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john3vanmba · 4 months

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New Road, Old Street

So, in one of our classes in Lasallian Business Leadership, Ethics, and CSR, we were asked to write our own life plan. This should cover at least cover the next 25 years of our lives; you heard that right, a quarter of a century!

Thinking back, I realized that I never really have a long-term goal in my life. In the last decade, after finishing my undergraduate degree as an Electrical Engineer, I just go to the office, do my job and go home. I am saving money here and there but I was not able to think yet of what I’m going to do with the amount that I am saving. I just think that at least I have a good amount in times of emergency or any unfavorable crisis.

In our write up about our life plans, we were tasked to cover at least our family goals, career aims, education, attitude, financial planning, physical and social well-being, artistic craft, public service and some pleasure. The parts were originally listed alphabetically but I ordered them as such because that’s the order of my priorities with family and career-oriented goals being on top.

Family-wise, my goal is to have my father have a comfortable life for the remaining of his life. Although both my sisters have good careers and earn good money, I also want my sisters to have good family life together with their children and husband; so, I intent to help them when necessary.

When it comes to my career and education. I am taking this MBA course to tackle both because I think they’re interconnected. Hopefully, this MBA program improve and smoothen the road to my corporate world journey. I wish to become a CFO someday; it’s going to be difficult but there’s no harm in trying.

Currently, I only have a few hundred thousand pesos in my bank account and an old car as my main assets and no liabilities, fortunately. I plan to save more and invest a few so I can hopefully have stacks in the future. All the remaining aspects are all bonuses but all those mentioned will be taking the front seat in my priorities.

I have re-read what I have written and submitted to Miss Pia. This is the same conclusion I put in the quarter century life plan, but I’m happy our professor required us to do that assignment as it made me draw a clear street that I will walk through in the next 25 years. It's remarkable how the assignment, mandated by our teacher, has proven to be instrumental in providing me with a clear roadmap for the next 25 years of my life. Through this exercise, I've come to recognize the critical importance of discerning between my wants and needs, which is a fundamental step in shaping my individuality and of course, for me to have a brighter future, not just selfishly but for everyone I love. It has become evident that this self-awareness is key to navigating the complexities of life effectively. Also, thanks to this activity, I've also been reminded of the invaluable role faith plays in our journey. Acknowledging the presence of the Guy upstairs, I have found comfort in the belief that He will guide me and help me build my own success. It's a reassuring notion that, amidst life's trials and tribulations, we are not alone. All that's required of us is patience, coupled with faith in the benevolent forces that govern our universe. I also realized that you need all aspects mentioned to be generally successful in life. Life is not just having plenty of assets, it is about your journey in this world and that there is God to help us; we just need to be patient and believe in him.

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danielle-summer-internship · 11 months

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Journal 4:

This week nearly felt like two with how chaotic it has been. Campers arrived on Sunday afternoon, and they brought plenty of challenges for us to tackle. Standard schedule for the most part on Sunday, we began checking in campers around 2 pm. Around 4:30, a few staff members and I went around to the cabins and began health checks. We are basically looking to see if the campers have any cuts, scrapes, or bruises that are alarming, as well as lice, so they don't pass it around to every other camper while they stay here. After all this, I went to the camps infirmary to help our health coordinator sort medicine and paperwork. I alphabetized all the paperwork so that she had an easier time during the week to keep track of which camper was which, as well as keep tabs on specific campers. The next few days passed by rather similar to one another. Monday through Thursday, I taught anywhere from four to six classes each day, making sure to fully go over rules and precautions so that campers had a full experience while they were with me. Each day had their own hiccups, as groups were late, or random woodland creatures making their ways to places I wish they wouldn't. This week alone, I have already had my fair share of Snakes, spiders, and more to be satisfied for a lifetime. The evenings also had a full schedule, with campfires and smoremaking on Monday and Tuesday for different groups, as well as our water sports, where the kids would swim and play water related games such as a duck duck goose style game. Wednesday was the talent show, although that was also my night off, so I didn't see very many acts before I left for the evening. Thursday was the dance and final Campfire, which was plenty fun and tiring. The campers packed that same evening, and just like that Friday morning came around. There was a slideshow and awards presentation Friday morning, just before the campers packed and left for home, and once again the camp was empty. After all the campers had left, we had a quick meeting to discuss the week, and left to clean up our cabins for the coming week. While we had a few bumps in the road this week, I believe that many of our staff have a better idea of what is expected of them now, and hopefully all will be smooth sailing this week, since we will have nearly 30% less campers as we did this week, which was about 150 total children. I hope to soon also discuss some of the smaller details of my work, and I believe this simple overview of the first week will give a good starting point to help me further break down what we do here as we continue on the same schedule for the remaining weeks.

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join-the-joywrite · 4 years

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Alright, let’s play a game, shall we?

By @willexandthephantoms

The rules are simple, The last song you listened to, and your favorite number ((and if you don’t have one, a random number will do))

Take that song, go to the line that matches your number, and write a drabble using the words.

My song: Minefields

My number: 26

"But these dreams I have of you ain't real enough."

It had happened again. And again. And again.

Julie was in class the second time and she'd gotten called out for daydreaming. Flynn's knowing smirk hadn't made her flushed face any cooler. The next time it happened, Julie had been sound asleep. She thought it would stop with time but a week on and it had only gotten a bit more frequent.

She was pretty sure she was starting to lose her mind. Luke was insufferable as it was, and now he had to go and occupy her thoughts too? The nerve of him!

So Julie set out to make things right. She hadn't stopped to consider that Luke wasn't really at fault for her dreams, but that didn't matter. She was confused and annoyed and she wanted someone to pin the blame on.

That Tuesday, after she'd done her homework and informed her dad that she would just be heading down to the studio for a bit, Julie shoved her feet into her big fuzzy slippers and marched down. Ray, of course, knew perfectly well that Julie just wanted to see her phantoms being perfectly all right before going to bed -- and he suspected Julie especially wanted to make sure Luke was still okay.

Julie stormed into the studio and every single atom of annoyance she felt evaporated the moment she caught sight of Luke, seated behind the piano. She tried to be annoyed that he had that effect on her but it didn't work.

Engrossed in his songbook, Luke didn't even notice Julie until she came to stand on the other side of the piano and had tapped the wood with her knuckles.

"Anyone home?"

"Julie!"

And there was that smile. The same one he gave her every time he saw her. The same one he gave her in her dreams. It was her smile. He never gave it to anyone else.

Julie wanted to use the same old excuse she'd been using for a while ("I just wanted to check up on you guys") but she was tired of only being held by Luke in her dreams.

"Jules?"

Julie glanced around. "Where are Reggie and Alex?"

"Oh, yeah, Alex said to tell you that he's out for date night with Willie. Those aren't his words, he's not brave enough to call them dates yet. And Reggie . . . I dunno, I thought you would've run into him at the house. He said something about Carlos and Flynn. Who knows which he picked."

Julie nodded as she leaned on the piano. "What's that you got there?"

"Just some scattered lyrics." Luke gave Julie a hopeful smile. "Maybe a new song? If I could borrow that pretty little head of yours for a while?"

Julie didn't want to write songs with Luke. She wanted to dance with him. She wanted him to hold her and tell her that he loved her. She wanted him to know that she loved him.

"Sure. Let's take a look."

Julie pulled herself up onto the piano as Luke excitedly jumped off the bench and hurried around to hand her the notebook.

"Ah. The famous chicken scratch," Julie teased as she lifted the book to read what Luke had written.

The pout he gave her was too adorable to keep looking at him and not wanting to kiss him.

"I like this line," Juli said, pointing and tilting the book.

"You can read that line?"

"We've been writing music together for a month or more, Luke. I can read everything."

"Okay, well, what's your take on the chorus? Reggie was looking at it before he took off and I believe he used the word 'trash' to describe it."

Julie smiled. "That's because your treasure looks like trash. You're missing, like, three alphabets."

"Well, it's a good thing you're our unofficial scribe then, isn't it?"

Julie smiled and automatically reached put to ruffle Luke's hair, smiling broader when he scrunched up his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, delight spreading across his face. When her hand paused behind his head, Luke opened his eyes to look at her questioningly. He still smiled, though. It was hard not to around Julie.

Those damned dreams, Julie thought, wanting to scowl as she remembered why she'd come down to the studio in the first place. Try as hard as she might, though, Julie could not scowl when Luke gave her his wide-eyed, curious stare.

It wasn't right, to want a ghost, was it? Did it even matter? Flynn had told her that her time with her boys was going to end one way or another. She knew that. She knew that this would hurt when time was up. But it didn't really matter. Luke was so very real to her. Whatever they had, it was real. But the dreams she had of him weren't real enough.

And Julie was about to change that.

The forgotten notebook slid off Julie's lap as she pulled Luke towards her and leaned down to kiss him. It was a very brief kiss, in part because Luke was stunned into complete silence and Julie couldn't believe that she had been that bold.

They stared at each other for a long, quiet moment.

"This isn't some prank, is it?" Luke eventually asked.

And finally, Julie had found the strength to scowl. "Of all the people in the world, it had to be you. You're absolutely crazy. Certified insane."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Stop smiling at me like that."

"Why? Does it make you want to kiss me again? Because if the answer's yes, then you know I'm not going to--"

Julie kissed Luke again. This time, with her free hand tightly gripping his collar and the other still resting behind his head, Julie leaned a little more forward.

As the two took a tumble to the ground, loud laughter sounded from the doors. Julie was too distracted by her unbelievable boldness to be mortified that Reggie, Alex and Willie had watched her essentially tackle Luke to the ground.

Julie leaned too far forward.

"Well, it's about damned time."

"I think you broke something of mine," Luke grumbled.

"You'll live," Julie blurted unthinkingly.

Reggie's laughter cut short for just a second as they all realised what Julie had said.

"I'm going to bed," Julie announced, standing up and fleeing the garage, cheeks burning as it began to settle in that she'd kissed Luke. Boy, was Flynn going to have a lot to say -- in between excited shrieking, of course.

Mara's Masterlist

As soon as Julie left, they swarmed Luke wanting to know every single detail. But of course, Luke was no help, simply staring in the direction Julie had walked with a dazed smile on his face.

This has zero editing so if you see something weird or wrong, no you don't shhh

#julie and the phantoms #julie and the fat ones #julie and the himbos #jatp #jatp fic #juke #julie molina #luke patterson #julie x luke

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ravennhearted · 5 years

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The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo

Summary: Jon Kent and Damian Wayne have been teammates for three years, the famed duo Robin and Superboy - but they've also been something else: soulmates. They just... haven't realized it quite yet.

[you can also find it on my ao3 here]

Jon stared at his arm, a smile tracing its way across his lips as he watched the picture appear. They were smooth black lines, one after another, until there was a giant dragon curling around his forearm, its mouth roaring into his palm.

“You’re such a sap,” Kathy said from next to him, rolling her eyes even as she smiled.

He made a face at her. “Shut up.”

“God, you can’t even say that without smiling,” she said, shaking her head.

“Hey,” Jon said, poking her with his pencil. “If your soulmate was as good of an artist as I mine is, you’d be just as much of a sap.”

“No talking,” Ms. Walters called from the front of the classroom.

Jon winced, glancing up at her. Only she hadn’t looked up from her computer. She was still sitting there, staring at the screen like it would fulfill her life or something.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Kathy said. Jon looked at her, glancing between her and the teacher. She ignored him. “You’re the only one with heart-eyes around here.”

He scoffed. “Please. I see the way you look at your arm when you write notes back and forth. You’re just as much of a sap as I am.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am no–”

“Do I need to separate you two?” Ms. Walters asked, actually looking up and glaring at them.

“No,” they chorused.

“Then do your work,” she said, gesturing towards the papers on their desks before looking back at her computer.

Kathy rolled her head towards him and smiled. Then proceeded to sit up straight and do a mock impression of Ms. Walters that was somehow stunningly accurate. She had that perfect I-don’t-give-a-fuck mixed with I’m-going-to-kill-all-of-you look.

Jon pressed his hand against his mouth to keep from laughing, his shoulders shaking.

She grinned in triumph before turning back to the pointless math worksheet that’d been handed out at the beginning of class.

Jon pinched his nose to keep from laughing. Letting out a long breath Jon looked down at his work. Only he looked at the dragon again instead.

It really was impressive. It was one of those Chinese-style dragons, with the long curving body and no wings that somehow just floated magically through the air. Not that a giant lizard with wings was any less magical or unrealistic, but still. It was at least a little less unrealistic.

