Stripping Away

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As we grow older in the West, we generally think we should have a lot to show for our lives—a lot of trophies. According to numerous Eastern philosophies, this is backwards. As we age, we shouldn’t accumulate more to represent ourselves, but rather strip things away to find our true selves—and thus, to find happiness and peace. 

Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

The Good Myth

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Six developmental trends may be identified as a standard or a criterion against which we may compare a particular personal myth. Over the course of adolescence through middle adulthood, a personal myths should ideally develop in the direction of increasing (1) coherence, (2)  openness, (3) credibility, (4) differentiation, (5) reconciliation, and (6) generative integration. The prototype of the “good story” in human identity is one that receives high marks on these six narrative standards.  

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By

Tuesday Tech Tools: 14 QR Generators

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Legit QR generators will have SSL certification along with positive reviews from notable companies.

delivr
Creates QR codes. Privacy focused.

Kaywa
5 dynamic codes for free, then $13.75 and up a month for analytics, etc.

Mashable
Article on how to create a QR code.

QR Explore
Offers a bulk QR code generator and label generator.

QR Stuff
QR code generator for both static and dynamic QR codes. Must sign up for an account first. Especially for small businesses. Free.

QRicket
Free QR code generator for static QR codes. Works especially with bit.ly and Google analytics. Free.

QRTIGER
A reliable QR Code generator that can integrate with 1000s of apps. Both for business and personal projects. Generate a static QR code for free if the content needs no editing.

Shopify
Offers a static QR code generator.

Sparq code (formally Maestro) no longer available

Unitag QR
EU company offering a QR code generator and a QR code reader. Must create an account first. Especially for small companies that conduct transactions in Euros.

Visme
Create graphics and maps just for a particular platform for social-specific content. Free for up to five maps with limited features. Paid accounts starting at $15 month. Also has a QR code generator for static codes.

Visualead
Integrate QR codes seamlessly into branded packaging. Good for marketers, small businesses, and professionals with limited graphic design skills.

Zebra QR
Create QR menus in a PDF or a landing page. Especially for dining places (cafes, restaurants, etc.)

Zxing Project

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11 Articles about Job Negotiation

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Painting your Internal World

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Therapists often run into a curious problem during treatment: Clients aren’t very good at describing their emotions. How exactly do you express the nature of your depression? So this spring, relationship counselor Crystal Rice hit upon a clever idea. She had her clients use Pinterest, the popular picture-pinning social network, to create arrays of images that map out their feelings. It’s a brilliant epiphany: While emotions can be devilishly difficult to convey in words, they’re often very accessible via pictures. “This way we can really identify what’s going on,” Rice says.

As Rice discovered with her clients, Pinterest’s appeal is that it gives us curiously powerful visual ways to communicate, think, and remember. If you see one picture of a guitar, it’s just a guitar; but when you see 80 of them lined up you start to see guitarness. This additive power is precisely what helps Rice’s clients paint their internal worlds.  

Part of the value of Pinterest is that it brings you out of yourself and into the world of things. As the Huffington Post writer Bianca Bosker argued, Facebook and Twitter are inwardly focused (“Look at me!”) while Pinterest is outwardly focused (“Look at this!”). It’s the world as seen through not your eyes but your imagination.  

Granted, Pinterest encourages plenty of dubious behavior too. It can be grindingly materialistic; all those pins of stuff to buy! Marketers are predictably adrool, and as they swarm aboard, the whole service might very well end up collapsing into a heap of product shilling.  

But I suspect we’ll see increasingly odd and clever ways of using Pinterest. If a picture is worth a thousand words, those collections are worth millions.

Clive Thompson, Wired Magazine 

25 Data Science Articles from July 2022

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Is machine learning about to face a reproducibility crisis?

The US Space Force has picked Wallaroo’s AI & machine learning platform to solve edge model deployment challenges in space  

A new Python package for computing effect sizes

Deep learning researchers should try other techniques when solving a problem

Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers is capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications

A small satellite mission for DARPA called Red-Eye comes to light that tested crosslinks and on-orbit processing

NGA is supporting the new Dept of State-funded Conflict Observatory program which helps document potential war crimes

US military cybersecurity experts at DARPA are concerned about the ubiquitous & open source Linux kernel

“Satellite modularity may be the key to answering new imperatives for the military space”

Large language models are not very good at being factual. “It looks very coherent. It’s almost true. But it’s often wrong.”

AI-enabled image fraud in scientific publications

It’s turning out to be harder than expected to integrate multiple types of satellites with a new ground architecture using custom-built ground stations

What does the smallsats trend & the rise of low earth orbit constellations mean for Geostationary Orbit?

