Youre being too emotional.

That phrase is simply a red flag to a bull no matter our gender, and many of us are familiar with a gush of lame retort options then flooding our brain. We were obviously on the defensive at the start and now were in danger of doubling down.

Once our primal fight or flight response has bolted its a big challenge to rein it in, but the better leader in us will want to learn to try. Logic dictates that were at our best when were thinking strategically and have a grounded sense of clarity around what we value in the moment. Not when were flailing at our assailant.

Our emotional reactions are valid and they will persist but when we practice the skill of leveraging their dynamic energy for positive effect, thats when magic happens. When we try our hand at being accountable for managing our own response, were suddenly empowered by personal choice and weve opened the door to our emotional intelligence.

Here are some tips for pulling the handbrake on your emotional knee-jerk reaction once its started.

On the next occasion where you feel triggered to react, make a conscious choice to create a gap between your initial emotion and your verbal response to it. Take a slow deep breath. In the next few seconds, ask yourself:

You may be asking yourself if its really possible to think through all of this in a matter of seconds and shift your gears in time, but youll find that even just your increased focus on self-awareness will make a difference, and the rest will follow in time.

Following are a few rewards for your efforts.

Increased Presence through Self-Awareness: With a sharpened ability to recognise our emotions as they arise, were empowered with the opportunity to manage them purposefully in alignment with our true objectives.

Self-Control: When we work to identify, acknowledge and accept our personal conflict triggers and are practiced at managing them quickly, we can bypass those spontaneous reactions that inflame, by creating a short gap in time. Its in that space that we can contemplate and manage our response.

Effective Relationships: With this new emotional agility, were better able to curb our defensive tendencies, and avoid the disruptive finger pointing and blame.

Flexibility: Our world is transforming so quickly, its more important than ever to develop a mindset that is skilled at being open, accepting and adaptive to change at every turn.

Solution Focus: By managing emotions and remaining as objective as possible during conversations that have the potential to be volatile and unproductive, we can focus our attention on outcomes and end results. Knowing how to regulate our emotional responses in alignment with best outcomes is an empowering place to start.

Read the original:
Managing your emotional responses in the boardroom - The CEO Magazine

Rabbi Jeffrey Schein returns to Cleveland Nov. 3 to host Digital Cube: Our Evolving Digital Selves, a panel discussion based on his book, Text Me: Ancient Jewish Wisdom Meets Contemporary Jewish Technology.

The event takes place at Temple Emanu El in Orange with an interfaith panel composed of the Rev. Andy Call, lead pastor of Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights; Rabbi Peter Haas, who is Abba Hillel Silver professor emeritus of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University, and Simee Malik, a community leader of Chagrin Valley Islamic Center in Solon.

The discussion, which will explore the connections between faith and technology, will be followed by interfaith dialogues facilitated by Rabbi Steven Denker, spiritual leader of Temple Emanu El; Rabbi Enid Lader, spiritual leader of Beth Israel-The West Temple in Cleveland; Rabbi Steve Segar, spiritual leader of Kol HaLev in Pepper Pike; and Masroor Malik, board member of the Chagrin Valley Islamic Center.

What the book tries to do by using various Jewish sources is offer what I call the three gifts of perspective, balance and self-awareness, Schein told the Cleveland Jewish News Oct. 25. Its a workbook. It draws a lot from the Jewish tradition of Musar to figure out and help us be more mindful about our own relationships to technology and when our devices are serving important purposes, our purposes, and when we end up serving the intentions, however unexpressed, of those devices and of technologies, when technologies drive us rather than us technologies.

The Temple Emanu El event will be Scheins second of eight appearances in a book tour. He is appearing in Toronto the day before and in Minneapolis afterward.

He said his favorite sources for the text include Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, and Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who wrote a book about the impact of television called The Medium is the Massage.

Schein, 71, who was the founding rabbi of Kol HaLev in Pepper Pike, relocated to Minneapolis four years ago to live near his grandchildren.

Originally posted here:
Former rabbi of Kol HaLev to discuss his book - Cleveland Jewish News

As you watch The Morning Show, more context, again, helps. The first three episodes made available to critics are remarkably flat for such a lavish venture. The series looks fantasticpolished and sumptuous in its re-creation of glaring TV studios, glassy Tribeca lofts, ballroom galas. Even a West Virginia coal-mine protest gets juiced with vivid landscapes and countless fleece-wearing extras clutching banners. But the initial story, which features the anchor Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) dealing with misconduct allegations about her on-air partner, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), feels strangely inert. Anistons Alex is a difficult character to absorb: Shes prickly, guarded even with family members, and mired in an existential crisis even before scandal hits. Carells Mitch, groomed to physically resemble Lauer, is enraged, barking at handlers who seem ill at ease in his presence. Reese Witherspoon plays Bradley Jackson, a local reporter on another network whose viral rant at the coal-mine protest turns her into national news, and whose scrappy underdog status is hard to square with Witherspoons preternatural star presence.

