Category Archives: Transhuman News

Ward is the executive director of the Center for Respectful Leadership. He lives in La Mesa.

During the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden conducted a virtual swearing in of a group of White House appointees over a videoconference call. He then presented them with a very stern warning: Im not joking when I say this, the 46th president of the United States said. If youre ever working with me, and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands or buts. Everybody, everybody, is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity.

Wow! Essentially, President Biden is commanding a culture of respect in his administration and doing so very, very directly. Given the amount of disrespect in political and public discourse weve been seeing and hearing in the last few years, this is a breath of fresh air.

And yet its not often that leaders make such clear and unequivocal statements about respectful behavior, not to mention what will happen if people dont comply. This is because many of them dont value respect, or assume its unimportant, or dont understand how respect is a key driver of partnership, performance and productivity. This is a shame, because respect is a far more important organizational success factor than most people think.

But can you really command employees to respect each other and expect that to work? Maybe.

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Part of creating a respectful organizational culture means ensuring that most, if not all, employees share the same definition and understanding of respect, as well as the same values and practices around decency, integrity, honesty, kindness and what are known as the three Cs: courtesy, civility and consideration.

But bringing employees to common agreement, and to a high level of understanding and practice around respect, requires education and training, collaboration and patience, trial and, yes, error. And given that the Biden administration is only a few days old, its a safe bet that these things havent happened, yet.

So President Biden appears to be jump-starting the process, by making his expectations of his appointees behaviors, and the consequences for not complying, achingly clear. This could have the desired impact, especially since the commander in chief is saying it.

But within his command to respect is a threat: if you dont comply, you lose your job. In some organizations, such a ham-fisted approach could backfire and result in everyone tiptoeing around each other on eggshells, afraid to be outed by their colleagues as politically incorrect or disrespectful. In this kind of environment, known as a too nice culture, most people wont speak their minds or give each other candid feedback, or theyll replace honest appraisal and openness with sugar-coated nuance and passive aggressiveness. The reality is a too nice culture is almost as destructive and as costly as an openly disrespectful culture.

Successful organizations are balanced. They are workplaces where respect is genuinely valued and practiced with consistency and authenticity, while at the same time they are places where people feel safe enough to argue a point passionately or call each other out on disrespectful behavior without a proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over offenders heads.

President Biden has been clear with his intentions, and hes made a good start on respect. Now he needs to ensure theres concrete training and follow up so that everyone in the Biden administration understands, values and practices respectful leadership every day.

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Opinion: President Biden's call for civility in the White House could backfire. Here's how to ensure it won't - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Every year, we take up the sordid task of skimming through the bottom-of-the-barrel of the years entertainment. Although this year was slim pickings, that didnt stop bad content from being, well, bad. Heres to the bad, worse, and downright unwatchable, and hoping that you didnt have to endure them.

What The Love! With Karan Johar (Netflix)

Unwatchability meter: Quite unwatchable, but could be a great watch when drunk or high.

Firstly, the title of the show is definitely not as intelligent as the team must have thought it to be. This is a show about finding love so lets take what the fuck and then change it to love hahaha, so funny. Secondly, the show was terribly sanitised and scripted, really boring, and had no goal. Six couples will find love at a random bar, and go on fake dates with celebrities who only did the show because they are KJos friends. Wow. So this is woke Splitsvilla on a budget? Thirdly, when KJo doesnt realise a young chap is gay (while he is evidently flamboyant so that the college kid sitting in Bilaspur does not need any hand-holding to spot the stereotypes while watching this aspirational show about rich kids and stylists finding love at a singles party, on his mobile subscription) and is pleasantly surprised and employs his laziest acting skills you know that this show is going to be forgettable AF.

Betaal (Netflix)

Unwatchability meter: Very unwatchable, might make you think of cancelling your subscription.

The Red Chillies-Netflix marriage didnt take off with Bard of Blood. So, when the South Korean zombie-themed series did so well, I am guessing it was time to try out an Indian iteration too? Because if it works in one market, why shouldnt it work in another? Id like to make both the teams write this a 100 times on a chalkboard VFX does not maketh a show.

Mrs. Serial Killer (Netflix)

Unwatchability meter: Unwatchable max, can induce beheading tendencies, starting with the films team.

The height of bad decisions made in 2020 is for Mrs. Serial Killer to get a release. It is the Arjun Kapoor of films so bad that it is really, really bad. Also, can we just keep Jackie F limited to dancing in Badshahs music videos?

