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States, Cities Face Tough Times Ahead | States, Cities Face Tough Times Ahead
With COVID-19 stripping millions from tax revenue and constituent and healthcare spending soaring, it’s no surprise: Austerity is here. Municipalities in the United States face an immediate need for critical cuts to public services, staff and budgets. In this first of three posts, I will discuss the fact that — while cuts may be painful — austerity isn’t always about loss. By embracing austerity quickly and making it a community project, there will be successes, too.
‘We are not doing this because we want to, driven by theory or ideology. We are doing this because we have to, driven by the urgent truth, that unless we do people will suffer and our national interest will suffer. But this government will not cut this deficit in a way that hurts those we most need to help’ – David Cameron, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2010)
Let me start by saying very clearly: I think austerity is a terrible idea. Cutting spending when public services are needed and the economy needs to be brought back to life doesn’t work. It’s been proven that it doesn’t stimulate economic growth. And, worst of all, it disproportionately makes the most vulnerable of our population suffer.
Yet, despite my strong feelings and hopes for the contrary, austerity is very likely on the table in most American communities. ‘Austerity’ may sound like a foreign concept, something we associate with the financial crisis in Europe. But according to Mark Davidson, a geographer and author of Cities under Austerity — Restructuring the US Metropolis, austerity became a distinct urban condition in the U.S. I don’t refer to austerity in the ideological sense of smaller government, but to the practical implication of cuts to public spending and services.
There are many ways we can enter austerity in the coming months. We may see cuts at all levels of government — severe cuts in local and state governments even as the Federal Government doles out stimulus. Indeed, those in local governments should not pin their hopes on Federal bail-outs. A recent survey by the National League of Cities and U.S. Conference of Mayors already found that 50–76% of mayors anticipate having to cut public services. Local and state governments have no actual control over federal bail-outs. It would be irresponsible for local and city leadership not to prepare for the worst.
The Face of What’s to Come
So what might austerity look like in the real world? We’ve already seen its beginnings. The first half of the year has delivered a terrible blow to local and state governments (like everywhere else in the world), as their revenue from taxes and permits evaporates and COVID-19 expenses exploded. A staggering 16.4% decline in retail in April glosses over how unevenly COVID-19 is hitting our economy. Online retailers like Amazon experienced rapid growth and won dominance while across the country small businesses like restaurants, shops, bars, gyms and after school programs are literally disappearing from our communities as their sources of revenue (and customers) are stuck at home.
According to experts, going forward a prolonged 40 to 60% drop in government revenues is a likely scenario, exceeding the capacity of the rainy day funds many municipalities so diligently built up. Fiscally speaking, municipal governments will first try to cover shortfalls by drawing on those rainy day funds, as well as tapping buffers built into budgets. Then come the cuts to the public services, which are typically funded by discretionary budgets comprising between 5 to 30% of their overall budgets. If all that isn’t enough, things will get even worse, especially if budget cuts begin to eat into the 70–80% of municipal budget that funds the heavily unionized police and fire departments or leads to defaults on bond payments. If solutions cannot be found, bankruptcy looms under Chapter 9 with a lot of legally uncharted territory. Next to cuts, cities may also look to generate revenue through increased rates or taxes.
But cuts aren’t the only challenge under an austerity budget because demand for services is likely to grow steeply. Just look at unemployment as a predictor for demand. Austerity typically comes into play when work prospects evaporate across the work landscape and anxiety is at its highest. In addition, unlike other financial crises, these problems will be especially pronounced as social distancing will keep local service industries like tourism and hospitality (which alone employ one billion low income workers globally) locked down, destroying the livelihoods of our most vulnerable people.
In 2012 British singer Plan B echoed youth sentiment when he penned his austerity anthem Ill Manors with the lines “Who closed down the community centre, I kill time there, used to be a member, what am I going to do now ’til September”. Government was unable to respond to the sharp rise in demand for social and community care services, retraining, or recreation just when people needed it most. It led to spikes in depression, youth riots, xenophobia and Brexit. And a deep desire to return to the quaint, good old days.
An eerie silence on austerity
Austerity seems imminent, yet no one is putting ideas on the table. I find this striking and deeply troubling. Other than calls for Federal Government bail-outs, or rushed emergency budgets, there is an eerie silence on how we might implement austerity. A lot of the discussion appears focused on enlightened new ways of living even as we read The Atlantic’s dire predictions of high street retail. By not debating austerity, we are giving up our agency in deciding how it should be implemented.
So the questions we should ask are these: How can we best live with austerity? How might we reframe austerity not as a “less of” debate but as an opportunity to reimagine what could be? Innovations are frequently borne not out of abundance but constraints. But despite the growing urgency, not everyone may be ready to ask them. Rick Cole, the city manager of Santa Monica resigned after pushback against his calls to prepare for the city for daunting cuts in the face of a $300 million budget shortfall. Santa Monica is set to implement a 24% budget cut for its next fiscal year that commences in July.
Maybe the American people have been in denial because we didn’t experience the kind of local government austerity others went through during the financial crisis. On average, municipal budgets were cut by 2% in the U.S., compared to 24% in the U,K. Posturing may also be at play, as states and local governments everywhere call for Federal Government bailouts. But a look at what happened over the past decade in countries like Greece, Spain and in particular the U.K. should serve as a reminder of both the prolonged suffering austerity can inflict on people as well as how certain communities succeeded in softening the blow by approaching austerity with care.
My next post shares a few lessons we can build on. | https://medium.com/embracing-austerity/states-cities-face-tough-times-ahead-5ef5b355e983 | ['Sascha Haselmayer'] | 2020-07-29 08:09:22.902000+00:00 | ['Public Service', 'Budget Cuts', 'Austerity', 'Covid 19', 'Government Innovation'] |
Leaf Blower Man | Photo by Callum Hill on Unsplash
Leaf blower man, please stop.
What are you doing?
Leave the leaves alone.
They’re not hurting anyone.
You’re hurting my ears
and burning carbon
for no good reason.
Go plant a tree instead
or at least feel the peace.
Hear the distant waves,
smell the summer air
and watch the fluttering green
of the occasional leaf
dance down to the ground
and let it be. | https://medium.com/resistance-poetry/leaf-blower-man-8d28063feda8 | ['Emma Briggs'] | 2020-12-03 12:48:06.887000+00:00 | ['Noise Pollution', 'Resistance Poetry', 'Poem', 'Leaves', 'Summer'] |
How to Live Joyously and Still Be Highly Successful | Photo courtesy of Jean Philippe Berghe of Unsplash
LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE!
How to Live Joyously and Still Be Highly Successful
One of the most common traits I see among successful people is the presence of genuine joy. Oh sure, they’re happy because they’re successful, right?
Wrong.
They’re successful because they’re happy.
Most people find success by doing something they truly enjoy. They operate in the lane of their passion and purpose. We all have a purpose in life. Some people have discovered it while others are still searching. And that’s OK. If you’re still searching, you can find happiness by doing the things you’re passionate about.
Fulfillment of purpose brings true joy to those fortunate enough to have enjoyed the price of success. Notice I didn’t say “paid” the price because success is a journey that should be enjoyed.
Life was meant to be enjoyed, savored, and cherished.
Laughter itself is contagious and is known to have inherent healing power and mood-altering effects. Try it yourself. The next time you’re not feeling so well or find yourself in a less than desirable mood, find a private restroom with a mirror, lock the door behind you and make silly faces in the mirror. I guarantee you’ll laugh. At the very least, you’ll smile at just how ridiculous you look as you attempt to make yourself laugh. You may in fact be thinking at this very moment how ridiculous (and funny) that could actually be. Hopefully, the even thought of it made you smile. And test me on this — see if you don’t experience a noticeable change in your overall well-being because of it.
Laughter produces laughter.
When you’re around someone who is genuinely joyful, you can’t help but smile and feel better. When you’re around laughter, you tend to be drawn to the energy perpetuated by that joy. I know that all too well because I’m married to one of the most genuinely joyous persons I’ve ever met.
Would you like to be successful and make more money? Sounds kind of like a cheesy cliché, I know. But if you find joy, you’ll find success. If you haven’t already discovered it, your purpose is just on the other side of your passions. Take action by following your passions and you’ll begin to discover things that lead you to your purpose…and that too will bring you joy.
True joy produces attractive energy that brings with it the seeds of opportunity, clarity, peace, and…more joy. People resonate with happy people.
So smile…better yet, smile big enough to make someone else smile. Doing so will bring a bit of joy to two people — them…and you.
To Your Best Life! | https://medium.com/g-life-magazine/how-to-live-joyously-and-still-be-highly-successful-30023e47d36a | ['Gary Westfal'] | 2020-12-15 14:15:32.042000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Joy', 'Mindfulness', 'Inspiration', 'Happiness'] |
The Story Behind Medium’s New Logo [2015] | *Medium has since updated their branding. The latest guidelines are here.
Ever since Medium first launched in beta three years ago, we have sported a logo that is a big, bold, black-and-white slab-serif M, from the font Stag.
While simple, elegant, and strong, this Stag M proved rather inflexible as a logo. It served us well through our first few years, but as Medium has grown and evolved, the logo has begun to feel flat, impenetrable, blunt, and not to be toyed with. It is also not particularly distinctive, either. In short, our M no longer captured or conveyed what Medium has become.
So, we set out this summer with the goal of creating a logo that was a better reflection of who we are, and where we want to head from here.
After exploring about a million different ideas for a new icon, we arrived back at the capital M as a visual mark we wanted to hold onto. Next step: we started having some fun — figuring out how an M shape could bend and stretch to embody what Medium felt like to us.
From there, we started getting more serious, working with type designer Rod Cavazos of the foundry PSY/OPS. With Rod, we pursued the concept that our logo could be made of a series of interconnected ideas or shapes that, when joined together, form a new thought. A logo that flows, unfurls, and builds like a great and memorable conversation.
At last, we were on to something! This simple geometric interpretation of the M felt fun — like a delightful game or a deeply satisfying puzzle. We couldn’t stop ourselves from playing with all the different treatments, mutations, and color combinations it was practically begging for.
We began to see the four planes of the logo as overlapping strains of a conversation. A conversation whose tone and direction shift as the planes come into contact with each other.
Next, we went back to our type friends at PSY/OPS to develop a unique wordmark that would be aesthetically akin and also live comfortably alongside our new M. The result is a custom set of letters that beautifully picks up on the angles and spirit of the logo, without becoming too harsh or overly geometric. | https://blog.medium.com/the-story-behind-medium-s-new-logo-4cd3e143dfcf | ['Erich Nagler'] | 2017-08-23 01:20:32.474000+00:00 | ['Medium Update', 'Logo Design', 'Next Level'] |
The World Of Digital Marketing: Past, Present, and Future | Have you ever wondered, where did digital marketing kick start from? Since when did the word ‘digital’ come into being? Three decades ago, marketers used the traditional mode of marketing to sell their products or services in the market. The term ‘Digital Marketing’ got its emerging popularity in the early 1990s. The advent of the ‘Internet’ made it happen. The internet continued to grow, and people started buying personal computers. They used E-Mails for their marketing works. In the coming years between 1993 to 1995 people using the internet gradually increased. This gradual rash in internet users is because of the advent of the first browser in the world named “ Netscape “. In 1994, AT&T corporation placed the first-ever clickable banner ad on the Hotwired website. A lot of people saw it and clicked the ad. In the same year, a lot of changes happened. Yahoo and Amazon launched. In the year 1998, a very significant thing happened, Google launched. The advent of Google and Yahoo made a drastic change that led to today’s digital marketing.
The launching of Linkedin, WordPress, Myspace, Gmail, and Facebook from 2002 to 2010 made it possible for marketers to use technology wisely. In 2007, companies started promoting themselves through the media available then.
Present
Today over 4–5 billion people use different social media. Among them, Facebook is the most used social media platform. In digital marketing, more Facebook ad revenue is coming from mobiles. A large number of people use social media to know more about products and services. Regardless of how small the industry is, digital marketing offers a wide range of affordable and efficient ways to make leads.
Types of Digital Marketing
Nowadays people spend most of their time on mobile devices. Because of this, we promote our business products and services through digital marketing and ensure that it reaches the desired customers.
Digital marketing is different channels used to promote business according to prospective customers.
Different types of tools are widely used now.
Some are listed below;
Search Engine Marketing
It’s the best mode of paid marketing widely used to promote products and services on the top of the search engine result page. It offers the advertiser the opportunity to display his/her advertisement to more desirable customers.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization or SEO makes your website ranking on top pages or increases our website visibility for relevant searches. The search engines(Google, Bing, etc.) crawl our website web pages and go from one page to another page to collect information and index them.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing
It comes under the SEM. It’s a search engine advertising method to make clicks to your website organically. Every time a click happens, you pay the search engine.
Social Media Marketing
Without any doubt, we can say that it’s the ultimate game-changer in marketing. It makes use of social media platforms to promote your product or services to desired customers. It’s the best way to increase sales and drive website traffic. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc are examples of Social Media platforms.
Email Marketing is a digital marketing strategy that sends E-Mails to customers.
Affiliate Marketing is a process of making money by promoting other company’s products/services.
Future of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is continuously making changes by the customer’s needs and brands. With the innovation and emerging technology SEO, content marketing, social media every platform going through the verge of change.
Artificial Intelligence is going to be used in paid media to automatically buy Ad space, using data to determine which potential customers should target.
Using Voice Search through Siri, Google assistant, etc, SEO should consider optimizing their websites to recognize voice search.
Video content is going to be gaining more popularity and becoming more authentic. | https://medium.com/@amyden92/the-world-of-digital-marketing-past-present-and-future-5e01b505bb9d | [] | 2020-12-23 11:37:51.257000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Zapio', 'PPC Marketing'] |
‘Even our bodies come out of the Earth’ | 49 year-old Clare Dubois is the courageous, passionate and dedicated founder of TreeSisters. Clare acknowledges that her whole life has been about the healing the feminine in the face of patriarchy. This stems from a very difficult childhood growing up with ‘an unbelievably horrendous misogynistic father.’ Life for Clare has been one of recovery from the hands of the masculine and this has been the inspiration for her to help women to heal.
Clare’s journey to set up TreeSisters is both remarkable and quite terrifying yet also magical and mystical. I hope you will be equally motivated, touched and encouraged by reading her story as I was when interviewing her.
Sue: Welcome, Clare. As we all know we are going through particularly challenging times, so I wanted to begin with when you first realised you had a mission to make a difference in the world?
Clare: I started having nightmares about climate change in my mid 20s. I became very frightened and depressed by what was going on. But there was never a sense of taking any leadership role. I never saw myself out front of anything, because back then I was a profound introvert, incredibly insecure and wounded. I couldn’t cope with people or crowds or much in life really.
Sue: How did this change for you?
Clare: I became involved with theatre performance around 2001. In one performance I played the earth where I got raped. While I was being raped, I was handing out cups of tea. So, I was inside this experience of being the one that gives all but is completely unseen – yet attacked whilst providing, and then driven to the edge of absolute collapse. And, for me it was complete collapse. I screamed my head off.
Sue: That must have been an incredibly powerful experience.
Clare: Yes, it was. I woke up to the reality that you can’t put the pain of the earth into therapy. I had the song ‘Humpty Dumpty can’t put things back together’ again going round and round in my head. I went into shock because in the play they put me back on my throne. At the end of the performance, I was given a little gift to open which was a small blue book with a white cloud on it. The little white clouds had the words, ‘You can change the world.’
All the dreams I’d been having throughout my twenties (I was living in the UK at the time) were telling me that there would be no more clouds, no more rain. So, I became obsessed with clouds. I used to draw them and take photographs of them and I wanted to have cloudscapes all over my house. I knew the climate was changing. This small book, saying you can change the world made me break into a million pieces, and I ended having to go outside because I was roaring with grief.
Sue: I can feel this grief as you talk about it.
Clare: Yes. All the time, I was having this argument in my head where my grief was screaming ‘You’re going to do something. You’ve got to do something.’ But then my insecurity was yelling, ‘You can’t do anything; you’re not good enough.’
Then my grief would say, ‘My world that I love this dying. I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to give my life to this.’ Then my insecurity would tell me, ‘But you’re nothing. Who do you think you are that you could do anything?’ These two voices just got louder and louder. It was as if womankind was screaming, ‘We’ve got to do something,’ and then the patriarchy saying, ‘Who the hell do you think you are, you can’t do anything. You’re the problem.’ I went through an hour of this whole kind of existential emotional argument inside myself. And, I won.
Sue: What do you mean, And I won?
Clare: The planet was more important than any amount of my insecurity or neuroticism. That was the point that I laid down my life for the planet. From that point on, it was just about the search for what I was meant to do.
Sue: Was this the beginning of finding your mission?
Clare: Yes. I met a businesswoman involved in coaching and joined up with her because I knew I wanted to coach people back to their essential selves. This led me to going to different conferences in the States. Each conference felt like this weird succession, taking me step by step along my journey.
Sue: What do you mean by that?
Clare: Well, I would hear somebody talk about what was going on in the rainforest, and I would start bawling my eyes out. I’d hear somebody talk about fundraising, and I’d start bawling my eyes out. And then I’d hear somebody else talk about indigenous peoples and I start bawling my eyes out again. It was like my body was talking to me through my tears. I started realising that I was supposed to be raising money for trees, but I had no idea in what form.
I ended up going to India in 2006, because I was still desperately trying to sort out my head from my father, but I wasn’t breaking out of victim consciousness. So I went to Sadhguru’s ashram in Tamil Nadu, and discovered he had grown thousands and thousands of saplings to give to the people who’d lost family members in the 2004 tsunami. The rehabilitation of these villages through this tree planting scheme happened as soon as people had somewhere to put their grief. This tree planting project was called Project Greenhouse, and every time someone talked about it, I started crying again. At the same time, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, here it is. This is IT.’
I became the UK coordinator for Project Greenhouse, believing that raising funds for trees was what I was supposed to be doing. But actually, what I really wanted to do was understand the social strategy, because Project Greenhouse in India wanted the world to raise funds for trees. So, I spent three years going back and forth trying to understand this social strategy.
Sue: It feels as if there was a kind of force with you.
Clare: You could say that. On the day I was going to a communications meeting in London to urge them to start a reforestation revolution, I swerved on ice and crashed the car into a tree – or a tree stopped me from going over the edge. It is one of those great metaphors from life: reforestation can stop humanity going over an edge!
