{ // 获取包含Hugging Face文本的span元素 const spans = link.querySelectorAll('span.whitespace-nowrap, span.hidden.whitespace-nowrap'); spans.forEach(span => { if (span.textContent && span.textContent.trim().match(/Hugging\s*Face/i)) { span.textContent = 'AI快站'; } }); }); // 替换logo图片的alt属性 document.querySelectorAll('img[alt*="Hugging"], img[alt*="Face"]').forEach(img => { if (img.alt.match(/Hugging\s*Face/i)) { img.alt = 'AI快站 logo'; } }); } // 替换导航栏中的链接 function replaceNavigationLinks() { // 已替换标记,防止重复运行 if (window._navLinksReplaced) { return; } // 已经替换过的链接集合,防止重复替换 const replacedLinks = new Set(); // 只在导航栏区域查找和替换链接 const headerArea = document.querySelector('header') || document.querySelector('nav'); if (!headerArea) { return; } // 在导航区域内查找链接 const navLinks = headerArea.querySelectorAll('a'); navLinks.forEach(link => { // 如果已经替换过,跳过 if (replacedLinks.has(link)) return; const linkText = link.textContent.trim(); const linkHref = link.getAttribute('href') || ''; // 替换Spaces链接 - 仅替换一次 if ( (linkHref.includes('/spaces') || linkHref === '/spaces' || linkText === 'Spaces' || linkText.match(/^s*Spacess*$/i)) && linkText !== 'OCR模型免费转Markdown' && linkText !== 'OCR模型免费转Markdown' ) { link.textContent = 'OCR模型免费转Markdown'; link.href = 'https://fast360.xyz'; link.setAttribute('target', '_blank'); link.setAttribute('rel', 'noopener noreferrer'); replacedLinks.add(link); } // 删除Posts链接 else if ( (linkHref.includes('/posts') || linkHref === '/posts' || linkText === 'Posts' || linkText.match(/^s*Postss*$/i)) ) { if (link.parentNode) { link.parentNode.removeChild(link); } replacedLinks.add(link); } // 替换Docs链接 - 仅替换一次 else if ( (linkHref.includes('/docs') || linkHref === '/docs' || linkText === 'Docs' || linkText.match(/^s*Docss*$/i)) && linkText !== '模型下载攻略' ) { link.textContent = '模型下载攻略'; link.href = '/'; replacedLinks.add(link); } // 删除Enterprise链接 else if ( (linkHref.includes('/enterprise') || linkHref === '/enterprise' || linkText === 'Enterprise' || linkText.match(/^s*Enterprises*$/i)) ) { if (link.parentNode) { link.parentNode.removeChild(link); } replacedLinks.add(link); } }); // 查找可能嵌套的Spaces和Posts文本 const textNodes = []; function findTextNodes(element) { if (element.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE) { const text = element.textContent.trim(); if (text === 'Spaces' || text === 'Posts' || text === 'Enterprise') { textNodes.push(element); } } else { for (const child of element.childNodes) { findTextNodes(child); } } } // 只在导航区域内查找文本节点 findTextNodes(headerArea); // 替换找到的文本节点 textNodes.forEach(node => { const text = node.textContent.trim(); if (text === 'Spaces') { node.textContent = node.textContent.replace(/Spaces/g, 'OCR模型免费转Markdown'); } else if (text === 'Posts') { // 删除Posts文本节点 if (node.parentNode) { node.parentNode.removeChild(node); } } else if (text === 'Enterprise') { // 删除Enterprise文本节点 if (node.parentNode) { node.parentNode.removeChild(node); } } }); // 标记已替换完成 window._navLinksReplaced = true; } // 替换代码区域中的域名 function replaceCodeDomains() { // 特别处理span.hljs-string和span.njs-string元素 document.querySelectorAll('span.hljs-string, span.njs-string, span[class*="hljs-string"], span[class*="njs-string"]').forEach(span => { if (span.textContent && span.textContent.includes('huggingface.co')) { span.textContent = span.textContent.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } }); // 替换hljs-string类的span中的域名(移除多余的转义符号) document.querySelectorAll('span.hljs-string, span[class*="hljs-string"]').forEach(span => { if (span.textContent && span.textContent.includes('huggingface.co')) { span.textContent = span.textContent.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } }); // 替换pre和code标签中包含git clone命令的域名 document.querySelectorAll('pre, code').forEach(element => { if (element.textContent && element.textContent.includes('git clone')) { const text = element.innerHTML; if (text.includes('huggingface.co')) { element.innerHTML = text.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } } }); // 处理特定的命令行示例 document.querySelectorAll('pre, code').forEach(element => { const text = element.innerHTML; if (text.includes('huggingface.co')) { // 针对git clone命令的专门处理 if (text.includes('git clone') || text.includes('GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1')) { element.innerHTML = text.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } } }); // 特别处理模型下载页面上的代码片段 document.querySelectorAll('.flex.border-t, .svelte_hydrator, .inline-block').forEach(container => { const content = container.innerHTML; if (content && content.includes('huggingface.co')) { container.innerHTML = content.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } }); // 特别处理模型仓库克隆对话框中的代码片段 try { // 查找包含"Clone this model repository"标题的对话框 const cloneDialog = document.querySelector('.svelte_hydration_boundary, [data-target="MainHeader"]'); if (cloneDialog) { // 查找对话框中所有的代码片段和命令示例 const codeElements = cloneDialog.querySelectorAll('pre, code, span'); codeElements.forEach(element => { if (element.textContent && element.textContent.includes('huggingface.co')) { if (element.innerHTML.includes('huggingface.co')) { element.innerHTML = element.innerHTML.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } else { element.textContent = element.textContent.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } } }); } // 更精确地定位克隆命令中的域名 document.querySelectorAll('[data-target]').forEach(container => { const codeBlocks = container.querySelectorAll('pre, code, span.hljs-string'); codeBlocks.forEach(block => { if (block.textContent && block.textContent.includes('huggingface.co')) { if (block.innerHTML.includes('huggingface.co')) { block.innerHTML = block.innerHTML.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } else { block.textContent = block.textContent.replace(/huggingface.co/g, 'aifasthub.com'); } } }); }); } catch (e) { // 错误处理但不打印日志 } } // 当DOM加载完成后执行替换 if (document.readyState === 'loading') { document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => { replaceHeaderBranding(); replaceNavigationLinks(); replaceCodeDomains(); // 只在必要时执行替换 - 3秒后再次检查 setTimeout(() => { if (!window._navLinksReplaced) { console.log('[Client] 3秒后重新检查导航链接'); replaceNavigationLinks(); } }, 3000); }); } else { replaceHeaderBranding(); replaceNavigationLinks(); replaceCodeDomains(); // 只在必要时执行替换 - 3秒后再次检查 setTimeout(() => { if (!window._navLinksReplaced) { console.log('[Client] 3秒后重新检查导航链接'); replaceNavigationLinks(); } }, 3000); } // 增加一个MutationObserver来处理可能的动态元素加载 const observer = new MutationObserver(mutations => { // 检查是否导航区域有变化 const hasNavChanges = mutations.some(mutation => { // 检查是否存在header或nav元素变化 return Array.from(mutation.addedNodes).some(node => { if (node.nodeType === Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { // 检查是否是导航元素或其子元素 if (node.tagName === 'HEADER' || node.tagName === 'NAV' || node.querySelector('header, nav')) { return true; } // 检查是否在导航元素内部 let parent = node.parentElement; while (parent) { if (parent.tagName === 'HEADER' || parent.tagName === 'NAV') { return true; } parent = parent.parentElement; } } return false; }); }); // 只在导航区域有变化时执行替换 if (hasNavChanges) { // 重置替换状态,允许再次替换 window._navLinksReplaced = false; replaceHeaderBranding(); replaceNavigationLinks(); } }); // 开始观察document.body的变化,包括子节点 if (document.body) { observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true }); } else { document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => { observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true }); }); } })(); \n\nStep7- Starting the Flask Server :\n\nif __name__ == \"__main__\":\n\napp.run(debug=True)\n\napp.run() is called and the web-application is hosted locally on [localhost:5000].\n\n“debug=True” makes sure that we don’t require to run our app every time we makes changes, we can simply refresh our web page to see the changes while the server is still running."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://towardsdatascience.com/video-streaming-in-web-browsers-with-opencv-flask-93a38846fe00"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Nakul Lakhotia']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-01-11 16:21:58.943000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Computer Visio', 'Streaming', 'Opencv', 'Surveillance', 'Flask']"}}},{"rowIdx":186007,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Nigeria: ImaliPay Launches Financial Products For Gig Economy Workers"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Nigerian startup ImaliPay has launched its platform, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to offer tailored financial products that promote the inclusion of gig economy platforms and workers across Africa.\n\nCo-founded early this year by Tatenda Furusa and Sanmi Akinmusire, ImaliPay offers both new and existing gig workers or freelancers the ability to seamlessly save their income and receive in-kind loans through a buy now, pay later model tied to their trade.\n\nAs gig workers save money or repay loans on time, they are able to build a credit history that will in turn unlock more formal financial services in the future.\n\n“Gig workers or freelancers are daily or weekly earners. Due to this volatility, and fragmented earnings or income, they often lack a safety net and lack tailored access to financial services. This means they are underserved or neglected by existing financial institutions. For new gig workers entering the new economy, they struggle to have a “leg up” to get into gig work,” Furusa told Disrupt Africa.\n\nImaliPay helps with this, and launched in partnership with e-hailing startup SafeBoda in Nigeria this year. Since then, Furusa said it has seen 30 per cent month-on-month customer growth, with 96 per cent of its registered riders saving, borrowing, or both.\n\n“This includes saving daily and weekly, and accessing product financing for phones, bike parts and fuel from our platform, which significantly improves productivity and earns more income over time,” he said.\n\nExpansion is an immediate goal. ImaliPay will soon launch in Kenya in partnership with services platform Lynk, and by the end of the year will also be active in South Africa, working with another large freelancer platform. It also plans to launch in Uganda and Ghana in the first quarter of 2021.\n\nImaliPay, which makes money through service charges, low interest rates and withdrawal fees, was briefly concerned by the effect of COVID-19 on certain parts of the gig economy.\n\n“However, ride-hailing and on-demand mobility have proved to be essential services for delivery of crucial consumer goods and commodities to households across Africa. Furthermore, the future of work post-COVID will involve significant remote work including outsourced jobs to online white collar freelancers,” said Furusa.\n\nSource: Disrupt Africa"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@digitaltimes-2020/nigeria-imalipay-launches-financial-products-for-gig-economy-workers-4e48091cc9dc"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Digital Times Africa']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-10-07 16:33:45.236000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Nigeria', 'Technology News', 'Technology', 'Fintech', 'Africa']"}}},{"rowIdx":186008,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Breaking the Rules: How FanVestor is Changing the Game in Fan Investing and Commerce"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"In my last post, I discussed innovations and disruptions in business and introduced you to FanVestor, the first of its kind all-in data-driven ecosystem that is revolutionizing investment through fan investing and fan-commerce with regard to entertainment and sports. FanVestor’s mission is to democratize investing so everyone, regardless of their bank balance, can become an “owner/investor” in individual celebrities and teams about which they feel passionate. What follows is an in-depth look at how FanVestor compares with other types of investing such as traditional capital markets and how it is innovating the crowdfunding industry.\n\nHistorically, investing has been a privilege reserved for high net worth and high-earning individuals and institutions. For the most part, this investing is also focused solely on investors’ financial goals, with no consideration of their other possible motives for investing. In recent years that has begun to change, as the uptick in investment in mission-driven companies has demonstrated that consumers have a desire to invest in enterprises that are aligned with their own values and interests. Unlike profit-driven companies that later add a philanthropic foundation as an afterthought, entrepreneurs are now building businesses that are conceived around a mission to do good in the world, and investors, particularly millennials, are investing with their conscience. But even with this socially responsible view of business, the investment paradigm continues to ignore millions of potential investors, who don’t fit the criteria for the concept of investing in the traditional capital markets. Even if these consumers have the means to do so, they may not be knowledgeable about investing in the stock market and perhaps even have a fear or distrust this arena. Some of these consumers have only been exposed to the 401K or IRA retirement investment plans and think of anything else as too risky. Whatever the case, for companies such as FanVestor there is a tremendous opportunities to democratize investing and innovate on both crowdfunding and entertainment and sports finance.\n\nThe increased popularity of crowdfunding in recent years is due to both consumer and business interests. There are several benefits to these platforms: for one, startups can raise money more quickly without having to pay upfront fees. Crowdfunding is also beneficial for entrepreneurs, who have had trouble securing funding through venture capitalists or from lending institutions. There are other benefits to crowdfunding as well — the online “pitch” of a company or project is a very effective marketing tool. Ideas that are not attractive to mainstream investors might gain traction in the crowdfunding space, especially when it comes to FanVestor’s model of celebrity-driven campaigns with the fan-sourced financing concept. In fact, if an issuer comes up with the right idea at the right time it can go viral, leading to overnight success as we have seen already with several Reg CF and Reg A+ offerings. All these securities offerings such as FanVestor’s are done under the SEC/FINRA strict guidance and oversight as well as managed by FINRA-certified Broker Dealers or Reg CF Official Portals. Investors can observe the funding process, which can generate further excitement and inspire them to spread the word within their social networks and communities. And finally, because these investors were excited enough to invest, they may also become your best customers that in which they are investing.\n\nWhile both traditional investing and crowdfunding models have their benefits, neither addresses the unique fundraising and investment opportunities in the sports and entertainment realms. Under the traditional investment model, control of investment opportunities today rest in the hands of media companies and sports teams. Moreover, investing in celebrities and entertainment has always been reserved for wealthy individuals and institutions, with no room for the average fan or follower. As with other forms of traditional investing, emotional investments are not even a consideration; it is often all about the monetary return.\n\nThe truth is, when emotions are at play, these campaigns can generate results with much lower cost of capital and higher valuations for the issuers than through the traditional capital markets. Why? Fans who invest in their idols do not typically think in terms of “What is my return on capital?”; “What are my minimum required multiples of revenue or EBITDA?” or “When do I need to re-balance my portfolio?” Their main motivator is to be a member of a community or a club associated with that celebrity. It is upon this principle that we based the foundation of our FanVestor “Invest with Heart” concept.\n\nThere still other significances between FanVestor and traditional investing models. Cross-border fan participation is barely accessible in traditional capital markets, especially from emerging markets; fans rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to invest in the international entertainment and sports figures they love. At the same time, unregulated fan investing has led to fraud, lack of accountability, and unimpressive financial incentives; there is also little to no engagement with those celebrities they invest in. On the other side of things, musicians and athletes who are seeking to raise capital have little to no knowledge of their fans’ financial background or spending habits.\n\nClearly, a new model was needed, and we have created that with FanVestor’s, fan investing and fan commerce platform for elite talent, musicians, and athletes as well as entertainment, sport and e-sport organizations — the only such platform in existence today with the highest level of compliance and online investing sophistication. It is the best of both worlds, combining the egalitarian, forward-thinking aspects of crowdfunding/fan-sourced fundraising with the security of traditional capital market investing. FanVestor allows celebrities to offer a percentage of any aspect of their career to the public. SEC-regulated financial products are FanVestor’s offerings, which means that owners/investors enjoy the same benefits (i.e. investment liquidity) as those who invest with investment banks such as Goldman Sachs or others. FanVestor investors now receive investment liquidity, future dividends and revenue shares when they invest. In addition, owner/investors are eligible for wide range of exclusive experiences and rewards — both digital and physical perks products/experiences not available through traditional investing or crowdfunding, such as priority access to music and sporting events and other experiences that are deeply meaningful to fans.\n\nMoreover, through FanVestor aims to provide ways for the needed liquidity for eco-system participants once the offerings are successfully completed.\n\nFanVestor’s platform is “Commercially Viable and Institutionally Credible™” because we work with major banking institutions as well as tax and legal advisors, including banks, accounting firms and law firms such a HSBC, Deloitte and Perkins Coie, respectively. FanVestor’s proprietary technology offers unprecedented security that is fully compliant with the SEC/FINRA investing regulations.\n\nOne of the most exciting aspects of the FanVestor model is its utilization of social media. Our platform is “talent agnostic,” meaning that any established talent, musicians, athletes, and entertainment or sport organizations can interact with, and raise capital from, their direct and indirect followers (through their fan clubs, et cetera) on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and so on. This ability to leverage social media is enhanced by FanVestor’s one-of-a-kind data management platform, which provides celebrities unprecedented access to their fan’s purchasing history and online interests and the ability to use targeted messaging and retarget products to further monetize projects. Fans that become owner/investors enjoy the benefits of FanVestor’s SEC-approved investment offerings, micro-securitization, and innovative unique rewards. FanVestor first and foremost caters to celebrities and their fanbase, using the trusted voice of those celebrities to promote their own projects, thereby increasing our project conversions. This is a vastly different approach from other companies (such as Republic, Start Engine, etc.) in the market, who rely on traditional, sometime very costly, marketing campaigns to promote offerings and products.\n\nThe element that sets FanVestor apart in the world of investing is our proprietary concept of “Invest with Heart™.” We understand the powerful emotional connection fans feel for the sports and entertainment figures they love. While this has always been the case, social media has exponentially strengthened that connection by affording fans a glimpse into their idols’ lives both on and off the stage or playing field, including charities they are passionate about. Recall the trend toward investing in mission-driven companies? More and more, people are putting their wallets where their hears are, and if the sports figure or musician they respect most cares supports a particular cause they will be more likely to as well.\n\nTake the Super Bowl, which is the largest annual sporting event in the U.S. and possibly the world — Super Bowl LIV, for example — had some 100M TV viewers, generating some $435M+ in-game advertising revenue for Fox. On the other hand, consider Portuguese soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo as another example. Ronaldo is not only known as the wealthiest athlete in the world, but the one with the largest social media platform (over 370 million followers across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter — and that’s not counting his fan clubs). Every time he posts about his favorite charities — Save the Children, UNICEF and World Vision — more than 200 million people see it — and those are just his direct followers! The resulting ripple effect, and the incredible potential for doing good in the world, is why Invest with Heart™ is an integral part of the FanVestor philosophy.\n\nHmm, an immediate access to 3.5B global fans through these 77 celebrities. This provides FanVestor an enormous opportunity with the thousands of athletes and celebrities who have strong social media followings!\n\nFanVestor does what Facebook and Instagram are not doing — let fans invest and engage. FanVestor does what eBay or Omaze don’t do — let fans invest and engage.\n\nFanVestor does what Goldman Sachs & Merrill Lynch don’t often do — let the average and/or non-accredited investor invest.\n\nFanVestor — lets fans invest in the careers and businesses of talent, musicians and athletes.\n\n## #\n\nIn my next piece, I look forward to sharing some insights on the exciting multi-year partnership collaboration between FanVestor and iHeartMedia — America’s #1 audio and music network, with our first sweepstakes campaign launch, supported by participating elite artists and sport organizations, initially to raise funds to benefit COVID-19 foundations.\n\nIn the meantime, download the FanVestor app or visit FanVestor to learn more about the exciting road ahead for fan-financed investing."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@michaelgolomb/breaking-the-rules-how-fanvestor-is-changing-the-game-in-fan-investing-and-commerce-6b6599b08623"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Michael Golomb']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-07-21 04:25:52.501000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Sports', 'Music', 'Crowdfunding', 'Esport', 'Finance']"}}},{"rowIdx":186009,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Best Diets and Exercises For the Beginners"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Best Diets and Exercises For the Beginners\n\nKnowing the best diet and exercise for eating a nutritious diet and starting a proper workout is new to most people. Proper discipline can be followed after a good fitness schedule. Editing diet and classification patterns will lead to weight loss with increasing weight problems around the world. A recent study confirms that diet changes, especially modifications to low-fat exercise, lead to more weight loss.\n\nIt is important to remember that abstinence is a habit, which ensures that for the rest of your life, you must monitor what you eat and drink to gain or maintain controlled weight. You just have to be more discriminating with the help you render toward other people.\n\nAbout the best diet and exercises for beginners to choose a diet plan\n\nAt the same time, let’s start with our goal of healthy eating and staying healthy in general. You can first check your body mass index or BMI, which is an indicator of one’s weight and height. Visit the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to help calculate the correct BMI. The second step is to keep a list of what you eat and drink on a regular basis. I concentrate on drinking, so people prefer not to indulge in what they drink. It is important to appreciate that sodas, juices and liquids contain calories in addition to water. This will save about 300 calories or more a day by removing soda from your diet. Approximately 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day is a maximum calorie intake for each individual (we’ll talk about that later), but using some sodas a day is a regular calorie intake. Will have a dramatic effect on the targets. Know that this is a lifestyle change and, let me remind you of it."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@funnyclip800/best-diets-and-exercises-for-the-beginners-fa3ec266fd62"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"[]"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-23 15:02:32.229000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Diet', 'Food', 'Diet Plan', 'Exercise', 'Workout']"}}},{"rowIdx":186010,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"NEXTY PLATFORM EXPLORER MAINTENANCE"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"NEXTY PLATFORM EXPLORER MAINTENANCE\n\nNexty official announcement regarding current queries on https://explorer.nexty.io and/or balance display\n\nDear Nexty community,\n\nThe Nexty team would like to announce that our explorer is currently under maintenance. Therefore, you cannot access to the site https://explorer.nexty.io or some transactions may be unavailable according to some recent reports.\n\nWhen explorer is under the maintenance, you may get problems with displaying NTY in your wallet. However, don’t be panic and please stay calm because your balance does not vanish. When the maintenance finishes and blockchain completes synchronization, and you still find the amount 0, please kindly contact the support team so we can double-check on explorer.nexty.io.\n\nWe will have another announcement on all Nexty Platform SNs when block explorer is ready soon.\n\n(For instant support, please join Nexty Official group at https://t.me/nexty_io)\n\nThank you for your patience and we are really sorry for this inconvenience.\n\nBest regards,\n\nThe Nexty team"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/nextyplatform/nexty-platform-explorer-maintenance-f967e288caae"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Nguyễn Bình Minh']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-07-16 10:07:01.583000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Blockchain', 'Nextyplatform', 'Explorer', 'English']"}}},{"rowIdx":186011,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Why Patriarchy changed our Ancient Mantra (Infographic)"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so. - The Gospel of Thomas\n\nOverview\n\nIn today’s lecture, we will discuss the historical power of the Heroic Journey (HJ), its foundation to Cultural Heritage, and its “Disappearance” from Modern Society.\n\nThere have been many excuses and names, but only one Opponent.\n\nThat Opponent, aptly identified by the BLM (Black Lives Matter) Movement, is Patriarchy.\n\nDon’t see the connection?\n\nLet’s go back in time and start from the beginning.\n\nBackground\n\nFor millions of years, Humanity has evolved its civilizations by Members of Society taking the Heroic Journey.\n\nMillions of Heroines have taken the call to adventure, journeyed to Magical Realms, and returned to their Villages to share their Experiences.\n\nThis is how Cultures and Movements have thrived throughout time, until the advent of Patriarchy.\n\nAround Six Thousand Years Ago, a group of Barbarians decided to start Global Conquests and Conquer the World.\n\nAs a result of their arrogance, the Modern Era has paid a tremendous price:\n\nLoss of the Sacred Feminine\n\nLoss of Respect, Honor, and Divine Allegiance to Women\n\nLoss of the Heroic Journey\n\nLoss of Artistic and Spiritual Evolution\n\nLoss of Cultural and Magical Intelligence\n\nHistorical Power of the Heroic Journey\n\nIn ancient times, cultures and civilizations maintained their integrity, balance, and wisdom through Mythology, Storytelling, Arts, Crafts, and Heroines.\n\nEach Village was “gifted” with identifying these individuals from an early age and then allowing these “Savior Figures” to develop and grow into their “Purpose.”\n\nThe Village never questioned whether the Savior was Female or whether the Savior was of proper age, they ensured the “Savior” was properly nourished until adulthood.\n\nMost of the village’s power came from a simple idiom.\n\nI have not.\n\nAs a Regulatory Concept, the phrase “I have not” provides an individual with phenomenal power, often mistakenly called “MAGICK” in our Modern Era.\n\nThere is NOTHING MAGICAL about Love, Romance, Passion, Inspiration, Motivation, Focus, Determination, Discipline, or Aspiration.\n\nThe Heroic Journey as the Foundation for Culture\n\nAs the Foundation for Culture, the Heroic Journey provides Individuals (Heroines) to self-identify, choose, develop, and evolve through Multiple Heroic Journeys.\n\nIt seems Magical, but it’s not.\n\nIt’s simple.\n\nThe Individual is given a Mantra (I have not) and with this Mantra, the Individual exists in their Ordinary World and when she is inspired by a Person, Event, Place, or Concept (PEPC), her Heroic Journey begins.\n\nShe leaves her Ordinary World, is initiated into a Magical Realm (Altered States), experiences Death, and returns to her Village with a Sacred Treasure.\n\nIts Disappearance from Modern Society\n\nThe Barbarians instituted Patriarchy and changed the Global Mantra.\n\nThink about that concept again.\n\nA Global Mantra, that had worked for millions of years, was changed because of the Barbarians’ Arrogance.\n\nAnd the Modern Era has accepted this foolishness whole-heartedly and has NEVER questioned its psychological abuse on the Modern Person’s Mentality.\n\nThe New Mantra goes like this:\n\nThou Shall Not\n\nAs you can see, this new Mantra allowed the Patriarchy to never experience guilt, problems, stress, or any issues.\n\nHow can you have any problems when you can just blame “Someone Else?”\n\nModern Examples that People Missed\n\nThis is common sense, but so many miss this small issue.\n\nHave you noticed that Evil and Ignorant people don’t have Health Issues?\n\nThis is because of the New Mantra of Patriarchy.\n\nThey BLAME EVERYONE ELSE for any issues, problems, or situations.\n\nLook around you, listen, and turn on the tv.\n\nAll the people responsible for hurting and killing people, when questioned about responsibility, have the same response.\n\nWhy did the Police kill that innocent black man?\n\nHe did it to himself.\n\nWhy did the Police drive over those innocent bystanders?\n\nThey did it to themselves.\n\nPlease, Dear Friend, stop asking the questions because you’re never going to get a straight answer.\n\nThey are using a different Mantra, so they are NEVER going to assume responsibility for ANYTHING.\n\nThis is why they don’t get sick or have health issues.\n\nEvil people don’t have “Heart,” so they are not bogged down by HUMANE emotions (Love, Passion, Guilt, Hurt, Compassion, Empathy, Stress, etc.).\n\nWe have those emotions and that’s why we have health issues and heart problems and high blood pressure.\n\nOn a Final Note, Evil People have no COMPASSION, so they NEVER feel Stress.\n\nThe #1 Killer of People today is STRESS and, guess what, EVIL people don’t feel stress.\n\nWhy?\n\nBecause they ONLY CARE about themselves.\n\nRemember that the next time you try arguing with a Racist or any Ignorant Person.\n\nClimax in Screenwriting\n\nThis example is going to be quick.\n\nWhy in the world would Women not PICKET out in the streets about the Patriarchal Foolishness in Screenwriting?\n\nSearch the web for Screenwriting Terms . . . or pick up an ebook about finishing a screenplay and you will see a Concept.\n\nIt is part of the Industry Jargon now and it’s perfectly acceptable to go into a Pitch Meeting and discuss the “CLIMAX” of your Story.\n\nAre you freaking serious?\n\nOf all names, why is this the name of the Ending?\n\nWe know, from this name, this was written by MEN.\n\nPatriarchal and Highly Elitist Men!\n\nTrust me, I’m not lying and I’m not making this up.\n\nThis is an Acceptable term to use in Hollywood and the Film Community.\n\nAll I can do is shake my head. . . (Beat)\n\nLet’s move on (sigh).\n\nConclusion\n\nAs Content Creators, it is our job to inspire the audience through our Storytelling and rebuild Mythology back into our Local Culture.\n\nA good place to start is incorporating the Heroic Journey into your stories by taking them yourself.\n\nGood Luck!\n\nTerms to Review\n\nPNF — Patriarchal Nuclear Fallout\n\nThe Sacred Feminine\n\nThe Heroic Journey\n\nPEPC — Person, Event, Place, or Concept\n\nAltered States\n\nAdditional Questions"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@miquielbanks/why-patriarchy-changed-our-ancient-mantra-infographic-a3b7b2d53766"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Miquiel Banks']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-01 15:35:35.726000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Screenwriting', 'Patriarchy', 'Infographics', 'History', 'Miquiel Banks']"}}},{"rowIdx":186012,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Every Day for Future: Porsche Impact"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Porsche Impact: Going carbon neutral\n\nAmerican Porsche customers are now able to calculate and offset their vehicles’ greenhouse emissions: Last week was the US launch of Porsche Impact, a carbon-offset program developed by Porsche Digital and Porsche AG.\n\nPorsche Impact is a web-based emissions calculator that allows Porsche owners to assess and compensate their car-related CO2 emissions. Customers who seek to offset their carbon footprint can make financial contributions to environmental projects to help combat the growing threat of global warming. Based on annual mileage, average fuel consumption and type of fuel used, they purchase emission offsets and support a specific climate project.\n\nBut, of course, it is not only our customers‘ responsibility to tackle climate change — as a company, we are committed to protecting the environment. That’s why our colleagues from Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) announced carbon neutrality for their corporate vehicle fleet, too. All cars at the two Experience Centers in Atlanta and Los Angeles as well as the entire Porsche Passport and Porsche Drive fleet are now enrolled in Porsche Impact.\n\nStronger together: Supporting sustainable projects with South Pole\n\nCustomers can choose from a portfolio of four offsetting projects around the world: biodiversity at Lake Kariba (Zimbabwe), forest protection in Alaska (U.S.), hydropower in Quảng Nam (Vietnam) and solar energy in La Paz (Mexico). These internationally certified projects effect change. By supporting these progressive environmental programs, we are able to deliver tangible long-term benefits to global climate stability as well as local ecosystems and communities.\n\nThe Porsche Impact program was launched alongside the new Porsche 992 in November 2018 and has since then been available to customers in Germany, the UK, and Poland. In Germany, our Porsche vehicle fleet including motorsports, are enrolled in Porsche Impact and therefore carbon neutral. The service is managed by South Pole, a Swiss provider of carbon offsetting and sustainability financing that has mobilised climate finance to over 700 projects worldwide.\n\nEnding 2018, Porsche has committed to neutralizing emissions from cars that are already on the road. To date, Porsche and its customers have offset more than 18,000 tonnes of carbon with Porsche Impact.\n\nPorsche Impact: Going carbon neutral\n\nTowards a Low-Carbon Future\n\nPorsche is cutting CO2 emissions on a major scale across its business, aiding the shift to a low-carbon future. In fact, sustainability is an essential part of Porsche’s corporate strategy and part of our vision for the future. Our goal is to have as little climate impact as possible. Therefore, we are continually looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions and improve efficiency. This strategy includes plans to hybridize and electrify our vehicle fleet. This year, the Taycan, our first fully electric sports car, will roll off the production line. We also introduced the S-Rating, sustainability criteria for our more than 7,600 suppliers.\n\nWe are very aware that this is only part of the solution and there’s still a long way to go. But we’re committed to tackling this challenge. To having a positive impact — together with our customers, partners and suppliers."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/next-level-german-engineering/every-day-for-future-porsche-impact-a4b9cef9e23f"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Porsche Digital']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-06-18 06:57:07.153000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Web App Development', 'Innovation', 'Sustainability', 'Climate Change', 'Co2 Emissions']"}}},{"rowIdx":186013,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Own a Piece of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"SAN DIEGO — To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science Inc., a company with technology innovations that offer capability advancements for government and commercial applications, announced Monday that its Form 1-A filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission has been qualified and investors may now learn more about the company and how to subscribe to the offering at https://invest.tothestarsacademy.com. The company is offering up to 6,000,000 shares of Class A Common Stock at $5.00 per share.\n\nDigital Offering LLC (“Digital Offering”) will act as the lead managing selling agent for the offering, which will be sold on a best-efforts basis. The company will also be using Cambria Capital’s online division, BANQ® (www.banq.co), for processing investment transactions. Investors will be able to subscribe online directly at www.banq.co.\n\nTom DeLonge (photo credit: Andrew Cagle)\n\nTTSA was founded by Blink-182 creator, multi-platinum entertainer and entrepreneur Tom DeLonge alongside Jim Semivan and Dr. Hal Puthoff, distinguished members of the scientific and intelligence community. The company’s technology innovations have been acquired, designed or produced by TTSA, leveraging advancements in material science and quantum physics that offer capability advancements for government and commercial applications. TTSA brings together leaders with experience from the Department of Defense, the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency and Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works.\n\nTTSA is actively consulting and providing services focused on enhancing or integrating a client’s technology with some of the company’s unique technology solutions. The company is currently collaborating with the U.S. Army, through a Cooperative Research & Development Agreement with the Combat Capabilities Development Command, the U.S. Army’s lead technology developer. TTSA has also created a virtual intelligence tool for collecting, analyzing and reporting unidentified aerial phenomena. In addition to technology, the company also houses through its wholly-owned subsidiary, To The Stars, Inc. It’s a catalog of copyrights, trademarks and award-winning content that focuses on the education, awareness and discussion of scientific phenomena and next-generation technology.\n\nIt is part of TTSA’s mission to shed light, de-stigmatize and legitimize the noteworthy problem surrounding UAP through the collection and distribution of highly credible evidence that can be researched by academic and scientific communities. The company was able to achieve part of this goal through the now-famous three military videos that the company released alongside the New York Times in 2017, which have been to date viewed more than 24 million times on YouTube. These videos were later confirmed as UAP videos by the Pentagon and the U.S. Navy acknowledged a new organized effort to standardize UAP reporting guidelines so personnel can report anomalous aerial encounters.\n\n“Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” (History.com)\n\nTTSA team’s research also reached an average of one million people per episode during its premiere season of HISTORY’s groundbreaking series, “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation,” which officially returned for season two on Saturday, July 11, at 10 p.m. EST. In response to a call-to-action shared at the end of each episode last season, thousands of emails were sent in by viewers and military witnesses with personal accounts of UAP sightings. In season two, each episode will center around a specific case or aspect of the modern UAP problem.\n\n“We are extremely grateful for the support we have received from our shareholders and the success of our efforts so far,” DeLonge said. “Our investors have allowed us to steadily advance our goals in all divisions including the acquisition of assets for our ADAM Research Program, development of the first AI-powered VAULT database for advanced technology discovery, the SCOUT global collection application, and aiding the expansion of our entertainment division’s intellectual property portfolio and product offerings. With their continued support, we are excited to renew our Regulation A Offering and hope you join us as we work hard to accomplish our mission and create long-lasting shareholder value.”\n\n“The vision of TTSA to commercialize the science and entertainment assets of the UAP community and to allow those members to be a part of the company alongside Tom DeLonge and the entire TTSA team is exactly what Reg. A was designed for,” said Mark Elenowitz, Managing Director of Digital Offering, LLC.\n\nTo learn more about the company and how to subscribe to the offering, visit https://invest.tothestarsacademy.com."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/keep-fighting/own-a-piece-of-to-the-stars-academy-of-arts-science-4247e3f4a62d"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Rhett Wilkinson']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-09-25 02:46:15.732000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Investment', 'Business', 'Science', 'Art', 'Space']"}}},{"rowIdx":186014,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Romantic relationships with robots — harmful or helpful?"