A Suitable Boy (Netflix)

Unwatchability meter: Watchable, if you are hyper-privileged, educationally challenged, uninformed about culture and history, write clicking selfies under Occupation in your Tinder bio, and think Rajasthans contribution to India is being the countrys Instagram capital. Basically, if you are a moron. Politically incorrect, insensitive, callous adaptation, and boring with a capital B (Mira Nair, peddling Indian rivers-and temples-and-ghazal-soiree nostalgia is so last decade. Most of your white audience have already done the Agra-Rajasthan-Bombay-Goa backpack trip and know that theres more to India than that) are some of the accusations against this show. But what overtakes is an aged tawaif speaking in English, the colonial masters language, right after Independence. Is it a joke? Is it an insult? Cant decide.

Durgamati (Amazon Prime Video)

Unwatchability meter: If you have endured Sadak 2 and Laxmii, very watchable. Otherwise, unwatchable AF.

The trailer was enough for us to know that this was going to be a bad film. But how bad, we couldnt predict. At one point in the film, a psychiatrist informs us that the protagonist suffers from Kakorrhaphiophobia, the fear of failure. Evidently, the film-maker doesnt suffer from the same infliction.

Sadak 2 (Disney + Hotstar)

Unwatchability meter: Shamefully unwatchable, ensuring that Kalank is not the low point of Alia Bhatts filmography.

Whose idea was it to make a sequel to a film from two decades back, which isnt top-of-mind pop culture recall right now? Was Mahesh Bhatt just becoming too much of a nuisance at home that family, and dear friend Sanju Baba, came together to just keep him occupied and out of the house? How else can anyone explain this colossal waste of money and acting talent? How does Makarand Deshpande sleep at night after delivering the worst acting performance of the decade? Film-makers are still using death by trishul insertion as a method of killing the villain in the climax, and no one objected to it? Questions, so many questions.

Virgin Bhanupriya (Zee5)

Unwatchability meter: Watch it only if you need a sure shot entry for your Worst Films and Shows of 2020 piece.

I love it when item girls and Instagram influencers start believing that they are actors. It is such a positive vibe. Look at Urvashi Rautela ditching her sexy avatar to play a bespectacled, fully clad, sexually inert toddler. Now, thats what we call Art Cinema. Tomorrow, Nora Fatehi might star as the lead in an Indira Gandhi biopic. Mr Faizu will do an adaptation of Macbeth. I am stunned that Virgin Bhanupriya wasnt Indias entry for the Oscars. What a sad snub.

Laxmii (Disney + Hotstar)

Unwatchability meter: It is, irrefutably, the worst thing you will ever see unless Akshay Kumar takes it up as a challenge to beat that (which I hope he doesnt, for the countrys mental health).

And, the worst film or show or extended cut of a TikTok video goes to *drum roll please* Akshay Kumars Laxmii. If you watched the film, you must have sobbed for days, or gone on a killing spree, or both. Laxmii is such an abomination of a film, hitting a low point in every department of film-making, that it is in competition with Gunda and assorted Ramsay Brothers films and it might even beat them. Id like to start crowdfunding to pay for the Laxmii teams therapy, and also for a care package for Twinkle Khanna. And Kiara Advani, darling, even if you are getting the Burj Khalifa, can you please pick films that will add to your filmography, and not turn you into another Katrina Kaif? Unlike her, you actually can act.

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Next Worst Films And Shows Of 2020 - Man's World India

Are you tired of the now-boring weekly Zoom quiz or wanting to add some extra fun to your family catch-ups?

For many of us, I think it's right to say that we want to leave Zoom quizzes back in the first national lockdown and move on to something a little different.

Estate agents across Norfolk are using technology such as video calls to keep in touch with clients, conduct virtual house tours and even make initial valuations. Picture: Getty Images- Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

There are many virtual games made for multiplayers so that friends and families cankeep in contact and combat boredom during the coronavirus pandemic.

Through video conferencing appslike Zoom and Microsoft Teams, participants can share their screenand invite multiple online users into their calls.

Here are some suggestions for socially-distant fun games to play with your friends and family while staying at home.

The Jackbox Party Pack series consists of various party game collections that are easy to play and absolutely brilliant.- Credit: Jackbox Games

The Jackbox Party Pack series consists of various party game collections that are easy to play and absolutely brilliant.

Highlights include Quiplash, which challenges players to come up with the most hilarious answers to various prompts, and Fibbage,a fib-til-you-win trivia party game.

Each Jackbox Party Pack is available on PC, mobile, Xbox, and Play Station, and only requires one person to own the game, with up to eight players participating from their phones.

The host can easily share their screen over Zoom or Skype.

