Have you visited the sculpture garden in the Anza Borrego Desert? There lies the most beautiful sculpture of a serpent. As Ani DiFranco once said: Art is why I get up in the morning! I couldnt agree more.

Serpents are very symbolic in art and theology. They represent fertility, healing, death, and transformation, but they also represent the uncoiling of energy at the base of the spine.

Growing up in the desert of the Southwest I would often find snake skins that had been sloughed off and abandoned for the elements to reclaim. The skin was soft to the touch with translucent scales.

That happens to us when we shed. Its uncomfortable, then were vulnerable in our new shiny skin until we toughen up, and whats left behind is beautiful and interesting.

If youre shedding an old version of yourself, you probably feel sensitive and irritated. Were constantly going through changes and transformations, but sometimes our growth can be challenging, especially when its emotional or spiritual. As I mentioned in last months article: Transformation isnt easy, but easy doesnt change you.

How do you protect yourself when you go through powerful energetic changes?

First, ground your energy, especially if you feel vulnerable. Close your eyes and visualize roots growing through your feet into the Earth. Then you can surround yourself in a bubble of light, which represents a protective barrier. For those of you who are highly empathic, you will need to consciously breathe deep.

There may be a tendency to hold your breath when you feel uncomfortable, anxious, or around people who you sense are stealing your energy from you.

Take a relaxing bath with 1 cup of baking soda and 1 cup of Epson salt. Spend more time in your sanctuary.

Baths are purifying and soothing to the nervous system. Rest is key when you are in a growth spurt like we see with children.

Allow the process to unfold. After a contraction is always an expansion. We see this is nature before a bloom. Contractions can be painful like in labor, but the expansion into parenthood can be really beautiful, if you accept your new identity.

In this new year, ask yourself: How do you want to grow and really show up in this world on a daily basis.

Tracy Aleksic is founder of Radiant Centre

Read more:
Mind, Body and Soul: Shedding and growth - Ramona Sentinel

It has not been a good year for sleep. Between a pandemic, social unrest, an election, and the stresses of working (or learning, or teaching) from home, millions of us are experiencing coronasomnia. Thats why two months ago, I started to take a CBN tincture, in hopes that it would combat the hours of blue light exposure and heightened holiday-related anxiety that were plaguing my sleep habits.

With one 50-milliliter drop of Ned Sleep Blendhalf the recommended doseI drifted into a peaceful, uninterrupted sleep for eight full hours (two more hours than usual, for me). Ive since incorporated a half-dropper of Ned into my bedtime routineand while it lacks the instant catalyst that melatonin or over-the-counter medications provide, it settles my mind into a restful, deep sleep as soon as I shut my eyes.

[Photo: courtesy Ned]

We all have hectic days and tend to stay up really late, and our brains get confused about when to be alert, when to be sleepy, and when to be sleeping deeply, explains Dr. Nitun Verma, a San Francisco sleep physician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Once upon a time when we all used to work outdoors, the sun would go down over a period of hours. It would get cooler, darker, quieter, and your brain would get the sense that it was time to go to sleep.

If youre in search of a good nights sleep, dont worryyou can still help your brain recognize its time to wind down just by building out a routine, Verma says. For example, he recommends cleaning up your workstation when youre done with work for the day. That concept helps your brain understand, Hey this activity is over. And now I get to have personal time and to relax. It shows your brain that youre getting ready to sleep.

For the rest of your evening, here are some of our best suggestions for calming down, cozying up, and getting some shut-eye.

[Photo: courtesy Prismatic Plants]Prismatic Plants Goodnight TincturePrismatic Plants Goodnight Tincture combines all the relaxing elements of cannabis without the unwanted side effects: CBD by itself is not sedativewhat it does do is help calm a busy, racing mind, says founder Sarah Polansky. If you need assistance in making your mind and body tired, then CBN is what you will want to take. Good Night features a blend of adaptogens, MCT oil, and terpenes with 300 milligrams of full-spectrum CBD and 10 milligrams of CBNenough to help you doze off, but not so much that you get a cannabis hangover the next morning, Polansky says.

