   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S69The Most Underrated Sci-Fi Show of the Year Teases a Massive Space War   Remember when people on Mars got rowdy in 2003? In For All Mankind Season 4, the alternate spaceflight timeline that began in 1969 will continue into the 21st century with a very different status quo for planetary colonization than we ever experienced in real life.As Apple’s sci-fi series continues its ambitious march toward the future, the new season will not only continue the show’s mind-bending alternate history but also potentially begin a very realistic interplanetary conflict between Earth and Mars. Or perhaps, war on Mars itself. And if For All Mankind does take its timeline into a solar system of interplanetary war, it could set a new precedent for sci-fi TV.
Continued here
|
S1Don't Let Your Company's Culture Stifle Leadership Development  All too often, leadership development programs don’t adequately account for the culture, norms, and system within which the leader is working. Leaders may be asked to think long term in a culture that fixates on immediate results, or they may be taught to collaborate across organizational boundaries when they’re rewarded for work within their own group. When leaders and leadership development practitioners fail to acknowledge the critical role of 1) a company’s culture and organizational context and 2) the most senior leaders’ role in shaping that context, they oversimplify and likely undermine their leadership development efforts. The author shares four strategies that Intuit has used to build a culture that reinforces, rather than inhibits, positive leader growth.
Continued here
|
S2AI Unlocks New Power for Employees: Are HR Leaders Ready? | Josh Bersin  Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.A new dynamic for human resources is upon us: the era of intelligence, driven by artificial intelligence. As we now know from the phenomenon of ChatGPT, generative AI has the potential to unlock trapped information from thousands of sources in an organization. Once a company starts building a large language model (LLM), it can collect data from HR, finance, recruiting, and other systems like a vacuum cleaner. Every process document, training program, compliance rule, and policy that gets input into the LLM will suddenly be available to any employee by asking the system a simple question. The new freedom and power this technology offers has the potential to make accessing useful information easier and faster than at any time in the past.
Continued here
|
S3Should you trust personal finance advice from a 'finfluencer'?  When Yasmin Purnell started blogging in 2017, she planned to share her experiences of becoming a digital nomad. However, the creative-writing graduate and copywriter soon found visitors to her site were more interested in how she afforded her freelance lifestyle.Noticing the hunger for personal finance advice, UK-based Purnell, now 31, rebranded her website. The Wallet Moth – a blog offering finance and frugal-living advice – was born.
Continued here
|
S4Business in Russia: Why some firms haven't left  When the first airstrikes fell on Ukraine in February 2022, corporate executives with operations or holdings in Russia were forced to pick a side. This decision had significant implications. Russia remains a major business market, with a population of 145 million; its 2022 GDP was a staggering $2.24tn (£1.81tn), right behind France. Fleeing companies would leave a lot of revenue on the table.Yet amid a gruelling war, with tens of thousands of civilian casualties and widespread international condemnation of Russia, companies risked severe reputational damage by staying put. Plus, a mix of international pressure, sanctions and risks of Russian government interference offered strong reasons for companies to leave when the conflict began.
Continued here
|
S5How to make the perfect omelette  Joining a French restaurant kitchen is a baptism by fire. An apprentice has mere moments to make an impression, and, according to Yves Camdeborde, owner of Paris' four Avant-Comptoir restaurants, is frequently given a task whose outward simplicity conceals true technicity. To succeed is to garner favour; to fail is to show one still has much to learn. Such is the role, from corner bistros to Michelin-starred dining rooms, of the omelette.A French omelette, Camdeborde explained, stands out from versions where fillings are mixed right in with the eggs.
Continued here
|
S6The Simple Art of Rice: Seafood paella with lime  When James Beard award-winning chef JJ Johnson owner of the fast-casual restaurant Fieldtrip in Harlem, New York, was growing up, he had Sunday night dinners at his grandmother Bebe's house. Bebe loved to make paella for this weekly gathering, and Johnson loved to eat it. "For me, paella was just part of the culture," Johnson said.In his new cookbook, The Simple Art of Rice (published this September), Johnson includes a recipe for paella inspired by the one Bebe used to make. This is one of dozens of recipes in the book that dive deep into rice around the world. "You can use so many different rice dishes to learn about culture and people," Johnson said.