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Copyright [India Today Conclave on Youtube]\n\nDigisexuality, artificial intelligence & sexbots\n\nMcArthur & Twist’s (2017) analysis of digisexuality explore two distinct waves of sexual technologies: the universally adopted ‘first wave’ and the emerging ‘second wave’. Digisexuality can be defined as “sexual experiences that are enabled or facilitated by digital technology” (McArthur & Twist, 2016, p.334). The first wave involves communication and networking technologies that facilitate sexual interactions between humans. The widespread use of pornography sites and dating applications have become seamlessly integrated in our relationships and romantic encounters. The novel second wave deals with the inclining absence of humans in providing sexual experiences through robotic replacement — a shift which Turkle deems as a threat to human relationships.\n\nIn 2017, Matt McMullen constructed the first AI sex doll called ‘Harmony’ giving users the chance to build the perfect companion via personalisation tools such as looks and voices (@https://realbotix.com/Harmony). Turkle (2017) argues that the birth of such experiences undermine the authenticity of real life relationships raising significant issues surrounding the future of intimacy. Will robotic affection replace human affection? In 2020, more individuals are likely to consider having sex with a robot — figures are up by 6% since the same questions were asked in 2017 (Nguyen, 2020). Turkle claims that easy access to technology has created a generation too lazy to make an effort to tackle “rich and demanding” (Turkle, 2012, 7:12) human relationships. Thus, we resort to technology which offers the ‘illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship’ (Turkle, 2017, p.1), choosing to sacrifice reality with artificiality to temporarily satisfy our (sexual) need for a connection.\n\n“People disappoint, robots will not” (Turkle, 2017)\n\nIn another world…\n\nDavid Levy’s (2007) utopian view of sexbots favours their therapeutic benefits; technology fills the void in the lives of those who are incapable of maintaining a relationship. He states that ‘customers who are unsatisfied by their real-world sexual encounters may…explore…their sexuality in a safe, nonjudgmental space’ (Levy 2007, p.208).\n\nCopyright [Warner Bros. Pictures on YouTube]\n\nSimilar themes are embedded in popular culture; the film Her (2013) narrates the story of Theodore who falls in love with his operating system, Samantha, who helps him cope with his depression caused by a recent divorce. The ability for computers to possess human qualities is known as the ELIZA effect (Hofstadter, 1995). Samantha adopts the role of a therapist; her calming voice and conscious awareness of her interaction with humans results in Theodore seeing the therapeutic software as a ‘her’. This highlights the necessity of AI robots in (1) creating a fulfilled sex life and (2) escaping difficulties of everyday life.\n\nIt’s not a utopia for everyone\n\nCreator of sex robot ‘Roxxxy’, Douglas Hines, defends their useful role in society via sex therapy. He claims the physical and sexual pleasure provided by sexbots can help minimise sex trafficking, physical and sexual abuse (Reid, 2018). However, Cox-George & Bewley (2018) indicate a lack of evidence supporting these claims suggesting they in fact have the opposite effect. Like Turkle, leader of Campaign Against Sex Robots Kathleen Richardson (2016) is critical of Levy & Hines, arguing female sexbots promote harmful sociosexual norms contributing to the objectification of women.\n\n“Paedophiles [and] rapists…need therapy, not dolls” (Richardson, 2015)\n\nSex robots create the impression of sex as a commodity. The possibility of having sex outside a person, reduces emotional attachments to mere female body parts for male gratification reinforcing Mulvey’s (1975) Male Gaze theory of women, real or not, as sexual objects. Patriarchal much. So, while some argue that these inventions are the key to satisfaction, I agree with Turkle and Richardson that sexbots are in fact, a degradation to the human race and name of love."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@anti-socialmedia/robots-realities-and-relationships-66871dfbdc73"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Anti Socialmedia']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-01-14 09:00:09.621000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Relationships', 'Robots', 'Social Media', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology']"}}},{"rowIdx":186015,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"So you want to bootstrap with PySpark"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"So you want to bootstrap with PySpark\n\nPhoto by Joshua Chai on Unsplash\n\nIt’s more complicated than you think.\n\nIf you’re here, there’s a small chance that you’ve found my article on one of my social media pages. More likely, you found out how hard it was to compute bootstrap, and since you have access to spark, you thought, “why not use it to increase this to warp speed” (or some other less nerdy concept of fast)? So, you’ve googled it.\n\nWell, there are a few obstacles, but it’s possible. Let’s discuss what are the steps of bootstrapping and how not to naively use spark while calculating it.\n\nThe Naive Approach\n\nFirst, the basics. I assume that you have a good grasp of what bootstrapping even is if you’re reading this article but, if that’s not the case, I would recommend Lorna Yen’s article at Towards Data Science:\n\nHere, we just need to remember the basic steps:\n\nbasic steps of boostrap method\n\nTake a sample from the population with sample size n. Draw a sample from the original sample data with replacement with size n, and replicate B times; each re-sampled sample is called a Bootstrap resample, and there will be B bootstrap resamples in total. Evaluate the statistic (mean, median, etc.) θ for each Bootstrap resample, and there will be B estimates of θ in total. Construct a sampling distribution with these B Bootstrap statistics and use it to make further statistical inference\n\nThe important thing for us is the second step. The thing with Spark is that it works by partitioning the data and into disjoint subsets and distributing them across the nodes in your cluster.\n\nSo, let’s say you’re trying to create bootstrap resamples with 1 million data points. In this case, we’re dealing with a very particular dataset, with 999.999 zeroes and only a single number 1. Also, you’re using 50 partitions for this calculation. In that case, what would it be the probability of a resample consisting of 1 million number ones?\n\n1 million data points distributed across 50 partitions, only a single 1 and all the rests are 0\n\nIn real life, 1/10³⁶. In naive spark, zero. You see, only one of these partitions will have a number one; all the other will only see zeroes. It’ll be impossible to have more than 20.000 ones; that would be the specific case when the only partition in 50 that has the one returns only ones. Thus, a naive approach won’t return all the possible resamples because every resampling needs the complete dataset to count as real bootstrapping.\n\nBootstrapping with Pyspark\n\nSo, how can we do it the right way? A good reference is Paul Cho’s blog post, Bootstrapping with spark.\n\nIn it, Paul explains the same issue I’ve explained above and how to circumvent it, but with code in Scala. Here, we’ll show how to do the same with Pyspark.\n\nWe have to use Spark as a parallel execution engine so that we could generate the bootstrap resamples in parallel. That will allow us to broadcast the full dataset to every single node. To do that, we need to create a higher-order function to help us run a statistical function in parallel on this broadcasted data.\n\nFirst, we create a RDD (resilient distributed dataset) with the number of desired resamples. To each resample index, we map the statistical function we want to apply to the data. After that, we convert the RDD into a Spark Data Frame. Finally, we rename the columns to something more relevant than “_1” and “_2”, and voilá, we have a spark data frame with the calculated statistics for every resample, and we can proceed to the construction of the distribution.\n\nBelow, we show an example of a function to get a mean of the bootstrapping resample:\n\nIn this function, we’re taking a list of floating numbers; for each index of the list, we take a random sample of the list and add it to a sum. In the end, we return the mean of this resample of the list.\n\nThe full code would loke something like this:\n\nFinal Notes\n\nSome final notes. This will not be as fast as naive spark, but will be faster than regular python, especially for big sets of data.\n\nAlso, Paul Cho proposed another set of functions to compress datasets with millions of data points, which takes a toll in performance, but allows Spark to broadcast those datasets without memory issues.\n\nFor our purposes, the functions that I’ve decribed above suits just fine, but we can get back to translating Paul’s Scala code to pyspark in the future."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://towardsdatascience.com/so-you-want-to-bootstrap-with-pyspark-fd04d056e4aa"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Celso M. Cantanhede Silva']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-21 16:08:32.409000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Bootstrapping', 'Python', 'Spark', 'Pyspark', 'Data Science']"}}},{"rowIdx":186016,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Burnout: Worse as a Writer or at a 9–5 Job?"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Burnout: Worse as a Writer or at a 9–5 Job?\n\nBurnout — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels\n\nMany people try to achieve more by working longer hours. And they try to get more done by cramming more obligations into their day. But, by stuffing their days with meetings and commitments, their productivity declines.\n\nThey experience burnout.\n\nAccording to the Mayo Clinic,\n\n“Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion, that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment”\n\nAnyone who has been working for a few years has likely experienced burnout. And I’m sure you’ve likely experienced it too.\n\nAnd when this happens, you seem unable to make progress on your work. You cannot concentrate on writing the article. You no longer have the motivation to finish the report.\n\nBut burnout is not permanent. You can take action and improve your situation, as we will see in this article."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@loukas-writes/is-burnout-worse-when-you-are-a-writer-or-a-worker-at-a-9-5-job-349358002317"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"[]"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-11-27 17:33:44.357000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Life Lessons', 'Burnout', 'Self']"}}},{"rowIdx":186017,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Wanchain Update 11th December 2017"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Dear Wanchain community,\n\nWe would like to give you a short update about the open beta release and Jack Lu’s (Founder & CEO of Wanchain) trip to South Korea this week.\n\nOpen Beta Release\n\nRelease date: December 18th* 2017\n\nRelease includes: Beta instructions guide, privacy and normal transfers, block explorer and wallet.\n\nBounties\n\nWe will be issuing bounties to community developers who report bugs, suggestions and pull requests (extra weightage).\n\n*In our previous communication we stated the release would be on Friday the 15th of December but after careful consideration have decided to release on the 18th of December. The 18th is a Monday and will allow us to provide the community with support throughout the week.\n\nNew Book Launch and the First Financial Technology Development Forum\n\nThis was organized by Beijing Blockchain Application Association in Beijing on Dec 9th. Jack Lu attended the forum, Sun Guofeng, the deputy director of Internet Finance Research Center and Institute of Finance of People’s Bank of China also attended.\n\nJack Lu at the First Financial Technology Development Forum (Beijing, China)\n\nWanchain visits South Korea\n\nCEO and Founder, Jack Lu, will be presenting Wanchain at a local meet up in South Korea. Please find the details below:\n\nJack Lu’s presentation at a meet up in Seoul, South Korea:\n\nDate: December 13th (Wed), 2017\n\nTopic: Wanchain links the world’s digital assets\n\nTime: 7:00PM ~ 8:30PM\n\nLocation: 강남구 테헤란로 10길 6 녹명빌딩 7층비포럼 접수 이메일\n\nAttendees: 50 people\n\nAgenda:\n\n7:00PM ~ 7:30PM Registration\n\n7:30PM ~ 8:10PM — Wanchain’s Presentation (40 min) by CEO Jack Lu\n\n8:10PM ~ 8:30PM — Q&A and Networking (20 min)\n\nAbout Wanchain\n\nBitcoin was the first natively digital asset; many more are following. The trend towards ‘digitizing’ assets leads to a fundamental change in the financial services industry. However, there is a problem. Currently many of these digital assets are isolated on their respective blockchains and their true potential is not being realized. Wanchain was founded by the technical cofounder of Factom, Jack Lu, with the goal of uniting the world’s isolated digital assets and transforming the digital economy.\n\nThese are our official social platforms:\n\n1,278 subscribers\n\nReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/wanchain\n\n1,749 members\n\nDiscord: https://discord.gg/3DpeV6W\n\nANN: 8,817 members, CHAT: 4,500 members\n\nTelegram Ann: https://t.me/WanchainANN\n\nTelegram Chat: https://t.me/WanchainCHAT\n\nJoin our expanding Medium community!\n\nMedium: https://medium.com/wanchain-foundation\n\n8,757 members\n\nFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/wanchainfoundation/\n\n11,200 followers\n\nTwitter: https://twitter.com/wanchain_org\n\n418 followers\n\nInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wanchain_org"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/wanchain-foundation/wanchain-update-11th-december-2017-148a455b9b2a"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Oliver Birch']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2017-12-11 20:46:31.378000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Ethereum', 'Crypto', 'Social Media', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency']"}}},{"rowIdx":186018,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"When my beliefs became the reason behind my pain"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein\n\nWhat I realized about myself\n\nOften in life, we restrain ourselves with ideals and beliefs which we build early on in life and assume they will hold true in every situation, every step of our life. We rely on the fact that what we are taught and know is the only truth. We hold on to these values believing that they define us and our existence. We start judging the people who hold different values from ours. While doing so what we fail to take into consideration is— the unpredictability of life, the vastness of this world, and our own ignorance. Like I had the belief that without a job, my life was a waste, and everything else meant nothing. I substituted a career with happiness and made my life so difficult. What made it even worse is that they were not really my beliefs, they were second-handed. I inherited those from my parents.\n\nAll this while I believed that I was a very ambitious person for whom the most important thing was her career. But that was not true. I did not realize that I am not the same person as my younger self. I had changed. My priorities had changed. Yes, I still wanted to have a career but I wanted a family more and that is why I chose to stay with my husband. But I did not realize it then. I was so busy fighting the situation I was in, that I didn’t even care to stop and take note of what I actually wanted; what really made me happy.\n\nChange in perception\n\nIt took me almost two years to understand the fact that life is not about rigidity. It’s about evolving — evolving into a person who is not limited by their beliefs. Who can be brave enough to question and shred those beliefs when they become a hindrance to one’s peace and happiness. It’s about welcoming the change and growing with it."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/weeds-wildflowers/when-my-beliefs-became-the-reason-behind-my-pain-df7d78acb182"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Shilpi Agarwal']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-09-30 00:17:18.711000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Life Lessons', 'Change', 'Self', 'Growth', 'Life']"}}},{"rowIdx":186019,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"We Hold the World in Our Hands"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” is a traditional African American spiritual, first published in 1927……\n\nThe song was first published in the paperbound hymnal Spirituals Triumphant, Old and New in 1927. In 1933, it was collected by Frank Warner from the singing of Sue Thomas in North Carolina. It was also recorded by other collectors such as Robert Sonkin of the Library of Congress, who recorded it in Gee’s Bend, Alabama in 1941. That version is still available at the Library’s American Folklife Center.\n\nFrank Warner performed the song during the 1940s and 1950s, and introduced it to the American folk scene. Warner recorded it on the Elektra album American Folk Songs and Ballads in 1952. It was quickly picked up by both American gospel singers and British skiffle and pop musicians… Wikipedia"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/genius-in-a-bottle/we-hold-the-world-in-our-hands-b8d60260bf40"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Susannah Mackinnie']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-11-11 00:17:32.149000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Climate Change', 'Environment', 'Poetry', 'Storytelling', 'Hope']"}}},{"rowIdx":186020,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Nancy Pelosi undermines the Democrats credibility by not proceeding with impeachment inquiries."},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Nancy Pelosi applauding Donald Trump during State of the Union. AP: Doug Mills\n\nHaving delivered his final report to the Department of Justice, Special Counsel Robert Mueller provided his first and what are likely to be his final public comments on the entire investigation in a press conference a few weeks ago. In doing so, the Special Counsel effectively reignited debate on the question of whether or not Democrats in the House of Representatives should begin an impeachment inquiry into the President.\n\nIt’s fair to say that the first calls for the President’s impeachment began within minutes of his inauguration, and these early calls most likely had more to do with the President’s general demeanour and temperament than any individual action he had actually taken. However, with the Mueller report complete it has become clear that Congress must make a decision on how to proceed, with the continued absence of a decision in many ways resembling a decision in and of itself.\n\nFirst though, it’s important to consider what Robert Mueller actually found. Of all the elements in this debate, one of the most troubling is how few people have actually read his report, despite forming a firm position on what should be done about its findings. First and foremost, the report revealed widespread criminality, with 34 indictments, 7 convictions (so far), and at least 12 referrals to other investigators that may result in yet further indictments and convictions. While the US President was not one of those charged, in his speech Mueller made abundantly clear that this couldn’t occur within his investigation due to the well-known Justice Department guidelines (not rules) preventing a sitting president from being charged by that Department.\n\nThis polarising judgement has pleased some, while surprising and disappointing many others. It remains unclear if Robert Mueller was working within this constraint from the outset of his investigation or if he came to this conclusion later on. Legitimate questions have been raised about whether or not Mueller should have made clear this view early on to ensure that the public’s expectations were appropriately managed, and if he didn’t know it at the time then he could quite reasonably have sought clarification or confirmation from the Justice Department as to their current position / interpretation.\n\nIt’s worth remembering however that while hindsight is always 20/20, the investigation itself was not specifically aimed at the President, but rather at Russian government efforts to interfere into the 2016 presidential election, those efforts’ links with the Trump campaign, and any related matters that may have been identified in the process. With a remit this broad, the US President himself was only one potential figure of interest for the investigation, and without doubt the investigation did reveal a staggering degree of criminality. For the US President though, Mueller made clear that while he was free to gather evidence, in his view the US Constitution makes Congress the only appropriate entity to determine whether or not the President could be indicted and convicted. And in sticking to the existing guidelines, he has at the very least ensured that no legitimate complaint can be made about his conduct being in any way abnormal.\n\nSo having passed the ball over to Congress, where do they sit? With slight variations within them, it appears that five distinct positions have emerged. They are:\n\nRepublican + no collusion + no obstruction = move on Republican + it’s bad = no impeachment (Mitt Romney) Republican + it’s bad = impeach (Justin Amash) Democrat + it’s bad + impeachment is politically bad for us = do nothing Democrat + it’s bad = impeach\n\nThe first position is the most easily explainable. While the flagrant rule breaking outlined in the report would in previous generations offend the law and order party, in practise the President remains immensely popular within the party and time and again Republican members of Congress that go against him have seen repercussions for their future electability. It’s no surprise therefore that the loudest Republican voices of opposition to the President are the ones that are known to be retiring from public office. This would explain why positions 2 and 3 are populated by one member of congress each.\n\nThe two Democratic positions appear to have split the party (or at least its elected representatives) somewhere down the middle, though with prerogative over which issues proceed to the House floor resting with Nancy Pelosi, her position is in effect the default one. The latter of these two is simple enough to explain. Members in this camp have determined that the President has committed impeachable offenses, and therefore must be impeached, or at the least face an impeachment hearing.\n\nMeanwhile the former camp believes that while the President’s behaviour is appalling, they have made the political calculation that impeaching him will not be beneficial to them with either their own electorates or the broader electorate, potentially leading to an improved standing for the President with the public. As the leading figure of this view, Nancy Pelosi is drawing on her not-too-distant memory of the Clinton impeachment which saw the President emerge with higher approval ratings from the whole process, with that impeachment having failed to reach a ‘conviction’ in the Senate. In this telling, a guarantee of success in the second step is a prerequisite for commencing the first, and Ms Pelosi has articulated this explanation on multiple occasions.\n\nUnfortunately for the Democratic party, while the cold political logic of Pelosi’s objection to commencing impeachment proceedings is understandable, it completely undermines the rest of the party’s concerns and protestations about the President’s actions. The Democrats have attempted to take what they view as the moral high ground for the last few decades in political discourse, in theory distancing themselves from the win-at-all costs approach taken by the Republican Party since the Gingrich Speaker years. The challenge with this approach however is that in the public’s view, claims to a moral high ground tend to be absolute. That is, just a single instance of ethically questionable behaviour is no different from a thousand of them, as evidenced by the false equivalence drawn in the public’s eyes between the actions of Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump (and the endless ‘what-aboutism’ on Fox News).\n\nIf we go back to the 5 positions identified earlier, how different is the fourth one from the first really? They are both results of a cynical political calculus, one that looks no further than the individual’s electability (sometimes rationally). Yet the Speaker is capable and relied upon to take a longer and wider view, seeing the wood for the trees in these circumstances. In her comments she has compared the impeachment process to an indictment (and not a conviction as many incorrectly assume), yet surely the many former prosecutors in her ranks would recoil at the suggestion that alleged criminals shouldn’t be charged unless a conviction is guaranteed?\n\nIn criminal law, an indictment provides the legal justification for search and seizure and is a key component of the due process afforded to those charged, and is the very reason that standards of proof increase incrementally in a criminal investigation. With probable cause (the standard for an indictment) unambiguously demonstrated in the case of the US President, and 64 percent of Americans now believing that he probably committed a crime prior to entering office (Quinnipiac, May 2019), the continued dithering by the Democratic Congress is no longer putting off a decision, it is a decision, because the expected response to this level of evidence of criminality by the President would be an impeachment inquiry.\n\nRobert Mueller is often described as an institutionalist. This means that he has a firm belief in the strength of institutions, and that if those institutions behave as intended the right outcome will inevitably eventuate. He has very carefully ensured that his output conforms to the norms of the institution he represents, working on the assumption that other institutions would then do the same. Yet by failing to do so, the US Congress is effectively enabling the President’s worst impulses, telling him and the public that breaking the law is fine as long as you have political support. They have to ask themselves, if they don’t follow through on the evidence already available, what exactly would it take for them to act, and why would the public listen?"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@sirilyazak/nancy-pelosi-and-the-democrats-are-undermining-their-own-credibility-by-not-proceeding-with-b598d1499b18"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"[]"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-06-17 01:00:37.600000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Nancy Pelosi', 'Democrats', 'Impeachment', 'Robert Mueller', 'Politics']"}}},{"rowIdx":186021,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Tod"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Tod\n\nTod means death in German, and this is Tod’s story as well as Sam’s\n\nPhoto by Kasturi Roy on Unsplash\n\n“Have you calmed down?”\n\n“Calmed down? What kind of question is that? No, no I’m not calm, and I don’t have a clue what to do about this.”\n\n“You seem calmer than earlier. Please, relax, sit down, and take a glass of water. It’ll be fine.”\n\nHe made a few turns around his small studio apartment, sat down for a few seconds without actually relaxing the entire time, and then grabbed a glass of water which he tried to drink, but almost choked. He then paced some more.\n\n“OK, OK. I’m OK. You must be some sort of hallucination brought on from some swelling in my brain after the car crash. They just missed it in the hospital and I should just call 911, that’s right.” He proceeded to dial 911.\n\n“Please don’t waste your time on that.”\n\n“Shit,” he dropped his phone. “Is it now? What,” he started pacing around his apartment with far more speed and nervousness than earlier. He felt dizzy and disoriented.\n\n“Sam, please relax, take some deep breaths. And, I can’t tell you if it’s now or later, I already explained that.”\n\n“Tod, I am seriously freaking out here. I’m going to die right now, the fuck.” Sam cried and pleaded and prayed.\n\n“It’s just anxiety. Why are you wasting your life on trivial matters, Sam?”\n\nSam felt tired. The crying exhausted him, and he managed, albeit briefly, to get a hold of himself and to give it a go with Tod’s advice. It didn’t work.\n\n“OK. I can’t tell you when, how, but I can tell you that you’ve been freaking out, or quote-unquote dying for half an hour now.”\n\n“Half an hour?” Sam doubted that assessment, but at the same time, he found it probable even though it felt like an hour to him.\n\n“Let’s try this way. What if I told you, this is just a hypothetical or maybe not, but either way, what if you had just another hour to live? Would you be freaking out in your lousy apartment or would you go and do something that you never got around to do, like ask that girl out?”\n\nSam managed to calm down, finally. “You got a point there,” he said. “Wait, how do you know about her?”\n\n“I told you, I’ve been following you since your birth. The fact that you can see me since you got out of that brief coma is what I can’t understand and I have no idea what to do about that.”\n\n“You don’t sound too concerned about it,” Sam noted.\n\n“Because that’s not my business. It changes nothing.”\n\n“OK. OK.” Sam got lost in thought. He figured, he’s still alive and kicking, maybe he should go and ask her out.\n\n“Wait a minute,” a thought occurred to him, which he didn’t consider earlier, “if you are always following me does that mean even when I’m in the bathroom or having sex?”\n\n“Yes,” Tod replied.\n\n“And you don’t see anything wrong with that?”\n\n“No.”\n\n“You mean, if I would use the last hour of my life to have sex with Sarah, you wouldn’t give us any privacy?”\n\n“Exactly. And the same goes for Sarah’s Tod, and basically for everyone else.”\n\n“That’s, that’s messed up.”\n\n“I don’t take any pleasure in it if that helps.”\n\nSam thought about it. “Maybe a little.”"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/illumination/tod-67dc5ad38f2e"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Vuk Ivanovic']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-09-14 00:29:12.888000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Life', 'Fiction', 'Family', 'Death', 'Short Story']"}}},{"rowIdx":186022,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Use Dj’s Aviation exclusive NordVPN deal and increase your security online!"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Dj’s Aviation is a popular YouTube channel that has more than 280k subscribers. Dan is the sole member of the Dj’s Aviation, whose passion for Aviation started over 14 years ago when he was only 19 years old. When he was younger he would have regular trips to the airports and this was what hooked him. Since he had such a huge passion for such a quite rare topic, he decided to create a YouTube channel and share it with others and fuel their passion for Aviation too. In his videos, Dan talks about various aviation news, analysis, shares his opinion, etc. Although Dan doesn’t have to do anything with cybersecurity, he still takes care of the viewers and shares how important it is to consider such factors. For that reason, Dj’s Aviation YouTube channel recommends using NordVPN and starting surfing online securely.\n\nThe best possible deal is waiting for you!\n\nTake Dj’s Aviation recommendation and take care of your security online. Use the exclusive deal and get NordVPN with a 70% discount, secure yourself online for only $3.49/month with a 3-year plan.\n\nFollow this link to apply the discount code automatically\n\nIf you want to secure all your devices, you can click here and download the software for iOS, or if you want to download it from Google store, you can do it by clicking here.\n\nWhy should you get NordVPN?\n\nThis premium quality VPN is the right choice when you’re looking for increasing your online security and other perks. First let’s talk about VPN’s primary purpose — security. NordVPN is based in Panama, meaning it doesn’t have to stick to mandatory data retention laws; therefore, it offers strict no-logs policy and stores neither usage nor connection logs. Regarding other benefits, it has features like P2P servers and a kill-switch that will allow you to torrent securely. Also, it’s capable of overcoming Netflix proxy blocks and works with other popular streaming service providers like Hulu, BBC, Amazon Prime, and many others. Moreover, it has over 5k servers in more than 60 countries and offers 6 simultaneous connections.\n\nWhat is a Virtual Private Network?\n\nVPN is a well-known online security tool that helps users to protect their internet traffic by encrypting it. That way, users can not only surf online securely but anonymously too. The virtual private network can be compared to a secret (or to be more specific — encrypted) tunnel that protects users’ info, which comes from the device to the internet. It also helps to avoid such intruders as hackers, the internet service provider, and even the government. Moreover, VPN is used for cases like gaming, torrenting, streaming, and securely using a wireless network in public places."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@frankpontony/use-djs-aviation-exclusive-nordvpn-deal-d74a67e37175"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Frank Ponton']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-06-02 12:02:40.648000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['VPN', 'Offers', 'Discount', 'Coupon']"}}},{"rowIdx":186023,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"When and How did Humankind Figure Out that Sex Makes Babies?"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"When and How did Humankind Figure Out that Sex Makes Babies?\n\nPhoto Credits: Spiegel\n\nWell, I think the answer is, since the beginning. While historians, scholars, anthropologists, and biologists can’t tell us the exact time, all the evidence shows us that human beings have been able to understand that there definitely is some relationship between sex and childbirth, since the homo sapiens walked on this planet probably between the unfolding of our breed and the evolution of human culture about 50,000 years ago.\n\nThere isn’t much material evidence on this matter. However, a plaque from the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük illustrates a Neolithic understanding, with a mother and child on one side and two figures embracing on the other. What we need to understand here is that all cultural groups had their own explanations for conception, but everyone acknowledged some sort of link between copulation and babies.\n\nPhoto Credits: Wikipedia\n\nNow coming to how ancient human beings attained reproductive consciousness, this part is a bit gloomy. I think that it’s most likely that they closely observed animals around them, and how those animals reproduced. They must’ve also observed that the women who don’t sleep with men, do not get pregnant. But this in no way means that those people had any idea about the complete process of the sperm meets eggs. That knowledge is fairly recent.\n\nIn the early 20th century, anthropologists who worked in places like New Guinea and Australia noted that their subjects were unable to establish a relationship between sex and babies. Later, further research told us that those reports were biased were at best only half-true. Let’s take the example of what Bronislaw Malinowski claimed in 1927. He said that in the Trobriand Islands, the father had nothing to do with producing a child. However, subsequent research on the same group established that semen for necessary for the congelation of menstrual blood, the suspension of which was believed to ultimately from the fetus.\n\nThe explanations of conception by the people of the Trobriand Islands might seem weird or strange but there is no doubt that on some level they did recognize the relationship between sex and childbirth. And surely, before us Westerners who like to feel superior, get all proud, it should be noted that our views on conception haven’t always been consistent or rational either. The number of unplanned pregnancies in the U.S. says it all.\n\nCynthia Eller, a woman’s studies scholar say that wile,\n\n“other events may also be necessary — such as the entrance of a spirit child through the top of the head (in the case of the Triobriand Islanders), or the entrance of a soul into a fertilized egg (in the case of Roman Catholics) … it is simply not believed that women bear children without any male participation whatsoever.”\n\nThe question arises that if human beings have always been able to understand that sex leads us to the delivery room, then did that information have any impact or consequences on our evolution as a society? What we call reproductive consciousness, we know that of the entire animal world, this consciousness is unique to humankind. And that special information might explain both our capacity to bend procreative abilities of nature to our favor in almost everything from animal breeding to family planning and the evolution of our taboos revolving around sex."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/when-and-how-did-humankind-figure-out-that-sex-makes-babies-d0ace7531816"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"[]"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-11-30 19:04:53.730000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Sexuality', 'Science', 'History', 'Sex', 'Pregnancy']"}}},{"rowIdx":186024,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Most Honest & Helpful Reviews for Bose 700 Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones — Curated by Rosi"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Although the headphones l ook good and feel fantastic on, I was very disappointed with the functionality . I loaded the Bose Music app on my iPhone and then followed the instructions to pair the headphones. The Bose Music app worked well until the firmware on headphones automatically updated and installed. After that, game over! The Bose Music app could not pair with the headphones … Went on the Bose website and tried to do a factory reset, but that was useless . Bose customer service was also useless .\n\nGreat audio, connectivity and comfort issues\n\nThese work great for this “new normal” of teleworking with multiple people in the house. Being able to turn the level of noise cancellation to three different levels … is great. Audio quality seems very good. I have some occasional connectivity issues. … What happens is when the phone is dialing out I hear the dialing etc… through the headphones, but as soon as someone picks up it flips over to regular phone audio unless I change it back to bluetooth manually. This happens maybe 10% of the time. I have a very large head … I have to have the headphones maximally extended to fit (which is OK) but after a couple of hours of continual use the cartilage around my ears hurt and I can get a bit of a headache … they are not at all comfortable to drop them down to wear them around your neck when not in use … the earpieces apply pressure to the side/front of my neck. Not comfortable and feels like they could fall off.\n\nRating: 4 / 5\n\nBy The Dude, sourced from BestBuy"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@rosi.reviews/most-honest-helpful-reviews-for-bose-700-active-noise-cancelling-headphones-curated-by-rosi-6ad8a3706553"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Rosi Reviews']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-09-09 23:53:30.712000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Startup', 'Mobile App Development', 'Headphones', 'Online Shopping', 'Technology']"}}},{"rowIdx":186025,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"A Quick Guide to Understanding Python’s Import Statement"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Heracles battling the Nemean Lion. (Source)\n\nIn today’s article, I will be going over Python’s import statements. I realized that import is a really important skill to master, especially when it comes to structuring one’s Python project.\n\nWhile making Automated Stoic, I wanted to use a few of the source code from Memento Mori. However, since I did not know how to properly use the import statement, I had to manually rewrite the code from one file into the other.\n\nAnd so, today I will be going in deep about import statement, what it does, and how one could utilize it to its maximum.\n\nWhat is an Import Statement?\n\nBefore we get into the specific details of how one could utilize the import statement, let us take a deep dive to understand the fundamental definition behind this method.\n\nAccording to Python’s official documentation, an import statement can be defined as the following:\n\nThe Python code in one module gains access to the code in another module by the process of importing it. The import statement is the most common way of invoking the import machinery, but it is not the only way. Functions such as importlib.import_module() and built-in __import__() can also be used to invoke the import machinery.\n\nIn short, the definition of an import statement is that it will transfer all of the code from one file to another Python file.\n\nFor example, let’s suppose that you have two Python files: first.py and second.py . Now, assume that the code in first.py is already written alongside its variables and functions. If you want to use these variables and functions in second.py , you can just import the first.py file and immediately gain access to the variables and functions.\n\nBefore we continue, what exactly is a module? In general programming, a module is a piece of software that has a specific functionality. For example, when building a tic-tac-toe game, a module will be responsible for the logic behind the game while another logic will be responsible for drawing the board. Each module is a different file, which can be edited separately.