright. I’m so language-based that I don’t think visually at all. I don’t have a mind’s eye. Or, I do, but it doesn’t see. It — I don’t know. It conceives. My mind’s eye ideates; it’s not a movie projector.
The realization of just how different that is from other people was mind blowing.
I’m not huge on labels, but there’s a newish term for the kind of extreme language-based thinking I’m talking about. Aphantasia. I don’t like it, because it ‘a’ means lacking and ‘phantasia’ means imagination and that’s not right. On lots of levels.
I don’t lack an imagination. It just operates non-visually.
When I close my eyes and try to remember my mother, for example, here are strong sensory memories and there are words. And feelings. But I don’t get a picture.
So, I asked my husband, and he thought I was being ridiculous. You know what your mother looked like.
I do, of course. I look like her. Only she was blonder and I have brown eyes. I know that I’m built like her, my face has the same shape. I can bring up very brief flashes of very specific details. A pair of jeans she liked to wear that had belonged to my brother. The way her pale blue eyes sometimes shifted back an forth rapidly, a little tick that she didn’t know she had.
I remember them so strongly that they feel like they’re just on the edge of visual memory, but I can’t bring them all the way up.
I’ll remember something very, very specific like that — the yellow rose with the pink edges that my daughter and my sister and I saw at the rose garden in Portland a couple of weeks ago — and for a few seconds it’s almost there. I’ll almost see the inside of the gift shop.
I’ll certainly smell it, overpoweringly rosey. And I can feel the silk scarves between my fingers. Taste that rose-smell on the back of my tongue. But I can’t see it.
I can’t see my mother. It doesn’t upset me, because I haven’t lost the ability. I have never been able to visualize anything. So I don’t miss it.
Other sensory memories are stronger. I can still hear her voice, for instance. I remember exactly what she smelled like. She wore Charlie Perfume all her life, and face powder always makes me remember her. I made shepherd’s pie last night and it tasted just like the recipe she used to make it for me every year on my birthday. It doesn’t matter that I don’t actually have the recipe. I just know.
I do make visual connections. For some reason, I constantly see women who remind me of my sister. I’m not sure if that’s some under-developed part of my brain trying to fire off or what. But it’s always some small detail, not an overall appearance. The shape of the bridge of a nose or the way someone holds themselves will make me see her in someone who otherwise doesn’t look anything like her.
I don’t even dream in pictures.
This is the hardest thing to explain.
A friend once asked me if I just dream of the words. Like do I just see them scroll past? Well. No. That would be a picture of the words, wouldn’t it? It’s not auditory, either. It’s not like someone reading to me or narrating my dream. Although I wake up with a memory of the words.
It’s more like I dream in story.
My dreams are fully formed, and I often remember them vividly. Like the one where I opened my washing machine and my great-grandmother’s head was sitting on the agitator. We had a coversation about life.
I didn’t see it. I just — knew it. The idea of it. It wasn’t a nightmare. I wasn’t scared. Maybe I would have been, if I’d seen my Nana’s head on a washing machine agitator instead of just had the idea of it.
After I watched a documentary about a woman whose teenage son murdered her toddler daughter, I spent two nights having intense dreams about being caught in impossible situations.
It isn’t uncommon for me to have dreams that continue on for several nights.
I often dream of being chased. It’s my one recurring nightmare. And in dreams, I know that I’m riding a bicycle that won’t go fast enough or I’m running down a hall that keeps stretching.
I can’t see those things, anymore than I can see what’s happening when I read a book. But I feel them. I wake up knowing they happened, the same way I know that I know that went to Wal-Mart yesterday.
Maybe because I don’t dream in pictures, I tend to remember my dreams more than anyone else I know. I wonder sometimes if my brain is like a hard drive. Because I’m not filling it up with video all night long, there’s more space to record.
Strangely, the only time I ever dream in pictures is if I fall back to sleep in the morning, after a night where I didn’t sleep well. Very rarely, I’ll have a few minutes of crazy, visual dreams that completely freak me out. They unsettle me enough that I try not to let it happen.
I have a hard time connecting names with faces.
I read, and adored, Bone Gap by Laura Ruby a couple of years ago. It’s about a boy who has face blindness. I don’t have face blindness, but I recognized myself in that character.
I have a terrible time connecting a face to a name. It’s embarrassing. People I absolutely should recognize, whom I’ve had significant experiences with, I can’t recognize visually if enough time has passed for me to have lost the connection between their faces and their names.
The second I hear their names, everything snaps into place like a rubber band. Because I’m a language-based thinker and their name, not their face, is what I need to make the connection.
I have lots of information about the people I’ve come in contact with on file in my mind. There’s nothing really wrong with my memory. It’s just that I don’t have a visual file. So I know what they look like and I have words like brunette, dark eyes, freckles, glasses, tall, round face — but lots of people fit that description. I need their name to unlock the file.
My husband, on the other hand, can see an 80-year-old in a movie and instantly place them as a child actor. It’s like his superpower. He never forgets a face or a name.
We moved last year to the little town where he grew up. He moved away after he graduated from high school, but there are dozens of people still here who he hasn’t seen in thirty years and he’s in his glory, seeing people on the street that he instantly recognizes and waiting for them to place him.
Just like the boy in Bone Gap, if someone has a very distinguishing feature, I have an easier time. For instance, when my daughter starts with a new soccer team there are always a few girls I can remember more easily.
They stand out for some reason. Maybe one girl has red hair. Or one is much taller than the rest. Maybe someone wears a knee brace or has a birthmark. A couple might be friends with my daughter and I know them already. I’m able to attach their names to them fairly quickly.
And there are always some girls I never can distinguish from each other. My brain just sees a gaggle of brownish ponytails, all the same height and build, wearing the same uniform. They’re too similar to each other in appearance for me to make a visual connection between them and their names unless I really get to know them. I have to use their uniform number to know who they are, sometimes for years.
My creative work is language based.
I’m a novelist, which requires me to create a world for other people.
For the most part, I don’t actually have to work too hard to write description. I’ve certainly read enough of them, so maybe that helps. I’ve just learned how to do it.
I know what I want a setting to feel like and that’s my starting point. I focus on what I want my reader to feel.
I don’t struggle to see things when they’re in front of me, of course. And I know what things look like. If I want to describe something specific, sometimes I’ll look up photographs.
The one problem I have is with remembering which details I’ve included in my work. I have to write them down. I keep a sort of story bible where I can keep those notes. Otherwise, I’m likely to forget the details I’ve written.
Both of my daughters are artists. So is my sister, my aunt, my grandmother. I am spectacularly non-artistic. I think I have a decent eye for things like design and style, but I struggle to create anything.
Mostly, because I don’t have the patience for it. I can’t picture the end result. It’s impossible to create something when you can’t imagine what you’re creating. Or at least it feels impossible.
Stories are different. Grandin talks about visual and language-based thinkers. Maybe the flip side of not being able to think visually is that I’ve got a hyper-developed ability to be a language-based thinker.
My mother taught me to read when I was three, because my need for stories was insatiable and she couldn’t keep up. I learned quickly. I went into school with standard five-year-old skills — except that I could already read.
I have a very vivid memory of standing on my grandmother’s back patio when I was eight or nine years old and having an epiphany. I could read anything. All of the words in the whole world were mine. They belonged to me. Even weird, long scientific words that I didn’t understand, I could sound out. I could read them and they were mine. I was filled with such an intense feeling of my own personal power.
There’s nothing wrong with my imagination.
It works just fine, thank you.
I sometimes think it’s too big for my body, actually. I am often overwhelmed by ideas. Bowled over by them. I get so excited about them — mine, other people’s, it doesn’t even matter.
Because I have no problem talking about my ideas, I can tell you all about how I think they’ll play out. How I imagine they’ll culminate. And, oh man, if you give me the chance, I’ll go on and on about your ideas, too.
I have a much harder time figuring out all the little steps between here and there. I get lost in them. I can usually manage the next step. If I’m lucky.
I have to have a kind of crazy number of strategies and systems in place to keep me on track, or I would never (I mean never, ever) finish anything. It’s hard for me to even realize sometimes that I’ve gone off track.
I’m sometimes taken by surprise when other people are shocked by my productivity. It isn’t that I’m such a go-getter. It’s that I have two modes. Either I don’t get anything done or I get everything done.
Because either I’m using my systems that bypass the fact that I can’t visualize anything, or I’m not.
I usually chalk that up to being extremely right brained, but maybe I’m extremely right brained because I can’t actually visualize my path.
You know how Olympic athletes talk about visualizing themselves going through their event, step-by-step, and winning? I can’t do something like that. At least, not literally.
I’m good with concepts and ideas, but I can’t close my eyes and meditate on an actual picture of myself doing anything.
In fact, meditation is almost painfully impossible for me. At least the kind where you close your eyes and visualize — I don’t know, your happy place or a quite meadow or something.
I only see black and my brain starts swimming with thoughts and ideas that have nothing to focus them. They batter me. If I’m going to focus, I need to open my eyes and actually see something.
Because I can’t visualize, I actually have to do it.
I can learn by reading. And I can learn by doing. But I can’t learn by listening at all, unless I also take extensive notes. Sometimes my husband will try to explain something to me. Give me directions, maybe. Or tell me how to do something he’d like me to do for him.
I can get maybe two turns in and then I just shake my head and hold up my hand to make him stop. It’s useless to go any further. I won’t remember. And if I let him keep going, it will only confuse me.
If I’m going to remember something, I have to write it down. I don’t usually have to go back to my notes, interestingly. But I have to actually write them down. Somehow the physical act of writing them transcribes them into the language center of my brain, and then they’re there and I can access them.
We moved to Pennsylvania in November and it took me months to not need my GPS to get home from the grocery store or to take my daughter to school. It got to the point of ridiculousness and I know that people thought I was doing it on purpose.
And I get it. It seemed like there was no possible way I couldn’t find my way home from the grocery store — it’s half a mile. But I couldn’t. I turned the wrong damned way every single time.
I struggled with the sudden change from desert sun to lake-effect gloom and spent a lot of that winter as a passenger. Plus, I didn’t have the few visual cues I’d gotten used to after years of living in the same place. It wasn’t until I pulled out of my funk and started driving myself that I was able to finally figure out my way around.
We live in a visual world.
And I guess it’s a little weird to be wired in such a way that I just don’t function very well within it. Here are some things that I’ve found that help me navigate our visual world a little more easily.
My kids think it’s hilarious that I’m so low tech. I need almost everything to be analog if it’s going to work for me. I can’t visualize how something will work out, so I have to write it down, sketch it out, plan it first. With a pencil on paper. Old school.
Step-by-step directions work best for me. If I want to learn how to do something, I seek out someone who teaches in a way that doesn’t skip steps, expecting me to be able to make a leap that my non-visual mind might completely miss.