Cards Against Humanity say it's a party game for horrible people.- Credit: All Bad Cards

Cards Against Humanity say it's a party game for horrible people.

In the game,which is strictly for adults, players complete fill-in-the-blank statements using words or phrases typically deemed as offensive, risqu orpolitically incorrect.

There is now a way to enjoy the card game with up to 50 friends virtually, with All Bad Cards.

In order to start the game, head to the website and clickNew Game. The site will then ask you to type in your nickname. Youll get a shareable link to invite other people

Then all that's left to do is video call your friends and watch each other reacting to the hilarious answers.

Monopoly is now available on the app store- Credit: App Store

Many board game classicssuch as Cludeo and Uno have private multiplayer features online, meaning you can set up a game and choose who can enter.

The same goes for the much-loved Monopoly board game, which has been added to the app store for families to play remotely.

If you've ever played Balderdash, you'll get the gist of Psych!- Credit: Psych!

If you've ever played Balderdash, you'll get the gist.

Join the game remotely from your phone with your friends, choose from a number of categories, and start making up fake answers.

All you have to do is simply voice or video call each other to discuss your hilarious answers.

Tabletopia has more than 1,500 board games- Credit: Tabletopia

Tabletopia has more than1,500 board games, ranging from classics like chess and digital card packs, all the way through to modern games likebirdwatching card game wingspan.

Some of the games do require a subscription but the majority are free to play with your friends.

The rest is here:
5 virtual games to play with family and friends over Zoom - Dereham Times

Australia Day used to be an obvious and uncontroversial occasion for brands to endear themselves to Australian consumers. No longer.

There has been a decided shift over the past decade in commercial attitudes to January 26, acknowledging the problematic nature of the dates choice as our day of national celebration to our First Nations.

Nothing demonstrates this more conclusively than Cricket Australia dropping references to Australia Day in its promotions of Big Bash League fixtures.

Its a significant step. The BBL doesnt need to appease inner-urban lefties. Its customer base is as middle-Australia as you can get. Nor can this be dismissed as corporate timidity, running for cover lest woke activists on social media make a fuss. Indeed the decision has likely excited more controversy than would have business as usual.

Well, its not cricket, declared Prime Minister Scott Morrison when asked about the move. I think Australian cricket fans would like to see Cricket Australia focus a lot more on cricket and a lot less on politics.

News Corps outrage machine has been running even hotter. The greatest betrayal of this country by a sporting body, fumed Sky News host Chris Smith.

Both Morrison and News Corp know something about appealing to core audiences. In this case, Cricket Australias attunement to its stakeholders is probably a better barometer of national feeling.

Brands have never been shy about using national holidays for commercial gain.

Take Anzac Day a date (on April 25) far less controversial than Australia Day, but one still fraught with sensitivities.

The Australian Football League has leveraged the Anzac spirit since 1995 through its Anzac Day match betweeen Collingwood and Essendon. Though not without its critics, the league has mostly managed to avoid running afoul of community sentiments in balancing commodification with commemoration.

Other brands have not been so artful. Woolworths, for example. In 2015 the Fresh Food People ran an Anzac Day campaign involving an image generator by which people could upload a photo of a relative who served in World War I or a more recent war to create a social media profile picture overlaid with the phrase Fresh in our Memories and a Woolworths logo.

Woolworths executives were shocked to discover many people thought this distasteful, and quickly dropped the promotion.

But it generally takes a lot for brands to back away from commercialisation opportunities. Carlton & United Breweries also copped criticism in 2015 over its Victoria Bitter beer brands Raise a Glass campaign (running since 2009) but was unapologetic.

It defended its association with Anzac Day citing a photo of Australian soldiers serving in Egypt during World War II who made a VB made out of Victoria Bitter beer bottles, and the money it contributed to the Returned & Services League and Legacy.

It did, however, drop the campaign in 2016. And now, of course, CUB is owned by Japanese conglomerate Asahi, which makes such promotions somewhat awkward.

Read more: Should we be consuming more than just patriotism on national days?

This may explain why VB has clung to its Australia Day promotions.

It used January 25 in 2018 to launch Knock Off Times campaign. Last year it marketed VB-branded thongs the ultimate fashion accessory for the Australia Day long weekend.

The reason is simple: its a sales opportunity.

The national public holiday is a day to have a party with family and friends. Barbecues are popular. Its a useful date for alcohol brands and others to time promotional campaigns that position themselves as dinky-di.

Coopers, now the largest Australian-owned brewery, has also used the day to promote its true-blue credentials. In 2017 it ran a national billboard campaign with the slogan: Australia Day. Australian-owned. Perfect.

