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Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Offset runs into trouble while trying to feed voters on line in Georgia

Offset lent his talents to The Lincoln Project to help get out the vote in Atlanta

Rapper Offset joined up with The Lincoln Project to provide further incentives to Georgia voters to vote. The rapper was scheduled to use his celebrity to support voters on long lines to vote in Georgia providing moral support and vegan food from Atlanta’s famed Slutty Vegan restaurant as well as Big Dave’s Cheesteak for those with more carnivorous leanings.

The Lincoln Project is a group of conservatives and Republicans who have united over their desire to propel Trump out of office. They’ve released some of the ads most critical to the 45th president during the election run-up, including powerful words from a press conference this year from former L.A. Clippers coach Doc Rivers.

Read More: Doc Rivers’ impassioned speech on race turned into ad by conservatives against Trump

But somewhere things went awry with Offset as The Lincoln Project tweeted that the Migos rapper was threatened by officials from Gwinnett county. Offset was scheduled to make appearances at Fickett Elementary and William Walker Rec Center, both in Atlanta.

For anyone outside of Atlanta, Gwinnett county covers a suburban swatch of the city, including areas like Dunwoody, Norcross and Peachtree Corners. Further details of any incident were not provided but it appears that something happened that Gwinnett county officials had issues with.

Offset in Atlanta on Election Day working with The Lincoln Project to get out the vote. (The Lincoln Project)

As Offset said that he did vote today, perhaps he was threatened for some reason while voting in his own swanky neighborhood. It is not, as several commenters on social media said today, illegal to provide food and refreshments to voters waiting on line. It is only a problem if you try to sway voters vote for one candidate or another.

The good news is, he voted.

There was no sign of Offset’s on-and-off-wife, Cardi B. at the voting booth with her husband, though that certainly just means that they didn’t vote together, at least as far as we know. The couple recently reconciled after Cardi filed for divorce, but she has now officially withdrawn the petition. As theGrio reported, Cardi said that she wanted the public to know her relationship was just as dysfunctional as anyone else’s while adding in her no-BS way that she missed ‘intimacy’ with her husband. But of course, she didn’t say intimacy.

Read More: Long lines, enthusiasm but no major problems as US votes

Offset, born Kiari Kentrell Cephus, is an Atlanta native. He and Cardi, born Belcalis Almanzár in New York City are parents to daughter Kulture, 2. Cardi has used her platform to support Democratic and progressive causes, doing an interview with Joe Biden for Elle magazine in August.

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The post Offset runs into trouble while trying to feed voters on line in Georgia appeared first on TheGrio.



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Voting in Georgia remains mainly smooth, with a few hiccups

Polls in Spalding County, Georgia will stay open to 9 p.m. due to technical glitches

ATLANTA (AP) — Despite some technical problems, voting in Georgia on Tuesday got off to a mostly smooth start — a marked departure from a June primary that required some voters to wait in line for hours to cast their ballots.

People lined up outside polling places before they opened at 7 a.m. but the average wait was down to 12 minutes a little less than an hour later, the secretary of state’s office announced.

“We are having a successful election in Georgia today,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said with roughly five hours of voting still to go.

Read More: Here’s how Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are handling Election Day

Raffensperger credited the large numbers of people who voted ahead of Election Day. A record of nearly 2.7 million voters cast their ballots during the state’s three-week early in-person voting period. Another 1.5 million absentee ballots had been received and accepted.

The primary was the first statewide election carried out on the new election system the state bought for more than $100 million last year from Dominion Voting Systems. The system includes touchscreen voting machines that print paper ballots for voters to insert into scanners, which read a barcode to record and tally the votes.

There were some problems. An apparent database error affected all polling sites in Spalding County about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Atlanta, where voters encountered delays after electronic ballots wouldn’t load on touchscreen voting machines. Poll workers switched to a manual process and voting continued. Eight of the 18 locations were operating normally by the afternoon, according to Gabe Sterling with the Secretary of State’s Office, but a court order will keep polls open until 9 p.m.

Four of seven locations that experienced technical problems in Morgan County east of Atlanta also were running normally later Tuesday, as was Morris Brandon Elementary School in Atlanta, where voters initially were forced to cast paper ballots instead of voting on machines.

A judge ordered two polling sites in DeKalb County to remain open past 7 p.m. because they opened late. One in Atlanta will be open until 7:45 p.m. and one in neighboring Decatur will be open until 7:40 p.m.

“This extension was requested, in an abundance of caution, to ensure that all electors at the locations have the required full 12 hours of voting,” according to a county news release.

A polling place in Cobb County, in Atlanta’s northwest suburbs, was to stay open until 7:20 p.m. because a poll manager overslept and it opened late, elections director Janine Eveler said.

One polling place in Gwinnett County, in Atlanta’s northeast suburbs, was also to stay open until 7:20 p.m., according to a court order.

Voting in the suburb of Powder Springs northwest of Atlanta, Susan Spence, a supporter for President Donald Trump, said she feels “terrified in a world with Biden, absolutely terrified.”

“I’m here because I believe in Americanism, not socialism,” said Spence, a 69-year-old retired teacher.

A voter with a Black Lives Matter mask reviews her ballot before dropping it off at Lucky Shoals Park Community Recreation Center in Norcross, Ga., on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (Casey Sykes/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

But Cynthia McDonald, a 52-year-old consultant in Sandy Springs who voted early for Biden, compared Trump to a catastrophe.

“It’s kind of like a train wreck that you can’t look away from,” she said. “Then you realize you’re not watching the train wreck, you’re on the damn train!”

Kelvin Hardnett stood in line in near-freezing weather for nearly an hour before polls opened at the Cobb County Civic Center outside Atlanta.

“I believe there’s a lot of division and separation,” said Hardnett, 36, who works for a security firm. “And I believe that once we get past the names and the titles and the personal agendas, then you know, we can focus on some real issues.”

A poll worker talks to a voter before they vote on a paper ballot on Election Day in Atlanta on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A combination of factors contributed to long lines in June, including equipment problems, coronavirus-related poll worker shortages and consolidation of polling places. Voters also queued for hours during early in-person voting last month, with some waiting more than eight hours to cast a ballot.

The coronavirus outbreak complicated training on the new system and many experienced poll workers dropped out ahead of the primary, fearing exposure to the virus. Since then, thousands of new poll workers have been recruited and trained, and election officials organized an army of technicians to be on hand to troubleshoot any equipment problems.