[Photo: courtesy The Well]The Well Relax BundleWhether you believe in the power of aromatherapy or just like the scent of lavender, the Wells Relax self-care bundle is an excellent way to wind down at the end of a long day. Staff editor Lara Sorokanich says: Before I get into bed, I spray this all over my pillows and sheets. It feels so luxurious and relaxing to get into a lavender-scented bed. Clinically backed or not, the smell definitely makes me feel happy as Im dozing off.

[Photo: courtesy Oura]Oura RingWhile the Oura Ring might not put you into a deep sleep, it can certainly tell you what happens once you get there. Slip this unintrusive smart band onto your finger to track health progress throughout the day and night; it monitors everything from step count to sleep quality. By automatically measuring your sleep balance against your daily activities via the accompanying Oura app, you can be one step closer to determining daytime habits (looking at you, afternoon coffee) that keep you up at night.

[Photo: courtesy Dohm]Dohm Natural Sound MachinesWhite noise is a city dwellers best friend. The dull hum of a sound machine can help drown out disruptions like construction during the day or noisy neighbors at night without adding to the chaos. The mechanical whirling of white noise works by creating a higher-volume baseline, meaning loud, jarring noises dont make you jump. We like these simple, space-conscious Dohm sound machines that enhance an atmosphere with gentle sleep-inducing noise and sleek, inoffensive design.

[Photo: courtesy The Nue Co.]The Nue Co. Sleep DropsPlant-driven supplement brand the Nue Co.s Sleep Suite includes a tincture, capsules, and a magnesium spray thats absorbed through the skin and can be taken individually or in tandem to best tackle your level of restlessness. My approach to a good nights sleep is to relax and unwind, limiting any screen usage an hour before bed and following the same nightly routine, says Jules Miller, founder and CEO of the Nue Co. I use our Magnesium Ease spray on my joints and stomach. Half an hour before bed, I place 12 Sleep Drops under my tongue to help me to fall asleep. I also like to ensure that the room is in complete darkness to minimize any disruption caused by light.

[Photo: courtesy Uncommon Goods]Moon Beam Sleep AidThis clever, flat disc acts as a sleep-inducing metronome, projecting gentle pulses of blue light onto your ceiling for 8 or 20 minutes. Moon Beams process has a dual purpose: calming your busy mind through distraction and slowing down your breathing and metabolism, readying your body for sleep. Users inhale and exhale in time with the dimming and brightening of the blue glow, eventually drifting from 11 breaths per minute to 6.

[Photo: courtesy Bearaby]Bearaby Cotton NapperWe love the deliciously heavy comfort of the chunky knit Bearaby Cotton Napper. The hype of weighted blankets comes from studies that found the all-encompassing pressure can help release serotonin in the body while reducing the stress hormone cortisol. But unlike fellow weighted blankets on the market, Bearabys beautiful, sustainable throws get their heft from thick woven cord that also serves as a mechanism to keep sleepers from getting sweaty.

[Photo: courtesy Riley Home]RileyReversible Flannel Sheet SetThese cotton flannel sheets from Riley are thick and plush, but breathable enough for those who sleep hot. While perfect sleep temperature is subjective, a layer of lightweight warmth can keep you comfortable all night long in chillier months.

[Photo: courtesy Brooklinen]Brooklinen Mulberry Silk Eye MaskDont underestimate the power of a pitch-black room. While blackout curtains certainly help, the glow of charging electronics and late-night rumblings of my partner and cat can shake me out of a deep sleep in an instant. As far as simple solutions go, a sleep mask makes a huge difference by minimizing disruptions. Even better if its made of luxurious silk, like this one from Brooklinen, that doesnt tug my skin and lashes through a night of tossing and turning.

Fast Companymay receive revenue for some links to products on our site.

