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Troops to receive Purple Hearts for injuries during Iranian missile barrage on al-Asad airbase in Iraq

There will be Purple Hearts awarded to troops injured during the Jan. 8 Iranian missile barrage on the al-Asad airbase in Iraq, a defense official told Military Times.




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My PTSD can be a weight. But in this pandemic, it feels like a superpower.

For the first time, it seems, the entire world knows what it’s like to live inside my head.






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School District Switches to Local and Organic Meals, Cuts Carbon Footprint—and Saves Money

By Melissa Hellmann Yes! Magazine A new report revealed surprising results when Oakland overhauled its lunch menu at 100-plus schools by serving less meat and more fruits and vegetables. When her eldest son was in elementary school in the Oakland … Continue reading




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Nature Offers Solutions to Water Woes and Flood Risks

By David Suzuki David Suzuki Foundation When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defence, transportation, … Continue reading




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You Know Clean Air is Good for Your Health. It’s Good for the Economy, Too.

By Rachel Cernansky Ensia When the Clean Air Act of 1970 became law, members of the business community in the United States responded with opposition. Such regulations are a drag on growth, some economists say, for individual businesses and for … Continue reading




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How Coal Country Is Cleaning Up Its Act

By Mason Adams Yes! Magazine A program in eastern Kentucky is retraining miners in industries that help mitigate the environmental impacts of mining on communities. Like many men raised in eastern Kentucky, Frank Morris spent a chunk of his working … Continue reading




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Coronavirus is Shutting Down the Meat Supply Chain

The United States faces a major meat shortage due to virus infections at processing plants. It means millions of pigs could be put down without ever making it to table. This is what the predicament looks like on a Minnesota farm. ... According to the Minnesota Pork Producers Association, an estimated 10,000 pigs are being euthanised every day in the state. ... [Farmer Mike Boerboom:] "On the same day that we're euthanising pigs - and it's a horrible day - is the same day that a grocery store 10 miles away may not get a shipment of pork. It's just that the supply chain is broken at this point."




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Judge Could Hold Up Trump Administration's Bid to Clear Flynn, Legal Experts say

The notoriously independent-minded federal judge who once said he was disgusted by the conduct of Michael Flynn could block the administration's bid to drop criminal charges against the former adviser to President Donald Trump, legal experts said.




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Scientists Obtain 'lucky' Image of Jupiter

Astronomers have produced a remarkable new image of Jupiter, tracing the glowing regions of warmth that lurk beneath the gas giant's cloud tops. The picture was captured in infared by the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, and is one of the sharpest observations of the planet ever made from the ground.




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Intuition, Creative Freedom & Doing What You Love with Chris Ballew

Today’s episode is going to rock your world … pun fully intended because today’s guest is an actual rock star. You may remember a band called Presidents of the United States of America. They took the world by storm in 1995 with their self titled album, Presidents of the United States of America playing songs like Lump and Peaches. Yes, that’s right. My guest today is frontman Chris Ballew. Chris and I have been friends for years, including collaborating on a music video together and at least one live performance (gotta listen to find out ;). Of course we get into his musical journey, a meteoric rise to success, and then realizing something was missing. We take some deep dives into Chris’ creative process, including his method for capturing his small bits and later using those to write new works, including his new project Casper Babypants. In this episode: Consider what kind of artist you are and how you relate to other artists. For years Chris played in bands, but what he learned about himself is his work is actually solo. Don’t censor yourself while you’re creating. Get it out, no matter how crazy or ridiculous or unusual and then […]

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Adaptation, Self-Awareness and Art of the Side Hustle with Chris Guillebeau

Chris Guillebeau has traveled to 193 countries. And just to be clear, that is all of the countries recognized on the planet. He is the first person to do it before the age of 35. More importantly, he has built online businesses, side hustles, and mastered the art of a non-conforming lifestyle since he was 19 years old. There’s almost nobody better person equipped to talk about starting lots of businesses. He has a daily podcast called Side Hustle School where he’s featured more than 850 different side hustle businesses + featured many in his new book called 100 Side Hustles. Chris also started half a dozen or more himself, started one of my favorite conferences, The World Domination Summit, and is a New York Times bestselling author of books like the $100 Start Up and The Art of Non-Conformity and many others. This guy is a beast and he’s so savvy, so humble. In this episode: We go into details about some of Chris’ favorite side hustle businesses he’s come across in his podcast & writing this book – what are some of the most common traits and failures. Chris shares his experience with depression, how he’s faced it, […]