\n\nIn this case, a module in terms of Python programming is simply a Python file with a .py extension where a set of functions, variables, or classes are defined and implemented. The name of the module will then be the name of the file. In the case of the example above, the Python files first.py and second.py are modules with the name first and second respectively.\n\nFurthermore, it is also important to note that whenever a developer is accessing modules using the import statement, that module is essentially executed. This allows the developer to make use of the scope of definitions within the imported module.\n\nTo import the module, Python needs a fully qualified name of the module being imported. This may come from various arguments such as the import statement or from parameters to the importlib.import_module() or __import__() functions. If any of the imports fail, then a ModuleNotFoundError is raised.\n\nWays to Import a Module\n\nSince we have already gained a good grasp of what an import statement is, let us see three different ways in which we can import a module!\n\nimport\n\nThe first way to import a module is by using the basic import statement. Usually, importing is done in the header section of the code, before writing any specific functions.\n\nWhen we import a module, we are making it available to us in our current program as a separate namespace. This means that we will have to refer to the functions of the imported module in dot notation, such as [module].[function].\n\nHere is an example:\n\nimport random\n\nprint(random.randint(1,25))\n\nIn the code above, we imported the random module, which is a built-in Python module. From that module, we would like to utilize their random integer function, randint() . Since the random module is available to us as a separate namespace, we would have to use dot-notation to refer to randint() , hence random.randint() .\n\nfrom [x] import [y]\n\nNow, if we want to import a specific function, we can use from ... import ... . This method of importing will also allow us to call the function without using the dot-notation. Here is an example:\n\nfrom random import randint\n\nprint(randint(1,25))\n\nSince we are using the from ... import ... notation, our aim is to use a specific function within the module. In this case, we are accessing the randint function within the random module. Doing so will allow us to call randint() without having to use the dot-notation.\n\nIn some programs, you might see people using from module import * . This statement will take every scope of definition within the local namespace. However, this is discouraged as it could potentially replace your locally defined variables or functions.\n\nBefore we continue to the last method, I would like to give a brief explanation of the differences between import x and from x import * . When a programmer uses import x , the programmer is essentially creating a reference to that module in the current namespace of x . This is why you need to define a module path to access a particular attribute or method from that module (such as x.name or x.function() )\n\nOn the other hand, if the programmer uses from x import * , then the programmer is creating a reference to all public objects in x within the local namespace of the current module. This way, the programmer won’t have to define a module path such as x.name , but can simply refer to it as name .\n\nHowever, the downside of using from x import * is that if you already have name defined in your local module, then it will be replaced by the name that came from the x module.\n\nimport [x] as [z]\n\nThis method is called aliasing methods. In the similar case above, you can create an alias of a method if the same name is present within your local project.\n\nFor example, if you already have a variable named x inside your local project, you can import your module x by giving it an alias.\n\nimport x as x_module print(x_module.name)\n\nWithin the program, we can now access x.name as x_module.name .\n\nStyling Import Statements\n\nAccording to the official style guide for Python (PEP 8), there are a few key points when it comes to styling import statements:\n\nImports should always be written at the top of the file after any comments and docstrings. Imports should be divided according to what is imported. There are generally three groups: standard library imports (built-in modules), related third party imports (modules that are installed but do not belong to the current application), and local application imports (modules that belong to the current application) Each group of imports should be divided by a blank space Write your imports alphabetically\n\nHere is an example:\n\n\"\"\"Illustration of a good import statement styling. Note that imports should come after docstring\"\"\" #Standard Library imports\n\nimport datetime\n\nimport os #Third pary imports\n\nfrom flask import Flask\n\nfrom flask_restful import Api\n\nfrom flask_sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy #Local application imports\n\nfrom local_module import local_class\n\nfrom local_package import local_function\n\nAs you can see above, the code starts of with the docstring. A docstring is used to document a specific segment of the code. Multi-line docstrings consist of a summary line, followed by a blank line, followed by a more elaborate description of the module.\n\nAbsolute vs Relative Imports\n\nAfter understanding the different methods to import a module, let us look deeper into how to import modules from a tree of a directory. In short, there are two ways: absolute imports and relative imports.\n\nAbsolute Imports\n\nAn absolute import specifies the module being import using its full path from the project root’s folder.\n\nLet’s say we have the following directory structure:\n\n└── project\n\n├── package1\n\n│ ├── module1.py\n\n│ └── module2.py\n\n└── package2\n\n├── __init__.py\n\n├── module3.py\n\n├── module4.py\n\n└── subpackage1\n\n└── module5.py\n\nWe have the root directory called project , which contains two sub-directories, package1 and package2. Here, it is good to remember that a package is basically a directory that holds one or more modules.\n\nHere, package1 has modules module1 and module2 , while package2 has an __init__.py file, two modules, and another subpackage which contains module5 .\n\nFor the sake of this example, let us assume the following:\n\npackage1/module2.py contains a function called function1 package2/__init__.py contains a class called class1 package2/subpackage1/module5.py contains a function called function2 .\n\nWith these assumptions, we can then write the following absolute imports:\n\nfrom package1.module2 import function1\n\nfrom package1 import module1\n\nfrom package2 import class1\n\nfrom package2.subpackage1.module5 import function2\n\nAs you can see from above, using absolute import is similar to calling the path of the file, except that we are using a dot instead of a slash.\n\nAbsolute imports are preferred and highly recommended by PEP 8, as it clearly shows the path of the function/module. However, absolute imports might get a little too long, such as the following:\n\nfrom package1.package2.package3.package4.package5 import function6\n\nIn this case, we can use relative import as an alternative.\n\nRelative Imports\n\nUnlike absolute imports that imports from the root of the project directory, relative imports is a method that imports relative to the current file the import statement is called.\n\nThere are two types of relative imports: implicit and explicit. However, since implicit relative imports have been deprecated in Python3, we will not be covering it.\n\nOne way to call a relative import is by using dot notation to specify the location. A single dot means that the module or package referenced is in the same hierarchy as the current project, while two dots mean that the referred package is one directory above. Three dots means two directories, and so on. This is similar to how you would use cd .. to go one directory up.\n\nLet’s assume the same directory as the structure above.\n\nIn this case, if you want to import function1 which is located in module2 inside module1 (both are in the same package), then you would have to write the following code:\n\n#package1/module1.py\n\nfrom .module2 import function1`\n\nFrom the example above, you start the import statement with a dot-notation, signifying the use of relative imports. Since it is only one dot, the computer will recognize that module2 is located in the same directory as module1 . After finding module2 , it will then import function1 to module1 .\n\nTake a look at another example:\n\n#package2/module3.py from . import class1\n\nfrom .subpackage1.module5 import function2\n\nRecall that the location of class1 is in __init__.py , while function2 is located in package2/subpackage1/module5.py . Since module3 is located in the same directory as __init__.py and subpackage1.module5 , we can easily import class1 and function2 by using relative import statements with one dot notation — signifying that they are located in the same directory.\n\nAside from shortening long absolute imports, relative imports are not encouraged as they could cause confusion on a shared project.\n\nSummary\n\nTo finish this article, let us summarize and review what we have learned today!\n\nImport statements will let a module gain access to another module’s defined scopes (variables, functions, classes)\n\nModules are files with a .py extension; each module should serve a specific function\n\nextension; each module should serve a specific function There are three ways to import a statement:\n\nimport x will refer to the module in its respective namespace. This means we will have to use dot-notation to call any of its variables/functions. from x import y will only import y from module x . This way, you won’t have to use dot-notation. (Bonus: from x import * will refer to the module in the current namespace while also replacing any names that are the same) import x as y will import module x which can be called by referring to it as y\n\nThe four rules of making import statements according to PEP 8:\n\nImport statements should be written after the docstrings and comments Import statements should be separated according to what is imported: built-in modules, installed modules that are not part of the application, modules that are part of the application. There should be a space in between each of the import categories Your imports should be in alphabetical order\n\nThere are two distinct ways of calling an import:\n\nAbsolute import: uses dot-notation to call an import file relative to the root of the directory Relative import: Import modules relative to the current file. It also uses dot-notation but starts the import with number of dots signifying the relative position.\n\nConclusion\n\nThe reason why I wanted to study import statements is that I wanted to use Memento Mori’s code for Automated Stoic without having to copy and paste the whole codebase.\n\nTo put this into practice, I will be going through the changes I made to utilize import in my past project.\n\nRemember: stay consistent.\n\nSources:"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/cold-brew-code/a-quick-guide-to-understanding-pythons-import-statement-505eea2d601f"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Richard Russell']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-06-05 07:41:57.127000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Programming', 'Computer Science', 'Python', 'Software Development']"}}},{"rowIdx":186026,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Thousands Have Vanished in the Arizona Borderlands"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Kindness is criminalized in Arizona. No More Deaths, a humanitarian non-profit that advocates for migrants out of Ajo, Arizona, regularly has their humanitarian camps raided. Officials charged eight of their volunteers with a variety of offenses a week after No More Deaths published a report accusing Border Patrol agents of dumping water jugs left by volunteers on migrant paths. One of the activists’ charges was “abandoning property,” apparently referring to the water, food, and blankets they left on migrant trails. Another volunteer, Scott Warren, was “[detained] in the town of Ajo on suspicion of supplying food, water and clean clothes to two undocumented migrants.” The charges against Scott were dropped two years later.\n\n“Today the government took the position that people of conscience should not be prosecuted for acts of humanitarian aid. In other words, humanitarian aid, by definition, is not a crime,” said Greg Kuykendall on the courthouse steps when announcing the dropped charges against Scott Warren, as reported by No More Deaths.\n\nOften, individual migrants die of exposure not realizing their journey will require weeks of walking instead of days. Coyotes, professional border crossing guides, often underplay the risks. If a person sprains an ankle and is unable to walk, the group must leave them behind. If someone is separated from the group, common when running from Border Patrol, they have no way of finding their guide and face almost certain death.\n\nNot only do migrants die from exposure or dehydration in the incredibly rough terrain, but No More Deaths alleges that Border Patrol regularly chases crossing migrants into remote terrain, where they often perish after becoming lost.\n\nAccording to local humanitarian groups, if a migrant has been missing for more than a month without contact, their families should start looking through the forensics system. The Colibrí Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona works to help families whose loved ones have disappeared while crossing the border. Often this involves identifying their remains by searching available forensic systems. The group also tracks migrants who vanished while crossing the border. They have over 3,500 missing persons cases.\n\nAs stated by Doctors Without Borders, Central American migrants predominantly make the journey to the United States and Mexico to flee violence in their home countries — which Doctors Without Borders says is comparable to a warzone in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. But the long journey north is also rife with violence and exploitation. 57 percent of the people interviewed by the organization experienced violence while traveling through Mexico, whether assault, extortion, sexual assault, or torture. Mexican gangs and human trafficking organizations often target Central Americans through kidnapping and extortion.\n\n“It’s clear from years of medical data and testimonies that many of our patients are desperately fleeing violence back home… These people deserve protection and care, and, at the very least, a fair chance to seek asylum. Instead they face more violence along the migration route, barred from countries where they wouldn’t be at risk. Now they are trapped in dangerous places with no way to seek safety,” said Sergio Martin, the head of mission in Mexico for Doctors Without Borders, quoted in a recent report released by the organization.\n\nAccording to the recent Doctors Without Borders report, 61 percent of migrants interviewed were exposed to violence in the two years leading up to their migration north. Half of those cited their exposure to violence as a key reason they chose to leave their home country. Migrating families with children were much more likely to be fleeing violence, with 75 percent of those fleeing with children cited violence as a key reason, which includes forced gang recruitment. If they’re caught and detained by US Border Patrol, however, the dangers don’t end there. Doctors Without Borders reports that many of their patients reported terrible conditions in American custody, often in freezing cells with bright lights kept on 24/7, and denied adequate access to health care, blankets, food, clothing, and human dignity.\n\nThe conditions at the migrant detention centers are a humanitarian travesty, even more so during a global pandemic. The humanitarian non-profit that advocates for the migrants, No More Deaths, addressed this in a press release this summer.\n\n“Meanwhile, precautions against the spread of the pandemic in cramped detention centers are abysmal. There is no soap in sinks, no access to gloves, and detained women and men just receive two face masks each — only after signing waivers of liability for the masks. Under these conditions, it is no surprise that more people are becoming infected with COVID-19. As of this writing, ICE acknowledges 69 known “positive” cases of COVID-19 at the La Palma facility alone. Recently, at an La Palma detention center in Eloy, detainees blocked the doors to their “pod” with tables and chairs, demanding masks, gloves, hand soap and testing. In response, the officers from CoreCivic — the for-profit company that operates many detention centers — broke through and shot them with rubber bullets and sprayed them with tear gas.”\n\nThe terrors migrant children face while separated from their parents are well documented. In many cases, the children’s basic needs are unmet and entire families are left broken and traumatized. The institutionalization of children, especially without the protective buffer of a parent, has horrible and lasting consequences on a child’s mental health and development. And the scale of this crisis is unfathomable. Since July 2017, more than 1,500 migrant children were separated from their parents after being detained separately. The American Civil Liberties Union claims that the true number of separated migrant children could be as high as 5,400 since the policy began. Recently, the ACLU announced that the parents cannot be located for 545 detained migrant children."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/an-injustice/thousands-have-vanished-in-the-arizona-borderlands-687683b795a5"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Raisa Nastukova']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-01 20:18:12.560000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Immigration', 'Culture', 'World', 'Migration', 'News']"}}},{"rowIdx":186027,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"John Piper’s Moral Reasoning Capabilities Hit the Fan"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"If I ever tell you I can’t vote against a baby-killer because the only way to do that would be to “vote for arrogance,” you have permission to hit me over the head with your copy of Desiring God.\n\nWhen it comes to political matters, most pastors and theologians are not serious people. I would prefer to listen to someone who knows something about the topic, and that person is clearly not John Piper.\n\nThis is not the first time John Piper’s moral reasoning capabilities have hit the fan (see our past coverage here and here) but today’s article has surprised even the cynical in a year that just keeps giving.\n\nJohn Piper’s latest shipwreck is called: Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin: Pondering the Implications of the 2020 Election. The article argues (I think) against voting either for Biden or Trump. While there may be fair arguments for such a position, you will not find them in Piper’s article. The position itself is not repulsive. But the reasoning is.\n\nPiper’s claim seems to be that the toxicity of Donald Trump’s personality is equally damaging to health of the nation as the policies of the Democratic Party, and when faced with the choice between voting for murderers or men who are as arrogant and “toxic” as Donald Trump, it is better to abstain from either option.\n\nWho has John Piper been listening to? His article lacks interaction with the writers to whom we could have hoped Piper might pay attention, ranging from Wayne Grudem to Doug Wilson. But the article lacks something else: Interaction with principled thinking as such. To think in principle, John Piper would have needed to do something like the following:\n\nState that he will not vote for someone with mostly godly policies but poor character, if that poor character crosses a specific line.\n\nState where he thinks that line is and why he thinks that’s where the line should be.\n\nSadly, many non-Christians tend to be better at moral reasoning than leading evangelicals. For instance, here is an outstanding video from Ben Shapiro explaining his moral reasoning about voting for Trump. Many people did not vote for Trump in 2016, but plan to vote for him in 2020.\n\nShapiro’s reasons could be summarized:\n\nIn 2016, Trump’s policy was unclear and it seemed like it might be horrible, but it is more clear now, and it has been pretty good so far. In some ways, Trump’s election in 2016 changed the conservative movement for the worse. That has already happened. The damage has already been done. The Democrats are much more dangerous in 2020 than they were in 2016, and the difference in the consequences of a Trump/Pence victory vs. a Biden/Harris victory to the moral, economic, and geopolitical wellbeing of the nation is completely clear.\n\nMurderers are on the loose, and we can’t vote for the other guy because he’s mean on Twitter?\n\nThat was how AD Robles summarized John Piper’s argument:\n\nAD Robles provides more analysis here:\n\nOther voices on Twitter shared similar disappointment in John Piper’s article:\n\nPiper’s Arguments\n\nPiper writes:\n\n“I will explain to my unbelieving neighbor why my allegiance to Jesus set me at odds with death — death by abortion and death by arrogance.”\n\nIn the article, Piper seems (through grossly vague and artificial language) to be claiming that he will not vote for either Biden or Trump.\n\nI will not interact much with John Piper’s “arguments” in this article, because there is not much there, besides what I quoted above. Piper believes the harm done to the nation via having an arrogant president is comparable to the harm done by having a president whose every policy opposes God.\n\nI would not morally condemn someone for choosing not to vote for Trump on the basis of a conviction that only Christians should be supported for the office of President, or similar reasoning. I would strongly disagree. But I would not criticize them in that case.\n\nBut that was not Piper’s argument. Instead, Piper suggested that there is a moral equivalence between arrogance vs. baby-killing. No other conclusion is possible: God has made John Piper stupid.\n\n“Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked,” says Proverbs 25:26. If there were a group of evil men wanting to destroy your family, take away everything you own, murder infants, and mutilate children, would you stand against them? What would stop you from voting for a man that wants to stand against them? His attitude of arrogance?\n\nA Better Moral Calculus\n\nJacob Brunton has just released a full-length discussion on the question of voting. In this video, he argues that the Democratic and Republican Parties should be judged by their explicit policy statements.\n\nBy the standard of God’s Word the Democratic Platform is in every way immoral and godless, while the Republican Platform manages at every point to be righteous — or at least far superior to the alternative. Moreover, now that we have seen Trump in office for four years, we know that he actually believes in his party’s platform.\n\nWhen I abstained from voting for Trump in 2016, it was in view of my incorrect assessment of Trump’s policies and aims. I thought he was deceiving his supporters and would rule as a leftist.\n\nBut, having seen a Trump presidency, I know that one option on the ballot (Biden/Harris) is wicked, while the other (Trump/Pence), while flawed, is oriented toward righteous values such as liberty, security, and individual rights, which are the only purpose of the government.\n\nWho is to say what has happened to John Piper? But at least he has given us his best. And by that, his best, Christians may determine whether he is a serious man."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/christian-intellectual/john-pipers-moral-reasoning-capabilities-hit-the-fan-f6e83edfd90a"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Cody Libolt']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-10-23 02:35:16.747000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Election 2020', 'Christianity', 'Politics', 'John Piper', 'Trump']"}}},{"rowIdx":186028,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Jupyter Standalone Might Just Be Better Than Anaconda"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Advantages of Conda\n\nAt the roots of Anaconda is environment virtualization. Of course, this can be seen as a huge advantage to using Anaconda over standalone Jupyter. Additionally, Anaconda comes with the “ Conda” package manager, which isn’t quite as expansive as the regular Python Package Index.\n\nAs a result of these features, to an inexperienced soul, the startup learning curve of Anaconda Navigator isn’t as fierce as setting up docker images and virtual environments to run Jupyter out of. However, a significant disadvantage of Conda is the lack of the regular package index. Therefore, it is possible through only a pretty challenging loophole to install traditional Python packages that haven’t been published to Conda. For someone that uses a lot of APIs and assorted packages, this, of course, is a problem.\n\nWith that in mind, Anaconda certainly is a great tool for Data Scientists, with extension applications like VSCode, Spark managers, and much more all easily implemented into the navigator to work inside of your Conda terminal, it’s easy to see why this is a common choice among Windows developers. Interestingly, a lot of my Windows friends use their Conda REPL like a terminal, so the value is certainly there for them."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://towardsdatascience.com/jupyter-standalone-might-just-be-better-than-anaconda-53104da05eee"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Emmett Boudreau']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-11-01 02:50:59.008000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Data Science', 'Programming', 'Jupyter Notebook', 'Python', 'Anaconda']"}}},{"rowIdx":186029,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"How to Access Remotely Deployed Android Devices"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"In my work, there are times when I deploy devices running on Android at a distant location. Sometimes having a shell is useful for debugging or doing some updates to the device.\n\nHere, I propose one possible solution using a few different applications.\n\nThe List\n\nWhen thinking of the solution, I try to keep the setup as minimal as possible.\n\nTermux (An Android Terminal Emulator, we can execute scripts, run nodejs, etc…) Reverse Shell Binary — Checks with 4. and connect to remote server if it’s for the device Remote Server (For the Android Device to connect to, as well as where we will send the commands) A HTTP server — For the Android Device to check whether to run the command\n\nTermux\n\nDownload the APK here: https://f-droid.org/repo/com.termux_99.apk. After that, install termux on the Android Device.\n\nTo automate script running on startup, install Termux:Boot https://f-droid.org/repo/com.termux.boot_7.apk.\n\nThen create a file ~/.termux/boot/start-service with the following contents.\n\n#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/sh\n\nwhile true; do sleep 5; /data/data/com.termux/files/reverse HTTPSERVER ACCESSTOKEN; done;\n\nWhat the file does is to run a while loop which will start the reverse binary if it crashes/stop.\n\nReverse Shell Binary\n\nThe binary is written in Golang. I chose Golang as it allows cross compilation and outputs a single executable binary. This makes it easy to deploy on different devices other than Android. You could be running a Raspberry Pi and the code can still work.\n\nThe binary works as follows.\n\nGet MAC address of device Check HTTP Server for remote server ip and port Connect to remote server using tcp Execute commands received over tcp Exit if crash\n\nWith the source codes, we can build it by running go build reverse.go . This output a binary for our current computer.\n\nCopy the binary to the device you want to control remotely and execute it. The HTTPSERVER and ACCESSTOKEN is described in the next section\n\nchmod +x reverse\n\n./reverse HTTPSERVER ACCESSTOKEN\n\nAs the binary may crash, we use a while loop to start it if it does so.\n\nwhile true; do sleep 5; ./reverse HTTPSERVER ACCESSTOKEN; done;\n\nRemote Server\n\nThe remote server job is to listen for connection from the device and sends commands over tcp to the remote device. We have to ensure that the port we want our remote device to connect is opened.\n\nFor this, I spin up a droplet on DigitalOcean and run the command.\n\nnc -lnvp 4444\n\nThat’s it for the remote server.\n\nHTTP Server\n\nThe HTTP Server should be a fixed endpoint. For this, I am using repl.it for a quick http server. Repl.it gives us a fixed url for example https://ReverseShell.username.repl.co. We will then embed that in our remote device. Hence whenever we want to start a reverse shell, we can just change the parameters deviceMAC and remoteServer .\n\nWith all that, we should have a reverse shell on our remote server now."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-access-remotely-deployed-android-devices-edbdb954bff3"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"[]"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-09-29 19:32:13.047000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Golang', 'Tools', 'Tips', 'Android', 'Programming']"}}},{"rowIdx":186030,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Nervous About Class Participation as a New 1L Law Student?"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Photo by Heidi K. Brown\n\nHere Are Ten Tips for Amplifying Our Voices Authentically in the Law Classroom\n\nAre you a new law student about to dive into your 1L year? Are you feeling a bit nervous about speaking in class? Or getting cold-called by a professor?\n\nI was nervous too.\n\nWhen I walked into my first law school classroom at The University of Virginia, my heart was banging so ferociously against my rib cage, I was certain everyone around me could hear it. Even though I had completed all the assigned reading, and had made checklists and flowcharts of the unfamiliar legal concepts, I worried I wouldn’t understand the professors’ questions…or my mind would go blank……or I’d turn beet red (I have a robust blushing response when I’m anxious)…or I’d end up looking totally incompetent in front of my peers. My classmates all seemed to know what was going on already; they dropped Latin phrases like res ipsa loquitur into casual hallway convos.\n\nA couple weeks into my 1L year, it happened. My Civil Procedure professor cold-called me. I had studied the concept of diversity jurisdiction the previous night and knew the rule like the back of my hand: the parties in the lawsuit needed to be citizens of different states and the amount in controversy needed to exceed a particular dollar threshold for the federal court to assume jurisdiction over the case. But the moment my teacher called my name, my blush fired up. My class notes swirled before my eyes like brushstrokes in a Van Gogh painting. My brain left the building. Somehow I mumbled an answer to the professor’s question, mistakenly suggesting Seattle and Portland were located in the same state and thus, the hypothetical court lacked diversity jurisdiction. Classmates chuckled. My professor briskly moved on to someone else. I slunk into my seat, enveloped in a cloud of mortification.\n\nI wish I could go back to that moment (and many others) and have a complete do-over, knowing what I know now about how to wrangle my physical, mental, and emotional stress responses.\n\nHaving grappled with public speaking anxiety throughout law school, a 15+-year career as a litigator in the construction industry, and in the early years of my law teaching job, I’ve devoted the past decade to understanding the mechanics of my performance fears so I can help law students avoid some (hopefully all!) of the angst I experienced. I’ve compiled some tips that might help you settle into your new academic adventure, practice amplifying your voice authentically, and ultimately thrive and flourish throughout your law school experience. Our profession needs your voice.\n\nTip #1: Ditch the Fake Bravado Messages\n\nBefore we even get started, I give you permission to reject all catchy performance-oriented slogans like “fake it till you make it!” or “just do it!” or “feel the fear and do it anyway!” Just, no. I tried for years to fake confidence — in the law classroom and the courtroom. Faking bravado never helped me get to the root of what was going on in my body, brain, and mind when I was nervous. Plus, it was impossible to hide my blush, which at the time felt like a neon sign broadcasting my fright. Instead, I finally decided to dig into the science behind my physical manifestations of fear and learn how to overwrite my accompanying negative mental soundtrack — a process which ultimately helped me tap into my authentic voice. As you step into your first semester of law school, please give yourself permission to reject any cliché messages that push inauthenticity. (Sometimes when well-meaning people foist the “fake it till you make it” advice on me, I smile and politely respond, “Thanks, but that’s not part of my process.”)\n\nTip #2: Cultivate Your Space in the Classroom\n\nIn the first week of the semester, try to get to each classroom early and choose a seat location that makes you feel most comfortable. Think about how close to or far away you want to be from the teacher and physical objects like the doorway and windows; whether you prefer having most of your classmates in front of you or behind you; and whether you’d prefer sitting on the end of a row so at least one side next to you feels pretty open. My personal preference as an introvert in a packed room is to be close to the front of a room (so I can’t see the eyes of a bunch of people behind me). I also like to sit close to one edge of the room so ideally there is no one on one side of me. (Similarly, in exercise classes, I grab mats or stationary bikes in the front side corner!) If your professor uses a seating chart and requires students to select a seat and stick with it for the semester, try to choose a seat that maximizes your calmness (although it’s certainly not the end of the world if you don’t get your preferred choice). You might experiment with a variety of seating choices in different classes in your first semester and make adjustments in second semester based on what location makes you feel most at ease.\n\nTip #3: Rewrite Your Mental Soundtrack\n\nIf you’re like me, when you anticipate how things might go if you’re called on in class, you might hear a less-than-helpful internal soundtrack. Let’s halt these negative mental messages starting on Day One of law school. When I finally decided to dissect my public speaking anxiety to figure it out once-and-for-all, I first needed to listen to, and actually transcribe, my negative mental soundtrack. Every time I anticipated or stepped into a public speaking scenario, my brain replayed unhelpful messages like, “You’re going to look stupid…You’re going to turn red…Everyone is going to wonder what you are doing here…What are you even doing here?!” I finally did a mental reboot: I decided that those negative messages were completely tired and outdated. I replaced them with accurate messages about my current preparedness and worthiness: “You’ve done the hard work. You deserve to be here. Our profession needs your voice. If you reach one person with your message, you’ve done your job today. And that one person can be you. Amplify your authentic voice. You don’t need to sound like everyone else.” The old negative messages may still sneak into our psyche. They’re persistent! But we can start noticing when they do; then we simply press pause and activate our new accurate soundtrack.\n\nTip #4: Acknowledge that the Law is a New Language\n\nIt’s important to realize that the law is a new language and you don’t speak it yet. That’s okay. No one would expect us to speak fluent French, Italian, or Spanish on our first day of a language class. The same thing goes for complex legal concepts and terminology. Look up every word you don’t recognize; keep a glossary in your class notes. (When I was a 21-year-old 1L law student, my classmates kept tossing words around like “notwithstanding,” “ostensibly,” and “normatively” and, most of the time, I literally had no idea what they were talking about.) As you experiment with unfamiliar phrasing, remind yourself that any new language takes time to learn. Break complex concepts into plain English; your legal vocabulary will grow over time.\n\nTip #5: If You’re A Fellow Introvert, Let’s Own Our Quiet Power\n\nWhen I started studying the science behind my need for quiet processing of complex subjects, I finally understood that I’m an introvert (which is different from being shy or socially anxious). Introverts naturally like to vet and test ideas internally before sharing them aloud, while extroverts tend to work their ideas out through engaged dialogue. Thus, extroverted law students likely will leap into classroom conversation more quickly and energetically than introverts. That’s fine; we introverts bring tremendous assets to the legal profession. (If you want to learn more about being an introverted law student or lawyer, please check out my deep-dive into the gifts we bring to the profession in The Introverted Lawyer: A Seven Step Journey Toward Authentically Empowered Advocacy.) As an introvert, I use the gift of writing to prepare me for situations in which I need to accelerate my normal pace of conversing about complex topics. In the first few days (and weeks) of class, try to discern patterns of questioning by each of your professors. Write down the questions they ask other students in class. Do your professors repeat particular words or phrasing? If you don’t know those words or phrases, that’s totally fine; look them up and put them in your growing glossary. As you prepare for each class, try organizing your notes around each professor’s unique questioning pattern. Do they ask about the facts of a precedent case? Do they want students to identify the legal issues posed in a case? Do they inquire about the elements or components of legal rules? Do they press further to explore different public policies (societal concerns) behind each rule? I routinely rely on preparatory notes to accelerate my thought processing time in scenarios where I’m expected to respond faster than I would normally like. You can do the same in the law school classroom. You can even say out loud, “I need to check my notes for a sec. Ok yes, the elements of the rule for negligence are…” or “There seem to be two competing public policies at play here…” Consider color-coding or tabbing your class-prep and in-class notes with different colors or tabs for facts, legal issues, rules, policies, themes, etc. You’ll get faster at retrieving answers to questions by using designations that make sense to you.\n\nTip #6: Conduct a Physical Inventory and…Channel Your Inner Athlete/Performer\n\nFor me, the physical manifestations of performance anxiety have always been tougher to deal with than the mental or emotional aspects. As you anticipate participating in class, take some time to notice what is happening in your body. It took me a long while to realize that when public speaking anxiety swoops in and begins to envelop me, my body immediately reacts by trying to get small. My shoulders cave inward; I cross my arms and legs. It’s as if my body is trying to curl up in a ball and roll right out of the room unnoticed. My body is just doing what it is biologically programmed to do: protect me from what it perceives as a threat. But my natural physical reaction is not-at-all helpful in performance moments. By collapsing my physical frame inward, I am cutting off optimal air, blood, and energy flow. I had to train myself to notice when this happens. Now, when I realize my body is reacting to stress by trying to get small, I make a concerted effort to open my frame back up. I shift my shoulders back and stand or sit in a balanced stance — like an athlete. Both feet on the ground, shoulders back, arms and hands open, spine tall. This is a super-quick recalibration we can do — in the moment — when we are called on in class. We can make this swift physical adjustment, mentally reboot, activate our new soundtrack, refer to our preparatory notes, and start speaking! (Oh, and if you’re an epic blusher like me…I read the best description ever about blushing in author Erika Hilliard’s book, Living Fully With Shyness and Social Anxiety: “To see a blush is to celebrate life’s living…Think of your blush as footprints left by the blood surging into the blood vessels under your skin. They symbolize the fact that life is coursing through you.” Now when I feel a blush coming on (which is often!), I pause and remind myself, “I’m alive! Yay me!” And the blush goes away faster than ever before. Be the blush.)