Read More: Vermont GOP Gov. Phil Scott votes for Biden over Trump

Raffensperger has said his office reviewed wait times and check-in times for precincts across the state after the primary, along with the number of registered voters, turnout and equipment distribution. They then advised counties to add more voting equipment in some places or to split precincts. That has resulted in several hundred new polling places for the general election, he said.

Fulton County alone added 91 polling places, bringing the total from 164 for the primary to 255 for the general election, according to elections director Rick Barron.

“We’ve had minimal lines throughout the county,” Barron told reporters on Tuesday morning. “It always helps when you have robust turnout during early voting to alleviate issues that can crop up on election day.”

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Martin, Ben Nadler, Sophia Tulp and Christina Cassidy contributed reporting.

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Despite Hacking Fears, Election Day Has a Mostly Smooth Start

Plenty of hours remain. But so far, the worst-case scenarios about ransomware and other meltdowns have seemingly not come to pass.

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Monday, November 2, 2020

A Process to minimize the gap between research and its applications

Human history is numerous pieces of evidence, doctrine, theologies through logic, and by extensive research in every field exists in the universe. 

There is a huge gap between research and its practical application. Studies should conduct with enormous responsibility with extreme efforts, but which has a very minimal effect on real-world problems. The majority of the research across the globe appears only in a few journals (s) /books / digital form or in a printed manifestation only that is forgotten by the real-world at the earliest and in the name of the new paradigm of investigate research they are re-inventing the wheel. A huge of this knowledge has been unused or never have the intention of using this with due diligence incomprehension or non-availability to the generations. Which is causing wasting valuable resources of an individual’s/organizations/ educational institutions and might be an enormous burden to their research and findings.

The previous research should be made available to the researchers across the globe to have unique research topics and to get valuable research findings. When any research conducted should not be based on individual preferences (or) benefits to them but keep humanity facing problems as a high priority and inclination to conduct studies.

The best and most resilient and most welcoming choice to reduce this gap is as follows:

  • It should be a need of the hour for global research institutions and corporate organizations should come together to co-operate and co-ordinate in conducting research
  • share common objectives, preferences, benefits and should encourage researchers to work on real-world issues
  • also, fund them to speed up the understanding and resolve the existing problems that the human race challenges in every aspect of their life and that can encourage humans to solve issues collectively
  • hence, establish global peace and transform the world as a universal safest place for living.

In this contemporary world, using the available technology, architecture, and computing power with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can effortlessly summarize the subsist research findings. It can have also help to find the research gaps and future research needs. These algorithmic findings are certainly guidance to the upcoming researchers to create their research objectives and motivate them to provide logic and enormous power to provide, investigate and find solutions where the to the problems in a better/optimal way to scale it up and implement across the globe.

Companies like Google, IBM Watson have already established their NLP tools to summarise the text information to a certain extent. Such companies can co-operate and co-ordinate with the research insinuations and then provide the unique methodologies which can be another level of the business model for the benefit of societies and companies as well.

It’s global researchers’ responsibility to avoid or not to spread the misleading research findings that are confusing to the entire communities across the globe; they should also stop the biased results. Many types of research have ushers to show their presence, which does not significantly have any impact on real-world issues. This habit should stop at the earliest or should able to use these capabilities, funds to find real solutions. And it’s also a huge responsibility to accept the bitter truth research findings and should also adopt.

Finally, exchange ideas and research findings will always help to build good societies for the human race around the globe.

I would be happy to receive your feedback or thought process to enhance this idea to be implemented. Please contact me @ varadivk@gmail.com or +91-7829033033 to discuss further.



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Digital Transformation in the age of COVID-19

COVID-19, by limiting us to our homes and bringing the global economy to a standstill has proved that the world healthcare ecosystem is not prepared for a pandemic. However, what it did teach us is that as consumers we are prepared to adopt the digital era in all life facets.  

This new found pro digital movement, however, has shown a glaring picture as well - despite of the preparatory stages that businesses and governments had entered into years ago, there still exists a disequilibrium )of sky ground size) in the demand of going digital and supply of digital solutions support. 

To close the gap, businesses which had mapped their digital strategies in two to three years phases have brought down the initiative activation milestone to as low as a couple of days and weeks. 

In a European survey, nearly 70 percent of executives from regions like Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, said that the pandemic is possibly going to speed up their digital transformation efforts. This speedening is visible across a range of geographies and sectors.

Consider how:

  • their physical banking channels online. 
  • How the healthcare service providers have moved into telehealth while the insurers have started focusing on self-service assessment of claims. 
  • And the retailers have started focusing on contactless purchasing and delivery. 

A trend that we are seeing emerging is that digital foundations are helping top cream companies adapt and grow in the crisis situation quickly. Brands like Walmart, Amazon, Citrix, and Netflix etc. which are known to be the digital leaders are performing a lot better in this crisis - we are constantly seeing them doubling down their investments for widening the gap. On the other hand, the laggards still have a scope of catching up if they jump-start the digital chart at a greater speed. 

When we work with clients on their digital transformation journey, most of the CEO/CMO executives tell us that while they understand the end goals and the fact that it has become the only survival mode, they are unsure of how to get there with confidence and godspeed. 

What we suggest to them is to look into where they currently stand in addition to lowering their expectations. The reality for companies that have never been digital or have been keeping adoption their third or fourth priority is that they cannot just wake up one day and reduce costs and change how their employees view digital transformation and customers expectations - all the while pivoting toward newer growth opportunities.  

Once they realize where they presently stand and how far the bar has been raised, we start at a point where they understand the need better. This is where we help them bounce ahead from competition by helping them rethink transformation through these practices:

Cloud Migration

Digital leaders are able to develop a digital base and scale it across the business when they have a strong foundation in cloud. A foundation that is built on efficiency, innovation, and talent based advantages for delivering outcomes fast and differently. 

We ask them to make a cloud migration and expertise a leadership level agenda. We ask them to set a target of shifting a minimum of 60% of their business on the cloud in the next quarter.

Go Back to the New Basics

A good amount of clients that come to us seeking help with their digital transformation needs are top in their industries. However, for achieving true digital transformations, businesses have to relook and redefine their traditional modes of doing a process and delivering values. We ask them to learn from their employees, clients, and the emerging digital-only competitors to know how they are approaching the service delivery that they are. 