He’d always liked that kind of dragon better, but looking at this… he might just have to change his mind.

Grabbing a pen, he wrote to the side of the dragon it’s beautiful.

He stared at his arm for a minute. Then another. And another.

Sighing, he grabbed his pencil and went back to the worksheet.

It wasn’t like they ever answered, after all.

--------------------------------

Damian stared at his arm as the two little words appeared. It’s beautiful. His heart did that funny thing it always did when they would respond. That half-skip. The one that made his stomach flutter even as a small smile spread across his lips.

He let his pen hover over his arm, an inch away from a blank part of his skin. He twirled his pen, back and forth, before setting it down on the table and standing up.

It wasn’t like he had to respond. Or that he should. For a variety of different reasons. One of which was his nightly activities. Another of which was the assassins that had raised him.

Besides, he didn’t draw on his arm for them. He did it because he liked to draw, and using a canvas other than paper was a good way to improve his skill. It wasn’t because he liked the little comments they left. The way the words were always messy and barely legible. Or that stupid smiley face they’d sometimes draw.

Clenching his hand, Damian walked into the kitchen and found Pennyworth setting a plate at the counter. “Good timing, Master Damian,” he said, handing him a fork. “I just finished lunch.”

“Thank you, Pennyworth,” Damian said, sitting down in front of the plate of rice and sautéed vegetables.

A glass of water was set in front of him. “You’re quite welcome, Master Damian. If you need me, I’ll be in the library tidying up.”

He nodded, barely looking up from the dragon on his arm.

“And Master Damian?”

He looked up to find Pennyworth in the door, looking at him with a smile.

“I suggest that you write something back,” he said, pointedly looking at his arm. “But that’s just the advice of an old man.”

Before he could answer, Pennyworth had walked out of the room.

Damian glared at his arm. No, he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t even draw on his arm. He should make sure his soulmate stayed as far away from him as possible.

He stabbed a piece of broccoli and shoved it in his mouth.

------------------------------------

“Want some help?”

Superboy hovered a few feet above the fight, watching as Robin fought off five armed thugs at once. He knew better by now then to just jump into the fight without asking first. The bruises on his back from when Robin had flipped him over his shoulder last week for doing just that still hurt.

“No,” Robin said, roundhouse kicking on in the face and throwing a batarang at another.

He pressed his lips together, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “You know, I’m already here–”

“A questionable decision,” he said, slamming one of the men's faces into the wall.

Superboy winced. “Not really, since we’re supposed to be partners–”

The third guy fell to the floor, clutching at his now-broken arm. “Is that what you’re calling us now?”

“It’s what our parents call us.” He crossed his arms.

“Are you pouting?” Robin asked turning to face him fully. And got what looked like a metal pipe to the back.

Snarling, Robin spun around and actually leaped at the guy, tackling him to the ground before knocking him unconscious.

“I am not pouting,” he said, puffing out his chest.

“You are,” he said, taking out a grappling hook. “This is unbelievable.”

Superboy opened his mouth to protest, but Robin turned away from him and shot his grapple at the last thug, wrapping him in the nearly unbreakable cord from head to foot. He fell to the ground, wiggling like a worm.

“Do you have no shame, Superboy?” Robin asked, crossing his arms. “We’re in the field. You’re supposed to intimidate these people.”

“I’m intimidating!” His voice cracked.

Robin raised an eyebrow.

Okay fine, that wasn’t very intimidating, but it wasn’t his fault his voice cracked. Blame puberty. God knows he does.

Floating to the ground, he asked, “Do you want me to fly these guys to a police station?”

Robin just scoffed and turned his back on him, grabbing the men and leaning them against the light pole closest to them.

“I can help,” he said, inching closer to one of the unconscious thugs.

Robin grunted as he dragged the third thug to the street. “I don’t need your help.”

Superboy stopped, eyebrows bunching together. “You sure?”

He dropped the thug next to the others, turning to face him. “I’m sure.”

Ouch. He tried not to let the hurt show on his face. From the way Robin rolled his eyes, he didn’t do a very good job.

His stomach went hot, his hands balling into fists. You know, he could get why he was rude and closed off sometimes. The whole raised-by-assassins bullshit he’d had to go through explained that. But mean? Dismissive? That wasn’t something he could explain away.

It wasn’t even like Robin was like that with everyone. He’d seen him be nice. Not often, and it was always a little awkward, but he could do it. It was just never directed at him.

“Do you hate me?” he asked to his back. “Because if you do, just tell me. At least then I’ll know where we stand.”

Robin looked over his shoulder. “Are we really going to do this here?”

“Yeah,” he said, crossing his arms. “We are.”

“Fine,” Robin said, dropping the last body by the light pole. “I don’t hate you. I just don’t trust you.”

That was… he didn’t even know how to react to that. He didn’t trust him? After everything? All the missions? All the times he’d had his back? All the times he’d saved him? And he still didn’t trust him?

“You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Why?”

Robin huffed, unspooling a grapple and tying the thugs to the light pole. “Would you like the list chronologically or alphabetically?”

Superboy stared at him. “Why do you do that?”

Robin looked at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That,” he said, gesturing at him. “Any time things get even a little bit personal you insult me. Do you even realize you’re doing it? Is it just me? Or are you just that closed off?”

“I’m not closed off,” he said, standing up straight and jutting his chin up.

“Name one friend that isn’t part of your family.”

Damian opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Jon raised an eyebrow, tilting his head.

“I don’t need this from you, Kent,” he said, turning and aiming his grapple at the nearest building.

“Well you need it from someone,” Jon said, grabbing his arm. And froze.

Because there was what looked like the start of a maw on his arm. One that looked familiar.

“Let go, Kent,” Damian growled. “Or I’ll make you.”

“What’s on your arm,” he said, trying to push up his sleeve.

His back slammed into the ground, Damian’s arm pressing into his neck, cutting off his air. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

“What is it?” he choked out, because it looked like…

“It’s none of your business,” Damian growled.

Jon grabbed his arm and pushed up his sleeve, revealing the dragon on his arm. “I think it is.”

Damian stared at his arm, jaw working. He watched him swallow hard. Then push off him, standing up in the alley and starting to pace, back and forth again and again.

Slowly Jon pushed up onto his elbows, looking at him. At his soulmate. Because Damian was his soulmate. Damian was the one who had been drawing those beautiful pictures on his arm for years. He hadn’t even known he could draw.

Damian. Damian Wayne. He was his soulmate. He’d known his soulmate for almost three years. Three years, and he hadn’t noticed. They’d somehow gone three years without realizing it. Him, who had freaking super-hearing, and Damian, the son of the world’s greatest detective. Between the two of them someone should have figured it out.

Carefully Jon stood up. “Damian.”

He whirled towards him, pushing up his sleeve and fully showing the dragon he’d drawn this afternoon. “Why.”

Jon frowned, his eyebrows pulling together. “What?”

Damian sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just… surprised.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” Jon said, taking a step closer to him. “What did you mean?”

Damian looked at him. Took a deep breath. Balled his hands into fists.

Jon watched, listening as his heartbeat started to pound faster and faster. In the entire time he’d known him, he’d never heard his heartbeat become erratic. Not when they were in trouble, or in a fight, or one of them was hurt. Never. It just didn’t happen. Yet his heart was pounding right now.

Sighing through his nose, Damian pushed off his hood. “I meant why are you of all people, my soulmate?”

Jon flinched, taking a half step back. “Do you not want me to be?”

Because that’s what it sounded like. It sounded like Damian was mad that it was him. That he didn’t want him. That he was some sort of… disappointment or something.

“No,” Damian said.

Jon flinched.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Damian growled, hands balling into fists. “I do not… mind having you as my soulmate, I just do not understand why.”

“What?”

He was lost. Or missing something. Or both. Probably both. When it came to Damian, it was usually both.

“Why is someone like you my soulmate?” Damian asked, taking a step closer and looking him up and down.

Jon frowned, crossing his arms. “You know, Robin, if you’re trying not to insult me, you’re doing a terrible job.”

Damian tsked, the sound echoing through the alley. “I am not trying to insult you, I simply mean that it makes no sense why someone like you who is so…”

“So what?”

“Good,” he said, eyebrows pulling together. “Someone so good.”

Jon’s mouth popped open. Oh. Oh.

“Damian, you’re good too,” he said softly, taking another step forward.

He scoffed. “The blood on my hands would say otherwise.”

“You are good,” he said. “What you did when you were with the League, that’s not on you. You did what you had to to survive. It’s not your fault.”

Damian frowned, looking at his face.

“It’s not,” Jon said, taking another step closer. “And if you need me to, I’ll remind you of that every day.”

Damian shook his head. “You need to stay away from me.”

“Not gonna happen,” Jon said, taking another step closer.

They were an inch apart, so close that Jon could feel his breath on his face.

“Why are you stubborn?” Damian growled, leaning closer.

Jon just grinned. “Does that mean you’re accepting this?”

“No.”

“I think you are.”

“I’m not.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you still so close?”

Damian blinked.

Before he could step away, Jon leaned forward and pressed his lips against Damian’s.

It was sloppy, and messy, and last maybe five seconds, but Jon felt like he was on top of the world.

Because he’d finally found him. After years of trying, he’d finally figured it out. And it was Damian. Damian, who was smart and amazing and confident. Who was everything.

He pulled away, grinning at the half-startled, half-happy look on Damian’s face. One that turned into a mock-glare as he said, “Don’t you dare do that again.”

Jon grinned. “No promises.”

#jondami #jondami week 2019 #day three #Jon Kent #Damian Wayne #Alfred Pennyworth #Kathy Branden #super sons #one-shot #damijon #soulmates #soulmate au #fluff #it's basically all fluff #i felt like writing fluff #don't judge me

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davevoetberg · 3 years

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July 2021 Update.

Greetings, As I write this (long overdue) update, I'm currently sitting in my office at our new house in Bangkok. As many of you know from previous updates, we'd spent the last 9 years in the Northeastern province of Kalasin, about 8 hours from where we are now. But as of the end of April, Bangkok has become our new home for the time being. Being that where we live is considered a red zone for the Covid outbreak, our freedom & interaction with others has been restricted to varying degrees throughout the last 2.5 months that we've been here. Unfortunately, that has meant that we've not gotten to meet in person with our new church community, Grace City. However, we have been able to be a part of the weekly online meetings & our family has also been getting to participate in a cell group at the pastor's house twice a month. Although the Covid situation has produced barriers to normal life for us (& millions of others), thankfully life hasn't come to a full-on standstill. We've still been able to move forward with various projects & opportunities, which I'd like to share about briefly below. 1. Translation Projects *Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full by Gloria Furman, a book project that will be made freely available for Thai mothers, is just about ready to print. Lord willing, I should be able to give the publisher the green light to start publishing within a week. Thank you to those of you who contributed to that project. We raised more than enough money to print 4,000 copies of the book. Your generosity is appreciated & will soon become a blessing to others as the book begins to be distributed & read by Thai Christian women throughout the country. *The Biggest Story by Kevin Deyoung is another book project that I'm happy to be able to announce should also be available in Thai later this year. The Biggest Story is a children's book that helps provide an overview of the Bible story with Jesus as the hero, accompanied by superb artwork. We've collaborated with another church in Bangkok in taking on this project & I will be following up with the U.S. publisher soon about getting rights for the book. The final draft should be done sometime within the next month. 2. Online Teaching Since we've been in Bangkok, I've had more time & opportunity to pursue filming teachings about the Scriptures & the gospel. Some time ago, after moving here, I was invited by the Pastor of our new church to produce short, weekly videos for the congregation of Grace City as a means of encouraging the believers in the church during the Covid situation. Also, I run a Youtube & Facebook page that provides biblical teaching for Thai people & I've been able to stay more consistent in updating those since we moved here. It seems to me that my desire (& hopefully gifting) lines up with a need I see in the Thai church for more Scripture-saturated content online. I hope to buy a new video camera in the near future to aid in producing longer videos (my current camera limits me to 10-minute videos). As I've requested prayer before, so I ask again. Please pray that my heart & motives would be pure as I create content to make available online before the eyes of others. May the exaltation of Christ's name, not mine, be my aim & desire. I confess, along with John the Baptist, "I am not the Christ." (John 1:20) 3. Mali's Homeschooling Mali's development in her homeschooling has been encouraging to watch. Currently we're doing Thai & English with her (taught by Oy & myself, respectively). She recently finished up learning the Thai alphabet (44 characters) & she's also working on reading through short stories in English. In the near future, we're going to try & introduce her to a more formal curriculum from the United States, most likely something from Sonlight's homeschool curriculum. Currently looking online for a reasonably-priced curriculum for her. 4. 9-year anniversary trip Despite recent Covid restrictions, we were still able to get down to the beach as a family on a recent anniversary trip for a few days last month. It is God's grace that has brought us through these last 9 years together. I've often thought of our relationship as a kind of "growing through fire". That may sound a bit depressing to some, but it is reality. At the same time, there has been lots of sunshine to be thankful for as well. Simply put, we've been through a lot together. And I trust that the God of all grace who has brought us this far will sustain us till the end. 5. College Classes My schooling at Bangkok Bible Seminary has been underway since January & I just recently started the 2nd semester of my first year there. Doing classes online (which I wasn't planning originally), creates an opportunity to do more ministry & spend more time with my family. I will need to be diligent with my schedule/studies in order stay on track in tackling each day's activities successfully & in a timely manner. 6. Etc. In addition to the above, I wanted to share that Oy went in for surgery last week to remove some internal cysts that had been causing her pain for probably half of her life. A generous donor offered to pay for the procedure. Praise The Lord for a successful surgery. She's been taking it a bit easy & should be fully recovered from the surgery sometime in the next couple weeks. Also, I've apologized for the infrequent updates a number of times now, but I've not followed through with my intentions to do better & update more consistently. Please forgive me for this as it displays both a lack of faithfulness to my word & appreciation for you, among other things. I want to attack this area (& related issues) with more of a Holy Spirit-empowered fervency then I have prior. No excuses here. I hope to have another update out sometime before the end of August. If you don't receive one from me by then, please feel free to write & check in with me about it. In conclusion, thank you to all of you who have prayed for us and/or contributed financially. We still desire to serve the Thai people & the Thai church with the gospel. Being finite & weak in ourselves, we need divine assistance to continue doing these things. Your prayers are appreciated in this regard. We are weak, but our Lord is strong. I know it can be difficult to maintain long-distance relationships (like keeping up with us) when so much is going on at home in your own lives already. So thank you for your selflessness in bearing our burdens with us. May The Lord bless you, The Voetbergs Bangkok, Thailand July 2021