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The Soulful Art of Persuasion with Jason Harris

As creators and entrepreneurs, getting our ideas out in the world is critical. And today, I have my long time friend Jason Harris in the hot seat to help us with just that. Jason is the founder and CEO of the award winning creative agency Mekanism. He is one of Creativity Mag’s most creative people in business, Top 100 People Who Make Advertising Great and about 52 other awards in the creative space. You’ve certainly seen his work if you’ve watched Superbowl commercials or heard of Peloton, Ben & Jerrys, HBO, and more. He also is one of the people that I look up to as a model of giving back. He donates a huge amount of his time to causes in which he believes and uses his marketing savvy for doing good in the world. I’m super inspired by our conversation today for so many reasons, but here’s handful to whet your palette: Of course we get into his new book The Soulful Art of Persuasion, in which Jason breaks down the art of sharing our ideas in an honest and authentic ways We talk about the ups and downs living life identifying as a professional creator, including the […]

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Win the Morning. Win the Day with Tim Ferriss

In small, daily actions you’re creating outcomes for yourself and by extension, creating your life. My man Tim Ferriss is a master at deconstructing the work of others and de-stilling it into a working practice. In fact, he wrote his book Tools of Titans as a reference of some of the tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires. In this quick episode, he shares the 3 key themes he’s seen in over 200 hundred people he’s interviewed. Enjoy! FOLLOW TIM: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Everything is Figureoutable with Marie Forleo

You know her, the award-winning host, author and speaker, Marie Forleo returns to the podcast to talk about her new book , Everything Is Figureoutable. In the New York Times Best-Selling book, Marie gives readers tactics to look at setbacks positively and overcome obstacles creatively, so you can start reaching your dreams.  In this episode, we sit down to talk about how her life experiences influenced the book. She shares stories of fear, failure and always having fun have impacted her life. And we discuss a quote of hers (that I repeat all the time) that can help you get into the creative zone. Enjoy! FOLLOW MARIE: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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How To Get UN-STUCK From Anything in Life That’s Got You Down [with Lewis Howes]

Ever felt STUCK with something in your life? Blocked, like you can’t get past this mental state, this hurdle, this creative block, this bad habit, this… Wait a minute. Why am I even asking that question? Of course you’ve been stuck before. We’ve literally ALL been stuck before. And by extension we all know how much it sucks to be in this state of mind. AND – on the flipside – how amazing it is when you can reclaim your life and get back to the things you want to be thinking, doing, and becoming. I’m obsessed with overcoming the mental blockers that try to keep me down – and I think it’s been a big piece of my personal success. Which is why I thought this little nugget might help. ENTER: Lewis Howes. My good friend Lewis Howes was in the studio shooting his newest CreativeLive course last week and I was able to snag him for a few minutes to chat about his new book and his amazingly simple, yet powerful process for reclaiming our lives and live our biggest dreams. In this episode, Lewis shares a powerful experience from his life and how- on reflection – it helped […]

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Harmony > Balance with Jason Calacanis

Today we’re going back to San Francisco with myself and Jason Calacanis on stage during my tour stop for my book Creative Calling. Jason is an investor and long time host of the This Week in Startups podcast. And, of course, Jason wastes no time in our conversation. He goes right to the heart of the matter by getting into failure, venture capitol, knowing when to quit, and when to push through. Enjoy! FOLLOW JASON: facebook | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Self Reliance + Personal Uprising with John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a veteran marketer. He’s written several bestselling books including Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine. He’s out with a new book called the Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business  As you might know, I’m a bit of a fan of daily habits, so of course John gives us a little preview into some of the daily explorations of thoughts and writings from notable American authors. Of course, that’s not all…  we also get into: We go deep into following your own path and listening to your intuition. What we can learn from rabble rousers of our history and those who embraced counter culture to follow their own beliefs. The role that self-awareness has in pursuing our dreams. and much more. Enjoy! FOLLOW JOHN: facebook | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New […]

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My Favorite Gifts For Photographers Under $100(ish)