\n\nTip #7: Make a Human Connection with Your Professors\n\nI literally am a law professor, and yet I’m often intimidated by law professors. To amplify our voice authentically in the law school classroom, it helps to realize our professors (and peers) are simply fellow human beings. (And they’re human beings who, like all of us, have been starved of normal human contact over the past 18 months!) Your professors likely have been champing at the bit to get back into the live classroom; they’ve been working on their syllabi, class plans, and assignments all summer; they are excited to meet you. Go to your professors’ office hours. In my opinion, it’s okay for you to say to them — out loud — that you’re a bit nervous to speak in class, but you are fervently doing the reading, and you really want to learn and contribute. I try to encourage law professors to not move on too quickly to someone else if the student they called on is struggling, but instead to help the student stay in the dialogue, focusing on what the student knows and understands from doing the reading. Try talking to your professors about how you can stay in a Socratic dialogue even if you appear nervous in class. And if they follow up and indeed help you through a challenging classroom moment, email or talk to them later, say thank you, and explain how their guidance helped! We are all learning how to be better educators and learners. (Caveat: Some professors who have never experienced public speaking anxiety of this sort, or who heavily default to traditional teaching methods, might well-meaningly give you the “fake it till you make it” advice, or say that classroom dynamics are meant to “mirror the courtroom” so you need to get used to it (or some other less-than-helpful explanation). No worries. If that professor calls on you, do your mental reboot and physical recalibration, and show that you have done the reading, even if that means saying — out loud — “I’m a little nervous but I think you are asking about the history of the rule. According to the Andreas case …”)\n\nTip #8: Experiment with Amplifying Your Voice…Authentically\n\nOur favorite athletes and performers develop step-by-step routines and rituals for practicing sequential tasks in training so when they enter the performance arena, they can activate the same sequence, and let their training take over. We can do the same. Let’s develop a sequence of actions we can practice in environments like non-intimidating classes taught by compassionate educators. You’re going to spend a ton of time doing your assigned reading, so you’re absolutely going to know the answers to some (probably many) of the questions posed in class. Establish a training routine/ritual that you can practice in classroom environments led by approachable professors: (1) do your substantive class prep; (2) activate your mental reboot; (3) recalibrate your physical frame; and (4) raise your hand! Afterwards, reflect on what worked great and what you could adjust a bit for next time. Then celebrate your authentic fortitude. (And please consider thanking those teachers for fostering a classroom culture in which all students can work on amplifying their voices).\n\nTip #9: Activate Other Class Participation Channels\n\nOne silver lining to teaching on Zoom during the 2020–2021 academic year was learning about different channels of classroom participation that afforded quiet students more time to think before being put on the spot (i.e., the “chat” feature”). Even if you are attending in-person classes this year, note all the different participation channels your professors are making available, and use them. Online discussion boards? After-class podium chats? In-class or outside-of-class polls? I obviously don’t want you to over-exhaust yourself, but consider amplifying your voice using different modes of communication. By conversing about legal concepts in writing, you will inevitably gain confidence in eventually speaking about those subjects.\n\nTip #10: Help One Another\n\nEven though people in law school might act like they have it all together, many students are feeling the exact same way you are. Help one another. If you see a student struggling to get through a Socratic dialogue in class, consider (bravely) raising your hand and saying, “[name] made a great point about X. It got me thinking about …” If someone had a hard time in a class dialogue, reach out to them and perhaps talk about working through some of these tips together. If someone awesomely navigated a cold-call, reach out and cheer them on. Help create a community of care. In doing so, you are amplifying your authentic advocacy voice and modeling how to make our profession better."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@heidikristinbrown/nervous-about-class-participation-as-a-new-1l-law-student-df7a6316e785"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Heidi K. Brown']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-08-20 12:02:37.680000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Law Student', 'Public Speaking', 'Law School', 'Wellbeing']"}}},{"rowIdx":186031,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"#Physicians #Burnout: Signs and #Symptoms"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"WHAT ARE THE SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF PHYSICIANS BURNOUT:\n\nAs the demands on time and energy increase, physicians are becoming more exhausted and overwhelmed. The frenetic pace at which medical professionals are expected to practice can drive even the most dedicated and experienced physicians into burnout mode.\n\nThe Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have been studying physician burnout and have identified five primary causes:\n\nTime pressures\n\nChaotic environment\n\nLow control of pace\n\nElectronic Health Record (EHR)\n\nFamily responsibility\n\nThe increased demands on medical professionals results in decreased time spent with patients. This reduces quality of interactions and ultimately, decline in patient care.\n\nThere are only so many responsibilities and tasks one person can attend to during a given day. One of the most important professions, responsible for the care and health needs of the general public is being stretched too thin. Is it any wonder our doctors are getting burned out?\n\nThe average physician treats around 20 patients per day.\n\nConsidering the vast range of symptoms patients present with, the demands of the electronic health record, the business of hospital/practice expectations, and an increasing level of responsibilities within the workday (not to mention personal life), it makes sense that our physicians are making diagnostic mistakes as a result of cognitive exhaustion.\n\nWhat Does Physician Burnout Look Like?\n\nCommon symptoms of physician burnout include emotional exhaustion and detachment, high stress, feeling useless, a sense that work is taking over one’s life and an increase in errors. In a prolonged state these symptoms can lead to depression, anxiety and even suicidal ideation\n\nStatistics indicate that around 54% of physicians report symptoms of burnout and 29% are clinically depressed.\n\nApproximately 300–400 physicians commit suicide yearly. The rate of completed suicides increases exponentially as physicians age, compared to that of the general public.\n\nThis disturbing set of statistics indicate the need for drastic change in the way physicians are expected to practice.\n\nIf we expect our medical professionals to provide consistent, quality care to patients, their wellbeing and life-balance must be prioritized.\n\nThe culture surrounding physician productivity and the extreme demands on health professionals must be challenged by a more ethical system. One in which people come first rather than profits. A healthy physician can provide better care to patients.\n\nBetter care reduces misdiagnoses, poor patient prognosis and malpractice suits.\n\nThe medical profession and their administrators needs to take care of their own; the important work of our doctors depends on it, as does the health of each and every patient they serve.\n\nHow to Meet the Needs of Burned Out Physicians\n\nMedical professionals have been open about their needs to reduce burnout. Requests such as flex schedules, more time to attend to tasks, electronic health record entry and work/home balance are all areas that physicians have identified for systems-level solutions to reduce burnout.\n\nIt is important for physicians to pay attention to their own physical and emotional health. However, the solutions for burnout need to be addressed at the macro-level as well as through individual self-care.\n\nAs the demands of the medical field increase, it is imperative for those in practice to monitor their own wellness. They should advocate for healthier #WorkLifeBalance. Caregivers often underestimate their own needs for self-care, and in the case of physicians, this can have detrimental consequences."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@drteyhousmyth/physicians-burnout-signs-and-symptoms-c5e8ae0d3a24"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Living With Finesse Dr. Teyhou Smyth']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-02-18 10:08:05.117000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Hospital', 'Fatigue', 'Nurse', 'Anxiety', 'Doctors']"}}},{"rowIdx":186032,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"HOW TO OVERCOME STRESS EATING"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"HOW TO OVERCOME STRESS EATING\n\nEmotional eating has been very common nowadays. People stress eat not only when they are stressed but also when they are bored. It often helps people to go through tough times. Binge eating helps people feel better.\n\nStress causes the body to enter fight or flight mode, which triggers the body to act rapidly. Basically, the adrenaline hormones are released as a response to stress which makes people lose appetite but if the stress lasts longer, here is when the process gets opposite, now the body finds comfort in over eating.\n\nKNOW WHAT TRIGGERS YOU\n\nEmotional eating is not only due to stress emotions but it is different for everyone. You must be self-aware about how and when you binge eat. Many people stress eat due to their habits like having a bucket of ice crem after breakup.\n\nIt is more likely a person over eats after a tired long day. And most importantly there are a lot of people who eat due to peer pressure. How can one not eat unhealthily when they are surrounded with friends who eat crap all the time?\n\nSUGARY FOODS FIGHT STRESS\n\nAccording to a research it was found that women are mostly drawn towards stress eating however the men are more prone to drinking and smoking. It is also found in a research people with high cortisol levels gain more weight when stressed. Stress not only causes to over eat but it has a large impact on food choices too. Emotional and physical stress causes intake of foods that are high in fats and sugars.\n\nAfter ingestion, sugary food causes feedback effect in the brain that is responsible for producing stress. So the reason people crave unhealthy foods is because they fight stress and makes people feel better at least for the moment.\n\nPREVENTING STRESS EATING\n\nIt is very important to take notice of your eating habits before it gets out of hand because wrong food choices cause many diseases along with mental, psychological problems. The first things to know are your alternatives. So when you are emotionally triggered you may have good things surrounded you\n\nTry keeping healthy snacks around you\n\nCompletely get rid of sugary and unhealthy snacks\n\nExercise more, as it produces healthy chemicals in the brain\n\nTry talking to a friend or a family member when you feel stressed.\n\nTAKEAWAY\n\nFeeling stress and binge eating is a normal behavior but you must not let that destroy your health. Food is the fuel you need to live a healthy lifestyle. Wrong food decisions may as well destroy your mental wellbeing."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@parihansafdar/how-to-overcome-stress-eating-4ee6ccc3f1b6"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Parihan Safdar']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-24 05:00:40.915000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Health', 'Lifestyle', 'Stress']"}}},{"rowIdx":186033,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Class is in Session: Geography 101 for Fantasy Writers"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"In fantasy, anything is possible.\n\nFloating cities, dragons and mystical beasts, palms that can conjure roaring flames — your fantasy world can be anything and more. Perhaps you’re a fan of fantasy for that reason; you enjoy the lack of logistical restraints. However, even in fantasy, a genre that allows for incredible things, there are certain elements of realism that are necessary to maintain the illusion of your setting’s corporeal existence.\n\nMap-making is a widely expected practice when it comes to fantasy writing; it comes with the territory. It’s by no means necessary to make a map should you not be interested in doing so, but if you do intend to give your readers a physical representation of your world, there are some things you definitely don’t want to get wrong.\n\nFirst thing’s first:\n\nNO COAST TO COAST RIVERS.\n\nIf a river flows from one coast to the other, that’s not a river; it’s more likely to be part of a sea, and the land it’s dividing are two separate masses. Likewise, rivers don’t flow from ocean to ocean; rather, they have a point at which the gather from a high elevation and then flow towards lower elevations. It’s incredibly unlikely that your continent or country is one massive incline that pushes the flow of the river from one side to the other.\n\nOn the same note, because rivers flow downward with the pull of gravity, rivers don’t split; they converge, or join together in order to create a singular, larger stream. Ultimately, a river’s primary goal is get to a larger body of water, like the ocean, and thus it will take the path of least resistance to do so. This means that if two rivers are flowing near one another, one or both of them will divert to whichever path gets them moving downward the fastest.\n\nIn my experience, the best place to start drawing rivers is within mountains. The precipitation — be it rain, melted snow and ice, or a combination of the two — will flow from the mountain down to the lowest point, which will inform not only potential water sources, but also the varying elevations of your land mass.\n\nOn the topic of rivers and bodies of water, it’s also important to note that lakes will usually only have one river that leads off into the ocean. As mentioned before, rivers tend to take the path of least resistance, and thus it’s unlikely for there to be two lowest points instead of just a single stream downward.\n\nOn Mountains:\n\nJust like rivers usually join together, the same applies to mountains — nature’s favorite polygamous points. Mountains will almost never be off by their lonesome, as mountains are created by the shifting of tectonic plates, which means that they’ll always arise in ranges and not as singular peaks.\n\nIf you take a look at mountain ranges on the world map, you’ll see what I mean. From the Himalayas, to the Andes, to good ole Appalachia, Earth’s mountains have formed in clusters; thus, unless explained by some magical or supernatural occurrence, your natural stone skyscrapers should never be solitary.\n\nAnother common mistake when it comes to etching mountains into maps is that many writers will place lush, forested land on both sides of a mountain or mountain range.\n\nThe rain shadow effect explains how mountains will usually have one lush side, while the other is dry and arid. In layman’s terms, dominant wind flow will carry moisture towards the mountain range, usually blowing from the ocean, and that side of the mountains will become ideal for plant growth, while the other side of the range will be blocked off from that moist air and thus become dry.\n\nTypically, the wet side of the mountains will face the coast, but this isn’t always true. The amazon rainforest in South America is on the inland side of the Andes Mountains, while the coastal side appears quite parched.\n\nOn Climate:\n\nThis brings us to the point of climate, and how many writers have a tendency to put vastly different climates far too close together.\n\nA tundra is not going to be directly north of a desert, and a temperate, deciduous forest will not suddenly become a tropical rainforest if you ride a few miles down the road. Even if your world doesn’t abide by the laws of our Earth’s equator, pay attention to how and where climates shift to determine how much distance should reasonably stretch between them.\n\nAgain, if your story contains a magical or perhaps even technological reason opposite climates would be close together, that’s different, but if you’re looking to make your setting as realistic as possible (yes, realism has its place, even in fantasy) it’s important to learn to keep track of these facets of your environment.\n\nOn Character and Setting Logistics:\n\nA character’s physical environment can affect both their temperament and the customs and culture of their region. How your characters experience their environment depends on exactly where they’re settled, and the geography of your setting will dictate that.\n\nThe most common mistake I see in association to this point is too many folks putting large scale settlements or cities in areas with little to no access to water. An immediate source of water is critical for a settlement’s survival. Aside from folks simply needing water to live, an immediate water supply is necessary for a load of other things, too:\n\nYou need irrigation for agriculture, because crops feed hungry mouths, and those hungry mouths belong to the citizens who work to turn a profit both for themselves and the city depending on how they’re taxed — citizens like farmers, who tend to the fields, or the soldiers that protect them. Armies need lots of food, and lots of food requires lots of water, and the more food they make and sell, the more money the city has, and the more money a city has, the bigger it might get, which means more people, which means more hungry mouths to feed, which means a growing need for more food, which means a need for more water.\n\nYa get what I’m saying here?\n\nAccess to food, water, shelter, and other natural resources might not seem like a vital detail for your story, but the reality is those things will drastically affect the quality of your characters’ lives and how the setting around them behaves. If their city is starving and low on food stores, it’s possible there could be an increase in thievery or trouble between citizens. If the noble population is hindering the common folks’ access to clean water, perhaps they’d have a conflict or riots on their hands. The circumstances of the world around your characters will directly influence the plot and how surrounding characters will behave in response to their environment, which is what makes setting details so important.\n\nSpeaking of characters making choices based on where their live, keep in mind that many cities back in the day — should your story be taking place in a past analogue — were not planned out as they are now. Cities wouldn’t fit evenly on a rectangular or geometric grid; rather, the original city would sprawl and spread outward as the population grew, creating a much more chaotic and less orderly map of the city.\n\nIn addition, the placement of citadels and fortresses was strategic. Generally speaking, the primary fortress of a city will be built on higher ground. Higher ground makes invasion and attack more difficult, not to mention high elevation makes for easier aerial views and assaults.\n\nThe goal was to dissuade or delay enemy attack by making it difficult to get to them, which is also why port placement was so crucial. Many fantasy writers jump to place their port cities on a long, open coastline, but no founder worth their salt would do such a thing.\n\nPorts are far more likely to be positioned closer inland within a bay or an inlet — somewhere that doesn’t make for easy attack by sea. In addition to whatever defenses might’ve been built and placed out in the waters off the shore to discourage naval attack, the land around the port provides a bit more natural protection and less opportunity for a large number of ships to reach the port quickly.\n\nOn Scale:\n\nAs far as biggest new map-making mistakes go, I’d say the most frequent one I see (other than rivers) is trouble with scale. Obviously, it’s difficult to determine exactly how big a nonexistent land mass is, but no matter how big you decide to make your city, country, or continent, the key to realism in your setting is consistency.\n\nUse real world references and decide on a scale. For the most part, it can arbitrary at first, but whatever scale you choose for your map needs to remain a constant, especially if characters in your story will be traveling long distances. Otherwise, the readers might pick up on the discrepancies and feel as though they traversed similar stretches more quickly or more slowly depending on what the plot calls for.\n\nMy advice? Decide on a real-world equivalent for distances between your key cities and locations. Use more populated areas for metropolises and kingdoms and farm lands or low-population regions for the more sparse places in your setting. If you are in fact creating an analog of the past, perhaps take some time to research the population of certain areas around the period closest to the one you’re emulating to get a better estimate of city size and density.\n\nOf course, most fantasy writers — myself included — aren’t also geologists, but in the age of the internet, information about how the natural world works is much more easily accessible. We’re very fortunate to have so much knowledge at our finger tips; why not put it to good use?\n\nThat said though, don’t feel obligated to create some massive world if that’s not necessary for your story. You don’t have to design a map to go with your fantasy story if that’s not something you’re interested in, but if it is, also remember that you don’t have to worldbuild anything that isn’t directly tied with the story. If your characters will only be visiting two places, it’s completely acceptable to only worldbuild those two places and forego anything that isn’t relevant.\n\nAll in all, worldbuilding is a super fun and engaging way to practice a slightly different element of creativity amidst the writing process. It’s something I love to do — probably a little too much — and I look forward to hearing all about your worlds in the future."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@atlasmodiah/class-is-in-session-geography-101-for-fantasy-writers-b09a940752e9"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Atlas Sallow']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-18 19:03:03.725000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Fantasy Writing', 'Maps', 'Worldbuilding', 'Fantasy', 'Writing Tips']"}}},{"rowIdx":186034,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Why So Many People Have to Travel for IVF Treatment"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"I am not a numbers person, but let’s have some fun with math. Take one 39-year-old single woman, add in eight unsuccessful intrauterine insemination treatments, deduct $12,000 in savings, insert two recommendations for IVF, factor in a 16 percent chance for success and where does that land you? At the corner of desperate and impoverished, which for me, was a block away from the Dairy Queen and down the street from a McDonald’s.\n\nIt was a lonely, expensive, and high caloric corner.\n\nMy Indianapolis-based fertility clinic had just told me that with my age and my response to treatment it was time to get aggressive. Aggressive meant IVF and a price tag of upward of $21,000 for just one cycle of treatment and zero guarantee of me having a baby. Unfortunately, insurance was no help. According to Resolve: The National Infertility Association, there are only 17 states in the nation that require coverage for fertility treatments, and Indiana is not one of them.\n\nMy only hope of starting a family would be an Uber ride somewhere far far away. Okay, maybe it wasn’t really an Uber, but it was a pretty long car ride in a Honda Accord.\n\nOnce I had come to terms with my IVF diagnosis, and the sticker shock of local treatment, I began to look for hope outside of my own backyard. Through the power of social media and Google, I began to learn of a dedicated and mighty tribe of patients who were traveling cross-country for IVF. A good number of these travelers had ventured to New York to the Syracuse location of CNY Fertility, which promotes “making priceless affordable.” With a single session of IVF starting at $3,900, CNY was offering the same services I had been quoted in Indy for a fraction of the cost. My mind was blown. After a few phone calls with CNY physicians and reference checks with other Indiana-based travel patients, I too signed on to be a long-distance patient of CNY Fertility, which keeps prices low as a personal choice.\n\nAs a road warrior patient, I underwent three IVF cycles, refinanced one house, drove over 6,440 miles, became a part-time Uber driver, missed roughly 10 days of work, made three trips to Niagara Falls, underwent weekly acupuncture, injected myself with enough needles to fill three large detergent bottles, yet spent far little to what I would have spent had I sought treatment in Indiana.\n\nReasons Why Patients Travel for IVF Treatment\n\nTruth is, I was not and am not the only Accord on the baby making highway. Hopefuls across the U.S. are jumping into planes, trains, and cars for the chance to try for a baby without sacrificing care or every dollar they have earned.\n\nAccording to Josef Woodman, CEO of Patients Beyond Borders, an organization dedicated to researching quality international health care, a little less than 5 percent of U.S. medical travelers are leaving the country for reproductive care and are finding significant savings by going the distance. “American patients can save 30–65 percent by crossing borders for fertility treatment, at clinics, such as Barbados Fertility Center (Barbados); BNH Hospital (Thailand); Centro Fecundar (Costa Rica); LIV Fertility Center (Mexico),” says Woodman.\n\nStateside, medical tourism is also on the rise, specifically at clinics which offer similar prices to the clinics found abroad with the added convenience and security of being treated at a U.S.-based clinic. In recent years, CNY Fertility has seen a remarkable surge in the travel patient sector, according to William Kiltz, CNY Fertility’s communications director. “In 2015, about 20 percent of our patients came from out of state,” says Kiltz. “Today over 50 percent are out of state and 5 percent come internationally. We have people who travel from Canada, India, the Philippines, Iran.”\n\nAside from the cost savings, Kiltz attributes this growth to a couple of key factors. “We accept a lot of people that are turned away from other clinics for being too old, having a high BMI, or low AMH levels. People similarly seek us out for challenging cases involving repetitive IVF failures and recurrent pregnancy loss because of our expertise in reproductive immunology.”\n\nDo Your Homework On a Clinic Beforehand\n\nBut keep in mind: While the cost savings and access to high quality care is quite attractive for many patients, it isn’t necessarily the right fit for every patient. Traveling brings an added bit of complexity to an already delicate situation. Before packing your bags, Woodman recommends doing your due diligence first. “Start researching the facility, the doctor, and the staff,” he says.\n\nAnd always make sure to dig deeper. Read through patient reviews and look for evidence of legal complaints. “If you see one complaint, maybe not a concern, but if you see 20 that might be a problem,” says Woodman. If planning to travel internationally for treatment, take a look to see if the website is in English (if it’s not, that can indicate you’ll have bad communication) and see if the clinic caters to international patients by offering things like airport transport and partnerships for accommodations.\n\nFor me, the math was never simple, but it was reproductive. Add up all the miles, all the failed pregnancy tests, all the needles, each doctors visit, every tear. They all came together and equaled one healthy 9-pound, 13-ounce baby boy, and that is all that math that mattered."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@angelahatem/why-so-many-people-have-to-travel-for-ivf-treatment-a7f24a0f83b0"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Angela Hatem']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-01-09 18:07:44.667000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Single Moms', 'Health', 'Baby', 'Ivf']"}}},{"rowIdx":186035,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"#ClimateFinanceNG: Bridging the Investment Gap For Nationally Determined Contributions (#NDCs) — By Dr. Jubril Adeojo"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"What are the inhibiting barriers and apparent disconnect between the purported available or required finance and the actual finance invested in sustainable development?\n\nI believe part of the supposed barriers to funding, range from the cost of some green technology assets, to the perception that investment in climate actions is risky, the corporate governance structure of companies. Time period in deployment of some Renewables, Short term ROI focus of investors and the current credit line structure of banks. All these most especially my last point to a very large extent are the disconnect in SDGs. Onewattsolar, an investee Company of SMefunds. They have a tech solution where business and individuals pay for the energy they consume only. Energy users do not need to won the solar assset, so they pay for the energy they consume.\n\nDo you think a far more coordinated effort is required to encourage investments in long-term and sustainable landscape-scale initiatives?\n\nCertainly, a coordinated effort needs to be encouraged. Financial institution, banks need to mainstream climate change into their lines of credit. We need to understand that right now topping the chart of all types of risk is the climate risk. How do you function as a bank when flood affects their investments or how do we investment in food production when drought is spreading or flood destroys crops.\n\nThe issue is, banks are not looking at the climate risk as investment strategy. Currently, we are advising AFDB on new guidelines to mainstream climate change into lines of credit released to African banks.\n\nThis will support Financial Institutions to identify and adopt innovative practice on sustainable financing measures to help sustainable businesses.\n\nWe are facing uncharted territory that requires taking unprecedented action to recalibrate globally towards a low-carbon economy. How do we unlock private finance as a solution to achieving change?\n\nIndeed scary times. To unlock private financing, not just unlocking but unlocking at massive scale. A. Increase transparency,- investors should readily know their exposure to carbon risk as well as their carbon impacts. The Govt at all levels should make it mandatory for companies to disclose their carbon risks and impacts. B. Redirect savings to investing in sustainable solution (green bonds): to achieve a low carbon economy fast enough we all need to get involved. Considering the low interest rate we have currently in Nigeria, how savings should be channelled to investing in sustainable solutions that will give you good return and also move us closer to a low-carbon economy.\n\nGovernment participation at all levels- all levels should invest in low carbon infrastructures. For instance local govt and state govts can issue a green bond in order to develop low-carbon infrastructurea to accelerate low carbon economy. We shouldn’t assume that people understand climate change. Continuous discussions like this so that people can understand climate change and its effect. Govt could introduce a label system that would indicate the carbon risk and impact. Heavy Sanctions: Governments should impose heavy sanctions on companies contributing to the environmental degradation and emissions. There should also be in place high carbon taxes. Reward those complying.\n\nThe world is in a transition phase propelled by ensuring global average temperatures remain below 2°C above pre-industrial levels amidst a rising population. Can sector investment help to achieve a sustainable future?\n\nYes. Investors need to use their understanding of the climate change we face now as pragmatic guide to analyse the manner in which they are investing. I believe using the principles of sustainability to guide investment makes business sense. It is a known fact, scientifically proven that if we continue to burn fossil fuels which aggravates climate change, economic activities will be utterly interrupted.\n\nCurrent floods and extreme weather should serve as warning of things to come. So investors should blink an eye before investing in the sector. This is a global challenge; I would say it is achievable but the way in which financial markets, Investors respond will be a great enabler to achieving the set target\n\nThere is a long-standing awareness dat funding for environmental & climate efforts is scarce. However, there is a growing discourse claiming the availability of trillions of dollars to finance d global envtal agenda? What’re ur thoughts on this?\n\nIt was Bill gates who said that to combat and defeat climate change we have to deploy green technologies are massive scale. Innovative ways of deploying capital at massive scale is equally paramount to achieve the set target.Saying there are trillions available and its sitting in the bank won’t move us nowhere. That’s just what I think. The trillion should be deployed to achieve the said global environmental agenda via innovativ financing models\n\nWhat is your recommendation for the government in bridging the investment gap for Nationally Determined Contributions (#NDCs)\n\nThere should be heavy sanctions and high carbon taxes for business who emit. B. Do more of implementing mitigation measures that will promote low carbon economy as well as sustainable and high economic growth. Continue to enhance national capacity to adapt to climate change. D Invest heavily in climate change related science, technology and R&D that will enable the country participate in ground breaking scientific and technological innovations Significantly increase public consciousness/awareness on climate issues. F Involve private sector participation in addressing the challenges of climate change with possible tax incentive. Strengthen the national institutions to establish a highly functional framework for climate change governance. Enforcement of environmental laws is the vaccination needed now to protect us from dire effects of climate change on our lives and business. SDG13Climate action is the most strategic because the success of other goals depend on it.\n\nThis is a tweet-chat series on #ClimateWednesday — #ClimateFinanceNG"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/climatewed/climatefinanceng-bridging-the-investment-gap-for-nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs-6221f56932f1"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Iccdi Africa']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-10-18 16:20:08.252000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Investment', 'Ndc', 'Finance', 'Climate Change', 'Renewable Energy']"}}},{"rowIdx":186036,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"User Experience as a Process"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"When we talk about user experience, we mostly think about mobile applications, websites and product design. Two days ago I was with my team we were discussing that how we can improve our team work and coordination within team. We discussed a lot of working process, for example six sigma, agile, waterfall and many more. But what I was thinking that most of us forget or don't know about User Experince.\n\nI think every individual or company who providing their services or selling their products to user or even they are supervising people, everybody needs to lear and understand user experience as a process within their working capacity. “ User experience is god of all working processes”\n\nIf a marketing manger is thinking about new marketing strategies I think first of all he/her has to learn user experience then he/her can make better strategies. Even a CEO or Head needs to learn user experience because he /her supervising some people. He needs to understand problems of people who are working under him/her.\n\nWhat I am trying to say that we have to understand the importance of user experience in our daily life. If I am not wrong whole world is user experience, everyone is user of everyone."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/nyc-design/user-experience-as-a-process-5b92f683e59f"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Salman Habib']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-04-22 14:29:53.430000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['User Experience', 'User Research', 'Psychology', 'New York', 'UX']"}}},{"rowIdx":186037,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Understanding New Location Permission Changes in iOS 13"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"1. “Allow Once”\n\nPrior to iOS 13, there were two location permissions: When In Use (foreground) and Always (background). iOS 13 introduces a third option: Allow Once . The “Allow Once” option is considered a temporary authorization, with the app prompting again the next time it’s opened. This option allows users to grant When In Use for a single session:\n\nAfter the session ends, you must request When In Use again. If a user who previously granted When In Use or Always upgrades to iOS 13, they will be grandfathered into that authorization status after upgrading. When you request location permission trough CLLocationManager , the user will see this popup with three choices:\n\nShare the location just once with the app and ask again Share the location with the app when the app is in use Don’t share location with the app at all\n\nIf the user taps option 1: “Allow once”, your app will be notified that the CLAuthorizationStatus changed to authorizedWhenInUse . Just as you’re used to in older iOS version when you get a permanent permission. It is now allowed for your app to start requesting locations — no code changes necessary.\n\nUsers can jump out and back into their app, and you will still have location permission. It’s only after a (longer) period of inactivity that iOS will revoke the permission and turn the CLAuthorizationStatus back to notDetermined . Your CLLocationManagerDelegate will get notified of the change in location permission when the app is back in the foreground so the UI can be updated accordingly.\n\nThis makes the new ‘allow once’ feature a nice privacy improvement for users. It also lowers the bar for users to give the location features in your app a try and decide later whether to grant it a more permanent permission."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/better-programming/understanding-new-location-permission-changes-in-ios-13-6c34dc5f54da"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Tejeshwar Singh Gill']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-10-18 05:34:30.167000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Location', 'Ios 13', 'iOS App Development', 'iOS', 'Gps']"}}},{"rowIdx":186038,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"A Path Through Polarization"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"​December 2020\n\nRecently I was approached by an HR professional who was curious about how the vision work that we do in Genysys might address the polarization of relationships in the workplace. The environment of polarization continues to escalate in today’s world. His question reminded me of a comment of a participant in an envisioning workshop that I facilitated almost ten years ago. This workshop was for members of a historical society that was deeply divided over what to do with a very unique asset. They had been given a castle in the middle of the local community. A majority of the society members didn’t want to have anything to do with the castle.\n\n​\n\nAfter the workshop one of the participants, who represented the majority of those who wanted nothing to do with the castle, came up to me and after thanking me for being willing to facilitate this workshop in such a contentious environment, made the following comment: “The common vision that we were able to develop today about the future of the castle has brought needed healing to our society.”​\n\n​\n\nUpon reflection, I believe that the key to developing some healing and common ground was first to identify the common questions that all of the participants had about the future of the castle beyond the present reality. As they thought beyond five years, which is where we in Genysys begin, it was amazing the common ground in interests, hopes, and concerns that began to emerge. When the results of the visioning exercise around the questions of the long-term future of the castle began to be shared the participants began to see that they often had much more in common about the future than they ever thought possible. As one participant indicated, “Eighty percent of what we shared today is common and/or complementary, our problem was that we had, up to now, no forum or way to discover our common ground.”\n\n​\n\nHere are two questions that might help in discovering common ground in an environment of polarized differences:\n\n​\n\nWhat common questions do we, in any group of which we are a part (work, family, community, church, etc.), have about our future beyond five years? How does each participant answer these questions as they look to that year of focus beyond five years?\n\n​\n\nThe common and complementary responses to those answers can provide a bridge of hope for a common and positive future for those involved as it was for the historical society and its castle."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/the-consultant-school/a-path-through-polarization-e8753a1b7345"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Ray Rood The Genysys Group']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-22 21:27:11.729000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Consulting', 'Organizational Culture', 'Polarization', 'Ending Polarization']"}}},{"rowIdx":186039,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"World Environment Day 2021: Revivify the Planet."},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"The Earth’s average temperature is increasing. Desert encroachment is intensifying. Polar ice melting is accentuating. The climate is capricious. Plant and animal life are going extinct and the ecosystem is at a tipping point. The beautiful planet Earth — the only planet in the ecosystem that can support life is sitting on a keg of gun powder, waiting for that last damage before it becomes antiquated.\n\nMan is in the midst of all of this chaos, ironically he has contributed immensely to its occurrence. Man’s activities on Earth may have been of great benefits but the indiscriminate cutting of trees, burning of fossil fuel, air, water and land pollution, plastic dumping in the ocean and his desultory hunting of wildlife is causing serious imbalances in the Earth system and there is a need to correct this. In light of this, World Environment Day 2021 is aimed at resuscitating the planet and its theme is Ecosystem Restoration.