P.S. If you’re interested in giving financially, click here.

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terrypearrson · 3 years

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The 12 best legal social media users of 2021

Meet the influencers that kept us entertained and educated over the past 12 months

It’s the question on everyone’s mind: who’s going to pick up this year’s Legal Cheek gong for best use of social media?

As we countdown to the Legal Cheek Awards, here is this year’s shortlist selected by our editorial team, and listed alphabetically below. It features the very best of the legal Twitter, Insta-law influencers, ‘vlawing’ YouTubers and legal-lip syncing TikTokers who kept us entertained and educated over the past year.

The winner will be announced at next month’s ceremony, an invite-only virtual event sponsored by BARBRI on the evening of Thursday 25 March 2021.

The winner will be decided by an independent judging panel, made up of The Secret Barrister (anonymous criminal barrister, bar blogger and author), David Lammy MP (barrister turned politician and author), and Miriam and Jonathan Seitler, aka ‘Carpool Caselaw’ (barrister dad and daughter duo who won last year’s ‘Best Use of Social Media’ award).

From left to right: The Secret Barrister (image via thesecretbarrister.com); David Lammy MP (image via Wikimedia Commons); Miriam and Jonathan Seitler, aka ‘Carpool Caselaw’

Alexandra Wilson

Author, Barrister & Campaigner

…Someone said the other day that I’m an “influencer”.

BUT I’ve thought about it… if I can influence people to work hard, pursue their dream and fight for justice then that truly is a wonderful thing.

What a privilege.

pic.twitter.com/knaODzqQOb

— Alexandra Wilson (@EssexBarrister) January 30, 2021

Bio: Junior criminal and family barrister Alexandra Wilson — who revealed she was mistaken for a defendant three times in one day — candidly tweets about race and class as she works to change the public perception of the bar. Platform: Twitter Username: @EssexBarrister Follower count: 45,100+

Dan Neidle

Bio: Dan Neidle, a tax partner at Clifford Chance, uses LinkedIn to inject levity into City law and has featured on a Q&A collab with corporate law meme account, ‘CityLawBois’. Platform: LinkedIn Username: Dan Neidle Follower count: 5,500+

Daniella Swinson

@itslegallybrunette

MY LAW STUDENTS KNOW

#lawschool #lawyer #propertylaw #lawstudent #lawtok #law #unistudent

♬ They Wish They were Us – Commercial Guy Ty

Bio: TikToker Daniella Swinson explores the funny side to law student stereotypes — in 60 seconds or less — while flexing her lip-syncing skills. Platform: TikTok Username: @itslegallybrunette Follower count: 30,900+

Holly Moore

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Holly Louise Moore (@thatlawblog)

Bio: Instagrammer Holly Moore raises awareness of alternative routes to qualification as she documents her experience as an in-house solicitor apprentice at ITV. Platform: Instagram Username: @thatlawblog Follower count: 4,600+

Justin Farrance

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Justin Farrance (@justinfarrance)

Bio: Allen & Overy trainee Justin Farrance tackles diversity & inclusion with his ‘Grow Mentoring’ initiative, a free mentoring service which uses social media to pair students with legal professionals. Platform: Instagram Username: @justinfarrance Follower count: 6,600+

‘Have We Got Planning News For You’ with Keating Chambers

youtube

Bio: Taking a legal spin on the hit BBC show, barristers from Keating Chambers came together over lockdown to raise money for the NHS as they discuss the latest news in planning law and policy from the week. One episode even features Judge Rinder! Platform: YouTube Username: Have We Got Planning News For You Follower count: 1,100+

The latest comments from across Legal Cheek

Leticia Santoro

@leticia.santoro

The case is R v Brown 1994 if you want to know more xx

♬ original sound –

Leticia

Bio: King’s College London law student Leticia Santoro breaks down classic case law with her 60-second TikTok summaries. Platform: TikTok Username: @leticia.santoro Follower count: 48,500+

Liam Porritt

youtube

Bio: Vlogging his way through law school and now an IGNITE trainee at Clifford Chance, YouTuber Liam Porritt helps subscribers enhance their studying using savvy productivity tips. Platform: YouTube Username: Liam Porritt Follower count: 82,300+

Lola-Rose Avery

11 years in the making… tomorrow my pupillage ends and I finally qualify.

I am apparently not what many people picture a barrister to be and am not from a ‘traditional’ background, but I did it. I am here taking up space. I Am a Barrister. #IAmtheBar #BHM pic.twitter.com/O69h5yGNIp

— lola (@legally_lola) October 5, 2020

Bio: Since sharing her personal experiences with racism — from childhood to law school — in a viral Twitter thread, junior family barrister Lola-Rose Avery speaks openly about diversity & inclusion at the bar. Platform: Twitter Username: @legally_lola Follower count: 8,900+

Lucy Cole

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lucy Cole • 𝘀𝗵𝗲/𝗵𝗲𝗿⁣ (@lucydoeslaw)

Bio: Future magic circle trainee Lucy Cole embraces Instagram’s Stories, TV and Reels features to share her study and application tips with the masses. Platform: Instagram Username: @lucydoeslaw Follower count: 9,000+

Sahar Farooqi

Bio: Sahar Farooqi, barrister and partner at DAC Beachcroft, keeps his LinkedIn connections motivated by speaking honestly about determination, diversity and overcoming rejection. Platform: LinkedIn Username: Sahar Farooqi Follower count: 25,100+

Toby Willcocks

@tobywillcocks

TikTok Law School: Conjoined Twins

#tiktoklawschool #lawschool #law #lawstudent #alevels #lawyer #learning #uni #studyhacks

♬ original sound – Toby Willcocks

Bio: Oxford and Harvard Uni law grad Toby Willocks outlines the legal basics in his ‘TikTok Law School’ series in hope of educating the next gen of aspiring lawyers. Platform: TikTok Username: @tobywillcocks Follower count: 75,000+

All figures are correct at the time of writing.

The winner of this category will be announced at The Legal Cheek Awards 2021, sponsored by BARBRI, on Thursday 25 March 2021.

For a weekly round-up of news, plus jobs and latest event info

The post The 12 best legal social media users of 2021 appeared first on Legal Cheek.

source https://www.legalcheek.com/2021/02/the-12-best-legal-social-media-users-of-2021/

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system76 · 7 years

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GNOME UX Hackfest 2017

Designing the future of GNOME Shell

I just got back from a week-long design hackfest in London focused on GNOME Shell and related components. It was a fantastic week with friends from GNOME, Red Hat, Endless, System76, and elementary working together to help make GNOME even better.

In the end we generated a lot of designs that will need to be refined, thought through more, and tested before implementation. But I’m confident the issues we raised and solutions we arrived at will positively affect GNOME Shell in the future. I look forward to the designs getting better hashed out and sharing them as soon as we can!

Photos by Jakub Steiner unless otherwise noted.

Attendees

I was joined in London by Cosimo Cecchi, Mario Sanchez, Robin Tafel, Allan Day, Florian Müllner, Jakub Steiner, and Tobias Bernard.

Cosimo, Mario, and Robin are from Endless; Allan, Florian, and Jakub are from Red Hat; and Tobias is a student at TU Berlin. I attended on behalf of System76, but also brought my experience and knowledge from elementary.

We were all there, however, as GNOME community contributors and designers to work together on the future of GNOME Shell.

Tuesday, Nov 14

Tuesday morning we headed to the first room Endless booked at a hotel and it was super fancy. Lots of wood textures, interesting glass and stone artwork, and nice ambient lighting.

Tuesday room, photo by Cosimo

Shared Agreements

First, Robin ran through the Shared Agreements that Endless uses at events to help create a welcoming space and arrive at an mutual understanding from participants:

Bring your full, honest self

This is a safe space

Assume good intentions from each other

Be open, listen actively

Speak your mind & heart

We all agreed to operate under these guidelines, wrote them on a large piece of paper, and posted it at each venue. I really liked this opener to ensure we’re all working together and getting the most out of the event!

Agenda

Next, we hammered out our agenda for the week, which you can check out on the hackfest wiki page. In summary, we decided to focus on three main areas for the four-day event:

Activities Overview (2 days)

First-Run Overlay/Tutorial (1 day)

We also decided to fit some of the other items in from the list in between if we were stuck, burnt out, or just had extra time. With the agenda decided, we dove straight into the Activites Overview.

Activities Overview

One of the first points that came up is whether people think in a more app- or window-centric way, or if that depends on the context. We also questioned the effectiveness of a big grid of alphabetic apps as the main way to see apps, and talked through potential user-customation ideas like being able to craft your own space for work and using drag-and-drop and folders to let users map things to their own mental model. We also talked about not making the default case be the overwhelming wall of apps, and ensuring a spatial model with both the pagination and how different views are connected to one another.

The first day of discussion was largely high-level and unconstrained. It ventured, at times, into tiling window managers, window switching, larger OS-wide spatial models, and “using the Z-axis.” We eventually did spend some time generating a lot of sketches and mockups of potential ideas, and Allan shared an idea he had been working on. We kind of settled into two main areas we needed to tackle: how to get into this “app picker” view, and how this app picker view would operate.

We had less consensus on how to get into it, but had started arriving on a few shared concepts with how it would operate:

Provide a “favorites” area that is the default view with user-manipulable icons and folders

Have a sort of “app basement” (thanks for that term, Robin!) where all apps live and can be brought out to the favorites area

Have a “suggested” area that would surface frequent/recent apps plus recently-installed apps to proactively prevent users from having to dive down into the basement

These concepts would help make the app picker more immediately useful to users than a paged list of everything on their system, and would help make folders actually behave how users seem to expect to based on their experiences with mobile OSes.

Other Concepts

During the exploration and generation of ideas, a few otherwise uncategorized ideas were brought up. These aren’t necessarily things that will happen, but stood out to me as interesting concepts.

One was using app icons to badge windows and workspaces in the Activities Overview; this is something we do in elementary OS and can be a boon to glanceable recognition of tasks. Another idea was revamping the Super + Tab window switcher to basically utilize the existing window spread as its UI.