According to a McKinsey report, bold moves taken to adopt digital technologies at scale and early when combined with greater allocation of digital-focused resources aligns with high value creation. 

Retain forced “agility”

The moment the coronavirus was announced to be transmitted through physical spaces and interactions, the foundation of work from the office fell down like a house of cards.  Almost overnight, businesses became digital enough to enable organization-wide remote working. What was then forced has become a new trend now with employees and executives alike saying that they don’t want to go back. 

To retain this speed in digital adoption, look back at the challenges you faced - internally and externally - which prevented you from achieving your goals. Then, develop lean processes to aid decision making and streamline the procurement process, evolve the culture for aiding new working methods. 

In the situations of extreme unclarity, where we are living under today, the leadership teams have to learn what is working for them and what is not, quickly. This calls for identifying and leaning unknown elements as and when they appear. 

Refocus on Technologies 

The sudden shift to the virtual interactions and operations both outside and inside the organization offers an opportunity for speed up the process of learning about and adopting new technologies which your businesses must have only started experimenting with. 

Up until this point, as CEOs and CMOs you must have realized the pain points in the present technology stack. You also must have gotten a preview on the impact that the technology stack would have if carried forward. 

In the ode of adopting new technologies, we help our clients look at the process on these grounds:

  • Scalability - ever since you have shifted to virtual delivery of your services, have you been able to maintain the customer inflow and acquisition or has the number lowered. If it’s the same, is your digital architecture prepared to increase the count? For improving scalability, we generally advise our clients to work on their backend by moving to microservice architecture and leg up their cloud migration efforts. 
  • Data security - were there any data breaches you faced when you shifted to remote working mode and the subsequent data sharing practices? If yes, you can look into technologies like AI, Blockchain, IoT etc to make the data movement secure in the future. 
  • Usability - before the crisis, the consumers and business partners had little choice in how they accessed your services or products through the new digital offerings. The options, however, have expanded at a stage where we are coming out of the eye of the crisis. 

Relook your offerings - if they stack up your internal and external stakeholders expectations. If the usability is low, any digital consultancy firm would advise you to work on improving it by learning from your customers and employees. 

Expedite the Outcome 

The only way businesses can take advantage of digital-movement friendly time is by developing a culture of constant innovation. They should begin by developing a task force in businesses to look at contributing external factors, review the internal processes and limitations, identify new opportunities, and all the while, keep an eye on competition. 

It has become all the more crucial for them to partner with an external digital transformation consultancy firm which can help their team and processes understand what is lacking and look at new opportunities from a digital perspective. The opportunities should then be combined with a new fail-fast culture that helps in understanding customers' needs which are rapidly changing and then create prototypes to gain customers’ feedback and see how digital tools help move them into becoming loyal consumers. 

Accept that Perfection is Good’s Enemy

In our experience, there’s nothing that pulls back an organization’s digital adoption efforts than them aiming to be perfect - the perfect digital message, perfect tools, perfect optimization, etc. the sudden nature of COVID-19 has given birth to a shift from “after months of hypothesis and A/B testing, we have assembled the best digital plan” to “it works”. 

The present time has gotten the Agile Manifesto concept of “Working Software” the rightful space under the sun that it deserves.  

Parting Statement

It is more or less the rule of human nature that the best learnings happen in some of the most uncertain and devastating times. The present coronavirus crisis fits all the boxes of being an uncertain and devastating event. 

We know that the companies and even industries which simultaneously learn the newness and are open and quick to adapt them with the help of acceleration that digital offerings provide will be able to rise above day-to-day digital demands. The unique insights that they will draw from their employees and customers at this point will help them ensure that the digital future is a lot more robust as we come out of the COVID-19 crisis than it was when we were coming in.



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4 Powerful Use Cases for Data Science in Finance

Data-driven solutions play a fundamental role in enhancing the services and profit margins of modern businesses in the finance sector. JP Morgan, one of the USA’s largest banking institutions, invests $11.5 billion a year in new technologies for this purpose. The company’s machine learning-based COiN platform reviews 12,000 annual commercial loan agreements in just a few hours, as opposed to the 360,000 man-hours it would take to do so manually. The benefits of applying data science in finance are diverse. And this is just one example.
There are a plethora of success stories demonstrating how major financial players capitalise on their data. But what's the significance of data science in finance now, in particular?
The coronavirus pandemic and the global measures that have followed have created a perfect economic storm. The financial sector stands at the front line of a growing credit crisis, with banks trying to manage disruption and maintain strict compliance amid social distancing guidelines which are at odds with their processes. Then there are the extraordinarily low interest rates and increasingly cash-insecure consumers to contend with. Some of the biggest banking challenges posed by the pandemic are:
  • Prioritising resources to cover the most critical business processes. Like many industries, the banking sector has found itself scrambling for answers and slow to make decisions on resourcing capacity, because it lacked an adequate data repository.
  • Delivering financial services off-site. Some essential financial operations, like branch banking, treasury or settlements, can only be done on-site. And the lack of a comprehensive customer database has prevented banks from being able to promptly accept and process payments from different accounts.
  • Dealing with the rising number of fraud cases. There have been numerous cases of critical data theft since COVID-19 first appeared. With rigorous data analysis, suspicious transactions could have been identified sooner and monetary fraud prevented.

To navigate the immediate obstacles, financial institutions must assess short-to-medium-term financial risks and adapt to new ways of operating in a post-pandemic world. Data science can be a powerful tool in finance, aiding risk management and continuity planning so that the industry is better prepared when the next challenge arises.

4 ways to harness data science within finance

A recent report from the World Economic Forum predicts that 463 exabytes of data will be generated daily by 2025. That‘s equal to 212 million DVDs a day, with an almost incomprehensible amount of actionable insights. Here are four key examples of how insurance, banking and investment companies can use data science to innovate the financial field.

1. Detect and prevent fraud

According to the American Bankers Association, banking institutions prevented $22 billion worth of fraudulent transactions in 2018. Now, using solutions powered by machine learning technologies, the finance industry is aiming at real-time fraud detection to minimise losses.