\n\nThere is a dire need to correct all the wrongs that have been done to our dear planet. Global warming and climate change would cause much more problems than all our activities combined can bring about. To revivify the ecosystem, conscious efforts need to be taken with alacrity to bring about quick positive changes.\n\nPlastic pollution has become a serious threat to aquatic life and an eyesore on land. They are not biodegradable and when they get to landfills they just remain there causing more pollution and preventing plant growth. In the water bodies they are broken into tiny pieces which are taken in by aquatic creatures such as fishes, turtles, porpoise etc and these driblets of plastics remains inside them which may lead to their death or its transfer through a process known as biomagnification. We cannot stop the use of plastics abruptly, but to fight plastic pollution, we need to reduce, reuse and recycle plastics.\n\nWe reduce the amount of plastics at our disposal by reusing the ones we already have. By so doing, the demand of plastics are drastically reduced. There is also a need for communal sensitization on the use of plastics and its impact on the environment. Everyone has a role to play. In cases whereby we cannot reuse, we recycle. Less than 30% of plastics ever produced have been recycled, the rest end up in landfills and water bodies. The recycling of plastics would be of tremendous benefits not just to man but to the Earth in general.\n\nThe environment is no one’s property to destroy; it is everyone’s responsibility to protect. Let’s restore the ecosystem, take responsibility and build back better.\n\n#WorldEnvironmentDay2021 #EcosystemRestoration #ReduceReuseRecycle #PlanetFirst #SaveEarth #ReviveEarth #Recycle #StepUpGreen #Environmentalist #TakeResponsibility #NoPlanetB\n\n8th June, 2021\n\nImoikor Joshua"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@stepupgreen/world-environment-day-2021-revivify-the-planet-50ed23545b2c"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Step-Up Green Climate Warriors Initiative']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-06-08 14:15:22.258000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Cleanup', 'Recycling', 'Plastic Pollution', 'Climate Change', 'World Environment Day']"}}},{"rowIdx":186040,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Latest picks: What does GPT-3 mean for AI?"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Get this newsletter By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.\n\nCheck your inbox\n\nMedium sent you an email at to complete your subscription."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://towardsdatascience.com/latest-picks-what-does-gpt-3-mean-for-ai-fb01ae90116c"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Tds Editors']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-10-15 13:27:14.177000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['The Daily Pick']"}}},{"rowIdx":186041,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"TLX contract upgrade"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Dear All,\n\nThe anticipated TLX token contract upgrade has been completed. We have successfully pushed our new custodial contract model to the Ethereum mainnet, which occured at block 6177787. The new contract address is 0xb3616550abc8af79c7a5902def9efa3bc9a95200.\n\nThe upgraded tokens have been distributed to the old TLX holders according to the snapshot taken at block 6160000. Thus, the old TLX tokens are now null and void. You may want to use the “burn” method of the old contract to dispose of your old tokens to prevent future confusion. Additionally, we are reaching out all of the token directories — including etherscan.io — to make sure our new contract information is accurately reflected.\n\nPlease note that, from now on, the TLX markets at Yobit are totally irrelevant to the actual token, and your TLX balance at Yobit does not represent any right with respect to the TeleX AI project. We encourage those who are interested in trading the token to use the decentralized exchange ForkDelta. You may reach the TLX/ETH market at ForkDelta at market.telexai.com.\n\nIf you think there is an error with the new TLX token distribution, please reach us at info@telexai.com. The 20th of October 2018 is the deadline for us to accept any dispute regarding the TLX balances. After that date, no refund, swap, or any other change-of-balance request will be considered.\n\nBest,\n\nTeleX AI Team"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/telexai/tlx-contract-upgrade-ab504cd8dad3"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Can Soysal']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2018-08-20 00:29:22.863000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Telex Ai', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Telegram', 'Blockchain']"}}},{"rowIdx":186042,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Short Story Sunday: The (crazy) Woman"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"The (crazy) Woman\n\nFeeling lost and confused is starting to become abnormally comfortable. Living a life of constant change isn’t what I imagined at this point in my life but it’s definitely what I chose. This unfortunate feeling seeps into my system from time to time and I resort to an activity that I know best: Roaming around Los Angeles on foot looking for clarity.\n\nIt’ about 11pm and I just started heading towards a grocery store more known for it’s people than produce. It’s called Ralphs but I found out that everyone calls it “Rock and Roll” Ralphs, why? No Idea. But, I’m making my steps towards Rock and Roll Ralphs and I’m feeling a major mental block with work. Currently I have a writing deadline, I’m supposed to have a writing sample submitted to someone in two days, and in about an hour when it reaches 12am it will be one day.\n\nI’m confused on a few levels. First: “What the Hell am I going to write?” Second: “I’ve had one month to write this, I can’t think of anything, what the hell is wrong with me?” Third: “What if this writers block never leaves? What if my ideas are just somehow gone?”\n\nThe typical questions about my placement in this world begin to arise, I try and tell myself to stop looking so much into things but I can’t help it. I start wondering, what does it say about me that I analyze everything? Then — Shit, what does it say about me that I analyze me analyzing everything? I’m starting to fear that I’m the guy who just can’t get things done because I’m too busy thinking about doing it.\n\nThis walk leads me no choice, it leads me right into the very busy Ralphs grocery store to sit and people watch. If there’s one thing I need right now it’s to sit and make shallow assessments of people. I wish I didn’t have these thoughts and make these assessments sometimes but I’m human, it happens.\n\nAs I walk in I notice the groups of stereotypes. I see the husband and wives, the boyfriends and girlfriends, the single women buying vodka already drunk walking around the store, the single men trying to talk to the single ladies buying vodka. The Ralphs is a gathering of every culture in Los Angeles, and fortunately it has a seating area off to the side by a coffee bean. I’m planning to sit and just let my thoughts go, I’m about 30 seconds away from people watching mode when a piece of luggage is rolled next to me.\n\nThe luggage belongs to an older woman, probably about 65 years old, instantly I smell something sour and notice that her clothes haven’t been washed in who knows how long. The woman has a perpetual deer in headlight look, she may have had some eye surgery at some point in her life but I doubt it. She’s got some dirt scattered on her, I checked her hands and fingernails to see if they were clean — they weren’t. But, something was in her hands, a US Weekly magazine (which consists of all the Hollywood gossip) my mystery woman was clearly homeless, and she was standing looking at me.\n\nShe said:\n\n“Are you waiting for someone?”\n\nShould I lie? Should I tell her I am so I don’t get caught in this conversation?\n\n“No, I’m just sitting here…. I’m Josh”\n\n“I’m Beth.”\n\nIt was at that moment without hesitation my Midwestern roots popped in and I heard my dad’s voice echo in my head — Always extend yourself and shake someone’s hand when you meet them.\n\nI stood up and extended my hand.\n\n“Pleasure to meet you”\n\nI felt the dryness of her hand hit mine, it felt like I was shaking dirt. I instantly knew I had to wash my hands. I’m naturally a person who likes to use my hands to think, which means I touch my face a lot. I really need to wash my hands, but I can’t be rude so I’ll do it later… just don’t touch your face.\n\nBeth sat down in the unoccupied space next to me plopped her magazine on the table and said:\n\n“I knew he was gay.”\n\n“…What’s that?”\n\n“I knew he was gay. Ricky Martin, I knew it.”\n\n“Oh. (fake smile) Okay”\n\n“My girlfriend was the one who injected the blood into him.”\n\nThis woman is starting to fill the shoes of the stigma she carries. Unfortunately many of us have encountered unfortunate individuals who at some point in their lives start losing touch with a certain reality. Which isn’t a bad thing, because something tells me this woman lives in her own reality, and that may be a different place than mine… good or bad.\n\n“Blood? What?”\n\n“You know the man’s blood into his penis. To make him homosexual.”\n\nWHAT!?\n\nI just nodded and gave a half -hearted smile because quite frankly I didn’t know what she was talking about. Although I’m about 250 percent certain one’s sexual preference isn’t determined by blood being injected into their reproductive organs I let her keep talking about her US weekly. She proceeded to make assessments about random celebrities and then began to discuss her former life as an actress. Apparently Beth had worked in a few films in her life and now she’s still waiting for her big break.\n\nBeth discussing her former life made my head wander. How can I not think my fate will take her road at some point? It sounded like she and was chasing a dream, a dream that never stopped or maybe never happened. There is something I find admirable about chasing what you actually want to do, probably because I’m currently doing it. But, more so because I like the idea doing what you want to do, and once you attain your dream it’s instantaneously your reality, and for me that’s what makes life exciting.\n\nBeth is all over the place now talking, I should have been paying better attention but I wasn’t. I clicked my head back into gear and started to listen to her talk again, I thought I would engage for the sake of being rude.\n\n“So, what are you doing here?”\n\n“Waiting to cook.”\n\n“Oh, okay.”\n\n“I love cooking, and I’m waiting for them to bring the organic flour, not that generic shit.”\n\n“I didn’t know flour could be generic.”\n\n“Flour can be anything.”\n\nNot sure if her comment just then was insightful or completely nuts but I nodded as if I knew exactly what she was talking about.\n\n“You know, there’s a place called Whole Foods just down the street, I think all there stuff is organic, maybe they have the stuff that’s not so generic.”\n\n“No! It’s from here. They told me they’d have it from here but their shipment isn’t in yet.”\n\nI’m uncomfortable and I want to go. My Mr. Nice guy talk to this woman routine is dried up, I felt sorry for this woman but now I feel sorry for myself for even being here. In some odd way I think I was hoping this woman would create inspiration for me to write later on but actually she’s created fear. I’m planning my escape.\n\n“Well, I think, I uh — “\n\n“Will you look and tell me if there is flour?”\n\n“What’s that?”\n\n“Organic flour, I want organic flour. I need the flour, I need it for my daughter, and she likes the organic flour. It’s right over there in aisle 7 or 8.”\n\nI feel bad for Beth.\n\n“Sure, but I need to get going after, is that okay?”\n\nNot sure why I just asked her if it was okay for me to leave but screw it, I’ll find this organic flour and be on my way. Maybe I should do some more walking and not get stuck sitting anywhere. Maybe I should just go home and try to write and wash my hands. One way or another, I need to find this woman some flour.\n\nI stood up and smiled at Beth and started to make my way to look for some organic flour. As I did I immediately noticed the security guard begin to walk over towards me. Security and cops always make me feel like I’m up to no good, as he makes his way to me I subconsciously put on my annoyed face so he won’t talk to me. But, he talks to me.\n\n“Excuse me man.”\n\nI’m looking back at a harmless 20 something security guard in a grocery store, he’s staring back at me like he knows more than me.\n\n“Yeah.”\n\n“Hey, that woman over there, she’s nuts man, she’s crazy.”\n\n“Okay.”\n\n“The one you’re talking to man.”\n\n“No I know who you meant, I’m just looking for something for her.”\n\n“I know, she always comes in here, she doesn’t buy anything. Man, I’m telling you she’s crazy man, crazy. I always kick her out, but she just keeps coming back in.”\n\nThat word crazy stuck out. I admittedly also think this woman is crazy but to hear it from this guy made it sound worse for some reason. Crazy carries a connotation of… well… crazy. It’s a word that get’s loosely tossed around and could potentially actually tell you if someone is crazy or not.\n\n“Well, let me just find something for her.”\n\n“Is it about that flour she wants? We don’t have it, that’s what she’s always talking about, some special flour for some cookies or some shit.”\n\n“Listen man, I’m just going to get going okay.”\n\n“Can you just tell her we don’t have it, tell her we never have it?”\n\nThis is just weird now. I walk back to my lady who, I can tell has been eyeing me like I’m in the wilderness. I tell her that they don’t have organic flour, even though I already think flour is organic. She tells me it has to SAY it’s organic, and they never say organic flour.\n\nWhatever.\n\n“Hey, I’m going to get going, good luck, I have to get home.”\n\nAs I extended my hand again (MAKE SURE I WASH MY HANDS!) she didn’t extend back. Apparently she knew I had a conversation with the security guard:\n\n“What did the rent a cop say to you?”\n\n“Oh, uh, nothing.”\n\n“I know he thinks I’m crazy, he tells me I’m crazy and I need to go home, but I’m not crazy, I don’t think I’m crazy. Do you think I’m crazy?”\n\nIf there is one thing I have learned in my life it’s to never tell a WOMAN that she’s crazy. I don’t care who the woman is, you never tell them they are crazy…. Especially one’s you’re dating… But that’s beside the point. I don’t think you can tell a homeless woman she is crazy because who knows what will happen, she has nothing to lose.\n\n“I don’t think you’re crazy.”\n\n“Liar!”\n\nWoah! Her yell caught me off guard.\n\n“Okay good luck Beth.”\n\nAs I started to make my way out she stung me with something, whether or not it she meant it when she said it I thought about it the entire walk home.\n\n“They told me they would have the organic flour! And now they don’t! I’m not the crazy one. I’m trying to make something perfect, something that requires the perfect flour, okay! I’m not crazy, I just want what they told me they would have, this is what I want, I want the perfect flour.”\n\nThen she mumbled…\n\n“People don’t understand that passion and crazy are the same thing, and I want to cook all night. I want perfect flour.”\n\nAnd that was it, that’s what led me to the door. That seemingly odd conversation to an even odder previous set of events had me walking at a fast pace to get home, I knew exactly what I was going to write.\n\nI walked into my house quickly and quietly and headed straight for the computer. I knew I should go and give my girlfriend a kiss and let her know I’m home but I needed to type. I had been gone for almost 2 hours and I need to turn in a story to use as a sample. I began typing at a very rapid pace. It was as if my walk of clarity worked even though I didn’t do much walking, I immediately typed the title:\n\nAdventures of Ingredients\n\nIt was about a woman banished to a grocery store, only able to leave when the perfect ingredients come in, and she has to cook her way out.\n\nSounds cheesy yes, but it was somewhat of a child adventure. Most importantly I was flowing with ideas. Before I knew it, it was 3:47am and I’m not too sure I had moved from the computer. I heard the bedroom door open and footsteps coming to me. It was my girlfriend.\n\nI imagine that when she opened the door only to see the light of my monitor blasting off my face I may have looked like a mad scientist. She said:\n\n“Babe, what are you doing? Come to bed.”\n\n“I can’t, I can’t I need to finish this writing, I’m almost there.”\n\n“How much longer?”\n\n“Not sure? Maybe a few hours?”\n\n“You’re crazy babe, just come to bed when you can.”\n\nMy girlfriend meant no harm but little did she know she used the keyword of the night — CRAZY. As she headed back to the bedroom I wanted to yell to her that I’m not crazy I’m just passionate about this and it needs to be perfect, I need to get it done. My perfect ingredients are coming together to make my story and I need to utilize them.\n\nWhether or not Beth knew it she really got to me with those final comments:\n\n“People don’t understand that passion and crazy are the same thing, and I want to cook all night. I want perfect flour.”\n\nSure, the context sounded completely ridiculous but I get it. The store told her she would have exactly what she needed and now she’s waiting it out, is she really that crazy? Is she crazy to want that perfect thing? Is her craziness what got her to that position in the first place?\n\nMy girlfriend gave me a moment to let this all sink in. With some sort of passion there is most definitely some sort of crazy. These two words are holding hands as far as I’m concerned and this is in every area of life …love…work…family’s…emotionally…physically… sport…the list goes on.\n\nI don’t know where this leads me and I certainly hope one day I’m not roaming into Ralphs for perfect food, but I do know that my passion to do what I want is not going to go away, and I’m not sure where that will lead. I’m pretty sure this lives in all of us, and the more we express our crazy the more we express our passions."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/joshhallman/short-story-sunday-the-crazy-woman-b27941066864"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Josh Hallman']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2016-06-12 03:03:16.444000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Short Story', 'Stories', 'Woman', 'Sunday', 'Writing']"}}},{"rowIdx":186043,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Productizing Your Design System"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"This article is the second of a three-part series that takes a deep dive through Workday’s experience of developing, productizing, and eventually releasing their design system out into the open. Check out Part I, Design Systems are Everybody’s Business.\n\nEmbrace your complexity\n\nDesign systems are the industry secret to scaling enterprise user experiences. Depending on your scale and complexity, we believe that a design system can range from a simple sticker sheet to a fully matured product. At Workday, we’ve made the differentiating decision to treat our design system as a product.\n\nSince the inception of our design system three years ago, Workday has grown tremendously. We now have over 12,000 workmates and hundreds of unique product applications, all working to support customers who have anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of their own employees. To call our ecosystem complex would be an understatement.\n\nThe Workday Canvas Design System was built to fully embrace our scale and complexity. It has evolved to operate like a standalone product, allowing it to do what design systems do best — empower users to efficiently create consistent, high-quality user experiences.\n\nIn this article, we open up about how our design system became a “product for products” and what that means to us as designers. We realize there’s no such thing as “one size fits all” in the world of enterprise design systems, but we hope our perspective and learnings can shed light on the struggles and successes of productizing your design system.\n\nTreat your design system like a design problem\n\nAlthough it seems obvious now, one of the trickiest parts about designing systems in the enterprise space is distinguishing and prioritizing all the users and stakeholders impacted by your system. Unlike teams focusing on a specific product or user, the users of our design system are widespread. We identified a range of user groups, such as an employee using Workday, a professional working in Workday, an internal developer building Workday, or an external developer creating a unique application outside of Workday.\n\nOne way our team identified and prioritized our most valuable user groups was through a stakeholder mapping activity. As a team, we listed every role, team, and organization that is either impacted by Workday Canvas or has the ability to influence the system. Through this exercise, we discovered that designers and developers are our most valuable user groups. We then began to conduct qualitative and quantitative research with these groups to understand more about the parts of our system that were working for them and the parts that weren’t.\n\nCanvas Stakeholder Map\n\nThis research created a repository of insights around design system-specific themes like communication, documentation, and education. These insights now directly inform our priorities. They ground us when we lose focus or question our purpose, or when we receive ad-hoc requests outside the defined scope of our team.\n\nTakeaways:\n\nApproach your design system like a human-centered design problem.\n\nTry a stakeholder mapping exercise to determine who your primary users are and to gain perspective of who is impacted by changes to your system.\n\nPrioritize dedicated resources\n\nAnother way we reframed our system into a product was by hiring dedicated product management and engineering resources to work with our team of designers. As a newly resourced team, our first initiative was to open source developer kits for our design system. (We’ll go into more detail in part three of this series.)\n\nOur product manager created artifacts like roadmaps and backlogs and set up rituals like sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and retros. Our designers created a process for building global, accessible, reusable components, and then worked closely with our dedicated team of developers to define and build our system in code, strengthening Workday Canvas as the ever-evolving source of truth.\n\nThis was our first attempt at operating as a fully cross-functional product team and it proved to be a major success. Sprint planning helped us stay focused and prioritize our efforts, daily stand-ups kept us accountable and aware, and our retros gave us time to reflect, improve, and celebrate our wins.\n\nIn the world of enterprise systems where things can easily feel complex, having the right process, structure, and resources in place demonstrated just how successful our team could be.\n\nTakeaways:\n\nIf your design system is going to operate like a product, it needs dedicated engineering, design, and product management resources.\n\nEstablish rituals and processes that give your team tangible goals and focus.\n\nMature your consulting practice\n\nIf you work on design systems, you’re probably used to people Slacking you messages like, “Hey, there! I want to use this new button component I created for my very specific use case.”\n\nSounds a lot like a feature request, right? Before approaching our design system like a product, those types of requests would make our team gasp in unison, appalled by such an audacious ask! But realistically speaking, it felt impossible to evolve as quickly as we needed to with the number of dedicated resources we had. Trying to completely control our design system was a bad practice we held onto for a long time.\n\nOur ego and the idea of forcing conformity was making the evolution of our system feel difficult. We realized we needed to let our primary users, our product designers, and the needs of their users drive the evolution of our design system — not us. This powerful realization shifted our mindset from controlling the evolution of our system to us facilitating and guiding it through designer and developer contribution.\n\nDuring the open source project, we began to encourage the design and development of our open source kit through a federated approach. Getting outside contribution from development and design teams who wanted to help build or reuse our components spread the workload and increased wider adoption across the company.\n\nTo handle the “feature” requests that come in, we created an intake process that starts with listening to our users. We’ve learned to ask questions like, “What is your use case?”, “Why aren’t the existing components meeting your needs?”, and “What are the variables and properties you need to make this component work for you?” Conversations like these share the responsibility and ownership of the system, empowering the user to have a direct impact on making our system better.\n\nWhile having these conversations, we simultaneously ask ourselves, “How could this be leveraged by other apps and product teams?” Thinking holistically and making connections across all of our products and platforms is just as important as listening to our users.\n\nMapping our intake process to our design process\n\nTakeaways:\n\nListen and always ask why.\n\nMake designers and developers on product teams your primary contributors.\n\nKnow when to leverage systems thinking.\n\nDefine your change management process\n\nLike creating a product, creating our design system has involved many stakeholders along the way. Back in January 2019, we started working on taking our design system open source. Working toward this milestone opened our eyes to the implications of change within our complex enterprise ecosystem. As more users began to employ our system to build products, we realized that more dependencies were creeping in — especially those related to maintaining the integrity of our ever-evolving system.\n\nWhile crafting and evolving our design system for the open source milestone, we were overlooking how our proposed changes would ripple throughout the company. For example, we decided to change the color of our primary buttons from orange to blue for accessibility reasons. We knew that changes like this had massive implications for designers and developers but had failed to see the larger impact on the teams we hadn’t considered. Our education team, for instance, saw a large impact on the learning materials they created.\n\nFor our team to operate as a product supporting other products, it was important to be intentional with change management and to carefully consider new additions to the system. Implementing change management measures meant we needed to create environments to test and verify contributions before pushing to our master library, and then to communicate regularly to all affected stakeholders. Change management helps us manage the quality of our master component library. It reduces the pain points caused by lack of communication and small but deadly production missteps. Like most painful experiences, we learned a lot and grew from it as a team.\n\nThe impact of changing a button caused by a lack of communication\n\nTakeaways:\n\nNo matter how big or small your design system gets, figure out how to evaluate the dependencies of each change.\n\nCreate a QA process and test environments before pushing to your Master Library.\n\nNever stop growing\n\nAt Workday, we recognize the challenges of creating a trustworthy system that can scale and adapt to change. In 2016, we knew that our company was growing fast and that we needed a way to maintain consistency and quality. It took us years of trial and error to find processes that work in practice. As we continue to evolve, we’ll continue to iterate because design systems are constantly changing — and that’s the exciting part. The benefits of productizing our design system gave us tangible results. It helped us identify and prioritize our most valuable user groups, it created rituals and artifacts to guide our focus, and it enlightened us on the ripple effect of our decisions. Where are we going now? As a product, our next steps are to dive deeper into research and validation, develop more education and training, and continue to empower our users to create consistent, high-quality user experiences — all while making their jobs a little bit easier."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/workday-design/productizing-your-design-system-1ae44f94b06"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Workday Design']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-02-25 19:08:04.531000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Open Source Design', 'Design Systems', 'UX Design', 'Product', 'Change Management']"}}},{"rowIdx":186044,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"‘Sugar daddy’ dating app banned by WeChat, labeled an ‘abnormal enterprise’ by authorities"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"‘Sugar daddy’ dating app banned by WeChat, labeled an ‘abnormal enterprise’ by authorities\n\nWell, that was quick\n\nObviously jealous of its incredible breakout success, WeChat has now banned China’s hottest social media app, one which aims to bring “sugar daddies” and “sugar babies” together — and which may not be around in China for long.\n\nThe American dating app “SeekingArrangement” has become a surprise overnight success in China, topping the charts this week for the most recent downloads of a free social networking app on China’s iOS app store, surpassing even WeChat itself.\n\nIn case you’ve never heard of it, SeekingArrangement, founded in 2006 by Singapore-born, MIT-graduate Brandon Wade is the the world’s premier “Sugar Daddy” dating site, claiming to have 10 million active members across 139 different countries with four “sugar babies” for every one “sugar daddy/momma.”\n\nWhile the app’s business plan has often been criticized in countries around the world for exploiting young, naive women and for being little more than a prostitution service, SeekingArrangement claims that it is merely helping its users form “balanced” relationships on their own terms:\n\nWhere Sugar Babies enjoy a life of luxury by being pampered with fine dinners, exotic trips and allowances. In turn, Sugar Daddies or Mommas find beautiful members to accompany them at all times. We want relationships to be balanced. We give our members a place for this to happen.\n\nThe app’s popularity suddenly exploded in China this week after the state-run Global Times published an article warning its readers that the infamous app had arrived in China, reporting that the company had been registered in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in 2015 and had launched a Chinese website and app (甜蜜定制).\n\nWhile the tabloid’s warning achieved much the opposite of its intended effect, with Chinese web users rushing to download the app, it seems unlikely that SeekingArrangement’s success will last long, considering Chinese censors’ attitudes towards sex and social media.\n\nIn an apparent attempt to win over China’s Net Nanny, the company has rephrased things a bit for its Chinese app, replacing “sugar daddy” with “successful man/woman” and “sugar baby” with “charming sweetheart.”\n\nAn anonymous worker at the company told China Daily that SeekingArrangement’s Chinese website and app are designed as a “premium platform that functions like any other legal dating site in China,” with the only difference being that SA targets “successful men of high quality and fine taste.”\n\nThe worker added that the company manually screens words like “sugar daddy” or “sex-for-cash” on member profiles in China, trying to distance itself from charges of prostitution.\n\n“Our Chinese product is exclusively developed for the local market and would definitely abide by the law here,” the worker insisted.\n\nMeanwhile, on the front page of SeekingArrangement’s Chinese website there’s a notice that reads: “SA’s Chinese version is an absolutely independent brand… do not be misled by biased media reports. SA Chinese will continue to build a high quality space for high quality people!”\n\nThe company’s website and app remain up in China, as does their Weibo page which has close to 11,000 followers.\n\nHowever, along with being disappared from WeChat, SeekingArrangement has also been placed under investigation by authorities in Shanghai which announced earlier today that the company has no operations in Shanghai and as been entered into the FTZ’s Lists of Enterprises with Abnormal Operations.\n\nBut hey, even if the company does get completely shut down in China by the end of the week, at least they’ll have gained a good bit of free publicity out of this whole drama."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/shanghaiist/sugar-daddy-dating-app-banned-by-wechat-labeled-an-abnormal-enterprise-by-authorities-f820c105cc46"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"[]"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2018-05-25 10:38:18.866000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Censorship', 'News', 'Apps', 'China', 'Dating']"}}},{"rowIdx":186045,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"My 6-Year-Old Is Chill AF. She Also Has Anxiety and OCD."},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Over the past eight months, I have been routinely amazed by my kid. The coronavirus pandemic changed her life. Preschool shut down. We quit going shopping, quit dining out. Her Frozen II birthday party was canceled. We didn’t get to go to the pool this summer or hang out with friends.\n\nThere’s a whole lot we quit doing, all to be safe, just in case. I never expected that to be easy for my daughter. I know it’s tough. It’s hard on me and we miss everything from leisurely Target trips to Saturdays spent at the library.\n\nI keep waiting for her to have a meltdown because she misses the McDonald’s play place, or because we drive past the old “bounce house” every single day. The bounce house was one of our favorite hangouts — a place where I could work on my writing and she could play with other kids — but they had to close their doors months ago.\n\nMany of our favorite places have closed over the past few months, even the American Girl store just outside of Atlanta, where we always planned to have her golden birthday in a few years. It feels like life has been one disappointment after another this year, and yet, my daughter takes it all in stride.\n\nNothing is quite “normal,” but my kid’s easygoing nature means that every socially-distanced holiday so far has been her definition of the “best day ever.”\n\nSeriously. Her Zoom birthday party and home festivities? “This is the best birthday ever,” she declared. No trick or treating this Halloween, but we still managed to do a socially-distanced play date. “Best Halloween ever!” She talked about that celebration every day for a week.\n\nIn a lot of ways, I’ve lucked out because my daughter is so damn easy to please. Sure, she’s still a kid, so she sometimes thinks she wants every single toy she sees on TV, but she totally gets it when I tell her no, not today, maybe never, etc. She trusts me, I think, to look at most situations on a case-by-case basis. I trust her to not lose her shit when I say no.\n\n“Hey, I don’t think I’m up to putting the big tree up for Christmas this year,” I told her last week. “I feel bad about that. What do you think? What if we do a real small tree instead?”\n\nMy daughter barely missed a beat.\n\n“Yeah, we could use my doll tree,” she said. “That would be fun.”\n\n“I’ll put an advent calendar tree on the wall too,” I told her.\n\nTHIS is the only tree I feel like putting up in 2020 | Image by Pottery Barn Kids\n\n“Ooh, yeah!” As she replied, I almost couldn’t believe it. How did I ever get such an easy-going kid?"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/honestly-yours/my-6-year-old-is-chill-af-she-also-has-anxiety-and-ocd-8137beda9d85"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Shannon Ashley']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-11-16 23:52:53.142000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Parenting', 'Life Lessons', 'Family', 'Life', 'Mental Health']"}}},{"rowIdx":186046,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Some Republicans plan to challenge Biden’s Electoral College victory. Here’s what happened when Democrats challenged Bush"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"When Congress met to tally the results of the 2004 presidential election, then-Sen. Barbara Boxer stood alone on the Senate floor to object to President George W. Bush’s reelection victory in Ohio over Democrat John Kerry, forcing the House and Senate to vote for only the second time in a century on whether to reject a state’s Electoral College votes.\n\nIt’s the same scenario that could play out next month with President Donald Trump publicly urging his supporters in Congress to object to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in battleground states that expanded mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/0-20547819\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/1-20554712\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/1-20554761\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/1-20554827\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/0-20548107\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/1-20555047\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/1-20555064\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/1-20555105\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/0-20548259\n\nhttps://www.vlive.tv/post/1-20555157\n\nCongress has the next — and final — vote in the 2020 election. Here’s how it works\n\nA group of House Republicans is preparing to object, and they need at least one senator to join them to force the chambers to vote on the matter. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately urged Senate Republicans to steer clear, several senators have declined to rule out taking part, and incoming GOP Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has left open the possibility he will join the effort.\n\nDemocrats and even some Republicans are warning against a challenge, despite the precedent laid by Boxer. In an interview with CNN, Boxer said that the circumstances are totally different this year, when Trump and his allies are seeking to overturn a national election result, than when she joined with then-Ohio Democratic Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones to object to Kerry’s loss.\n\n“Our intent was not to overturn the election in any way. Our intent was to focus on voter suppression in Ohio,” said the retired California Democrat, who says her objection was her proudest moment on the Senate floor. “They’re talking about the vote that the presidency was stolen from Donald Trump. It’s not even a close comparison.”\n\nCongress will count the Electoral College votes in a joint session of Congress on January 6, which represents Trump’s final chance to try to overturn the election result he lost to Biden. In reality, Trump’s Republican allies have virtually zero chance of changing the result, only to delay the inevitable affirmation of Biden as the Electoral College winner and the next president.\n\nThat hasn’t stopped Trump — who has spread baseless conspiracy theories to falsely claim he won the election — from pressing for Congress to dispute the result next month. Just before Christmas, Trump hosted House Republicans at the White House who have been spearheading the effort to object to the Electoral College results, led by GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.\n\n“I believe we have multiple senators, and the question is not if, but how many,” Brooks said last week.\n\nBrooks said the Republicans are preparing to object to Biden’s win in as many as six states, which would force a dozen hours of debate on the House and Senate floors, turning the counting of Biden’s victory into a political circus.\n\nGOP senator leaves door open to objecting\n\nIn order to force a vote to challenge a state’s election results, however, a senator must join with a member of Congress in writing to object to the results. McConnell, who has recognized Biden’s victory, has warned his conference not to join the House GOP effort and force the Senate GOP conference to take a politically toxic vote on whether they’re siding with Trump or not.\n\nBut Tuberville, who beat Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the Alabama Republican primary, left the door open last week to objections to the Electoral College results. Tuberville’s comments prompted Trump to tweet multiple stories about the new Alabama senator potentially defying McConnell and speak to him over the weekend.\n\n“I spoke to a great gentleman, Tommy Tuberville, last night, and he is so excited,” Trump told Rudy Giuliani during a brief call to Giuliani’s WABC radio show on December 20.\n\n“He said, ‘You made me the most popular politician in the United States,’” Trump added. “He’s great.”\n\nShould Tuberville or another senator join the House objections, the two chambers would separate and debate each state’s objection for two hours before voting. Because Democrats control the House, the effort has effectively zero chance of succeeding, and even in a Republican-controlled Senate, numerous Republicans have said there was not widespread fraud.\n\n“In the Senate, it would go down like a shot dog,” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the №2 Senate Republican, said last week. “I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”\n\nPrevious objections have failed without Senate backing\n\nThe joint session to count the Electoral College votes on January 6 will be led by Vice President Mike Pence, who attended Monday’s White House meeting with Trump and House Republicans, raising questions about how he will handle being in the awkward position of affirming Biden’s victory over his own presidential ticket.