Every holiday season, I get an influx of DMs, tweets, texts and messages from followers, friends and family asking for my photo gear recommendations. This year, rather than putting together a list of all the high-tech cameras and lenses that come with high-price tags to match – I wanted share some affordable add-ons that thrifty photographers should have in their arsenal. As I like to say, the best camera is the one you have with you and most of the time that’s the one in your pocket ????  If you are looking for gift ideas for the photographer on your list these are my go-tos under $100(ish).   Moment Lens  These pocket size lenses will transform your mobile device into a lightweight DSLR. With a variety of lenses from fisheye to macro, Moment add-ons are durable, easy-to-use and have incredible clarity. Compatible with almost every smartphone, these compact lens take the camera in your pocket up a notch.          Shure Mic Shure has transformed mobile audio with its line of mobile mics. Regardless of your price point, the audio company creates options that will take your sound from distorted to crystal clear. As a photographer and podcaster […]

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Chris Burkard: Say Yes to What You Want

Today’s guest is one many of you have been asking for oh-so-long. He’s one of the top travel, outdoor, and landscape photographers in the world, bringing us to some of the most untamed and powerful landscapes in the pursuit of powerful stories, hidden surf, and a good adventure. Of course in this episode we get into his new book, At Glacier’s End, but we also get into some meaty topics such as: the power of exploring personal projects and how it can shape new opportunities the sacrifice that comes as pursing your passions personal growth and how it evolves over time and so much more Enjoy! FOLLOW CHRIS: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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There Is Only One You with Clemency Burton-Hill

There are 7106 languages on earth and yet there are a few universal languages that transcends the language barrier. In this episode we explore one of the first universal languages of human history: music. My guest today is Clemency Burton-Hill. From underground DJ to the Creative Director at New York Public Radio, she is an author, a musician, and host of multiple podcasts including The Open Ears Project, Classical Fix, and Moments that Made Me. Her latest book, Year of Wonder helps readers explore and experience a new classical musical piece every day. In this episode: Classical music has a bad rap for being stuffy, boring, and largely inaccessible. Clemency expands on what’s available, and how it’s really the soundtrack of our lives. The universality of music and how we use music to explore, express, and share. Of course, Clemency drops so many names of musical artists to explore who are crushing it today. Enjoy! FOLLOW CLEMENCY: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast  Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in […]

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Corey Rich: Good Enough is Never Good Enough

Corey Rich is a director, writer, and one of the top action sports photographers of our time. He has built a life and a career around his passions for travel and adventure by documenting some of the world’s greatest athletes in extreme locations spanning the globe. From alpine climbing in Pakistan’s Karakoram Mountains to ultramarathon racing in the Sahara Desert of Morocco, freight-train hopping in the American West, underwater cave exploration in the Yucatan and snowboarding in Papua New Guinea – if you’re an outdoor adventure lover, you’ve likely seen his work gracing the pages of your favorite magazines and video screens. Corey is a long-time friend and a master storyteller, so when he released his latest book, Stories Behind the Images, I couldn’t wait to have him on the show. In this episode, Corey takes us on a journey behind the scenes of his life and career. We get into: Doing what you love. The process of chasing the things we know we’re supposed to be doing in our heart. Sacrifice. I don’t know a single person at the top of their game who hasn’t sacrificed something to be where they are today. Corey reflects on what what he’s sacrificed […]

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Finding Mastery: A Conversation with Michael Gervais

This week I’m in the hot seat with one of the leading experts in mindset training. Dr. Michael Gervais is a high performance psychologist working in the trenches of high-stakes environments with some of the best in the world. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists, MVPs from every major sport and Fortune 100 CEOs. Dr. Gervais is also the co-founder of Compete to Create, an educational platform for mindset training. Today I’m on his podcast Finding Mastery which unpacks & decodes each guest’s journey to mastery through mindset skills and practices. If you’ve been a listener for awhile, you’ll know this is one of my favorite topics and something I wholeheartedly credit to unlocking my best work. In this episode: How I learned to trust my intuition Dr. Gervais aptly calls out two journeys to mastery: one of self, and one of craft. I share my perspective on how mastery of craft is a required step to mastering oneself We’re taught that making mistakes is bad so we should avoid them. What we really should be taught is it’s not about avoiding mistakes, it’s about error recovery. and much more… Enjoy! FOLLOW MICHAEL: instagram | twitter […]

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The Code of the Extraordinary Mind with Vishen Lakhiani