Machine learning enables the creation of algorithms that can learn from data, spot any unusual user behaviour, predict risks, and automatically notify financial companies of a threat. Data science helps banks recognise:

  • Fake insurance claims. With the help of machine learning algorithms, data provided by insurance agents, police, or clients can be analysed to spot inconsistencies more accurately than with manual checks.
  • Duplicate transactions and insurance claims. Duplicated invoices or claims aren’t always sinister, but machine learning algorithms can distinguish between an accidental click and a premeditated fraud attempt, thus preventing financial losses.
  • Account theft and suspicious transactions. Algorithms can analyse a user’s routine transactional data, then any suspicious activity can be flagged and verified by the card owner.

2. Manage customer data more efficiently

Financial institutions are responsible for managing vast amounts of customer data – transactions, mobile interactions and social media activity. This information can be categorised as “structured” or “unstructured” – the latter posing a real challenge when it comes to processing.

Employing data science within finance helps companies manage and store customers’ data far more efficiently. Firms can boost profits using AI-driven tools and technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), data mining and text analytics, while machine learning algorithms analyse data, identify valuable insights and suggest better business solutions.

3. Enable data-driven risk assessment

The financial industry faces potential risks from competitors, credits, volatile markets and more. Data science can help finance firms analyse their data to proactively identify such risks, monitor them, then prioritise and address them if investments become vulnerable.

Financial traders, managers, and investors can make reliable predictions around trading, based on past and present data. Data science can analyse the market landscape and customer data in real time, enabling financial specialists to take action to mitigate risks.

Data science can also be used in finance to implement a credit scoring algorithm. Using the wealth of available customer data, it can analyse transactions and verify creditworthiness far more efficiently.

4. Leverage customer analytics and personalisation

Data science is a powerful tool for helping financial institutions understand customers. Machine learning algorithms are able to gather insights on clients’ preferences, to improve personalisation and build predictive models of behaviour. Meanwhile, NLP and voice recognition software can improve communication with consumers. Thus, financial institutions can optimise business decisions and offer enhanced customer service.

Studying behavioural trends allows financial institutions to predict each consumer’s actions. Insurance companies use consumer analysis to minimise losses by defining below zero customers and measuring customer “lifetime value”.

Conclusion

The use of data science in the financial sector goes beyond fraud, risk management and customer analysis. Financial institutions can harness machine learning algorithms to automate business processes and improve security.

By using data science within finance, companies have new opportunities to win customer loyalty, safeguard their profits and stay competitive.

Originally published here



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Data Science Movies Recommendation System

Nearly everybody wants to invest their recreation energy to watch motion pictures with their loved ones. We as a whole have a similar encounter when we sit on our lounge chair to pick a film that we will watch and go through the following two hours yet can't discover one following 20 minutes. It is so baffling. We unquestionably need a PC operator to give film proposals to us when we have to pick a film and spare our time.

Evidently, a film suggestion specialist has just become a fundamental aspect of our life. As indicated by Data Science Central "Albeit hard information is hard to obtain, many educated sources gauge that, for the significant online business stages like Amazon and Netflix, that recommenders might be liable for as much as 10% to 25% of steady income."

What is recommender System?

There are two types of recommendation systems. They are:

Content-Based Recommender System

A content-based recommender system functions on a user's generated data. We can create the data either directly (such as clicking likes) or indirectly (such as clicking links). This information is used to create a personal profile for the personal that includes the metadata of the user-interacted objects. The more reliable the device or engine collects results, the Interactive Recommender System becomes.

Collaborative Recommender System

A collaborative recommender system makes a suggestion based on how the item was liked by related people. Users with common preferences would be grouped by the system. Recommender schemes can also conduct mutual filtering using object similarities in addition to user similarities (such as 'Users who liked this object X also liked Y'). Most systems will be a combination of these two methods.

It is not a novel idea to make suggestions. Even if e-commerce was not so prevalent, retail store sales workers promoted goods to consumers for the purpose of upselling and cross-selling, eventually optimising profit. The goal of the recommendation programmes is exactly the same.

The recommendation system's other goal is to achieve customer satisfaction by delivering valuable content and optimising the time a person spends on your website or channel. It also tends to increase the commitment of customers. On the other hand, ad budgets can be tailored only for those who have a tendency to respond to them by highlighting products and services.

Why Recommendation systems?

1. They assist the customer with identifying objects of interest
2. Helps the provider of products distribute their products to the proper customer
(a) To classify, for each consumer, the most appropriate products
(b) Display each user customised content
(c) Recommend the correct customer with top deals and discounts
3. User interaction will enhance websites
4. This raises company profits by increased consumption.

Daily Life Examples of Movies Recommender Systems:

1.GroupLens
a) Helped in developing initial recommender systems by pioneering collaborative filtering model.
b) It also provided many data-sets to train models including Movie Lens and Book Lens

2. Amazon
a) Implemented commercial recommender systems
b) They also implemented a lot of computational improvements

3. Netflix
a) Pioneered Latent Factor/ Matrix Factorization models


4. Google
a) Search results in search bar
b) Gmail typing next word

5. YouTube
a) Making a playlist
b) Suggesting same Genre videos
c) Hybrid Recommendation Systems
d) Deep Learning based systems

Let’s go with the Coding part. The dataset link is: https://www.kaggle.com/rounakbanik/the-movies-dataset