I capitalize on the things that I’m good at. I’ve built an entire life, including a thriving career, around being a language-based thinker. Temple Grandin, incidentally, did the same thing with her extreme visual thinking. She turned her ability to intensely visualize into a career building livestock equipment that revolutionized that industry. | https://shauntagrimes.medium.com/aphantasia-my-minds-eye-is-blind-84d98be6d249 | ['Shaunta Grimes'] | 2019-09-16 16:33:00.308000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Life', 'Mental Health', 'Self', 'Life Lessons'] |
I know you can’t see them, but this comment contains 534,692 claps. | Exploring diversity and multiculturalism means sharing what we have in common — and one of the best ways to do that is through stories. | https://medium.com/@SusanatScenescape/i-know-you-cant-see-them-but-this-comment-contains-534-692-claps-e031ad084a43 | ['Susan At Scenescape'] | 2020-12-08 12:20:20.465000+00:00 | ['Celebrity', 'Fame', 'Consent'] |
7 Common Dreams and What They Say About You | 7 Common Dreams and What They Say About You
How to use your dreams to understand yourself better
Photo by Joshua Abner from Pexels
Not many people pay enough attention to their dreams, and here’s why that should change. Dreams are manifestations of unconscious desires and wishes. They are signals from the brain and body.
Carl Jung, a highly reputed Swiss psychiatrist, saw dreams as “the psyche’s attempt to communicate important things to the individual”, and he valued them above all else, as a way of knowing what was really going on.
Dreams help you make connections about your feelings that your conscious self wouldn’t make. Think of them as free therapy sessions in your mind, nudging you to confront your suppressed emotions.
Before we get into the dream interpretations, let me clarify how you can tell when a dream actually means something. PET scans and MRIs have shown that some dreams are mere “data dumps”, where you dispose of excess information that you collected during the day.
Your brain discards “useless” memories, and saves the valuable ones. So, a random acquaintance or something you thought of during the day popping up in your dreams is very normal and may not signify something deep.
However, many recurring dreams reveal unusual and sometimes bizarre symbolism that cannot be written off as a coincidence. These symbols are strongly connected to the psyche and can help dreamers understand themselves much better. | https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/7-common-dreams-and-what-they-say-about-you-c341222c2849 | ['Bertilla Niveda'] | 2020-11-09 07:52:46.573000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Dreams', 'Mental Health', 'Philosophy', 'Self'] |
Deposit & Trading, WIN 250,000 ZEFU! | 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/bithumb-global/deposit-trading-win-250-000-zefu-b2e10ced3f3b | ['Bithumb Global'] | 2020-12-18 07:21:39.563000+00:00 | ['Bithumb Global', 'Airdrop', 'Crypto'] |
Importance of Analytics and Master Data | Data influence the future of a business; the organizations are more focused on data to improve the quality and standard of the product or service. The data scientists are predicting the future of business by analyzing the data.
As we know, various factors are influence the future of business. But the data scientist is forecasting the future by using previous data, current trends, environmental situation, etc. The environmental factors regularly changing, this may mislead the prediction. Moreover, the relevance of the data may affect negatively. The master data plan helps to identify the relevance of data. One of the major barriers faced by the data scientist is the irrelevancy of data. The quality and quantity of data influence the prediction process. So the data scientists try to create master data to overcome these barriers.
The organizations are aware of the importance of data and the analytical process. But some of the organization still follows the conventional method of approach. But the scientific approach of prediction helps to improve the productivity and growth of the business. Not only in economic, but also for social growth. If the organization is aware of the future market, then they can change their strategies to adapt to the situation. For example, if aware of the covid-19 pandemic before 2019, we try to prevent the outbreak of the virus at any cost. At the same, the organization takes advanced measures to succeed.
The prediction process is not a simpler task; data scientists are taking different factors into account to predict wisely. The accuracy of prediction may vary; different known and unknown factors influence the upcoming happening. The prediction also influences the growth of the organization. Investors are confidently investing in such organizations for increases the value of money. The merging and acquisition are happening depending upon the predictive result. The probability of growth rate analysis and easily identifies the benefits of merging and acquisition. The corporate is always rely upon these scientific predictive methods. These methods are helpful for the organization to achieve the objective easily. Technology always helps to improve the growth of the organization. | https://medium.com/@maxed-blog/importance-of-analytics-and-master-data-85020250c3dd | [] | 2020-12-19 14:32:37.254000+00:00 | ['Data', 'Analytics', 'Data Analytics', 'Master Data Management'] |
Signs Your Business Needs a Website Redesign | Your website plays a big part in the identity of your business. The way your website looks will have a huge impact on the way your visitors feel when they land on your website. What will their first impression be? Are they going to want to do business with you?
If you have not updated your website in a while, it’s it may be time for a website redesign. Consider working with a professional web designer to help you through the process.
Is Time to Redesign Your Website?
Is your website mobile-friendly?
The majority of people are viewing the internet from their phones and tablets, so it makes sense to create a design that works with all screen sizes.
Does your website load quickly?
Do you have a lot of pages that are not mobile-friendly and cause the page to take forever to load when visitors come from their phone or tablet?
Are your competitors ranking better than you online?
Maybe it’s because they’ve updated their website recently and you haven’t. So how do you rank higher? Here are some tips to help:
Optimize keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes by including them within the title tags, headings, and other information that is shown when people find your website via a keyword. For example, if you operate as a mattress store then “mattress” would be one of those keywords worth optimizing. The more times it appears throughout the pages on your website — with emphasis placed where it makes sense in terms of context
Can your visitors find what they are looking for on your website?
If website visitors cannot find what they are looking for, then it’s time to redesign your website. Your website navigation should be simple to follow and work well on mobile devices as well as desktops and tablets.
Are you putting out new content regularly?
You need a website that is constantly updated with new information and news to keep it fresh for website visitors.
Are your competitors getting more leads than you?
You might not be reaching people that are searching for what you offer or the information they’re looking for on Google. For example, if you sell medical equipment to physicians’ offices then make sure you have content related to the equipment you sell. If you sell TM Flow Systems or Sudomotor Testing equipment, make sure to include information about products you sell in the content of your website.
Is your website content up to date?
If your website was created years ago, it is absolutely time for a redesign. Technology changes so quickly, and it’s not possible to keep up with all the latest developments without a new design.
Are you still using Flash?
Flash has been phased out because of lack of support on mobile devices. If you’re still using Flash on your site, you definitely need an update.
Don’t miss out on all of this valuable business because your website is outdated and needs updating. The redesign process can be daunting but with these easy steps, you’ll be back up in running again in no time.
For more digital marketing tips, visit https://roegraphics.com/tips. | https://medium.com/@bethrfloyd/signs-your-business-needs-a-website-redesign-f24bfff9401e | ['Roe Graphics'] | 2021-07-07 21:37:46.757000+00:00 | ['Search Engine Optimizati', 'Website Design', 'Website'] |
Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum | Hard — Leetcode problem
Given a non-empty binary tree, find the maximum path sum.
For this problem, a path is defined as any node sequence from some starting node to any node in the tree along the parent-child connections. The path must contain at least one node and does not need to go through the root.
Example 1:
Input: root = [1,2,3]
Output: 6
Example 2:
Input: root = [-10,9,20,null,null,15,7]
Output: 42
Constraints:
The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [0, 3 * 104] .
. -1000 <= Node.val <= 1000
Solution :
HInts : kandane’s algorithm and also recursive nature of BST.
Approach 1: Recursion
Intuition
First of all, let’s simplify the problem and implement a function max_gain(node) which takes a node as an argument and computes a maximum contribution that this node and one/zero of its subtrees could add.
In other words, it’s a maximum gain one could have including the node (and maybe one of its subtrees) into the path.
Hence if one would know for sure that the max path contains root , the problem would be solved as max_gain(root) . Unfortunately, the max path does not need to go through the root, and here is an example of such a tree
That means one needs to modify the above function and to check at each step what is better : to continue the current path or to start a new path with the current node as a highest node in this new path.
Algorithm
Now everything is ready to write down an algorithm.
Initiate max_sum as the smallest possible integer and call max_gain(node = root) .
as the smallest possible integer and call . Implement max_gain(node) with a check to continue the old path or to start a new path:
with a check to continue the old path or to start a new path: 1. Base case : if node is null, the max gain is 0 .
. 2. Call max_gain recursively for the node children to compute max gain from the left and right subtrees : left_gain = max(max_gain(node.left), 0) and
right_gain = max(max_gain(node.right), 0) .
recursively for the node children to compute max gain from the left and right subtrees : and . 3. Now check to continue the old path or to start a new path. To start a new path would cost price_newpath = node.val + left_gain + right_gain . Update max_sum if it's better to start a new path.
. Update if it's better to start a new path. 4. For the recursion return the max gain the node and one/zero of its subtrees could add to the current path : node.val + max(left_gain, right_gain) .
Tree Node
Here is the definition of the TreeNode which we would use in the following implementation.
class TreeNode(object):
""" Definition of a binary tree node."""
def __init__(self, x):
self.val = x
self.left = None
self.right = None
Implementation
Notice that we are looking at a path from 15-> 20 -> 7 , which is an arc kind of path not seen before.
class Solution:
def maxPathSum(self, root):
"""
:type root: TreeNode
:rtype: int
"""
def max_gain(node):
if not node:
return 0 # max sum on the left and right sub-trees of node
left_gain = max(max_gain(node.left), 0)
right_gain = max(max_gain(node.right), 0)
# the price to start a new path where `node` is a highest node price_newpath = node.val + left_gain + right_gain
# update max_sum if it's better to start a new path
self.max_sum = max(self.max_sum, price_newpath)
# for recursion :
# return the max gain if continue the same path
return node.val + max(left_gain, right_gain)
self.max_sum = float('-inf')
max_gain(root)
return self.max_sum
Link : https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-maximum-path-sum/solution/
Complexity Analysis | https://takeitoutamber.medium.com/binary-tree-maximum-path-sum-f1c04afed876 | ['Technical Interviews Preparation'] | 2020-12-21 19:07:51.120000+00:00 | ['Binary Search Tree', 'Maximum Path Sum', 'Leetcode Hard'] |
Breaking Bad episode review — 4.6 — Cornered | Original air date: August 21, 2011
Director: Michael Slovis
Writer: Gennifer Hutchison
Rating: 9/10
This episode has a couple of really great scenarios or scenes. It’s far from my favorite episode, and I don’t think it’s as gripping as a lot of my favorites. But the scene early on between Walt and Skyler, in which it’s apparent that Skyler has no idea how dangerous Walt is, is fantastic.
Yes, the “one who knocks” scene. Great stuff.
I also at this point can’t really say I know why Walt told Hank that the genius behind the blue meth might still be out there. He acts the next day like he wasn’t really aware of what he said, but I don’t think that’s the case. Skyler thinks that it’s a cry for help and that he secretly wants to be caught. I think it’s more his pride again; he can’t take hearing another person being credited with his genius.
Skyler also considers fleeing with Holly after her conversation with Walt, and I don’t think that’s unreasonable in any way.
Jesse continues to work some odd jobs with Mike, and this one involves the two of them scouting a place with supposedly stolen meth. Jesse confronts one of the two methheads and gets him to dig a hole for no reason.
He goes inside and gets a gun pointed at him by the other one, but he and Mike take care of business. Mike talks to Gus about the stolen meth, and what it means in their ongoing war with the cartel.