Some concepts we briefly touched on

These ideas weren’t fleshed out in detail, but I think they would be interesting areas to explore. Badging windows and workspaces, for example, could be a relatively small change that greatly increases the usefulness of the overview.

Wednesday, Nov 15

The space Wednesday was larger if slightly less inspiring than the venue Tuesday. We spread out and got to work on refining our ideas. Thanks again to Endless for booking this space!

Wednesday room, photo by Mario

App Picker

First, we regrouped around the app picker view itself. We found we were generally in consensus on what should be there, but still had questions around how exactly it should look and work. We also started generating ideas for how to get to it: Spatially on the same layer off to the left of the window spread? Behind a button that expands into the picker? From a sort of Dash that slides over on top of the existing view?

Sketch of the existing mouse travel for launching apps

Getting Spatial

Something Tobias brought to the hackfest was the constant push to think spatially — that is, organizing interface elements into a sort of virtual physical space, keeping animations and locations of items consistent within the rules of that model.

Thinking through spatial models and layers with paper, photo by me

We seemed to arrive at a consensus that workspaces should continue to operate vertically and live to the right of the window spread, meaning for balance reasons the app picker should probably live to the left. This negated some of the more radical ideas like having it slide up on a sheet from the bottom (because it would be very unbalanced). Apps living to the left also keeps the general mouse travel from existing versions of GNOME Shell, meaning it would be an easier transition for existing users.

We ended the day wanting to sleep on the ideas we’d had and to give some of the designers opportunities to mock their ideas up in a higher fidelity.

A sketch of how the app picker itself could work

Thursday, Nov 16

Activities Overview Wrap Up

Thursday we met at the Red Hat offices to wrap up our work on the Activities Overview. We shared some higher fidelity mockups and basically arrived at a consensus of the way forward. I don’t want (nor do I have the authority) to announce anything official, but my feeling was that several of the ideas we brought up earlier would need to be fleshed out and tested a bit more, then GNOME will need to decide when to implement them. It won’t likely be in the next cycle, but our work hopefully provides the foundational design work and a path forward.

First-Run Overlay

Next, we dove into the First-Run Overlay. We started with Robin showing us what Endless plans to ship in Endless OS, including the design process and thinking that went into it. Endless OS isn’t vanilla GNOME, but many of the same concepts could be adapted for GNOME itself.

My rough translation of the Endless overlay to a vanilla GNOME Shell design

I brought up my reservations with first-run tutorial patterns, but I think if implemented very basically (with only a couple of screens), it could work. Ideally it would also be implemented per-session, meaning that downstreams like Endless OS, Pop!_OS, and Ubuntu could choose to implement it and extend it or pare it back to match their experiences if they so choose.

We agreed that there are really five different components to the idea of user education and help as far as a GNOME-based OS is concerned:

Help Guide (which is launched on first login in GNOME today),

First-Run Overlay (like what Endless wants to implement),

A sort of feature gallery in Initial Setup to show some features and how to access them,

On-demand videos or tutorials that apps or the shell could call over some API (eg. in-context “help” actions that pull up a help UI focused on that feature), and

Progressive disclosure/education through something like tooltips

None of these are mutually exclusive, and each one could be worked on. We spent a small amount of time working on some designs for a first-run overlay, but the tricky part there is more implementation than design.

Progressive disclosure of actions and keyboard shortcuts, photo by me

I also plan to file issues for progressive disclosure/user education through context like in my sketch above.

Starting on Login/Lock Screen

In the afternoon, we moved on to start discussing the login/lock screen. Allan started by writing up the goals of the lock screen, along with the issues that have cropped up with it since its release and the constraints that it has to operate within. The idea was to guide the discussion and design process by solving the issues while still addressing the original goals.

We ended the day after a bit of discussion, and rough sketches of how space could be better utilized, but nothing concrete.

Some rough initial ideas, photo by Robin

Friday, Nov 17

Friday we devoted to the login/lock screen. We started iterating through ideas, looking at how other platforms operate, and mocking things up. We ended up with several really interesting concepts that were very different from one another visually, but shared some things in common:

Iconified notifications (not the entire contents) to tell users there are notifications to be seen when they unlock

Reducing the number of clicks/actions to log into the last-logged-in user

Using the user’s desktop wallpaper instead of a separate lock screen wallpaper

Making stronger use of user avatars (and thus doing something intelligent in Initial Setup to ensure all users have a uniquely recognizable avatar)

One of my favorite concepts shared was by Tobias. He mocked up using the user’s wallpaper as a stronger identifier combined with their avatar as cards in the user list, then expanding that wallpaper out to the full screen when the user is selected. I’ve reproduced the gist of it in this terrible sketch:

At the end of the day, we didn’t have a single clear path forward, but had many concepts that we want to explore further. We did have a consensus of the key goals and some converged ideas around notifications and user avatars, which was productive. I look forward to seeing these ideas more fleshed out!

Food, Sights, & Social

GNOME Beers

What would a hackfest be without a little bit of food and socializing as well? Allan led the way to several delicious food venues throughout the week including Malaysian, Vietnamese, Australian, Thai, Ethiopian, British, Spanish, Italian, and probably half a dozen others I forgot. We also spent some time in the evenings at a handful of local pubs, and met up with more members of the GNOME community at the GNOME Beers event on Wednesday night.

Borough Market, photo by me

Walking across London Bridge, photo by me

Out on the street after lunch

Millenium Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedreal, photo by me

We spent one long lunch grabbing food at Borough Market, walking along the River Thames, and crossing the Millenium Bridge doing a small amount of sightseeing. After a different lunch we briefly stopped by the British Library.

“How far does this go down?” at the British Library, photo by me

St. Pancras station, photo by me

We ended the week at a big band jazz performance by Beats & Pieces as a part of London Jazz Week, and got what I’m told is a traditional British cuisine: salt beef bagels.

Beats & Pieces big band jazz, photo by me

Summary

Overall, the event was a huge success in my eyes. We iterated through a lot of ideas, generated quite a few designs that can be refined and eventually implemented, and also just bonded as a community of designers within GNOME.

I am sure I missed some things we discussed, and I purposefully left out any higher-fidelity mockups (since these ideas are in no way set in stone). If you want to dig into things on your own, be sure to visit the hackfest wiki page for more details. Also feel free to tweet at me and I will try to answer any questions.

Thanks to GNOME, Endless, and Red Hat for making this event possible, and System76 for sending me out to London on such short notice! I look forward to our continued collaboration.

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jbaquerot · 7 years

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These days, we have the opposite problem we had 5-10 years ago…

Back then, it was actually difficult to find datasets for data science and machine learning projects.

Since then, we’ve been flooded with lists and lists of datasets. Today, the problem is not finding datasets, but rather sifting through them to keep the relevant ones.

Well, we’ve done that for you right here.

Below, you’ll find a curated list of free datasets for data science and machine learning, organized by their use case. You’ll find both hand-picked datasets and our favorite aggregators.

Datasets for Exploratory Analysis

Exploratory analysis is your first step in most data science exercises. The best datasets for practicing exploratory analysis should be fun, interesting, and non-trivial (i.e. require you to dig a little to uncover all the insights).

Our picks:

Game of Thrones - Game of Thrones is a popular TV series based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice book series. With this dataset, you can explore its political landscape, characters, and battles.

World University Rankings - Ranking universities can be difficult and controversial. There are hundreds of ranking systems, and they rarely reach a consensus. This dataset contains three global university rankings.

IMDB 5000 Movie Dataset - This dataset explores the question of whether we can anticipate a movie's popularity before it's even released.

Aggregators:

Kaggle Datasets - Open datasets contributed by the Kaggle community. Here, you'll find a grab bag of topics. Plus, you can learn from the short tutorials and scripts that accompany the datasets.

r/datasets - Open datasets contributed by the Reddit community. This is another source of interesting and quirky datasets, but the datasets tend to less refined.

Datasets for General Machine Learning

In this context, we refer to "general" machine learning as Regression, Classification, and Clustering with relational (i.e. table-format) data. These are the most common ML tasks.

Our picks:

Wine Quality (Regression) - Properties of red and white vinho verde wine samples from the north of Portugal. The goal is to model wine quality based on physicochemical tests. (We also have a tutorial.)

Credit Card Default (Classification) - Predicting credit card default is a valuable and common use for machine learning. This rich dataset includes demographics, payment history, credit, and default data.

US Census Data (Clustering) - Clustering based on demographics is a tried and true way to perform market research and segmentation.

Aggregators:

UCI Machine Learning Repository - The UCI ML repository is an old and popular aggregator for machine learning datasets. Tip: Most of their datasets have linked academic papers that you can use for benchmarks.

Datasets for Deep Learning

While not appropriate for general-purpose machine learning, deep learning has been dominating certain niches, especially those that use image, text, or audio data. From our experience, the best way to get started with deep learning is to practice on image data because of the wealth of tutorials available.

Our picks:

MNIST - MNIST contains images for handwritten digit classification. It's considered a great entry dataset for deep learning because it's complex enough to warrant neural networks, while still being manageable on a single CPU. (We also have a tutorial.)

CIFAR - The next step up in difficulty is the CIFAR-10 dataset, which contains 60,000 images broken into 10 different classes. For a bigger challenge, you can try the CIFAR-100 dataset, which has 100 different classes.

ImageNet - ImageNet hosts a computer vision competition every year, and many consider it to be the benchmark for modern performance. The current image dataset has 1000 different classes.

YouTube 8M - Ready to tackle videos, but can't spare terabytes of storage? This dataset contains millions of YouTube video ID's and billions of audio and visual features that were pre-extracted using the latest deep learning models.

Aggregators:

Deeplearning.net - Up-to-date list of datasets for benchmarking deep learning algorithms.

DeepLearning4J.org - Up-to-date list of high-quality datasets for deep learning research.

Datasets for Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing (N.L.P.) is about text data. And for messy data like text, it's especially important for the datasets to have real-world applications so that you can perform easy sanity checks.

Our picks:

Enron Dataset - Email data from the senior management of Enron, organized into folders. This dataset was originally made public and posted to the web by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during its investigation.

Amazon Reviews - Contains ~35 million reviews from Amazon spanning 18 years. Data include product and user information, ratings, and the plaintext review.

Newsgroup Classification - Collection of approximately 20,000 newsgroup documents, partitioned (nearly) evenly across 20 different newsgroups. Great for practicing text classification and topic modeling.

Aggregators:

nlp-datasets (Github) - Alphabetical list of free/public domain datasets with text data for use in NLP.

Quora Answer - List of annotated corpora for NLP.

Datasets for Cloud Machine Learning

Technically, any dataset can be used for cloud-based machine learning if you just upload it to the cloud. However, if you're just starting out and evaluating a platform, you may wish to skip all the data piping.

Fortunately, the major cloud computing services all provide public datasets that you can easily import. Their datasets are all comparable.

Our picks:

AWS Public Datasets

Google Cloud Public Datasets

Microsoft Azure Public Datasets

Datasets for Time Series Analysis

Time series analysis requires observations marked with a timestamp. In other words, each subject and/or feature is tracked across time.

Our picks:

EOD Stock Prices - End of day stock prices, dividends, and splits for 3,000 US companies, curated by the Quandl community.

Zillow Real Estate Research - Home prices and rents by size, type, and tier, sliced by zip code, neighborhood, city, metro area, county and state.

Global Education Statistics - Over 4,000 internationally comparable indicators for education access, progression, completion, literacy, teachers, population, and expenditures.

Aggregators:

Quandl - Quandl contains free and premium time series datasets for financial analysis.

The World Bank - Contains global macroeconomic time series and searchable by country or indicator.

Datasets for Recommender Systems

Recommender systems have taken the entertainment and e-commerce industries by storm. Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify are great examples.

Our picks:

MovieLens - Rating data sets from the MovieLens web site. Perfect for getting started thanks to the various dataset sizes available. Jester - Ideal for building a simple collaborative filter. Contains 4.1 Million continuous ratings (-10.00 to +10.00) of 100 jokes from 73,421 users.

Million Song Dataset - Large, rich dataset for music recommendations. You can start with a pure collaborative filter and then expand it with other methods such as content-based models or web scraping.

Aggregators:

entaroadun (Github) - Collection of datasets for recommender systems. Tip: Check the comments section for recent datasets.

Datasets for Specific Industries

In this compendium, we've organized datasets by their use case. This is helpful if you need to practice a certain skill, such as deep learning or time series analysis.