Join me + bestselling author Vishen Lakhiani LIVE Tuesday April 7 at 6:30pm PST. Vishen Lakhiani is one of today’s most influential minds in the fields of education and human consciousness. He is the founder of Mindvalley University and its 2 million-strong student base and creator of the Quests learning platform: a next-generation method of online learning, which attains an unheard-of 60% completion rate on courses, in an industry where 8% is average. Vishen’s book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, made the New York Times Business Best Sellers List, and hit the coveted #1 spot on Amazon five times in 2017. Enjoy! FOLLOW VISHEN: instagram | facebook | website Listen to the Podcast coming soon … Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Resilience + Reinvention with Canlis Restaurateurs

In any uncertain time there, we can both feel anxious, upset, curious and we can also look for opportunities. Opportunities for reinvention, for connection, and community in ways we haven’t seen before. That’s the theme of today’s episode with some of my good friends Mark and Brian Canlis + James Beard Award Winning Chef Brady Williams in a conversation we recorded for CreativeLive TV. Mark and Brian run an iconic restaurant in Seattle named Canlis. It’s been a family business for over 70 years. Faced with these uncertain times, they share how they’ve reinvented their business 3 times over the last couple of months. No matter what industry you’re in, their story of overcoming obstacles, problem solving and heart is wisdom for all of us. Enjoy! FOLLOW CANLIS: instagram | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors […]

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Do What You Can Do with Cellist Joshua Roman

Legendary musician Yo-Yo Ma called my guest today the future of classical music in America. Joshua Roman is a cellist, accomplished composer and curator whose performances embrace musical styles from Bach to Radiohead. At 22, he became the youngest principal cellist in the Seattle Symphony. Now as a soloist, his performances have been viewed by millions. I was able to catch up with Joshua on this special LIVE performance CreativeLive TV. Wherever you are in the world, hope this episode lifts you up. Please be sure to give Joshua a shout on the socials. Enjoy! FOLLOW JOSHUA: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Scurry: A Race-To-Finish Scavenger Hunt App

We have a lot of traditions here at Viget, many of which you may have read about - TTT, FLF, Pointless Weekend. There are others, but you have to be an insider for more information on those.

Pointless Weekend is one of our favorite traditions, though. It’s been around over a decade and some pretty fun work has come out of it over the years, like Storyboard, Baby Bookie, and Short Order. At a high level, we take 48 hours to build a tool, experiment, or stunt as a team, across all four of our offices. These projects are entirely separate from our client work and we use them to try out new technologies, explore roles on the team, and stress-test our processes.

The first step for a Pointless Weekend is assembling the teams. We had two teams this year, with a record number of participants. You can read about TrailBuddy, what the other team built, here.

The Scurry team was split between the DC and Durham offices, so all meetings were held via Hangout.

Once we were assembled, we set out to understand the constraints and the goals of our Pointless Project. We went into this weekend with an extra pep in our step, as we were determined to build something for the upcoming Viget 20th anniversary TTT this summer. Here’s what we knew we wanted:

  1. An activity all Vigets could do together, where they could create memories, and share broadly on social
  2. Something that we could use in a spotty network at C Lazy U Ranch in Colorado
  3. A product we can share with others: corporate groups, families and friends, schools, bachelor/ette parties

We landed on a scavenger hunt native app, which we named Scurry (Scavenger + Hurry = Scurry. Brilliant, right?). There are already a few scavenger apps available, so we set out to create something that was

  • Quick and easy to set up hunts
  • Free and intuitive for users
  • A nice combination of trivia and activities
  • Social! We wanted to enable teams to share photos and progress

One of the main reasons we have Pointless Weekends is to test out new technologies and processes. In that vein, we tried out Notion as our central organizing tool - we used it for user journeys, data modeling, and even writing tickets, which we typically use Github for.

We tested out Notion as our primary tool, writing tickets and tracking progress.

When we built the app, we needed to prepare for spotty network service, as internet connectivity isn’t guaranteed at C Lazy U Ranch – where our Viget20 celebration will be. A Progressive Web Application (PWA) didn't make sense for our tech requirements, so we chose the route of creating a native application.

There are a number of options available to build native applications. But, as we were looking to make as much progress as possible in 48-hours, we chose one of our favorite frameworks: React Native. React Native allows developers to build true, cross-platform native applications, using some of our favorite technologies: javascript, the React framework, and a native-specific variant of CSS. We decided on the turn-key solution Expo. Expo has extra tooling allowing for easy development, deployment, and debugging.

This is a snap shot of our app and Expo.