Continued here
|
S7Why 'wear, wash, repeat' makes sense  We all have certain items of clothing that we feel most comfortable in, and that we end up throwing on every day, even though we have 10 other garments that would fulfil the same purpose in the wardrobe. One pair of jeans that fits better than all the others, or one T-shirt that is just us, our best and truest identity in sartorial form. And as New York, London, Paris and Milan fashion weeks aim to create shopping momentum for autumn 2024's must-have new styles, many of us are reclining on the sofa or going for a walk in the park wearing the same jumper we have picked off the back of our bedroom chair every day for years. But why is that? And how do our lazy dressing habits make us sustainability supporters?Ruth Barrett and her partner Jordan got married a week before the pandemic shut Britain down. While the couple celebrated their wedding in the nick of time, they missed out on a honeymoon. In the grand scheme of things, the lost trip is not a big deal at all, Barrett says, but when she and Jordan were able to drive their car around their local area for a mini honeymoon a few months later, that felt very special. "Obviously there were so many other things that were so much more important," Barrett tells BBC Culture. "That were so distressing [at the time], but we got that little nugget of niceness."
Continued here
|
S8American Fiction review: Could Jeffrey Wright win the best actor Oscar?  In a year where many stars stayed away from the Toronto International Film Festival because of the actors' strike, it meant more focus was on the films, even if many considered this year's selection less than vintage. Nevertheless, there were a number of breakout movies, including Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, Azazel Jacobs' His Three Daughters and Christy Hall's Daddio – while the clear highlight was Cord Jefferson's American Fiction, which deservedly won The People’s Choice award, commonly cited as a harbinger for Oscar success. Past winners of the audience-selected prize include subsequent best picture victors Slumdog Millionaire, Green Book, Nomadland, The Kings Speech and 12 Years a Slave. American Fiction is an adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, a satire on the US publishing industry. It's a showcase for Jeffrey Wright, who is magnificent in the role of a struggling intellectual author who dumbs down to write a bestseller.
Continued here
|
S9US policy of 'pragmatic engagement' in Afghanistan risks legitimatizing Taliban rule  For two decades, the conflict in Afghanistan occupied international attention and U.S. resources. But ever since American troops withdrew in 2021, the conflict has seemingly been viewed in Washington more as a concern localized to the region of Central and South Asia.This is due in large part to the U.S.’s shifting global priorities. The invasion in Ukraine and Chinese ambitions in the Pacific have meant that Afghanistan is no longer a top priority for the U.S. administration.
Continued here
|
S10S11Earthquakes and other natural hazards are a risk everywhere - here's how people are preparing in the US and around the world  Some places are more prone to hazards such as earthquakes, flooding and hurricanes, but there’s nowhere where the risk is zero. The good news is that humans can make good decisions to lower the odds of such hazards turning into disasters. Technology can help determine where to make investments to save the most lives.The terrible devastation caused by a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Morocco on Sept. 8, 2023, is the result of the presence of centuries-old historic buildings and the continued use of old construction methods such as clay bricks and unreinforced masonry. These building materials are prevalent worldwide, particularly in developing countries.
Continued here
|
S12S13AI won't be replacing your priest, minister, rabbi or imam any time soon  Early in the summer of 2023, robots projected on a screen delivered sermons to about 300 congregants at St. Paul’s Church in Bavaria, Germany. Created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna, the experimental church service drew immense interest. The deadpan sermon delivery prompted many to doubt whether AI can really displace priests and pastoral instruction. At the end of the service, an attendee remarked, “There was no heart and no soul.”