The moment I hit the tree, there was a blinding flash of white light inside the car, and I was given two words: The Experiment. Then a voice started talking to me. It told me that humanity is running out of time. It’s not over yet but it’s going to take all of us rising to the challenge to get through what’s coming. The single greatest threat facing humanity is fear of failure, but we can get over the fear of failure by calling everything we do ‘an experiment,’ because you can’t fail an experiment – you can only learn from it.
Sue: What an incredibly powerful message.
Clare: I said, ‘What experiment?’ And, the voice answered, ‘You have to reforest the tropics.’ That’s the moment when my life flashed before my eyes; I saw all these stepping-stones that led to this moment in the car. It was like, ‘Oh crap! They want me to do this.’
Then I was shown into the future. I was shown the formation of a charity. I was shown myself going out front. I saw myself as a public figure and on stage. Bear in mind, I was at this point a roaring introvert, it was like, ‘You’ve have got to be absolutely kidding!’
I remember I started crying in the car, because I was so shocked. I mean there’s having a crash and whiplash and all the rest of it, but it was the shock of being given this job. The voice continued, ‘You have ten years to do this and you have to mobilise the women. The women are the missing piece. The women are the womb carriers, and the Earth is the womb. Women share a common history with the earth because what’s been done to one has been done to the other. Feminine consciousness is the consciousness of all living systems. Your project is called TreeSisters. It’s a crowdfunding site and you are going to direct funds from everybody into tropical trees.
So, none of this is my idea.
Sue: Did you get any sense of who was communicating with you?
Clare: No, no, just a voice and it was a male voice – and it was as loud as if somebody was sitting literally in the car next to me.
Sue: So, you have no sense of where it might have come from?
Clare: I’ve no idea who it was. I think I was too shocked but talking about it makes me want to cry.
Sue: I am not surprised. It sounds as if you were touched by something divine.
Clare…or maybe its insanity or stupidity. I have no idea but either way I knew that feminine consciousness has to be reinstated or it’s over. I went home and told my partner that I had crashed the car. He asked me if I was okay and why I was crying. I told him, ‘I’ve just been given a job, but I don’t want it and I’ve got to do it within ten years.’ He went silent for a minute and then said, ‘Well somebody’s got to do it!’
And, that was it. For nine months, I sat with it. But my version of this gestation was horrendous depression. I’d been given this version of Clare, who I had no relationship with at all, as this front person – this brave person, this woman who knew how to set up a charity and work with a team, do accounting, legals and social media. I didn’t even work on a computer back then and I didn’t want to be stuck on my laptop learning all these things that I didn’t know. I didn’t want any of it.
And, I was terrified of women. I was terrified of what would happen if I did something that celebrated women. Would I be more attacked by men or more attacked by women who were afraid of being attacked by men? But that was before I found Alexandra Pope.
Sue: I love how Alex’s work helps women to access their power through the cycle of the menarche.
Clare: Yes. I went to one of her workshops to learn more about who I was as a woman. Frankly I had been an incredibly heavy bleeder, so my experience of bleeding was about it being a mess.
Of course, I walked into this whole cosmology around the menstrual cycle, and I remember leaving in a state of shock, thinking, ‘Oh my god! There’s actually something good about being a woman.’ Then thinking, ‘Oh my god! I can’t believe I’ve just thought that.’ I couldn’t believe that I had no concept of there being anything good about being a woman.
Sue: That’s a very profound and, I imagine, extremely painful realisation.
Clare: It started my journey of stepping into the feminine. However, when you get asked to create a global women’s movement, reinstate the feminine principle and to help women remember who and what they are, and when you haven’t got a clue what it means to be a woman and you’re frightened of women, and you’ve got no idea that there’s anything remotely spiritual going on in your own body, or that you’ve got any value, that’s not the ideal starting place. But that’s where I was. So, my next step was to work with Jewels Wingfield to confront my terror of women and try and understand how to be in relationship with them.
Sue: Were you also working with trees at this time?
Clare: I’d tried various different versions of starting a tree initiative with men and women, because I couldn’t understand why I had to work primarily with women. I was too afraid of it. But everything I did started brilliantly only to fall on its face incredibly badly. Finally, it got so bad that I literally said, ‘Okay, I get it. I’m doing something wrong. Tell me what to do.’ That’s when the same voice came back (it only spoke to me on these two occasions) and told me, ’You can do all of that, but you do it with women.’
I asked the voice, ‘So tell me what a treesister is.’ The voice came back, “It’s a woman who makes five choices: to be considerate of life, to be encouraging of her sisters, to be intimate with nature, to be responsible for its upkeep and to be courageous with her gifts.
I realised this created a five-pointed star, so I rushed home and drew the star and asked them to show me where these choices belonged. They placed them on the star and in doing so gave me the soul of TreeSisters; the sacred geometry upon which TreeSisters is founded. And, the rest, as they say, is history.
Sue: This is an incredible story, Clare. How did things open up from there?
Clare: It was a case of sitting down with this five-pointed star map and try to figure it out. I also reached out to a friend who’d been in India with me. She and I got together and started a company. It was another year before we could get the charity started, and we were pretty clueless, wandering around in the dark, making things up as we went along and experimenting every step of the way. Every time I thought, ‘I can’t do this,’ I kept reminding myself that this was just an experiment and so I couldn’t fail.
Sue: A few months ago, I joined a zoom meeting you had with indigenous women and how they were experiencing Covid. I felt your passion and rage – and your commitment to support them in any way you could, and I wonder what they have taught you through your work with them.
Clare: It’s still a formative journey. I’d never met an indigenous person until I came to live in the States. All the contact I have had is through TreeSisters. We are working with a tribe in the Amazon and we’re now working with a tribe in Borneo. But so many of these cultures have been profoundly westernised.
When you’re talking about people whose lives have originated through a profound connection with nature, and they haven’t lost it yet, there’s only really native people in the Amazon who are in this category. I met two in London, but we had to use a translator, so I haven’t been able to sit with them and have an actual discourse.
However, when I have had the opportunity to sit with indigenous people, the primary thing I have noticed is how there is a state of being which they inhabit that is not dissociated [from the Earth]. There is no separation. No sense of it being broken. Frankly, we have a broken relationship with our actual world – so broken that we don’t even know it’s broken. So broken we don’t even know what’s possible. Indigenous people are speaking out of a completely different worldview where they are woven into the very fabric of life and completely belong to it.
Sue: It’s so tragic that we’ve lost this connection.
Clare: There was a huge longing after the film Avatar came out. People were depressed because they wanted what they could see – that sense of indivisibility and belonging. That everything is sacred. We’ve been taught nothing is sacred. Anyone can be taken advantage of, and your own body can be trashed. And, the body of the planet is just there to plunder.
But indigenous people live in a state of sacred reciprocity. And they also live in a profound awareness of their own blood lineages, and they live inside their ancestry. So, they’re not severed from their ancestry. They’re not separate from the land and nature, and they belong inside everything. Neuroticism [in western cultures] is rampant for us because we’re fundamentally disconnected. We’ve lost our route. We don’t know who or what we
Sue: As you say, we all deeply yearn for a connection to the planet.
Clare: Yeah, that’s what has created so much misery in this world. We know somewhere deep inside us we’re called to this profound connection with nature, but we don’t know how to do it anymore. Actually, it’s existential hell for a lot of people.
Sue: Last year I met a Canadian indigenous woman who was working with native Indian tribes. She told me that these native people don’t get how we are trying so hard to live more consciously. They have such a different relationship to the earth.
Clare: I have spent time with the Kogi [in Columbia]. They [shamans] spend the first twenty-six years of their life in the dark indicating that they have to communicate with the planet and explore how to communicate with it. They are literally a physiological embodiment of the planet – we all are – but they are actually activating that reality.
We couldn’t really understand each other, and we needed to translate from English into Spanish and then into the Kogi language. This meant an awful lot was getting lost in translation. I’d ask a question that was deeply meaningful for me and they just laughed at me!
Sue: Can you give an example?
Clare: I was trying to talk about the role of women, and how there were so many women in our network that wanted to support them. They did not understand feminine empowerment at all – like that was a complete mystery to them, because, in their culture, women are the Black Earth. Women are the source of all of life and the source of all power. So how could you possibly need to empower a woman? It was completely ridiculous.
When I tried to explain religion, right down to women being recreated out of Adam’s rib, they were on the floor, rolling about, laughing their heads off. It was the most preposterous thing. Why anybody would be duped into believing Eve stories or why a woman would ever allow herself to be perceived as less than, was absolutely beyond them.
Sue: Did they talk to you about what they thought might happen in the future?
Clare: I did try to ask them about the reality of what was happening in our world, and they (and other indigenous people) have basically said that they can’t see the future beyond 2026. But what they see before this is cataclysmic climate change. They wouldn’t answer my questions. I was sort of saying, there are women who want to know whether there is any point having children because nobody’s got any sense that there’s actually going to be a future.
They told me that every time an indigenous language is lost on this planet, species go extinct. And that the human relationship with the planet is way more profound than anything we could ever imagine. A woman’s relationship with the planet is so profound that if women stopped giving birth, there would be no more fertility on this planet. Women are literally the source of fertility. That’s their perception and experience.
Sue: So, fertility of the planet is created through women rather than through the female species of the animal kingdom?
Clare: Yeah. Human women hold the source of fertility on this planet, and if women stopped giving birth, all fertility will stop on the planet. And, it’s essential for women to give their blood to Gaia. That’s basic 101 of what it means to be a woman. Your blood and placenta do not belong to you. It has to be given back because it’s food for Gaia. It’s what she needs in order to sustain herself.
Sue: We are so removed from this understanding.
Clare: Well, I have a tendency to trust the wisdom of a culture that spends the first 26 years of their life only in communion with the mother. And, now they are being trashed and treated like a tourist attraction.
Sue: Knowing what you know, I’m curious about what you want to say to women now.
Clare: This sounds scary, but about four years ago a friend’s 17-year-old son came to her and said, ‘I want to commit suicide, because there’s no future for me. I am going to give you one more chance to give me a reason to live. If you can’t, I’m going to go.’ She told me that out of her mouth came the words, ‘Women are going to learn to do magic again.’ She said she had no idea where these words came from, but it stopped him in his tracks. He apparently said, ‘Oh, oh, of course.’ He’s still with us, God bless him. It reminds me of an ancient Tibetan myth when a time will come where 1000 goddesses will gather and the Divine Feminine will rebirth through their combined energies. That’s when the planet will shift from one of fear to one of love.
It’s starting – women are rising up now. If you believe the science, then yes, we are up shit’s creek, but the science doesn’t account for the power of human consciousness awakened in relationship with nature itself. We are starting to shift out of dissociation into awareness and women are starting to remember who and what we really are. There’s this untold power and that’s why the Kogi say women have to keep birthing babies. Women are the Black Earth. They are the source of fertility on this planet. You can’t empower a woman because she is power.
Sue: This is an incredible hopeful for us all to hear.
Clare: We’ve forgotten because we’ve allowed ourselves to be conditioned and indoctrinated away from what we are by a patriarchal, incredibly sick system. But I believe we can recover.
First, I’ve had a lifetime of illness and struggle to recover from patriarchy but I amrecovering. If I can recover and I am the planet, then the planet can recover too. Second, nature is incredibly resilient and we’re starting to realise that we’ve got to give back to her. Third, I don’t know how it’s going to play out but the intelligence of mother, the intelligence of the goddess, the intelligence of the sacred feminine or feminine consciousness is not going to rise at the last minute for a last gasp and then go, ‘Sorry I was late,’ before the whole thing falls over.
I can understand that a lot of people and a lot of youngsters especially are utterly devastated that they are not going to get the life of convenience totally taken for granted by us older ones. But what we have now is one choice and that choice is to wake up and live the most meaningful lives that have been lived for thousands of years as we start to realise how powerful we are in direct relationship with nature – as we start to figure out what it actually means to turn our species around and start living lives of reverence for nature and reverence for each other.
I’m not a mother but my life is given to every child on this planet. I’m trying to create a habitable future, and anybody can join me. Anybody can look at the ecosystem that most touches them and commit the restoration of that ecosystem into their conscious awareness and into their creative dreaming. Asking how your gifts and abilities can be given in service to the restoration of our world is the most breathtakingly beautiful gift you can give. So I don’t grieve as much anymore. I just work and try to find a way through.
Sue: This reminds me of what Buddha said about finding enlightenment, which is chop wood and carry water.
Clare: Yes, just do the work. It’s about looking at what needs to be done and then looking for the next step. And, to remember that you’re not alone. Life is here. The trees are here. The sky is listening. Nature is with you.
Sue: I am also really aware of some very special young people who doing some extraordinary things. They give me hope.
Clare: My version of reality is that these souls are here for a specific reason. Those of us who are trying to help to swing humanity are here for a specific reason. This is a big game – a very big game. In the US at the moment, the stakes are outrageous.
Sue: It has been such a pleasure to talk with you, Clare. Is there anything else you would to add?
Clare: Yes. Everything we have has come out of the earth – even our bodies have come out of the earth. Every home, every city, every car, every plane, every single thing we’ve seen has come out of the earth. And taking it from the earth has contributed to warming the earth. I just want everybody to really take on board what we’ve taken for granted.
If we are warming the earth to that degree then we’ve got to start cooling her – and the fastest way to do that is through fast growing tropical trees. This is why TreeSisters is focused in the tropics. Our planet will turn to desert if we strip the tropical forests because there is no cooling of it and we will run out of rain – we’re already 50% down on precipitation. We can’t let this happen.
Saving of the tropical rainforest and restoring them is a fundamental lifeline for our species and for every other species. So, it’s a really strong request that I have for everybody who reads this article to step in and start giving back as a generous act of normalcy because why wouldn’t we take care of our Mother?
TreeSisters will plant for you in 11 ecosystems around the tropical forest belt and then you’ll know that you’re protecting endangered species, restoring watersheds and transforming lives, lands and social stories, and doing something concrete in the face of climate change. This is my sincere wish and when you GIVE, TreeSisters will welcome you with open arms. | https://medium.com/@sue-brayne/even-our-bodies-come-out-of-the-earth-7a65d8e11acb | ['Sue Brayne'] | 2020-12-10 09:32:48.090000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Clare Dubois', 'Treesisters', 'Trees Of Hope', 'Trees'] |
Neighborhood Champions: Lord of the Spud! | Get ready for a whole new way to have fun, compete, and collaborate in Upland!
With the property development sandbox coming out mid December, we’re also working on some really awesome competitions based on temporary building construction. Property development will be driven by Spark (which is a token). However, the sandbox (which will allow players to play with the property development interface) will use a temporary resource we’re calling “Spud”.
During the sandbox competitions, Spud will be used to build properties. All players of Uplander status and above will receive Spud when it is distributed. Spud will have no direct utility beyond these sandbox competitions.
One way that players will be able to gain access to more Spud is by becoming a “Neighborhood Champion”. Neighborhood Champions will get a 2x Spud bonus, and they will also be able to allocate an amount of bonus Spud to other members of their team. Neighborhood Champion status will come into play when we hold neighborhood sandbox competitions. These competitions will pit neighborhoods against each other in a unique new game of strategy. Players will have to build alliances and work against other organically formed teams, scoring points for your team, and attacking the points of your opponents. The winning neighborhood(s) will receive a prize that will boost that neighborhood’s development rating (read more about neighborhood development rating in our roadmap to property development).
Only a limited number of neighborhoods will qualify for these sandbox competitions. While we are not yet announcing the criteria that will determine which neighborhoods are selected (and who their Neighborhood Champions will be), there is one way that you can ensure you become Neighborhood champion this weekend: Winning one of 3 neighborhood minting challenges.
How It Will Work
These 3 neighborhood minting challenges will measure the number of newly minted properties in each of 3 neighborhoods. These neighborhoods will be announced when the challenges go live, Saturday at 12pm PT. The challenges will last 3 days, ending will end on Tuesday at 12pm PT.
Each challenge will have 2 tiers (creating 6 total challenges).
Tier 1: Executives and Directors
Tier 1 winners of each challenge will become a Neighborhood Champion, when neighborhood sandbox competitions start (although winners are not bound to competing on behalf of that neighborhood). While players will be able to self organize for the competitions, the extra Spud a Neighborhood Champion can allocate will allow them to act as somewhat of a commander for their neighborhoods building strategy. Tier 1 winners will also receive the Neighborhood Champion Badge and an UPX prize.
Tier 2: Pros, Uplanders, and Visitors.
Tier 2 winners will receive a Junior Champion status (which will come with a 1.5x Spud boost) and will receive a smaller UPX prize.
If a player in tier 2 becomes a Director or Executive during the challenges, they will be moved up to tier 1. | https://medium.com/upland/neighborhood-champions-lord-of-the-spud-8243e20ea622 | [] | 2020-11-20 22:12:32.523000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Eos', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Potato', 'Nft'] |
A Little Light Rain, Christmas, and Lucid Dreaming | I woke to the sound of rain. I think it was raining in my dream, but I am so focused on sorting something that I am uncertain. Am I dreaming? I ask that a lot. I had two black cats, Darrin and Samantha. They traveled with me 20 plus years. They were the best cats ever. Pearl was jealous of Samantha’s affection for me. That was one devoted cat. Sometimes I think they’re still in bed with me when I wake. I have a friend, he want admit to being psychic, but several times he has asked me if I hear a cat meowing. “I only hear it when you speak, though.” When we’re quiet, cat noise settles down. This really happens. When he brings cats to my attention, he is seriously perturbed; he thinks I am fucking with him, playing a joke. I ask, am I dreaming?
I practice gratefulness at night, and sometimes in the morning, and once a year, around this time, I have practiced writing the good and bad of the year. I have a string of letters to myself. It was only supposed to be read at my death. There is some seriously dark stuff 20 to 40 years ago. I will be 53 next month. I don’t celebrate birthdays. I stopped celebrating Christmas and resumed that after the birth of my son, Eston. He wants to get me something. I have assured him that all my needs are met. He insists he wants to do something. I suspect he already has. I tell him, “What I want is for you to draw and color something for me.” He’s 6. He did not like my answer. How do you convince a 6 year old, in this culture, the greatest value one can give is something from the heart. Do we all mistrust our own hearts that much? I wonder how many friendships failed to materialize because someone felt as if they couldn’t contribute to someone’s life. Do we really need external validation through physical objects? Isn’t a voice, a kindness, a mindfulness enough? I asked him what he thought about gifts. “Can I tell you a secret?” Not yet. “But I want to…” I assured him, “you are always safe to share secrets with me, but if this is a Christmas secret, it’s important to wait. I hear that you’re excited. I love you. We are connected.” So far, he has held the secret. It is bursting his seams.