However, you may also wish to search by a specific industry, such as datasets for neuroscience, weather, or manufacturing. Here are a couple options:

Aggregators:

Awesome Public Datasets - High quality datasets separated by industry.

Data.gov - Curated government data separated by industry.

Datasets for Streaming

Streaming datasets are used for building real-time applications, such as data visualization, trend tracking, or updatable (i.e. "online") machine learning models.

Our picks:

Twitter API - The twitter API is a classic source for streaming data. You can track tweets, hashtags, and more.

StockTwits API - StockTwits is like a twitter for traders and investors. You can expand this dataset in many interesting ways by joining it to time series datasets using the timestamp and ticker symbol.

Weather Underground - A reliable weather API with global coverage. Features a free tier and paid options for scaling up.

Aggregators:

Satori - Satori is a platform that lets you connect to streaming live data at ultra-low latency (for free). They frequently add new datasets.

Datasets for Web Scraping

Web scraping is a common part of data science research, but you must be careful of violating websites' terms of services. Fortunately, there's a whole site that's designed to be freely scraped.

Our picks:

ToScrape.com - Web scraping sandbox with two subdomains. You can practice scraping a fictional bookstore or a site that lists quotes from famous people.

Datasets for Current Events

Finding datasets for current events can be tricky. Fortunately, some publications have started releasing the datasets they use in their articles.

Aggregators:

FiveThirtyEight - FiveThirtyEight is a news and sports site with data-driven articles. They make their datasets openly available on Github.

BuzzFeedNews - BuzzFeed became (in)famous for their listicles and superficial pieces, but they've since expanded into investigative journalism. Their datasets are available on Github.

#datasets #machine learning #data analysis #data science

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artisticestheticreads · 5 years

Text

Where It All Began

DISCLAIMER: This is a flash back chapter of the VERY first time when Amir Carter and Veronica Mitchellson first met and I have to say its adorable asf. This chapter contains some against, fluff and over all cuteness. Also, this contains some racist issues. ENJOY.

[My Lovin’ by En Vogue plays]

VERONICA

The year was 1992 and it was the first day of kindergarten. I was so excited to start school that my mom laid my outfit on my desk for me. “Baby gyal, it’s time for school”, my dad came in to wake me. I opened my eyes and sprung out of bed to the bathroom so that I can get ready. My mom helped me up on my stool so I can brush my teeth and wash my face. “I see someone is excited about school”, she said as she put my hair in two afro puffs with two blue ribbons into bows. She ran some Let’s Jam on my edges and looked at me through the mirror. She smiled and helped me down so we can eat breakfast; shrimp grits with eggs and sausage and apple juice. I finished and ran to my room to get dress with my pa’s hand. “Come on, pa! We gotta get ready!” He helped my get dressed in the school uniform; a navy blue overall dress, grey button down and Mary Janes with high white socks. He slipped on my huge Bugs Bunny Backpack and kissed my head. My mom met us in the car and I watched the outside as we drove by. The sun was out and everyone was out for either work or school.

We finally got to the school and my dad took me inside beside my mom. “Where is my room, pa?” He looked down the hall and read the numbers. “Well, what room number is yours?” I thought about it and said “5K.” My mom stopped and knelt down, pointing to the door. “What does that say, baby?” I smiled big and said “there it is, 5K!” I ran to the class and looked inside. The rug looked like a huge puzzle. The tables were really short like they were made for us, there were little shelves for our stuff and a little group of kids were inside. “Wow”, my dad said as he walked in with my mom. “V, can you find your name” my mom asked. I looked down the way and stood in front of a shelf. I pointed to it and my mom nodded. “Good job, baby.” My teacher walked over to us. She was an older white woman with white hair. “Hi, I am Mrs. Stewart.”She looked at me and said “you must be Veronica”. I nodded and she smiled. “Well, this shelf here is for you and you only. You can put your lunch box in the fridge over there and your bag will be here, okay?” I said “yes, ma’am.” Mrs. S said “go ahead and go to the other children, young lady.”

I put my backpack on the shelf and walked over to the kids. They all looked over at me and I made eye contact with one student with similar outfit than mine but her hair was really curly like spaghetti. and her skin was like butterscotch pudding. “Hi, I’m Veronica.” She smiled and she had her bottom tooth missing. “Hi, I’m Cassidy. Cassidy Montgomery.” “Your tooth is missing, too.” She nodded and said “yes, last night the tooth fairy came and gave me a dollar.” I looked at her with my mouth wide open. “A dollar?!” She nodded faster and said “I know. I’m gonna save it though.” We kept talking and I can tell we were gonna be good friends one day.

[My Lovin’ by En Vogue fades; They Want EFX by Das EFX plays]

AMIR

Aaron and I were going to the same school but he was in second grade. I wore a gray uniform shirt with black slacks and loafers and my X-Men backpack. My folks behind us and I was really scared. I never been to school before. Aaron looked at me and said “you’ll be fine, Amir.” “I’s just scared. I don’t wanna go.” My mom said “baby, it’s okay.” We finally got to the class and I saw a taller black man and a woman talking to a white lady. I looked around and my dad knelt down. “Come on’ big man. You’ll be fine, okay?” I nodded and hugged him. Aaron gave me dap and a hug before leaving with him to his class leaving my mom and I alone. She went to the shelf and I looked over at a group of kids then followed. The lady said “Hi, I am Mrs. Stewart. What is your name.?” I hid behind my moms back and ma said “sorry, he’s shy. His name is Amir.”

Teach said “well, Amir you can put your back pack by your name and your lunch will go in the fridge. Do you wanna go by the other children?” I looked up to my mom, she smiled and took my back pack. I slowly walked over to the the table, found my name and sat there quietly. Some kid with brown skin approached me with a group of boys. “Hi, I’m Jeremiah.” I looked up and said “I’m Amir.” He held out his hand and I shook it, still shy. Jeremiah sat next to me and asked “are you scared or somethin’?” I nodded and he said “just stick with us and you’ll be fine.” Class started and we all sat in our chairs but Jeremiah had moved beside two girls, one with light skin and curls and the other dark like me with afro puffs. “Okay class, so I think we should start with out names will start in alphabetical order.” She looked at me and said “you’re first.”

[They Want EFX by Das EFX fades]

I looked around and said “I uh I’m Amir C-Carter.” Everyone looked at me like I was weird and I hung my head down. Mrs. Stewart continued and every kid said their name. Then I heard a voice that sounded different. Like if there was hint of island but her voice was really sweet. I looked up and it was the girl with the puffs. “I’m Veronica Nami Mitchellson and I am Jamaican. My parents own their own restaurant and it’s only the three of us.” Mrs. Stevens smiled and went to the next student named Cassidy. I looked at Veronica a lot that day from the beginning to recess. She was really....different.

VERONICA

It was time for recess and I was playing jump rope with Cassidy and some other girls. “Go, Veronica, go.” I was having a blast until I saw that kid Amir alone. I pointed and said “we should ask him to play with us.” She looked at me and said “girls can’t play with boys.” “Why not?” She said “because they are mean and weird.” I looked over and he was gone. I looked over at the girls and started playing again. Eventually, we back to class and after that it was lunch time.

We all took our lunches and sat together as a class outside. I looked around and said “there are a lot of big kids around.” Cassidy nodded and took her pb & j out. “Yeah, my sister is over there. She’s in the fifth grade.” “The fifth grade?” She nodded and said “yeah and my my big brother is the seventh grade but that is in middle school.” I was so shocked. “How many is there?” “My mom said there is twelve of them and then college.” I bit into my ham sandwich and said “College? What’s that?” She shrugged and said “I’m not sure but my parents say we have plenty of time.” I nodded and sipped my apple juice that my parents packed in my lunch.

I looked down the table and saw Amir with some boys eating. He still looked a little uncomfortable but looked okay I guess. Some of the girls and I were done and we decided to go play. I was turning the rope and having fun until some big kid came up to us. “You’re in our spot.” I looked up at the bigger white boy and said “I’m sorry.” I held out my hand and said “I’m Veronica”. He and his boys looked at us and said “move.” Cassidy grabbed my hand and said “come on, Veronica.” I looked at her then at the kid and said “but you didn’t shake my hand. You have to. My fadda says its rude not to.” I held it out again and his nostril opened up. “Is yoour ‘fadda’ dumb like you?” My eyes grew big, Cassidy looked at him and said “that isn’t nice.” I can feel like I was getting sad and held my head down. “Awe, is the little ugly, dark skin, nappy headed baby gonna cry.” Still looking at the ground, I wiped my eyes and they circled around us.

AMIR

Jeremiah looked over and said “that’s Veronica and Cassidy but who are those kids.” I looked in the same direction and saw Veronica with her head down and it looked like she was crying in the middle of a circle of white kids. I got up, put my trash in the can and went over to Aaron. “Aaron, I need your help.” He looked up and said “what’s wrong, kid?” “There’s a little girl crying with some boys. I think they are being mean.” I ran and he followed with his friends. Aaron pointed and we all went to them. Amir pulled on the kids shirt and said “excuse me.” He looked down at me and said “what?” I looked at Veronica who was sitting on the ground with her face in her arms.

I asked “why is she cryin’?” “Why you wanna know?” I looked at her and her eyes were on me; they were like brown marbles. I looked up and said “because she is really sweet and she’s my friend.” He huffed and said “so” when he pushed my head back. But I held it back up. “I think you should say sorry.” He laughed and pushed me against Aaron. “Hey! That’s my brother and his friend your messing with.” The kid pushed Aaron and his boys tackled his friends. I looked at Veronica who was still sitting on the ground.

I sat next to her and said “hi, Amir.” She still didn’t look at me. “Are you okay?” She looked at me and her eyes were full of tears; it made me sad. Her little lip quivered and she yelled “you’re not my friend! Boys and girls can’t be. LEAVE ME ALONE!!” then she ran to the girls bathroom as the other girls followed her. I sat alone, rubbing my forehead until the principal came to take me to his office. “Okay, young man. What is going on?”

VERONICA

At the end of lunch, Cassidy’s older sister washed my face off and I noticed I was the only dark skin girl there. She walked us back to class and when we went in, I noticed Amir wasn’t in his seat. I sat down between Jeremiah and Cassidy when, into ten minutes, my name was called over the intercom and a hall monitor came to the door. He took me to the principal office to see the big kids from lunch, Amir and some other boys sat there with a room full of parents along with mine.

My mom sat me in her lap while my dad stood. The principal finally said “so, I called you all in because this young man Amir told me about an altercation at lunch involving this young lady.” He looked at me and asked “what happened, Veronica.” I looked at him, my parents and Amir and held my head down. “Those boys over there called my ugly, dark skin and nappy headed.” My mom held me close and looked at the kids. “What kind of fuckery do yuh run in dat household, eh?” My mom was beyond mad and everyone knew it. Principal Moore said “Ma’am please. No profanity.” My mom looked at my dad, he picked me up his arms and she stood. “Mi child, my baby gyal was told that she was an ugly, nappy head dark skin and yuh tellin’ me not to cuss. Stakki ! Yuh a mad man!! Tis is day first day of school and we already got a call for some likkle red neck crackin’ da whip white bwoy.” The bully’s mom stood and said “that is my son you are talking about.” My dad chimed in and said “yeah you’re son and brother.” My parents high five at their insults. I rested my head on my dad’s shoulders and they continued.

AMIR

Her parents were going crazy about her and my parents understood why. My dad said “how can you excuse that kind of behavior from a child?” My mom stood and added “what kind of school you running here?! You have a little black girl crying because a little boy said she was ugly and from looking at her she is too damn cute for her own good if you wanna be honest. This boy and his friends look like they should hit the gym from eating all those Hostess cupcakes. The woman looked at her and my mom turned to her. “I wish you would say somethin’ because I will pop yo ass like a balloon animal.” The mom looked down at her feet and my mom swung her hips saying “that’s what I thought.” My dad said “there should be no reason why we having a party in here. There are kids in here should be punished.” The bully’s dad said “like ya boys”. My mom looked at him and said “boy shut cho ass up.”

Mr. Moore said “enough. Your son, Aaron, attacked these boys so they will all be suspended.” Veronica’s mom said “what did likkle Aaron do? Was he one of the bullies?”