Continued here
|
S14S15EV sales growth points to oil demand peaking by 2030 - so why is the oil industry doubling down on production?  Robert Brecha is also affiliated with Climate Analytics, a global non-profit climate science and policy institute. Opinions and ideas expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Dayton or Climate Analytics. Electric vehicle sales are growing faster than expected around the world, and, sales of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles have been falling. Yet, the U.S. government still forecasts an increasing demand for oil, and the oil industry is doubling down on production plans.
Continued here
|
S16Rising number of 'predatory' academic journals undermines research and public trust in scholarship  There were an estimated 996 publishers that published over 11,800 predatory journals in 2015. That is roughly the same number of legitimate, open-access academic journals – available to readers without charge and archived in a library supported by a government or academic institution – published around the same time. In 2021, another estimate said there were 15,000 predatory journals.We are scholars of journalism and media ethics who see the negative effects predatory publishing is having on our own fields of journalism and mass communication. We believe it is important for people to understand how this problem affects society more broadly.
Continued here
|
S17S18S19Russell Brand: how the comedy industry uses humour to abuse and silence women  Recent allegations against comedian Russell Brand were published by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. Brand has denied the allegations in a video posted to his Instagram account.Much discussion about the allegations has highlighted the possibility that celebrity status can be leveraged to abuse and silence women. There has not been as much attention, however, to the way Brand’s persona as a comedian and the specifics of the comedy industry may have influenced events.
Continued here
|
S20Positive outlook for local and export gas supplies for early 2024: ACCC  The outlooks for both local and export supplies of gas are positive for the early months of next year, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry’s September report. The inquiry, which provides regular information on east coast supply, says there will be sufficient gas to meet domestic demand as we go into 2024, while exports are predicted to be 9% higher in the first quarter, compared to the same quarter this year.
Continued here
|
S21Chatbots for medical advice: three ways to avoid misleading information  Bioethicist, Department of Health Ethics and Society, Maastricht University and Institute for Biomedical Ethics, University of Basel We expect medical professionals to give us reliable information about ourselves and potential treatments so that we can make informed decisions about which (if any) medicine or other intervention we need. If your doctor instead “bullshits” you (yes – this term has been used in academic publications to refer to persuasion without regard for truth, and not as a swear word) under the deception of authoritative medical advice, the decisions you make could be based on faulty evidence and may result in harm or even death.
Continued here
|
S22S23Nipah virus outbreak in India - what you need to know  There has been an outbreak of the deadly Nipah virus in Kerala, India. Five people have caught the virus, two of whom have died. The authorities in the Kozhikode district, where the outbreak occurred, have instituted “containment zones” in the area and schools have been closed. Seventy-six people who came into contact with the infected are being closely monitored for signs of the disease.
Continued here
|
S24Bankruptcy is spiking among UK borrowers - but there are debt relief options if you are struggling financially  UK households have one of the highest debt levels in the world. Steadily increasing in the last two decades, the average total debt per household (including mortgages) is £65,619 as of August 2023. This is £34,644 per adult, or around 103.5% of average earnings.As indebtedness has steadily increased over the last two decades, household bankruptcies have quadrupled, reaching around 200,000 filings in 2022. One of the main reasons of this increase is arguably the 2002 UK bankruptcy reform, which made it easier for people to file for bankruptcy.
Continued here
|
S25Albania: how one of the most corrupt countries in Europe is tackling crime at the highest level  Albania may be struggling with high levels of corruption at all levels of society, but the country is taking a new approach to tackling this crime with the introduction of a special anti-corruption body, known as Spak. Spak is made up of a special prosecution office, the national bureau of investigation, and special courts dealing with corruption and organised crime. Its structure was established as part of Albania’s judicial reform, and adopted by its parliament in 2016, giving it constitutional powers to fight corruption and organised crime at the highest levels of government and society.