 import pandas as pd  import numpy as np 
 df1=pd.read_csv('../input/movies-dataset/movie_dataset.csv')
df1.columns
df1.head(5)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
rich=df1.sort_values('budget',ascending=False)
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
rects1 = ax.bar(rich['title'].head(15),rich['budget'].head(15),
color=["Red","Orange","Yellow","Green","Blue"])
plt.xlabel("Movie Title")
plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = (50,50)
plt.title("Budget Wise top movies")
plt.ylabel("Movie Budeget")
def autolabel(rects):
for rect in rects:
height = rect.get_height()
ax.text(rect.get_x() + rect.get_width()/2., 1.05*height,
'%f' % float(height/100000),
ha='center', va='bottom')
autolabel(rects1)
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
plt.show()
rich1=df1.sort_values('vote_average',ascending=False)
rich1.head()
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
rects1 = ax.bar(rich1['title'].head(20),rich1['vote_average'].head(20),
color=["Red","Orange","Yellow","Green","Blue"])
plt.xlabel("Movie Title")
plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = (30,20)
plt.title("Rating Wise top movies")
plt.ylabel("Average rating")
def autolabel(rects):
for rect in rects:
height = rect.get_height()
ax.text(rect.get_x() + rect.get_width()/2., 1.05*height,
'%f' % float(height),
ha='center', va='bottom')
autolabel(rects1)
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
plt.show()
C= df1['vote_average'].mean()
print(C)
m= df1['vote_count'].quantile(0.9)
q_movies = df1.copy().loc[df1['vote_count'] >= m]
q_movies.shape
def weightedrating(x,m=m,C=C):
v = x['vote_count']
R = x['vote_average']
# Calculation based on the IMDB formula
return (v/(v+m) * R) + (m/(m+v) * C)
# A new column for weighted rating named weight_score in the dataset
q_movies['weight_score'] = q_movies.apply(weightedrating, axis=1)
#Sort movies based on score calculated above
q_movies = q_movies.sort_values('weight_score', ascending=False)
#Print the top 20 movies
q_movies[['title', 'vote_count', 'vote_average', 'weight_score']].head(20)
pop= df1.sort_values('popularity', ascending=False)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.figure(figsize=(12,4))
plt.barh(pop['title'].head(5),pop['popularity'].head(5), align='center',
color=['red','pink','orange','yellow','green'])
plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
plt.xlabel("Popularity")
plt.title("Popular Movies")
df1['overview'].head(5)
features = ['keywords','cast','genres','director']
##Step 3: Create a column in DF which combines all selected features
for feature in features:
df1[feature] = df1[feature].fillna('')
def combine_features(row):
try:
return row['keywords'] +" "+row['cast']+" "+row["genres"]+" "+row["director"]
except:
print("Error:", row)
df1["combined_features"] = df1.apply(combine_features,axis=1)
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer
from sklearn.metrics.pairwise import cosine_similarity
cv = CountVectorizer()
count_matrix = cv.fit_transform(df1["combined_features"])
##Step 5: Compute the Cosine Similarity based on the count_matrix
cosine_sim = cosine_similarity(count_matrix)
sim_df = pd.DataFrame(cosine_sim,index=df1.title,columns=df1.title)
sim_df.head()
movie_user_likes = "Avatar"
sim_df[movie_user_likes].sort_values(ascending=False)[:20]
movie_user_likes = "Gravity"
sim_df[movie_user_likes].sort_values(ascending=False)[:20]
from scipy import sparse
from sklearn.metrics.pairwise import cosine_similarity
ratings = pd.read_csv("../input/colab-fitting/toy_dataset.csv",index_col=0)
ratings = ratings.fillna(0)
ratings
def standardize(row):
new_row = (row - row.mean())/(row.max()-row.min())
return new_row
ratings_std = ratings.apply(standardize)
item_similarity = cosine_similarity(ratings_std.T)
print(item_similarity)
item_similarity_df =
pd.DataFrame(item_similarity,index=ratings.columns,columns=ratings.columns)
item_similarity_df
def get_similar_movies(movie_name,user_rating):
similar_score = item_similarity_df[movie_name]*(user_rating-2.5)
similar_score = similar_score.sort_values(ascending=False)
return similar_score
print(get_similar_movies("romantic3",1))
action_lover = [("action1",5),("romantic2",1),("romantic3",1)]
similar_movies = pd.DataFrame()
for movie,rating in action_lover:
similar_movies = similar_movies.append(get_similar_movies(movie,rating),ignore_index=True)
similar_movies.head()
similar_movies.sum().sort_values(ascending=False)

In case the user or the movie is very new, we do not have many records to predict results. In such cases, the last value in the prediction will appear in recommendations and the performance of the recommendation system by comparing predicted values and original rating values. We will calculate the ‘RMSE’ (root mean squared error) value. In this case, the RMSE value is 0.9313, which one can judge if it is good or bad depending on the size of the dataset.

Disadvantages of Movie Recommendation system

It does not work for a new user who has not rated any item yet as enough ratings are required content-based recommender evaluates the user preferences and provides accurate recommendations.
No recommendation of serendipitous items.
Limited Content Analysis- The recommender does not work if the system fails to distinguish the items that a user likes from the items that he does not like.

Conclusion

In this article we discussed about recommender system, recommendation systems, daily real life examples and disadvantages of data science movie recommendation system.

Author Bio

Rohit Sharma is the Program Director for the upGrad-IIIT Bangalore, PG Diploma Data Analytics Program, one of the leading data science courses. Motivated to leverage technology to solve problems. Working on solving problems of scale and long term technology strategy.



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AI Generated Avatars Becoming Digital Influencers

As the recent rise in Covid-19 threatens once again to shutter advertising agencies, film studios, and similar media "factories" globally, a quiet, desperate shift is taking place in the creation of new media, brought about by increasingly sophisticated AI capabilities. A new spate of actors and models are making their way to people's screens, such as pink-haired Imma, above, who has developed an extensive following in Japan on Instagram and TikTok, and is appearing increasingly on the covers of Japanese magazines.

She also doesn't exist.

Imma joins a growing host of digital avatars who are replacing human actors, models, and photographers with computer-generated equivalents. Cloud-based GPUs and sophisticated game and modeling software have increasingly attracted the attention of a new generation of artist/programmers who are taking advantage of this to generate images, video, and audio that are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from reality, especially when that reality is otherwise captured via jump cuts, and matte overlays that have made tools such as TikTok and Reels the primary tools for video production for the typical Instagram celebrity.

The business potential for such virtual models and spokespeople is huge, according to a recent piece by Bloomberg on digital avatars. Such avatars have obvious benefits over their flesh and blood counterparts. They can appear in print or video anywhere - on a far-off beach, on a busy street in a bustling city, or staring out at dirigibles and flying saucers while taking a taxi above the clouds - without ever having to send a crew out for several days to some otherwise uninhabited Caribbean beach, reserving expensive permits for filming or dealing with observers, or spending a great deal of time with specialized green screen effects.

The models don't age out of roles, don't have bad hair days, or become prima donnas. The initial cost to develop such models may be fairly high (though seldom more than the cost of sending models and crew to a tropical island) but once created, that model becomes highly malleable, and can be used in a large number of different situations.

Ordinarily, these changes have been on the horizon for a while, and until the pandemic, the use of such models was increasing slowly anyway. Yet as for so many other things, the pandemic shifted the need for virtual models and actors into overdrive, as social distancing requirements and lockdowns put a very real limit on the ability of creative agencies to put together content with live actors.

