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Audiobooks Narrated by Kathleen Li
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Machine learning systems are both complex and unique. Complex because they consist of many different components and involve many different stakeholders. Unique because they're data dependent, with data varying wildly from one use case to the next. In this book, you'll learn a holistic approach to designing ML systems that are reliable, scalable, maintainable, and adaptive to changing environments and business requirements.
Author Chip Huyen, cofounder of Claypot AI, considers each design decision—such as how to process and create training data, which features to use, how often to retrain models, and what to monitor—in the context of how it can help your system as a whole achieve its objectives. The iterative framework in this book uses actual case studies backed by ample references.
This book will help you tackle scenarios such as engineering data and choosing the right metrics to solve a business problem; automating the process for continually developing, evaluating, deploying, and updating models; developing a monitoring system to quickly detect and address issues your models might encounter in production; architecting an ML platform that serves across use cases; and developing responsible ML systems.
A survey of Chinese naval operational history, Li's book focuses on the major battles and important engagements of Chinese naval operations from 1949-2009. His findings elucidate the origin of and changes of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) by examining its adaptation, modernization, and setbacks in the past sixty years. Based upon newly available Chinese sources and personal interviews with retired generals, admirals, and PLA officers, the work offers Chinese perspective on the study of PLAN war fighting history. The untold operational stories of the Chinese captains, boatswains, sailors, gunners, and naval pilots provide a firsthand look at a naval officer and his crew during the Cold War and beyond. They also indicate important lessons learned by the naval leaders who faced the enemies during a period when the PLAN underwent a complex transformation.
China's New Navy explains how the Chinese Navy's operational experience brought about its reform. It concludes that some early experiences are still relevant to Beijing's leaders as they consider specific strategic and operational challenges. Li redefines and adapts such strategic Cold War concepts as nuclear deterrence and local warfare to be meaningful in today's strategic context, one in which PLAN is ready to open fire first in a defensive offense against the other sea powers like the US Navy.
Caring for our aging parents—whether we take them into our homes or support them from a distance—is a beautiful opportunity for us to honor them. It can also be an intensely demanding process in which we discover things about them, about ourselves, and about the difficulties of old age that stretch and challenge us.
Addressing the endeavor with grace and clarity, Kathleen Nielson offers five rich scriptural truths to guide our thinking: God sovereignly ordains our aging, calls us to honor our elders, sees the sufferings of age, helps us to the end, and reveals what is to come. Learn how, in light of these truths, we are empowered to respond to our parents and other loved ones with humility, respect, compassion, faith, and hope.
Angry because her father, Louisiana Senator Jacob Windsor, has announced his engagement to Hollywood starlet Kara Bordeaux, Julia Windsor decides she’d rather leave home than be subjected to heightened security and a deluge of paparazzi. She travels to Singapore, severs all communication with those she’s left behind, and chooses to live a life of anonymity.
When Julia meets handsome Gabriel Davenport, she keeps her true purpose for being in Singapore a secret. The friendship that develops quickly evolves into something much deeper.
Julia marvels that she’s traveled halfway around the world to find love with an American man. But will that love endure when she discovers that Gabriel is a former Special Forces sergeant hired by her father to protect her?
Empress Wu Zetian (624-705 AD) was the only woman to be the sovereign ruler of imperial China. A teenage concubine of the Tang Emperor Taizong, she seduced his son while the emperor lay dying. Recalled from a nunnery as part of an intricate court power-game, she caused the deaths of two lady rivals, before securing her enthronement as the Emperor Gaozong's consort. She ruled in the name of her husband and two eldest sons, presiding over the pinnacle of the Silk Road, before proclaiming herself the founder of a new dynasty. Worshipped as the Sage Mother of Mankind and reviled as the Treacherous Fox, she was deposed aged 79, after angry courtiers murdered her two young lovers. The subject of countless books, plays, and films, Empress Wu remains a feminist icon and a bugbear of Chinese conservatism. Jonathan Clements weighs the evidence of her life and legacy: so charismatic that she could rise from nothing to the height of medieval power, so hated that her own children left her tombstone blank.
The First Emperor
In 1974, Chinese peasants made the discovery of the century . . . Thousands of terracotta soldiers guarding the tomb of a tyrant.
Ying Zheng was born to rule the world, claiming descent from gods, crowned king while still a child. He was the product of a heartless, brutal regime devoted to domination, groomed from an early age to become the First Emperor of China after a century of scheming by his ancestors.
He faked a foreign threat to justify an invasion. He ruled a nation under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He ordered his interrogators to torture suspects. He boiled his critics alive. He buried dissenting scholars. He declared war on death itself.
Jonathan Clements uses modern archaeology and ancient texts to outline the First Emperor's career and the grand schemes that followed unification: the Great Wall that guarded his frontiers and the famous Terracotta Army that watches over his tomb.
This revised edition includes updates from a further decade of publications, archaeology and fictional adaptations, plus the author's encounter with Yang Zhifa, the man who discovered the Terracotta Army.