Even brands with tenuous connections to barbecues (or Australia) have gotten in on the act. A Mercedes-Benz promotion in 2018 featured sausages on a grill in the style of the German luxury car brands three-pointed badge

But for brands attuned to middle Australia, waving the flag around Australia Day is losing its explicit appeal as community attitudes change.

Lets not forget the date has never been universally embraced. Marking the date of arrival of the First Fleet at Port Jackson in 1788, January 26 was only nationally adopted as Australia Day in the mid-1930s. Given the dates association with colonisation and dispossession, Indigenous Australians have lamented the choice ever since. In 1938 the first Aboriginal Day of Mourning and Protest was held in Sydney. Counter-commemorations of the day as Survival Day and Invasion Day are hardly new.

To appreciate how attitudes have shifted, think about lamb.

No advertiser has leveraged Australia Day more adroitly than Meat and Livestock Australia. It has pegged its advertising campaign promoting lamb as the national meat to the holiday for two decades, with former AFL player and lambassador Sam Kekovich fronting the campaign from 2005 to 2014.

The longevity of the campaigns timing with January 26 indicates the strategys success.

The campaigns have been consistently irreverent, appealing to the larrikan sense of humour. But in recent years theyve also become far less politically incorrect. Gone are explicit appeals to nationalism and skewering of easy targets such as vegans. Instead their messages are about sharing and togetherness.

This years campaign, Make lamb, not walls, is a comical take on border closures. Notably it makes no mention of Australia Day.

Last week pollster Essential Research, which has been surveying Australians annually since 2015 about their feelings of Australia Day and celebrating it on January 26 published data showing 53% of Australians regard it as just another public holiday (compared with 40% in January 2015).

Opposition to moving Australia Day to another day is still quite significant (35%) but, tellingly, just 17% of those aged 18-35 are opposed, compared with 55% of those 55 or older. Even among Coalition voters, more support a separate day than oppose it (49% to 45%).

The waning attachment of market-sensitive mainstream brands such as MLA to the day may be just as telling, in the same way betting markets are a useful adjunct to polls to accurately measure the popular mood.

Read more: New research reveals our complex attitudes to Australia Day

Cricket Australias detachment may be the most significant of all barometers. Its hard to think of a brand more acutely aligned with Australian identity.

True, not all the BBLs franchise teams are on board. The commercial and marketing manager of the two Melbourne teams, Nick Cummins, is batting on with promoting this years January 26 fixtures at the MCG as Australia Day matches. It was, he said a complex issue that needs time and extensive engagement.

But the writing is on the wall. As Indigenous cricketer Dan Christian put it, there comes a time to to read the room.

More here:
It's not just cricket: Australia Day isn't the commercial winner it used to be - The Conversation AU

The Private Sydney Australia Day Dishonours list is dedicated to the shameless, the unintentionally hilarious, the idiotic, the buffoonish and the self-absorbed of our great land.

And theres no shortage of contenders, as a quick scroll down the Daily Mails right-hand column of shame would testify on any given day and at any given hour.

This year's honour for Services to Indolence goes to Kyle Sandilands. The radio star, who is almost as famous for the amount of days he has off work than he is for his tawdry love life, became headline news again after he slept in and turned up to work an hour late last week.

Sierra uploaded a video to social media outlining the couples experience and said they had been kept in the dark after multiple training sessions were cancelled at the last minute.Credit:YouTube/Vanessa Sierra

PS's nominees for Services To Shameless Attention Seeking have to be Aussie tennis star Bernard Tomic and his latest squeeze, an OnlyFans adult entertainer named Vanessa Sierra.

Rebel Wilson with her beer baron boyfriend Jacob Busch in Monte Carlo last year.Credit:Instagram

They've been "locked up" in hotel quarantine ahead of the Australian Open and according to them, the conditions have been unbearable. (Sierra now says she was joking when she started posting on social media about the hardship of having to wash her own hair, which the next day she claimed had generated 500 death threats.)

Sierra scaled the dizzying heights of Aussie celebrity as an also-ran on the torturous dating show Love Island, but last week she became headline news all by herself on Channel Seven. The network played her heavily edited video, apparently skipping Sierra's "punchline", though to be honest she's no Joan Rivers.

Comic Rebel Wilson is being inducted today into the Order of the Ultimate Bogan Betrayers.

Wilson has been applauded for shedding kilos during her year-long health kick, but judging by her highly-orchestrated Instagram feed it would appear she now has little in common with the woman her fans originally fell in love with.

Wilson got her big break in Fat Pizza 20 years ago, in which she unapologetically played overweight Greek-Australian Toula. Last year she admitted she would be "crucified" if the politically incorrect show went to air today.