Our frontend developers were able to immediately dive in making screens and styling components, and quickly made the mockups in Whimsical a reality.

On the backend, we used the supported library to connect to the backend datastore, Firebase. Firebase is a hosted solution for data storage, with key features built-in like authentication, realtime updates, and offline support. Our backend developer worked behind the frontend developers hooking those views up to live data.

Both of these tools, Expo and Firebase, were easy to use and allowed us to focus on building a working application quickly, rather than being mired in setup or bespoke solutions to common problems.

Whimsical is one of our favorite tools for building out mockups of an app.

We made impressive progress in our 48-hour sprint, but there’s still some work to do. We have some additional features we hope to add before TTT, which will require additional testing and refining. For now, stay tuned and sign up for our newsletter. We’ll be sure to share when Scurry is ready for the world!



  • News & Culture

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Together We Flourish, Remotely

Like many other companies, Viget is working through the new challenge of suddenly being a fully-distributed company. We don’t know how long it will last or every challenge that will arise because of these unfortunate circumstances, but we know the health and well-being of our people is paramount. As Employee Engagement Manager, I feel inspired by these new challenges, eager to step up, and committed to seeing what good can come of this.

Now more than ever, we want to maintain the culture that has sustained us over the last 20 years – a culture that I think is best captured by our mantra, “do great work and be a great teammate.” As everyone is adjusting to new work environments, schedules, and distractions, I am adjusting my approach to employee engagement, and the People Team is looking for new ways to nurture and protect the culture we treasure.

The backbone of being a great teammate is knowing each other and caring about each other. For years the People Team has focused on making sure people who work at Viget are known, accepted, and cared about. From onboarding to events to weekly and monthly touchpoints, we invest in coworkers knowing each other. On top of that, we have well-appointed offices where people like to be, and friendships unfold over time. Abruptly becoming fully distributed makes it impossible for some of these connections to happen organically, like they would have around the coffee machine and the lunch tables. These microinteractions between colleagues in the same office, the hellos when you get off the elevator or the “what’d you get up to this weekend” chit chat near the seltzer refrigerator, all add up. We realize more than ever how valuable those moments are, and I know I will feel extra grateful for them when we are all back together.

Until that time, we are working to make sure everyone at Viget feels connected, safe, healthy, and most importantly, together, even when we are physically apart. We are keeping up our weekly staff meetings and monthly team lunches, and we just onboarded a new hire last week as thoroughly as ever. There are some other, new ways we’re sparking connections, too.

New ways we're sparking connections:

Connecting IntentionallyWe are making the most of the tools that we’ve been using for years. New Slack channels have spun up, including #exercise, where folks are sharing how they are making do without a gym, and #igotyou, a place where folks can post where they’ve found supplies in stock as grocery stores are being emptied at an alarming pace.
Remote Lunch TablesWe have teammates in three different time zones, on different project teams, and at different stages of life. We’ve created two virtual lunch tables, one at 12PM EST and one at 12PM MST, where folks can join with or without their lunches and with or without their kids, partners, or pets. There are no rules or structure, just an opportunity to chat and see a friendly face as a touchpoint to your day.
Last Weekend This MorningCatching up Monday morning is a great way to kick off your week. Historically, I’ve done this from my desk over coffee as I greet folks coming off the elevator (I usually have the privilege of sitting at our front desk). I now do this from my desk, at home, over coffee as folks pop in or out of our Zoom call. One upshot of the new normal is I can “greet” anyone who shows up, not just people who work from my same office. Again, no structure, just a way to start our week, together.
Munch MadnessYes, you read that right. Most of the sports world is enjoying an intermission. Since our CEO can’t cheer on his beloved Cavaliers and our VP of Design can’t cheer on his Gators, we’ve created something potentially much better. A definitive snack bracket. There is a minimal time commitment and folks with no sports knowledge can participate. The rules are simple: create and submit your bracket, ranking who you believe will win each snack faceoff. Then as we move through the rounds, vote on your favorite snacks. The competition has already sparked tons of conversation and plenty of snack hot takes. Want to start a munch-off of your own? Check out our bracket as a starting point.
Virtual Happy HoursSigning off for the day and shutting down your machine is incredibly important for maintaining a work-life balance. Casually checking in, unwinding, and being able to chat about your day is also important. We have big, beautiful kitchens in each of our offices, along with casual spaces where at the end of any given day you can find a few Vigets catching up before heading home. This is something we don’t want to miss! So we’re setting up weekly happy hours where folks can hop in and say hi to each other face-to-face. We’ve found Zoom to be a great platform so we can see the maximum number of our teammates possible. Like all of our other events, it’s optional. There is also an understanding that your roommate, kid, significant other, or pet might show up on screen (and are welcome!). No one is shamed for multitasking and we encourage our teammates to join as they can. So far we’ve toasted new teammates, played a song or two, and up next we’ll play trivia.