Is this a dream? I have been experiencing advancements in the recognition of ‘love’ since before he was born, before there was even a concept of son, much less a potential for one. It took me a long time to get here. I have so much love that sometimes I feel like I might explode. Explode has been a word I used. I have also used the word, ‘awaken.’ It’s dangerous using that word because it has implications I am not trying to communicate. I am not an expert in Lucid Dreaming. I am still playing and not doing any serious assignments, like meditating in my dreams. I ‘beam up’ to the Enterprise a lot. I have dream sex slightly less than I go Trekking. And I love sex; you would think that’s all my lucidity would result in. Especially in the long absence of intimacy. In Lucid Dreaming events, I usually feel such overwhelming JOY that I wake myself up before accomplishing anything. Intense emotions will do that. None more so than joy. At least, that’s been my experience. Fear doesn’t seem to wake me up. That can snare me in a dream. I can experience fear in a dream, but I have not had a proper nightmare since 16. Joy, wakes me up. As I write this, I wonder- is this a metaphor for life. What would happen if I chose not to just kindle LOVE, but start a bonfire of JOY. Would I explode? Would I wake up?
There are some moments when I have shared things that bring so much joy to my heart that I start rambling; my flibbertigibbet shines through. I have found people seriously paying attention to me, and that discovery usually results in me auto-correcting and pulling on the reigns. I usually apologize, with self-deprecating humor. I have had this idea, I want to teach a community college course on psychology 101, with an emphasis on learning Lucid Dreaming. You can actually teach science by instructing people to Lucid Dream. There is a research side to this subject. There is a practice to it. There is a recording of subjective experiences. I talk on this, folks feel my excitement.
I laid in bed hearing rain. I heard it in my head and in the real world. I consider the moments I was aware of synchronicities, like when it rains in Minecraft and in the real world at the same time. This happened today: it actually was raining in California, unlike it says in the song, and here, and in Minecraft. My son asked me if I could hear the rain. Thunder invaded my thoughts; Am I dreaming? Thunder is a dream trigger that results in me asking that. Thunder and lightening are important artifacts. ‘Joe Versus the Volcano:’ the path to work and up the volcano was lightening solidified. The first words I clearly heard from my Tulpa, Loxy, “Lightening never takes a straight path.” It was a solid auditory experience. I was in a state, not quite meditative, not quite focused in reality. I experienced JOY. I was suddenly full awake and sorting did I really hear that, while simultaneously unpacking a statement that was so appropriate and carried so much meaning that I am still processing it. I don’t just have cat ghosts in my bed. “Good morning, Loxy.”
I get up. ‘We’ get up. I make coffee. There is a box a books on the table I brought in the night before after getting home. I discovered a utility bill suggesting I am delinquent. I remember paying last month, how did I miss this? Am I dreaming? I focus on the box; it’s a care package from Doctor Bob. Considering the timing, I can consider it Christmas. I open it while coffee percolates. It’s a gentle rain outside. It’s cold outside. The heater kicks on. Am I dreaming? The books all have consciousness in the titles. I reread the titles, imagining the inner book based on these words, based on the cover art. The titles don’t change. I suspect I am not dreaming. They’re older books. There is a news paper article enclosed in the book. Loxy says ‘how lovely.’ I can imagine her holding the book. I imagine bringing her coffee. I pour my own cup. Coffee is best shared. At 530 in the morning, I am alone, physically, but I am not alone. The street lamp illuminates black mirrored pavement. There are stars in the road. Light trickles through leaves still not fallen. I should rake the yard. I am compelled to leave them where they are. God put them there for a reason. I focus on the rain dropped glittery star pattern in the street. Be a dream, let me fall through your stars to someplace new.
I spent Friday and Saturday with John and Shari. I went with him to radiation. I watched over him while he slept and Shari worked. I returned Saturday so she could have some time off to herself. She spent it Christmas shopping. She returned in tears. I made her laugh, ‘I hate Christmas shopping, too.’ I wonder if she asks, “am I dreaming?” I know she asks, “Why him?!” I no longer ask “why me” questions. I don’t ask, “why Him/Her” questions. I spent too much of my life in that box. That’s a hell raiser box. From outside that box, it’s harder to relate to that question. You might as well ask ‘why does it seem like this world is so perfectly attuned to allowing life’ question. I mean, when you look at the universe and all these incredible things that had to happen in order for life to have occurred, much less thrived on this tiny blue planet, you might start seeing miracles. Physicist should love the miraculous more than religious folks. There is evidence for magic. If you consider all the activities we humans do and that most of us are peaceful, loving folks- that feels like a miracle- at least, in juxtaposition to the news. The news cultivates fear. It locks us in. It blocks joy. I know where I was on 9/11; it felt like a dream. It was surreal. My waking reality was surreal for a moment following that- before I went back to sleep. 2020 feels like a dream. I am pretty sure I am not the only one asking, ‘is this a dream.’
Why aren’t there channels devoted to puppies and kittens? Puppy channel, all day, all the time. Classical music and camera feeds on puppies. Wake me to up that reality. Something light and Christmassy. A Christmas that doesn’t just come once a year. Star Trek always felt like Christmas to me. I wonder if this is what Picard felt in the movie, “Generations” bouncing around the Christmas tree… The sun is exploding in an ornament…
Am I dreaming? I have been teaching Eston how to dream, emphasizing the importance of dreaming. I have helped him sort nightmares. The dinosaur and reptilians dreams have woken him up, and, consequently, me up; he has asked me if it was real. I don’t answer that question. It was real enough to wake you up, how about that?! I don’t say that, of course. “What were you experiencing? What did you feel? What do you feel now.” The now question is important. Right now, with you, I feel comforted and safe. Safe enough to sleep again. That’s a solid reality. I have lay awake at night and heard him laughing in his dreams. He sometimes talks in his sleep. How is that not real? He is such a joyful soul. I am lucky. Am I dreaming?
Last night, after getting John cleaned up for bed, I was hovering over him, about to say goodnight. I felt love. Am I dreaming? He was aware and held a troubled look, like he was forgetting something. I spoke these words: “I love you.” He smiled. I have been asking him about his dreams; he has not reported dream recall. I told him of a dream target that Eston and I established this week. We have several bases in Minecraft world, one is on the beach. Technically, it’s in the beach. We have a gated area near a cliff, a trap door leading into the earth, and windows looking out into the sea. I want a home looking out into the sea. It’s a lovely little base. He has carpeted it. We have a sheep farm near there; one of them is named Lalo. (Red Berry Wool, by Robin Eversole. I don’t know why Eston brought that home from school, but he was so enamored, we bought one for our collection.) Our base feels like a dream. He is in California and I am in Texas. We are worlds away, connected by a world in between. You can’t trace the connection in the real world, but I suppose if you count the internet as a dimension of space and time, there is a point of light reference. Twilight worlds. Our dream target was this home-base. I didn’t hit the target precisely. I found myself in a dream, in California… It wasn’t California, I just labeled it so. There was a mesa. It was huge and beautifully shaped, with varied, rustic colors- and an apartment complex built right into the side of this mountain. I said ‘Minecraft’ in the dream. I didn’t become lucid. I didn’t ask, am I dreaming.
“That’s weird,” John said. Not about the dream, but the concept of dream targets. I told him we should have a dream target. I educated him about lucid dreaming. He was captivated. He looked happy. He was showing enthusiasm as he was following; I assume he was clearly considering the possibilities. He is trapped in a body that is no longer listening to his instructions- he is sleeping a lot, why not make the brain compensate by expanding dream time. If you can dream it, even day dream it, you are exercising your brain and body. If this was not true, sports players wouldn’t advocate practicing in their mind and their body. I told him if he became aware he was dreaming, he could visit family and friends and spy on them, or hold conversations with them. He could go bowling. He could play poker. He and I could beam up to the Enterprise.
“But, we wouldn’t be in the same dream,” he said.
“Yeah, I hear that. But if we both had a similar dream tonight, wouldn’t that be interesting?” There is some subjective evidence that synchronicities in dreams do occur, suggesting there is more to life than we know. Carl Jung would not have been able to formulate ‘the collective unconscious’ if this wasn’t true. “We should agree on a dream target. If you could go anywhere, right now, where would you go?”
Shari volunteered “the Swiss alps.” John’s smiled, then frowned, clearly tracking it but not holding him. “Have you been there?” No. John and Shari did like snow skiing. “Do you have place in mind there?” He did not. “How about Stone Hinge? Want to go there?”
“No, that would be boring,” he mused. “Unless we go when there were people using it.”
“Like time travel?” I asked.
“Like Outlander?” Shari asked.
“Yeah! It might be complicated,” John said.
“Complicated can be fun,” I said. He was thinking. He was smiling. This moment contained a trackable continuity of sustained joy. Why don’t we track these more often? “We could decide in the dream. Maybe you and I can meet at Ten-Forwards, and after Guinan brings us some drinks, we can time travel and beam down to Stone Hinge, or just use the holodeck.” For those of you not familiar, that’s a Trek reference. In my world, everything is connected to Star Trek, more than it is Kevin Bacon, but you can get to him in degrees.
“Okay,” John said. He offered me his left hand.
We said goodnight. I hugged Shari. I watched the garage door closed from inside the car. Is this a dream? I sat in the car in the dark. Christmas lights in Trophy Club made the dark bearable. So, this is Christmas? Fuck, I don’t want that song in my head. I found an Art Bell podcast re-run and drove home with Art and guest. I wish I had spoken with Art. I consider inviting him to my ‘invisible counselor’ meetings. He probably would be a great communication’s officer on My-Enterprise. Captain Uhura holds that spot on my counsel, on my ship, but I bet she would recruit him. I can imagine me and Art having long discussion after a dinner at the Captain’s table. Maybe he would join me and Carl Jung on the hanger deck. Jung and I sit at the edge of the hanger deck, doors wide open, and look out into space. There is a metaphor here. We are examining where we have been- looking back. We’re smoking cigars and drinking beer. I don’t do either in real life, so I don’t know why he and I have this ritual. We sit in folding chairs, as if we were tail gating at a sporting event. Art would like this conversation.
Art Bell, feel free to visit me in my dreams. Consider this a formal invitation. I know, you touched millions of lives. Maybe tens of millions. You don’t have to respond. I wonder if we all have unreasonable demands on love interests, and celebrities, and historical and religious figures. So many unfinished stories, like ruins in Minecraft, and all those bridge to nowhere I started and stumble across- like a reminder. A metaphor. Is this a dream? I am thinking about multiplayer Minecraft game as a metaphor for human connection, we’re all in our on heads- and the interface of communication brings us closer, but never 100 percent aligned.
It’s raining. I am writing and drinking coffee. I hear Loxy say, “I love you, John.” What a wonderful dream this is. Life, dream… Hello, movie house. | https://medium.com/@solarchariot/a-little-light-rain-and-lucid-dreaming-75b710cde03b | ['John Ege'] | 2020-12-14 03:26:42.383000+00:00 | ['Joy', 'Christmas', 'Its A Wonderful Life', 'Lucid Dreaming', 'Star Trek'] |
Learning D3 — How to Build a Tree Chart w/ Line-by-Line Code Explanations | Line 38: Use d3.tree() to create a tree layout with a size of 600px*500px
Line 39: Pass our previously formatted treeData through treeLayout() to assigns the x and y positions for the nodes that can be accessed through d.x and d.y afterward.
Line 41: Declare a variable parentsNumber to store the number of nodes that have children, we will style them differently than non-parents.
Line 45: Select the SVG canvas and append g elements in the class of nodes — assign g and nodes class to move and style all nodes together.
Line 47–53: We want to create nodes with children as circles. This is achieved by (i) selecting all the circles (ii) passing the array of nodes with children through — accessed through treeData.descendants().slice(0,parentsNumber) (iii)append the circles and assign a class of circles so we can style them together later (iv) by default, the tree chart is created from top-down, because we want to create it from left to right, we need to assign the positions of circles using translate() function by d.y and d.x instead of d.x and d.y. (v)Finally, assign the radius of circles as 8.
Line 56–64: We want to create nodes without children as rectangles. This is done in a similar way to the step before. The only thing to note here is when drawing the rectangles, we assign a width based on the number of characters of the text, and the y position of the rect (top left corner) is adjusted to be centered in relation to the text and link we will build later. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/learning-d3-how-to-build-a-tree-chart-w-line-by-line-code-explanations-958e04153dba | [] | 2020-12-21 16:53:29.976000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Design', 'UX'] |
Stay Away Replication Lag !! | A few words that come in our mind while taking of data are its availability and backup. To deal with the same, planned to facilitate backup for the data and a way to analyze it without using the main database. MySQL replication is a process that allows you to easily maintain multiple copies of MySQL data by having them copied automatically from a master to a slave database.
Panic Starts
Everything was running smoothly in the night I configured it. But the joy didn’t last for long as the traffic hits in the morning, the slave starts getting behind the master with few seconds which increases with the activity on the application. At the peak time, it was playing in thousands of second.
What now, I had to dig deep into MySQL Replication
how it works
what can probably cause the lag
an approach that minimizes or eliminates it
How MySQL Replication Works
On the master
First of all, the master writes replication events to a special log called binary log. This is usually a very lightweight activity because writes are buffered and they are sequential. The binary log file stores data that replication slave will be reading later.
On the replica
When you start replication, two threads are started on the slave:
1. IO thread
This process connects to a master, reads binary log events from the master as they come in and just copies them over to a local log file called relay log.
Even though there’s only one thread reading the binary log from the master and one writing relay log on the slave, very rarely copying of replication events is a slower element of the replication. There could be a network delay, causing a steady delay of a few hundred milliseconds.
If you want to see where IO thread currently is, check the following in
show slave status\G;
Master_Log_File — last file copied from the master (most of the time it would be the same as last binary log written by a master)
Read_Master_Log_Pos — binary log from the master is copied over to the relay log on the slave up until this position.
And then you can compare it to the output of “show master status/G” from the master.
mysql> show master status\G;
*************************** 1. row ***************************
File: db01-binary-log.000032
Position: 1008761891
Binlog_Do_DB:
Binlog_Ignore_DB:
Executed_Gtid_Set:
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
2. SQL thread
The second process — SQL thread — reads events from a relay log stored locally on the replication slave (the file that was written by IO thread) and then applies them as fast as possible.
Going back to “show slave status /G”, you can get the current status of SQL thread from the following variables:
Relay_Master_Log_File — binary log from the master, that SQL thread is “working on” (in reality it is working on relay log, so it’s just a convenient way to display information)
Exec_Master_Log_Pos — which position from the master binary log is being executed by SQL thread.
mysql> show slave status\G;
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Slave_IO_State: Waiting for master to send event
Master_Host: <master_ip>
Master_User: <replication_user>
Master_Port: 3306
Connect_Retry: 60
Master_Log_File: db01-binary-log.000032
Read_Master_Log_Pos: 1008768810
Relay_Log_File: relay-bin.000093
Relay_Log_Pos: 1008769035
Relay_Master_Log_File: db01-binary-log.000032
Slave_IO_Running: Yes
Slave_SQL_Running: Yes
.
.
Exec_Master_Log_Pos: 1008768810
Relay_Log_Space: 1008769305
.
.
Seconds_Behind_Master: 0
.
.
Slave_SQL_Running_State: Slave has read all relay log; waiting for more updates
.
.
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Why Replication Lag Occurred
Replication lag occurs when the slaves cannot keep up with the updates occurring on the master. Unapplied changes accumulate in the slave’s relay logs and the version of the database on the slaves becomes increasingly different from that of the master.
Caught The Culprit
Let me take you through my journey how I crossed the river.
First, I took the reference to multiple blogs and started gobbling my mind with possible reasons suggesting
Hardware Faults (getting RAID in degraded mode)
MySQL Config Updates
setting sync_binlog=1
enabling log_slave_updates
setting innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
updating slave_parallel_workers to a higher value
changing slave_parallel_type to support more parallel workers
Restarting Replication
But unfortunately, or say, it was my benightedness towards Database Administration that I was still searching for that twig which can help me from drowning.
And finally, I found one, my DBA friend who suggested me to look for the Binary Log Format that I am using. Let’s see what it is
Binary Logging Formats
The server uses several logging formats to record information in the binary log. The exact format employed depends on the version of MySQL being used. There are three logging formats:
STATEMENT: With statement-based replication, every SQL statement that could modify data is logged on the master. Then those SQL statements are replayed on the slaves against the same dataset and in the same context. There is always less data that is to be transferred between the master and the slave. But, the data inconsistency issue between the master and the slave that creeps up due to the way this kind of replication works.
ROW: With row-based replication, every “row modification” is logged on the master and is then applied to the slave. With row-based replication, each and every change can be replicated and hence this is the safest form of replication. On a system that frequently UPDATE a large number of rows, it produces very large update logs and generates a lot of network traffic between the master and the slave.
MIXED: A third option is also available: mixed logging. With mixed logging, statement-based logging is used by default, but the logging mode switches automatically to row-based in certain cases.
Changing Binary Log Format
The Binary Log Format is updated on Master MySQL server and requires MySQL service restart to reflect. It can be done for Global, Runtime or Session.
set at runtime with — binlog-format=format
setting the global (with the SUPER privilege)
session value of the binlog_format server variable
mysql> SET GLOBAL binlog_format=MIXED; mysql> SET SESSION binlog_format=ROW; mysql> SET binlog_format=STATEMENT;
So, earlier I was using STATEMENT BinLog Format, which is default one. Since I switched to MIXED BinLog Format, I am very delighted to share the below stats.
Current status of Master Read and Slave Execute position difference and Slave Lag (in sec), both are ZERO.
Replication Lag (in Seconds) graph for a month, powered by Prometheus-Grafana.