\n\nIt’s the same position that former Vice President Al Gore faced in 2001 following his razor-thin loss to Bush that came down to a disputed recount in Florida. During that vote, House Democrats protested the Florida result, but no senator objection, and the effort died.\n\nThat’s also what happened in 2017, when a group of House Democrats objected to Trump’s win in several states, citing Russia’s election interference and problems with voter suppression. No senators joined the House members, however, and Biden — who was presiding over the session in his role as president of the Senate — gaveled down and dismissed the objections, certifying Trump as the winner.\n\n“We were trying to focus attention on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s efforts to undermine and sabotage the American election,” said Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, one of the Democrats who raised an objection on the floor in 2017. “There’s certainly a lot more evidence of Vladimir Putin’s cyberattacks on the DNC and the (Hillary) Clinton campaign and efforts to manipulate American public opinion through social media than there’s been of any fraud or corruption in the 2020 election.”\n\nHouse GOP leaders have cited past Democratic objections, including Boxer’s and House Democrats’ 2017 objections, to justify disputing Biden’s victory next month.\n\n“If any Republicans did it, it’s clearly not the first time it’s been done,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, who has yet to acknowledge Biden as President-elect, said last week. “Every Republican president in the last three terms have been objected to by Democrats.”\n\n‘People wanted to strangle me’\n\nIn 2005, Boxer joined forces with Tubbs Jones to protest Bush’s victory in Ohio, which was the decisive state in Bush’s 2004 election victory against Kerry.\n\nSince the Electoral Count Act was passed in 1887, it was only the second time a protest had forced the two chambers to vote on accepting a state’s the Electoral College result, according to the Congressional Research Service. The first was over a single “faithless” elector from North Carolina who cast a vote in 1969 for George Wallace instead of Richard Nixon. That objection was also rejected by both chambers.\n\nBoxer said that Tubbs Jones, who died in 2008, convinced her to join the 2005 objection by showing her the problems that took place with Ohio’s votes, including hours-long lines at polls, broken voting machines and high rates rejection rates for provisional ballots in the state’s African American communities.\n\n“This objection does not have at its root the hope or even the hint of overturning the victory of the president,” Tubbs Jones said on the House floor when the two chambers separated to debate. “But it is a necessary, timely and appropriate opportunity to review and remedy the most precious process in our democracy.”\n\nIn the Senate, Boxer’s fellow Democrats spoke in support of addressing problems with voter suppression. But when it came time to vote, only Boxer cast a vote to sustain the protest. She lost 74–1.\n\nIn the House, the vote was 267–31 against the objection, and Ohio’s votes were counted.\n\n“It was one of my proudest moments, even though I stood alone,” Boxer told CNN. “I was very unpopular that day in the Senate — people wanted to strangle me.”\n\nIn the weeks after they had raised the Electoral College objection, Boxer and Tubbs Jones joined with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to introduce new voting rights legislation, though it didn’t advance in the Republican-held Senate.\n\n“Looking back on it, I think we were so prescient because after that, things got even worse with voter suppression,” Boxer said. “We had hoped that our taking that stand would set the stage for legislation, but we could never get it done in the Republican Senate. We could just not get it out.”"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@ukosasih54/some-republicans-plan-to-challenge-bidens-electoral-college-victory-92e212ed8d4c"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"[]"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-27 17:45:12.762000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Biden', 'Electoral', 'Republicans']"}}},{"rowIdx":186047,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Dropping Aug 10, ~3:00pm PST"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Dropping Aug 10, ~3:00pm PST\n\nGet ready for a drop today from Gala Labs that everyone’s been talking (and dancing) about. Each VOX in the inaugural series is a unique Town Star inspired character with a randomized set of traits true to that character.\n\nCollectVox.com\n\nComplete with an FBX source file, VOX are versatile companions who can be animated, 3D printed, used in augmented reality and more. Every VOX will also generate future play-to-earn rewards by interacting in various ways with the Gala Games ecosystem.\n\n8888 VOX will be sold in the first series drop. Each VOX will be sold for 0.0888 ETH (plus gas fees). VOX may only be purchased with ETH.\n\nThe inaugural series of VOX will be available for sale at CollectVox.com starting August 10, 2021 at 3:00 pm PST. You won’t want to show up fashionably late to this party.\n\nOwn Your Expression\n\nWe can all agree that the art of digital expression has taken a massive leap forward in recent years. From the chat rooms of the 90s where we piled our favorite qualities about ourselves into one glorious screen name, to the sideways punctuation we used to express some of the earliest iterations of the emoji :) ❤ on a freakishly durable Nokia phone.\n\nNow, thanks to blockchain technology, we can actually own things. With cartridge video games, cassette tapes and DVDs, we were brushing on the idea of real ownership, but then the share-it-all culture that came with the early internet changed the rules. For two decades the digital property ownership battles have raged on. Until the rise of blockchain, players and collectors could never be empowered by real ownership. As the players of the world continue waking up to the idea that they can own the things they play with, blockchain-backed ownership will become the new standard for digital possession.\n\nVirtual Self\n\nOne of the most fascinating things about the emergence of NFT collectibles, blockchain gaming and crypto assets into the mainstream is what it says about individuality. By opening the door to an entirely new level of economy and society, people are given greater freedom and more opportunities than ever before to express their unique identities.\n\nYour “identity” is simply a collection of stories. More specifically, it’s the collection of stories you tell yourself about yourself. An identity can be as large or as small as anyone can imagine. Like a holiday tree that you can decorate with an endless amount of ornaments, your identity forms throughout your life.\n\nNow that digital asset ownership is being gradually intertwined into our lives, it can be a source of joy, solace or fond memories. Our digital belongings will be direct reminders of some of the most important stories we tell ourselves, the stories that make up our identity. Being able to own unique virtual items will enrich our natural abilities to know ourselves, as we begin to craft virtual versions of ourselves.\n\nUnique in Multiple Ways\n\nEvery VOX is unique. Think about that for a moment. Until you open the box, you don’t know anything about the VOX. It could be an incredibly rare combination of traits, the rarest of which will earn greater defi rewards in upcoming games. No matter what, your VOX will be one-of-a-kind, a unique part of your digital identity.\n\nIn addition to each VOX being an individual, the idea is brand new as well. Of course there have been other avatar NFT projects. Some of them have even offered randomly generated unique traits (like VOX) and fetched high prices on secondary markets. By offering source files as an ownership benefit, Gala Labs is creating the opportunity for your VOX to boldly go where no avatar has gone before, no matter the metaverse. VOX is the beginning of something big, something all across the metaverse, something that will earn, and something that is provably yours.\n\nAvatars that Defi\n\nWe don’t think it’s too soon to turn defi into a verb! There is no better word for what these VOX avatars will do as the project unfolds. They will defi! Just owning a VOX will unlock your future ability to earn gaming rewards like VoxCoin. The more rare the VOX, the more epic the rewards!\n\nJoin the Party!\n\nThis isn’t just another party where everyone tries to fit in. This is the party where absolutely everyone stands out! Express your digital self with Vox!\n\nCollectVox.com\n\nDiscord Community"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://blog.gala.games/join-the-party-with-vox-b414ad3de889"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Gala Games']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-08-10 14:41:56.149000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Blockchain Game', 'Nft', 'Gala Games', 'Vox', 'Cryptocurrency']"}}},{"rowIdx":186048,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Professional Team Management 2: How to Discover Root Issues to be Solved"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"This is a continuation of the previous article. I’m going to write some more specifics about individual topics.\n\nOnce again, in a nutshell, the role of a product manager is to bring the maximum value to users through some kind of product or service. To achieve this, the mission is to define the value to be provided to the users, share it as a vision with the people involved, and execute everything necessary by any means necessary.\n\nHowever, even if we say we are going to do everything, we have a limited amount of time. How do you find out what you really need to do in that limited time? In this article, I will write about the approach to discovering issues.\n\nDiscover the Bottleneck\n\nFirst of all, I would like to conclude that what we need to do at that moment is, in a word, to “solve the bottleneck”. This is one of the basic ideas of TOC (Theory of Constraints), which is one of the theories used to solve problems in SCM (Supply Chain Management) in the manufacturing industry.\n\n#If you have time, please read the book “The Goal” for more details.\n\nIn a simple diagram, when there are processes A to D from input to output, in order to increase the overall throughput (speed of output), it is necessary to strengthen B, which is the weakest process.\n\nIn this case, at least at that moment, no matter how much you strengthen A/C/D, it will not contribute to the overall throughput improvement. In fact, to improve them, you may take away the time of the person in charge of B (very common), or you may create more to-dos than necessary in front of B by improving A too much (also very common), both of which will have the opposite effect and result in a decrease in overall throughput.\n\nIn other words, the only thing that needs to be done at that moment is to improve and strengthen “B”, and this “B” is the immediate bottleneck.\n\nTheoretically, it is very simple, but in reality, it is not easy to find bottlenecks because the process is not always this simple. Because it is not easy, it is a very important task for product managers to identify and eliminate the “bottlenecks” in creating value.\n\nThe Complexity of Reality\n\nIn reality, many people are involved in the creation of a single product or service. The product in the AI business that I am in charge of right now is very complex and consists of a combination of many elemental technologies such as voice recognition and natural language processing. If I dare to describe the complexity in two dimensions, it looks like this.\n\nIn this situation, it is difficult to discover the bottleneck by decomposing the process and measuring the speed of each output. This is because there are too many dependencies.\n\nAlso, as a matter of course, if a bottleneck will be solved, it will shift the bottleneck to another place. The fact that bottlenecks keep shifting one after another means that the cost/effort of discovering bottlenecks needs to be minimized. If the discovery cost is too high, it becomes practically difficult to keep discovering the changing bottlenecks quickly. Therefore, decomposing the process to discovering bottlenecks is too costly and not an effective method.\n\nSo, what do we do? I recommend to focus on human relationships and information flow.\n\nFocus on Where the Communication Path is Concentrated\n\nFind out who the communication is focused on, as shown in the diagram below.\n\nRepeated interviews with the relevant people inside and outside the team can reveal this rather easily, as long as you ask the right questions.” Who are the people involved? What is your role with them? How do you interact with them?” etc., draw a communication path as shown in the figure above, and figure out who the path gathers.\n\nThe solution depends on the situation, but for example, in case of a person who many members are dependent on, he or she may need to:\n\n1. separate the tasks that can only be done by that person from those that cannot be done by that person, and distribute the roles.\n\n2. if this is not possible, automate or make it efficient as much as possible.\n\n3. if it is difficult to do even 2, encourage the person to manage the difficulties and be prepared to do 1 and 2 when there’s more time.\n\nI choose the best solution based on the person’s situation, role, and feelings.\n\nOtherwise, if he or she is the kind of person who holds on to their tasks, I often redistribute work and roles, even if rather forcefully.\n\nWhen the communication path is concentrated, it is rather easy to detect and often does not take long to solve. However, there is another pattern that can easily become a bottleneck. It is the loop structure.\n\nFocus on Where the Communication Path Loops\n\nYou should also pay attention to the points where communication loops, as shown in the diagram below, i.e., where the conversation does not go forward.\n\nIn this case, it is most likely that the communication protocol between the people in the loop does not match and they are not able to communicate with each other. For example, planning and business, business and development, planning and development, etc. are supposed to be expressing the same thing, but the protocols are so different that the conversation is not taking place.\n\nAlso, in an environment with strong diversity, such as one where people from various backgrounds are gathered, differences in work style ideology may be the cause. For example, in a culture that values autonomy and consensus, and a culture where the scope of responsibility is clear and where superiors are in charge, interactions between people and teams from these two cultures can easily create a situation where trust isn’t built well. This is because they have different ways of thinking about decision-making. Such conflicts are often not verbalized (it is hard to imagine where the gaps are even between the people involved), so it is necessary to use intuition and experience to discover the issue.\n\nIn such cases, it is often difficult to expect a resolution between the members within a short period of time. If you don’t have much time, you can get help from a director who can talk about diverse protocols, or you can intervene yourself to solve the gap.\n\nRead About Changes over Time\n\nThis is a unique point of a professional team. People with very high abilities, without exception, learn and grow very fast, and they do not stop while they are working on one business or project.\n\nTherefore, what may be a bottleneck at a given moment may naturally become less of a bottleneck with the speed of growth. Therefore, for a professional team, it is necessary to take a clairvoyant view of the growth speed of each person in his or her role and find the bottleneck with a time frame in mind.\n\nIn the above diagram, the filled area is the current throughput, and the dotted line is the future throughput, but improving “B” is not effective, and the correct answer is “D”.\n\nIt’s really hard to predict this correctly. I often find myself wishing I hadn’t done it this way after the fact. The reason for this is simple, though: many people grow beyond their imagination.\n\nUsers, Teams, and Stakeholders\n\nSo far, I have written about the approach to solving the issues within the team. Of course, if there are issues with the users, it means that the vision is not good, which means that the realization of the vision will not bring much value. If there are issues with stakeholders, it means that the company is not making sense of the business and setting KGI/KPI.\n\nOf course, if you are going to create a vision from scratch, you will need to start from scratch to formulate it and organize expectations with stakeholders (I’m not going to talk about how to define a vision or how to determine KGI/KPI because that is not the subject of this article).\n\nOn the other hand, there are many cases where there is some kind of team in place, such as when you join the project from the middle. In such cases, it is recommended to approach the team first. As a result, even if the bottleneck is not in the team, but between users or stakeholders, approaching the team is often the fastest way to discover the bottleneck no matter where it is.\n\nThis is because most of the time, the people on that team already understand the issue itself, they just don’t know how to identify and solve the bottleneck. So, as I mentioned earlier, when you are working on a project, if there is a team there, don’t start thinking by yourself, but talk with them first. In a nutshell, I think this is the fastest way to discover the bottleneck that needs to be solved first, and that is to talk to as many people as possible before thinking alone.\n\nIn the End\n\nI wrote about the approach to finding issues that product managers need to solve in product management where many people and things are moving dynamically. The topic of productivity is often discussed, and I feel that people who have a high level of productivity have no hesitation in solving problems, but they are also very accurate in identifying the root issues and very fast in identifying them.\n\nWhenever I meet someone who feels this way, I always role-play what I would do if I were them, and then I often ask them directly how they set the problem.This is because it is easy to see from the outside how the problem was “solved”, but it is sometimes difficult to see how the problem was “discovered”. Then, I match the results with my own role-playing results.\n\nIn the end, the accuracy of finding and solving problems depends on the number of experiences, but since there is a limit to the number of experiences you can have in your own time, I think the best shortcut is to increase the number of experiences by using the time and experience of other excellent people.\n\nSo, that was my approach to discover issues. I will try to write about other know-how and tips as a product manager when I feel like it."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@hirokinakamura614/professional-team-management-2-how-to-discover-root-issues-to-be-solved-e1e4e1519a82"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Nakamura Hiroki']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-27 14:48:00.963000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Product Manager', 'Product Management', 'Problem Solving', 'Management']"}}},{"rowIdx":186049,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Customizing Google charts — part 2"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Customizing Google charts — part 2\n\nCreating a custom legend for Line Chart\n\nNOTE: This article contains snippets of code from a project I worked on in 2016! It uses jQuery and Google charts API that could have changed.\n\nIn the first part of this series, I talked about Treemaps and the usage of getBoundingClientRect() method, that helped us to recreate the rectangles. Now we will take a look at Line chart and we will build a custom interactive legend that will highlight the lines in the chart. As before, I won’t cover everything here and you can check the code to see implementation details (one can learn a lot just by reading a code).\n\nPhoto by Isaac Smith on Unsplash\n\nA few points I will describe:\n\ninitializing Line Chart using DataView class\n\nconstructing the custom legend labels (using template literals)\n\ntoggling the state of checkboxes\n\nHere is an image of the customized chart we are going to build.\n\nLine chart with a custom interactive legend\n\nIn order to show the lines in the chart, we have to feed it with some data. All charts store their data in a table and there are several ways to create them. The tables are either represented as:\n\nDataTable or DataView.\n\n(For example, in the 1st part of this series, we created DataTable for Treemap using helper function arrayToDataTable())\n\nInitializing Line Chart using DataView class\n\nWe are going to create an interactive legend, so when we click a label or a line, it will be highlighted. For that we need to get some information from the chart. Let’s read a summary of the 2 main representations:\n\nA DataTable is used to create the original data table.\n\nA DataView is a convenience class that provides a read-only view of a DataTable , with methods to hide or reorder rows or columns quickly without modifying the linked, original data.\n\nAs we can see, DataView provide us with various methods that we can use for example for showing/hiding the rows/columns and getting some data. That’s why DataView is the candidate we choose. We are going to use for example getNumberOfColumns() and getColumnLabel() methods.\n\nOur data in the demo comes from JSON, so we have to first format it to proper DataTable format before we can pass it to DataView object. The format we have to follow looks like this:\n\n{\n\n\"cols\":[\n\n{\"id\":\"Col1\",\"label\":\"\",\"type\":\"date\"}\n\n],\n\n\"rows\":[\n\n{\"c\":[{\"v\":\"a\"},{\"v\":\"Date(2010,10,6)\"}]},\n\n{\"c\":[{\"v\":\"b\"},{\"v\":\"Date(2010,10,7)\"}]}\n\n]\n\n}\n\nWe parse our JSON, construct the rows and columns as above, fill them with the values and create a new DataTable. We have the function called formatDataForLineChart(data) that does just that and return formatted data.\n\n// This is a part of the snippet to demonstrate how we can create the // rows. Check out the demo for more details. var formattedData = $.parseJSON(jsonData);\n\nvar dataCols = [ {id: 'id' + 0, label: 'Date', type: 'string'} ];\n\nvar dataRow = [];\n\n... $.each(formattedData, function(index, days) {\n\n...\n\ndataRow[i++] = { c: [ { v: formattedDate } ] } ;\n\n$.each(v, function(index, val) {\n\ndataRow[i - 1].c[index + 1] = { v: val };\n\n});\n\n...\n\n}\n\nWhen we have that we can create the LineChart and display it. Yay!\n\nvar data = formatDataForLineChart(json);\n\nvar view = new google.visualization.DataView(data);\n\nvar chart = new google.charts.Line(document.getElementById('linechart'));\n\nchart.draw(view, options);\n\nConstructing the custom legend labels\n\nWe want to display the labels in columns like in this example:\n\nCustom interactive legend\n\nWhen the chart is ready (event listener) we get the number of columns and iterate through them to create the labels with checkboxes.\n\ngoogle.visualization.events.addListener(chart, 'ready', function() {\n\n\n\nvar colsNum = data.getNumberOfColumns();\n\nvar legendAr = [];\n\n... for (var i = 1; i < colsNum; i++) {\n\nvar legendName = data.getColumnLabel(i);\n\nvar id = data.getColumnId(i);\n\nvar label = createLabel(legendName, id);\n\n...\n\n}\n\n}\n\nAgain, please check the demo for more details.\n\nLet’s take a closer look at createLabel() function though. We define HTML as a string and return it. Since it’s a longer string we use ‘+’ operator to join it together.\n\nfunction createLabel(name,i) {\n\nvar label = '';\n\n\n\nreturn label;\n\n}\n\nThat’s the old fashion way, but we can improve it by using template literals!\n\nTemplate literals are string literals allowing embedded expressions. You can use multi-line strings and string interpolation features with them.\n\nThis is great, because we can omit all the single quotes and pluses. We just have to enclose our string with the backticks ` ` and use placeholders with ${expression}\n\nIt would look like this:\n\nfunction createLabel(name,i) {\n\nvar label = ``; return label;\n\n}\n\nIt looks cleaner isn’t it? Ok, lastly let’s see how we can select the lines and labels.\n\nToggling the state of checkboxes\n\nAs you might notice, we added data attributes on the elements we created with JS (i.e data-id=”${i}”. We did it also for the lines in the chart (targeting the SVG paths). This enable us to make it interactive and highlight the lines/labels on click.\n\nThere is a function called updateLineChartCols() that contains a bunch of other functions that help us to style the elements and determine whether we should select or deselect the checkboxes.\n\nWe can target the checkboxes in the legend, loop through them and toggle the ‘checked’ state like this:\n\nfor(var i = 0; i < inputsArr.length; i++) {\n\ninputsArr[i].prop('checked', false);\n\n}\n\nWe either set ‘checked’ to true or false based on some previous logic.\n\nDEMO link\n\nEven though I described only a few selected parts of the code I hope you find the overall process useful and you learnt something new.\n\nThank you for reading!"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://miroslav-slapka.medium.com/customizing-google-charts-creating-a-custom-legend-for-line-chart-58facd6a5760"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Miroslav Šlapka']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-11-29 18:17:46.629000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Google', 'JavaScript', 'Charts', 'Web', 'Web Development']"}}},{"rowIdx":186050,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"How PEL anonymized patient data"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Since the publication of `Optimising mHealth helpdesk responsiveness in South Africa` paper in the BMJ Global Health, the Patient Engagement Lab team has been working on language understanding and interpretation in a low-resource language setting. To further our work we had to bridge the gap between university research and its real-life application. We discussed the data that we had collected with academics, and realised that these data were incredibly rare, and would be extremely valuable to other programmes in ‘resource-poor language’ settings. There are substantial opportunities for win-win collaborations with universities in which we operationalise research grade work. There are numerous challenges with establishing this, but also substantial benefits. In this blog we provide guidelines as to how we did this so that other organisations can take these into consideration. In a future blog we plan to detail the substantial outputs that came from this collaboration.\n\nGiven that we work within South Africa, we took our lead from the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI). Both POPI and the more well known General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) frameworks take a ‘consent driven’ approach to data sharing. Under this umbrella, users own their identifiable data. This means that identifiable user data can be shared only if the user has given permission to share the data. Consent to share personalised data is often difficult to obtain, particularly in programmes that are at scale. The logistics involved in ensuring that people really understand what they are consenting to are prohibitively complicated and expensive. For example, typical research studies may require a 10–15 minute verbal explanation of risks etc. In the absence of explicit user permission or consent, we can only share anonymised data.\n\nCorrectly anonymised data minimises the risks associated with re-identification of individuals, but when one dives into the implementation of anonymisation, the concept immediately becomes complex — much more complex than the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) laws would lead you to believe. Simple removal of prescribed meta-data does not guarantee anonymity. Someone trying to identify you may be able to use contextual information (i.e. your participation in a programme) to further identify you. For some context, Latanya Sweeney [1] showed that:\n\n87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on {5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth}. About half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only {place, gender, date of birth}, where place is basically the city, town, or municipality in which the person resides. And even at the county level, {county, gender, date of birth} are likely to uniquely identify 18% of the U.S.population. In general, few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person.\n\nGiven the above, one needs to exercise a great deal of caution when considering sharing personal data. The question then remains, how does one institute an anonymization process? And, more importantly, is there a cost-effective way for organisations to do this and thereby enable research collaborations?\n\nGDPR does not provide technical guidance as to how to implement anonymisation. However, a very useful guide from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office does provide guidance in the form of the ‘motivated intruder test’:\n\nThe ‘motivated intruder’ is taken to be a person who starts without any prior knowledge but who wishes to identify the individual from whose personal data the anonymised data has been derived. This test is meant to assess whether the motivated intruder would be successful.\n\nThe approach assumes that the ‘motivated intruder’ is reasonably competent, has access to resources such as the internet, libraries, and all public documents, and would employ investigative techniques such as making inquiries of people who may have additional knowledge of the identity of the data subject or advertising for anyone with information to come forward. The ‘motivated intruder’ is not assumed to have any specialist knowledge such as computer hacking skills, or to have access to specialist equipment or to resort to criminality such as burglary, to gain access to data that is kept securely.\n\nCertain data are clearly more identifying than others. We therefore know that sharing certain variables will more likely fail the motivated intruder test than sharing others. For example, knowing a first name is identifying; knowing the first and last name is more identifying. A field of statistics called disclosure control divides variables in a dataset into two groups: identifying and non-identifying. These categories are split further, as illustrated in Figure 1. In this post we will focus on the left branch of Figure 1, namely on the direct and quasi identifiers.\n\nFigure 1.\n\nDirect identifier variables can either be removed from the dataset prior to release or combined with a one way hash together with a random number (to avoid incorrectly assuming that a MD5 has of a number is sufficient see) e.g. in SQL:\n\nIn addition we can apply the technique of k-anonymisation [4] to ensure that no record has fewer than k other records that are similar to it, thereby reducing the chances of re-identification. This can be achieved either through generalisation or redaction. In order to improve the utility of the data, one can also transform the data to remove absolute quasi-identifiers. For example in a dataset that contains event timestamped data (e.g. a pregnancy with expected delivery date and dates that indicate attendance at a clinic), the dates of clinic attendance (e.g. 2019–03–25) can be replaced by time intervals to the expected delivery date. There will be more instances of given time intervals than absolute dates, thereby improving the k-anonymisation of the data.\n\nGuidelines [4] for applying k-anonymisation do not provide a fixed value to choose for k; the difficulty and risk of re-identification is typically hard to calculate and will depend on the quasi-identifiers available, externally available data sets, etc. Having said that, typical values for k are between 5 and 15 in health care data when shared with a small group of researchers. We used a value of 50 to be very conservative when sharing with our research partners at the University of Stellenbosch and Duke University.\n\nHopefully this blog has provided some food for thought in this arena. We are aiming to publish another blog detailing our collaboration model, which we also think is worth sharing. In terms of sharing data more publicly, we do not currently think that sharing our data publicly is feasible, but are exploring other means of anonymizing the data, including differential privacy.\n\nPlease let us know your thoughts!"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/patient-engagement-lab/how-pel-anonymized-patient-data-158f3bdc46b5"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Monika Obrocka']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-10-07 13:11:42.319000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Privacy']"}}},{"rowIdx":186051,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"How to Set Goals for Aggressive Business Growth (Museum Hack Case Study)"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"This article was inspired by Noah Kagan’s conversation with Michael Alexis from Museum Hack https://okdork.com/museum-hack/\n\nLooking for a framework on how to set business goals for the new year?\n\nHere’s a real-life case-study on how Museum Hacks thinks about setting corporate goals and how to measure progress towards those goals.\n\nIncluding:\n\nHow to drive growth using ambitious goals How to get alignment and company-wide buy-in on goals Why hope is a terrible strategy\n\nThink Aggressive\n\nMuseum Hack had hit a plateau in revenue.\n\nMuseum Hack offers renegade tours of the world’s largest museums. They grew revenue from $1.2 million to $2.6 million between 2015 and 2017.\n\nPretty awesome growth!\n\nIn 2018 they grew $200,000 to $2.8 million. They had initially set their 2019 goal to be $3 million.\n\nNot quite the 2x growth they had seen before.\n\nThey first had to set a more aggressive goal.\n\n“Aggressive” means different things for every company. But aim for at least 25% growth.\n\nMichael spoke with his team and they came back with a profit goal that was 40% higher than the year before.\n\nSetting a challenging goal can spur creativity and provide focus.\n\nGet Focused\n\nAlmost everyone has heard of the 80/20 rule.\n\nIt’s cliché, but if you look at any company, you’ll see that relatively few things bring in most of the money.\n\nAllocate most resources to the thing that is bringing in the most money. Be experimental and long-term with the rest.\n\nFor Museum Hack, the majority of their revenue came through corporate tours and the remainder came from public tours and museum consulting.\n\nMichael already believed that growing corporate sales would be the best way to hit their new goals. He realized that growing corporate sales would need to come at the expense of something else.\n\nThe team decided to move resources from lower priorities, like pure brand plays, to doubling corporate sales because they had bought-in to the goal.\n\nBecome Aligned\n\nEveryone at your company (or at least in your management team) should know your goals. This helps everyone be on the same page and work towards the target.\n\nThen you just have to check-in on progress towards that target.\n\nAt AppSumo, the Groupon for software, they have an all-hands meeting every week where they review the progress towards the yearly revenue target.\n\nMuseum Hack had a system to check in on their goals where they would:\n\nlook at the previous year’s numbers\n\nmake predictions on how much each category could grow\n\nand look at what strategies they could use to grow in each area.\n\nEach month they would review the financials to see what was growing.\n\nIn this method, they were looking at the results but not the inputs. 👎\n\nMeasuring Inputs\n\nThere are a million things that we could try to use to grow our business but only a few strategies will actually make a large impact.\n\nThe specific tactics are particular to each industry and company. You have to plan backward from the goal and decide what inputs will output the results you want.\n\nMeasuring your team’s inputs allows you to decide which strategies to remove or double down on.\n\nYou can use a proactive dashboard (coined by noah kagan) because it gives you a view of what was done each week.\n\nIt gives each employee clarity on what they should be prioritizing and gives the management team clarity on what is working.\n\nMuseum Hack had success with organic SEO and used cold emails and ads as needed.\n\nThey now have a controllable dashboard where they can see progress towards:\n\nCold email: outreach/week\n\nSEO: content/week\n\nAd spend: spend/month\n\nThey review the dashboard every 4–6 weeks.\n\nThese strategies allow them to track their progress towards achieving their new aggressive growth goal."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@learnthenapply/how-to-set-goals-for-aggressive-business-growth-museum-hack-case-study-eae61483b06"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Aswin John']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-15 02:56:39.886000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Goals', 'Planning', 'Business Strategy', 'Goal Setting', 'Growth']"}}},{"rowIdx":186052,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"5 Tips to Make Your Fashion Shopping Sustainable"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Being a personal stylist has helped me realize that for a few years now, people have started changing their minds, asking for information, and being aware of what they are buying.\n\nAt the beginning of my career, not many of my clients would ask me for the quality of the products, or if the brands were fair trade or where the clothes were made. But little by little, I can see how society is in a constant change. We still have a long way to go but this is a good sign of what is to come.\n\nI would like to share with all of you, a bit of myself, and my relationship with fashion over the years.\n\nI used to be a girl who was crazy about fashion but I didn’t care about quality or who made my clothes — at that time not many people spoke out about this issue. I found myself shopping for new clothes, shoes, accessories every single week, and as you can understand, nothing I really need.\n\nSomething really helped me to stop shopping in a compulsive way was to ask myself, “Do I need this product?”. As you can imagine, most of the time the answer was “No, I don’t need it”. But my consumerist mind was saying to me “you really love it, you can’t live without it and is going to be out of stock soon because it’s a very cool piece” obviously I could live without it and didn’t need it. What I started doing it, was asking myself in three weeks' time, first, if I still needed it, second, if I still loved it as much as the first day and third, if I really thought it was a good purchase.\n\nPhoto by Jacek Dylag\n\nHowever, the reality is that I needed to re-educate myself again. It took me time to stop buying and think further than I want this or that. I started thinking about who made my clothes or the impact my acts had on the environment among others and that’s what made me change my lifestyle and start being more sustainable.\n\nAs a consequence of the Mundial crisis we are living in, the big brands will have to take decisions and change their business model into more sustainable and caring options. Right now, the fashion industry is the second most polluting in the world. Society is asking more than ever for a change. We all showed, in these last three months that if we consume responsibly, the pollution falls to disappear in many countries, and we leave the earth breathing again.\n\nPhoto by Charles Etoroma\n\nSo, let’s bet for sustainability. Making some changes in our habits, for example:\n\nBuy vintage clothes instead of brand new.\n\nCustomize those items you have in your wardrobes that you don’t like anymore, or you are tired to wear.\n\nIf you decided to go for a brand new item, find out about the brand you are going to buy. Where they made your clothes? Are the people who make your clothes in good working conditions? The fabrics they use, if they are recycled, organic, fair trade, or sustainable?\n\nBuy items with quality that you don’t need to renew every year.\n\nChoose timeless outfits that you can wear over and over during the years and you won’t be bored with them.\n\nThose are some of the ideas I try to introduce when I need to buy something. Also, no one is perfect and sometimes I don’t tick all the boxes. But it will be amazing if all of us, next time we go shopping, we can keep in mind some of these tips and put them into practice. You will save money, space in your wardrobe, you will be helping people, you will help people with their rights as workers and you will help take care of our planet!"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/an-injustice/5-tips-to-make-your-fashion-shopping-sustainable-2e144e83c8de"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Maria Pastor Paz']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-07-16 10:30:06.001000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Shopping', 'Lifestyle', 'Fashion', 'Sustainability', 'Environment']"}}},{"rowIdx":186053,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Hollywood and Film vs. AAA and Indie Games: Who Is Losing Least in LGBT+ Representation?"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"A lot has been said recently about how so-called “AAA” video games are moving into the same cultural space that major Hollywood studio releases occupy — they are becoming places where we spend our time, mental energy, and, well, money, as a culture. Less has been said, and more should be, about how LGBT+ people — and here I primarily mean “lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who are open about it,” because the truth is that nobody is representing transgender or asexual people and other sexual and gender minorities very well — are not represented well in either, but how the gap of representation seems substantially smaller in video games. Off the top of my head before I started doing research for this article, I could name dozens of fairly high-profile video games, including Skyrim and The Sims, which combined across platforms constitute a substantial percentage of all video game sales ever, where LGB couples are present. The only film with a significant budget that I could think of off-hand was Independence Day: Resurgence, which against what I would have thought were significant odds has a gay couple as important background characters.