I love the Jesse and Mike stuff in this episode, of course. And I love the Walt and Skyler stuff. The only part I really don’t much care for is Walt buying his son a car. | https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/breaking-bad-episode-review-4-6-cornered-84130047925a | ['Patrick J Mullen'] | 2020-09-10 04:51:01.189000+00:00 | ['Breaking Bad', 'Tv Reviews', 'Drama', 'Television', 'TV'] |
Decisions, decisions… | Decisions, decisions…
Do you have a hard time making decisions?
What happens when you must choose between two or more options?
Do you put off making decisions because you are afraid you will make the ‘wrong’ choice?
There is nothing to worry about. There is no wrong path or choice.
You will just have different experiences on whatever path you choose to follow. And remember, you can always change course at any time.
Know that you will learn valuable life lessons along whatever path you choose.
Nothing is ever a waste of time; even if you think it was. Because that ‘wasted’ time taught you many valuable life lessons. | https://medium.com/spiritual-psychology/decisions-decisions-66f971faf974 | ['Charlotte Allison'] | 2020-12-17 23:14:53.871000+00:00 | ['Choices', 'Life Lessons', 'Decision Making', 'Personal Growth', 'Decisions'] |
Why So Many Coding Students Struggle Getting a Job After Coding Bootcamps | Why So Many Coding Students Struggle Getting a Job After Coding Bootcamps
It’s the difference between learning to code and learning computer science
Photo by Emile Perron on Unsplash.
Imagine, like so many folks, that you decide what you want to study when you’re just 18. You go to college, finish a four-year degree in Mechanical Engineering, and then realize what you actually want to do is get a job in coding. There are tons of benefits — pay, flexibility, personal satisfaction. It’s a no-brainer.
There’s just one problem: The last thing you want to do is go back to school for another two or four very expensive years. After reading a bit online, you see that a possible route for you is getting a job after a coding bootcamp. It seems like a sweet deal — you pay a fraction of typical college tuition and then are on your way to getting a coding job with no experience or degree.
There’s just one more problem: The path after graduating from a coding bootcamp leaves you really underprepared for the programming job market. “We see more and more students coming to Qvault because people are having a hard time landing jobs after taking a bootcamp or doing some web development courses,” says Lane Wagner, engineer and founder of Qvault, an online computer science education platform. That’s why so many bootcamp graduates leave their 15-week course thinking they’ll glide into a job offer, only to find the process of getting a job after a coding bootcamp is painful, arduous, and seemingly never-ending.
It’s frustrating because it can feel like you’ve done everything right: You’ve realized getting a programming job can be beneficial to your career and happiness, you’ve picked a language, found a course, and completed it… only to struggle getting a job after the bootcamp.
Coding bootcamps don’t give a great understanding of the fundamentals underpinning how programming really works. Bootcamps are great for a lot of different reasons: They’re cheaper than a degree and up to date on modern languages, but they tend to focus on practical skills over understanding theory, which means even after finishing one, you might still not really understand the mathematical and statistical theory that underlies that code you’re doing.
If you’ve graduated from a coding bootcamp and are tearing your hair out in frustration because you can’t seem to get a job, stop applying to 20 places a day. Try to identify what’s causing you to get stuck at this last hurdle and then work on a plan to overcome it. | https://medium.com/better-programming/why-so-many-coding-students-struggle-getting-a-job-after-coding-bootcamps-570c3db6a20d | ['Zulie Rane'] | 2020-11-23 16:27:05.329000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Coding', 'Data Science', 'Work', 'Programming'] |
Start With a Dream | Sure, this year was hard, and we’ll be glad to see it go. Next year will be better, but haven’t we said that before? We don’t have to wait until next year to do better. We can start right now.
Start with a dream; it all begins here. What does that dream look like? Brainstorm ideas and write them down. If you don’t write it down, it’s still just a dream.
But don’t stop there, you have to work the plan. Ask yourself why this is important. If you can’t answer that, you’ll lack direction. How bad do you want it? Are you willing to sacrifice and put in the work?
What’s your next step? And the one after that?
If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Start with a dream and let it take you there. | https://medium.com/the-shortform/start-with-a-dream-78ccaf1fcf00 | ['Patricia Rosa'] | 2020-12-14 12:30:29.917000+00:00 | ['Optimism', 'Productivity', 'Dreams', 'Goals', 'Resolutions'] |
The Miracle Question in Recovery. Using the Miracle Question to hone… | Using the Miracle Question to hone problems into solutions.
One of my favorite therapeutic tools is the Miracle Question
It comes from Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) which was developed by the therapist couple Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg in the 1980s. The goal of SFBT is to examine the client’s problem in the here-and-now. It orients a client’s awareness towards solutions, rather than the problem saturated world which the client brings with them into the therapy room.
We are constantly creating the future in our minds and often creating a picture-perfect one; sometimes without even being conscious of the thoughts. SFBT allows a person to bring those thoughts into present awareness. Then, the therapy focuses on creating solutions and goals to achieve that future.
The Miracle Question is used to help both the care provider and the client understand what that future can look like by looking at the problem from the vantage of it miraculously vanishing. The client's response invites a discussion and subsequent lines of questioning about what that new ideal state of being looks like. The question itself asks:
“Suppose tonight, while you slept, a miracle occurred. When you wake up tomorrow, what would be some of the things you would notice that would tell you life had suddenly gotten better?”
The Miracle Question in Practice
You may be saying to yourself, well that’s pretty open to all kinds of responses. Some of which may not be actually attainable. The thing is, the response is the tip of the solution iceberg. We need to continue to look below the surface for the real solutions to emerge. For instance, if someone’s problem is they have gone through a divorce and their ideal version is them being back with their partner, the care provider can respond “How would that make a difference?” The client may respond, “I would have someone in my life again and I would be happy.” Then the therapist would ask “Are there people in your life already who make you happy?” This process begins to show the client that while their problem exists, there are other areas in which the problem does not exist.
That is the beauty of the question: the ability to continue drilling down. Once people see that that the problem is not pervasive in every aspect of their life, solutions can be developed and goals can be set to help develop skills that can help with creating their ideal future state. This is why this question is perfect for helping people working towards addiction recovery.
Using The Miracle Question in Recovery Support
Asking this question to clients working towards recovery can result in a lot of valuable discussion about what their overarching life goals may look like. Addiction disease can make the future feel fuzzy; the compass is not pointing in any clear direction. The Miracle Question can help the client and the care provider begin to find a north star in the recovery process.
“Addiction tells people to keep driving forward even when they want to get off at the next exit. It keeps diverting them from getting off the addiction highway.”
In the case of a person working towards recovery, a response to the Miracle Question might be “I would no longer wake up and want to drink/use drugs.” The care provider would then pose, “How would that make a difference in your life?” The client may respond, “I would no longer feel the need to drink when I am feeling nervous or anxious.” The care provider would then examine this with the client and ask, “Are there times in your life now when you don’t feel anxious or the need to drink/use drugs?” Based on this response and subsequent ones, the client and care provider begin to develop goals for the problem of drinking/using drugs in relation to feelings of anxiety and nervousness.
The Miracle Question and resulting drill down can hone the problem into a well-defined solution. Goals can then be created and action items can be developed as homework between sessions to become more aware of moments where the problem is not as noticeable. The client can also practice the skills they are learning in the process in real-world settings.
Making Miracles Happen
This is a quick and really rewarding therapeutic technique. It does require some practice to understand the drilling down techniques. You want to be able to use the questions to get a well-defined solution, which is not easy, but it is so rewarding when you finally get it down. This is such a great way to quickly build rapport and increase a client’s engagement in any type of therapeutic, counseling, or coaching session. Client’s feel like they are a part of the process and have a say in the direction their care goes. It removes that element of feeling like the care provider is the one with all the answers, when in fact the client really is the expert in their own life.
People have the strengths and abilities to create solutions to their problems. They just need a guide to help them make sense of the directions that the backseat driver of addiction disease is messing up. Addiction tells people to keep driving forward even when they want to get off at the next exit. It keeps diverting them from getting off the addiction highway.
This is why I love the Miracle Question. It helps make the addiction disease easier to ignore and the directions easier to follow. It allows a client to be in the driver’s seat and the care provider to act not as a new backseat driver, but as the traffic signs on the road. The care provider guides, as the client steers the car off the nearest exit and onto the road of recovery. | https://medium.com/@matt-19677/the-miracle-question-in-recovery-b767e0f18eda | ['Matt Demasi'] | 2020-12-16 19:54:53.481000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Therapy', 'Mental Health', 'Addiction Recovery', 'Psychology'] |
I Have PTSD from Living in New York City for Twenty Years | I lived in New York City for twenty years. I was one of those “I love New York/greatest city on earth” die-hard psychos who believed there was nowhere else on the planet to live. After two decades the weather, endless gloom, and eight months a year of seasonal depression (that antidepressants, a psychopharmacologist, a psychologist, and a lightbox couldn’t fix) was too unbearable to counter-argue with the remaining nice four months. The place I claimed to love was slowly killing me. My quality of life was the equivalent of being under house arrest in Siberia, except with a doorman and Uber Eats.
Why didn’t anyone tell me I could move?
Because no one leaves New York City. Except to go to L.A. And then, for some reason, they come back.
I had to leave.
I was depressed from living in a box with no outdoor space that faced an overpriced supermarket and seven banks.
I was depleted from the lack of vitamin D. I was downtrodden from the miserable lifestyle.
I was exhausted from protecting myself against the endless vile elements with the layers of expensive battle gear that no one has enough room for. The dreary heavy black/grey wool sweaters, the thick ugly socks that make your boots too tight, the boots that feel like you have weights on your feet, the super unsexy down jacket, the hat you can never find, the gloves you constantly lose only one of, the scarf that drags on the ground, and the hood that obstructs your peripheral vision and makes you unable to hear anyone you’re walking next to. I have PTSD just from writing that.
Plus, I forgot the umbrella that either gets blown inside out from the wind, pokes someone’s eye out, or you simply lose on the regular. All of those awful necessities weigh you down; they are both physically and mentally burdensome.
I moved out of New York ten years ago this month. It wasn’t long after that I realized it wasn’t just the weather and the poor quality of life that were insufferable. It’s like a bad relationship — the longer you’re out of it the more clarity you have. How did I stand for that abuse for so long?
Each year that I was gone I became more and more aware of how much it traumatized me and how difficult everyday life was. Like, for example, how aggravating, time-consuming and expensive it was to get anywhere. How you have to wait in a ten-person long line just to buy toothpaste. How you have to strategically zig-zag through hordes of assertive pedestrians to walk your dogs without them getting stepped on. How your best scenery (assuming you don’t live facing Central Park) are the ugly grey buildings or the dirty streets with garbage bags piled up on the corner. On top of that, I was 41 years old and I didn’t want or need to compete with 8 million other people for success, an apartment, a boyfriend, or a table at a good restaurant anymore. None of it was worth it.
I never saw a sunset before I moved to Miami. I never even thought about sunsets. It wasn’t part of my world. I was used to staring at a man staring at his TV in the building across the street. I was used to going home in the winter at 4:30 p.m. every day because it was dark. I was used to staying in my apartment for days on end, sleeping entire weekends away and wasting my life.