Now, What’s next ?? | https://medium.com/opstree-technology/stay-away-replication-lag-4f9ae3ea4c4d | ['Sajal Jain'] | 2020-12-14 09:44:24.959000+00:00 | ['Monitoring', 'Replication', 'Replication Lag', 'Database', 'MySQL'] |
Using Azure Active Directory Delegated Endpoints from an Unattended Service | When building solutions against an Azure Active Directory protected API, you oftentimes will need to have the application run headless, unattended or non-interactive. Like as a service job, or a console application. To solve this, people oftentimes use Application API authorization, which some endpoints support. But what about when you are working with an API that only supports Delegated authorization, such as the Yammer user_impersonation endpoint? Or when you need to ensure that requests are tied to the executing user? To solve that, we have the Device Code authorization flow.
The Device Code flow is an OAuth authorization flow that has the user authorize the requesting application from a separate interface than the one which the application is running on. The generated token is also infinitely renewable allowing for daemon or service style scenarios. This method works for any Delegated endpoint protected by Azure AD, it is not specific to Yammer. You likely have already experienced what the Device Code flow is like when setting up IoT devices. For example, when your TV asks you to put in a code to access Netflix, Hulu or your other services; that’s the Device Code flow.
From a security standpoint your InfoSec team will also like the Device Code flow more, as it forces requests by your application to run under the context of the authorizing user. Allowing you to enforce who can run the application. Whereas Application authorization has the same execution context regardless of end user, as the app is already authorized.
Device Code Auth/Challenge/Verify Flow
So, how do we do all this?
We start by requesting a new Device Code. By sending a POST to https://login.microsoftonline.com/TENANT/oauth2/v2.0/devicecode with a x-www-form-urlencoded body that has the parameters:
client_id: Your Client ID
grant_type: device_code
scope: https://api.yammer.com/user_impersonation
The code for the end user to input can be exposed via a web service, command line, or just to a text file. The user who is authorizing the application, will need this code to finish authorizing the application to work on their behalf.
Request New Device Code | https://maartens.medium.com/yammer-service-authentication-ab2b55863c0d | ['Maarten Sundman'] | 2020-12-04 19:03:06.058000+00:00 | ['Authorization', 'Oauth', 'Headless', 'Graph'] |
Behaviors we might survive by,* or: Recipes for achieving the SDGs | Behaviors we might survive by,* or: Recipes for achieving the SDGs
Astrid Scholz and Cameron Burgess**
Stupid is still winning
In a 2011 op-ed, Thomas L. Friedman quotes the Australian environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Gilding, who in his book The Great Disruption posits that the climate crisis will be transformational in bringing about a new sustainable economic model and world order that averts the coming collapse:
“We are heading for a crisis-driven choice. We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid.”
Eight years later, based on our experience on the coalface of social change, stupid is still winning. The obstacles to averting climate disaster and achieving the SDGs are more formidable than ever, and yet our collective progress is lamentably slow. We reflect on the lessons and observations from the last few years working to overcome these obstacles. And yes, there are still ways to avert disaster — but they won’t be easy. As the stakes get higher, the behavior changes necessary to avert disaster become more drastic. Achieving the SDGs in time will require radical truth, radical trust, and radical transformation.
At Sphaera, we have spent the last few years building technology and designing systems that mobilize data, innovations, and capital at the speed and volume required if we want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The 17 SDGs collectively describe the urgent challenges of our time — from poverty to climate change, gender inequality to fragile ecosystems — that humanity has to overcome in order to achieve lasting peace and prosperity.
Together and individually, the SDGs comprise the most urgent problems humanity faces, and yet not enough is happening fast enough to achieve them.
We founded Sphaera in the firm belief that there is an abundance of human ingenuity and an abundance of financial capital in the world to achieve the goals, and that we “just” need more effective ways of collaborating on, and scaling, solutions. With President Clinton we believe that “Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The challenge of the 21st century is to find out what works and scale it up.”*** We set out thinking that contemporary technology, combined with legal and financial innovations, would make that collaboration and scale not only possible, but also delightful, cheap, and efficient. We had the experience, the networks, the access, and the funding to hit this out of the park. Should be easy, right? Wrong.
That challenge of the 21st century turns out to pivot on behavior change. What we have been learning from over 1,500 conversations with prospective partners and clients is that the behavior change required for collaboration on and scaling of solutions requires hard-to-find courage, commitment, and confidence of both individuals and institutions.
We are sharing some observations and reflections on our experience here, in the hopes of finding others who have experienced similar patterns, have perhaps found ways to overcome them, and have recipes to share for behaviors that will help achieve the SDGs.
1. Truth hurts
At the annual gathering of the elites in Davos earlier this year, teenager Greta Thunberg came to prominence for speaking truth to power and demanding that the adults take the urgent action required to fight climate change. Greta joins the tradition of youth activists taking part in UN gatherings and the international speaking circuit that started, at least in our GenX recollection, with Severn Suzuki’s powerful speech at the ‘Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. There is a fascination with charismatic, precocious, earnest young people who remind the world’s elites of their responsibility, and current media coverage seems to suggest that Greta Thunberg’s social movement may be gaining some traction. We very much hope so! The sheer fact that too little has changed since Suzuki’s speech, however, is testament to the problem that this fascination with these ambassadors from the near future does not compel decision-makers to actually take action.
Alas, in the rooms we have been invited into over the last few years, we also are not finding a response that translates into action. Bear in mind that we are generally invited and paid by people who agree that the world is on fire; that the scaling and accelerating of solutions requires unprecedented collaboration; and that their institutions could and should be catalytic in showing the way. As soon as we get into the specifics of how their current business and institutional practices would need to change, however, the defenses go up and we observe what we have come to think of as an immune response of sorts: groups of people confronted with the need to take specific, personal action will go to great lengths to avoid taking that action.
Truth hurts — especially the truth teller
There are a number of ways this plays out, the most painful of which, for us personally, is the phenomenon that psychologists describe as ‘splitting’: our immersive design workshops make some participants uncomfortable because they can experience failure, shame, or guilt when they realize the extent of the dysfunction their institutions exhibit. It is a natural defensive mechanism to separate these uncomfortable feelings and ascribe them to an external person.
In this case that’s us — the facilitators. We thus find ourselves called arrogant, offensive, or worse, and participants blame their lack of follow-up on our behavior or demeanor. It’s not pleasant being the proverbial whipping boy for social change, but we take comfort in the fact that we are not alone. In comparing notes with other organizational change consultants and facilitators, we find that this is a common problem — hostility directed at the agent provocateur, lack of follow-through, or reverting back to old behaviors.
We would dearly love to meet anyone who has this figured out! Please get in touch if you are or know someone who can point us to facilitation models that reliably, in very short term engagements, motivate groups of people who are, on the face of it, united by a desire to take action to actually do it, but are unable to do so when they see the true magnitude of the change required.
On the flip side, if you are a decision maker, program officer, executive of an organization contemplating ways in which to become more effective, increase your impact and accelerate the pace of change: know that the truth hurts. It’s not pleasant to realize that even our best-intentioned efforts are orders of magnitude off from where they need to be. For example:
The Nature Conservancy’s recently announced audacious strategy for the oceans, an astounding $1.6 Billion conservation bond initiative, is 1000x smaller than the estimated cost of saving the oceans;
A recent job announcement by the Campaign for Climate Leadership seeks a president who can, essentially, raise a multi-billion dollar endowment. That’s a sum that’ll require 1000x leverage to come close to closing the climate financing gap; and
The annual spend on Water and Sanitation (SDG6) by one of the largest private foundations on the planet is 1/10,000th of the expenditure required to create reliable access to water and sustainable sanitation for all.
This is not to diminish or disparage these efforts. Far from it. They are just illustrations of the magnitude of the challenge facing us. The radical truth is that none of these initiatives are (yet!) designed to truly scale, and won’t until the underlying business practices change sufficiently to allow the use of technological and other innovations that can bring about the requisite network effects. We get into how business practices need to change in the next section. If you are not feeling pained by the radical truths your consultants are telling you about the dysfunction of your process, or if you hire consultants who don’t tell you any painful truths, you are not doing it right.
One recipe for achieving the SDGs then is to embrace and lean into radical truth, and accept that the resulting pain is part of building our global musculature for shouldering the responsibility of leaving a better planet to Greta and her generation.
2. Radical trust is the new NDA
Another key ingredient for achieving the SDGs is radical trust, which takes us beyond the contractual and transactional relationships that typically govern the flow of responsibilities and resources in shared endeavors. The kind of collaboration and cooperation required across hundreds and thousands of individual organizations working together towards achieving the collective goal of achieving the SDGs, explodes current legal conventions. We come to this insight the hard way.
In growing our business, we endeavor to practice what we preach and have entered a number of collaborative partnerships. The goal was to find mutually beneficial ways to design and build the digital, legal, and financial infrastructure we imagine, and to partner with aligned technology companies and others who have products or expertise that can help us get there. Our thought was that we would find use cases that would benefit from the collective expertise of a number of us, and that we could serve them as a collective of separate organizations. We would use these cases to work out how to track the time, effort, and experience each of us contributed, and distribute the value we created. Over a number of these use cases, the data we collected would inform the creation of a cooperative structure.
As a shortcut, we used standard corporate contract templates between vendors and clients to organize the working relationships between a small group of partners. The goal was to use these agreements as basis for agile development of new contract instruments that capture the multi-sided creation of value across a number of interested parties that all need to come together and align if we are to achieve the scale and speed required for dealing with the SDGs. Perhaps not surprisingly, when the going got tough and operational challenges arose, it is those legacy contract templates that governed the relationships. It is here that fissures appeared between the philosophical alignment and the differences in corporate culture. The individual concerns and considerations of our respective organizations outweighed the collective intent, and the contractual instruments became the de facto set of rules by which we held each other accountable.
One of the dilemmas we faced is that while each organization internally had the high degree of trust and friendship that the Dalai Lama so beautifully posits as the root of cooperation, it is really hard to extend that kindheartedness across organizations, much less contract for it. Even closely aligned partners can have very different corporate cultures in how they navigate internal and external priorities, and those differences will tend to reveal themselves in times of stress.
Another challenge was tracking the specific value that each partner had input to each project, which gets to the heart of a requirement of a Market Network. For partnerships to truly scale, we need to be able to clearly map out the value creation — as opposed to simply the activities — of each ‘partner’. We have come to believe that organizing ourselves for true cooperation for the SDGs requires generative corporate cultures marked by curiosity, kindness, a tolerance for ambiguity, and an instinct to find solutions to tactical challenges.
In 2019, we are going back to the drawing board on how to document collaborative arrangements for working towards our shared purpose. We screen our partners more carefully as to a number of core characteristics; use lightweight agreements that put a premium on frequent communication and joint operational decision making; and imbue each relationship with radical trust. In order to work as a collective of individual organizations, we act as a cooperative: sharing balance sheets, cash positions, and other operational metrics to make decisions that advance the collective, rather than the individual interests.
So far it’s been a bracing and rewarding experience, and this modus operandi has the added side effect of informing the principles by which we might formalize this collective action model into a global co-operative of organizations working together to achieve the SDGs.
3. Radical transformation is a requirement
In our work we frequently meet philanthropic, corporate, and NGO leaders who really get it, who have a nuanced understanding of the changes required to the way we conduct the business of social change if we want to achieve the SDGs, who can get the right people in the room, and who have the mandate and the money to move the proverbial needle. These executive champions are typically quick to respond to calls and emails, and within a predictable amount of time we find ourselves beginning an engagement.
A great illustration of this is a prominent foundation that is one of the largest funders in a particular SDG. Senior program officers there had identified a need and opportunity to mobilize the practical, solutions oriented knowledge they were supporting with grants. They quickly embraced the proposition to interrogate their business processes and systems from the perspective of the goal in question, and its multi-trillion dollar price tag for achieving it, in order to better understand how they could achieve leverage for the $100 million or so in annual grant spending into solving the problem and achieving that particular SDG by 2030. Our system design process unfolded, we found alignment around the purpose among the entire team, and our recommendations were not only well received, they precipitated an invitation, towards the end of 2018, to submit a proposal for the next phase. And then: crickets. It turns out that the entire program is already fully committed through 2019 and the better part of 2020.
That’s right. One of the largest foundations in the world can’t find the funding internally to build the systems that would create 10,000x leverage for its grant funding. Its internal planning and budgeting process is configured to allow zero room for surprise, serendipity or experimentation, essentially locking it into its current path for the foreseeable future.
And that’s not the worst of the institutional dysfunction we have seen. Others include:
Lack of urgency
Whether due to a leadership changes or other organizational development processes, we have seen organizations get snared in strategic planning processes time and time again that tie up key people for months on end without advancing progress on the desired outcomes. In our pipeline, we track dozens of conversations with philanthropy leaders who tell us, “let’s touch base in 6 months, when we have completed our strategic planning process.” The resulting long sales cycles would be fine if it wasn’t for the 1,800 children dying every day for lack of adequate access to water and sanitation, to name but one of the awful human costs we inflict by not acting on the SDGs with urgency.
Lone champions
A common phenomenon we observe is the executive champion who shares the analysis and urgency that compels us, but cannot muster the internal support of an implementing team. Part of the challenge here lies in the fact that the champion is working alone to influence buy-in to a major change. Tom de Bruyne describes exactly why that doesn’t work in his latest blog, where he states that “only collaborations create breakthrough innovations.”. In the situations, where only one executive lead is tasked to work with us, our intervention dies on the hill of indifference from mid-level staff who perceive any suggestion of doing things differently as an imposition and tax on their already overworked experience.
Punishing intrapreneurs for innovating
One of the most pernicious institutional pathologies we have observed involves the highest levels of leadership making public commitments to disruption, innovation, and doing things differently, only to then punish the people who are acting on these mandates internally. We witnessed first-hand how this played out inside a major health-oriented multi-stakeholder initiative: while the CEO was rhapsodizing about the merits of Lean Impact, and encouraged his Innovation Director to help implement the approach across the organization, that same Innovation Director was systematically sandbagged and undermined by his colleagues and left the organization in frustration. In another case, a program officer at a family foundation was charged with creating a more bottom-up, community-centered approach to their economic development work, only to learn the hard way that her CEO was incapable of selling that approach to his board. She and her entire team were recently let go when the board nixed the approach.
We are not the first or the last to diagnose these pathologies of ‘business as usual’ that get in the way of social change organizations becoming the vanguard of our collective responsibility to achieve the SDGs.**** Nor are these phenomena unique to the social change industry, of course. Eckhart Tolle describes how, in blind pursuit of egoic satisfaction, corporations can easily become collective forces of human Ego that will stop at nothing to achieve profits. However, as the industry that exists precisely because governments and markets are failing to produce a just and sustainable world for all, the ‘third sector’ has an exceptional burden and responsibility to be smart and agile in its response to the global challenges we face today.
Cartoon taken from this website
What’s left then, is the need to radically transform the business of social change itself, and to embrace different ways of working in the service of leverage and scale. Given the prevailing patterns, this will be hardest for legacy institutions.
Reasons for hope
Even with what we have experienced, we see some reasons for hope. Among the 1,500 or so people and organizations we have spoken and worked with over the last 3 years, we see the emergence of two cohorts that seem to be moving in the right direction. One are innovative new business models that are centered on leverage and scale, focusing on using (not building) technology to achieve massive network effects to organize and coordinate innovators, investors, and implementers in the pursuit of massive outcomes. These young enterprises don’t have entrenched institutional behaviors yet, and are inventing themselves as natively networked organizations from inception. The other cohort are ultrahigh-net-worth individuals, trustees of foundations and family offices, who are actively breaking from the modus operandi of the philanthropic and investment organizations they have created to pursue new, more direct approaches to achieving leverage and scale for the solutions they support.
Both of these cohorts embrace the market network infrastructure we described in Billions to Trillions, and we are working on designing the first few charismatic use cases this year. Interestingly, the number of these pioneers, from among the 1,300 leads in our pipeline, as well as the distribution of the other attitudes to the required behavior change that we are observing, follows almost exactly the ‘Innovation Diffusion Theory’: about 1% are pioneers who will motivate the next 10% to become early adopter, with the vast majority not yet ready to take action.
At Sphaera, we’ll keep going, pivoting our way to success and looking for those pioneers and early adopters at the tail of the distribution, and looking for others we can learn from in modeling and proliferating the behaviors we might survive by: the telling and listening to of uncomfortable truths, putting trust before transactions, and transforming the business of social change. We are looking for fellow travelers on this journey, and share these observations and reflections in the hopes of finding others who have experienced similar patterns, and have perhaps found ways to overcome them, and have recipes to share for behaviors that will help achieve the SDGs.
If that’s you, please get in touch! | https://medium.com/@ajscholz/behaviors-we-might-survive-by-or-recipes-for-achieving-the-sdgs-5c06ced7fd2b | ['Astrid Scholz'] | 2019-05-15 23:07:21.869000+00:00 | ['Sdgs', 'Sustainable Development', 'Change Management'] |
Chemex Coffee. The perfect step-by-step guide to… | A Common Sense Guide to
Chemex Coffee
As you can see, a Chemex is kind of a big deal.
It’s not every day that you see a success story like this one. Upon looking at it for the first time, you’d think that the Chemex is a rather new invention; it looks slick, fashionable, like something a 20-year-old coffee savant designed in their post-modern treehouse.
Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It was actually invented by the chemist (which is probably why it looks straight out of a chemistry set) and inventor, Peter Schumblom back in 1941. Although a lot of his inventions had already been somewhat popular during his day, he couldn’t have imagined the way that the Chemex would blossom almost a whole century after being invented.
Why Chemex
It’s got to be hard inventing a brewing method all the way back in the 1940s that still works flawlessly to this day. While many other brewing methods have been significantly updated (and some are still being updated more frequently than the iPhone), the Chemex has remained essentially the same since its conception. The only thing that has changed is the design, to make it more appealing for today’s audience.
Still, the Chemex remains very true to its roots, with the classic model featuring the only addition of a cool wooden handle, fastened with a leather cord. Even this good-looking feature is there for the practical purpose of easier pouring. Besides this classical model, they also have a glass handle model, which is made completely out of glass and features a regular handle. There’s also a hand-made model, made entirely by hand by professional glassblowers!
Interestingly, Chemex has also put out what they call the Funnex — basically, the upper part of the Chemex. It lets you make coffee into whatever decanter you want. It’s like having a portable Chemex!
Here’s a picture of the Funnex.