Continued here
|
S26S27Why invasive ants are a silent threat to our ecosystems  Invertebrates are often described by experts as the “little things that run the world”, and ants are certainly one of the top contenders for this role. Ants help ecosystems to function normally and the total weight of all ants on Earth is roughly equivalent to 1.4 billion people, or 33 Empire State Buildings. Invasive species are thought to be the second largest threat to biodiversity after habitat destruction. They are a leading cause of animal extinctions, potentially leading to species extinction and ecosystem failure.
Continued here
|
S28UFOs: how Nasa plans to get to the bottom of unexplained sightings  UAP is the term Nasa now uses for UFOs. The committee was directed to gather reports of UAPs and try to understand what these mysterious events really are, including answering the question of whether or not they could be extraterrestrial in origin. The committee held a press conference back in May, when it provided an update on its work up to that point. The study team outlined some of the common explanations for UAP sightings – which includes boats low on the horizon and high-flying balloons – as well as how many events remained truly unexplained.
Continued here
|
S29Hanan Ashrawi and Yossi Beilin on what happened after the Oslo accords handshake - podcast  When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn in September 1993, it was the beginning of a peace process, not a final agreement. In the second part of Inside the Oslo Accords, a special podcast series from The Conversation Weekly, we explore what happened in the years after the handshake. We hear the perspectives of two insiders to the negotiations: Palestinian political and civil society leader, Hanan Ashrawi, and Israeli former deputy foreign minister, Yossi Beilin.
Continued here
|
S30S31Mexican court ruling upholding women's right to abortion shows global trend better than US Roe v Wade decision  It may surprise you to learn that, over the past 30 years, no fewer than 60 countries have liberalised their abortion laws while only four have rolled back abortion rights. The United States is, of course, one of the latter group that has recently restricted women’s access to abortion. Because the US looms so large in international news coverage of abortion, casual observers often assume that anti-abortion reforms in the US signal a broader global trend or will trigger a domino effect of abortion restrictions. But this view is misguided. It’s important to explore why this is.
Continued here
|
S32Russell Brand investigation: what good journalists should have to go through to report sexual assault allegations  The allegations of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse by comedian and actor Russell Brand seemed like a bombshell scoop to many readers and viewers. But for the journalists at The Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches, the publication of their report was the result of four years of reporting, investigating and fact checking. The claims related to four alleged victims from 2006-13, when Brand was at the height of his fame. Pre-empting the release of the Channel 4 documentary and the Sunday Times splash, Brand posted a video denying the allegations and stating that all his previous relationships were consensual.
Continued here
|
S33'Time In A Bottle': Jim Croce's music continues to inspire 50 years after his life was cut short  On Thursday, Sept. 20, 1973, singer-songwriter Jim Croce died when his chartered plane crashed shortly after takeoff in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He was 30 years old.Croce was a chart-topping musician who had performed over 300 concerts in the previous year. He had been in Natchitoches to play that evening at Northwestern State University, making up for a concert canceled the previous spring because he had a sore throat. Croce had performed for an enthusiastic if small audience. Many people had stayed home to watch the televised broadcast of the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King.
Continued here
|
S34S35Buffy Sainte-Marie: Singer-songwriter is an activist at heart  After a 60-year career, Buffy Sainte-Marie recently announced she is hanging up her performing clothes for health-related reasons.Sainte-Marie was born on Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan but was raised in Massachusetts and Maine after she was adopted. When Sainte-Marie found her way to Greenwich Village in New York City in 1963, she had already developed an interest in her Cree heritage, wondering why American Indians seemed relegated to museums.
Continued here
|
S36S37S38Lots of women try herbs like black cohosh for menopausal symptoms like hot flushes - but does it work?  Menopause is the stage of life where the ovaries stop releasing eggs and menstrual periods cease. Most Australian women go through menopause between 45 and 55 years of age, with the average age being 51 years, although some women may be younger.Hot flushes and night sweats are typical symptoms of menopause, with vaginal dryness, muscle and joint pains, mood changes and sleep disturbance also commonly reported. Up to 75% of women experience menopausal symptoms, with nearly 30% severely affected.