One afternoon a few years ago my mother called and asked what I was doing. It was around sunset and I told her I was sitting on my terrace staring at the clouds. She asked if I was high. I wasn’t. I was just mesmerized by the beautiful sky and in awe that this was now a part of my life. It brought me peace and tranquility and an appreciation for something I never even thought about, nor had the opportunity to observe for the twenty years I lived in a concrete jungle. I wish I had realized there were other options in life. I wish I had moved sooner.
I’ve been living in Florida for a decade now and it’s not New York and that’s the best thing about it. People ask me if I miss New York. No, I don’t miss anything about it (except maybe the cupcakes.) But I don’t miss the struggle, the fight, the battle gear, the angst. I don’t miss how unhappy everyone looks and how unpleasant everyone is. New York City might be a great place to visit, but it’s not a great place to live. Then again it depends on what’s important to you — money, power, prestige, titles, or positive mental health and a great quality of life. I did love New York a long time ago. I never dreamed I would leave, but I’m so happy I did. | https://byrslf.co/i-have-ptsd-from-living-in-new-york-city-for-twenty-years-b97fc3451ff2 | ['Pam Gaslow'] | 2021-05-08 20:43:13.560000+00:00 | ['Winter', 'New York City', 'Living', 'Seasonal Depression', 'Beyourself'] |
Not What I Thought I was Going to Write | 100 Naked Words — Day 50
Not What I Thought I was Going to Write
Reflections, Ripples and Ramblings of a Restless Mind
Photo Credit — Me! Lido di Camaiore, Tuscany
My plan was some great piece of writing, of wisdom analysing my 50 days on 100NW. It was going to be pithy and witty, erudite and insightful.
But I forgot that I wanted to write about that.
So I wrote this instead:
I started wondering if I was experiencing burnout. My writing has felt very forced recently and I have been struggling to draw upon my experiences in the same way.
Everything feels a little stale and a bit forced.
Until the poetry hits.
And it hits every morning, every day. It lifts me up and carries me so far above myself that I feel as if I’m watching my body create a trail along the paths it walks.
What poetry does for me is order my thoughts, even though the writing itself can be disordered, chaotic.
Maybe I’m not burning out. Maybe I’m burning up… | https://medium.com/100-naked-words/not-what-i-thought-i-was-going-to-write-5424e61b769b | ['Aarish Shah'] | 2017-03-02 18:02:03.742000+00:00 | ['100 Naked Words', 'Writing', 'Inspiration', 'Poetry', 'Creative Writing'] |
What about Airbnb in Milan? | Short business trips? Holidays to escape from your daily life? Just moved in town and looking for an apartment? Smartworking by the sea? Airbnb is an answer to all these questions but how to decide which apartment or neighbourhood is the right one for you (and your pockets)?
I live in Milan and I know the city but I asked myself, from the perspective of a tourist, where would I want to book an Airbnb accommodation, so I came up with some questions:
Which are the most expensive neighbourhoods in Milan for Airbnb accommodations and where are they located? Which are the neighbourhoods with the highest density of Airbnb accommodations in Milan? Is there a correlation between price and density of Airbnb accommodations in this area? Is it possible to predict the price of an Airbnb accommodation given some of the information on its listing on Airbnb site?
Distribution of Airbnb accommodations’ prices
As you might expect, the most expensive Airbnb accommodations are all located in the city center. There are only a few exceptions, as highlighted in the following map, where two or three neighbourhoods show a higher average price compared to the surroundings in the south and east areas.
Is there anything else to say about that high average price in that small neighbourhood of the city center?
Comparison between density and prices distribution
Most of the Airbnb accommodations are located in the city center, as shown in the following graph. Around 54% of the accommodations are all located in only a few (10) of the city center neighborhoods, which are also the most expensive ones.
At a first sight, it is possible to say that the city center is both dense and with the highest average prices for Airbnb accommodations but taking into consideration the seven neighbourhoods with the highest average price, there are a few exceptions to consider:
The neighbourhoods with the two highest average prices (QUINTOSOLE and GIARDINI PORTA VENEZIA) correspond to the lowest density class.
Only two neighbourhoods are both highly dense and with a high average price (DUOMO and BRERA), the remaining three are in lower density classes.
You can now book your Airbnb accommodation
The neighbourhoods with the most expensive Airbnb accommodations, which are also among the ones with the highest density, are DUOMO and BRERA. No worries, there is always space in Milan if you are willing to spend a little bit more than average!
GARIBALDI REPUBBLICA, GUASTALLA and GHISOLFA have a lower average price and a lower density compared to the previous two. In my opinion GARIBALDI would then be the perfect option, considering also the nice places to visit and the night life in the very near neighbourhood ISOLA.
The most expensive one is GIARDINI PORTA VENEZIA, which has also a low amount of available places: it seems that this can be called literally an exclusive neighbourhood.
Average price of the most expensive neighbourhoods and related number of listing - June 2020
If you are curious about the data and the processing behind this post, feel free to reach my GitHub repository https://github.com/AleGuarnieri/Airbnb-accomodations-analysis-in-Milan | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/what-about-airbnb-in-milan-737752c14680 | ['Alessandro Guarnieri'] | 2020-09-21 05:51:58.770000+00:00 | ['Airbnb', 'Crisp Dm', 'Choropleth Map', 'Milan', 'Data Science'] |
We need more normality in fiction, and we need it now | I am not arguing the hetero-normative representation of relationships in this piece, nor am I addressing the lack of minorities representation, because we all know the state of literature today. What I want to discuss pertains to the definition of a normal romantic relationship in new adult books.
New adult fiction is a developing genre of fiction with protagonists in the 18–30 age bracket. I, myself, fall into the category of people these books are marketed to, and have been for many years now. So I know how important these books are. And surely, other readers know as well.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, please understand that I am not attacking any writer here. As an aspiring writer myself, I understand the appeal of writing a super sweet romance. I also understand why some writers prefer over the top unrealistic dark romance.
What I don’t understand, as a reader and a writer, is the lack of writers willing to write about the real deal : the relationship between new adults who struggle with their lives and identities.
Granted, some people; the luckiest of us; cruise through their late teens and early twenties. These rare caterpillars soon mutate into social butterflies able to maneuver their ways through relationships.
The reality of the rest of us is somehow harsher. A lot of new adults navigate life equally confused and hopeful. For the majority, failure; especially in relationships; is a known acquaintance and self doubt a constant partner.
But you know what? That’s okay!
Our twenties are the most formative years of our lives. We become aware of ourselves and test our personalities against those of the people we meet and love. We discover our vulnerabilities and become aware of the world and how it impacts us.
Which brings me back to my topic: How lacking heavily marketed new adult fiction is when it comes to the representation of a certain type of relationships.
My message is simple: if you are in the new adult age bracket and cannot find yourself or your relationship in the characters you read, fear not, that is normal. People usually don’t have life figured out by 22. Handsome drug lords who are secretly feminist don’t run the streets, and there is no relationship that goes without arguments.
Which, if you ask me, if totally okay. It must be exhausting to be brilliant at everything you endeavor and find your soulmates before you are 22, all the while never using anything to improve yourself because you are perfect just as you are.
Taking time to find your way in life is the way to go. Mental illness is not something to be ashamed of, and breakups are not a failure. Life is messy and hard, and as long as you are trying your best, you are doing great.
If you are a new adult writer, you are of course free to write whatever you like. But if you happen to favour contemporary literature, please consider addressing realistic relationships in your art.
Do not shy away from vulnerable characters and sad endings. Do not shy away from hard relationships. Raw emotions can be a great addition to your novel and a realistic, sad ending once in a while never hurt anyone.
Ray Bradbury said: “The more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more literary you are” | https://medium.com/@o-m-lassa/we-need-more-normality-in-fiction-and-we-need-it-now-fe481240a67d | ['O. M. Lassa'] | 2020-12-12 22:46:08.850000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Life And Books', 'Books And Authors'] |
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Ashes, Ashes, Everywhere | The first days after my son’s suicide were punctuated with question marks. Words uttered in library whispers by well-meaning relatives or friends hinted at the questions that always swirl around suicide. None of them were answerable, except to say that my son was fiercely private about his inner struggles. He didn’t want to burden anyone by sharing his darkness, so he hid it all behind smiles and laughter.
I preferred the questions I could answer: the simpler ones related to the business of death.
Who is writing the obituary? I am, with input from my family. Where do you want to publish it? Online and in our home newspaper. Burial or cremation? Cremation, please. We have a range of options for the body, from an unadorned box to the fanciest of caskets. What do you prefer? The box suits him; he used to keep his clothes together with duct tape. Do you want remembrance jewelry? Jewelry? Oh, with ashes in them? (I wear my necklace every day.)
What kind of container do you want for the ashes? Where do you want to put them?
The last two questions stumped me.
One of Ben’s professors in college deemed him a “force of nature,” a description so apt that we used it in the obituary. Ben was elemental, connected to the natural world he loved, and he was impossible to contain in life. His spirit seemed too large for any container to hold him in death.
Ben never stayed anywhere for long in life. His grandmother called him her will-o-the-wisp, an elemental force who drifted in and out of her life, dropping by without notice to share an order of crab rangoons or raid her refrigerator for leftovers. A sudden invitation to spend a week at a friend’s slope-side cabin coupled with an impending snowstorm saw him depart a family visit in PA — right after dinner, on Christmas Eve — to drive north; he never could resist the siren’s song of fresh snow. Unannounced, last-minute adventures were his signature. He existed in so many places to me; how could we put him in a single location in death?
Any decision seemed impossible; I needed time to think about it, to talk to my husband and our children.
We settled on scattering tubes, which come in several varieties and different sizes depending on the purpose. Cardboard single-use with outdoor scenes like a sunset or the mountains for Ben’s closest friends. Small, discreet wooden tubes for travel to distant areas. Resealable metal ones in velvet cases for scattering ashes in multiple places.
The containers didn’t hold all the ashes; I received a box with the rest the day of the funeral. There are fewer ashes now, but there are still places he longed to go; I plan to take him.
His ashes contain his every moment, birth to death, reduced to their essence, and they sparkle in the sunlight.
The funeral director’s face paled when I asked him to tell me about the ashes, but he patiently explained that the remains are similar in size and weight to a 5-pound sack of flour. Later, when I looked it up, I learned that the composition and color of remains are influenced by their exposure to minerals, metals, and elements stored in the bones. The amount of body fat can affect the color (more body fat can cause the ashes to be darker in color, for example).
Ashes In My Hand
The first time I held Ben’s remains in my hand was after his funeral, sitting at the Penobscot River in the spot where he meditated. Sunlight warmed my face as I opened the scattering tube. The grief was settling into my soul, weighing on me in inverse proportion to the tiny pile of bone shards and powder — the consistency of sand — I held in my palm.
I dropped them into the river along with my heart and watched them swirl and sink slowly to the rocks. In the clear water, they caught the sunlight, and I remember thinking that Ben was so brilliant that it was entirely logical that his ashes would shine, even underwater.