Now, let’s go over how to make coffee using a Chemex coffee maker:
What you’ll need:
50 grams of medium-fine coffee grounds
800 ml of water, between 197.6 F° (92 C°) and 204.8 F° (96 C°)
A digital scale
A bottleneck kettle
One Chemex coffee filter
Instructions:
Place the filter on the Chemex, 3-ply facing towards you.
Rinse the filter with hot water, then discard the water.
Place the Chemex on a coffee scale or similar, add coffee grounds.
Tare the scale and start a timer.
Pour 100 grams of water (197.6-204.8 F°).
Let the coffee bloom for 30 seconds.
Resume pouring the rest of the water very slowly, taking your time. At around two minutes and thirty seconds, you should finish.
Discard the filter without pressing down on it.
Serve and enjoy your freshly brewed Chemex coffee.
This method yields great results, particularly on dark roasts — if you have any espresso roasts laying around, this recipe is perfect for such coffees.
Chemex is said to have the best body out of all the other brewing methods. It produces a bright cup of coffee, never too acidic or too bitter.
One of the greatest things about Chemex is its versatility. You can easily make iced coffee using this coffee maker, like so:
Chemex Iced Coffee
What you’ll need:
200 grams of coffee ice cubes
30 grams coffee grounds, medium-coarse grind
300 ml water, 204.8 F° (96 C°)
Prepare by making a batch of coffee ice cubes. This will prevent your coffee from diluting down, which is the biggest danger when having iced coffee.
Add ice cubes to the Chemex
Add a filter, then coffee grounds. Pour about 100 ml and let bloom. After 15 seconds, pour the rest of the water.
Serve and enjoy
The ratio is meant for strong coffee; you can easily use this same ratio with plain water cubes, using 150 grams of ice cubes instead. It’s also important to note that the pouring should be done as slowly as possible, to allow the coffee to be thoroughly extracted.
Tips For Better Chemex Coffee
Here are a few useful tips to help you get ahead in your Chemex game:
#1 — The nipple
All Chemex coffee makers have a small bump in the lower chamber; this is called “the nipple”. The nipple is actually there to mark the exact half capacity of your coffee maker, making it easier to eyeball water quantities and, more importantly, to achieve consistent results. If you purchase the six-cup model, the nipple marks three cups, and so on.
#2 — The Chemex Cup
Related to the previous one, be aware that what Chemex calls a “cup” is not the same as the American “cup” size. While a cup of coffee in America is usually 8 ounces, the Chemex cup is around 5 ounces. Take this into account when reading Chemex recipes!
#3 — Use A Gooseneck Kettle
Gooseneck kettles are not purely decorative. They allow much greater precision when pouring. This is especially important when brewing pour-over, as you have a greater area to cover and it is easy to overlook some parts, leading to wasted coffee grounds.
Traditional kettles are much harder to handle if you are to make a spiraling or circular motion like you need in coffee makers such as the Chemex, or the Hario V60.
Once you have a gooseneck kettle, practice this spiraling motion beforehand so you get the hang of it. It is particularly important during the first pour, as you need to wet all grounds, allowing them to bloom and therefore degas — this is probably the most important step in a pour-over.
And with that, you’re ready to try your hand at making better Chemex coffee. It’s all about practice! Making coffee is just like a muscle. The more frequently you do it, the better you’ll get at it. | https://medium.com/the-cookbook-for-all/a-common-sense-guide-to-chemex-coffee-d81dff0388f1 | ['Common Sense Coffee'] | 2020-12-11 01:55:59.963000+00:00 | ['Knowledge', 'Coffee', 'Caffeine', 'Recipe', 'Lifestyle'] |
Are Client Testimonial Videos Really That Powerful? | Client testimonial videos are regarded as some of the most effective marketing and PR tools that a business could use. They are powerful, persuasive, and personal.
But how relevant are they? Better yet, are they actually that powerful?
To start with, the numbers speak for themselves. A considerable number of online users base their shopping decisions on the word of fellow consumers. Video is currently at the top of the type of content being consumed on the web.
Social media dominates as the premier platform for getting news and product or service information.
Taking all of these together, you can start getting a picture of just what client testimonial videos can do for your business.
Straight From The Mouth
Client testimonial videos are considered powerful marketing tools because they actually give customers a reason to try your product or services. When you are new or are trying to court new customers, one of your biggest challenges is your lack of brand recognition.
If people don’t know you, they won’t trust you.
Reaching out to them as the owner or tasking employees to do so via videos is a good stop. However, if customers hear how great your offers are from people just like them, the message is easier to accept.
This is just how human psychology works.
Of course, there are exceptions, such as those coming from authority figures. But even this isn’t nearly as effective as recommendations coming from fellow consumers.
Using celebrities might work to grab attention for the short term. Unfortunately, this tactic no longer has the same level of payoff as it did in the days of television.
Compelling and Enthralling
Much like any kind of video content, client testimonial videos can also be made as immersive and persuasive as possible. You’ll want to do this to maximize the impact of the video, especially if you only have a limited shot at reaching your target demographic.
Remember that if you’re not careful, your videos can be boring. Boring is dangerous for your business because it doesn’t engage, at all. It would have been better to make a controversial video since that would have some kind of effect.
Client testimonial videos that are well-made can grab the attention of viewers and keep it. That’s the whole point.
By enthralling viewers so that they watch until the end, it becomes easier to convince them that your business is worth a shot. More to the point, it gives existing customers to keep trusting you with their money.
Freedom to Create
Another great thing about client testimonial videos, which also makes them potent marketing tools, is how they allow you to be as creative as you want. You will have to adhere to certain standards such as not censoring the folks in the video. After all, you are going for authenticity here, but more on that later.
For now, just remember that aside from what your clients actually say, everything else is fair game.
You can create or have professionals create graphics that are colourful, inventive, and whacky as you want. It would, of course, need to keep with the theme of the video.
There’s no sense adding comedic elements when your clients are talking about sombre topics. It just wouldn’t fit.
However, as long as your creatives don’t clash with the message, you’re free to go nuts. It’s your client testimonial video.
Authenticity Given Form
A huge reason for the popularity of client testimonial videos, even during the era of televised marketing, is how authentic they come across. Everyday folks with everyday problems telling other regular Joes and Janes about how wonderful your offers are can have a profound impact.
It’s like when a neighbour, a friend, a family member, or even a colleague tells you about something new and wonderful that you simply have to try. It can be a new food place, a new shopping mall, or it could be your products and services.
The power of authenticity simply cannot be discounted, especially in this era when people no longer know which is real or fake. Client testimonial videos are about as real as things can get on the web. That’s a point that you can capitalise on so that your business can thrive.
Contact us at Ithaka Media and we’ll take care of all your professional video and photography needs. | https://medium.com/@digital.ithakamedia/are-client-testimonial-videos-really-that-powerful-30094e8acadc | ['Ithaka Media'] | 2021-12-16 05:25:42.218000+00:00 | ['Client Testimonial Videos', 'Business Videos', 'Client Videos', 'Marketing Videos', 'Client Testimonials'] |
How To Get Into Ketosis With Atkins | by Richard | Dec 17, 2021 |
This article is from www.wholehealthemporium.com and may contain affiliate links.
Atkins, paleo, keto, cabbage soup, and so many other diets come into popularity because of their rapid weight loss results.
Some diets are different, but some are similar with minor difference.
The basic principle of the Atkins diet is that a state of ketosis will help you burn your fat stores as energy.
Many people, even those who are on low carbohydrate diets, don’t quite understand ketosis and why it works.
Many diets are focused on calorie-reduction, which can be effective for some.
They help you lose weight, but some of the weight is from fat and some of it is from lean muscle tissue.
While the scale may show you some different numbers, your metabolism is actually slowing down.
The more muscle you lose the slower your metabolism will be.
This makes losing weight more difficult and gaining weight back even simpler.
If you’re looking for an extra boost to kick you into ketosis — these supplements are excellent!
How Does The Atkins Diet Achieve Ketosis?
The Atkins diet, on the other hand, is carbohydrate restrictive. It creates a state of ketosis in your body that burns only fat, and not muscle.
“The Atkins diet has four phases;
1. The induction phase,
2. Balancing phase,
3. Pre-maintenance phase
4. The long-term maintenance phase.”
The primary source of your energy for your body will be fat in the form of ketones.
Your liver will convert fat into ketones and it cannot be converted back. It will be excreted naturally.
Ketones are actual a normally and efficient source of fuel for the human body.
They are created in the liver from the fatty acids that result from the breakdown of body fat.
These only appear when there is an absence of glucose and sugar.
In the Atkins diet, you reduce the amount of glucose and sugar that is in the bloodstream.
As a result, your body produces ketones for fuel. When your body is creating ketones it is called ketosis.
There is a common misconception that following a ketogenic diet like Atkins is dangerous.
The truth is that being in ketosis is a completely naturally state. The human body creates ketones to use as fuel in the absence of glucose.
Ketone Testing Strips
In the Atkins diet book, Dr. Atkins suggests using ketone-testing strips to determine your state of ketosis during dieting.
These small plastic strips are held in the urine stream and contain a special chemically treated absorptive pad.
This pad will change color if ketones are present in the urine. With the presence of ketones, the strip will change varying shades of pink to purple.
There is a color scale on the label of the bottle that will help you determine your ketone levels.
Where To Find Ketone Strips
Ketone strips are available in any pharmacy and can be found among the diabetic supplies.
In some stores, they are kept behind the counter so you may have to ask for them. You won’t need a prescription to buy them though.
Once you open a package of ketosis strips they have a shelf life of 6 months. It may be helpful to mark the opening date on the box.
How Useful Are Ketone Strips?
Ketone strips will let you know if you are progressing correctly on the Atkins diet. If you are following the Induction plan to the letter and aren’t seeing purple, don’t worry.
Some people never show trace amounts of ketones or they may show just above the minimum line.
As long as you are losing weight and inches then you are successfully using ketones. Also, if you’ve just exercised a few hours before using the strips, you may not see purple.
Watch Out For Dehydration
Some dieters may mistakenly believe that a dark purple result on the testing strips means that they are losing weight faster.
Actually, the darkest purple color is a sign of dehydration. It means that your urine is too concentrated and you need to drink water.
Ketones come from fat in the bloodstream, whether it is fat that you eat or fat that you burn. So if you eat a meal heavy in fat and then immediately use a testing strip, then you’ll see a dark purple result. Use the strips as a guide, but don’t get hung up on the color.
Also watch out for the keto flu — click here to learn how you can beat the keto flu!
Supplements
Thousands of people who have had success with the atkins and/or keto diet find supplementing with additional vitamins is beneficial for their journey.
Also adding certain Superfoods like spirulina or chlorella can help boost your energy levels, detox, help with weight loss, and give clarity of mind without knocking you out of ketosis.
Conclusion
Reaching a state of ketosis is the key to success on the Atkins diet. Eliminating carbohydrates from the diet will help you in this process.
Make sure to follow the eating plan correctly and use the ketone testing strips as needed.
Supplements and superfoods can significantly help you during your in the process
Thank you for reading!
What was has your journey with the atkins and/or keto diet been like? Please share your comments with us below!
Edited by Pauline D. and Richard Tracy
Works Cited
“The Atkins Diet: Benefits, Risks and What to Eat — Health Guide.” .Ro.co. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2021.
Amazon.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2021. | https://medium.com/@wholehealthemporium/how-to-get-into-ketosis-with-atkins-c804b9525204 | ['Whole Health Emporium'] | 2021-12-17 14:03:04.535000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Health', 'Healthcare', 'Keto', 'Weight Loss Tips'] |
On Dreaming and Experience Design — part 1 | Photo by Max Micallef on Unsplash
UPDATE:
Since I wrote this, I found out that Human Experience Design is actually a thing. UX for VR that is. When I wrote this I was thinking about something deeper than VR.
—
The ultimate User Experience is what I now call Human Experience and it is happening while we live our life.
An important part of this Human Experience is when we are dreaming. When we are dreaming unconscious parts of our Self, our close ones and our society act very much like Big Data.
In the Process of Dreaming, you, as the person experiencing “the experience/your dream that is” are getting exactly what you need at the time. “Magical Cookies” are collected during the day, when you experience life, and at night “Natural Big Data” is doing its work. You dream exactly what you need, or what you think that you need at the moment. It’s your psyches way of balancing stuff.
One interesting part is that we are now creating another layer to this experience with the digital worlds we are collectively designing. Both as product designers and as product users.
As a person with an experience in altered states of consciousness I no longer want to call this “User” Experience Design, I call it “Human” Experience Design.
The “product” is whatever we are doing and interacting with, and, our environment.
For example, I am now typing on the keyboard. You could say I am experiencing something that someone at Lenovo carefully thought about when designing the laptop.
But apart from that I have my nephew in my back, clicking on his computer playing Fortnite. Further away my sister is cooking in the kitchen. My stomach is excited about mashed potatoes.
So no matter how carefully someone at Lenovo designed this keyboard there are an infinite ways to experience it and it’s gonna be different every time for every human being experiencing it.
As Persons experiencing a digital or physical product we are now constantly making it better as data is collected byte by byte.
As Digital Creators in the digital realm, we have a huge responsibility. We are educating “digital children” both metaphorically and literally(thinking of my nephew behind me). We are altering the experience of the Persons living and consuming our creation, most of the time, a commercial product.
But, both as persons experiencing something on the web and creators of experiences, what are we making better? Why? Better at what? For what purpose? How? Who is ultimately gaining and What are they gaining?
These are few of the questions that arise in this process.
I do have to admit that maybe it’s a bit to radical and blunt, we have to make room for some compromise and adapt to what can be done in todays reality.
I want to stir this back to the dream world. Maybe that is where I need to pay more attention. How do night time dreams really come about? Who is storing all of the “cookies”? What are they doing with them? Why?
Verse, Universe, Uni-verse, United Verse?
(Just some fun with words). | https://medium.com/@flaviusfrantz/on-dreaming-and-human-experience-design-fc3531ea0e80 | ['Flavius Frantz'] | 2020-12-12 15:58:19.945000+00:00 | ['Human Experience', 'VR', 'Vr Experiences', 'Ux Writing', 'Human Experience Design'] |
The Hypocrisy of Autocracy | During the Democratic National Convention in 2016 the incomparable Michelle Obama gave a speech in which she uttered the now famous words, “when they go low, we go high.” This was an Obama and probably a Robinson family mantra well before it went national. This was how the Obamas taught their daughters to react to unfair and unearned criticism. This is how the Michelle and Barack always responded to cruel and racist barbs and it is the underpinning of their grace.
Since the convention, particularly after Hillary Clinton won the election but was denied the office she had earned, many have questioned the wisdom of Michelle Obama’s words. It is — after all — frustrating to be the recipient of hateful abuse and even threats of violence when you have done nothing at all to deserve it. But Michelle’s right.
There’s not a lot you can do beyond hold up a mirror and hope they see their reflection as it actually is.
Fascists and autocrats at the ground level have two main things going on. Firstly, they feel that they lack an identity or social mooring and secondly they feel aggrieved. They don’t have to actually be aggrieved, they just have to feel that way. If you descend to their level you prove their point.
This is kind of like dealing with someone who is delusional and trying to gaslight you. You cannot just point out that they’re completely untethered from reality — of course Trump never won a general election, of course there’s no “witch hunt,” against him, of course Democrats are not harvesting children’s blood for satanic rituals. But they have tied their sense of identity to all those insane things being true. They are not emotionally in a position to let go of it because without it they’re not — in their very own eyes — a person. And yeah, through their delusion they are causing considerable damage and have actually killed people.
So you may think, “enough is enough.” You may think that they’ll use your refusal to engage as a sign that you’re complicit. And they will. But as a group the best way to respond to fascists is to insist on your own reality, but not necessarily demand that they immediately let go of their fantasy. Except for the ones that injure and kill people. If they get to that point they need to go to prison.
The problem with fascists is that they are inherently damaged. The reason fascists engage in violent behaviour and come up with plots to kidnap and murder governors, or shoot up synagogues, or just randomly massacre Black people is because they have convinced themselves — unreasonably — that their feelings are more important than other people’s lives. If you talk to a fascist and ask them why they are violent they will invariably tell you that the other side is worse. According to Nazis and the KKK, Jews and/or Black people and/or Muslims and/or Mexicans and/or whatever group that aren’t them are going around raping white women and killing white children. They will insist on this. It’s obviously and clearly not factual, but you will never be able to convince a radicalized fascist that it’s not. And once you’ve failed they’ll insist that they’re just being, “rational.”
So the question is, how did they get to this point? White people are not oppressed at all. White women get kicked by white men rather frequently, but there’s no weird conspiracy against specifically white men. So why manufacture one?
Well, weirdly, it’s jealousy. White people, particularly white men don’t really understand systemic racism and sexism. They’ve never experienced it themselves. They do not really understand how behaviours they think are innocuous or even complimentary like commenting on a woman’s body or suggesting someone is well-spoken can reinforce inequality. Worse, programs like Affirmative Action and Title IX mean that white men feel like they are not being given the allocations or positions they “deserve.” They don’t understand these programs as creating an actual meritocracy because they cannot conceptualize a society where a woman or person of colour might be the better candidate or athlete or student or whatever they may be. They do not understand that they are not just naturally the best so when someone else gets something they wanted, even if it’s something they never worked for or never really previously thought about, they feel aggrieved.
Gamergate is a really excellent example of this aggrievement out of nowhere. There were always women and people of colour and LGBTQ individuals playing games. And there always will be. Gamers are perceived as white and male, and white men are largely the demographic marketed to by game companies, but the actual gaming community is much more diverse. Gamergate came about because of a bad breakup and a guy who thought his ex-girlfriend’s success couldn’t possibly be due to her skill as a developer and therefore had to be due to her use of sexuality in what he believed was a primarily white male field.
Seriously. That’s what it was about. A guy was upset his girlfriend wasn’t his girlfriend anymore.
But a lot of mostly white male gamers latched onto the conflict and it became about female encroachment into male space. Again, this is ridiculous. Women already played games en masse. The call — as it were — was coming from inside the house. But white men, not understanding what discrimination really was, wanted a reason to be angry and special and so this imagined influx of women into gaming became a cause. No one was threatening white men, videogames are still made with sexist and racist themes, men can play videogames to their heart’s content, and there was no caravan of women illegally crossing the border into the sacred utopia of gaming man-land (just as there was no violent caravan of migrants bent on illegally crossing into the US).