Continued here
|
S39Most pink diamonds were birthed by a disintegrating supercontinent. Where can we find more?  There is nothing quite like a diamond. For many they are the ultimate “I love you” gift, and jewellers will tell you the ultra-hard stones have unmatched “fire” and “brilliance”. The sentimental and aesthetic value of the gems is matched by their price, which can run to tens of thousand dollars per carat – and even more for coloured diamonds, especially if they are blue, green, violet, orange, red or pink.But why are diamonds so expensive? How do they form? Do we really find diamonds in volcanoes? What is the link to supercontinents and ancient lifeforms?
Continued here
|
S40The Nobel Peace Prize often reveals how contentious peace can be  Leading up to the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, there is widespread speculation about who will win. There are 351 nominees for the 2023 prize, 259 individuals and 92 organizations. Although the list is confidential, there is widespread speculation about who’s on it, including favourites and long shots, repeat and first-time nominees.
Continued here
|
S41What history can tell us about the success (or failure) of referendums in Australia  The Australian nation came into being following a series of referendums in the 1890s, and they have been a regular feature of Australian democracy ever since. In every decade of the 20th century, there was at least one referendum. However, the 2023 referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament will be the first in nearly a quarter of a century.The authors of the Australian Constitution wanted it to be an enduring but not unchanging document. In Section 128, a mechanism for changing the Constitution was included that has a role for the federal government, the states and the people. Federal parliament must agree to put a change forward, and it then requires the approval of a majority of states as well as an overall majority of voters.
Continued here
|
S42S43Hidden women of history: disabled Australian author Dorothy Cottrell was 'the Liane Moriarty of the Jazz Age' but is almost unheard of here  In the late 1920s, poet Mary Gilmore – the woman on the A$10 note – declared she’d encountered only two instances of “genius” during her four decades in Australian literature. The first was a man who remains a household name: Henry Lawson, bush poet, author of iconic stories like The Drover’s Wife, who upon his death received a state funeral. Today, Lawson’s work is still widely taught in schools. But what of Gilmore’s second genius? The writer who “wrote an Australia never before presented in prose”? This second virtuoso was a young, disabled woman and – funnily enough – she has been largely forgotten.
Continued here
|
S44Discriminatory policing is denying Black youth their childhood  A class-action lawsuit was brought against the Toronto Police Service in August over the force’s historic use of street checks, known as carding. The lawsuit highlights the damaging and discriminatory impacts of carding, which has disproportionately affected Black and Indigenous youth. Officially, the practice was halted years ago, though the lawsuit alleges that the practice continues. The allegations have not been tested in court.
Continued here
|
S45Justin Trudeau's India accusation complicates western efforts to rein in China  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegation that the Indian government was involved in the assassination on Canadian soil of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh independence advocate, will undoubtedly erode Canadian-Indian relations at a time when the West is trying to appeal to India. Trudeau has made international headlines with his allegation in Parliament this week that India had a hand in the murder of Nijjar, who was gunned down last June in the parking lot of a gurdwara — a Sikh place of worship — in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey.
Continued here
|
S46Colonists upended Aboriginal farming, growing grain and running sheep on rich yamfields, and cattle on arid grainlands  First Nations readers are advised this article contains references to colonial violence against First Nations people.In 1788 the First Fleet brought two bulls and four cows from the Cape of Good Hope and put them on grass on Bennelong Point, where Sydney Opera House is now. But there wasn’t much grass, and it wasn’t much good, so the cattle took off. Seven years later they were found 65 kilometres southwest, on the Cowpastures near Camden, a flourishing herd. By 1820 they were supporting an abattoir and a couple of tanneries.
Continued here
|
S47Why does my hair turn green from the swimming pool?  If you are a blonde like me and enjoy laps in a swimming pool, you may have noticed your hair acquires a green tint after frequent swims in chlorinated water.This happens to both bleached and natural blondes. In fact, the green tinge happens to everyone, but it’s less visible on dark hair and those whose hair isn’t damaged by chemical treatments such as bleaching.