My mom shook her head and said “no. He did the right thing and stopped it along wit Amir.” Veronica’s mom said to the principal “from the look of it, neither Amir and Aaron should be suspended. They was protecting some one when no one else had the balls too. We should be throwing them a party for them.” Her dad nodded and said “a big one at dat.” I smiled small and looked down. Her mom continued “those likkle boys over there should be da ones on trial here. We are raising our daughter to know that she is an amazing, sweet, beautiful girl. Do yuh know how hard dat is when kids like him come around? We want her to use her skin as a reason why she is beautiful.” She took Veronica is her arms and held her close. Her dad said “we taught her how to love herself and she knows this, Moore. She knows to always be sweet and kind because in this world, you only have one chance to do right. My mudda taught her as well. Veronica is a very sweet girl and when she is exposed to such behavior...it hurts her.” I looked at Mr. Moore and said “she is very sweet. Veronica has been nice to everyone.”

VERONICA

I looked at Amir and he had his head up. His mom played with his head and kissed it. She said “y’see. And apparently my children who are in second and kindergarten cant’s personally hurt a big ass fifth grader.” Mr. Moore said “okay, so Mitchell and his friends will be suspended for a week and a half for bullying these children. The parents stood and said “it’ because they are black.” Mr. Moore said “make that two weeks”; they left and he apologized. We went back to our class and got our backpacks to go home early due to what happened; our parents waited outside as we came out.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your daughter. We know how it is”, Amir’s mom said. “We have all dark skin children.” My dad asked “how many?” His dad replied “we have three boys and a baby girl.” My mom said “oh lawd. Kids just everywhere.” They laughed and his mom said “tell me about it. Trust me, our baby Amaya will be the last one.” His dad shook his head and said “she said that when we had Amir.” She hit his chest and shook her head. She held her hand out to my mom. “I’m Anne by the way and this Franklin.” They all shook hands and I looked at Aaron with Amir. My dad knelt down and told them “thank you, bwoys. You are little fighters, aren’t you?” Aaron nodded but Amir was just quiet. My dad shook their hands and stood back straight to talk to Franklin.

AMIR

Aaron looked at her and asked “are you okay.” She nodded and he said “y’know if anyone mess with you again, we got your back. We are kinda like your big brothers now. Okay, Veronica?” She nodded and gave a slight grin. He shook her hand and said “I’m Aaron. You’ll meet our big brother soon. He is in the seventh grade.” She said “the seventh?” He nodded and looked at me with his hand on my shoulder. “You should thank my little brother here. He came and got me.” She looked at me and we began walking with Veronica and I were behind them all.

We looked at each other and she said “thank you.” I said “you’re welcome.” I held my hand out and said “I’m Amir.” She looked at my hand and said “I’m Veronica”. I looked her confused and asked “how do you say that?” She smiled and said “you can just call me, V. For now. Only family calls me V.” I nodded and asked “so are we friends now.” She looked at me and said “sure.” We got closer to our families and said “so, I guess our families are one big family.” I nodded and said “yeah. Your parents are nice.” Yours too.” We got really quiet and she said

VERONICA

“Do you wanna play tomorrow and have lunch together?” He smiled and so did I. I saw his folks walking with his mom’s head on his dad’s shoulder and I kinda leaned in on Amir’s until he looked at me. His mom said “c’mon, Mir. Let’s go home. Bye, Veronica.” I waved them by and mom said “I’ll call you and we will make plans for dinner as a thank you.” They all nodded and they got in their car. We stood there as the drove off and I yelled out “bye, Mir” as I waved big.

AMIR

I looked back, waved and said “bye, V.” I sat back in my seat as my dad drove and said “boys, we appreciate you for helping that little girl out. Only real men do that.” Moms said “exactly but don’t be getting in fights every day, okay?” She winked as we said “yes, ma’am.” I sat there and thought about today. Even though I was scared and shy, I met Jeremiah and made helped a new friend in V who was in need. As Aaron said, we were family and now, and all I wanted to do was protect her from the world because someone that sweet and friendly needed someone to protect them.

TAGGED LOVES♥: @muse-of-mbaku @im5ftbutmythroat66@chaneajoyyy@melanin-samii @theunsweetenedtruth @doux-ciel@unicornluvin8765@vikkidc@wakandantings@thadelightfulone@mzamethystp @simbiann @tropicalsun10@babydoll756@notoriouslynay@vminax@quinsly @pinkdemolition@quietstorm-73@chaoticcashfancroissant @bugngiz @chocolatedippedinhoney@yafavcocoa @lostgalaxies

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cancerousjojian · 7 years

Text

💌 = fluff

🥀 = angst

⚡ = 500+ notes

🖤 = shay’s faves

last updated: december 30, 2019

MARVEL:

peter parker:

[COLLEGE AU SERIES MASTERLIST]

dating peter would include 💌⚡ → headcannon of dating peter parker!

graduation 💌 → post-graduation ceremony with peter featuring aunt may

ease my mind 💌🥀🖤 → a sleep-deprived peter parker admits he has feelings for you in quite unconventional circumstances

fall 💌 → spending fall with peter headcannon

stargazing 💌 → peter surprises you with a backyard camping sleepover after a particularly awful day

beautiful weather 💌 → it’s your and peter’s first date, and he’s a little nervous

traveling with peter would include 💌 → traveling to europe on a class trip with peter headcannon

stop staring at me 💌 → peter just thinks you’re really, really cute.

surprise kiss 💌 → things change when an especially surprising kiss occurs between you and peter

a kiss to hide from bad guys 💌 → peter is paranoid someone is going to find out about his secret identity. oh, and you’re looking especially beautiful.

you’re bleeding all over my carpet 💌 → you have to change your plans when peter shows up to your house with an injured eye. mentions of blood and light injuries.

i like you in my clothes 💌🖤 → peter is feeling soft when he sees you in his clothes for the first time.

stares at 💌 → again, peter parker just can’t get enough of you.

healed 💌🥀🖤 → peter is feeling a little guilty and you’re wondering how he keeps getting hurt

make it up to you 💌🥀 → peter disappears for a whole day and you start to blame yourself

learn to move on 🥀 →peter needs you more than you need him, which is a whole, whole lot. some post-endgame angst because i apparently i love to suffer.

summer headcanons 💌 → headcanons that came from the question, what would it be like to spenf the summer with peter parker?

scott lang:

dating scott lang would include 💌 → headcannons of dating our favorite ex-convict.

can’t sleep 💌🥀🖤 → you and scott are forced to act like a married couple for a mission, and scott realizes just how he feels about you.

parent teacher conferences 💌 → you’re cassie’s teacher, and you find yourself quite intimidated by her incredibly attractive dad.

fluff alphabet 💌 → exactly what it sounds like, fluff alphabet with scott.

gingerbread houses 💌 → there’s no better way to spend any given saturday night in december than a gingerbread house building competition.

part of the family 💌 → scott asks you to move in with him at the demand of none other than cassie lang.

isn’t it great? 💌 → scott looks, like, really attractive in the ant-man suit.

i could kiss you 💌🖤 → scotty falls head over heels for you and accidentally blurts it out one day.

roommate au 💌🖤 → he needs a place to stay. you need a roommate. you just didn’t expect him to be so charming.

gone 🥀 → he’s starting to disappear for days at a time, and you’re starting to worry. finally, his secret comes out.

steve rogers:

healer 💌🥀🖤 → steve is just too old for this. he gets hurt during a mission and you don’t hesitate to clean him up. mentions of light injuries.

eggnog and mistletoe 💌 → stark parties were already a weird place to be, especially when it during the holidays and you’re forced to confront your feelings about a particularly handsome super soldier.

shares a treat 💌🖤 → steve is lovesick and craving a milkshake. this fic is a result of that.

a park in brooklyn 💌🥀🖤 → steve is feeling really sentimental and in-love, and you’re feeling really tired.

a gift for you 💌 → you give steve a heartwarming gift, which makes him fall all the more in live with you.

ava starr:

ease the pain 💌🥀 → ava relies on you to help her through her roughest nights.

eddie brock:

fluff alphabet 💌 → fluff alphabet with the man himself.

having an SO with piercings headcannon 💌⚡ → venom is really confused about modern fashion.

cold weather 💌 → cuddling always helps combat cold weather, right?

there’s a leaf in your hair 💌🖤 → eddie is a sap and the romantic setting in the rain isn’t helping.

you’re beautiful 💌 → you get stood up and are feeling extra terrible. eddie is there to flirt and save the night.

you’re freezing 💌🥀 → venom saves your life and eddie picks up the pieces. mentions of violence and dark themes.

i see you 💌🥀 → you’re there to help eddie in one of the worst times of his life.

peter b. parker

gray 💌 → you find a gray hair in peter’s head and he has a midlife crisis.

massages 💌 → peter helps you relax after a stressful day at work.

first kiss 💌🖤 → you share your first kiss with peter, and it’s his first in a long time.

lazy morning kiss 💌 → peter just wants to keep cuddling with the love of his life but you insist otherwise.

spider-suit malfunction 💌🖤 → peter gets stuck in his spidersuit somehow, and you swear you’re dating a manchild. a giggly kiss is shared.

jealous 🥀 → peter is having a bad night and wants to tell you how he feels more than anything in the world.

i almost lost you 💌🥀 → being a superhero had its low nights. luckily, you’re by his side for all of them. mentions of blood and injuries.

you’ve never hurt me 🥀🖤 → peter can’t imagine what he would do without you. so he treads lightly.

fortune cookies 💌🖤 → you had a bad day, but peter helps you through it. you realize just how lucky you are.

too sober 💌 → peter is drunk and orders a pizza. that’s it, that’s the fic.

pickle jar 💌 → peter battles his most ruthless enemy yet again; a particularly stubborn pickle jar.

do you sleep anymore? 💌 → it seems like your next door neighbor is always awake and you’re starting to become concerned.

anxiety attack 🥀 → you have an anxiety attack and peter helps calm you down. heavily centers around anxiety.

pumpkin carving 💌 → based on the prompt “i just think it’s unfair to carve your pumpkin on both sides.” happy halloween!

spider-man noir:

a kiss to hide 💌 → peter needs to hide and your apartment seems like the perfect place.

a much needed hug 💌 → even an angst kin like peter needs a hug every once in a while.

i need a place to stay 💌 → peter shows up at your house asking for a place to stay. you happily oblige.

morning confession 💌 → peter is just, like, really in love with you.

tomorrow 💌🥀 → peter is trying to let you know how he feels, but he doesn’t know of anything will change unless he gets something off his chest first.

are you flirting with me? 💌🖤 → you know what they say, drunken words are sober thoughts.

caught off-guard kiss 💌 → a silly little fic about peter sneaking up on you to kiss you.

i like your face 💌🖤 → first dates were never peter’s thing. but he really wants to make this one work because you’re an angel and he thinks he loves you for real.

tackles to the ground 💌 → peter is paranoid once again and embarrasses himself when he purposely tackles you to hide himself from an enemy.

midnight calls 💌 → never call the person you’re secretly in love with at midnight. it’s a recipe for heartbreak, as peter finds out.

a kiss in the rain 💌 → yet another kiss-in-the-rain-fic because peter is a sucker for you.

fever dream 🥀 → you’re forced to leave peter in the early hours of morning, like a dream inside his resting head.

ripeter parker:

i forgot my name again 💌🥀 → peter wasn’t okay, but he will be. and you’ll be there for every step of it.

carries bridal style 💌 → peter finds you asleep on his couch one night.

carol danvers:

safe place 💌🥀🖤 → carol comes back to planet 616 with a mission. things take a turn, though, when she finds herself in the familiar company of you, the girl from her dreams.

single 💌 → sometimes breakups aren’t the worst things in the world, especially when you’ve got a certain excitable blonde who can’t stop flirting with you.

kiss in the rain 💌 →your bonfire plans with carol get cancelled when it starts literally raining on your parade, and you decide to take advantage of the romantic setting.

all yours, captain 💌🖤 → carol can get a little possessive at times. she can’t help it, you simply mean to much to her. she decides to show you just how much that could be.

i’m not going to kiss you 💌 → you swear there’s something between you and carol. one night, your suspicions are confirmed.

thinking about you 💌 → it’s late, and carol decides to visit you. feelings are admitted and a couple kisses are shared.

morning kisses 💌 → carol just looks really cute when she’s sleeping, okay?

tight spaces 💌 →uh oh! you and carol are stuck in a cramped closet together after it’s been mutually established you have feelings for each other. what ever will you two do?

natasha romanoff:

distracted 💌 → nat is up late, and you’re wondering why. you get to her to abandon her work to spend some quality time with you.

almost 💌 → based on the kiss prompt; a kiss that is leading to more but disrupted by a third party, which happens to be none other that steven rogers.

human contact 💌 → based on the prompts “do you mind if we stay like this for a little while longer?” & “i think i forgot what human contact felt like”.

traffic 💌 →based on the kiss prompts “in a vehicle + lust”

breakfast in bed 💌 → you’re hungover and natasha makes you breakfast in bed

it’s been awhile 💌🥀 → you see her for the first time in months, but things are strangely familiar.

quentin beck:

red 🥀🖤⚡ → quentin is feeling upset and undeserving once again. like always, you’re right by his side to put those feelings alseep as best you can.

how are you feeling? 🥀 → he pines for you. you ignore it. it’s angsty.

let’s go home 🥀 → based on the prompts “you’re not going to die” and “let’s go home”.

are we on a date? 💌→ quentin invites you to a lovely dinner. it’s supposed to be for work, but flirting occurs. oh well.

holding in 💌🥀 → he’s feeling stressed out and he won’t tell you anything about it. typical.