Wilson also wrote and starred in the series Bogan Pride, playing the character Jennie Cragg as she embarks on a quest to win $10,000 in a local dance battle to pay for her morbidly obese mother's stomach stapling operation.

No more fat-shaming, culturally insensitive cheap laughs for Wilson these days though.

Wilson now flies around the world's most exclusive resorts on a seemingly endless fleet of private jets, parties on superyachts with billionaires, and hangs out with European royalty and Hollywood A-listers. She is dating a hot beer baron with a penchant for Gucci mules and regularly poses in sexy photo shoots showing off her new, svelte figure.

For Services to Injectibles, Lip Fillers and Fabulousness, PS can't look past former child star Jack Vidgen, who has recreated himself into an androgynous Lolitaesque character. He appears to have kissed his squeaky-clean, boy next door persona goodbye, along with his legion of 80-year-old grandmother fans.

During his time on I'm A Celebrity. . . Get Me Out Of Here! Vidgen opened up about the many cosmetic procedures he had undergone, saying: "If someone's happy... and they look like a circus clown... if they're happy, they're happy."

Jack Vidgen, then 14, blew everyone away with his audition on Australia's Got Talent in 2011.Credit: Nine

Clearly not as happy are this years inductees into the Order Of Repressed Angry White Men who have valiantly been waging their battles on the gender, race and sexuality fronts since Moses was a boy: NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham and unintentional humorist, Christian lobbyist Lyle Shelton.

Latham has given up trolling former Australian of the Year, domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, and focused his hyperventilation on ensuring school kids remain in their scientifically-proven gender camps (sorry Jack, you and your false eyelashes and luscious lips are not welcome).

Meanwhile like-minded Shelton has been waging war against story book reading drag queens in Brisbane when he's not posing in selfies with local Proud Boys. He insists he was joking after he managed to absorb valuable Queensland police time when he tweeted he had a "sneaky run across the border and back" and "avoided the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] virus police" in the process.

However you intend to commemorate, commiserate or simply ignore Australia Day, and regardless of your views on Shelton, Latham, Sandilands, Tomic, Sierra, Wilson et al, we should never forget how lucky we are to live in a place where deliberately mischievous columns such as this can be written.

That's reason enough to let all us Australians rejoice every day of the year.

Andrew Hornery is a senior journalist and Private Sydney columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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The most UnAustralian Australians of the Year - Sydney Morning Herald

The Telegraph

Anger is mounting in Somalia over allegations young men are being secretly recruited and sent to Eritrea to fight in Ethiopia's civil war. Three families told Reuters their young sons had officially been recruited by Somalia's government to work in Qatar, only to later find out they had been sent to Eritrea and forced to serve as soldiers. Ali Jamac Dhoodi, 48, told the news agency he thought his son was working as a security guard in Qatar to help prepare for next year's football World Cup. But he said he was later told by Somalia's National Intelligence Agency that his son had died in Eritrea. "They showed me a picture from their WhatsApp and asked me, 'do you know this picture and his full name?' I said, 'yes he is my son,'" Dhoodi, 48, said. "They said to me 'your son died'. I cried." Others said their sons, who had originally been sent to Eritrea for military training, were sent to fight in the Ethiopian civil war. Mothers have led rare protests in the capital Mogadishu demanding to know where their children had been sent, and some lawmakers have written to Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo asking for information. I heard that our children who were sent to Eritrea for military training have been taken and their responsibility was turned over to [Ethiopian Prime Minister] Abiy Ahmed to fight for him, Fatuma Moallim Abdulle, the mother of 20-year-old soldier Ahmed Ibrahim Jumaleh, told The Associated Press. "According to the information I gathered, our children were taken straight to Mekele city," the capital of the Tigray region, she said. You may understand how I feel, I am a mother who carried her child for nine months in my belly, thats my blood and flesh. Eritrea is accused of involvement in the conflict pitting its neighbour Ethiopia's federal government against the rebellious leaders of the northern Tigray region. Witnesses have accused Eritrean forces of massacring civilians and pillaging villages in the embattled region. The United States on Thursday said it had pressed Eritrea's government to immediately withdraw its troops from Ethiopia. Somalian and Ethiopian authorities have denied Somali troops are being deployed in Tigray. Ethiopia and Eritrea have consistently denied reports of Eritrean troops fighting in the conflict, despite extensive Telegraph reporting and the video of an Ethiopian general pointing to the contrary.

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The defense production act can be used as a incentive rather than a weapon: NAM CEO - Yahoo Money