Attract good fortune and joy to every aspect of your life. Pamela Chen and Samantha Blossom teach you how to use ancient, Far Eastern magic in a modernized way, no matter your background or experience level. With their help, you can create your unique revolution through sacred devotional practices that anyone can tap into immediately.
The Mandarin Tree shares the wisdom of Asia in an accessible way, presenting insights on mystical beings and animal magic, goddesses and ancestors, Feng Shui, and the Five Elements. Discover magical techniques that tap into the power of the Laughing Buddha, the Money Frog, the lunisolar zodiac, and more. With easy-to-use, magical modalities, this book helps you manifest your greatest life.
The Mandarin Tree includes a foreword by Benebell Wen, author of The Tao of Craft and I Ching, the Oracle.
In Opening to Oneness, Zen teacher Nancy Baker offers a detailed path of practice for Zen students planning to take the precepts and for anyone, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, interested in deepening their personal study of ethical living. She reveals that there are three levels of each precept: a literal level (don't kill, not even a bug), a relative level that takes moral ambiguity into account (what if it's a malaria-spreading mosquito?), and an ultimate level-the paradoxical level of nonduality, in which the precepts are naturally expressed from a state of oneness.
Full of nuance, intelligence, and compassion, the first half of the book addresses the ten grave precepts mostly from the relative level, including instructions for how to practice these precepts individually and in pairs or groups. The second half of the book takes a deep dive into looking at the precepts from the ultimate perspective, largely through an exploration of the writings of Dogen, the thirteenth-century religious genius who founded the Soto Zen school.
At once comprehensive and innovative, Opening to Oneness will take its place alongside classics like The Mind of Clover, The Heart of Being, and Being Upright as a cherished guide to Zen Buddhist ethics.
The Holy Spirit in the Christian Life offers a brief account of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, focusing specifically on the question of the person and work of the Spirit in the Christian life.
Lutheran theologian Cheryl Peterson identifies three key movements of the Christian life, showing the Spirit's role in each: justification (God the Holy Spirit working for us), sanctification (God the Holy Spirit working in us), and mission (God the Holy Spirit working through us). Peterson explores scriptural and doctrinal perspectives on the person and work of the Holy Spirit-especially from churches with Reformation roots-in view of contemporary spiritual movements, including the spiritual-but-not-religious and the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. In addition, she explores the means of the Spirit's work through Word, sacrament, and spiritual gifts.
This book offers a fresh look at the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church today. It is ideal for seminarians and working pastors.
Contemporary challenges and discoveries call for an expansion of narrative therapy practices.
Narrative therapy has the potential to help clients understand their challenges as separate from their selves, shifting the focus to their inner strengths when managing a problem. Narrative Practices and Emotions provides a fresh perspective for new and experienced practitioners alike on how to combine classic narrative therapy with the latest scholarship on the mind-body connection.
Authors Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin and Gerald Monk tap into cutting edge discoveries on mindfulness, interpersonal neurobiology, and positive psychology. Each chapter offers a wealth of clinical questions and embodied exercises, while 'conversation maps'-which provide important guideposts to practitioners-are illustrated with engaging transcripts of therapeutic work. These compelling case studies elegantly demonstrate how skillful conversations can invigorate hope and support personal development. Listeners will discover a wide variety of ways to assist clients of all ages in reengaging with a meaningful life and sustaining well-being.
At eighteen years old, Wai Jia Tam met girls who, despite horrific abuse and abandonment, lived with incredible joy and audacious hope to pursue their dreams. Inspired by their lives, she, too, dared to dream brave-and raised $100,000 to build them a home.
Now a globally recognized humanitarian, physician, and nonprofit founder, Dr. Tam addresses the self-doubt, fear, and uncertainty we all have, unlocking the hope and faith you need to trust God to fulfill your dreams, big or small. Through powerful stories, biblical insights, and practical principles, Dr. Tam empowers you to
- say yes to God despite what others say
- protect your dreams under the refuge of prayer
- push past setbacks and doubts
- cultivate courage to step out in faith
Your dreams matter deeply. No matter where you are or what is going on around you, now is your time to dream brave-and watch God do something far greater than you imagined.
To a lively cast of international players that shaped Manchuria during the early twentieth century, At the Frontier of God's Empire adds the remarkable story of Alfred Marie Caubriere (1876-1948). A French Catholic missionary, Caubriere arrived in Manchuria on the eve of the Boxer Uprising in 1899 and was murdered on the eve of the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1948. Living with ordinary Chinese people for half a century, Caubriere witnessed the collapse of the Qing empire, the warlord's chaos that followed, the rise and fall of Japanese Manchukuo, and the emergence of communist China. Caubriere's incredible personal archive, on which Ji Li draws extensively, opens a unique window into everyday interaction between Manchuria's grassroots society and international players. His gripping accounts personalize the Catholic Church's expansion in East Asia and the interplay of missions and empire in local society.
Through Caubriere's experience, At the Frontier of God's Empire examines Chinese people at social and cultural margins during this period. A wealth of primary sources and family letters illuminate vital issues in modern Chinese history, such as the transformation of local society, mass migration and religion, tensions between church and state, and the importance of cross-cultural exchanges in everyday life in Chinese Catholic communities.