I realized Ben’s ashes are as unique in death as he was in his life. They are not just his bones. Call it energy, call it spirit, call it love in a different form. His ashes contain his every moment, birth to death, reduced to their essence, and they sparkle in the sunlight.
Scattered Ashes
I resolved to take Ben to the places I associate with his passions and interests, to go on adventures as a way to remember him and try to make peace with his loss. I’ve taken him to a music festival, ridden on a float in a Mardis Gras parade, and gone whitewater rafting down the Penobscot. I’ve gone backpacking and camped out solo. I’ve been on open mountain tops, deep woods, waterfalls, rivers, oceans. Brilliant sunshine, blowing snow, dense fog, drenching rain. Sunrise, sunset, and every hour in between.
Friends and family took ashes to honor our lost adventurer in the one way he would want: they’ve gone on adventures of their own. It’s become a group project as a tribute to him. Ben’s life-long best friend and “brother by choice” chose Mt. Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain and the site of one of their most epic camping adventures. His three high school buddies: tubing down their favorite river and planting sunflowers at the apple orchard they all loved. A close college friend: a favorite trail with an overlook in Connecticut. His Aunt: an Arizona desert canyon. A cousin: cliffs on the Irish coast. One of my dearest friends: The Arctic Circle, after sending me pictures of “beer with Ben” from the trip to get there.
Ben kept many of his relationships separate. Words, thoughts, the manner of scattering, whether they cried, I have no wish to know the details beyond receiving a picture or two. They were part of his story in life; they remain part of his story by honoring him in death. I know they take him to places symbolic of his meaning in their lives, or places he would have visited someday. It’s enough to know they loved my son.
Ashes in My Heart
There have been days it felt effortless to be out on the trails, and days it was so hard and heavy that I wanted to cry. Days the ashes felt weightless and ethereal, and days the metal tube weighed my entire body down as I climbed the trail.
But I find him out there on the trails when I see it through his eyes or let the wonder of the view from the top of the world wash over me. I see him standing on peaks, wading through streams, feeling the spray of waterfalls, or watching ocean waves. He always said he felt most himself when he was outside, drinking in the wonder of the world.
The act of scattering helps us honor and remember our loved ones, and possibly find a moment of peace.
When the timing suits me and I feel him, I sprinkle a tiny handful of his ashes and take a picture of his hat, stolen from him at graduation with a suicide remembrance ribbon pinned to it, made by his auntie for his funeral, and my remembrance necklace: a green malachite pendant for the color of his eyes, and a small, ash-filled, silver bead.
Some images will stay with me. The double rainbow on Garfield at the end of a 2-day trek is etched in my brain. If I close my eyes, I am back in Yellowstone, on my snowshoes in the brilliant sun, listening to wolf-song wash over me. It was a mile away, but it echoed up the valley so loud that I felt it on my skin.
I look up and imagine the sweep of the eagle in the Cascades as it flew, eye-level, across a mountain peak. I see the bighorn ram standing mere feet away, posing and peaceful, on the Continental Divide in Glacier. I feel the peace of watching the sunset from West Bond in the White Mountains of New Hampshire or the majesty of Knife Edge on Mt. Katahdin, the rooftop of Baxter State Park, and Ben’s favorite hike.
I think Ben sends me these moments, and I store them away in my heart. Sometimes I wonder if I got enough of them, they could start to fill the emptiness of loss, or at least begin to make the space less jarring. But they have to be earned. They come at the end of long, arduous treks or after I’ve overcome some obstacle or taken a step forward on this journey and learned a lesson from it.
Ashes In the Sunlight
Life is fragile and messy. We lose the ground, and love is so quickly reduced to ashes. But what I’ve learned this year, scattering my son’s remains from one coast to the other, a tiny handful at a time, is that my connection with him is unbroken.
Whether we scatter their remains a tiny bit at a time or all at once, the act of scattering helps us honor and remember our loved ones. Hopefully, we find a moment of peace and grace in the act of sending their essence into the air, or water, or earth.
When I scatter Ben’s remains, I gain understanding. I catch glimpses of my son, and his life, and our love, in the sparkle of his ashes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | https://medium.com/@bamoco3367/ashes-ashes-everywhere-b17a05ed1768 | ['Si Jason Evangelho'] | 2020-12-19 02:26:25.749000+00:00 | ['Grief', 'Politics', 'Suicide', 'Grieving Process', 'Death'] |
Magnificent Melissa | Magnificent Melissa
Double D’s if you please
the real Melissa — photo by author
This is actually not a phony story. Written for my magazine in which I did real reviews of real girls, the following is a genuine encounter.
TIME: About midnight several weeks ago. PLACE: The girls’ lounge at a big Midtown incall. The scene is as usual with television tuned to BET and a rap video playing. The place is a mess. Clothes, blankets, shoes, boots, and especially, half-eaten take-out food litters the room. Hey! The girls are sloppy. No big surprise. One lady is stretched out on the couch…fast asleep and in no condition to introduce.
Those who are awake are in deep conversation. The subjects run the customary gamut: Clothes, rappers, clubs, gossip about other girls, other houses, regular tricks, and everybody else’s body parts…be they working girls or clients.
A very beautiful but almost brain-dead Amer/Asian asks me for the hundredth time the name and number of a doctor who does butt injections. She wants a bigger ass. And so does her “man.” Then she starts in talking about one of the house regulars almost every girl has seen.
“So-and-so needs an implant,” she teases referring to the diminutive size of the guy’s organ.
I roll my eyes to myself. I’ve heard flat-butted/small-chested chicks make fun of under-endowed guys a hundred times. I look around the room as the conversation about the size of the male organ continues. There isn’t a decent set of juggs in the whole joint. They got a lot of nerve!
One of the girls has the stupidest looking implants I’ve ever seen. Another has a fabulous butt but almost no tits at all. Whatever…I take a few shots of one of the girls the owner has requested I photograph, and head back to my apartment to meet an old cab driver buddy for a drink.
Half an hour later I’m home and hanging with my knucklehead amigo. We’re going to some bar. But before we leave, he has to rummage through all the piles of photos to gawk the girls.
“Billy…show me which girls you’ve had sex with in these pictures,” comes his juvenile request. I take a few minutes to separate out a few shots for his edification. And as we peruse the babes I’ve bagged, two things become apparent.
First is they’re almost all not caucasian. And second, none has very large breasts. I begin to ponder the situation within the context of my earliere-tht-evening visit and think to myself “let me be like one of those hoochies I was just hanging with. Fuck style, grace, class, and all that. The next girl I boff is going to have a big, gorgeous, natural, and very succulent set of the most fabulous mammaries I can find on the beat.” John and I high-five each other as I verbalize my observations. “Yeah! Big fuckin’ tits,” he guffaws as we exit to a bar to gawk at babes.
The next day I consider my options. Mirror, mirror on the wall…who has the largest, most perfectly shaped, most delicious tits of them all? And then I think Melissa.
Melissa is a South American woman…part of what I call “The Million Brazilian Cotillion,” who doesn’t advertise with me…but just secured a sublease for a Midtown apartment where she plans to strike out on her own…rather than work for the madam by whom she was previously employed.
I’ve known Melissa for about two years and always liked her quiet, unassuming personality, her cute little smile, and her large, round and sizzlingly sumptuous set of natural D’s.
I called her cell phone number, which she’d given me several months prior, found her on the other end and made my pitch. It was time for her to advertise and as a token of my generosity (yeah, right), I offered her a free ad in exchange for a session.
Melissa had turned me down before, not wanting to get intimate with somebody who is so involved with her colleagues. But this time (I guess because she had an apartment and really did need to start advertising), she accepted my offer.
And so I headed over with a bottle of wine…and images of all the drooling, jealous size-freak working girls sucking and fondling those fantastic Melissa melons.
The irony of the whole situation is that of all the working girls I’ve ever dealt with, Melissa is the least nasty, the least gossipy, and the least whorish sex-for-sale woman I’ve ever met. No doubt, every client I’ve ever had sex with has gone back to her friends and described in great detail, the length, girth, hardness, and staying-power of my private parts. One or two have even reviewed my performance while I was still there! Melissa is the one girl who would never do that. A discreet working girl? C’mon. Who are we kidding? Well, no lie. Melissa is a lady…for real.
Anyway…we sat at her table…talking about relationships and love and the kind of stuff that guys and girls talk about on a real date. And I soon discovered that she’s really just an old fashioned girl, lonely in the city, and looking for someone to love her.
Toiling as a working girl is something she does not because she enjoys it particularly (although she is capable of falling for a client)…just because she has no other choice. Melissa talked about going back to school and finding a better way…which is great….but what I really observed as I looked into her eyes is a girl who wants a man to take care of her. Not one she can get over on and abuse…but one she can love and cherish forever and ever amen. It’s a funny thing. The girl with the most awesome endowment…the one who has the breasts all those dopey incall girls would kill for…is the most reserved of them all.
And so as we sipped our drinks and began to melt in the moment, the bed seemed to beckon. The entire process was completely natural. A gentle hug, a little bouncing and rubbing, and we were ready for the show. As is usually the case, I lay my prey down on the bed naked to massage, knead, and fondle the object of my enslavement. Melissa was no exception.
I do this for a few reasons. Because girls do talk. And given that I do business with them, I feel it imperative to show respect and consideration. If I don’t get reviewed as a stud, I at least want the gossip to be that I’m a nice guy and an easy session.
Second, I really do love to massage and fondle the female form. It’s not a chore…it’s a privilege.
And third, it’s a partially masturbatory exercise. I’m not just playing with them…I’m playing with myself as well.
Anyway…enough of my sexual psyche and how I feel about women. Who the fuck cares? Tell us about Melissa’s big juggs! Ok! They really were (and are) fabulous. Big breasts are one thing…and nice breasts are another. And rarely does one woman get both. Well, Melissa’s got both…BIG TIME.
I didn’t pay any particular extra attention to her pulchritudinous pillows. Rather, I gave all her body parts equal time. But I certainly did notice how large and full and firm they felt in my grimy paws.
But more important, I felt like I was making love to a date more than like I was groping an escort. And if Melissa has one quality more unique in a working girl than having big and beautiful breasts, it’s that she’s more ladylike than any working girl I’ve ever known.
In deference to her discretion, I will not chronicle the gory details of every thrust, moan, groan, and squirt during our session. That would only serve as an indignity to a very discreet encounter. What I will say is that I found Melissa to be very deep, wet, delicious, and especially satisfying in the missionary position. She’s very strong in the pelvic area and met my every downstroke with a powerfully engulfing upstroke of her own. Or to be more direct and to the point in a magazine of this genre…she fucked the shit out of me and made cum like a madman.
Another thing I really liked about Melissa was that she didn’t have a big attitude or a big ego about her big chest. It wasn’t as if she exuded an air of “I have fabulous breasts and you’re lucky to be in their presence.” Nope! Just a girl next door looking for a little love, a little affection, and a hot orgasm as she pays the bills.