China sent a new data relay satellite into orbit that can work in different orbital positions low- and mid-orbiting satellites

From physicist to machine learning engineer for Google—talking about skills he had to learn, “use cases, best practices & the field of ML”

Making atomic force microscopy more accurate with artificial intelligence by using machine learning techniques to reduce AFM uncertainty

Apache Hive hacks for a data scientist

Countries that have launched the most objects into space ranked

A practical guide for time series data forecasting using machine learning models in Python

He dropped out to become a poet. Now he’s won the top award for mathematics: “Mathematicians are a lot like artists in that really we’re looking for beauty”

How predicting the occurrence of a word (n-gram language modeling) can be used at the convergence of artificial intelligence & linguistics (natural language processing)

Team seeks to improve coordination between data from geospatial intelligence information systems – operated by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and US Air Force aircraft

Some of the best spreadsheets with the power of Python and the ease of use of Excel

“The question of whether space is really crowded is hotly debated in the industry” Myths vs. Reality

Adversarial machine learning poses a new threat to national security

Daily data science articles here.

Deep Roots (published on this day in 1954)

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All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be the blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

-J. R. R. Tolkien, from the “Fellowship of the Ring” published July 29, 1954

Playing Patty-cake

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With younger children the communication is more and more nonverbal but still ideally requires periods of total concentration.

You can't play patty-cake very well when your mind is elsewhere. And if you can only play patty-cake halfheartedly, you are running the risk of having a halfhearted child. Adolescent children require less total listening time from their parents than a six-year-old but even more true listening time.

They are much less likely to chatter aimlessly, but when they do talk, they want their parents' full attention even more than do the younger children.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Tuesday Tech Tools: 16 Presentation Tools

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Beautiful.ai
Quickly make beautiful slides with these graphic tools. Slightly different workflow than PowerPoint so it takes a little time getting used to but more fun. Free.

Brainshark
Convert existing PowerPoints slide presentations into an online video. Easy to use. fee for some options.

Bunkr
Collects visual content and organize it into slides. Like Evernote for formatting presentations. Built for speedy, easy assembly though not as flexible as Prezi. The HTML5 presentation works on computers, phones and tablets.  Allows for multiple users to work on the same presentation (like Google Docs). Free unless you want to space to store more than two presentations, though you can download them in PDF or PPT.

Flipsnack (formally SlideSnack)
Record your PDFs as an audio-visual slidecast. Basic features are free, more options for purchase.

Google Docs Presentations  
Create presentations inside Google Docs. Free with collaborative editing but more limited than PowerPoint.

Keynote
For Mac users, compatible with iPhone and iPad.

Ludus
Presentation app focused on simple formatting. Turns PDFs into flipbooks. Add text, photos, videos. $14.99 a month.

Mmhmm
Makes video presentations for video conference meetings. Easily superimpose a resizable version of yourself over photos, videos and slides and share a live feed. Fun tools like laser pointers and filters. There is an educational discount. $12 a month.

Mobile Mouse
Use Your phone to Give a presentation. Phone app will control computer. Free version with limited features. MobileMouse Pro, $2.99 for iPad or Android or iOS $1.99.

Paste
A product of WeTransfer to quickly create slide decks. Limited options compared to PowerPoint or Keynote but inexpensive. $9.99 a year.

Pitch*
Embed pre-recorded videos inside of presentations. Customize video sizes, shapes, and positioning for each slide. Free $8 a month for more options.

PowerPoint
The ubiquitous Microsoft presentation program that’s still easy to use (although often poorly used) for creating slides. $159.99, less with Microsoft 360.

Prezi*
Slide creator. Alternative to PowerPoint. Use 3-D zoom and turn your slides into a cinematic experience.

Screencast-O-Matic
Screencasts can be shared on YouTube, embedded in websites, and accessed online.

Screencastify*
Chrome extension that records a computer screen. Videos are saved on your Google Drive account. Allows the user to record the desktop or record audio. Free.

SlideShare*
Popular resentation tool owned by LinkedIn. Use documents, PDFs and video to create webinars, audio presentations, for online lectures etc. Solid analytics for free. Watch a slide show about SlideShare here.

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Job Interviews: 19 Articles About What They Do

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Love's advice to his younger self

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Robert Love offers this advice to his 16-year-old self in The Week magazine:

Dear Bob: Would you like some advice from the older you? Turn the volume down to 10 and the SPF up to 30. Be patient with yourself and those who cross your path. Cherish your friends and family; you will miss them soon enough. Don’t feel too bad if you never seem to understand the girl in your life. There are mysteries that will never be solved. Most of all, never lose your curiosity. It will guide you to a career and a calling and bring you into the company of others who are wildly curious about the world and how it works. Believe me, there is no better place to be.