Read more from the original source:
The best products and tips for getting a better night's sleep - Fast Company

Executive Summary

It is very, very easy for a well-intentioned AI practitioner to inadvertently do harm when they set out to do good AI has the power to amplify unfair biases, making innate biases exponentially more harmful. Because AI often interacts with complex social systems, where correlation and causation might not be immediately clear or even easily discernible AI practitioners need to build partnerships with community members, stakeholders, and experts to help them better understand the world theyre interacting with and the implications of making mistakes. Community-based system dynamics (CBSD) is a promising participatory approach to understanding complex social systems that does just that.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, impacting industries and creating entirely new opportunities. From an engineering standpoint, AI is just a more advanced form of data engineering. Most good AI projects function more like muddy pickup trucks than spotless race cars they are a workhorse technology that humbly makes a production line 5% safer or movie recommendations a little more on point. However, more so than many other technologies, it is very, very easy for a well-intentioned AI practitioner to inadvertently do harm when they set out to do good. AI has the power to amplify unfair biases, making innate biases exponentially more harmful.

As Google AI practitioners, we understand that how AI technology is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come. As such, its crucial to formulate best practices. This starts with the responsible development of the technology and mitigating any potential unfair bias which may exist, both of which require technologists to look more than one step ahead: not Will this delivery automation save 15% on the delivery cost? but How will this change affect the cities where we operate and the people at-risk populations in particular who live there?

This has to be done the old-fashioned way: by human data scientists understanding the process that generates the variables that end up in datasets and models. Whats more, that understanding can only be achieved in partnership with the people represented by and impacted by these variables community members and stakeholders, such as experts who understand the complex systems that AI will ultimately interact with.

How do we actually implement this goal of building fairness into these new technologies especially when they often work in ways we might not expect? As a first step, computer scientists need to do more to understand the contexts in which their technologies are being developed and deployed.

Despite our advances in measuring and detecting unfair bias, causation mistakes can still lead to harmful outcomes for marginalized communities. Whats a causation mistake? Take, for example, the observation during the Middle Ages that sick people attracted fewer lice, which led to an assumption that lice were good for you. In actual fact, lice dont like living on people with fevers. Causation mistakes like this, where a correlation is wrongly thought to signal a cause and effect, can be extremely harmful in high-stakes domains such as health care and criminal justice. AI system developers who usually do not have social science backgrounds typically do not understand the underlying societal systems and structures that generate the problems their systems are intended to solve. This lack of understanding can lead to designs based on oversimplified, incorrect causal assumptions that exclude critical societal factors and can lead to unintended and harmful outcomes.

For instance, the researchers who discovered that a medical algorithm widely used in the U.S. health care was racially biased against Black patients identified that the root cause was the mistaken causal assumption, made by the algorithm designers, that people with more complex health needs will have spent more money on health care. This assumption ignores critical factors such as lack of trust in the health care system and lack of access to affordable health care that tend to decrease spending on health care by Black patients regardless of the complexity of their health care needs.

Researchers make this kind of causation/correlation mistake all the time.But things are worse for a deep learning computer, which searches billions of possible correlations in order to find the most accurate way to predict data, and thus has billions of opportunities to make causal mistakes. Complicating the issue further, it is very hard, even with modern tools, such as Shapely analysis, to understand why such a mistake was made a human data scientist sitting in a lab with their supercomputer can never deduce from the data itself what the causation mistakes may be. This is why, among scientists, it is never acceptable to claim to have found a causal relationship in nature just by passively looking at data. You must formulate the hypothesis and then conduct an experiment in order to tease out the causation.

Addressing these causal mistakes requires taking a step back. Computer scientists need to do more to understand and account for the underlying societal contexts in which these technologies are developed and deployed.