If you’re looking for a nasty whore to smack you upside the head with her big tits and hiss “pound me with that stiff fucking dick” as you do the wild thing, Melissa’s not your girl. But if you want a sensuous experience with somebody real and sincere who just happens to have one of the most beautiful set of breasts you’ll ever see or feel…then Melissa is the one. | https://medium.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-escorts-but/magnificent-melissa-b1f0a91bbbf8 | ['William', 'Dollar Bill'] | 2020-12-07 13:28:30.802000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'Culture', 'Escorts', 'Sex Work', 'Erotica'] |
Forget About New Year’s Resolutions — Life Doesn’t Care What Date It Is | Look on the bright side
Don’t think this is an article of gloom and doom, because it isn’t. The new year will no doubt bring moments we won’t enjoy, but it will also develop awesome memories for most of us. Every year does the same.
Your personal life, family, career, will all experience ups and downs. Hopefully far more smiles than frowns. We might like to compartmentalise these into neat volumes of 12 months, but existence does not recognise our primitive methods of timekeeping. It’s all about the journey.
Nevertheless, on December 31 each year, we mark the end of another number and look forward to a better new number (just add one). We make resolutions, promises to ourselves, plans for better days and greater achievements ahead.
All that is fine. It’s a good idea for our mental wellbeing to set goals. But please, don’t restrict yourself to doing things within the timeframe of a certain year, month, week or day. These are artificial boundaries.
Promising yourself that 2021 will be your big year will only set yourself up for failure and disappointment. Your time to shine may arrive on January 15. Or March 6. Or May 27. Perhaps on December 13, lasting for eight months into 2022.
Your new year will be punctuated by highs and lows, elations and deflations. Don’t give the year credit for any achievements, and don’t blame it for whatever goes wrong.
Time is a continuation. It marches on without a care for any labels we pin to it. I personally have never celebrated New Year’s Eve as the end of one thing and the start of something new. This year, I’ll be noting that Thursday has simply become Friday. | https://medium.com/@mark-campbell/forget-about-new-years-resolutions-life-doesn-t-care-what-date-it-is-7f789a7d12b | ['Mark Campbell'] | 2020-12-28 23:55:38.820000+00:00 | ['New Years Resolutions', '2021', 'Positive Thinking', 'New Year', 'Mindset'] |
I make up the easel first, then paint what I see through | Oceans. Depression. Anxious feeling in my chest. Train Stations. Hotel complementary breakfast. Eggs over easy, maybe? I’ll pass on the coffee thanks. Seasons are changing, my frame of sight is being hidden. But still modern. Not outdated, yet.
Tell me what was really the purpose of this feat.
Action. Writing down words on a napkin. Eating one meal a day because I feel uncertain. I’ll watch “The Aviator” four times in a row with Leonardo DiCaprio because I can.
Ability. Opportunity. Look outside. For God sakes. Go outside.
More time to cultivate. Harvest these fruits that have been fading out. Spreading out our new way of reasoning.
A metaphorical cutting board. Called judgment. Scathing through your own reviews.
Silence, but it’s heavy. Unread emails, drafts. Cold drafts pouring in from the windowsill of perception.
Our souls are wistful in this epoch. We didn’t ask for blue check marks. Likes. Comments. Retweets. We asked for simple contentment without the applied material. Take away the half eaten Apple in our pockets and we are FREE. INDEPENDENT. CLEAR.
We don’t want to sleep. We want to be worn out. Frayed. Beat to a pulp by this fiction world.
We travel. We go on trips. Just to take pictures. How fiendish are we? How selfish.
I’m perfectly tranquil in this spot of incomprehensible discomfort.
The American Dream is entombed inside a glass box. A Gladstone that won’t pass through PSA Pre-Check.
Think about how rapid our biggest star flees in these winter months. It’s always tomorrow, even today.
Attracted on what’s to come. By choice.
I’d do anything for accuracy. For truth.
Our phones will never die. We will perish with our phones still healthful.
I glance around. I see a lot of things. On the TV, Phone. Computer. With my own eyes.
Wisdom. Bitter Medicine called hypocrite. Dreadful taste. We will wash it down with liquid. Firewater. Do you want another one?
What do I see? Whatever I want. It’s my world. All the people. They have novels too. Right?
I’m not in discomfort for the forthcoming. I’m in unheard-of distraction.
I’m intrigued. Captivated. Slightly entertained.
Second hand smoke fills my face. My lungs screaming for advice, it’s subtle but long-lasting. This all has to come to an end. Humanity is on sale right now. Half off. Shallow graves. Crooked family photos hanging in your dining room. Airplane coffee is dire. What comes from my Easel?
Frame with a white canvas. Painting the color Red. Night sweats. Street lights. Dead ends. Thunder storms. License plates in the back car window. Cracked phone screens. Leftovers. Empty bank accounts. Dryer sheets. Snow storms. Sunburn. Hangovers. Restaurant pagers. It’ll be a forty-five minute wait. Controlled. Avocado toast. Los Angeles. Angels without Angles. Instagram Models. Is that Gluten-free? Dead batteries. Low Tire Pressure. Dogs on three foot chains. Self-Checkout. UPS orders at Christmas time arriving the twenty-sixth.
That’s what we are negotiating with. Goodwill Cashmere. Five Dollars for that? A plunder.
What I see through, is nothing more than a daydream. Illusion. That’s why I paint my stand before hand.
Grow. Water yourself. Paint a sunset. YOUR SUNSET. Not the one on Instagram. Fine by me. My night panics are gasping for something. Eager for warmth.
We don’t really know enough to cry, so we sob anyway. To quench our thirst.
Why is that?
Because I, WE are manifesting. Blooming gorgeous.
Just because our grass hills are burnt, doesn’t mean nothing can flourish.
Did I say I was in solitary?
We get drained. Stale. Burned out over what we identify. This is not what I wanted.
I was BEGGING to GRASP VERISIMILITUDE.
Now I go and request my accolade of luscious unstable…..growth. Forgiveness to my ravine called guilt.
Into the crest of forgiveness I reside.
I still want EXTRA. Additional information on why our time is just a DREAM that has Dashed into the woods. To be killed.
I’m still in languish. I’ll wipe the shadows. The waves from my mind still complete.
I’ll soar back into TRUISM. As I should. | https://medium.com/@dimwind/i-make-up-the-easel-first-then-paint-what-i-see-through-ef191a6246b9 | ['Dimitri W'] | 2019-11-27 15:45:23.451000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Fiction', 'Philosophy', 'Awakening', 'Vision'] |
How to Start Having 1-on-1s Out of Nowhere | How to Start Having 1-on-1s Out of Nowhere
It’s never too late to start connecting with your team
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.
A senior manager and peer of mine (from another organization) wanted to know how to start having one-on-one meetings with his direct reports despite having never had them before.
His team wasn’t that big and his direct reports were managers. Even though they had been on his team for years, he had not had a single one-on-one with any of them.
Their communication was limited to meetings for projects, emails, technical documents, and so forth, as well as asking for updates on Slack. The only time performance or careers were discussed was in December for the company’s year-end reviews.
This senior manager genuinely wanted to change this and had wanted to for a while.
But how do you start having candid and frequent performance and coaching sessions when you have neglected them for so long? Will that make you seem weak or indecisive as a leader?
The good news is that it is not too late to start. If anything, you will look even stronger depending on how you position yourself. Here are the key ways to break that ice even if it is years overdue. | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-start-having-1-on-1s-out-of-nowhere-857594ee29e6 | ['William Anderson'] | 2020-07-31 14:18:08.157000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Leadership', 'Mentorship', 'Work', 'Programming'] |
Keeping Your Startup Team Motivated | Keeping Your Startup Team Motivated
Strategies for Startup Founders from the Dreamit Community
One of the most important roles for a founder is keeping employees engaged. Study after study shows that engaged workforces outperform their competition. But every company is different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to optimize for engagement. As a founder, you’ll have to craft a bespoke approach, but here are some methods that have proved to work for our portfolio companies AND for other startups.
#1 — Communicate Your Mission from the Get-Go
From the first moment you interact with a potential employee, you should be communicating your mission. “Culture starts in hiring,” states Kofi Kankam, founder of college admissions startup Admit.me. Kankam uses his own personal story in the hiring process and has built a team for his startup with people who appreciate the value of college. Many of his hires are first generation college students and some are first generation Americans. “We speak a lot about how we are changing people’s lives. We help people get into school and to change their life trajectory.” To show the tangible results of their mission, Kankam prints out pictures of the students they work with and hangs them in their office. You can also do things like showing your employees emails from the people who you help or have your customers come in to office.
“Your mission gives you a framework for making decisions.” — Kofi Kankam
This type of mission gives meaning to work which in turn gives employees a sense of ownership in the company. Many founders mistakenly believe that crafting a strong mission statement is enough, but the mission statement is just the first step of communicating your mission. You should constantly be reminding employees of the massive transformative purpose (MTP) of your startup, or the big problem or issue you are solving that will have a positive impact on society. This sense of purpose is apparent even to outsiders among the most successful organizations (think about the SpaceX, TED, Tesla). To figure out the MTP for your own startup, you have to ask 1.) Who is your startup impacting? 2.) What problem are you trying to solve?
For Simon Lorenz of healthcare messaging startup Klara, this MTP means building the central communication system for healthcare. Simon writes at the end of every offer letter that he knows the person might be able to earn a higher salary at another company, but he describes the impact of the problem that the company is solving for patients to convince them to join his team. “This is fundamental for any startup,” states Lorenz. He also emphasizes the need to remind employees about the mission all the time. “If you don’t talk about it constantly, then it’s not there,” said Lorenz.
#2 — Emphasize Teamwork
When employees feel like they are part of a team, they feel like they are doing something greater than themselves. This feeling will not only power them through rough patches during the day but will give employees endurance to get through rough patches that startups inevitably face in their early years.
Startup founders have begun to change the way employees are compensated to incentivize for collective rather than individual outcomes. (If you want to see an example of the opposite tactic, i.e. what not to do, see what happened at Sears when the company created a hyper competitive individualized incentive program.)
To increase teamwork, you first need to build trust. Group activities are one way to build trust. Increased transparency about what everyone is doing is another way. If you’re startup employees less than 15 people, you should be so tight-knit and aware of what your coworkers are doing that you’d be able to pick up the slack if something happened to any one of them. One startup coined the term “bus factor” to describe the importance of team members being able to quickly pick up slack if one employee leaves unexpectedly (or, as the name suggests, gets hit by a bus).
“When the members of a startup team are a closely knit group with shared ambitions, they have an innate respect for each other and are not keen on letting each other down. This helps in increasing the accountability of everyone’s work because peer pressure factors into the equation and motivates everyone to work harder for the team’s success. Even on days you don’t feel particularly driven to work, your concern for the team overpowers the lack of motivation and you focus on doing your work industriously.”
See our recent story on creating community within your startup for further examples on team building.
#3 — Offer Sufficient and Transparent Compensation
Compensation is inseparable from recruiting and thus in indispensable motivating factor for team members. In an early stage startup, founders might spend as much as 40–50% of their time searching and convincing the right people to join the team. Inadequate compensation can be a major demotivating factor, but a lack of transparency around compensation can be even worse. You should have conversations once or twice a year around the topic of compensation.