Radicalization can result from psychologically externalized personal failure and the narrative for a lot of these movements including Nazism is exactly that. White people, primarily white men but also a lot of white women aren’t for whatever reason doing well, but see select minorities either doing well or successfully putting on a brave face and they decide that their own personal failure or even just perceived or relative failure is not due to a downturn in the economy or their own lack of degrees or skills or work, but minority groups accessing and using up limited resources before and instead of them.
This is how populism works. A would be leader finds the aggrieved but powerful majority and tells them that their failure to live up to a certain standard is due to greed, incompetence, and cronyism from the reigning “establishment,” who further is preferencing a given minority group over the majority. It comes down to “they are taking your things and benefitting from your work, and you are getting nothing in return.”
That is an attractive message and everyone from Nazis to BernieBros to Proud Boys to KKK members have fallen for it. “It’s not your fault and you have a right to be angry,” is an attractive message.
Unfortunately, it’s not a productive message. Because the next step is “reclaiming your heritage/rights/living room/country,” usually through violence. And, of course, since said violence was based on a flawed premise, it’s not only violent and horrific, but it ultimately serves no actual purpose.
Fascists have incredibly dark and violent fantasies. Despite almost invariably belonging to the hegemonic group and under absolutely no threat, they labour under the pretence that they’re being either outbred or that there is an active genocide against them. This allows them to justify violence against women — who must be controlled for breeding purposes according to them — and the nebulous “other,” even if the nebulous other happens to be an innocent child. But they take it even further. Fascists often justify extreme violence against themselves and members of their own “in group.” They encourage and even idolize mass shooters who then take their own life.
There is no logic or rationale behind either the violent behaviour or fantasies. Sadly, fascists understand violence — any violence — as a display of strength and are therefore afraid to question violence or stop committing it.
There is no easy way of thoroughly defeating fascism. If you counter it with violence even violence in self-defence, fascists will use that action to justify further violence. If you negotiate with them as an actual group you both give them legitimacy and put yourself in a position where the negotiation cannot possibly progress because what they want is for you not to exist. The only way of defeating them is going to Michelle Obama’s mantra and fully embracing the strength that “when they go, low we go high,” requires.
Fully purging fascism from our system requires rehabilitating each individual fascist. And that sucks. Not only does it suck because these people have done truly revolting racist and sexist things for no reason other than as an expression of their misdirected resentment, but it sucks because fascists are fundamentally irrational. There is no such thing as a logical autocrat. You can have a despot who utilizes autocracy or fascism or populism to gain and maintain power, but you cannot have a base of logical or rational fascists.
That means, as with people who are delusional and as with gaslighters you have to hold on to reality while not immediately threatening or succumbing to their dark and weird fantasy.
There is hope. There are ex-white supremacists. There are reformed Nazis. Former members of the KKK have realized the damage they have done and rededicated their lives to the advancement of civil rights and equality. But if you’re truly Antifa you have to have Michelle Obama’s endless strength and patience. | https://medium.com/@ariadneschulz/the-hypocrisy-of-autocracy-9ebbba9c69 | ['Ariadne Schulz'] | 2020-12-18 23:59:58.595000+00:00 | ['Fascism', 'Hope', 'Radicalisation', 'White Supremacy', 'Extremism'] |
You Don’t Know CSS | A look behind the scenes…
YDKCSS
Hi! Are you now developing a website or web application? Are you a front-end guy that loves working on HTML/CSS? Have you ever known about CSS’s inheritance, specificity, or the “cascading” itself?
Well, the chance is you might don’t know CSS in depth. But, fret not, that was me too before I took this awesome Advanced CSS course taught by one of Udemy’s Top Instructors Jonas Schmedtmann.
So, this article is basically an excerpt from that course, that I believe will enrich your understanding of what’s going on underneath. Enough chit-chat, here it goes! | https://medium.com/frontend-buddy/ydkcss-5fc20fcebf44 | ['Hizkia Juan Suryanto'] | 2020-07-20 05:01:01.175000+00:00 | ['HTML', 'Web Design', 'Front End Development', 'CSS', 'Web Development'] |
The Yellow Sweater: Words for My Best Friend | The Yellow Sweater: Words for My Best Friend
You were a welcome respite from years of wandering through a desert of disconnection Larkyn Simony Jan 19, 2020·3 min read
Photo by the author
I have this yellow sweater. I don’t know if you remember it or not. Actually, yellow may not be the best way to describe the color; the words goldenrod or sunflower might be more accurate. I wore my yellow sweater to work last week, even though I knew I shouldn’t. It has ink spots on the sleeve from when I didn’t notice the ink on a greeting card wasn’t dry and I dragged the sleeve through it. Though I tried, that ink never would come out. The seams of my yellow sweater are coming apart. It, like me, has seen better days.
But I wore my yellow sweater to work anyway. It’s the kind of thing I’d normally throw away. It endured a final rip at work last week which has rendered it unusable, yet I can’t get rid of it. It sits on my desk and reminds me of you. It is the sweater I wore the day we met, and if I throw it away, then I am throwing away everything there ever was or ever will be between us. That’s what I tell myself.
You were my best friend. Maybe because I needed a best friend, even though I’ve never been a best friend kind of girl. Maybe because we got along so well from the beginning. We first encountered each other on a dating site and, when we met, the day I wore that yellow sweater, we argued our way through half the dinner. We were so similar in ways that made dating a terrible idea, and so different in ways that made dating a terrible idea, that we decided to give dating a try.
After a very brief, and very awkward attempt at dating, you finally said what was true: We’d make much better friends than we did romantic partners. You said as friends we could be in each other’s lives forever, until we were old and couldn’t walk without assistance. I knew you were right, but I figured that, like most times men and women say they will be friends after failed romantic dalliances, we’d never see each other again. To my great surprise, we did see each other again one day the next week. And the day after that, and most of the days after that.
We spent almost all of our free time together. You were working on a PhD, which was grueling and not always satisfying work. Maybe I was a good distraction from your work and your studies. Maybe I was an escape. I never considered that might be the role I played in your life, until one day I did. Yet, in spite of all the things I learned about you and about how you don’t get close to people, you allowed me in. You allowed us to become close; you allowed me to see you as you really were. You were my best friend, until one day you weren’t.
For me, you were a welcome respite from years of wandering through a desert of disconnection from myself, the world, and other people. An incorrect mental-health diagnosis, and being wrongly medicated made closeness with other people impossible for me, even though not being close to people is the opposite of who I truly am.
In spite of my strong desire to say you used me, and to say you never cared, in my heart I think you did care. A lot. I know you did. But knowing you did makes it much harder than thinking I was nothing more more important to you than a Netflix binge or a night of drinking that made you forget all your stresses. I still tell myself I never really did matter to you. If I never mattered to you, life makes a lot more sense And if I tell myself that enough, I might believe it. If I tell myself that enough, I might start living life again, instead of crying into this ragged, unsightly, broken, yellow sweater. | https://medium.com/@LarkynSimony/the-yellow-sweater-cf262b1bb3a6 | ['Larkyn Simony'] | 2021-07-25 01:45:48.590000+00:00 | ['Sad', 'Friendship', 'Losing A Friend', 'Best Friend', 'Grief'] |
S3,E12 || Star Trek: Discovery (Series 3, Episode 12) Online 1080p-HD | ⭐ Watch Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 12 Full Episode, Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 12 Full Watch Free, Star Trek: Discovery Episode 12,Star Trek: Discovery CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery Eps. 12,Star Trek: Discovery ENG Sub, Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Star Trek: Discovery Series 3,Star Trek: Discovery Episode 12, Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 12, Star Trek: Discovery Full Streaming, Star Trek: Discovery Download HD, Star Trek: Discovery All Subtitle, Watch Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 12 Full Episodes
Film, also called movie, motion picture or moving picture, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound, and more rarely, other sensory stimulations.[12] The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is ofCBS All Access used to refer to filmmaking and the film Star Trek: Discovery, and to the art form that is the result of it.
❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies specifically to telecommunications networks, as most of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio CDs). There are challenges with streaming conCBS All Accesst on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the conCBS All Accesst. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain conCBS All Accesst.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet conCBS All Accesst in real-time much as live television broadcasts conCBS All Accesst over the airwaves via a television signal. Live internet streaming requires a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the conCBS All Accesst, a media publisher, and a conCBS All Accesst delivery network to distribute and deliver the conCBS All Accesst. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the conCBS All Accesst before watching or lisCBS All Accessing to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio conCBS All Accesst before the entire file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can apply to media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONCBS All AccessT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[12][12][12][12][12] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is inCBS All Accessded to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[12][12][12] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is ofCBS All Access shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][12][3][3][3] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[3]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not exCBS All Accessd beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsisCBS All Accesst.[3]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 3 to 12 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[12] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[3]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[12] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exCBS All Accesssible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[12] Credit is exCBS All Accessded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ CBS All Accessween China, U.S.
CBS All Access’s live-action “Star Trek: Discovery” was supposed to be a huge win for under-represented groups in Hollywood. The $12 million-budgeted film is among the most expensive ever directed by a woman, and it features an all-Asian cast — a first for productions of such scale.
Despite well-inCBS All Accesstioned ambitions, however, the film has exposed the difficulties of representation in a world of complex geopolitics. CBS All Access primarily cast Asian rather than Asian American stars in lead roles to appeal to Chinese consumers, yet Chinese viewers rejected the movie as inauthentic and American. Then, politics ensnared the production as stars Liu Yifei, who plays Star Trek: Discovery, and Donnie Yen professed support for Hong Kong police during the brutal crackdown on protesters in 31212. Later, CBS All Access issued “special thanks” in the credits to government bodies in China’s Xinjiang region that are directly involved in perpetrating major human rights abuses against the minority Uighur population.
“Star Trek: Discovery” inadverCBS All Accesstly reveals why it’s so difficult to create multicultural conCBS All Accesst with global appeal in 2020. It highlights the vast disconnect CBS All Accessween Asian Americans in Hollywood and Chinese nationals in China, as well as the exCBS All Accesst to which Hollywood fails to acknowledge the difference CBS All Accessween their aesthetics, tastes and politics. It also underscores the limits of the American conversation on representation in a global world.
In conversations with seStar Trek: Discoveryl Asian-American creatives, Variety found that many feel caught CBS All Accessween fighting against underrepresentation in Hollywood and being accidentally complicit in China’s authoritarian politics, with no easy answers for how to deal with the moral questions “Star Trek: Discovery” poses.
“When do we care about representation versus fundamental civil rights? This is not a simple question,” says Bing Chen, co-founder of Gold House, a collective that mobilizes the Asian American community to help diverse films, including “Star Trek: Discovery,” achieve opening weekend box office success via its #GoldOpen movement. “An impossible duality faces us. We absolutely acknowledge the terrible and unacceptable nature of what’s going on over there [in China] politically, but we also understand what’s at stake on the Star Trek: Discovery side.”
The film leaves the Asian American community at “the intersection of choosing CBS All Accessween surface-level representation — faces that look like ours — versus values and other cultural nuances that don’t reflect ours,” says Lulu Wang, director of “The Farewell.”
In a business in which past box office success determines what future projects are bankrolled, those with their eyes squarely on the prize of increasing opportunities for Asian Americans say they feel a responsibility to support “Star Trek: Discovery” no matter what. That support is ofCBS All Access very personal amid the Star Trek: Discovery’s close-knit community of Asian Americans, where people don’t want to tear down the hard work of peers and Star Trek: Discovery.
Others say they wouldn’t have given CBS All Access their $3 if they’d known about the controversial end credits.
“‘Star Trek: Discovery’ is actually the first film where the Asian American community is really split,” says sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, who examines racism in Hollywood. “For people who are more global and consume more global news, maybe they’re thinking, ‘We shouldn’t sell our soul in order to get affirmation from Hollywood.’ But we have this scarcity mentality.
“I felt like I couldn’t completely lambast ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ because I personally felt solidarity with the Asian American actors,” Yuen continues. “I wanted to see them do well. But at what cost?”
This scarcity mentality is particularly acute for Asian American actors, who find roles few and far CBS All Accessween. Lulu Wang notes that many “have built their career on a film like ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ and other crossovers, because they might not speak the native language — Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Hindi — to actually do a role overseas, but there’s no role being writCBS All Access for them in America.”
Certainly, the actors in “Star Trek: Discovery,” who have seen major career breakthroughs tainted by the film’s political backlash, feel this acutely. “You have to understand the tough position that we are in here as the cast, and that CBS All Access is in too,” says actor Chen Tang, who plays Star Trek: Discovery’s army buddy Yao.
There’s not much he can do except keep trying to nail the roles he lands in hopes of paving the way for others. “The more I can do great work, the more likely there’s going to be somebody like me [for kids to look at and say], ‘Maybe someday that could be me.’”
Part of the problem is that what’s happening in China feels very distant to Americans. “The Chinese-speaking market is impenetrable to people in the West; they don’t know what’s going on or what those people are saying,” says Daniel York Loh of British East Asians and South East Asians in Theatre and Screen (BEATS), a U.K. nonprofit seeking greater on-screen Asian representation.
York Loh offers a provocative comparison to illustrate the West’s milquetoast reaction to “Star Trek: Discovery” principal Liu’s pro-police comments. “The equivalent would be, say, someone like Emma Roberts going, ‘Yeah, the cops in Portland should beat those protesters.’ That would be huge — there’d be no getting around that.”
Some of the disconnect is understandable: With information overload at home, it’s hard to muster the energy to care about faraway problems. But part of it is a broader failure to grasp the real lack of overlap CBS All Accessween issues that matter to the mainland’s majority Han Chinese versus minority Chinese Americans. They may look similar, but they have been shaped in diametrically different political and social contexts.
“China’s nationalist pride is very different from the Asian American pride, which is one of overcoming racism and inequality. It’s hard for Chinese to relate to that,” Yuen says.
Beijing-born Wang points out she ofCBS All Access has more in common with first-generation Muslim Americans, Jamaican Americans or other immigrants than with Chinese nationals who’ve always lived in China and never left.
If the “Star Trek: Discovery” debacle has taught us anything, in a world where we’re still too quick to equate “American” with “white,” it’s that “we definitely have to separate out the Asian American perspective from the Asian one,” says Wang. “We have to separate race, nationality and culture. We have to talk about these things separately. True representation is about capturing specificities.”
She ran up against the Star Trek: Discovery’s inability to make these distinctions while creating “The Farewell.” Americans felt it was a Chinese film because of its subtitles, Chinese cast and location, while Chinese producers considered it an American film because it wasn’t fully Chinese. The endeavor to simply tell a personal family story became a “political fight to claim a space that doesn’t yet exist.”
In the search for authentic storytelling, “the key is to lean into the in-CBS All Accessweenness,” she said. “More and more, people won’t fit into these neat boxes, so in-CBS All Accessweenness is exactly what we need.”
However, it may prove harder for Chinese Americans to carve out a space for their “in-CBS All Accessweenness” than for other minority groups, given China’s growing economic clout.
Notes author and writer-producer Charles Yu, whose latest novel about Asian representation in Hollywood, “Interior Chinatown,” is a National Book Award finalist, “As Asian Americans continue on what I feel is a little bit of an island over here, the world is changing over in Asia; in some ways the center of gravity is shifting over there and away from here, economically and culturally.”
With the Chinese film market set to surpass the US as the world’s largest this year, the question thus arises: “Will the cumulative impact of Asian American audiences be such a small drop in the bucket compared to the China market that it’ll just be overwhelmed, in terms of what gets made or financed?”
As with “Star Trek: Discovery,” more parochial, American conversations on race will inevitably run up against other global issues as U.S. studios continue to target China. Some say Asian American creators should be prepared to meet Star Trek: Discovery by broadening their outlook.
“Most people in this Star Trek: Discovery think, ‘I’d love for there to be Hollywood-China co-productions if it meant a job for me. I believe in free speech, and censorship is terrible, but it’s not my battle. I just want to get my pilot sold,’” says actor-producer Brian Yang (“Hawaii Five-0,” “Linsanity”), who’s worked for more than a decade CBS All Accessween the two countries. “But the world’s getting smaller. Streamers make shows for the world now. For anyone that works in this business, it would behoove them to study and understand Star Trek: Discoverys that are happening in and [among] other countries.”
Gold House’s Chen agrees. “We need to speak even more thoughtfully and try to understand how the world does not function as it does in our zip code,” he says. “We still have so much soft power coming from the U.S. What we say matters. This is not the problem and burden any of us as Asian Americans asked for, but this is on us, unfortunately. We just have to fight harder. And every step we take, we’re going to be right and we’re going to be wrong.”
☆ ALL ABOUT THE SERIES ☆
is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[12] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exCBS All Accesssible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[12] Credit is exCBS All Accessded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘Hausen’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ CBS All Accessween China, U.S. | https://medium.com/star-trek-discovery-s3xe12-4khd-quality/s3-e12-star-trek-discovery-series-3-episode-12-online-1080p-hd-2ba44081476d | ['Naomi Briggs'] | 2020-12-25 22:12:55.026000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Lifestyle', 'Coronavirus', 'TV Series'] |
Komodo: A Detailed Guide | Originally published in the NOWNodes blog.
The Komodo platform, aimed at bringing new standards in cryptocurrency security and anonymity protocols, was founded in September 2016. Headquartered in San Gwann, Malta, the Komodo platform leverages the Zcash Zero-Knowledge proofs to help its users make 100% untraceable transactions. These transactions are protected by Bitcoin’s Petahash Proof of Work mechanism.
Komodo’s Unique Blockchain Platform
The blockchain platform offered by Komodo is open and composable. These fully composable solutions, built on multi-chain designs. It proves beneficial for solo developers, growing startups, and comparatively larger enterprises alike. These entities can leverage this aspect of composability to create a customized blockchain that is capable of hosting applications, software, and any other type of blockchain-based solution.
The composability of Komodo’s blockchain provides a wide variety of components that can be activated as and when needed and can be used in different combinations and configurations so that they can meet the specific needs of a specific use case.
Although launched in 2016, the development of the platform started further back in 2014. The initial development process took its cue from the tested technology paradigms of Bitcoin and ZCash. In offering customization facilities relating to the blockchain, Komodo enables projects to build a fully customizable and independent Antara smart chain that remains connected to the multi-chain ecosystem of Komodo through platform synchronizations. The smart chain is protected with bitcoin level security. Antara equips Komodo with the provisions of offering a toolkit for blockchain. The different development tools within this kit enable the users to build on advanced business logic. This facility is complemented by Komodo’s on-chain native app support.