Here at Google, we started to lay the foundations for what this approach might look like. In a recent paper co-written by DeepMind, Google AI, and our Trust & Safety team, we argue that considering these societal contexts requires embracing the fact that they are dynamic, complex, non-linear, adaptive systems governed by hard-to-see feedback mechanisms. We all participate in these systems, but no individual person or algorithm can see them in their entirety or fully understand them. So, to account for these inevitable blindspots and innovate responsibly, technologists must collaborate with stakeholders representatives from sociology, behavioral science, and the humanities, as well as from vulnerable communities to form a shared hypothesis of how they work. This process should happen at the earliest stages of product development even before product design starts and be done in full partnership with communities most vulnerable to algorithmic bias.

This participatory approach to understanding complex social systems called community-based system dynamics (CBSD) requires building new networks to bring these stakeholders into the process. CBSD isgrounded in systems thinking and incorporates rigorous qualitative and quantitative methods for collaboratively describing and understanding complex problem domains, and weve identified it as a promising practice in our research. Building the capacity topartner with communities in fair and ethical ways that provide benefits to all participants needs to be a top priority. It wont be easy. But the societal insights gained from a deep understanding of the problems that matter most to the most vulnerable in society can lead to technological innovations that are safer and more beneficial for everyone.

When communities are underrepresented in the product development design process, they are underserved by the products that result. Right now, were designing what the future of AI will look like. Will it be inclusive and equitable? Or will it reflect the most unfair and unjust elements of our society? The more just option isnt a foregone conclusion we have to work towards it. Our vision for the technology is one where a full range of perspectives, experiences and structural inequities are accounted for. We work to seek out and include these perspectives in a range of ways, including human rights diligence processes, research sprints, direct input from vulnerable communities and organizations focused on inclusion, diversity, and equity such as WiML (Women in ML) and Latinx in AI; many of these organizations are also co-founded and co-led by Googler researchers, such as Black in AI and Queer in AI.

If we, as a field, want this technology to live up to our ideals, then we need to change how we think about what were building to shift to our mindset from building because we can to building what we should. This means fundamentally shifting our focus to understanding deep problems and working to ethically partner and collaborate with marginalized communities. This will give us a more reliable view of both the data that fuels our algorithms and the problems we seek to solve. This deeper understanding could allow organizations in every sector to unlock new possibilities of what they have to offer while being inclusive, equitable and socially beneficial.

Read more:
AI Engineers Need to Think Beyond Engineering - Harvard Business Review

Whether youre on the buy-side or the sell-side, an M&A transaction involves a broad range of critical issues. We understand your industry and have the breadth and depth to advise you on all the legal aspects of your deal. In our new series, 'M&A Plus', our team of legal and industry experts critically examine key issues that arise in M&A transactions, both international and domestic.

We bring deep mid-market M&A expertise to your deals. Our strong collegiate and commercial culture allows us to work seamlessly with colleagues, clients and other trusted advisors to get the deal done. Our focus on outstanding collaboration has been recognised by our recent win of the Mergermarket Australia M&A Collaboration of the Year Award 2020.

In this edition of M&A Plus, we take a close look at M&A plus warranty and indemnity insurance.

In Australia, warranty and indemnity (W&I) insurance has become increasingly popular in the context of private M&A transactions. Typically, the buyer takes out a W&I Insurance policy (W&I Policy) to protect against financial loss arising from a breach of sellers warranty or under an indemnity. For further information, see our previous article W&I insurance: a practical guide to the Australian M&A market.

Importantly, the decision to obtain W&I insurance may alter the negotiation positions taken by, and ultimately, the content of the sale agreement reached between, the seller and the buyer. In a W&I insured deal, the seller may be more willing to accept a broader warranty set than it would under a non-insured deal, if those warranties (after thorough due diligence) are underwritten by the insurer.

Timing of cover

Commonly, the W&I Policy is negotiated before the sale agreement is signed. That way, if the insurer declines to cover a particular warranty, the buyer and the seller still have an opportunity to deal with the issue another way, or alternatively, contractually allocate the risk between themselves.