PRODIGAL SON:

malcolm bright:

a good night’s sleep 💌🥀 → it’s your first night sleeping at malcolm’s apartment after months of dating. he’s beyond and nervous and wonder if he’s made a mistake.

bruises 💌🥀 → based on the sensory prompt ‘the tender ache when you press against bruises’

cold weather 💌→based on the prompts “i love you almost as much as i love this weather” and “cuddling always helps combat cold weather”

STRANGER THINGS:

steve harrington:

dating steve harrington headcannons 💌⚡ → dating steve harrington headcannons because i love this handsome babysitter.

KINGSMAN:

eggsy ‘galahad’ unwin:

dating eggsy unwin headcannons 💌 → dating eggsy while being a kingsman headcannon

TATBILB:

peter kavinsky:

dating peter kavinsky headcannons 💌⚡ → what i would imagine dating peter kavinsky would include

THE DIRT:

tommy lee:

whole lotta blood 💌🖤 → of course their first show ends in a fist fight. you would expect nothing less of the crue, and you’re left to your own devices with tommy to clean up the mess.

still here 💌 → being sick is never any fun, especially when it’s in a crowded tour bus with three of the rowdiest rockstars in the world. luckily, tommy can count on you to take care of him.

nikki sixx:

room service 💌🥀 → you’re there to soften the blow when nikki is unexpectedly shoved into seeing deana again.

#masterlist #marvel fanfiction #peter parker imagine #scott lang imagine #steve rogers imagine #ava starr imagine #eddie brock imagine #peter b. parker imagine #ripeter imagine #spider-man noir imagine #tom holland imagine #timothee chalamet imagine

1K notes · View notes

android-for-life · 4 years

Text

"Alphabet issues sustainability bonds to support environmental and social initiatives"

For more than 20 years, Google's products have improved the lives of people all over the world. Operating our business in an environmentally and socially responsible way has been a core value since our founding in 1998. Google has been carbon neutral since 2007 and we’ve matched our entire electricity consumption with renewables for the past three years. We continue to make major investments in affordable housing and have made a number of significant commitments to promote racial equity.

Today, as part of a $10 billion debt offering, we have issued $5.75 billion in sustainability bonds, the largest sustainability or green bond by any company in history. Although a number of companies have issued green bonds (directed solely to environmental uses), sustainability bonds differ in that their proceeds support investment in both environmental and social initiatives. Such bonds are an emerging asset class and we hope this transaction will help develop this new market. We’re encouraged that there was such strong demand for these bonds from investors—they were significantly oversubscribed.

The proceeds from these sustainability bonds will fund ongoing and new projects that are environmentally or socially responsible and enable investors to join us in tackling critical issues. We believe that these investments benefit our communities, employees and stakeholders, and are an important part of fulfilling Google’s mission and goal of creating value over the long term.

Consistent with the Green Bond Principles and the Social Bond Principles, eligible projects for use of proceeds are within the following eight areas that build on significant investments we have previously made and will not be allocated to any Google.org activities.

Energy efficiency

For more than a decade, we’ve worked to make Google data centers some of the most efficient in the world by optimizing our use of energy, water, and materials. Today, on average, a Google data center is twice as energy efficient as a typical enterprise data center. Compared with five years ago, we now deliver around seven times as much computing power with the same amount of electricity.

Clean energy

Combating climate change requires transitioning to a clean energy economy. To date, we have committed approximately $4 billion to purchase clean energy from more than 50 wind and solar projects globally through 2034. Next, we are focused on our longer term vision to source carbon-free energy for our operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week; this means matching our energy consumption with clean energy for each of our data centers around the world on an hour-by-hour basis.

Green buildings

Since the beginning, we've focused on the impact of our workplaces: from how we build our offices to preventing food waste in our cafes. Today, more than 13 million square feet of Google offices are LEED certified.

Clean transportation

We’re working to mitigate carbon emissions and take cars off the road by promoting the use of EVs and bicycles. By using Google shuttles in the Bay Area, we saved 40,000+ metric tons of CO2 emissions—equivalent to taking 8,760 cars off the road every work day.

Circular economy and design

We are committed to maximizing the reuse of finite resources across our operations, products, and supply chains and to enable others to do the same. To date, we’ve shipped millions of devices made with post-consumer recycled plastic and 100% of Nest products launched in 2019 include recycled plastics.

Affordable housing

We strive to be a good neighbor in the places we call home. To address the lack of affordable housing in the Bay Area, we made a $1 billion commitment to invest in housing and expect to help build 20,000 residential units, of which at least 5,000 will be affordable.

Commitment to racial equity

Because racial equity is inextricably linked to economic opportunity, we will continue to support Black businesses. Recent efforts include a $175+ million economic opportunity initiative, including financing for small businesses in Black communities, and a $100 million YouTube fund to amplify the voices of Black creators and artists.

Support for small business and COVID-19 response

COVID-19 has taken a devastating toll on many businesses. To help we made an $800+ million commitment to small- and medium-sized businesses, health organizations, governments, and health workers on the frontlines. We’ve also partnered with Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) to provide low-interest loans to community development financial institutions, who in turn provide loans to small businesses in underserved communities in the U.S., and are working with the American Library Association to create entrepreneurship centers across the U.S.

Our Sustainability Bond Framework will guide our investments. To ensure transparency and alignment with the framework, we'll report back annually on which projects have been funded from the bonds' proceeds and their expected impact.

This is the next chapter in our commitment to a more sustainable future for everyone.

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

#jeprog

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robertbryantblog · 5 years

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Where Rapidssl Digicert

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a-alex-hammer · 5 years

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AI Helping Recyling Industry Improve Accuracy, Speed Sorting Rate

TOMRA got its start in 1972 as a provider of reverse vending, aka bottle collection, machines.

By AI Trends Staff

AI is helping the recyling industry improve the accuracy of identifying specific types of plastics and other materials, including items contaminated with food and other substances, as well as speed up the sorting rate.

Smart robots, sensors and vision systems fortified with machine learning software are creeping into production at recycling facilities in Colorado, Japan and Europe.

Here are two companies talking up the potential to make the act of processing everything from plastic to demolished construction materials far more efficient and scalable, according to an account in GreenBiz: five-year-old startup AMP Robotics, a machine learning and computer vision specialist headquartered in Louisville, Colorado; and a Norwegian company, TOMRA, which got its start managing reverse vending machines that uses sensors to endow its food sorting and recycling systems with more intelligence.

A New Vision for Sorting

As its name suggests, AMP Robotics’ innovations lie in how it’s rethinking recycling robots. Founder and CEO Matanya Horowitz began receiving grants back in 2014 to research and develop vision systems that could improve the accuracy of separating items with machines rather than by humans. The company’s equipment is “trained” by being shown millions of images — everything from logos to box shapes to dyed plastics.

“If you can teach a person to distinguish something, you can teach our vision system to distinguish it,” said Horowitz to GreenBiz.

The idea, he said, is to help facilities become far more specific about separating streams of waste, which could allow operations to capture revenue from entirely new sorts of services.

For example, the technology — using a combination of light and machine learning software — could be used to sort out colored whipped cream tubs or yogurt containers from clear plastics. It can even identify items that carry a specific brand logo. One early adopter, Alpine Recyling in Colorado, recently was able to add coffee cups to the mix of stuff that its facility can handle. These levels of specificity could be valuable for consumer products companies seeking either to put their own product packaging back into circulation or to buy specific types of plastics.

“We can track what is truly being recycled,” Horowitz added, and that could help provide insight into where better collection systems — and messaging — might be needed.

AMP’s latest technology is a dual-robot system called Cortex, which the 35-person company will sell for municipal solid waste, electronic waste and construction and demolition applications. The equipment can sort, pick and place items at a speed of 160 pieces per minute. More important, it will allow facilities to tackle a process that typically has been very difficult to scale — separating post-consumer fiber from cardboard to sheets of paper.

Horowitz is cagey about how much money his company has raised, although its backers include Closed Loop Partners, and he called out the Alphabet company Sidewalk Labs during our conversation. Likewise, he won’t talk about the cost of his firm’s technology, pointing out that customers are seeing a payback of less than two years and that it sorts at the rate of two people.

That latter statistic might give pause to those concerned about the job-elimination potential of robotics technology, but Horowitz says recycling facilities often have high rates of turnover. “Many facilities are run underutilized,” he said.

AMP Robotics is also touting applications in the construction sector. Earlier this year, it disclosed a partnership with Japanese waste management company Ryohshin to sell AI-driven robots for recovering materials out of demolition debris — including wood, metal, electronics and concrete.

TOMRA Seeks Help from AI to “Create Value Out of Waste”

TOMRA, which recently joined the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, is credited as the inventor of near-infrared sensors for sorting applications. It holds close to 80 patents, and has extensive experience with sensors that can provide information about moisture or chlorine levels as items are being washed and sorted. The company’s technology is installed in roughly 100,000 locations worldwide; aside from recycling and collection, the company sells to food operations that need to sort things such as fresh produce.

“We urgently need to transform the recycling industry by creating value out of waste,” said Stefan Ranstrand, TOMRA president and CEO, in a statement. “In some markets, recycling rates are as high as 98 percent, and some consumer goods companies are now making new products out of 100 percent recycled materials. But this is only a very small part of the picture, and much more must be done to preserve our world for generations to come.”

Two of TOMRA’s most recent innovations include a material recognition sensor that can sort single-layer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) trays (think cafeteria trays) and a new laser feature. The latter development helps TOMRA’s systems detect black objects that are typically hard to ID, as well as those with certain shapes, such as silicon cartridges. Over time, the AI associated with these systems will be able to detect the presence of films within rigid plastics, according to the company’s website.

“If you really need to sort out materials to the highest quality possible, you need to be able to do this,” said Volker Rehrmann, executive vice president of TOMRA and head of the 4,000-person company’s newly formed circular economy team.

AI has been part of TOMRA’s technology for some time — some level of algorithmic detection was introduced as part of its original bottle collection machines. The company collects 40 billion used beverage containers annually through those reverse vending machines. So it has plenty of legacy experience, which will be vitally important for finding value in the wide range of plastics that now exist in the world.

“Without going into the details, it now needs to be much more accurate than it used to be,” Rehrmann said.

That’s because even though recycling is big business — an estimated $110 billion in America alone last year — he estimates that only 2 percent of those materials are valued as a resource, not waste, within a closed loop economy. That’s a problem that the Alliance to End Plastic Waste is determined to address. “They have realized that change is necessary,” Rehrmann said.

History of AI in Reycling Sorting

AI’s use in sorting started with systems in the 1970s to 1980s, according to an account in recyclingtoday. These systems were based on optical sensors and electronics that compared gray values or colors. Based on the ratio between these colors, the electronic circuit would make a rules-based decision whether to keep or eject the material. For instance, the first reverse vending machine (RVM) recognized the shape of a bottle based on the shadow it generated, which was detected by prepositioned optical sensors.

In the early 1990s, pixel-based classification of gray-scale and color camera images was used in combination with custom-made electronics, which limited the capabilities of the AI in terms of thresholds and decisions. With the emergence of personal computers (PCs), it became possible to use this technology for the classification of images.

Customized camera technology was used to acquire specific spectral properties and better clustering possibilities, leading to improved AI accuracy. This made it possible to assign each pixel with a specific class of material based on its spectral content. Color was no longer the only identifying criteria.

This technology was then combined with object recognition in the late 1990s, which made it possible to cluster different pixels of similar properties and combine them into an object.