At the end of the day, we are all here for one reason: to do great work. Our award-winning work is made possible by the trust we’ve built within our teams. Staying focused and accountable to ourselves and our clients is what drives our motivation to continue to show up and do our best. In our new working environment, it is crucial that we can both stay connected and productive; a lot of teammates are stepping up to support one another. Here are a few ways we are continuing to foster our “do great work” mantra.

New ways we're fostering great work:

Staying in TouchThe People Team is actively touching base with every employee. Our focus is on their health, productivity, and connection. These 1:1s have given us a baseline for how we can provide the best support for our team, from making sure they're aware of flexible work options to setting them up with the tools they need to be successful. We’ve delivered chairs, monitors, and helped troubleshoot in-home wifi issues. We are committed to making sure every Viget is set up for success.
Sharing is CaringWe’re no stranger to remote teams. We have four offices across the U.S. and a handful of full-time remote folks, and we’ve leaned on our inside experts to share their expertise on remote work. Most recently, ourData & Analytics Director, who has been working remotely full time for five years, gave a presentation on best practices for working from home. His top tips for working from home include:
  • Minimize other windows in remote meetings.
  • Set a schedule and avoid midday chores.
  • Take breaks away from the screen.
  • Plan your workday on your shared calendar.
  • Be mindful of Slack and social media as a distraction.
  • Use timers.
  • Keep your work area separate from where you relax.
  • Pretend that you’re still working from work.
  • Experiment and figure out what works for you.

Our UX Research Director also stepped up to share her expertise to aid in adjusting to our new working conditions. She led a microclass on remote facilitation where she shared best practices and went over tools that support remote collaboration. Some of the tools she highlighted included Miro, Mural, Whimsical, and Jamboard. During the microclass she demonstrated use of Whimsical’s voting feature, which makes it easy for distributed groups to establish discussion topic priorities.

Always PreparedHaving all of our project materials stored in the Cloud in a consistent, predictable way is a cornerstone of our business continuity plan. It is more important than ever for our team to follow the established best practices and ensure that project files are accessible to the full Viget team in the event of unplanned time off. Our VP of Client Services is leading efforts to ensure everyone is aware of and following our established guidelines with tools like Drive, Slack, Github, and Figma. Our priorities are that clients’ needs are met, quality is high, and timelines are honored.

As the pandemic unfolds, our approach to employee engagement will evolve. We have more things in the works to build and maintain connections while distributed, including trivia and game nights, book clubs, virtual movie nights, and community service opportunities, just to name a few. No matter what we’re doing or what tool we’re using to connect, we’ll be in it together: doing great work, being great teammates, and looking forward.



  • News & Culture

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Why Collaborative Coding Is The Ultimate Career Hack

Taking your first steps in programming is like picking up a foreign language. At first, the syntax makes no sense, the vocabulary is unfamiliar, and everything looks and sounds unintelligible. If you’re anything like me when I started, fluency feels impossible. I promise it isn’t. When I began coding, the learning curve hit me — hard. I spent ten months teaching myself the basics while trying to stave off feelings of self-doubt that I now recognize as imposter syndrome.




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Smashing Podcast Episode 15 With Phil Smith: How Can I Build An App In 10 Days?

In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about building apps on a tight timeline. How can you quickly turn around a project to respond to an emerging situation like COVID-19? Drew McLellan talks to Phil Smith to find out. Show Notes CardMedic React Native React Native for Web Expo Apiary Phil’s company amillionmonkeys Phil’s personal blog and Twitter Weekly Update Getting Started With Nuxt Implementing Dark Mode In React Apps Using styled-components How To Succeed In Wireframe Design Mirage JS Deep Dive: Understanding Mirage JS Models And Associations (Part 1) Readability Algorithms Should Be Tools, Not Targets Transcript Drew McLellan: He is director of the full-stack web development studio amillionmonkeys, where he partners with business owners and creative agencies to build digital products that make an impact.