\n\nThat offhand impression isn’t the whole story. In the wake of the decision of Jurassic Park: Fallen World’s creative team to delete an (extremely minor) scene which would have had a character inform the protagonist that she was gay, and the fact that this, like the deletion of the bisexuality of the character Valkyrie from Thor: Ragnarok, was blamed on “time constraints” and not bigotry, I have developed two hypotheses: either same-sex female relationships distort the fabric of film’s space-time, or a bunch of people in Hollywood are lying to cover their bigotry. (The frequent excuse about the importance of Chinese box office and the alleged bigotry of Chinese censors doesn’t hold up when you consider that both these examples are minor scenes that were, in fact, deleted from the film without affecting its coherence, and that films are edited for foreign markets all the time. Remember when the Harry Potter filmmakers reshot every scene that mentioned the [thing] Stone because Americans don’t know what a Philosopher is? Because I do.) Conversely, video gaming, despite being the home of, well, GamerGate and its assorted hordes of bigots, has recently foregrounded LGB representation with promotional materials for The Last of Us: Part II and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, and even took a crack at representing nonbinary people in Battletech (which is fairly easy and inflamed bigots to a ridiculous proportion, given that it is literally canon that no one cares about your gender in a giant stompy robot, so the player’s ability to select from three instead of two pronouns is irrelevant because no one uses them anyway). So, are games better than movies? Are games getting better at this than movies? These are two separate questions. I had a number of questions, but what they boil down to are:\n\nIn raw numbers of significant, meaningful depictions of gay/trans people that aren’t obviously characterized as bad or wrong, who’s doing better: film or games?\n\nWho spends more money developing titles that feature LGBT+ representation?\n\nWho is doing better at sales with LGBT representation?\n\nThe results are interesting. Film obviously has a significantly longer history than video games (although with Tetris still holding the title for best selling game in history, games go back farther than one might think.) That history has included representation of people who are not straight. The first same sex kiss occurred in Wings (1927), which you may recognize as the movie Rian Johnson copied an entire shot for for the casino scene in Star Wars — the Last Jedi. Strangely, he couldn’t manage to snag any of that progressive 1927 lesbian representation.\n\nObviously, this was before the censorship regime that would soon take hold of Hollywood and help contribute to it becoming the propaganda machine that it is today. If we look more recently, 1969’s highly controversial Midnight Cowboy, one of the first films to be rated by the Motion Picture Association of America, featured a bisexual male main character and received the “X” rating (now roughly equivalent to NC-17) for, well, having gay people in it. That probably didn’t help representation moving forward.\n\nAs I found in my other recent Medium piece about gay representation in gaming, technically the first LGBT+ representation people can point to in games was in 1986, which in the defense of games, was not far from the time where video games were first figuring out how to actually have characters who related to one another at all. The first high profile example of games where LGB relationships were there and more or less normalized was 1998’s Fallout 2. The Sims, in 2000, was notable for allowing gay relationships but not marriage but also more or less forgetting to implement straight marriage, and all subsequent Sims titles — which, again, constitute one of the most important and highest grossing franchises in video game history — allow same sex couples to do everything that mixed-sex couples can do. The Sims 4 added explicit transgender and nonbinary representation last year. Meanwhile, the 1990s brought us some really terrible examples of trans representation (Silence of the Lambs, The Crying Game) and some cult classics (Bound, But I’m a Cheerleader). The negative-representation trans examples were culturally significant at the time, while Bound and But I’m a Cheerleader are gay cult classics but didn’t get a lot of recognition when they came out.\n\nWhat touched off this discussion was studio tampering, and specifically the removal of discussion of same-sex interest from a character in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the same event not long before in Thor: Ragnarok. It’s worth noting that video games also dealt with this — but most prominently, from film executives, although they aren’t the only culprits. What I mean by this: both Bioware’s 2003 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Obsidian’s 2005 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II were originally planned to include the possibility for a female player character to pursue a (chaste, because this is Star Wars) relationship with other female characters. This was forbidden at the behest of Lucasfilm, the film studio which had the final call on these games — some claim at the behest of George Lucas himself. In 2011, when the massively multiplayer sequel The Old Republic was released, Lucasfilm again forbade the inclusion of gay relationships; after the Disney buyout of the Star Wars franchise, which notably made the entire Old Republic series non-canon with respect to new material, Bioware was allowed to include token same-sex relationships (which technically makes Star Wars: The Old Republic, with its $200 million development budget, the most expensive anything with gay representation, ever, giving video games a highly sketchy but significant data point over video games).\n\nIn any case, in the same decade where Lucasfilm was suppressing gay Star Wars characters, film made some pushes to be at least seen as diverse when it came to gay relationships. Brokeback Mountain is probably the most notable gay film of the 2000s. It did not, however, make a dent in the box office. Meanwhile, in games, Bioware’s Mass Effect series released two titles in the 2000s, each of which had the potential for a bi or lesbian female protagonist, and two other titles (Dragon Age: Origins and Jade Empire) that had the possibility of gay or lesbian relationships for their protagonist.\n\nThe current decade is where it gets interesting. There’s been increasing press around movies about gay and transgender people: Moonlight, Tangerine, Love Simon, Call Me By Your Name. There’s been continuing release of games with same-sex relationships by Bioware (although their next game, Anthem, has been stated to not include any form of romantic relationships). Joining them have been numerous independent developers ranging from zero-budget to extremely large budgets; Bethesda’s Skyrim, which has the potential for same sex protagonist relationships, is, like The Sims, one of the highest grossing titles of all time across all platforms. They also included same-sex attraction in Fallout 4 (if the main character is same-sex attracted, they appear to be specifically bisexual, as the plot requires them to have a dead spouse of the opposite sex with whom they had a child). Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas also included the possibility of the expression of same sex attraction by protagonists, although it didn’t include “romances”. Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us splits protagonism between Joel, a presumably straight man, and Ellie, a lesbian teenager who will be the protagonist in the upcoming Last of Us Part II, which recently made waves with an E3 trailer containing the most motion-captured-lip-smacking-detailed kiss in video game history, which just happened to be gay. In the medium-to-low budget range of games still developed by studios, DONTNOD’s Life is Strange series has, in its currently released titles, centered on lesbian and bisexual women and their relationships.\n\nTo Sum Up: Video Games Are Doing Less Worse Than Film\n\nHere’s what it boils down to: if you look at all of film history, there’s almost no films that are both successful and well-funded by studios that also represent LGBT+ characters well. If you look at video game history, you see inclusion of same-sex attracted central characters for at least the past two decades. Furthermore, it’s clear that many creatives in games would like to be doing more, and that in one high profile case, an entire series was planned with LGB representation and that representation was removed or not implemented because of a film studio’s decision.\n\nVideo games are still overwhelmingly about straight people. None of this is to suggest we should be complacent — my other Medium article on this subject showed that games with LGBT representation, much less protagonists, are a miniscule fraction of games as a whole. However, Hollywood is so incredibly worse at this, deleting offhand references to the sexuality of background characters.\n\nThe kicker: if you look at the top 50 films of all time in terms of how much money they made, zero of them have any gay representation at all. In video games, one of the three main characters of the third best selling game of all time, Grand Theft Auto V, Trevor, is bisexual. Having played the game, I wouldn’t trumpet it as good representation, but it’s there in a way nothing on the top 50 in film has. It’s also notable that GTAV is only beaten by Tetris and Minecraft, neither of which have anything resembling characters with relationships at all. Skyrim is the twelfth best-selling game of all time, The Last of Us is number 38, and The Sims is number 42. Four out of fifty of the top video games of all time have gay people in them; zero of the top fifty movies do.\n\nLet’s be honest, Hollywood: deleting people’s sexualities and never including queer characters isn’t about how they affect the “time balance” of your movies. It’s an excuse, just like the vaguely-racist “Chinese censors” thing is. Out of the high-budget films I found that did have positive gay representation, by the way, the Wachowskis and Roland Emmerich, all queer directors, were responsible for a disproportionate number, whereas game developers who put gay characters in their stories are frequently not queer-identified. If video games, the industry that brought us GamerGate, can take some tiny, half-assed strides toward inclusion, then Hollywood needs to drag itself out of this non-inclusive bog of its own making.\n\nDr. Eleanor A. Lockhart holds a Ph.D. in communication from Texas A&M University. She is a former professor of communication studies, and unable to work due to disability. If you want to support her health and ability to do research like this, you can support her Patreon, PayPal, or Cashapp. Her Twitter is @BootlegGirl"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/ellies-pop-culture-disc-horse/hollywood-and-film-vs-aaa-and-indie-games-who-is-losing-least-in-lgbt-representation-6160cb9eee3b"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Eleanor Amaranth Lockhart']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-05-27 03:10:36.223000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Entertainment', 'Representation', 'LGBTQ', 'Film', 'Videogames']"}}},{"rowIdx":186054,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Racial Supremacy and Ethnic Preservationism"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Opposite sides of the ‘racist’ coin\n\nNote; eksentric spellings are deliberate — see https://equanimity.blog/spelling-change-implementation/\n\nAs a word, ‘racism’ is used somewhat indiscriminately. This is unfortunate, because there is a world of difference between racial supremacy beliefs and a group’s desire to retain its ethnic character. The former is held by a tiny minority. The latter is widespread. This distinction is lost in the heated, moralistic debates about race and immigration, and an opportunity to find common ground, sadly missed.\n\nThe ‘Anglo-zone’ in particular is grappling with this issue — each country in its own way — as the movement of people continues its trend from global majority areas; just about every other country in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia. Meanwhile, globalization undermines and destabilizes them as functioning nation-states.\n\nLet’s look at an historical example, and use the wisdom of hindsight to postulate a better outcome that might be applied to our present circumstances. The USA’s Civil War was fought over the issues of racism, slavery and the right to seccede. The different distribution of wealth and development played an important role in the dynamic between the industrial north and the agrarian south. The North (the Union) eventually sought to abolish slavery, upon which the economy of the South (the Confederacy) depended.\n\nInstead of spending enormous numbers in finances and human lives pursuing a punishing war, what if the North had said to the South, ‘we’ll help you turn your slaves into employees’? This sounds simplistic, but it illustrates a strategy of owning each other’s problems and finding a shared solution. It wouldn’t have solved the issue of co-existence because the actual manumission, or emancipation of slaves in the USA was complicated by racial supremacist beliefs. The idea of transportation back to Africa was widespread and in fact birthed the nation of Liberia. Nonetheless, if the industrial strength of the North had been invested in transitioning the South’s economy towards a more employee and technology-reliant one, there would have been few losers, many more winners, and a lot less carnage.\n\nOf course, hindsight is an easy thing. How can we apply this to today’s problems?\n\nAs I said, every immigrant nation is responding differently, although there are common threads; Brexit and Trump are cries to reclaim control of borders. In the United States, a recent documentary filmaker, Lourdes Lee Vasquez produced Immigration Paradox and found that many people in the so-called ‘alt-right’ were not racial supremacists; all they wanted was for their country’s border laws to be respected and put into practice. This shows that the divide is not as extreme as it appears. In Canada and Australasia the discussion is possibly a little more advanced, although there is still no distinction between supremacy and preservation.\n\nLet me speak as an Anglo-Celtic Australian resident and citizen. Even here, there is polarization around these issues. The only way to overcome this is to reach out to your ‘enemy’ and find common ground, with a sincere desire to understand and look for solutions. This involves give and take. The ‘watermelons’ in the Greens and the ‘rednecks’ in the countryside may seem a world apart, but there is commonality; a concern for humanity and our future together. Whilst one side may be keen to see racial and ethnic differences melt away and our human commonalities emerge, the other side seeks to retain the colour of national diversity and the time to absorb and process changes. Whilst for one side, change can’t happen soon enough, the other side calls for change to stop. In reality, neither side is as extreme as they appear. In a democratic community, it means there HAS to be a compromise to avoid conflict. Ethnic preservationists ask for a slow-down, a chance to assess mutliculturalism and make it true. To me, multiculturalism has become bastardized by economic opportunism and rapid, high levels of immigration. A significant drop in Australia’s immigration levels would slow the unprecedented rate of population growth and prevent the ravaging to the environment that breaks the hearts of Greens. It would also afford time to make sense of our current cultural mix. Business, government and other open-border advocates have different motives, but they all give little consideration to the social stresses their policies create. Living cheek-to-jowl with every conceivable ethnic group increases the psychological load on individuals, many of whom are already cognitively occupied with issues of sex and sexuality, not to mention putting food on the table. The complexities of these issues are repeatedly underestimated by the advocates of non-discriminatory, high immigration levels. It’s a win-win for both sides to slow this down. However, the radicals on the left will have to accept that ethnic diversity between nations remains more or less as it is for the time being and borders are not going to be as open as they’d like them to be.\n\nWhat will the ‘alt-right’ have to compromise on?\n\nThe momentum behind current immigration patterns comes in part from perceived historical injustices. The Age of European exploration, colonization and imperialism included tragedies and atrocities that are shared by countless earlier invading, conquering tribes and nations. The pattern continues today, and not just by Europeans. This pursuit of glory has earned the nation-state a bad rap. If we are to learn anything from it, it is that the desire to dominate is at the core. The biggest culprits today are, not uncoincidentaly, the biggest nations; the USA, China, Russia and the EU. They have only come to be because individuals, rich and poor, have lent their support to competitiveness; the competition for economic, military and material supremacy. What the ‘alt-right’ should yield on is this tendency to dominate. Australia can lead by example by calling for multi-lateral disarmament, a military retreat to within our borders, greater economic self-reliance and a massive beefing up of the United Nation’s capacity to host conflict resolution and conduct peace-keeping interventions. It is a very difficult thing for a country like ours not to be caught up in the geopolitical shenanigans of larger nations. But we should at least do what we can to diffuse their combustibility. And by the way, the far left would do well to also drop its habit of attempting to dominate debate.\n\n843 words"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@saimoncole/racial-supremacy-and-ethnic-preservationism-7075571a9653"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Simon Cole']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-10-16 01:53:52.073000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Anglophone Crisis', 'Ethnicity', 'Solutions', 'Immigration', 'Racism']"}}},{"rowIdx":186055,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"What’s new in wifi 6 router and how fast it is?"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"What’s new in wifi 6 router and how fast it is?\n\nIn case you’re experiencing buffering, ensure that your router isn’t the reason! Jump on the super-quick roadway with the quickest WiFi 6 innovation. Intended to expand network limits and improve the exhibition of your home organization, WiFi 6 (802.11ax) is the most recent age of WiFi innovation.\n\nIt will enable you with quicker WiFi speeds with solid associations, so you can appreciate cradle-free streaming, quicker downloads, and add more shrewd home gadgets without hindering your web insight.\n\nPhoto by Compare Fibre on Unsplash\n\nWi-Fi 6 is the next-generation technology in WiFi standards as you are using now. Wi-Fi 6 can also be known as “AX WiFi” or “802.11ax WiFi”. Initially, Wi-Fi 6 router was built to respond to the growing devices around the world.\n\nA Wi-Fi 6 router helps to use many devices simultaneously like if you have a VR device or many smart home devices or have a large number of household devices as they are fast, have increased efficiency, and are better at transferring data than previous generations.\n\nThis is to a lesser extent a one-time speed increment and even more a future-confronting overhaul intended to ensure our velocities don’t come to a standstill a couple of years not far off.\n\nWi-Fi 6 is simply beginning to show up this year, and there’s a decent possibility it’ll be inside your next telephone or PC. This is what you ought to expect once it shows up.\n\nWi-Fi 6 is the upcoming age of Wi-Fi. It’ll do a similar essential thing — interface you to the web — just with a lot of extra innovations to get that going all the more proficiently, accelerating associations all the while.\n\nHow Fast Wi-Fi 6?\n\nFrom the start, Wi-Fi 6 associations aren’t probably going to be significantly quicker. A solitary Wi-Fi 6 PC associated with a Wi-Fi 6 switch may just be marginally quicker than a solitary Wi-Fi 5 PC associated with a Wi-Fi 5 switch.\n\nWi-Fi 6 acquaints some innovations with assistance to relieve the issues that accompany putting many Wi-Fi gadgets on a solitary organization. It allows switches to speaking with more gadgets on the double, allows switches to send information to different gadgets in similar transmission, and lets Wi-Fi gadgets plan registration with the switch.\n\nTogether, those highlights should keep associations solid even as an ever-increasing number of gadgets begin requesting information.\n\nThe maximum velocities of those gadgets won’t be helped, yet the paces you see in normal, day by day utilize likely will get a redesign. Precisely how quick that redesign is, however, will rely upon the number of gadgets are on your organization and exactly how requesting those gadgets are.\n\nWi-Fi 6 uses both 1024-QAM to provide signals stored with more data (providing you with more efficiency) and with a 160 MHz Channel catering a wider channel to make your WiFi faster. It also allows you to experience fault-free VR or enjoy remarkably realistic 4K and even 8K streaming.\n\nExactly how quick is WiFi 6 versus WiFi 5?\n\nTo start with, we should discuss hypothetical throughput. As Intel put it, “Wi-Fi 6 is equipped for a most extreme throughput of 9.6 Gbps across numerous channels, contrasted with 3.5 Gbps on Wi-Fi 5.” In principle, a WiFi 6 fit switch could hit speeds over 250% quicker than current WiFi 5 gadgets.\n\nRemote neighborhoods give web admittance to numerous clients in quickly developing numbers in homes, workplaces, production lines, and public spots. The development rate is so quick, truth is told, that what had been the worldwide norm for remote systems administration, IEEE 802.11ac, delivered in 2014, can at this point don’t keep up.\n\nWi-Fi 6 enhances the exhibition of Wi-Fi 5 by obtaining helpful methods from 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) cell radio innovation, in the expectation that Wi-Fi 6 will give the expanded limit expected to a developing number of interconnected remote gadgets. These reach from the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and more astute 5G remote cell phones to try and associated vehicles.\n\nFor numerous clients in thick conditions with a large number of remote gadgets, Wi-Fi 6 expands upon the different client, various info, and different yield (MU-MIMO) reception apparatus designs utilized in Wi-Fi 5, with broadened abilities.\n\nWi-Fi 5 switches, with their different radio wires, are intended to deal with upwards of four synchronous clients or information streams. Huge information moves are conceivable, yet just on downlinks from switches or APs to client gadgets."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@szq545/whats-new-in-wifi-6-router-and-how-fast-it-is-766acbc660c1"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Saurabh Sahani']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-26 13:26:25.760000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Wifi', 'Wifi Router', 'Tips']"}}},{"rowIdx":186056,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Converting an Array to JSON Object in JavaScript"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Converting an Array to JSON Object in JavaScript\n\nIf you have an array of data but the program you’re communicating with requires an object, don’t fear, we’ll go over some easy conversion methods.\n\nThe post Converting an Array to JSON Object in JavaScript first appeared on Qvault.\n\nJSON, or “JavaScript Object Notation”, is one of the most popular data exchange formats, particularly in web development. If you have an array of data but the program you’re communicating with requires an object, don’t fear, we’ll go over some easy conversion methods.\n\nQuick Answer — JS Array to JSON\n\nArrays are actually valid JSON, so if you just need to prepare your array in order to make a fetch request with it, it’s as easy as using the JSON.stringify() method.\n\nconst resp = await fetch('https://example.com', {\n\nmethod: 'POST',\n\nmode: 'cors',\n\nheaders: {\n\n'Content-Type': 'application/json'\n\n},\n\nbody: JSON.stringify([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])\n\n});\n\nThe JSON.stringify() method converts a JavaScript object, array or value to a JSON string that can be sent over the wire using the Fetch API (or another communication library).\n\nWeird Answer — Array to JSON with indexes as keys\n\nIf you didn’t want the direct string representation of a JSON array, perhaps you want an object where the keys are the indexes of the array. For example:\n\n[\"apple\", \"orange\", \"banana\"]\n\n\n\n// becomes\n\n\n\n{\n\n\"0\": \"apple\",\n\n\"1\": \"orange\",\n\n\"2\": \"banana\"\n\n}\n\nTo get a JSON object from an array with index keys you can use the Object.assign method in conjunction with `JSON.stringify` following code:\n\nconst array = [\"apple\", \"orange\", \"banana\"]\n\nconst jsonString = JSON.stringify(Object.assign({}, array))\n\n// jsonString becomes\n\n// {\"0\":\"apple\",\"1\":\"orange\",\"2\":\"banana\"}\n\nThanks For Reading!\n\nTake computer science courses on our new platform\n\nFollow and hit us up on Twitter @q_vault if you have any questions or comments\n\nSubscribe to our Newsletter for more programming articles"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/qvault/converting-an-array-to-json-object-in-javascript-f9f1d163cb34"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Lane Wagner']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-12-28 15:07:04.778000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Webdev', 'JavaScript', 'Languages', 'Front End']"}}},{"rowIdx":186057,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Announcing XD to Flutter v2.0!"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"That means that, with the XD to Flutter plugin, you can get your designs running on virtually any device with the click of a button. It’s not going to code your whole app for you, but it’ll give you a head start.\n\nXD to Flutter is built by gskinner in partnership with Adobe, and is published as a plugin for Adobe XD itself, so you can use it with any existing Adobe XD design you’re building.\n\nAwesome! So what’s new?\n\nThe initial release of XD to Flutter had great support for outputting all the different visual elements in a design — vector graphics, images, rich text, background blurs, blend modes, shadows, and similar — but the result could be static and inflexible.\n\nWhile it was handy for grabbing an icon or text style, we wanted it to do more! XD empowers designers to create dynamic UIs, with tools like responsive layout, scrollable areas, stacks, and grids; we want the plugin to support every one of those capabilities, and with v2.0 we’ve made a lot of progress.\n\nResponsive Resize\n\nXD to Flutter supports the responsive layout features of XD, which lets you “pin” elements within their enclosing parent and precisely control how they resize.\n\nResponsive design in Adobe XD\n\nResponsive resize in Flutter\n\nThis is achieved in Flutter by using a custom Pinned layout widget in the open-source adobe_xd package that developers can leverage directly in their projects.\n\nPinned widget code example\n\nStacks & Scroll Groups\n\n“Stacks” and Scroll Groups provide new ways to lay out content on-screen dynamically in Adobe XD. Stacks in XD let you arrange a bunch of different elements in a horizontal or vertical list, with varying spacing between them; they are more similar to a Flex widget in Flutter than their namesake Stack widget.\n\nScroll Groups predictably let you define an area to scroll a larger group of content vertically or horizontally, right inside your design.\n\nXD to Flutter v2.0 supports both of these features, converting them into common Flutter widgets ( Column , Row , and SingleChildScrollView ). You can even put a stack into a scroll group to easily create a scrolling list of items.\n\nStacks & Scroll Groups in XD (left) and Flutter (right)\n\nPadding & Background Elements\n\nAnother new feature is background elements, which let you designate a visual element as the background for a group. This can be paired with padding to space the background’s edges from the content.\n\nThe Flutter export uses a Stack widget to layer the background element behind the content, which is placed into a Padding widget.\n\nPadding & Background in XD (left) and Flutter (right)\n\nFlutter 2 & null safety\n\nThe layout features described above enable much more responsive UI, complimenting Flutter 2’s increased support for form factors like desktop and web.\n\nFlutter 2 also introduces sound null safety — a language feature that helps developers catch nullability issues before they cause problems in apps. XD to Flutter v2.0 includes a new setting to “Export Null Safe Code”, ensuring that the generated code is future-ready.\n\n“Export Null Safe Code” setting and output\n\nSounds great! How do I get started?\n\nWhether you’re using it to copy the code for a tricky gradient, or to export fully responsive, parameterized, interactive widgets, it’s simple to join the thousands of creative professionals that are already using the XD to Flutter plugin.\n\nYou can install it by selecting “Browse Plugins…” from Adobe XD’s “Plugin” menu and searching for “Flutter” (strangely, searching for “XD to Flutter” doesn’t work), or just visit adobe.com/go/xd_to_flutter.\n\nOnce you have it installed, open the XD to Flutter panel from the plugins panel, and tap the “Need help?” link to check out the plugin documentation.\n\nFlutter 2 is an exciting step forward for the framework, with a focus on building beautiful apps that run virtually anywhere. At gskinner, we’re thrilled to be working with Adobe and Google to ensure that XD to Flutter continues to make the process of faithfully translating a delightful design to a working product even easier.\n\nStay tuned for more exciting updates to the plugin soon!"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/flutter/announcing-xd-to-flutter-v2-0-c743bac2aeeb"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Grant Skinner']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-04-29 14:03:15.612000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Mobile App Development', 'Flutter', 'Adobe Xd', 'App Development', 'Flutter App Development']"}}},{"rowIdx":186058,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Advanced Dependency Injection in React"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Advanced Dependency Injection in React\n\nDependency injection is a pattern that reduces hardcoded dependencies. It promotes composability by enabling one dependency to be replaced by another of the same type.\n\nThis article will evaluate the dependency injection support in React and how we can extend it using InversifyJS.\n\nWhy Dependency Injection?\n\nDependency Injection (or, more broadly, inversion of control) is used to address several challenges.\n\nLoosely coupled modules — This can be used as a software design tool, forcing to keep code modules separate.\n\n— This can be used as a software design tool, forcing to keep code modules separate. Better reusability — This makes it easier to substitute modules of the same type.\n\n— This makes it easier to substitute modules of the same type. Better testability — Makes it easily testable by injecting mock dependencies.\n\nBesides, when it comes to React, it has inbuilt support for dependency injection.\n\nDependency Injection with React\n\nHowever, we may not necessarily think of it as dependency injection. Let’s take a look at few examples to understand them better.\n\n1. Using props allows dependency injection.\n\nfunction welcome(props) {\n\nreturn

Hello, {props.name}

;\n\n}\n\nThe welcome component receives the props parameter name and produces an HTML output.\n\n2. Using context is another method for dependency injection.\n\nfunction counter() {\n\nconst { message } = useContext(MessageContext);\n\nreturn

{ message }

;\n\n}\n\nSince context is passed down the component tree, we can extract it using hooks inside components.\n\n3. JSX is also a method supported by React for dependency injection.\n\nconst ReviewList = props => (\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n);\n\nThe perPage parameter is passed to the component, which fetches the “/reviews” route from the REST API.\n\nHowever, does not directly render the reviews. Instead, it delegates to the child component , which renders the list as a table.\n\nThis signifies that the rendering of is dependent on the . And it’s the caller of that sets this dependency.\n\nSo the parent-child relationship, in the above example, is a form of dependency injection.\n\nHowever, these strategies may be helpful for a small application. But if it scales, you need better support for dependency injection beyond these basics.\n\nSo let’s look at few libraries that extend the dependency injection support for React.\n\nExtend using InversifyJS\n\nInversifyJS is a JavaScript dependency injection library that is powerful, lightweight, and simple to use. However, using it with React as a component feature is still challenging.\n\nThis is because InversifyJS uses constructor injection, whereas React does not allow users to extend the constructors of its components. However, let’s look at how we can solve this challenge with an example.\n\nIf you take a closer look, the IoC initialization and the NameProvider class return a name displayed by the React Component. And do you know that it’s a typical InversifyJS use case?\n\nThis will create a new instance of the class for every injection as a Transient scope declaration.\n\nBesides, Singleton scope (the same instance for every injection) and Request scope (the same instance for one container.get ) are also available.\n\nHowever, let’s look at few InversifyJS extension libraries we can use to expand its behavior.\n\n1. Using inversify-inject-decorators\n\nWhen we can’t perform a constructor injection, this is the preferred technique to use with InversifyJS. This library has four additional decorators to be used in different projects, namely:\n\nlazyInject\n\nlazyInjectNamed\n\nlazyInjectTagged\n\nlazyMultiInject\n\nThis gives a lazily evaluated injection. It means that the dependence isn’t provided while the object is initialized. Instead, it is provided at its first usage and cached for later.\n\nDuring the initialization, a correct Boolean value can be used to switch off caching. Besides, you can also go through the complete example by using the Inversify-Inject-Decorators link.\n\n2. Using inversify-react\n\nInversify-react is a library that uniquely performs dependency injection. By using it, we get a React component provider for our use. This provider holds the IoC container and passes it down in the React tree.\n\nBesides, we also get four decorators;\n\nprovide\n\nprovide.singleton\n\nprovide.transient\n\nresolve\n\nAnd the entire code example is given in Inversify-react-example.\n\n3. Using react-inversify\n\nAlthough the name is similar to that of the previous library, this one takes a very different approach. Here, we have a provider component that is comparable to inversify-react.\n\nSince we need to construct an additional class and wrap our component in a higher-order component, usage is somewhat more challenging.\n\nHowever, this approach is closer to React because objects are passed as properties rather than instantiated inside the component.\n\nAnother benefit is that we can make full use of InversifyJS. That means we don’t have to rely on what the library has to provide.\n\nHowever, it does require writing a lot more code than other solutions. Besides, you can access the complete example via the React-inversify-example link.\n\nConclusion\n\nDependency Injection is being used by many popular libraries in the React ecosystem, such as React Router and Redux. Additionally, React also has direct support for dependency injection.\n\nHowever, for advanced use cases, we need libraries such as InversifyJS.\n\nThank you for reading. At last, if you have any clarifications, feel free to comment down below."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://blog.bitsrc.io/advanced-dependency-injection-in-react-af962bb94d35"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Minura Samaranayake']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-08-29 12:38:10.586000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'React', 'Dependencies', 'Dependency Injection']"}}},{"rowIdx":186059,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Dear Anna…"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Dear Anna…\n\nHere I stand listening to your praises from different tongues. They seem to have forgotten the day you walked down the aisle and I stood at the end with tears flowing down in awe of the union to be sealed, or maybe they feel I didn’t know of certain qualities you possessed. Whatever the reason, my ears are bleeding and I wish to plug their mouths and shut them off.\n\nSadly, that is not the worst, dealing with your compliments are fine enough. However the chants of “Olorun a wo, Olorun a da si\", whispers of “Omo lo ma sin iwo o” or those with nerve to pat my shoulder and tell me “omo yii ni ko toju o”. How could you leave me with a child, Anna, I can’t even carry her properly. I’m still learning to change a diaper, just this morning, I accidentally put the milk in her nose, Anna.\n\nPlease just wake up, fulfil your promises or don’t you remember? We agreed to see our grand children, when we have heads brimming with gray hair, after laughing at each other for crying over a sad movie and making fun of our toothlessness. We said we would hold hands and sleep to awake into a perfect light.\n\nYou breached that contract, Anna. You cheated! You are making these people say things they shouldn’t bother thinking of. Please Anna, you even got your wish, our daughter looks like my twin, you now have two of us in the house just open your eyes.\n\nOh! My love, stop lying still in that rose pink dress. Take my hand and come out of this box. You never liked confined spaces so I see no reason why you are lying like a log of wood.\n\nI laid our bed just the way you like it with three pillows on your side, all for you. Come lie beside me till the end of time."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@Mo.Alfy/dear-anna-af7a9ee06ae5"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Olamide Mariet']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-08-07 11:43:54.681000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Death', 'Tears', 'Baby', 'Yoruba']"}}},{"rowIdx":186060,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"How to become a Hadoop Developer?- Job Trends and Salary"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Hadoop Developer is the most aspired and highly-paid role in current IT Industry. This High-Caliber profile takes superior skillset to tackle with gigantic volumes of data with remarkable accuracy. In this article, we will understand the job description of a Hadoop Developer.\n\nWho is a Hadoop Developer?\n\nHow to become a Hadoop Developer?\n\nSkills Required by a Hadoop Developer\n\nSalary Trends\n\nJob Trends\n\nTop Companies Hiring\n\nFuture of a Hadoop Developer\n\nRoles and Responsibilities\n\nWho is a Hadoop Developer?\n\nHadoop Developer is a professional programmer, with sophisticated knowledge of Hadoop components and tools. A Hadoop Developer, basically designs, develops and deploys Hadoop applications with strong documentation skills.\n\nHow to become a Hadoop Developer?\n\nTo become a Hadoop Developer, you have to go through the road map described.\n\nA strong grip on the SQL basics and Distributed systems is mandatory.\n\nand is mandatory. Strong Programming skills in languages such as Java, Python, JavaScript, NodeJS\n\nBuild your own Hadoop Projects in order to understand the terminology of Hadoop\n\nBeing comfortable with Java is a must. Because Hadoop was developed using Java\n\nis a must. Because Hadoop was developed using Java A Bachelors or a Masters Degree in Computer Science\n\nSkills Required by a Hadoop Developer\n\nHadoop Development involves multiple technologies and programming languages. The important skills to become a successful Hadoop Developer are enlisted below.\n\nBasic knowledge of Hadoop and its Eco-System\n\nand its Able to work with Linux and execute dome of the basic commands\n\nand execute dome of the basic commands Hands-on Experience with Hadoop Core components\n\nExperience with Hadoop technologies like MapReduce, Pig, Hive, HBase.\n\nAbility to handle Multi-Threading and Concurrency in the Eco-System\n\nand Concurrency in the The familiarity of ETL tools and Data Loading tools like Flume and Sqoop\n\nand Data Loading tools like and Should be able to work with Back-End Programming.\n\nProgramming. Experienced with Scripting Languages like PigLatin\n\nGood Knowledge of Query Languages like HiveQL\n\nSalary Trends\n\nHadoop Developer is one of the most highly rewarded profiles in the world of IT Industry. Salary estimations based on the most recent updates provided in the social media say the average salary of Hadoop Developer is more than any other professional.\n\nLet us now discuss the salary trends for a Hadoop Developer in different countries based on the experience. Firstly, let us consider the United States of America. Based On Experience, the big data professionals working in the domains are offered with respective salaries as described below.\n\nThe entry-level salaries starting at 75,000 US$ to 80,000 US$ and on the other hand, the candidates with 20 plus years of experience are being offered 125,000 US$ to 150,000 US$ per annul.