It is significant, for instance, that The Walt Disney Company, which had already invested heavily in the use of CGI-based actors and props for its wildly popular series The Mandalorian, was able to finish production on the awaited second season of that show so quickly after California's Governor Newcom started loosening the limits on production. It did so by taking advantage of the hyperrealistic rendering capabilities of graphical processing units (GPUs) which are now capable of extensive texture mapping, shading, ray tracing, subdermal lighting and so forth by dint of the GPU architectures that were optimized for better gameplay.

Moreover, such processing can readily be done in parallel across multiple dedicated cloud processors, which not only increases the render time dramatically but also makes modeling, rigging (the process of positioning objects relative to one another) and lighting take far less time than they would on a single laptop. This also makes procedural shaders, which handle the animation of everything from hair to skin to dirt to water and smoke, feasible to the home-bound graphic artist or designer. Companies such as nVidia have partnered with cloud providers to make racks of GPUs acting in parallel available to anyone with a decent Internet connection even without necessarily needing to have such GPUs available on the artist's computers directly. 

This process is also driven by the rise of generative adversarial networks (a form of neural network that is able to take related types of images and build subtle composites that can then be evaluated to determine the "verisimilitude" of a given image. Those that survive are then used as the basis for other such images. When used as is, such GANs are remarkably effective at creating realistic portraits of people quickly, while at the same time also providing templates for the generation of models underlying such templates that can then be used for simulating action. The StyleGan2 algorithms drive the site This Person Does Not Exist, which generates unique, very realistic facial images. The site also contains detailed information about the StyleGan2 algorithms involved in the process.

The ability to create such realistic avatars has also led to the rise of fake identities in social media sites, as people take advantage of such tools to either disguise themselves on places as diverse as Facebook and Tinder, or simulate fake profiles for spamming and trolling, or, in at least a couple of cases, creating faked dossiers for political mischief, complete with people who existed only within a GPU. 

StyleGan2, in conjunction with similar research for capturing facial orientation and lip-synch movements, are also changing the nature of gaming as the ability to wear avatars that are able to speak and make facial gestures. From pre-generated audio recorded live, or text-to-speech interfaces such as are used to power a host of verbal virtual assistants (Siri being the Ur example), such viseme-matching algorithms are increasingly putting a face to what once had been primarily audio only "digital-companions".  

It is very likely that, for good or ill, this particular area of development will become one of the hottest faces of the AI movement. If the Japanese experience is any indication, such "Virtual Ambassadors" may very well become celebrities in their own rights. In many cases, the environments for creating such virtual models are likely to be the same -platforms that currently are used for developing immersive reality games, such as Microsoft's Unreal Engine or  Reallusion's Character Creator platform. As the pandemic continues to change how we work, it is likely that the next generation of advertising, media creation and immersive gaming will rely upon these virtual avatars, the next general of digital influencers.

Kurt Cagle is the Community Editor for Data Science Central.



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Common dishes on ‘wonderful’ relationship with Tiffany Haddish

‘She’s a really incredible human being, and the more I get to know her, I see how dynamic she is.’

Less than a week after reports claiming Common and Tiffany Haddish called it quits, the rapper gushed about his relationship with the comedian during his guest appearance on SiriusXM’s “The Karen Hunter Show.”

Common has shut down the breakup rumors, making clear that he and the Girls Trip star are  “doing wonderful.”

“She’s a really incredible human being, and the more I get to know her, I just see how dynamic she is as a person. How intelligent, how selfless she is, how she stands up in Hollywood for black women. I’m learning. You know what I mean? She takes it like the law,” he explained to Hunter.

Read More: Common confirms tie-up with Tiffany Haddish: I am ‘grateful to have her in my life’

Tiffany Haddish Common theGrio.com
Common and Tiffany Haddish attend Toast To The Arts Presented by Remy Martin on March 2, 2018 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for Remy Martin)

The actor and Grammy-winning performer noted that Haddish possesses the type of “courage and rawness that we’ve been looking for – the equality that we talk about,” he said. 

“Especially within – any area of life – but then the Hollywood structure, sometimes you have to shake them up and say ‘hey, y’all, this is what it has to be,’” he continued. “She’s also fun. She’s fun. And ultimately, Karen, Tiffany has a good heart at the end of the day.”

The couple sparked rumors of a breakup recently when Common briefly unfollowed Haddish on social media. In a recent interview, however, she set the record straight about their relationship. 

“I feel like it’s gonna work,” Haddish shared with Extra‘s Rachel Lindsay. “I haven’t felt like this about a relationship ever.” 

Common and Haddish also dispelled breakup rumors via social media after saying “I love you” on Instagram Live.

Read More: Ice Cube, Tiffany Haddish and Don Peebles talk economic equality on ‘Vote For Your Life’

In July, Haddish appeared on the “Wild Ride! With Steve-O” podcast and said Common “is hands down the best relationship I’ve ever been in.”

She also revealed that she lost 20 pounds since hooking up with the Chicago native. “I feel more confident in me and it’s not him that’s doing it,” she shared.

“I’m just way happier and it’s like knowing I got somebody that cares about me, that really has my back. It seems like he does anyways. And I love it. I love him.”

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Nancy Pelosi warns Trump about interfering with election results

‘I would just like him to know it ain’t going to happen for him at the end of the day.’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has warned President Donald Trump that she’s been preparing for months for any attempts by his administration to steal the election. 

“We’re ready for it all,” Pelosi told HuffPost in a Friday interview. “I would just like him to know it ain’t going to happen for him at the end of the day.”

theGRIO previously reported, it doesn’t appear that Trump is going to let a potential Joe Biden victory keep him from remaining in the White House for four more years. 

Read More: Trump promises court fight over Pennsylvania absentee votes

Getty

In a press conference in September, Trump seemed to confirm that he wouldn’t take an election loss at face value. When directly asked by a reporter at the White House presser if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power, he was vague.

“We’ll have to see what happens,” Trump said. “I’ve been complaining about the ballots. The ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control and you know who knows it better than anyone else, the Democrats.”

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election, Biden has consistently been ahead of Trump in the polls. Critics have slammed the president for refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses. 

Pelosi has been preparing for this by working with a team of experts to outline responses to Trump’s shenanigans before and after the election. Her team includes attorneys with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Republicans and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the report states. 