If the parties agree to put the W&I Policy in place after the sale agreement has been signed, the seller should insist on a condition precedent requiring the buyer to obtain adequate W&I cover (to the satisfaction of the seller) within a specified timeframe prior to completion. The buyers failure to do so would then entitle the seller to terminate the sale agreement. In the absence of a condition precedent and right of termination, the seller may find itself in a precarious position. Having agreed to a broad warranty set on the basis that those warranties would be insured, the seller will still be bound by those warranties, and liable to the buyer if insurance is not obtained.

Mind the gap

Often, a sale agreement will not sign and complete contemporaneously - there may be a gap of several days, weeks or even months, between signing and completion. During this time, the parties are generally required to satisfy (or waive) certain conditions precedent and comply with various pre-completion obligations.

If W&I insurance is taken out at the time of signing the sale agreement, but there is a gap (particularly, a lengthy gap) between signing and completion, the parties should be mindful of potential liability traps that may arise.

Coverage

The level of coverage under W&I insurance varies from policy to policy. While specific terms may be negotiated between the insurer and the insured, a number of standard exclusions tend to apply, including in relation to information which has been disclosed (or is known), transfer pricing, fraud, forward-looking information, and criminal liability.

A lesser-known standard exclusion relates to breaches of insured warranties and claims under insured indemnities, which occur in respect of the period between signing and completion. Despite this being a customary exclusion, the insurer may sometimes provide coverage for warranty breaches and indemnity claims arising in respect of the period from signing to completion under 'new breach cover'.

The availability and suitability of new breach cover depends on a number of factors, including:

Disclosure obligations

A general principle of W&I insurance is that the insurer will only cover unknown risks. If there are risks known to the insured (whether identified during due diligence or otherwise), these risks will be excluded from cover. In line with this position, the insurer will require the insured to periodically deliver a written no claims declaration (NCD) confirming that its nominated deal team members are not aware of any matters that would result in a claim being made under the W&I Policy.

The first NCD is required at signing, with a final NCD to be given on completion. Additional NCDs may be required in the interim (usually, at the end of each 30-day period) if new breach cover has been taken out.

In the absence of new breach cover, a breach that occurs between signing and completion must be disclosed in the completion NCD and will be excluded from cover.

Interaction between policy coverage and the sale agreement

The parties should give careful thought to the operation of the W&I Policy and its interaction with the contractual rights and obligations of the parties under the sale agreement. In particular, it can be problematic for the buyer where the sale agreement provides:

If standard W&I insurance cover is taken out, the parties should consider how to deal with any potential or contingent breaches which become apparent between signing and completion. If the buyer is unable to terminate for a potential warranty breach, then the seller should not be under a positive obligation to disclose potential breaches prior to completion. Otherwise, the buyers deal team members will have knowledge of the potential breach, which may then be excluded from cover. In this scenario, the buyer will have no right to terminate, no right to claim against the W&I Policy and no right to claim against the seller.

Where new breach cover is taken out, the W&I Policy will usually exclude any material adverse change that occurs between signing and completion. If the buyer has no right to terminate for a material adverse change, the buyer will be forced to wear the loss, having once again, no right to terminate, no right to claim against the W&I Policy and no right to claim against the seller.

Conclusion

In recent years, W&I insurance has become more widespread in the Australia market. Under the right circumstances, W&I insurance can help facilitate smoother M&A transactions. However, it may also lull the parties into a false sense of security, unless due care is taken to align the W&I Policy with the sale agreement. Similarly, parties should be aware that W&I insurance is not aimed at replacing, but rather complementing other insurance solutions, such as directors and officers liability insurance, professional indemnity insurance, and cyber insurance.

Whether you are on the buy-side or the sell-side on an M&A transaction, be mindful of the period between signing and completion. Take care to select an appropriate W&I Policy and obtain advice to carefully negotiate the sale agreement to close out any unintended liability traps.

Read more here:
M&A Plus Insurance - Please mind the gap: managing the timing considerations of warranty and indemnity insurance - Lexology