\n\nFollowed by the United States of America, we will now discuss the salary trends for Hadoop Developers in the United Kingdom.\n\nThe Salary trends for a Hadoop Developer in the United Kingdom for an entry-level developer starts at 25,000 Pounds to 30,000 Pounds and on the other hand, for an experienced candidate, the salary offered is 80,000 Pounds to 90,000 Pounds.\n\nFollowed by the United Kingdom, we will now discuss the Hadoop Developer Salary Trends in India.\n\nThe Salary trends for a Hadoop Developer in India for an entry-level developer starts at 400,00 INR to 500,000 INR and on the other hand, for an experienced candidate, the salary offered is 4,500,000 INR to 5,000,000 INR.\n\nJob Trends\n\nThe number of Hadoop jobs has increased at a sharp rate from 2014 to 2019.\n\nto It has risen to almost double between April 2016 to April 2019.\n\nto 50,000 vacancies related to Big data are currently available in business sectors of India.\n\nvacancies related to Big data are currently available in business sectors of India. India contributes to 12% of Hadoop Developer jobs in the worldwide market.\n\nin the worldwide market. The number of offshore jobs in India is likely to increase at a rapid pace due to outsourcing.\n\ndue to outsourcing. Almost all big MNCs in India are offering handsome salaries for Hadoop Developers in India.\n\nin India are offering for Hadoop Developers in India. 80% of market employers are looking for Big Data experts from engineering and management domains.\n\nTop Companies Hiring\n\nThe Top ten Companies hiring Hadoop Developers are,\n\nFacebook\n\nTwitter\n\nLinkedin\n\nYahoo\n\neBay\n\nMedium\n\nAdobe\n\nInfosys\n\nCognizant\n\nAccenture\n\nFuture of a Hadoop Developer\n\nHadoop is a technology that the future relies on. Major large-scale enterprises need Hadoop for storing, processing and analysing their big data. The amount of data is increasing exponentially and so is the need for this software.\n\nIn the year 2018, the Global Big Data and Business Analytics Market were standing at US$ 169 billion and by 2022, it is predicted to grow to US$ 274 billion. However, a PwC report predicts that by 2020, there will be around 2.7 million job postings in Data Science and Analytics in the US alone.\n\nIf you are thinking to learn Hadoop, Then it’s the perfect time\n\nRoles and Responsibilities\n\nDifferent companies have different issues with their data, so, the roles and responsibilities of the developers need a varied skill set to capable enough to handle multiple situations with instantaneous solutions. Some of the major and general roles and responsibilities of the Hadoop Developer are.\n\nDeveloping Hadoop and implementing it with optimum Performance\n\nAbility to Load data from different data sources\n\nfrom different Design, build, install, configure and support Hadoop system\n\nand Hadoop system Ability to translate complex technical requirements in detailed a design.\n\nAnalyse vast data storages and uncover insights.\n\nvast data storages and uncover insights. Maintain security and data privacy.\n\nand Design scalable and high-performance web services for data tracking.\n\nand web services for data tracking. High-speed data querying.\n\ndata querying. Loading, deploying and managing data in HBase.\n\nand data in Defining job flows using schedulers like Zookeeper\n\nCluster Coordination services through Zookeeper\n\nWith this, we come to an end of this article. I hope I have thrown some light on to your knowledge on a Hadoop Developer along with skills required, roles and responsibilities, job trends and Salary trends.\n\nIf you wish to check out more articles on the market’s most trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Python, Ethical Hacking, then you can refer to Edureka’s official site.\n\nDo look out for other articles in this series which will explain the various other aspects of Big data."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/edureka/hadoop-developer-cc3afc54962c"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Shubham Sinha']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-09-11 06:23:19.072000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Big Data', 'Hadoop', 'Hadoop Developer', 'Big Data Analytics', 'Hadoop Training']"}}},{"rowIdx":186061,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"The Reserve Bucket"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"The Reserve Bucket\n\nand why you should hold on to that lame ass story you wrote\n\nI don’t want to write a book or a novel. It’s never been my goal. I have the attention span of a bouncy ball, or a drunk person who keeps forgetting they were in search of a public restroom. Sure I can write 50,000 to 80,000 words, just not on the same subject at one time. Maybe at some point I’ll consider publishing a collection of essays, but for now I’ll stick with writing and publishing those essays as standalones.\n\nThere are times I’ve fallen short or felt creatively drained when “Fuck it” feels the best route to take. Other times I could write three stories a day, swiftly and with grace, and at times I’m even willing to lose sleep to keep the groove going. I utilized both as the positive and negative they are.\n\nI discovered this thing I’ve come to call my reserve bucket. It’s sort of a never empty bucket of stories and articles. It’s never ending because you regularly take stories out and put stories in.\n\nAs writers we’re going to come up with just as many bad ideas as we do good. We’ll write as many shit stories as we do perfect stories. It’s a legitimate part of the writing process. There are aspects and loopholes and all sorts of #lifehappens we weren’t prepared for, but we were prepared to keep our writing career rolling, no matter what, with our reserve bucket.\n\nThe definition of a writer is not to just sit down, pump out a story and poof our job is done for the day. That’s not how being a writer works at all, no. Just, no.\n\nIn a sense being a writer is similar to a plague. It’s 24/7/365. Generating ideas never stops nor does our power of observation. It’s more like; Dear lord, please let me take this train ride into the city without a single realization that, whoa, I just had an idea! This is the real deal. The reality of writing, writer, write. It’s a process that never ends.\n\nThere are three #major #valuable #important reasons why every writer should have a reserve bucket of stories and articles."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://erikasauter.medium.com/the-reserve-bucket-ca3547c4bccb"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Erika Sauter']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2018-07-20 18:11:33.129000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Culture', 'Writing', 'Life', 'Creativity', 'Productivity']"}}},{"rowIdx":186062,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Fluent: Design Behind the Design"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Purpose and process\n\nThis month, we’ve launched an update to our Fluent Design System website. The update represents our approach to helping our designers and developers build and design products for our customers. Fluent Design is a collective, open design system that ensures people, teams, and their products have the fundamental components and processes to build coherent experiences across platforms.\n\nEarlier this year, I wrote about how we’re evolving the Fluent Design System to be “more than a set of outcomes” and how we use it to collectively design and build products.\n\nThe evolution of Fluent represents a critical moment for our design system at Microsoft. At Build 2017, we introduced Fluent as the latest Windows design language with a focus on bridging user experiences across multiple devices and 3D environments. Both figuratively and literally, Fluent became defined by its focus on fundamental principles and building blocks: light, depth, motion, materials, and scale.\n\nToday, Fluent is simple in its emphasis on systematizing the fundamentals. It’s an attempt to optimize the process for both designers and developers through a shared foundation. At least in its initial stage, it’s as much about process as it is about pixels and interactions. It’s less about creating something new and more about establishing coherence. Coherence relieves cognitive overload, helping people focus on what they’re trying to accomplish and not on how they’re trying to accomplish it. Essentially, the updated Fluent website is a representation of this evolution to broaden this story of coherent experiences.\n\nSimply put, it’s about designers and developers working better together to create best-in-class experiences that empower our customers."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/microsoft-design/fluent-design-behind-the-design-973028062fcc"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Joseph Mclaughlin']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-08-22 17:25:43.526000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Fluent Design', 'Microsoft', 'Fluent Design System', 'User Experience', 'Design']"}}},{"rowIdx":186063,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"GiveCrypto’s October Monthly Report"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Overview\n\nDonations — $13,926\n\nPeople Impacted — 854\n\nNew Experiments — 7\n\nExperiment Details\n\nGiveCrypto’s short term focus has been rapid experimentation; we want to learn as much as possible about transferring cryptocurrency to people in need. Some of the early experiments were pretty basic; with modest goals like the recipient’s ability to receive and utilize crypto. We are already implementing more sophisticated experiments that test vectors like previous crypto activity, purchase/cash-out options, duration/size of transfers and macroeconomic conditions. Future experiments will continue to build upon the lessons learned from this work.\n\nBelow is a table of all experiments that ran in October followed by a brief overview of each experiment.\n\nZuck\n\nDonate non-trivial amount ($50 USD) in BTC to four trusted individuals in Uganda; two nationals and two refugees. This was our first experiment and outcome tracking wasn’t well planned. Cancelled on Oct 22nd.\n\nSolidity Training\n\nSubsidizing solidity training courses for five computer savvy Somali refugees in Uganda. We will pay them $50 (paid in BTC) for completing the final course.\n\nSempo\n\nBasic income of $75 per week (paid in DAI) for five Syrian refugee families living in Lebanon (Beirut). Also have a grocery store and pharmacy that accept payment in DAI for food/medicine.\n\nBonnum\n\nBasic income of $1 per day (paid in EOS) for twenty Venezuelan refugee families in Paracaima, Brazil. Also have a bodega in a local church that accepts crypto payments for food and exchanges EOS for Brazilian fiat.\n\nCryptoDiana\n\nPaid a local Venezuelan to cold-call restaurants that accept crypto and pitch them on distributing $100 worth of food to local community. This was an attempt to scale the work that was done during the work-trial, but wasn’t successful. Cancelled on Oct 13th.\n\nCoinbase Ambassador\n\nGiving $100 (in ETH) to Coinbase employees and ask them distribute the funds to people in need.\n\nWala\n\nDonating $20 (in DALA) to fifty different people in Uganda; twenty-five had previously used crypto and twenty-five are new to crypto. Next phase will involve an ambassador component; to see how/if they give to people in need.\n\nBrito\n\nGiving $10 (in BTC) to 100 different people in Venezuela. First redemption option is a food truck that will accept crypto for discounted meals. We are also subsidizing some of the software development for the recipient’s wallet.\n\nAirTM\n\nGiving $20 (in BTC) to 250 different people in Venezuela and Argentina. The recipients will be grouped by light (< 2 Tx per month) and heavy (> 2 Tx per month) activity users to see how the different groups behave.\n\nMost of these experiments are still running and it would be premature to draw any definitive conclusions. But, we have already learned some (mostly intuitive) lessons.\n\nGenerosity is powerful — we all have an innate desire to help other people, most of us just lack the tools and resources\n\nCrypto is confusing but almost all recipients have figured out how to receive, hold and use the funds\n\nFood > medicine — although recipients asked for a pharmacy option (in the Sempo experiment), they all used the funds to purchase food\n\nNew crypto users convert to cash, existing crypto users are more likely to hold crypto or make crypto purchases\n\nAmbassador Dapp\n\nThe ambassador dapp runs in the Coinbase Wallet and will allow anybody to donate funds on behalf of GiveCrypto. The first version of the application will be invitation based and restricted to individuals that are trusted by GiveCrypto partners.\n\nThe ambassador dapp is the first component of a larger ‘distributed charity’ platform. Our preliminary vision is that future enhancements might include components like:\n\nBlock tracking — scripts that analyze downstream transactions\n\nPurchase validation — tools that validate use of proceeds\n\nIdentity verification — maximizing the likelihood that our recipients are who they say they are\n\nReputation scoring — maintaining a score of our users based on their behavior\n\nDistribution dashboard — real-time, quantitative information about how funds are used\n\nContent management system — collecting and distributing qualitative and visually appealing stories about how funds are used\n\nOperational Foundation\n\nWe are beginning to create an operational foundation that will allow GiveCrypto to scale fundraising and donation efforts. The primary components of the operational platform are:\n\nFinancial system — NetSuite\n\nDonor relationship management system — Salesforce NSP\n\nSecurity/custody protocols — Coinbase Custody\n\nContent management system — TBD\n\nFundraising\n\nWe have explicitly decided not to focus on fundraising for Q4 of 2018. We want to better define GiveCrypto’s strategy and create supporting content before we reach out to current/prospective donors. We feel like we are making good progress on both fronts and will be well positioned to begin fundraising in earnest in 2019."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/givecrypto/givecryptos-october-monthly-report-5c191bc03b56"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Joe Waltman']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2018-11-02 16:00:59.502000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Blockchain', 'Charity', 'Nonprofit', 'Coinbase', 'Cryptocurrency']"}}},{"rowIdx":186064,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"How to Get Unstuck"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"How to Get Unstuck\n\nBy Deepak Chopra, MD\n\nThere are lots of reasons to consider the human mind is unfathomable, beginning with simple evidence like the thousands of psychology books on the market and the years of training required to become a licensed psychiatrist. But it is possible to create huge changes in how your mind is working, here and now, that do not require in-depth knowledge.\n\nInstead, all that is needed is the habit of watching yourself. Life is about action and reaction. Very complex and tangled influences may be at work — and almost certainly are — but they mostly remain undercover. What we experience is action and reaction, which leads to each person’s unique pattern of behaving.\n\nLooking at your behavior on the scale of months and years, or even days and weeks, is impossible, because everyone has thousands of thoughts that lead to thousands of actions and reactions. But it is very different, and much easier, to simply look at what happens next. If you look at your next reaction to anything — an incident at work, a phone call, your child running in with a scraped knee — the same thing happens next: you do something based on the past.\n\nYou possess a backlog, a virtual library, of memories that imprinted how you acted and reacted. Some people are more predictable than others in how they act and react — a frontline soldier confronts very limited options compared with a philosopher. But everyone consults a library of set responses when the next thing happens.\n\nIf these set responses work out reasonably well, most people are satisfied. They react and move on. But if you take a moment to observe your next reaction, some disturbing clues emerge about what is actually going on inside you. These observations include the following:\n\n· Your reactions are knee-jerk and not actually thought through.\n\n· Being the product of memory, your reaction is repeating the past rather than meeting the present moment.\n\n· Set responses make you a robot of the past.\n\n· If you think you are living in the present, you are the victim of an illusion.\n\nThese observations describe someone who is stuck. Stuckness doesn’t need a technical definition. Look around, and you will see people repeating themselves all the time, engaging in mindless daily routines, arguing over the same old things in relationship, feeling uncomfortable with change, and suffering pain and frustration because their lives never seem to improve.\n\nNone of that sounds desirable, so why do we content ourselves with being stuck? Again observation provides an answer. If you look at your next reaction, there is a push-and-pull between the positive and negative aspects of being stuck.\n\nPositive: Routine makes life predictable and reassuring. Repetition is the path of least resistance. It feels safe to know where you stand. Fixed reactions remove the threat of the unknown.\n\nNegatives: Routine is stifling and boring. Repetition is stultifying. It feels empty to think of yourself as a known quantity, with nothing new to offer. By not welcoming the unknown, all avenues of creativity, discovery, and curiosity are cut off.\n\nIf you consider the positives and negatives for a moment, there’s no contest. Everyone would want to get unstuck. Tolerating a routine, repetitive existence leads nowhere. We all know this inside, even if we have to dig deep to admit the truth. Money, skill, and status don’t make a difference, which is why doctors have a high burnout rate.\n\nThe real problem isn’t stuckness but not knowing how to get unstuck. The simple step already mentioned — observing your own reactions — is the key. Stuckness represents a surrender to unconscious habits, beliefs, and old conditioning. To undo their hold on you, you must first observe how these influences work. You cannot change what you aren’t aware of.\n\nWhat should you start noticing? Very simple things, really.\n\nNotice when you say something you said before.\n\nNotice when you react the same way you reacted in the past.\n\nNotice when other people tune you out.\n\nNotice how you actually feel, here and now.\n\nNotice when you resort to anxiety or anger.\n\nMany times, all you have to do is to observe these repeated reactions and they will start to dissolve and dissipate. You are exchanging an unconscious existence for a conscious one, and living consciously is both the remedy and the goal of getting unstuck. But there is also a simple action you can take. When you notice any of the reactions on the list — in other words, any obvious repetition of old conditioning — stop at once.\n\nBy stopping you tell your unconscious mind that you don’t want to operate on autopilot. What happens next? Wait and see. Most of the time, especially at first, the old conditioning will force its way back. Autopilot has had years of reinforcement. It thinks it knows what to do in any situation. Only you have the power to wake up from this fixed notion, because only your conscious mind can turn the autopilot off.\n\nGetting unstuck requires nothing more than what I’ve described. Everyone has conscious moments, many of them in fact. No one is ever completely robotic. We sense the upwelling of love, joy, curiosity, altruism, sympathy, insight, and intuition. These are non-reactive responses. Diminish your automatic reactions and expand your responses to life here and now. Again, that is both the remedy and the goal. The fully conscious life is the best life. To discover that this is so, the place to begin is by getting unstuck.\n\nDeepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotify www.deepakchopra.com"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://deepakchopra.medium.com/how-to-get-unstuck-5940d81b9e8f"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Deepak Chopra']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-07-29 14:19:00.470000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Self Improvement', 'Getting Unstuck', 'Consciousness', 'Overcoming Habits']"}}},{"rowIdx":186065,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Increasing Self Productivity by 99% via 6TPD Rule"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"How I Stay Productive Every day?\n\nBackground\n\nIt is interesting to see how the society function around us. We live with many kinds of people with various traits, activities, attitudes, believes, and interest. We can easily notice this if we take some time to observe two or three people around us.\n\nOnce in a while I love to observe people that I know and strangers that I have no clue of their background. It is very interesting observing them as I can learn about them, what they do, what their action and reaction towards something and consecutively do my own reflection based on personal observation. From here we can continuously improve ourselves.\n\nThere are many types of people out there. In the context of this article, I categorize people into two types: (1) People with a lot of free time (relax) and (2) People with a lot of responsibilities (busy). Plenty can be discussed from these two types. Both have their own stories and perks.\n\nI would also further segment people into two kinds, which are (1) genius, and (2) ordinary. The reason I did this is because once again, I observed people around me. I am working in a place where there are plenty of highly intelligent people, as I work in a university.\n\nTo make it even more competitive, it is one of the top university in my country and the university I am at working at is a research university status. It is amazing to see so many genius people around me at work, plenty of them who excelled superbly in their tertiary education up till their highly decorated successes in their career.\n\nBeing employed as an academician specializing in chemical engineering, I am also demanded to achieve numerous key performance indicators (KPI) from all sort of levels and directions. I find myself to be in the “people with a lot of responsibilities” type, which after this I will just use the term busy; and also the “ordinary” kind.\n\nSince I fall under both of the unfavorable types, I cannot afford to just lay back and just be a spectator witnessing people around me marching with success. I cannot be ordinary. I need to move forward. I know that I need to work harder, in fact double or triple harder than others in order to produce spectacular outcomes.\n\nThat is when I feel that I need to be more productive than before. Like anyone else, I only have 24 hours a day. But I know I need to be able to produce and deliver more. I need to make my results and products do all the shouting. But how could I do or achieve this?\n\nFew years back, I read an incredible book — The 10X Rule by Grant Cordone. We were taught to set targets 10 times greater than what we believe we can achieve and to take actions that are 10 times greater than what we believe are necessary to achieve our goals.\n\nCordone’s message was strong and anyone who can successfully apply it is a winner. I realized that we need to multiply our believes and actions to produce dazzling outputs. It’s partly from this book that inspired me to think bigger and out of the box. If I cannot be up to Cordone’s standard, I need to establish a reasonable standard I can follow consistently and keep on growing.\n\nBeing in a world where social media presence always hijacks our precious time to do work, I know that I need to have my own formula to overcome this, not to be a victim of social technologies. Not to suffer from unproductive life. I need to device a simple yet powerful recipe that can work for me (and perhaps for others too).\n\n6TPD Rule Concept\n\nMy immediate solution is very simple and straight forward. I just need to plan and organize my limited time as wise and as strategic possible. Brian Tracy in his book “Eat that Frog” and and Mohd Daud Bakar in his book “I Have 25 Hours a Day” gave me some insights, strategies and motivation on how to complete more tasks, cleverly. I integrated some of their methods and wisdoms, and design it to suit myself.\n\nThat’s when I created my own version set of rule, the 6TPD Rule. It simply means 6 Tasks Per Day rule. The concept is simply to perform, complete or execute 6 selected tasks, jobs, activities in a single day.\n\nWhy 6 and not 5 or 4 or any other digit?\n\nThe digit is just a number assigned to how many tasks we are capable to humanly accomplish per day. It is subjective. It can be different from one person to another person.\n\nA very highly efficient person could designate his version of 11TPD Rule and accomplish far more than a person who sets himself to be a 4TPD Rule. You define your own “X”TPD Rule. There is no point to be rigid or limit yourself.\n\nSometimes, you set 6TPD Rule, but in a very productive day, you can complete 12 tasks. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with that. However there will be days that only 3 tasks could be accomplished. Again, it is just a number, a guide for your subconscious mind or a daily goal for you to achieve. But the most important point is that you strive your best to accomplish 6 or more tasks per day, which eventually the average will reflect 6 tasks per day.\n\nLet say once you set yourself to the 6TPD Rule consistently and manage to stick to the plan for 2 months, you can upgrade yourself to 7TPD Rule or even more. You know yourself better and you know your own potential. Hence, you decide the best that works for you.\n\nThe figures below show examples of the list that I made everyday using my mobile phone note app, which then I crossed the tasks once I have done it. Every time I cross a task, I felt boosted, motivated and excited. It made me want to keep on working and crossing more tasks. This indicates that my dopamine hormone, the motivation molecule, is flourishing positively in my body.\n\nDopamine is our achievement hormone. The higher the hormone concentration, the higher will be our focus, alertness, creativity and long-term memory. Dopamine drives us to seek rewards in achieving goals and position us to be in the fight mode effort to be successful.\n\nMeasuring Productivity\n\nThe quantification of productivity in the self help segment is debatable. There are no specific methods to measure it. It is not as simple as a mathematical formula that you can know the answer swiftly. It is also not a simple programming that you can insert data to your coding and then yield the output data within seconds.\n\nHuman like us have certain tasks and responsibilities which gets bigger and heavier as we grow. When we were kids, our main duty is to study besides enjoying our childhood activities. The day we graduated from university, that marks the commencement of a more serious business. Older generation will say to young graduates, “Welcome to the real world”. Sigh.\n\nBut, still we never really measure productivity. Me included. Early last year, I gave it a serious thought. To keep moving forward, we need to measure productivity as best as we can. Car manufacturing companies measure their productivity by quantifying the number of cars they produce and sell per day, per month and per year (just a simple example). Same goes for other businesses or organizations.\n\nSo, I felt it is better to have a number of tasks that we used to complete on average for the past months or years, as a benchmark. This is important data that you can easily trace if you have a proper record, either in your to do list, note book, laptop, blog or anywhere.\n\nBefore this I believe, I am at 3 to 4 tasks per day. Maybe because at that time, my responsibilities are less and I am relatively younger. However, as we grew and became more matured, more appointments, more projects, more responsibilities are given whether we like it or not. This was when I felt that 24 hours a day was not enough.\n\nI considered 3 tasks a day as my personal benchmark based on my previous performance. I doubled that amount and it became 6 tasks per day, which is basically the 6TPD Rule I devoted to. In my mind, whenever I can, I will attempt more than six, if circumstances permit.\n\nWhen I first implemented 6TPD Rule, it was a shaky start. It was tough mentally and psychologically because I pushed myself (out of my comfort zone). However, as times goes by I began to better grasp the philosophy of it. I became more comfortable and turned to be more driven.\n\nI noticed that I can double what I accomplished per day compared to the point where I initially benchmarked myself. It is worth it. My personal productivity literally doubled. Truly, it is very simple, yet powerful. It’s possible and realistic.\n\nLets look at how we can accomplish the 6TPD Rule. There are simple steps that can be followed to ensure the success of the method. The steps are elaborated below:\n\nMake A List\n\nIt all starts with making a list of tasks to do. Every day I jot down a list of tasks I need to do. I will do it either before I sleep at night or very early in the morning. By doing this, my subconscious mind has set myself to perform predetermine tasks to be executed immediately next day in the morning.\n\nWhen I list down my tasks, it will comprise of official tasks and sometimes unofficial tasks such as personal or house chores that I need to do. When I list down my tasks, it will usually be as low as 10 but sometimes as high as 20 tasks per day. It depends on the situation at that particular time. Every moment is different, but the game plan is the same.\n\nDo not complicate this step. It is very simple. You can use a note book, paper, your note aps in your mobile phone or anything that you can list down your tasks. For me, it is seasonal. Sometimes I write my list tasks in a book and sometimes in my note aps in my mobile phone. List as many as possible tasks that you want to do or to achieve in that particular day.\n\n2. Take Action — Just Do It!\n\nNow that you already have that list, you can target which one to execute first. You should start taking action. Be discipline, responsible and accountable to yourself. This is your tasks and you need to perform them. Normally, I will dwell with it one by one until I managed to cross at least 6 to 10 of them per day.\n\nWhat I meant by cross is that I marked the tasks as done. It is ok for me not to be able to cross all of the tasks in a particular day, if the lists are too long. The fact that I managed to complete 6 to 10 tasks per day is considered a massive achievement and a productive day for me.\n\nMost of the time it is quite impossible to complete all tasks since we have other routine official and unofficial tasks to perform. Sometimes, on a particular day, I managed to cross more than 10 tasks, whereas sometimes I could only do 3 tasks. Again, it depends on what happen on that day since other responsibilities are there plus sudden unplanned important events sometimes hijack the time.\n\n3. Focus and Consistency\n\nThis part is easier said than done. It is not easy to stay focus and be consistent if we do not have a clear goal in mind what to achieve in that particular day. More often, the tasks that we want to perform could be small components of our short term goals. The more tasks you complete, the more closer we are to our short term goals.\n\nOn contrary, sometimes the listed tasks are normal chores such as repairing sink in the toilet, servicing the car, making donation to an organization, calling someone to discuss something and so on. My point here is, whatever you have listed in Step 1, just focus to perform the tasks, and do it consistently till you managed to cross more than 6 tasks that day.\n\nBelieve me, being consistent to cross 6 tasks per day means you successfully complete performing 42 tasks per week; 180 tasks per month; 2190 tasks per year.\n\nIf your efficiency is down by 10%, it is still good enough because you will be completing 162 tasks per month and 1971 tasks per year, which is still better than NOT having a clear plan of action. If your efficiency is up by 10%, that is excellent as you will accomplish 198 tasks per week and 2409 tasks per year. This is an interesting way of looking at the overall concept right?\n\nSince “focus and consistency” plays a huge role in the 2nd step that is “taking action”, I would like to break down the discussion into smaller pieces, so that it is easily digestible and easier to be done.\n\n3.1 Wake up early & complete half of the tasks before afternoon. By doing this, you will feel the sense of satisfaction and joy as you have completed quite a number of tasks. Imagine the pressure if you start to work on your list after lunch time, you will indulge yourself in unnecessary stress.\n\n3.2 Complete the most important tasks before afternoon. This is the imperative message conveyed by Brian Tracy in his best selling book. I’ve tried this a lot and it gave me sense of relieve after finally settling the most challenging part in the list, ie. to eat the frog.\n\nOften, among the listed tasks, there will be one task that applies to 20–80 rule as stated by Ryan Tate in his book The 20% Doctrine. That particular task resemble merely 20% but in actual fact it had covered 80% of the overall commitment for the day.\n\n3.3 Limit social media moment while working on the list. When you start dealing with the tasks, put your mobile phone away and do not open the social media browser. Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Linkedin will not run away from you. Just be patient till you complete most of the listed tasks, then later in the day you can read updates / reply comments on your social media account.\n\n3.4 Segment huge task into several smaller fragments. Sometimes you work on a big project that it is impossible to be completed in a day. This project or task may require 3 months or 7 months or 1.5 years or 3 years. It doesn’t matter.\n\nBreak it down into smaller segments. If the smaller segments need to be broken down into tinier segments, just do it. For example, you probably are a full time research student who need to do your master thesis in 2 years time. Plan carefully your 2 years research work and break it down in to several parts.\n\n3.5 Reward yourself. Every one needs a motivation. Hence, let say after successfully completing 6 activities within 7 consecutive days, you can reward yourself with something of great value, inline with your goal or simply some relaxation moment.\n\nThe 5 above mentioned points hopefully can guide you to stay focus and consistent towards making you sharp and sensible when executing the listed tasks.\n\n4. Be Creative & Innovative\n\nBeing creative and innovative strategy can also be used for other purpose for yourself. There are various approaches and benefits from the 6TPD Rule implementation such as:\n\n4.1 Developing new habits. There will be time you want to transform something to be your habit or routine. Include them in your daily list, do it consistently, until it becomes a routine, than omit it.\n\nA simple example would be exercising 5 minutes a day. It is not easy to do this for some people even though they know the importance of it. Hence, if you include it in the list, you may want to do it once and for all for that day. And after the 5 minutes exercise, you can slash that task just like that.\n\nRepeat the same thing tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. After 2 or 3 weeks, it will appear to be a routine for you. You no longer need to list 5 minutes exercise in your list. It really help us to nurture the discipline and character within our self.\n\n4.2 It will eventually be done. Do not worry for the listed tasks that are not completed on a particular day. There will be tomorrow for you to cross that incomplete tasks. Normally this is the kind of tasks that are not important and not urgent.\n\nRe-list it again. Just recycle it and crush them on a brand new fresh day. Recycle them repeatedly until you execute them. This always happen to me and I will keep on relisting the tasks. Eventually, it will be crossed and disappear from my next list.\n\n4.3 List an activity that you don’t want to commit . There maybe some activities that is very natural to you, that you are always motivated to do but it’s NOT GOOD for you. You can list that too in the 6TPD Rule.\n\nList it as “Not to do that activity” and train yourself not to do it. For instance, “Not to eat junk food”, “Not to sleep in the morning”, “Not to smoke cigarette”, “Not to spend more than 1 hour on social media in the morning”, “Not to watch TV — more than 2 hours per day” etc… Once you manage not to do it on that day, you can cross that item. It will be help you be a better version of yourself.\n\nConcluding Remarks\n\nThe list of tasks can be a great mixed between office jobs, personal, family and friend stuffs. It’s really up to you to custom the 6TPD Rule. Be flexible. Yeah… just be flexible. Stay positive. Know your short, medium and long term goals. With this you will always be on high alert and your activities will have the right navigation.\n\nThe most important thing here is to be able to accomplish 6 or more tasks per day so you make your life more productive and meaningful. It’s your life and you know what matters the most in your life. Go ahead and design your own version of 6TPD Rule.\n\nAll the best. Stay productive!"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/@zakiyamani/4-steps-towards-increasing-self-productivity-by-99-via-6tpd-rule-4538147d5bfc"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Zaki Yamani Zakaria']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2021-06-14 12:01:41.430000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Checklist', 'Self Help', 'Efficiency', 'Effectiveness', 'Increase Productivity']"}}},{"rowIdx":186066,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"The Basics of EDA (with candy)"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"The Basics of EDA (with candy)\n\n“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.”\n\nCarly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard\n\nAs a data scientist, it is said that we will spend about 80% of our time on EDA. Therefore, as tedious as it may seem, it is a good idea to master the process before moving on to the fun stuff. The process which includes cleaning, sorting, and checking feature correlations to weed out the noise and hopefully gain some insight to what pieces are most useful.\n\nThe dataset for this example is the candy hierarchy for 2017 from the Science Creative Quarterly website. You can find and download the csv here if you want to follow along. I’m using Python 3.7 in Jupyter notebook.\n\nSome of the steps I share here will be personal preference and you can modify as you like, however, these first few steps are pretty important to ALWAYS do.\n\nImport:\n\nPandas — data analysis library, necessary for almost all data manipulation\n\nNumpy — for linear algebra functions, good to have even if you’re not expecting to need it.\n\nMatplotlib — visualization library for plotting and graphs\n\nSeaborn — for more customizable data visualization\n\nRead in your data:\n\nUsing pandas pd.read_csv function, enter your data source as a string and save it as a variable which will be the name of your DataFrame going forward. Many people use df, I like to use something more descriptive so i’ll go with candy this time.\n\nNext you’ll want to check the first few rows of the data to get a peak at what you’ll be working with."},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://towardsdatascience.com/the-basics-of-eda-with-candy-83b2e8ad9e63"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Rachel Koenig']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2019-07-19 05:29:22.552000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['Data Science', 'Candyhierarchy', 'Pandas Dataframe', 'Statscandy', 'Exploratory Data Analysis']"}}},{"rowIdx":186067,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"The Importance of Diversity in the STEM Sector"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"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\n\nMake 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"},"url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://medium.com/supplierty-news/the-importance-of-diversity-in-the-stem-sector-15c15157a989"},"authors":{"kind":"string","value":"['Jaymie White']"},"timestamp":{"kind":"string","value":"2020-10-14 14:16:34.872000+00:00"},"tags":{"kind":"string","value":"['STEM', 'Diversity In Tech', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Diversity']"}}},{"rowIdx":186068,"cells":{"title":{"kind":"string","value":"Developing Content Layouts for Content and Experience Cloud"},"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Prerequisite\n\nPlease refer to the previous post Developing for Content and Experience Cloud (CEC) using Sites Toolkit for an introduction to Sites Toolkit and installation. This post assumes that the Project Creation and Installation step is completed.\n\nContent Layouts\n\nContent layouts help users view the data in content items through content list or content placeholder components used in sites pages. You can create multiple content layouts for a content type to create different views or to represent different parts of a content item. In this post, we will explore how to use Sites Toolkit to develop content layouts.\n\nCreating a content layout\n\nTo create a content layout, a content type is required. The template named BlogTemplate has the ‘Starter-Blog-Post’ content type. Let us create a template called ‘Starter-Blog-Template’ from the BlogTemplate.\n\ncec create-template Starter-Blog-Template -f BlogTemplate\n\nNow create a content layout for the ‘Starter-Blog-Post’ content type.\n\ncec create-contentlayout My-Blog-Layout -c Starter-Blog-Post -t Starter-Blog-Template\n\nOptions:\n\n— contenttype, -c Content layout is based on [required]\n\n— template, -t