“There is nothing wrong with commission-based compensation, but if you’re only getting started, sales may be slow for a while. Make sure that you are filling in the gaps; otherwise, your team members may leave to pursue better (read: higher paying) opportunities with more established companies. Provide a sign-on bonus for the first 30 days, for example, or offer a weekly base salary to everyone who meets certain goals for their sales attempts.”
See this Guide to Compensation at startups for more information on creating a fair, transparent system.
#4 — Meet with Your Team Often
If your startup team feels as if they’ve been tossed out into the ocean to sink or swim, they’ll quickly lose the motivation they need to help you build your company. For this reason, it’s important that you meet with them often — perhaps even daily at first — to discuss some of the challenges the startup faces. When you actively reassure and motivate people, and when you address their concerns legitimately, they’ll keep fighting for your success.
When you are meeting with your team, don’t be late for meetings and don’t reschedule. It implies to employees that you don’t care that much about them.
When you’re meeting with your startup team, make sure that you’re keeping them in the loop about the current state of affairs and the future of your company. If you’re doing very well, share that with them. If things have started to take a bit of a nosedive, share that with them, as well. The goal is to show them the impact that they’re having on the company and give them a chance to have a say in things that are happening.
If you do choose to share problems with your team (which you should do), wait until you have a roadmap to work through those problems.
#5 — Be Transparent and Show Empathy
As you scale, you have to be more transparent. If you can’t make payroll, you do NOT want employees to figure this out on their own. If your employee knows when you are being challenged, they may feel some uncertainty, but in the good times it will feel a lot better. If they are aware of your problems, they might come up with solutions that you did not think of before.
If you are on the road or apart from your team, you should consider using video to communicate with the team regularly. Email is not always personal.
When you speak with them, you must show empathy. In the height of the financial crisis, Dreamit CEO Avi Savar still worked as founder and CEO of Big Fuel. At the height of the crisis, the company experienced a cash crunch. “We had contingency plan upon contingency plan. Finally, we told the entire staff we did not want to let anyone go but we knew we had to make some cuts.” Instead of hiding the cash crunch, he proposed a 20% pay cut across all employees to get through the trying time, rather than laying off employees. He and his cofounder took a $1 a year salary. The team sacrificed collectively and did not complain, and his employees showed up in his office later and thanked him.
#6 — Give Feedback (Positive and Negative)
There is no one tool that will solve the problem of feedback. You have to figure out your own methodology. One important thing is meeting with everyone one on one and making sure you are asking them a few questions on a regular basis. Your intent as a manager should be to take away the obstacles in front of them.
When giving feedback remember to discuss things that are fact-based, talk about how it had an effect on others, and give a recommendation on how they can improve that behavior going forward. Then offer your assistance going forward.
The praise is public, the critique is private. — Kofi Kankam
Further Reading:
On Emphasizing Teamwork
Energizing Your Coworkers
Importance of Mission
Full Dreamit Podcast on Motivating Your Startup Team
Giving Good Feedback at Startups in Forbes | https://medium.com/dreamit-perspectives/keeping-your-startup-team-motivated-413d3dec6e59 | ['Charles Lacalle'] | 2016-12-15 21:37:58.840000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Startup'] |
Q Acoustics Q Active 200 review: This high-end powered bookshelf audio system delivers impeccable performance | Q Acoustics Q Active 200 review: This high-end powered bookshelf audio system delivers impeccable performance Theresa Jan 27·8 min read
Q Acoustics builds mighty-fine loudspeakers, and for its first self-powered offering, the company could have modified any of its existing designs by bolting on an amplifier and calling it a day. What it has wrought instead is a complete high-end audio system that can accommodate nearly any source: analog or digital, wired or wireless, streaming or locally sourced; one that can be incorporated into any of the most common home-audio and smart-home ecosystems.
The Q Active 200 system consists of a pair of self-amplified, wireless two-way bookshelf speakers and the Q Active Control Hub (the company will soon offer the same technology in a tower speaker system, the Q Active 400). The broad range of audio sources the Hub can handle range from a server on your network, to most of the popular streaming services, to a turntable equipped with a moving-magnet cartridge. It can then send that music both to its own speakers and to other audio systems on your network, using Apple AirPlay 2 or Google Chromecast.
[ Further reading: The best surge protectors for your costly electronics ]The company will soon offer a Works with Alexa variant of the Hub that will enable the speakers to be incorporated into Amazon’s smart home and multi-room audio ecosystem as well. The company tells me it might eventually produce a Hub that supports both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa in one box. As it stands, you can swap Hubs and keep the same speakers if you ever switch smart home ecosystems. The Hub by itself sells for $400.
This is an in-depth review. If you care more about performance than a deep dive into specs and what makes the system tick, just click here to go to the review’s performance section.
Bluetooth is just one arrow in the Q Active 200’s quiver, but it is nonetheless part of TechHive’s coverage of the best Bluetooth speakers, where you’ll find reviews of the competition’s offerings, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product. Michael Brown / IDG There are touch-sensitive buttons on the front of the Q Active Control Hub, but most people will hide this component in a cabinet and not think about it once the system is set up.
The Q Active Control HubThe Hub has an onboard Wi-Fi 5 network adapter, plus an ethernet port if you have the infrastructure to take advantage of a wired network connection. Audio inputs include HDMI with ARC, a Toslink optical digital audio, and analog stereo RCA. Connect a turntable equipped with a moving-magnet cartridge to these last inputs and you can flip a toggle switch to activate an onboard phono preamp. You can also connect your turntable to the Hub’s grounding terminal to prevent ground-loop-induced hum.
The only music source not supported is a USB storage device. The speakers deliver plenty of low-end oomph (I’ll get into their specs and performance later), but the Hub has a subwoofer output if that aspect of the system just doesn’t scratch your itch.
While the HDMI port supports ARC (Audio Return Channel), this is strictly a stereo audio system; the Hub won’t decode Dolby Digital or any other soundtrack formats. That said, the speakers’ incredibly wide sweet spot tends to present dialog as centered in the sound stage. HDMI CEC support means you can use your TV remote to control the volume when you’re watching the TV. The Toslink input auto-senses incoming audio and will power the system on as soon as a signal is detected.
Michael Brown / IDG The Q Active Control Hub can handle just about any audio source, digital or analog, including a turntable.
In addition to wired inputs, the Hub can play music via a UPnP server on your local network (e.g., a NAS box), and it supports all the leading streaming-audio services, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Qobuz, Spotify (via Spotify Connect), and Tidal. There’s also a Bluetooth 4.1 radio on board if you want to play music stored on your smartphone. The Hub can accept bitstreams with up to 32-bit resolution and 192kHz sampling rates, although it will downsample them to 24-bit/96kHz before sending the digital audio to the speakers.
The Q Active 200 is Roon Ready, too, so while it doesn’t offer native MQA support, it can perform as a Roon endpoint and play MQA-encoded tracks after they’ve been “unfolded” by a Roon Core (a Roon Nucleus server or a computer or NAS box on your network that’s running ROCK—the Roon Optimized Core Kit). This makes it possible to play MQA-encoded tracks stored on a server or streamed via Tidal’s Tidal Masters service tier.
Incoming digital audio from the HDMI or Toslink ports is run through a sample rate converter, where it is re-sampled to 24-bit/96kHz resolution to eliminate audible aliasing. Incoming analog audio is likewise converted to 24-bit/96KHz digital audio for the same purpose. To minimize jitter artifacts, a low-jitter master clock in the Hub times streamed audio, Bluetooth audio, and re-sampled data coming from the sample rate converter. Post processing, digital audio is streamed to the speakers using a dedicated 5.8GHz link, where a digital signal processor (DSP) outputs PWM (pulse-width modulation) audio to the Class D amplifiers powering each driver. I’ll discuss this aspect in more depth in the speaker section, but the upshot is that the audio signal remains in the digital domain until it’s amplified and sent to the speakers’ drivers.
Michael Brown / IDG The Q Active remote control uses Wi-Fi to communicate with the Hub.
Up to three Q Active systems can be deployed in a single home—each system will use its own discrete wireless channel, so they don’t step on each other—but you can also use Chromecast- or AirPlay 2-compatible components if you need coverage in more than three rooms, or if there are areas in your home where you don’t need such high-resolution audio. Bear in mind that when streaming to other components, you’re subject to the limitations of the components receiving the stream. Chromecast can support bit streams up to 24-bit/96kHz resolution, for instance, but AirPlay 2 is limited to 16-bit/48kHz resolution. Both technologies support lossless audio formats, including FLAC for Chromecast; AirPlay 2 uses the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC).
Touch-sensitive buttons on the front of the Hub let you control most aspects of the system, apart from volume control, but Q Acoustics provides a wireless remote control so you can hide the Hub in a cabinet. The 5.5 x 1.5 x 3/8-inch (HxWxD) remote has raised but non-backlit buttons for system power, mute and volume up/down, play/pause, track forward/back, and source selection. It communicates with the Hub using 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, so there is no line-of-sight requirement.
Michael Brown / IDG Touch-sensitive controls on each speaker allow you to adjust the volume and select the audio source (the buttons on either speaker control both).
The speakers themselves also have touch-sensitive buttons for volume control and source selection. Alternatively, you can control the system using Google Assistant or Apple Siri voice commands (once the system has been added to your Apple Home app). The coming Works with Alexa version of the Hub will, of course, support Alexa voice commands. All of this obviates the need for a dedicated Q Active app on your phone.
Q Active 200 speaker designThe Q Active 200 speakers are wireless, self-powered, two-way bookshelf models. The only cables you’ll connect to them are power cords—there are no wires connecting the speakers to the Hub, and there are no wires connecting the left and right speakers to each other. In fact, there is no left or right speaker until you designate them as such by setting a toggle switch on the back of each speaker’s cabinet. Having the front drivers in each speaker asymmetrically mounted looks odd, but the design yields two important benefits: It enables the speaker baffles to be reinforced at the strongest points of the speaker cabinets—the tops and sides—and it gives the listener the ability to adjust the speakers’ sweet spot depending on where they’re sitting.
Michael Brown / IDG A three-way toggle switch lets you inform the speakers’ DSP where the speaker will be located in your room: Close to a wall, close to a corner, or in free space.
In a near-field listening environment—using the speakers with a computer, for example—you’ll get the best performance with the drivers on the outside edge. If you’re in a more conventional listening environment—such as sitting on a couch across the room—you’ll want the drivers on the inside edge. A second toggle switch on each speaker instructs its internal DSP to change the speaker’s voicing to compensate for speaker placement. The speakers are a ported design, so it’s best to allow some space between the speaker and the wall. If that’s not possible, or if you hang the speakers on the wall, you can set a three-way toggle to indicate if the speaker is close to a wall or close to a corner. The third choice is having the speaker in free space. Q Acoustics also provides foam bungs for the speaker’s ports if you still find the bass too boomy for your taste.