Continued here
|
S48S49S50Do we really need another Swan Lake?  Last year when, The Australian Ballet announced their 2023 season and I saw a “new” Swan Lake on the list, I asked myself: did we really need another Swan Lake?First staged by the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow in 1877 – but most known for its 1895 version staged by the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg – it is the ballet which makes most sense as a pure classical ballet with its castles of parading royalty, its princes and princesses performing in crowded ballrooms and its lake of gliding swans.
Continued here
|
S51S52S53Slavery, illusion and dead white men: Zadie Smith's The Fraud explodes the historical novel  Victorian England loved a juicy scandal and Zadie Smith situates The Fraud in one of the mid-19th century’s most toothsome cause célèbres: the Tichborne case. Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to a title and fortune, went missing when the ship he was travelling on sank en route to Jamaica. His distraught mother, Lady Tichborne, clinging to the idea her son had been plucked from the ocean by a ship bound for Australia, advertised widely in the newspapers. In 1864 a man came forward claiming to be the lost heir.
Continued here
|
S54How do hay fever treatments actually work? And what's best for my symptoms?  Spring has sprung and many people are welcoming longer days and more time outdoors. But for almost one in five Australians, spring also brings the misery of watery, itchy red eyes, a runny, congested nose, and sneezing. Hay fever (also known as allergic rhinitis) is caused when an allergen enters the nose or eyes. Allergens are harmless airborne substances the body has incorrectly identified as harmful. This triggers an immune response, which leads to the release of inflammatory chemicals (mediators) – one of which is histamine.
Continued here
|
S55The social lives of kangaroos are more complex than we thought  Have you ever wondered what a kangaroo’s social life looks like? Well, kangaroos have stronger bonds to one another than you might think. Over six years, we monitored a population of around 130 eastern grey kangaroos near Wollar in New South Wales to see how their relationships changed over time. Keeping tabs on individual roos led to some surprising results.
Continued here
|
S56S57AU and G20: membership will give Africa more say on global issues - if it speaks with one voice  After seven years of advocating for full membership, the African Union (AU) will join the Group of 20 “most important industrialised and developing economies”. It becomes the second regional bloc to join the group after the 27-member European Union (EU).The G20 was established after the 1999 Asian financial crisis as an informal grouping of ministers of finance and central bank governors. It grew out of the G7, which was formed in 1975 to deal with another complex global financial and economic crisis.
Continued here
|
S58X Users to Require Elon Musk to Pay Them to Keep Using It  THE XVERSE (The Borowitz Report)—Users of X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, are about to roll out a plan that would require Elon Musk to pay them a monthly fee to keep using the site.Tracy Klugian, a user who masterminded the plan, said that a monthly fee of $10.99 would compensate users for the toxic experience of being on X.
Continued here
|
S59Republican Support for the U.A.W. Is a Big LOL  The United Auto Workers strike is now in its second calendar week, and Republicans in Michigan and elsewhere are making an absurd political play. After years of representing the interests of big business and resisting legislation supported by labor unions, they are claiming to be a party with the interests of the striking autoworkers at heart.As you might have expected, Donald Trump is leading the stunt. This past weekend, he told NBC News, “The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump.” He and other Republicans have seized on the argument that the Biden Administration’s push for electric vehicles (E.V.s) is a betrayal of the country’s autoworkers, most of whom work at plants that make gasoline vehicles or their components.
Continued here
|
S60Nikki Haley's Consensus Appeal  Midway through the Q.-&-A. section of Nikki Haley's town hall, earlier this month, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Merrimack, New Hampshire, a man named Ted Johnson stood up to announce that America was heading for civil war. "So," he asked Haley, "how can I get back to that day, in the nineteen-eighties, when I was happy, running in the street, riding my bike?"As it happens, Haley brings up the eighties a lot. Her most recent book takes its title from a Margaret Thatcher quotation, and she frequently invokes Thatcher on the campaign trail; last month, at the first G.O.P. Presidential debate, she trotted out the "If you want something done, ask a woman" line to her biggest audience yet. In February, a video teaser for Haley's campaign had opened with a grainy clip of Jeane Kirkpatrickâthe Democrat turned neocon foreign-policy adviser to Ronald Reaganâaddressing the 1984 Republican National Convention.