By the 2000s, hyperspectral imaging systems became available, and the power of PCs further increased. Artificial neural networks (ANN) started to become available for classification problems in data processing. Based on previously trained samples for the specific application and machine, this class of AI could now combine different features and properties to make one classification. As a result, more complex materials could be detected and another level of sorting accuracy was achieved.

Later in the 2000s, so-called support vector machines (SVMs) became available. Although it sounds like a physical machine, these are mathematical models that allow a machine to define clusters in multidimensional space. Storing the results in tables on the physical sorter improved the performance again.

Common to all previously mentioned forms of AI used for sorting is the fact that the so-called training or learning aspects of AI must be supervised. In the very simple example of the RVM from the 1970s, the engineer had to physically place the optical sensor in the correct location, and a set of labeled samples needed to be available for teaching the system before putting the sorter into operation.

How AI Is Employed in Recyling Today

Today, the initial teaching of the system requires a computer vision engineer to define the relevant features for the sorting task. This generates feature vectors from the image data, which are then used in conjunction with the labels for automatically training the ANN or SVM. Because the training is done automatically without interaction by the engineer, this approach is called unsupervised learning.

The next step in the evolution of AI in sorting is deploying deep learning methodologies that became available in the 2010s and are now used in a range of applications. These types of networks were invented decades ago. Because of a massive increase in processing power in modern graphics processing units and millions of generally available and labeled images, it is now possible to apply them to practical problems.

So-called deep convolutional neural networks are still an ANN; but, compared with the early derivations, they have a much larger number of layers and neurons. Consequently, the networks are more powerful. However, they also require a lot more training data than traditional approaches.

The major advantage of convolutional neural networks is that the feature extraction step also is performed automatically during the training of the network. As a result, a computer vision engineer is no longer required to manually define the features relevant for the task. Typically, the first layers of the network generate features, which are integrated into more complex features in the following layers and then classified in the last layers.

These networks can be combined almost like building blocks, with each one being pretrained for a certain task. By doing this, the design can be adapted to the application at hand. Deep learning technologies have a major impact in image recognition in particular.

Where AI Is Taking the Recyling Industry

The current phase of AI development—especially the deep learning aspects—will enable the recycling industry to tackle currently unresolved challenges.

Today, a handpicking station at the end of a line is still needed to improve the quality of the final product to the desired level. An example could be seen with silicon cartridges, which are not desirable in a polyethylene stream. To pick them up with a robot, or to eject them through a last optical sorter, they would need to be detected first.

For this capability, AI and deep learning will play an important role in improving efficiency. Combining these new forms of AI with the potential of big data (e.g., with the data we already can collect from the machines today) will open even more opportunities to increase production, reduce cost and improve quality.

There’s this idea that today’s AI is like finding a free lunch and an ugly duckling. Both ideas are actual mathematical theorems that relate to the topic of artificial intelligence.

The first theorem basically states that no single AI solution is superior to all the others for a specific application. Each solution can have certain benefits that come at the cost of some disadvantages elsewhere—hence, there is no such thing as a “free lunch.”

The ugly duckling theorem is similar, stating that no optimal feature set exists for all applications. Even if we could find generic AI that solves many different challenges, it would not fit at least one application or problem and would not provide a suitable solution—making it the “ugly duckling.”

With this in mind, we should stay modest in our expectations regarding what is possible with convolutional neural networks and deep learning. Plenty of examples are available where deep learning is solving difficult, loosely structured recognition problems, but with other sorting tasks other AI approaches will have better performance. Finding the right combination of different types of AI was key in the past and will remain a key to ensuring the best sorting performance for recyclables in the future.

Artificial intelligence has been deployed in the recycling industry for quite some time. Yet, the possibilities that deep learning can offer when the fields of machine vision and machine learning are brought under one umbrella are new and exciting for the industry.

(Ed. Note: The authors of the recylingtoday piece are vice presidents with research responsibilities for Germany-based TOMRA Sorting GmbH, www.tomra.com/en/sorting/recycling, part of Norway-based TOMRA Systems ASA.)

Read the source posts in GreenBiz and in recyclingtoday.

Source link

Source/Repost=> http://technewsdestination.com/ai-helping-recyling-industry-improve-accuracy-speed-sorting-rate/ ** Alex Hammer | Founder and CEO at Ecommerce ROI ** http://technewsdestination.com

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jasonmcgathey · 5 years

Text

This has already been a fun, if sprawling and chaotic, section to tackle. Expect frequent changes as I continue to add to and revise the sections. It’s probably going to take a while to get a handle on this page – so just maybe, if you can, try and avoid these orange construction cones and blinking arrows straight out of the Spring-Sandusky interchange mess. If it looks a little skeletal, know that I am working on this as my current main project, and continue hoping some brilliant idea will help me organize it a little better. Until that lightning flash of inspiration arrives, maybe a series of alphabetized districts (with a couple I’m making up just now) and/or major roads is the best way to go:

Arena District (north of Spring, west of High)

Brewery District (south of the interstates, west of High)

E. Broad Street

W. Broad Street

Downtown Proper (area with most of the government buildings, etc, between Broad, the Scioto River, the interstates, and S. 4th Street)

German Village

N. High Street

S. High Street

Uptown District (everything north of Broad that isn’t covered elsewhere)

-Arena District-

Nationwide Arena

North Market

-Brewery District-

Though downtown as a whole has been plagued by this to some extent, the Brewery District is unique in that I feel like for 20 plus years now, there’s been this trend of bars blowing into here with a ton of hype, and being packed to the gills in what has always been a happening district – in other words, a theoretically sustainable business – but then the masses stop showing up overnight, a few months down the road, and the place is toast before you know it.

Banana Joe’s – an early lesson in how the night of the week is everything. We came here on a Friday and it was one of the most insane crowds I’ve ever witnessed; a Thursday journey maybe two weeks later had more in common with a funeral home.

Brewmasters Gate (485 S. Front St.) – this would be an excellent example of what I’m talking about. This opened as a positively cavernous club in the early 2000s, and had to be just about the most popular place in town for a good six months. A bunch of us drove down here often during the summer of its heyday, during which time it was unfailingly jam packed with young people throwing down, spilling out to the spacious patio and even the sidewalks. By the following summer, nobody came here, and you were looked at kind of strangely if mentioning it. I’m not sure exactly when it closed, but it didn’t seem to stick around very long after this. Strangely enough, the place survives and has maintained the same name, though it appears this is now just a hall people rent out for events.

Tommy Keegan’s – stumbling across this entry in my journal, from early 1998, is an especially striking example of why I’m glad to have taken so many notes. I actually forgot all about this enterprise and haven’t heard mention of it since.

Tommy Keegan’s looks vaguely like one of those modern faux Irish pubs or something, with its painted cement floor, its dark and generally unfussy atmosphere. Being located underground doesn’t hurt, either. The front, larger room holds most of the bar’s occupants, including some annoying, talent-challenged goober playing acoustic guitar and singing near the door. It’s hard to imagine he would receive much encouragement or tip money even if warbling at the campus BW3. But apparently, they pay him to come here.

The back room is a bit more subdued and we make a bee line for it. They’ve got one of those giant hoppers dispensing free popcorn back here, and even while knowing in the back of your mind it’s only going to make your thirstier, desiring ever more beer, which is why they manipulate you such, in the moment you just don’t care and grab some anyway. Or at least this is what I do.

It’s Keisha’s birthday and we started out with a much larger posse, but the war of attrition has whittled us down to these seven survivors: the birthday girl and Pam, and then Damon, Paul, John H, this Mike guy who’s kind of cool, and me. But somehow there’s this random kid just hanging out by these pool tables, of which the bar has a couple back here, and by some convoluted turn of events he winds up being partners against Paul and me in a few games of standard billiards. Damon is absolutely on fire for some reason, and they totally smoke us from start to finish. But we’ve already exhausted what limited kicks are to be found at Keegan’s, and have agreed to strike off for Victory’s next.

“Stay and play a few games with me!” the kid begs Damon, “we’ll make some money!”

“Ah, we gotta go,” Damon returns with a laugh.

Victory’s – I’ve only actually set foot inside of Victory’s once prior to this, nearly a year ago, that night of Maria’s birthday bus. And while it feels impossible to have memories down here from a year ago, which were pretty crazy yet not really referenced at all since then – neither in my thoughts nor discussions with these guys – I guess it’s another example of how the proverbial moss is growing beneath us, and we’d best keep moving if wishing to avoid entrapment by it.

So the layout here is much different that I remember, but then again, I’d been pretty blasted that night, a singular experience thus far in my Columbus residency. There are two front rooms with one long, connected bar that runs in the middle of each. One side is basically a chill out zone, while the other is encumbered with a dance floor to boogie upon, and a stage for the band. In the back, which is kept much darker, there’s an elevated second dance floor, this time under the purview of a nearby DJ booth, while beyond here the pattern repeats with that exact same scenario out on an exterior patio. The patio is not presently open, however.

Damon and Paul sit off to one side which allows them the perfect vantage point for drinking, smoking, watching and critiquing the band all at once. They call themselves Jonesy, though I’m not exactly sure of the spelling, and these guys do a fantastic job mixing 80’s covers with a few more recent selections, from the likes of Nine Inch Nails. So good, in fact, that these two are debating whether this band isn’t just miming to a tape. Featuring keyboards and electric drums, both elements you don’t see a whole lot of in this city’s live scene, they also boast an impressive live show, although it might actually belong to the bar.

The rest of us are out on the dance floor, hopping around to the music, hoping for a cheap brush of fate with one of these ladies. John breaks away from us to scout the perimeter for any fresh prospects. During this interim I do enjoy the inevitable wayward interactions with Keisha.

“I thought that was so hilarious earlier when my friend got kicked out of the bar, and you were like, gee, that’s terrible!” she’s shouting into my ear at one point, laughing hysterically.

John returns with even better information than this. “There’s a couple outrageously hot chicks on the other dance floor,” he tells me. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

We stroll off to the back room and step up to the elevated floor, casually work our way toward these two honeys. And yes, they are quite exceptional in appearance. Just as we’re about to zero in on them, however, these two dudes swoop in and throw their arms around the girls, clearly some sort of flag panting move. Damn. So the ladies are claimed, but whatever. As more ammunition mounting in this war chest of whatever you want to call it, Keisha and Pam have actually followed us back here, with Mike in tow right behind them. So they climb onto this platform with us, and we continue dancing in this dingy corridor.

-E. Broad Street-

Columbus Dispatch

Columbus Dispatch (62 E. Broad) – Home of the city’s major daily newspaper. I don’t feel like Cleveland bests Columbus in very many categories at all, but this is one exception – The Plain Dealer has always been a better paper. A lot of people, including some of my friends and I, were vaguely horrified when the Dispatch bought up treasured weekly independents, The Other Paper and Alive! True to form, they soon axed The Other Paper, citing overkill. In fairness, however, I will say they didn’t really seem to tinker with Alive! much, far less than expected.

-W. Broad Street-

COSI

Center of Science and Industry. It’s an okay spot, though much less exciting than one might imagine. A trip to the zoo or the Ohio Historical Society easily offers you much more bang for your buck. Only recommended if you’ve never been and are burned out on all the other similar options in town.

Emma digging into chocolate cake at Spaghetti Warehouse

Spaghetti Warehouse – Treasured destination over the years, mostly because my daughter Emma is somewhat of a spaghetti maniac. Our most notable visit here was probably her 4th birthday party, which featured a memorably random cast of family members. Up above are some photos of her attacking chocolate birthday cake at that party. Maddie appears to be enjoying herself considerably just watching her sister in action. As the name would imply, it’s a great old building with a warehouse vibe, the highlight being this train car with highly in-demand seating.

-German Village-

The original Max & Erma’s was opened down here in 1958 (739 S. 3rd Street), before becoming a franchise in 1972. Sadly this spot went belly up in 2017 and an operation known as Wunderbar currently calls this address home. But as a consolation prize, there’s no shortage of great restaurants and taverns both, mostly within walking distance of one another, down in this district.

-Uptown District-

Mitchell’s Steakhouse

Downtown Columbus This has already been a fun, if sprawling and chaotic, section to tackle. Expect frequent changes as I continue to add to and revise the sections.

#Arena District #Brewery District #Columbus Dispatch #COSI #Dispatch #downtown Columbus #Mitchell&039;s #Mitchell&039;s Steakhouse #North Market #Victory&039;s

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