Intelligence, Applied - Issue
This is issue #2 of intelligence, applied.
Hope you’re keeping well. I want to thank you for subscribing - I know you have a thousand other emails and newsletters in your inbox that are clamouring for your attention. I promise to keep this short and useful. If you’re reading this on my website and not via email, I’d encourage you to subscribe here.
A quick primer: I’m interested in the applications of data and machine learning to further human potential, agnostic of realm or industry. Through this newsletter I’m hoping to highlight data projects that I find interesting, or podcasts, articles and playlists that inspire me.
Saadat
Last week #
It is hard not to let the events of last ten days affect us mentally; on top of a global pandemic, there are million other acts of injustice occurring globally every day. Perhaps why the killing of George Floyd and other members of the black community as a result of police brutality strikes such a chord is because of how long the cries for help have gone unheard. The struggle for racial equality has plagued the US since for more than four centuries hundred years, and one can only hope that the events of last week are the tipping point for change.
What can I do to become a more informed individual?
I’ve realized the my information diet lacks racial and cultural diversity; a quick scan of authors on my Kindle, podcasts I subscribe to, email newsletter subscriptions, people I follow on Twitter reveals a lack of diversity of thought and opinions. Which is bewildering given I am person of colour. I intend to change that, starting today. If you have any recommendations on unique perspectives that I should be paying attention to, please let me know by replying to this email.
Love, Trust and Speech to Text #
Businesses are built on love and trust. This is a quote from the podcast I highlighted last week (see previous note about exposure to diverse ideas). This phrase captivated me. As I’m building a company from the ground up, I’m paying particular attention to writing down cultural virtues that I hope the company will embody for the future, and ensuring that the foundations of the company are ground in love and trust are top of mind. There were many other parts of the conversation between Eric Ries and Brian Chesky that I wanted to note of for future reference, but I couldn’t find a podcast transcription services available for free. Turns out you call pull this off with a bit of Python code (code and details are forthcoming, but I used the transcribe module available here ).
As with any natural language processing (NLP) problem, the initial results aren’t great:
The full text of the podcast is available here.
Data Product of the Week: #
PodScribe (as the name suggests) transcribes your favourite podcast episode (for a fee). It’s essentially a paid web application version of the code that I used above, and also uses Google’s Speech-to-Text API.
(PodScribe does not sponsor, and is not affiliated with this newsletter.)
Feedback is welcome, as always.
Hoping you have a productive week ahead.