Continued here
|
S61The World According to Elon Musk's Grandfather  This month, Elon Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, alleging that its denunciation of Xâthe A.D.L. had accused the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter of amplifying antisemitismâhas cost Musk's company a fortune in advertising revenue. The Anti-Defamation League, in turn, asserted that Musk's threat was "dangerous and deeply irresponsible." This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to California to meet with Musk to discuss artificial intelligence, but their other much-anticipated topic was antisemitism. Netanyahu asked Musk to "stop antisemitism as best you can." Musk, alluding to SpaceX and his hope for a mission to Mars, responded that he favors anything that "ultimately leads us to become a spacefaring civilization," and, since hate hinders that mission, "obviously, I'm against antisemitism."This all unfolded amid the release of Walter Isaacson's new biography of Musk. Musk's family history has a bearing on the dispute, but, in the book, as I pointed out in a review, Isaacson only glancingly discusses Musk's grandfather J. N. Haldeman, whom he presents as a risk-taking adventurer and whose politics he dismisses as "quirky." In fact, Haldeman was a pro-apartheid, antisemitic conspiracy theorist who blamed much of what bothered him about the world on Jewish financiers.
Continued here
|
S62"Stop Making Sense" and the Transformative Power of Collaboration  Talking pictures began with a musicalâ"The Jazz Singer," in 1927âand the filming of musical performance has been an artistic battleground ever since. With great performers, unadorned recording is a virtue; film plays an archival role in preserving onstage singing and dancing that would otherwise have been lost to history. But movies are an art in themselves, and, when performances are filmed without an aesthetic, the result is numbing, as the up-and-down fortunes of early movie musicals reflect. In the wake of the success of "The Jazz Singer," the genre was overused and underthought, and soon became box-office poison, until Busby Berkeley reimagined and revitalized it, with the artistry of his highly stylized numbers in "42nd Street" (1933). The conflict endures, especially in the subgenre of concert movies, in which a director's limited control of the action and of camera placement makes it hard to produce a stylishly cinematic work. One of the few directors to overcome these obstacles and create a concert movie artistically equal to his fiction features is the late Jonathan Demmeâwith "Stop Making Sense," his 1984 film of the band Talking Heads in performance. (It is now having a theatrical rerelease, in a new restoration.)Demmeâwhether in his previous movies, such as "Citizens Band" and "Melvin and Howard," or his later and more famous ones, including "The Silence of the Lambs," "Philadelphia," and "Rachel Getting Married"âexcelled at tracking the complex interactions of ensemble casts. The same artistic impulse is at the heart of "Stop Making Sense," which stitches together parts of three Talking Heads performances from December, 1983, at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, to evoke a single concert. With Demme's dramatic features, the creation of the ensemble was a product of his actor-focussed directorial ethic, but in "Stop Making Sense" he achieves this feeling by creating a distinctive image repertory that emphasizes the band members' interplay and offers a clear visual manifestation of their connections, both practical and intangible.
Continued here
|
S63Apple's Updated Options for Ignoring Your Screen-Time Limit  With Apple Screen Time, you can manage how many minutes you allow yourself on any given app. In addition to the previously programmed snooze intervals of one minute, fifteen minutes, and the rest of the day, to better serve your horrible little life style, we've expanded our options to include:Snooze until I'm at the front of the line at the bagel shop, and they've just run out of everything bagels.