“We have been prepared for the worst for a long time because what we have seen is the worst on the part of this president in terms of his disrespect for the Constitution, his disregard of free will of the people and his stooping to any level for his own reelection,” said Pelosi. “We have tremendous intellectual, political and financial resources at our disposal. … We have our lawyers poised to move on a dime on Election Day or evening, as we see a problem.”

Read More: Biden: Trump is ‘terrified’ of Pennsylvania election results

According to Axios, Trump intends to declare victory on election night if the results show him ahead, even if millions of ballots remain to be counted.

Pelosi said she’s ready for that, too.

“This is not child’s play,” she said. “It is unconstitutional.” Adding, “We will make sure that we will have a fair count.″

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Best Practices for Deploying Hadoop Server on CentOS/RHEL 7 – Part 1

In this series of articles, we are going to cover the entire Cloudera Hadoop Cluster Building building with Vendor and Industrial recommended best practices. Part 1: Best Practices for Deploying Hadoop Server on CentOS/RHEL

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Netflix unveils trailer and photos for Shondaland series ‘Bridgerton’

It’s the first project from the streamer’s deal with Shonda Rhimes.

Netflix has finally unveiled the trailer for Bridgerton, the first offering from Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland since its move to the streamer. 

Read More: Shonda Rhimes shares Disneyland pass incident that made her move to Netflix

According to the show synopsis provided by Netflix, Bridgerton is Inspired by the bestselling novels by Julia Quinn. The series follows Phoebe Dynevor as Daphne Bridgerton, eldest daughter of the powerful Bridgerton family as she makes her debut onto Regency London’s competitive marriage market. As her pursuit of love unravels, the high society scandal sheet written by the mysterious Lady Whistledown casts criticisms on Daphne who has caught the eye of London’s most desirable duke.

Netflix

“You do not know me and never shall, but be forewarned, dear reader: I certainly know you,” Lady Whistledown, as voiced by the legendary Julie Andrews, starts off. “The social season is upon us. We shall discover which young ladies might succeed at securing a match. Let it be known, if there’s a scandal, I shall uncover it … and share every last detail.”

Created by Chris Van Dusen, Bridgerton is a romantic, scandalous, and quick-witted series that celebrates the timelessness of enduring friendships, families finding their way, and the search for a love that conquers all. The series also stars Jonathan Bailey (Anthony Bridgerton), Nicola Coughlan (Penelope Featherington), Claudia Jessie (Eloise Bridgerton), Ruby Barker (Marina Thompson), Adjoa Andoh (Lady Danbury), Golda Rosheuvel (Queen Charlotte), Luke Thompson (Benedict Bridgerton), Luke Newton (Colin Bridgerton), Ruby Stokes (Francesca Bridgerton), Will Tilston (Gregory Bridgerton), Florence Hunt (Hyacinth Bridgerton), Ruth Gemmell  (Lady Violet Bridgerton), Bessie Carter (Prudence Featherington), Harriet Cains (Philipa Featherington), Polly Walker (Lady Portia Featherington), and Ben Miller (Lord Featherington).

Enter the highly desirable and rebellious Simon, the Duke of Hastings played by Regé-Jean Page, a committed bachelor and the catch of the season for the debutantes’ mamas. Despite proclaiming that they want nothing the other has to offer, the attraction between the Duke and Daphne is undeniable and sparks fly as they find themselves engaged in an increasing battle of wits while navigating society’s expectations for their future.

Read More: Shonda Rhimes readies ‘Notes on Love’ anthology series at Netflix

Bridgerton premieres Christmas Day on Netflix. 

Check out the trailer:

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Eve to leave ‘The Talk’ to focus on ‘expanding our family’

‘I have had the most beautiful experience,’

Eve is parting ways with The Talk after four seasons.

Appearing in the studio remotely on Monday (Nov. 2), the 41-year-old rapper announced that December will be the last month she appears on the CBS daytime talk show. Eve says it’s been a great ride but she’s ready to move on to focus on building a family with her billionaire husband Maximillion Cooper.

“I’ve been so grateful that I’m able to stay here in London and do the show,” Eve told her co-hosts Sharon Osbournce, Sheryl Underwood and Carrie Ann Inaba.”But I can’t see, for me, the foreseeable future of traveling back at the moment.”

The coronavirus related lockdown in the UK has anchored Eve at her family home in London, USA Today reports.

Read More: Eve Is Married! Rapper Weds Maximillion Cooper in Ibiza

“This is one of the hardest decisions in the world, because I wish I hated one of you, but I don’t,” she joked. “It would just make it so much easier.”

Eve went on to describe the positive impact the show has had on her since she joined as co-host in 2017.

“I have had the most beautiful experience,” she said. “I’ve grown as a woman, as a person. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: I never thought that being on a talk show would be this much of an opening of my spirit, soul, personality, everything. Sitting onstage with all you women has been the best thing ever. I truly love you.”

Eve then shared that she and her husband are currently focused on “expanding our family.”

Over the summer, she opened up about her interracial marriage to Cooper for an episode of TV One’s’ Uncensored.

“I don’t think about our race. I don’t. When we first got together, yeah, of course. I had never been with a white guy seriously like that. So yeah, I definitely thought about it. But we are so honest with each other that we have discussions, and that’s a beautiful thing,” she said.

Read More: Eve on interracial dating: ‘Black men have been doing it for years’

After confirming her exit from The Talk on Monday, Eve’s co-hosts expressed their support for her decision. 

“Real friends support each other,” said Inaba. “We all support you.”

“There is a big place here for you always in my heart,”  Osbourne added. “I just want you to be happy.”

Of Eve’s plans to start a family with Cooper, Underwood joked that they should “hurry up so I can be an auntie.”

“We’re trying,” Eve replied. “We’re working on it.”

Watch her announcement via the YouTube video above

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Crowd chants ‘LeBron James sucks’ at rally as Trump slams NBA

‘When they don’t respect our flag, nobody wants to watch.’

President Donald Trump called out LeBron James at a rally Monday in Pennsylvania, and the crowd responded by chanting that the NBA superstar “sucks.”

A day before the 2020 presidential election, Trump made time to rant about the NBA Finals between James’ Los Angeles Lakers and the Heat.