The multi-chain design of Komodo allows many sovereign smart chain projects to co-exist in the same ecosystem with each one having its own consensus, network, and coin. However, these independent chains are capable of doing cross-chain transfers of value and logic leveraging Komodo Core’s Platform Synchronization technology.
The Antara smart chains keep on updating themselves with the progress of time and technology. All these smart chains are future proof and the users of these smart chains keep receiving free updates as and when they are released. New features are also added to the base Komodo technology stack on frequent intervals keeping the technology dynamic.
Developers, start-ups, and enterprises who build their own independent smart chain to meet their needs are free to scale up when they feel. The Antara smart chain allows them to scale on demand by bringing together multiple smart chains under the ambit of one logical chain. Not only expansion in the number of chains, but Antara smart chain technology also enables scaling up in terms of functionalities of the chain. One can introduce several new features and options to their chain, including oracles, tokens, trustless price feeds, stablecoins, etc.
Apart from enabling projects to create custom, independent smart chains, Komodo also helps businesses and individual users with a bunch of necessary white-label products, including multi-coin wallets, atomic swap DEX, custom block explorers, and hosted infrastructure solutions.
In the next segments, we will have a detailed look into these offerings of Komodo.
Atomic Swap DEX and Multi-Currency Wallet
The AtomicDEX offered by Komodo combines a highly secure wallet with a non-custodial decentralized exchange. Users can leverage this combine to store their holdings and trade on a peer-to-peer basis without having to give up control over their funds.
The multi-currency wallet helps frequent crypto users to get rid of a host of different wallets required to hold each different type of coins. One can conveniently store their BTC, ETH, and a dozen more types of coins in the test version of the wallet in a secure and non-custodial way. Although the current Beta release of the wallet allows a dozen types, the final launch will have the capacity to store more than hundreds of different types of crypto coins.
On the other hand, the biggest facility provided by the Atomic Swap DEX is that it lets the users trade any coin without having to go through an exchange first. Since one does not have to go through an exchange to trade, there is no giving up of control over their funds. Atomic Swap DEX is known as the industry’s most advanced, mobile-first atomic swap protocol so far.
The Benefits of Komodo’s Atomic Swap DEX
The next-generation decentralized exchange or DEX technology introduced by Komodo addresses a lot of legacy issues when it comes to the trading of digital assets.
Although the blockchain technology is pivoted on decentralization, the trading in the blockchain is still largely dependent on the centralized exchange services. But, these CEX services have their limitations and disadvantages.
Centralized exchanges suffer from a lack of security. According to estimates, in 2018 alone, all centralized exchanges combined lost digital assets worth US$1 billion to hackers and cyber attackers. It becomes a matter of grave concern for the users as they need to give up the control of their funds before going to trade through centralized exchanges.
Trading through centralized exchanges proves costlier than average. Not only the user has to pay 0.33% trading fees applied on the value of the trade, but one also needs to pay fees for withdrawal and regaining one’s control over his or her funds.
Centralized exchanges also fail to provide a good range of trading pairs. Most of the CEX services have one or two trading pairs for most of the coins and tokens.
The AtomicDEX offered by Komodo takes care of each of these problems. It offers the highest standard of security protocol to its users who, under any condition, do not have to give up control over their funds by sharing their private key with the exchange. The Komodo DEX services also offer a bouquet of unrestricted trading pairs to its users where any asset is eligible for direct swapping. The fees are also much less on the DEX as compared to any centralized exchange services. In the AtomicSwapDEX, while the market makers do not need to pay any fees, the takers need to pay only 0.15%
Komodo: Tokenomics
The native token of Komodo is the KMD token. The total supply of the KMD token is fixed at an upper limit of 200 million tokens. Out of these 200 million, 100 million were pre-mined and were distributed through an ICO or Initial Coin Offering. Of these 100 million Komodo tokens that went into ICO, 90% were available for the investors who participated in the ICO. The rest of the 10% was set aside for the future development of the platform. Apart from the 100 million KMD tokens, the other 100 million are decomposed by Komodo through its proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
Komodo users with more than 10 KMD tokens held in a single address are eligible for a 5% reward.
To give an idea about the trading potential of Komodo, its price reached an all-time high of USD 12.23 on December 22, 2017, trading at a volume of more than USD 1.2 billion.
Latest Komodo Updates
Komodo platform completed its first successful stress test on 31st October 2020. During this stress test, a total of 2000 traders attempted performing swaps through the AtomicDEX. The test enriched Komodo developers with a host of valuable data for them to test the veracity of Market Maker 2, Komodo’s highly-sophisticated order-matching technology, based in Libtorrent.
This update to Market Maker 2 will make Komodo far more useful than its previous versions. It enables the DEX with the whole package of free battle-tested servers for DHT bootstrap and a significantly large network of DHT peers. It’s also helpful in correcting and upgrading the network address translations and anomalies relating to routing. The use of Libtorrent in Market Maker 2 makes the AtomicDEX eligible to operate while switching IPs. It becomes particularly useful when the user is mobile and might be using different Wi-Fi routers, cellular towers, etc.
As a provider of the next generation of DEX technology, the Komodo platform has established itself as a major driving force in the evolution of blockchain technology. With a strong foundation, comprised of the Antara framework, delayed proof of work mechanism, atomic swaps, and platform synchronization features, Komodo is expected to continue its run as an innovation and thought leader in the world of blockchain in the days to come.
Also, Read | https://medium.com/coinmonks/komodo-a-detailed-guide-694c4e77c79a | [] | 2020-12-28 13:02:12.108000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Atomic Dex', 'Komodo', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Do You Know Her? | Do You Know Her?
Poem
Image by Cari R. from Pixabay
do you know her?
she holds oceans
between breaths
in a peak
of pale foam
she makes aftercraft
of the undercroft
insides furnished
with sin
she is interrogation
low-leaning
unflinching
from your fleeing outrage
do you know her?
I know her | https://medium.com/assemblage/do-you-know-her-72262c5d96e | ['Lisa Alletson'] | 2020-03-23 12:48:35.520000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Women', 'Self', 'Poem', 'Strong Women'] |
Living At Home During Grad School | Living At Home During Grad School
Photo by Flaunter on Unsplash
I am 23 and I live at home.
Although those words may not come across as striking as they may have years ago when moving out at 18 was the universal standard, they still carry some negative notion to many.
I live with my mother and father, my 15-year-old brother, and our 2 dogs. I have 2 younger sisters who go to college far away, one of whom is a communications major who lives on her own in Florida.
Despite the horror stories I’ve heard from others, I have had no tangible issue living at home.
My parents don’t have any crazy rules, I have a wonderful relationship with them, and before the pandemic, I spent 90% of all days out of the house on the campus where I attend graduate school.
The house I live in is large and beautiful, its many walls filled with memories of many people’s joy, stress, despair, and love. The house has stood for over 100 years. It has seen decades of joyous holiday celebrations.
Out the window, you can watch the seasons change as the in-ground pool my dad and his friends built themselves turns into an ice rink when winter hits.
In the summer I can look out the window and see my childhood. My siblings, cousins, and friends, all pretending to take our driver’s tests as we rode our bikes around our dead-end street.
We didn’t yet know screens. We spent our days outside doing cartwheels and pretending any chunk of wood on the playground was a balance beam.
Our childhood was magnificent and to this day, I am profoundly grateful for the roof I have over my head, having all my family and friends close by, and my serene room where the desk my parents bought me houses thousands of hours of neuroscience and orthopedic study material and my cranberry chutney candle.
Somehow many years have passed, but I am still here. I stayed here to save money in undergrad since I went to school just down the street.
My plans shifted when I did not get accepted to the affordable graduate program at the university I attended during my undergraduate studies. I did however get accepted into one of the nation's top 10 programs, but the price was significantly higher.
Eventually, I decided it was too good an opportunity to give up. | https://medium.com/illumination/living-at-home-during-grad-school-951a46a35768 | [] | 2020-12-17 01:18:50.304000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Education Reform', 'Higher Education', 'Graduate School'] |
Window of heart | More from Simran Kankas Follow
Author of ‘Beyond and Within’ — https://amz.run/3ZHY; My bond with the universe since the childhood helped me find the purpose of my life. | https://simrankankas.medium.com/window-of-heart-78ca7732a31f | ['Simran Kankas'] | 2020-01-28 11:54:39.063000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Self', 'Mindfulness', 'Poetry', 'Haiku'] |
A community of life | All Americans should care about the wildlife on the coast plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even if we never visit.
(Photo credit: Credit: Alan D. Wilson via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a legacy of our country’s conservation movement. Originally established in 1960 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the refuge pre-dates the publication of Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring (1962) and the Santa Barbara oil spill (1969), which horrified the organizers of the first Earth Day (1970).
I’ve never been to the refuge, and, I suspect you’ve never been there either. In fact, the vast majority of Americans are less likely to visit the north slope of Alaska than almost any other spot in the U.S. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to have access to a private plane or you’re up for hiking and backpacking there from Fairbanks — with all of the food and provisions you’ll need — it’s surely worth the effort. By all accounts, it’s spectacular. However, that’s beyond so many of us. Still, even if we never get there, that’s not the point of protecting this place.
This reason why this wild and amazing place must be protected was eloquently explained in the 1964 Wilderness Act, which was enacted four years after the refuge was officially designated.
Its words clearly apply to this remote Alaskan area: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” | https://medium.com/environment-america/a-community-of-life-252c46586e07 | ['Ellen', 'Len'] | 2020-12-23 15:15:36.219000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Wildlife Conservation', 'Arctic', 'Polar Bears', 'Wildlife'] |
A Disproportionate Burden | Voter ID laws in the United States are becoming more common and more strict. In 2013 alone, legislators in six states moved to strengthen their voter ID laws. Today, eleven states have a strict voter ID requirement in place. Moreover, the fate of these laws is far from certain; almost every strict ID requirement has been challenged in the courts, and many of these cases remain outstanding. More challenges to these laws are likely to emerge in the future. Outside of these legal proceedings, the constitutionality of these laws remains in question. The stakes for American democracy are high and growing higher by the year.
The answer to that constitutionality question may well be tipped one way or the other by the weight of the empirical evidence about the burden these laws pose on minorities. All of this means that there is a real need for hard evidence. Clear, objective, and empirical answers to the core voter identification debates could actually sway outcomes on the issue.
In this article, we have attempted to provide some of those hard empirical answers. By focusing on data from recent elections following widely implemented strict photo ID laws, by using official turnout data to eliminate concerns over inflated and biased turnout patterns from self-reported survey data, and by employing a research design that incorporates longitudinal data and difference-in-difference tests, our analysis overcomes many of the core problems faced by previous studies. As such, our study offers a more rigorous test of these laws.
Our primary analysis assesses changes in aggregate county turnout data between 2012 to 2016, incorporating all U.S. counties in the analysis. We also perform a robustness check that focuses on changes in county turnout between 2010 and 2014. The core test is to compare changes in turnout in racially diverse counties in states that have implemented a new strict voter identification law to changes in turnout in similarly racially diverse counties in states that have not enacted a new strict voter identification law. We also focus on how the gap in turnout changes between more racially diverse and less racially diverse counties in states with newly enacted strict ID laws, compared to how the gap changes elsewhere. We perform these difference-in-difference tests with and without controls for other factors that could also shape changes in turnout.
The findings presented in our paper strongly suggest that these laws do, in fact, represent a burden that disproportionately affects minorities and significantly alters the makeup of the voting population. Where these laws are enacted, turnout in racially diverse counties declines: it declines more than in less diverse areas, and it declines more sharply than it does in other states. As a result of these laws, the voices of Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, and other minorities become more muted and the relative influence of white America grows. An already significant racial skew in American democracy becomes all the more pronounced. If courts are indeed trying to gauge the burden these laws impose on minorities and others, then this new data should help the courts with their deliberations. | https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/a-disproportionate-burden-a6521956423e | ['Mit Election Lab'] | 2018-07-26 21:13:26.233000+00:00 | ['Esra 2018', 'Politics', 'Voting'] |
Why is Ebrahim Laher the most Trusted Strategic Advisor in South Africa? | Ebrahim Laher, is a known name in the world of Strategic Advisory and Business Strategic growth. He is a well-known Digital Entrepreneur, Strategic Advisor to companies in the Emerging Market. He is a former Executive Director at EOH, Co-Founder at Hetu Consulting. A successful digital entrepreneur, Ebrahim Laher’s journey as a Digital Entrepreneur and Strategic Advisor’s in Africa, South Africa, the Middle East has been astounding where he has made vast contributions to businesses and society at a large scale by making millions of transformations with digital technology.
For making lucrative developments in the field of business, entrepreneurship, philosophy, education, Ebrahim Laher has contributed a lot. His knowledge of Digital Entrepreneurship has opened up many new avenues and questions about providing benefiting strategies, opportunities for businesses and government to flourish.
What Makes Ebrahim Laher, one of the most Trusted Advisors in Africa and the Middle East?
When someone thinks of a Strategic Advisor, Ebrahim Laher is a renowned name who’s the best advisor in the creation of goals and how to develop tactics and regarding the tools to improvise digital strategic advisory. Consulting is natural to Ebrahim Laher as he held positions requiring expert skills and knowledge to advise companies on what they should do and how to do it. The unique advisory and helping nature of Ebrahim Laher has traded multi-fold strategies to prove growth, even for a short span of time in many successful and upcoming companies.
Often it is observed that people use the word strategy and tactics but organizations like EOH have developed leaps and bounds in South Africa due to Ebrahim Laher. Africa’s potential as a growth market in the digital industry has remained both underestimated and misunderstood. Ebrahim Laher was the key strategic advisor with the potential in transforming the main roles of a company by solving the businesses biggest challenges.
EOH is among Africa’s biggest information and communication technology (ICT) providers. Ebrahim Laher, a top-notch digital entrepreneur harnesses the reach and power of the technology in order to offer products and services for the profit of the company. He possesses all the characteristics of a traditional entrepreneur i.e.vision, determination, persistence, and creativity. Ebrahim Laher holds a number of key traits to become the most trusted advisors in South Africa and Africa. He has operated constantly shifting algorithms that control who or what appears in the online listing in South Africa. Due to Ebrahim Laher’s Digital entrepreneurship skills, the companies have specialized in the provision of technology services to businesses and the government.
How Ebrahim Laher has become the most popular digital entrepreneur in Africa?
Ebrahim Laher has become the most popular digital entrepreneur in South Africa as he has been influential in aiding organizations, businesses, and even government bodies across countries such as Africa, South Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The digital entrepreneurship skills of Ebrahim Laher have improved the process of data collection across all social platforms and even allowed organizations for identifying opportunities across the globe. He has advised the organization to scale to great heights over time. With the best strategies for the Businesses goals, products, Likewise Ebrahim Laher has scaled many businesses in Africa.
He is highly notable for the growth of EOH Group that has its branches laid out in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, India, The UK, South America, and Turkey. Ebrahim Laher has maintained lucrative conventional methods and values for the company. With the unique advisory nature of Ebrahim Laher, EOH has jumped substantially high and is valuable in the world of Digital Entrepreneurship in South Africa.
Ebrahim Laher has integrated many prosperous Strategic Partnership schemes with variant partners that have mutually benefited and ensured that businesses in Africa have thrived with the latest technology services and strategic growth. EOH’s existence has solved challenges in Africa eagerly and has provided much knowledge and industry expertise. Ebrahim Laher has committed to sustainable transformation thus making the businesses in Africa bring about more contributions to society positively. To know about Ebrahim Laher, click here. | https://medium.com/@newsfeedsouthafrica/why-is-ebrahim-laher-the-most-trusted-strategic-advisor-in-south-africa-bbd667443799 | [] | 2021-12-22 09:09:48.371000+00:00 | ['Strategic Planning', 'South Africa', 'Eos', 'Ebrahimlaher', 'Eoh Ebrahim Laher'] |
21 Predictions about the Software Development Trends in 2021 | 1. Centralized Infrastructure: Cloud, cloud everywhere
During COVID-19, most of the industry suffered heavily, albeit a handful of industries. Cloud is the forerunner industry, which actually becomes stronger than ever during the pandemic. If there were any doubt and uncertainty in terms of Cloud adoptions, COVID-19 has wiped that away.
A global-scale catastrophe like Corona showed that we not only need Cloud for upscale, we also need it for down-scaling, i.e., when demand for our services drops significantly. Think about the tourism and transportation industry that has to maintain their expensive data centers, although their market drops 90%.
Forrester predicted Global Public Cloud IT infrastructure market would grow to a whopping 120 Billion USD with 35% growth in 2021:
No matter which industry you are in (Government, Startups, Agriculture, Healthcare, Banking), plan Cloud migration as the entire world moves to Cloud sooner than later. There will be a huge shortage and high demand for Cloud-Native Engineers in 2021 and onwards.
If you are an IT engineer, jump into any MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) to earn your Cloud certificate. The good news is that many of them are offering free months during Covid. Also, the major public cloud providers are offering free courses. Recently the biggest public Cloud provider Amazon has declared that they will give free Cloud Computing training to 29 million people between 2021–2025:
2. Decentralised Infrastructure: Edge Computing will see exponential growth
In contrast to the Public Cloud where we want to have a centralized Data Center for Data and Compute power, there are many scenarios where we want to have the opposite, i.e. the Data and Compute power near the end-user. Some are very low latency (5 to 20 ms), high bandwidth, regulatory reasons, Real-Time use cases, smart and powerful end-user devices, etc.
Although Edge computing is an old concept and we are using Edge Computing in Content Delivery Network (CDN), it is gaining popularity in recent years. With the rise of connected vehicles (autonomous Cars, drones), online gaming, IoT, smart devices, and edge AI/ML, Edge Computing will be a gigantic market in 2021 and beyond. Another key reason Edge computing will be key in 2021 is the rise of the 5G mobile devices.
In 2021, two groups of industries will fight for the market share in Edge computing. One group will be the public Cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, as reported here:
Here again, Amazon is the leader with many services like AWS Snow family, AWS IoT Greengrass. Microsoft is also providing edge services with Azure Stack Edge, Azure Edge Zone. Google is also moving its Data Center services to the end-user with Google Anthos.