Continued here
|
S64The 10 Best John Wick Knockoff Movies, Ranked  No one could have known John Wick would sire a cinematic universe when it debuted in 2014. At worst, it would be another bottom-of-the-barrel Taken-esque revenge thriller; at best, a vehicle for Keanu Reeves’ long-awaited comeback. Thankfully, we got the latter. The Wick films propelled Reeves, stuntmen-turned-directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, and their respective production companies to the forefront of action filmmaking. While Stahelski and Reeves continue to expand the Wick world, Leitch and a handful of other alums have gone on to create their own neon-drenched, ultraviolent odysseys. Some have been the perfect placeholders while we wait for actual John Wick sequels and spin-offs, others... not so much. But that hasn’t stopped Hollywood from trying to manufacture John Wick’s lightning in a bottle.
Continued here
|
S6520 Years Ago, the Most Underrated Vampire Thriller Redefined a Classic Genre  Since the early days of cinema, filmmakers have been obsessed with vampires. Some classics, like Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, stay close to the tone of traditional vampire tales. Conversely, more experimental efforts like Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, play with vampire archetypes and gothic horror tropes in their own unique, artistic ways.But few 20th-century movies offer as distinct a take on the genre as Underworld. The Len Wiseman-directed 2003 action film pulls from multiple different influences, including 1999’s The Matrix and 1998’s Blade, to create a visually striking alternate reality where vampires and werewolves walk, hunt, growl, and fight among us. Twenty years after its September 19 release, Underworld’s late ‘90s influences feel more dated than they did at the time of its release — but the film itself still feels just as refreshing and original.
Continued here
|
S66New NASA Video Reveals a Never-Before-Seen Phenomenon Near the Sun  A video from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe shows how space dust gets blasted away after a solar eruption. In a blog post published on Friday, the space agency shared a video of a solar explosion having a peculiar effect on its environment. The blast, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), is a type of event thought to have repercussions throughout the Solar System. One specific consequence revealed for the first time in new footage obtained on September 5 with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, is that a CME can clear out interplanetary dust.
Continued here
|
S67'Ahsoka' Theory Finally Settles a Longstanding Star Wars Debate  Both the Star Wars prequels and its sequel trilogy have influenced Ahsoka. For all the callbacks the series has made to the distant past, fans are also expecting it to answer questions about the future. It’s uniquely positioned to do both; since it takes place after the fall of the Empire and before the rise of the First Order, Ahsoka can expand the stories we know while contextualizing events that still don’t really make sense.While Ahsoka isn’t part of the sequel trilogy, her fate remains one of the era’s biggest unanswered questions. After The Rise of Skywalker, many fans assumed Ahsoka had passed and become one with the Force, since she was one of a handful of bygone Jedi that spoke to Rey (Daisy Ridley). Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni never outright confirmed fans’ suspicions — in fact, he seemed to do the exact opposite — but he’s always been pretty noncommittal about Ahsoka’s future, and reluctant to let go of the character.
Continued here
|
S68The iPhone 15 Pro & Pro Max Are the Most 'Pro' Phones Apple Has Ever Made  I am not exaggerating when I say that Apple pulled out all of the stops for the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. Top to bottom, inside and out, Apple's premium iPhones are the best smartphones — again.These are the best iPhones that Apple has ever made. They further widen the gap between the pro and non-pro iPhones with even more "pro" features like a camera system that goes far beyond its physical lenses, an A17 Pro chip with performance that's in a class of its own, an Action button that pushes customization to a new level, and a USB-C port that finally makes transferring high-res photos and videos speedy.
Continued here
|
S70When Does 'Ahsoka' Take Place? An Ingenious Easter Egg Holds the Answer  While the Mando-verse may be covering the years after Return of the Jedi, Ahsoka isn’t exactly upfront about when the series is set. We know it’s somewhere in the New Republic era, but precisely when is up for debate.However, in Episode 5 we saw Ahsoka undergo a Gandalf-like resurrection that finally gives us a firm benchmark. Her new look — and a key moment in another Star Wars show — may pinpoint exactly when this adventure takes place, and it’s further along than you probably thought.
Continued here
|
 |
TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India |