“How about basketball? “How about LeBron?,” Trump asked the crowd assembled in the city of Avoca. “I felt badly for LeBron, very badly. Down 71% and that’s with the championship,” he continued, USA Today reports.

Read More: Crowd yells ‘Fire Fauci’ at rally, Trump says wait until after election

Getty

“I didn’t watch one shot. I get bored. Back, forth, back, forth. You know why? When they don’t respect our country, when they don’t respect our flag, nobody wants to watch,” Trump added.

James previously made clear that the NBA community does not care if Trump watches the games or not. 

“I really don’t think the basketball community are sad about losing his viewership,” James told reporters during a post-game interview in August. “The game will go on without his eyes on it. I can sit here and speak for all of us that love the game of basketball, we could [not] care less.”

Trump appears to be less than impressed that the NBA superstar led the Lakers to their 17th championship last month.

“The NFL is way down,” Trump told his supporters on Monday. “You gotta stand for our flag. You gotta really be great to our flag and to our anthem and if you don’t do that, we’re not watching.”

The crowd then repeatedly chanted “LeBron James sucks.” Watch the moment via the Twitter video embed below.

Read More: Barack Obama joins LeBron James and Maverick Carter in ‘The Shop’

Trump and James have traded jabs as far back as 2017. Last month, the president called him a “hater” during an interview on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. 

“He’s a great basketball player, but people don’t want to see a guy that’s that way. They don’t want to see that. … He’s a hater,” Trump said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “You don’t want to sit down, watch a basketball game, and then watch somebody that hates your guts, okay.”

In a tweet earlier this year, James said Trump made hate “fashionable again” in the United States.

theGrio previously reported, back in 2017, Trump rescinded an invitation to Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors to visit the White House following their National Championship win. James famously responded by calling the president a “ bum” in a tweet.

James has not revealed support of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, however, he leads non-partisan voter reform efforts through charitable organizations.

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Rapper Loon to serve as fellow for Meek Mill’s REFORM Alliance

The “I Need a Girl” rapper is ready to give back after serving time in prison

Amir Junaid Muhadith, once known as Bad Boy rapper Loon has only been home from prison a few short months but he’s already helping create change for formally incarcerated individuals.

Read More: Philadelphia boutique owner speaks out after store looted during protests

Muhadith has teamed up with Meek Mill’s organization, REFORM Alliance, which “is committed to advancing criminal justice reform and eradicating laws and policies that perpetuate injustice in the United States,” per a press release obtained by theGrio. The former rapper will now serve as an inaugural fellow in its program designed to help formerly incarcerated individuals reintegrate into society.

Muhadith was sentenced to 14 years in prison back in 2011 for “conspiracy to distribute more than one kilogram of heroin,” per Revolt.

He was released back in July due to the coronavirus pandemic and with the help of the First Step Act.

Rapper Loon appears at the Playstation 2 And The Hip-Hop Summit Present “Race To The Polls” at Hammerstein Ballroom October 14, 2004 in New York City. (Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images)

Jessica Jackson, the chief advocacy officer for REFORM Alliance was a part of a team that helped Muhadith get released from prison through the Act. Jackson explains: “The act was the culmination of a bipartisan effort to improve criminal justice outcomes, as well as to reduce the size of the federal prison population while also creating mechanisms to maintain public safety,” per the Bureau of Prisons.

“Amir’s first-hand perspective and strategic thinking will be invaluable to helping us improve an ineffective and destructive supervision system,” Jackson said in the release. “In the short amount of time he’s been released, Amir has already impressed us with his ideas and commitment to creating positive change.” 

Meek Mill sits as the co-chair of the organization along with fellow celebrities such as Jay- Z and Van Jones.

Muhadith says he can help the organization because he knows all too well the challenges of reentering society after serving time in prison.

Read More: Bad Boy Records rapper Loon granted release from prison

“I can personally relate to the stress of navigating life on supervision with the risk of reincarceration, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to use my experience to help REFORM and collaborate on ways to make a lasting impact on the system,” he said, per the press release. “It’s imperative that we provide people on probation with the support, training, and counseling to truly succeed rather than resort to punitive punishment.” 

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Lil Nas X claps back at Dave East after homophobic response to Nicki Minaj costume

Lil Nas X was quick with the clap back.

Lil Nas X’s Halloween costume had another rapper in his feelings. 

The “Old Town Road” rapper took to Instagram to drop a picture of himself dressed in a Nicki Minaj costume for the holiday. The 21-year-old was dressed in a Minaj-style signature blonde wig accompanied with plentiful cleavage peeking out the top of a tight pink dress that accentuated his waist and hips.

Read More: Lil Nas X channels Nicki Minaj for Halloween costume

But Harlem rapper Dave East was not in favor of the costume and posted his disdain for the outfit via social media. He said,

View this post on Instagram

NAS MARAJ 💅🏾💅🏾💅🏾

A post shared by Lil Nas X (@lilnasx) on

“And y’all was mad at me about this n—” wrote Dave East per Lovebscott.com The publication says in another post, East added,

 “Bati mon bun up!!!!” “I gotta move to Jamaica, @PopcaanMusic on my wayyyyy chubble.” 

According to Forbes, Jamaica is a dangerous country for homosexuals and was once called the most homophobic place in the world, according to Time magazine.

“One of the Caribbean’s most popular vacation destinations for tourists worldwide, Jamaica was another shocking country to top our LGBTQ+ Danger Index,” says journalist Lyric Fergusson. “Jamaica ranks as the third-worst Caribbean nation for members of the LGBTQ+ community behind Barbados and Saint Lucia. This is largely due to Jamaica’s ‘buggery law,’ which is leftover from the colonial era and allows for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, including hard labor. In fact, Jamaica was called ‘the most homophobic place on Earth’ by Time magazine in 2006 and LGBTQ+ people are sadly still the victims of homophobic violence today.”

But Lil Nas X quickly clapped back at East with this message, caught by Lovebscott.com,

Read More: Taraji P. Henson announced as host of the 2020 American Music Awards

“It’s ‘batty man’ n—-s can’t even be homophobic the proper way smh butchering the hell out of the patois,” he adds. “Bro I don’t bother a soul in this industry. All I do is tweet and make bangers. Leave me alone Damn.”

Lil Nas X took home four Billboard Music Awards last month, including the Top 100 song for his huge hit “Old Town Road” with Billy Ray Cyrus.

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