If you intend to hang the speakers, you’ll want beefy hardware: Each cabinet measures 11.2 x 6.7 x 11.4 inches (HxWxD) and weighs 16.5 pounds. Q Acoustics provided its trippy-looking, 3-foot-high Q FS75 stands ($499) for this review. They’re inspired by the Tensegrity speaker stands the company designed for its Concept 300 speakers, which we reviewed in the spring of 2019. The stands are designed to minimize unwanted reflections, and they come with spiked feet to reduce the surface area of the stand that contacts your floor, reducing unwanted vibration (rubber tips are provided so the spikes don’t damage hard-surfaced floors). Q Acoustics even provides cable-routing clips that keep the power cords strapped to one of the stands’ legs, so they don’t dangle.
Michael Brown / IDG Cable clips for the Q Acoustics’ Q FS75 speaker stands ensure the power cords don’t dangle and spoil the design aesthetic. .
Q Acoustics mounts a pair of 2.25-inch, full-range, Balanced-Mode Radiator (BMR) drivers in the front of each Q Active 200 speaker, behind a non-removable grille designed to prevent damage from curious children’s fingers. BMRs are valued for their ability to deliver a wide soundstage; plus, the ones in the Q Active 200 operate down to 150Hz, where crossover to the onboard subwoofer occurs. Sound at and below that frequency is non-directional, which enabled Q Acoustics to mount the 4.5-inch, high-excursion subwoofer in the rear of the enclosure, where it fires into a waveguide that directs airflow to the vents on the sides of the cabinet. Time-delay circuitry digitally delays audio signals from reaching the BMRs to keep sound from the front-mounted drivers and the rear-mounted subwoofer precisely time aligned.
Each of the two BMRs and the subwoofer are powered by its own Class D amplifier. Q Acoustics says the system puts out 100 watts of continuous power and 280 watts of peak power. The system’s frequency response range is 46Hz to 20kHz (-6db).
Michael Brown / IDG A pair of 2.25-inch, full-range, Balanced-Mode Radiators are stacked in the front of the speaker.
Click to read more about the Q Active 200's speaker performance | https://medium.com/@theresa73619114/q-acoustics-q-active-200-review-this-high-end-powered-bookshelf-audio-system-delivers-impeccable-9f6fd0ae41ed | [] | 2021-01-27 11:01:20.549000+00:00 | ['Electronics', 'Chargers', 'Chromecast', 'Security Cameras'] |
Dealing with a person high on marijuana | It’s quite likely that you may have to help someone high on marijuana at some point in your life, as marijuana dependence or addiction is actually quite common.
Remember that over a hundred thousand people are treated for marijuana addiction annually in the United States alone, and that, at least seven percent of all those who try marijuana will end up being addicted to it.
Don’t interfere while the person is high
If someone is high on marijuana, there is no need to interfere unless the intoxication seems to be an overdose, or a combination of several drugs, that is to say, unless it seems life threatening or dangerous in some way.
You can take the intoxicated person to a doctor, as a physician is really the most competent person to assess whether or not an intoxication is life threatening. If it is life threatening, which can easily occur if there is combination of drugs involved, or if there is a combination of drugs or alcohol, then the intoxication will require medical treatment.
If it is simply a normal marijuana intoxication, then time is really the best way of treating it, as the high will subside in a little while.
There is little point in trying to treat an addict for a marijuana addiction while they are intoxicated
This is because the mind is not rational at this time. Generally speaking, medical treatment is only necessary in cases where serious and chronic use of marijuana has led to delirium induced by the marijuana, or serious psychotic disorders that have been induced by marijuana use.
These things can occur, and are indeed, quite common.
For example, chronic depression is often induced by marijuana use, because marijuana use uses up neurotransmitters in the brain, and depression is a natural result of this.
Similarly, treatment for marijuana may become imperative if marijuana use is inducing intense anxiety when the patient is not high. But, other than this, there is little reason for medical intervention in quitting marijuana.
A good support circle
The most important thing that a marijuana user needs is an extremely supportive circle of family and friends.
A user’s family and friends can encourage him or her, not only to quit weed, but by making it clear that they value his or her capabilities, personalities and talents. With such support the marijuana user will find withdrawal a easy and relatively painless process.
Support groups can also help, but not everyone may be comfortable with the belief systems that are sometimes part of these groups. Nevertheless, many people have had positive experiences in quitting marijuana and other addictions through narcotics anonymous.
Relapses can occur
Remember that marijuana users tend to occasionally relapse even after withdrawal. One must not be critical when this happens, as it is a natural part of the withdrawal process, but instead, should be extremely supportive of the marijuana user.
If a marijuana user relapses and happens to use the drug shortly after withdrawing, you must show a lot of understanding, and talk of the relapse as part of a learning process rather than as a sign of failure.
Try to get the marijuana user to see it in this light, and as a result, you might find that they come away from this experience stronger rather than weaker.
signs of weed addiction: https://bit.ly/3gjjZYZ
***************************************************************
This article contains affiliate links, I will make a commission when anybody buys from it. | https://medium.com/@iamsaikarthik/dealing-with-a-person-high-on-marijuana-bd92cedaf21a | ['Blogging Entrepreneur'] | 2021-06-16 06:12:30.375000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Smoking', 'Deal', 'Marijuana', 'Weed'] |
Elemental Desires | Fire, walk with me;
Swallow me whole and incinerate me
Scoop up my smoldering ashes and breathe —
Air, dance with me;
With your lips, your tongue, you entangle me
I cling to your sweaty skin and weep —
Water, drink with me;
Flood my rivers. My gushing wells
confluence with your sediments, to find shore —
Earth, lay with me;
Assemble gently my burning bones
Hold me like a broken bird in your hands — | https://medium.com/essensually-ena/elemental-desires-81846cbf4964 | ['Ena Dahl'] | 2019-11-27 17:54:30.546000+00:00 | ['Elemental', 'Alchemy', 'Sex', 'Sacred', 'Poetry'] |
9 DAYS TO CHRISTMAS — 9 WAYS YOU AND YOUR ORGANISATION ARE THE REAL MVPs | 2020 has been labeled as an over-hyped year which came to disappoint all of us. COVID-19 hit Nigeria and there was a lockdown. It seemed like they were coming one after the other; hype in fuel pump price followed. Then the #EndSARS protest came to shake even the whole world. Every food item became very expensive, endless insecurity issues, and it was like we were going to get burnt up in the heat of all these. Despite the hurdles, all year round, social organisations have made people smile. Whooowh! This is a social-sector stan article.
This is why we think you and your organisation are the real MVPs:
External funding was so low this year and yet you guys were still able to break ceilings and achieve results. If that is not impressive, we don’t know what it is. Powerful organisations. You killed it!
2. It would have been impossible to get the level of COVID-19 awareness we had in Nigeria without you all. Even non-healthcare based organizations joined in the awareness. You all showed one more time that it is about the good of the community, over role playing. One for all and all for one!
3. The #EndSARS protests shook the whole world but you stood strong, advocating for the people and contributing your own quota to making Nigeria great again.
4. Then your fund-raising game was strong! You guys literally drew funds from nowhere to make things happen! You’re the Don when it comes to crushing fundraising goals.
5. The way you social organisations and groups took advantage of tech in the lockdown! You set the pace for others to follow in conducting webinars and every virtual event. This is the finest example in history of taking advantage of stormy situations. Indeed, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
6. It’s almost the end of the year and you guys did magic by finishing up the bulk of your objectives and activities for the year — up and running for 365 days; no leave, no transfer.
7. Your service to humanity is invaluable. The smile on people’s faces in a harsh world is priceless. You guys make it happen. You give without expecting anything in return. You wipe tears away. You provide for people. You meet needs! You’re the real superheroes.
8. You do a lot more than people praise you for. You don’t want the credits. You just do things because you want to. The selflessness is top-notch. You have sharp eyes for details and notice problems even before they arise.
9. The many adjustments you have had to make this year with much change of laws and policies. For example, new tax rates in recent times, you might have been a bit shaken but we move! | https://medium.com/@heyimpacty/9-days-to-christmas-9-ways-you-and-your-organisation-are-the-real-mvps-5f1fe7019d68 | [] | 2020-12-17 18:55:17.416000+00:00 | ['MVP', 'Nigeria', 'Christmas', 'Impact', 'Heroes'] |
METS ACQUIRE FOUR-TIME ALL-STAR FRANCISCO LINDOR & RHP CARLOS CARRASCO FROM CLEVELAND | FLUSHING, N.Y., January 7, 2021 — The New York Mets today announced that they have acquired four-time All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor and RHP Carlos Carrasco from Cleveland in exchange for infielder Amed Rosario, infielder Andrés Giménez, minor league RHP Josh Wolf and minor league outfielder Isaiah Greene.
Lindor, 27, is a four-time All-Star (2016–2019), a two-time Gold Glove Award winner (2016, 2019), including the American League Platinum Glove for the best overall defender in 2016 and a two-time Silver Slugger (2017, 2018).
The 5–11, 190-pounder ranks third in the majors with 258 extra-base hits since 2017. He ranks third in runs scored (359), fifth in hits (592), tied for 12th in homers (111) and 17th in stolen bases (68) during that span.
Lindor finished in the top 15 in the American League Most Valuable Player voting each year from 2016–2019. Since 2016, Lindor has a 47.6 UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) according to FanGraphs, which is the third-highest rating among all players behind Mookie Betts and Andrelton Simmons.
Lindor has slashed .285/.346/.488 with 191 doubles, 138 homers, 411 RBI and 99 stolen bases in 777 games during his six-year career with Cleveland.
Carrasco, 33, led the American League with 18 wins in 2017. The 6–4, 224-pounder was diagnosed with leukemia in 2019. He returned to the field that same season becoming the AL Comeback Player of the Year. Carrasco also earned the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award in 2019 for his philanthropic efforts.
He was seventh in the AL with a 2.91 ERA over 12 starts in 2020 and was sixth with 82 strikeouts in 68.0 innings of work. Carrasco has also finished in the top 10 in ERA in 2017 (sixth — 3.29) and 2018 (eighth — 3.38) and in the top 10 in strikeouts in 2015 (fifth — 216), 2017 (fifth — 226) and 2018 (fourth — 231).
Since 2015, Carrasco is tied for 10th in the majors with 69 wins, 11th in strikeouts (1,001) and 15th in ERA (3.54 — minimum 800 innings).
Carrasco is 88–73 with a 3.77 ERA and 1,305 strikeouts in 242 games, 195 starts during his 11-year major league career with Cleveland.
Rosario, 25, hit .268 with 63 doubles, 32 homers and 148 RBI in 403 games with the Mets from 2017–2020.
Gimenez, 22, batted .263 with three doubles, three homers and 12 RBI in 49 games last year in his first year in the majors.
Wolf, 20, was selected by the Mets in the second-round of the 2019 First-Year Player Draft and Greene, 19, was the 69th overall pick from the 2020 First-Year Player Draft. | https://medium.com/@newyorkmets/mets-acquire-four-time-all-star-francisco-lindor-rhp-carlos-carrasco-from-cleveland-92f9c7381f5b | ['New York Mets'] | 2021-01-07 18:00:41.734000+00:00 | ['Francisco Lindor', 'Mets', 'Baseball', 'New York Mets', 'Carlos Carrasco'] |
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