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Reducing Design Risk

Lean, agile, do more with less. Again, and again, design culture urges us to move quickly and trim research and design operations to the point where design becomes a mere thread in the larger corporate spool. Author and designer Nikki Anderson explains the consequences of this pressure to conduct research at lightning speed: “When we’re asked to synthesize at the speed of light, user research becomes a way for teams to take a shortcut — to invent assumptions based on quickly made correlations, opinions, and quotes.






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eagereyesTV Episode 2: Unit Charts, Dot Plots, ISOTYPE, and What Makes Them Special

Charts usually show values as visual properties, like the length in a bar chart, the location in a scatterplot, the area in a bubble chart, etc. Unit charts show values as multiples instead. One famous example of these charts is called ISOTYPE, and you may have seen them in information graphics as well. They’re an […]




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Paper: Evidence for Area as the Primary Visual Cue in Pie Charts

How we read pie charts is still an open question: is it angle? Is it area? Is it arc length? In a study I'm presenting as a short paper at the IEEE VIS conference in Vancouver next week, I tried to tease the visual cues apart – using modeling and 3D pie charts. The big […]




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eagereyesTV Episode 3: 3D Pie Charts For Science!

How do we read pie charts? This seems like a straightforward question to answer, but it turns out that most of what you’ve probably heard is wrong. We don’t actually know whether we use angle, area, or arc length. In a short paper at the VIS conference this week I’m presenting a study I ran […]




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eagereyesTV: What is Data? Part 1, File Formats and Intent

We all use data all the time, but what exactly is data? How do different programs know what to do with our data? How is visualizing data different from other uses of data? And isn’t everything inside a computer data in the end? The latest episode of eagereyesTV looks at what data is and what […]




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ISOTYPE Book: Young, Prager, There’s Work for All

This book from 1945 contains a very interesting mix of different charts made by the ISOTYPE Institute, some classic and some quite unusual. As a book about labor and unemployment, it also makes extensive use of Gerd Arntz’s famous unemployed man icon. Michael Young and Theodor Prager’s There’s Work for All is part of a […]




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eagereyesTV: What Is Data? Part 2, Are Images Data?

Visualization turns data into images, but are images themselves data? There are often claims that they are, but then you mostly see the images themselves without much additional data. In this video, I look at image browsers, a project classifying selfies along a number of criteria, and the additional information stored in HEIC that makes […]




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The Visual Evolution of the “Flattening the Curve” Information Graphic

Communication has been quite a challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic, and data visualization hasn't been the most helpful given the low quality of the data – see Amanda Makulec's plea to think harder about making another coronavirus chart. A great example of how to do things right is the widely-circulated Flatten the Curve information graphic/cartoon. […]




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In Praise of the Diagonal Reference Line

Annotations are what set visual communication and journalism apart from just visualization. They often consist of text, but some of the most useful annotations are graphical elements, and many of them are very simple. One type I have a particular fondness for is the diagonal reference line, which has been used to provide powerful context […]




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Non-associative Frobenius algebras for simply laced Chevalley groups. (arXiv:2005.02625v1 [math.RA] CROSS LISTED)

We provide an explicit construction for a class of commutative, non-associative algebras for each of the simple Chevalley groups of simply laced type. Moreover, we equip these algebras with an associating bilinear form, which turns them into Frobenius algebras. This class includes a 3876-dimensional algebra on which the Chevalley group of type E8 acts by automorphisms. We also prove that these algebras admit the structure of (axial) decomposition algebras.




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The entropy of holomorphic correspondences: exact computations and rational semigroups. (arXiv:2004.13691v1 [math.DS] CROSS LISTED)

We study two notions of topological entropy of correspondences introduced by Friedland and Dinh-Sibony. Upper bounds are known for both. We identify a class of holomorphic correspondences whose entropy in the sense of Dinh-Sibony equals the known upper bound. This provides an exact computation of the entropy for rational semigroups. We also explore a connection between these two notions of entropy.




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Resonances as Viscosity Limits for Exponentially Decaying Potentials. (arXiv:2005.01257v2 [math.SP] UPDATED)

We show that the complex absorbing potential (CAP) method for computing scattering resonances applies to the case of exponentially decaying potentials. That means that the eigenvalues of $-Delta + V - iepsilon x^2$, $|V(x)|leq e^{-2gamma |x|}$ converge, as $ epsilon o 0+ $, to the poles of the meromorphic continuation of $ ( -Delta + V -lambda^2 )^{-1} $ uniformly on compact subsets of $ extrm{Re},lambda>0$, $ extrm{Im},lambda>-gamma$, $arglambda > pi/8$.