The other group is the industry that already has the Edge Infrastructure like Telecom Companies, Data Center Providers, Network Providers. If they can move fast and leverage their advantages (i.e., existing Infrastructure), they have the opportunity to lead here. The Hybrid cloud provider RedHat (IBM) will be a key player here with its Hybrid Cloud Platform OpenShift, and engagement in OpenStack. Recently Samsung has joined with IBM to develop Edge Computing solutions:
State of the Edge is the initiative to make Open Standard for Edge Computing to make the Edge computing vendor-neutral. Recently State of the Edge became part of the Linux Foundation. Like CNCF, the State of the Edge will also gain more moment in 2021 and onwards.
Prepare for many innovations, mergers, neck-to-neck fight, and standardization in Edge Computing in 2021 and beyond.
3. Cloud: AWS is leading, but Multi-Cloud will be the future
Among the public Cloud vendors, there is no question about who is the leader. In Q3 2020, Amazon is leading the public Cloud market with a 32% market share, as shown below:
Microsoft had another strong year with its cloud offering and enjoyed 48% annual growth in 2020. In Q3 2020, Microsoft has a 19% market share compared to a 17% market share in Q3 2019.
As it is now, Google is the third-largest public Cloud provider with its 7% market share in Q3 2020.
In 2021, Amazon and Microsoft will keep their position as the first and second spots, respectively. However, Alibaba will take over third place in 2021 as it is just behind Google with a 6% market share in Q3 2020.
Also, the Multi-Cloud initiative will get more momentum in 2021. Many companies also moving to a Multi-Cloud strategy. CIA has recently awarded its Cloud contract to multiple vendors instead of one single vendor:
Until now, Amazon was reluctant to join the multi-cloud initiative to protect its market share. But as we had already seen with Microsoft 10 years ago, the whole industry and community are bigger than the biggest individual company. Recently, Amazon has silently joined the Multi-Cloud initiative:
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) plays a key role in the Multi-Cloud movement and has arguably surpassed the Linux Foundation. In 2021, we can see more growth in the CNCF. Also, Multi-Cloud service providers like HashiCorp will become more important in 2021.
Some outstanding projects also provide API compatibility with popular vendor-specific Cloud Services like MinIO (providing AWS S3 compatible Object Storage). In 2021, there will be more initiatives like MinIO so that we can easily lift-and-shift popular Vendor lock services.
This is good news for the whole industry as I dream of a world where companies can deploy their application in Multiple Cloud seamlessly.
4. Containerization: Kubernetes is the Emperor, and Docker will slip away
Containerization is the Core Technology of the Cloud Native IT, whether Public Cloud, Private Cloud, or even Edge Computing. For several years now, Kubernetes has established itself as the leading Container Orchestration and Management Technology. Like Linux ruled the Data Centers previously, Kubernetes is ruling the Public Cloud and Private Cloud landscape. Initially, Google was the leading force behind Kubernetes, but now almost all Giant Tech companies put their weight behind Kubernetes.
All the major public Cloud providers are now offering managed Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, Google GKE) along with their managed Containerization Services. On the other side, RedHat is offering managed Kubernetes Service in private Cloud with OpenShift.
In 2021, we will see more adoption of Kubernetes as it is the core component in the Hybrid-Cloud or Multi-Cloud strategy. Non-traditional Enterprise applications like AI/ML, Databases, Data Platforms, Serverless, and Edge Computing applications will also move to Kubernetes.
On the flip side, Docker is slowly losing its charm as a Conternization Technology. There are already initiatives to standardize the container format and runtime, and two of them are getting huge traction in recent years. One is the Kubernetes led Container Runtime Interface (CRI). The other one is the Linux Foundation lead Open Container Initiative (OCI).
Recently Kubernetes has deprecated Docker in favor of CRI and planning to remove Docker completely in late 2021 in its upcoming Kubernetes release (1.22):
As Kubernetes is the 800-pound Gorilla in the containerization ecosystem, 2021 will be the beginning of an end for Docker. On the upside, the CRI and OCI will get more momentum in 2021, and especially the CRI based containers will get a huge boost in 2021.
5. Computing: Quantum Computing will get momentum
Quantum Computing is the most revolutionary technology on this list. Like the digital computer, it has the potential to impact every sector. I have created a list of hottest Technology for the 2030s, and Quantum Computing was in the number one spot:
To put into perspective: if we think about today's most advanced Supercomputers as a normal human being, for example, a Chess Player or an 8th-grade math student, then Quantum computing is the Supergenius like Magnus Carles, who can play with 50 average Chess players at a time or genius Mathematician like Euler.
There were some significant breakthroughs and advancements in Quantum computing in 2020. In June 2020, Honeywell claimed that it had created the most powerful Quantum Computer, beating the previous record set by Google:
Only a few days ago, a group of scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) showed that Quantum Computer could beat the most advanced classical Supercomputer comfortably for a particular task (Gaussian boson sampling):
Many governments and Tech Giants are exploring and investing in Quantum Computing. Google and IBM are two of the biggest players in this field. Google even launched an open-source library TensorFlow Quantum (TFQ), for prototyping the Quantum Machine learning models:
Amazon is also offering managed quantum computing service via its Amazon Braket Cloud Service.
Considering the massive interest and its infinite possibilities, there will be some breakthroughs and jaw-dropping discoveries in Computer Quantum in 2021.
If you want to explore Quantum Computing, then you can use the Open Source SDK qiskit, which is also offering the free course:
6. Blockchain: The roller coaster ride will continue
Blockchain (Distributed Ledger) is also one of the major disruptive technologies developed in recent times. Technology-wise, it has the potential to change the whole industry. Although Cryptocurrency played a major role in popularizing the technology. It also played a major role in moving the Technology in the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” in Gartner’s Hype Cycle curve.
Many rogue entities capitalized on the popularity of Bitcoin and created scam projects to cheat common people who wanted to be rich in a short time. Now Blockchain is going through the “Trough of Disillusionment” of the Hype Cycle curve. Also, Governments are interfering in Cryptocurrencies to prevent scams. Recently the Chinese government has seized a Cryptocurrency scam “Plus Token Ponzi”:
Facebook released its Cryptocurrency Libra in 2019 but got intense regulatory pressure in 2020:
Other open-source Blockchains like Ethereum are putting a Code in the Block, making it possible to use it as a smart contract, which is the future of Blockchain.
In 2021, Blockchain will be used more as a Smart contract mechanism, and hopefully, it will enter the “Slope of Enlightenment” phase. Blockchain will get a major boost in 2021, as China has put it in its ambitious 500 Trillion “New Infrastructure” plan:
7. Artificial Intelligence: AI will be for all
As one of the hottest Technology in recent times, AI has also seen many breakthroughs in 2020. Another interesting trend is that AI slowly started to enter all sectors with the slogan “AI for all.”
In the natural language processing domain, GPT-3 was the biggest breakthrough that came in May 2020. The US company OpenAI created GPT-3, which has made it possible to create human-like text using Deep Learning. Only after four months, the entire world was simultaneously amazed and shocked when the following Guardian Article was written using GPT-3:
In 2021, there will be a breakthrough in Natural Language Processing, where AI will write articles or write small software programs.
The other interesting development was the AutoML 2.0, which enables Automated feature engineering. In 2021, there will be a major advancement in Full Cycle AI Automation and more democratization in AI.
AI is not unbiased, and ethical AI is getting more traction. Another major trend in AI is explainable AI, which will need an explanation for why AI has taken a certain decision. In 2021, there will be major progress in these fields as the EU has set regulations to explain AI’s decision.
AI will also see major adoption in the Aviation industry in 2021 and beyond. Only a few days ago, the US Air Force used AI as Co-Pilot to fly an Aircraft:
AI will also be the centerpiece in Chinese digital-based infrastructure for the future:
Expects lots of mind-blowing innovations and democratization in AI in 2021.
8. Deep Learning Library: It will be TensorFlow 2.0 and PyTorch
Google and Facebook are the two dominant players in Deep Learning and Neural Network. Google’s key business is searching capability, and it is the leading innovator in Natural Language Processing. Facebook’s key business is a social network, and it has to handle Images, Videos, and Text. In Image processing, Facebook is the tech leader with many innovations.
TensorFlow from Google was the leading library in Deep Learning, but everything changed in 2016 when Facebook released PyTorch. PyTorch used Dynamic Graph instead of Static Graph (used by TensorFlow) and more Python friendly. Google reacted by creating TensorFlow 2.0 in 2019, which copied many PyTorch features (Dynamic Graph, Python friendliness). It also works perfectly with Google’s Collab, a very modern and powerful Notebook. Since then, Google enjoyed the upturn of TensorFlow 2.0’s popularity. Currently, TensorFlow is the most popular Deep Learning framework, according to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2020: | https://towardsdatascience.com/21-predictions-about-the-software-development-trends-in-2021-600bfa048be | ['Md Kamaruzzaman'] | 2020-12-25 11:21:21.811000+00:00 | ['Software', 'Programming', 'AI', 'Data', 'Cloud'] |
Fetch.AI’s Staking Model Explained | We’re delighted to be able to announce plans for staking in the run up to the launch of the Fetch.AI main network at the end of this year. In an earlier article, we provided the key information that our supporters will need to take part in the staking program. The purpose of this article is to provide some background on the role of staking on the Fetch.AI platform and the rationale for the design of the staking model. We’ll also discuss how staking will evolve as the Fetch.AI network grows over time.
Staking is a mechanism that is used in the Fetch.AI consensus to secure the operation of the blockchain. The operators of nodes, known as validators, stake FET tokens in exchange for the right to earn rewards from the production of blocks over a certain time period. This stake can be withheld if the validators do not follow the protocol correctly. Users can also delegate stake to a particular validator to earn a share of the rewards that they receive. In both cases, the locking of stake allows the network to operate securely by putting the principal at risk if validators misbehave in any way.
In the following sections, we use a question-and-answer format to explain other aspects of the staking program.
So what is Proof-of-Stake and why do we need it?
There is a common idea behind all Proof-of-X schemes where X could be “Work” or “Stake” or some other valuable resource. Nodes that maintain the blockchain need some mechanism to distinguish valid blocks from blocks that contain invalid transactions or some other defect. This is necessary as an attacker can easily write a program that outputs invalid blocks that contain plausible lists of transactions and other associated data. Without some type of penalty, an attacker would then be able to flood the network with these fake blocks to stop the blockchain from operating. Proof-of-X chains resist this type of attack by requiring that block producers provide evidence that is easy to verify (a proof) that a significant amount of resources have been expended in the block’s creation. This makes it expensive for an attacker to disrupt the blockchain with fake blocks. In Proof-of-Stake chains, the expense involves the node “locking-up’’ a significant amount of funds for a certain amount of time. The private key that locked these funds can then be used to append digital signatures to blocks that prove they came from the same individual. Blocks that arrive with invalid signatures are safe to ignore. In contrast, blocks that include valid signatures allow the allocation of rewards for good behaviour or the levying of penalties for misconduct via the withholding of stake.
Bitcoin uses Proof-of-Work. How does that differ from staking and why is staking better?
In Proof-of-Work, the solution of a difficult computational puzzle demonstrates the expense involved in creating a block. This proves that a substantial amount of energy has been burned at great financial cost. This is the cause of Bitcoin’s well-publicised environmental impact. The main benefit of Proof-of-Stake systems over Proof-of-Work is that that they are much more energy efficient. They can also support higher transaction throughput. Another important advantage is that staking is what economists would call a “homogeneous” cost. In simple terms, this means that it is the same for everyone. The specialised hardware that is available for Bitcoin mining leads to different costs. This is one of the reasons that mining has become centralised in China where the hardware is manufactured and energy is cheap. The homogeneous cost of staking means that it can deliver greater decentralisation.
A final advantage of Proof-of-Stake is that it is likely to provide greater security. This arises from the stakes being a resource that is intrinsic to the blockchain. Misbehavior can thus be discouraged through the withholding of stake. In contrast, the hashing power used in Proof-of-Work chains is an external physical resource that is independent of the ledger. This means that miners cannot be restrained by other participants in the protocol. This is one of the main causes of the bitter disputes that have taken place after forking of the Bitcoin blockchain.
You have a sharded blockchain. What is that exactly?
One of the main weaknesses of existing blockchains is that they have limited throughput. This is caused by bottlenecks on, for example, how fast the nodes can execute transactions or send large messages to each other. It’s possible to avoid these bottlenecks by breaking these tasks up into different groups or shards that run in parallel with each other. If sharding is implemented correctly, then the throughput of the ledger will increase linearly with the number of shards. This enables potentially unlimited throughput.
So are the validators running a single shard or many?
At the launch of the main network, all nodes will be running all of the shards. In blockchain terminology, these are known as “master” nodes. In later updates of the ledger, we’ll also introduce “light” nodes that run a subset of the shards and have a lower operating cost. These nodes will also be able to take part in consensus and earn fees and rewards despite being unable to create blocks by themselves. Additionally, they will be able to host instances of the Open Economic Framework (OEF). This supports deployment of multi-agent systems. Nodes will also be able to earn revenue from providing services to agents.
What is the reason for having two hundred master nodes at the launch of your main network?
The design of our consensus protocol and our sharded blockchain make it technically feasible for there to be a larger number. Though, it’s important to remember that running a node involves quite a significant operating cost. Ultimately, this cost must met by people using the platform. To put it another way, there is a trade-off between the number of nodes (and the protocol’s degree of decentralisation) and low transaction fees. A total of two hundred nodes is a major improvement over many other Proof-of-Stake chains. This reflects the high efficiency and performance of our ledger. A restriction on the number of nodes also allows control of transaction fees in the future.
Will there always be two hundred validator nodes or are you planning on increasing the number at some point?
The two hundred nodes will maintain the ledger for a specific tenure, which will have a duration of around a month. At the end of their term, another auction will conclude. Stakes will be returned or reallocated, and the validators will be replaced by a new and potentially different set of individuals.
The ledger is a work in progress and will continue to develop after launch of the main network. Our roadmap lays out a development plan to improve the ledger’s performance, decentralisation and security. These improvements will also enable us to increase the number of nodes that can take part in consensus. It is also likely that other types of nodes will be available for supporting deployment of autonomous economic agents. These nodes do not need to be directly involved in consensus.
Why is there a reserve price of 200,000 FET for becoming a validator?
An important aspect of the incentive design is that it needs to provide cryptoeconomic security. If a single entity controlled a majority of the staked tokens (say, 51%) then they would have effective control of the blockchain. We need to set the reserve price at a sufficiently high level that this would be difficult for anyone to achieve. If the number of staked coins is high enough, then the increased demand for tokens will cause the price to rise significantly. This will make the attack progressively more expensive. The reserve price is set in the expectation that at least 15% of the circulating supply will be staked in the first three years of operation.
I have less than 200,000 FET but would still like to earn rewards for staking. How do I get involved?
We will be inviting our partners in industry and academia to operate ledger nodes. In exchange for locking your stake and delegating it to them, they will serve as validators on your behalf and pay a defined reward for your contribution. This is likely to be a competitive process. Thus, we anticipate that the margins of these operators will be low and that they will offer very good reward to retail investors.
How does the staking program benefit the Fetch.AI ecosystem before launch of main-net?
We’re testing the economic mechanism that will determine which parties are responsible for operating the blockchain before main-net so that we gain insight into the number of bidders that we can expect and the quantity of tokens that will be staked. This gives us an indication of the number of nodes that must be supported by block rewards and transaction fees and the level of security that we will attain. There are also the secondary questions on the duration of the bidding phase and lock-up periods, and the overall user experience. It’s an experimental process and we’re offering rewards to compensate people for the effort of understanding the auction design and the user-interface, for locking tokens and for the risk associated with staking tokens in a novel smart contract.
What are the benefits of participating in the staking program?
We’re using an auction to allocate staking rights to two hundred validators. The auction will be implemented in a smart contract. The winners will be entitled to an initial annual reward of approximately 50,000 FET for acting as a validator. Sale of all stakes at the reserve price will correspond to an annual gross return of around 20% on the principal if the nodes follow the protocol correctly. This reward must cover the cost for operating a node, and also provide an additional incentive to provide security to the protocol by locking a large quantity of tokens. If you are a smaller FET holder, the smart contract will allow you to delegate your stake to a validator at a specific rate of return. This will compensate you for the effort of choosing a responsible validator who will operate a node on your behalf, the risk of making an erroneous choice, and for the opportunity cost of locking your tokens for a defined period of time.
Are the rewards going to decrease similarly to Bitcoin or Ethereum halving?
For those of you not familiar with halving, an explainer can be found here. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum halving, Fetch.AI staking rewards will increase with token supply. This will reward our supporters for holding tokens as the supply and adoption of the token increase. During the first three years of operation, rewards will increase. The goal is to maintain at least 15% of the circulating supply allocated to staking. After this period, we’ll be transitioning to a fee-based incentive model as FET is a non-inflationary token that will preserve its users’ value.
How do I find out more?
Additional aspects of the staking program are discussed in these FAQs.
I’m also happy to answer questions on Twitter (@jonathan6620 or @Fetch_AI). Alternatively, you’re welcome to post questions on our Telegram channel. | https://medium.com/fetch-ai/fetch-ais-staking-model-explained-e9a987a89529 | ['Jonathan Ward'] | 2020-01-01 08:13:08.498000+00:00 | ['Fetch Ai', 'Proof Of Stake', 'Technology', 'Staking', 'Blockchain'] |
#18 Growth Weekly News | Learn the latest news in Digital Analytics world and join us on this week’s stories in the comments.
18 is my personal favourite number and I couldn’t do less for you this week. 😊 So, I promise you this: great things are happening — product updates and learning material. I said enough and I won’t spare your time any longer. So keep reading…
Last week in summary: Firebase introduced a ton of new features, among them Language Identification, Smart Reply and Cloud Run and Google Cloud continues strong for another week, with the new Cloud Dataproc announced at Google Cloud Next ‘19. | https://medium.com/growth-analytics/18-growth-weekly-news-5a4664b6ff5f | ['Alexandra Poulopoulou'] | 2019-04-18 08:18:41.809000+00:00 | ['Google Ads', 'Firebase', 'News', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Cloud Computing'] |
Tiptoe | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/simple-is-licious/tiptoe-4c6d2a327fbc | ['Lyondhur Picciarelli'] | 2017-09-06 05:00:50.399000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Sil'] |
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