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Automorphisms of shift spaces and the Higman--Thomspon groups: the one-sided case. (arXiv:2004.08478v2 [math.GR] UPDATED)

Let $1 le r < n$ be integers. We give a proof that the group $mathop{mathrm{Aut}}({X_{n}^{mathbb{N}}, sigma_{n}})$ of automorphisms of the one-sided shift on $n$ letters embeds naturally as a subgroup $mathcal{h}_{n}$ of the outer automorphism group $mathop{mathrm{Out}}(G_{n,r})$ of the Higman-Thompson group $G_{n,r}$. From this, we can represent the elements of $mathop{mathrm{Aut}}({X_{n}^{mathbb{N}}, sigma_{n}})$ by finite state non-initial transducers admitting a very strong synchronizing condition.

Let $H in mathcal{H}_{n}$ and write $|H|$ for the number of states of the minimal transducer representing $H$. We show that $H$ can be written as a product of at most $|H|$ torsion elements. This result strengthens a similar result of Boyle, Franks and Kitchens, where the decomposition involves more complex torsion elements and also does not support practical extit{a priori} estimates of the length of the resulting product.

We also give new proofs of some known results about $mathop{mathrm{Aut}}({X_{n}^{mathbb{N}}, sigma_{n}})$.




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Linear Convergence of First- and Zeroth-Order Primal-Dual Algorithms for Distributed Nonconvex Optimization. (arXiv:1912.12110v2 [math.OC] UPDATED)

This paper considers the distributed nonconvex optimization problem of minimizing a global cost function formed by a sum of local cost functions by using local information exchange. We first propose a distributed first-order primal-dual algorithm. We show that it converges sublinearly to the stationary point if each local cost function is smooth and linearly to the global optimum under an additional condition that the global cost function satisfies the Polyak-{L}ojasiewicz condition. This condition is weaker than strong convexity, which is a standard condition for proving the linear convergence of distributed optimization algorithms, and the global minimizer is not necessarily unique or finite. Motivated by the situations where the gradients are unavailable, we then propose a distributed zeroth-order algorithm, derived from the proposed distributed first-order algorithm by using a deterministic gradient estimator, and show that it has the same convergence properties as the proposed first-order algorithm under the same conditions. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical simulations.




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Quasistatic evolution for dislocation-free finite plasticity. (arXiv:1912.10118v2 [math.AP] UPDATED)

We investigate quasistatic evolution in finite plasticity under the assumption that the plastic strain is compatible. This assumption is well-suited to describe the special case of dislocation-free plasticity and entails that the plastic strain is the gradient of a plastic deformation map. The total deformation can be then seen as the composition of a plastic and an elastic deformation. This opens the way to an existence theory for the quasistatic evolution problem featuring both Lagrangian and Eulerian variables. A remarkable trait of the result is that it does not require second-order gradients.




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Regularized vortex approximation for 2D Euler equations with transport noise. (arXiv:1912.07233v2 [math.PR] UPDATED)

We study a mean field approximation for the 2D Euler vorticity equation driven by a transport noise. We prove that the Euler equations can be approximated by interacting point vortices driven by a regularized Biot-Savart kernel and the same common noise. The approximation happens by sending the number of particles $N$ to infinity and the regularization $epsilon$ in the Biot-Savart kernel to $0$, as a suitable function of $N$.




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Locally equivalent Floer complexes and unoriented link cobordisms. (arXiv:1911.03659v4 [math.GT] UPDATED)

We show that the local equivalence class of the collapsed link Floer complex $cCFL^infty(L)$, together with many $Upsilon$-type invariants extracted from this group, is a concordance invariant of links. In particular, we define a version of the invariants $Upsilon_L(t)$ and $ u^+(L)$ when $L$ is a link and we prove that they give a lower bound for the slice genus $g_4(L)$. Furthermore, in the last section of the paper we study the homology group $HFL'(L)$ and its behaviour under unoriented cobordisms. We obtain that a normalized version of the $upsilon$-set, introduced by Ozsv'ath, Stipsicz and Szab'o, produces a lower bound for the 4-dimensional smooth crosscap number $gamma_4(L)$.