But then, on Thursday, Apple released more episodes to critics, and I watched more, and something changed. The pilot is an odd cocktail of stilted Sorkinian monologues and cashmere-swaddled nervous breakdowns, energized occasionally by Billy Crudups scenery-chewing performance as a satanic network honcho, Cory Ellison. There are periodic explicative orations about the state of the nation. (I think America is tired of Twitter fighting. Its ignorant, and its contributing to the dumbing down of our country.) A scene where a drunken Alex tries to process the news cycle outing Mitch as a serial harasser by going into his dressing room and rifling through his kombucha stash feels emotionally idle, and endless.

And yet, when The Morning Show finally gets its setup established, and starts to grapple with the consequences and the meaning of what Mitch has actually done, the show finds some momentum. Its at its most fascinating, and meaningful, when its picking at the cultural scar tissue left by so many allegations: the men in puddles of self-pitying reprisal, the dishonest proclamations that persist even now about movements going too far and all men being tarred with the same sticky brush, regardless of the scale of their reported offenses. With Carells Mitch, The Morning Show gets to think about the self-aggrandizement and denial that make some abusers incapable of honestly evaluating themselves. But it also gives space to the women he harassed to explain how his behavior affected them.

The moments in which Kerry Ehrin, The Morning Shows showrunner, and Mimi Leder, its director and executive producer, etch out Mitchs stages of delusion are riveting to watch. In the pilot, hes irate. They cant just do this to me, he rants, a cornered child smashing his toys. Its illegal. They cant just ruin my career based on hearsay. I didnt rape anybody. By Episode 2, hes in denial, insisting to his business manager that this substantial hit to his income is only temporary. But in Episode 3, when Mitch plays tennis with a scandal-ridden film director (played by Martin Short) whom he initially sees as a fellow victim of an overbearing witch hunt, you can finally sense the sharper edges of self-awareness start to pierce Mitchs armor. It gradually dawns on him that the man hes aligning himself with is actually a predator. But that same realization makes it harder to conceal the fact that he might be one, too.

The rest is here:
A #MeToo Scandal Erupts. The Morning Show Captures What Happens Next. - The Atlantic

Embrace your guilty pleasures

While solo dining might conjure up images of a corner booth at a cafe or a bar stool at a local restaurant, the ultimate solo dining experience is eating home alone. Its when were home alone with no one watching what were eating, how or where that our quirks, eccentricities and guilty pleasures come out.

Samantha Widder, now a graduate adviser for the food studies program at New York University, spent several months during her own graduate studies gathering accounts from 150 people of their food habits when eating alone. Responses showed a wide spectrum of food experiences, representing the joys, stigmas and even fears around eating alone. (One respondent said he would eat only soft food when eating by himself, for fear he would choke.)

I was thinking that I was going to find more of a celebratory tone, and there was more shame than I expected, Ms. Widder said.

People described eating frozen food, takeout leftovers in bed, cold cuts slathered in mustard, and in more than one case an entire box of crackers with an entire block of cheese.

Personally, I find that if theres no one around then I can almost celebrate those habits and those things, Ms. Widder said, citing a love of processed food. Whether people felt fear or freedom, shame or pleasure seemed to come down to their own attitude.

For her part, Ms. Widder said she found a certain comfort in the ubiquity of eating alone in a place like New York City. After all, if youre eating old pickles out of the fridge in a Brooklyn apartment, chances are that more than one neighbor is, too.

If dining alone still carries stigma and anxiety for many people, drinking alone might be the last frontier. But as Victoria James, a New York City sommelier and the beverage director at Cote, explained, treating yourself to a quality cocktail or a glass of wine can play a part in the richness of the experience. I think that the best way to savor a beverage when youre alone is just sort of have that recognition; toast to yourself, she said. I think its a really beautiful thing. So first and foremost, celebrate that moment.

Link:
How to Eat Alone (and Like It) - The New York Times

By Jared Coyle, Head of Innovation Experience Group, SAP North America and Eric Stine, Chief Customer Innovation Officer, SAP North America

Within enterprise leadership circles, significant time and energy are given to the critical shifts that are happening among a wide array of industries. But much less time is spent on building frameworks to address these changes based on learnings that can be gleaned from a long history of industrial transformations, from the radical changes of industrialization in the late 18th century through to todays digital transformations and the rise of forward-facing technologies like machine intelligence and the hyper-connectivity of things in daily life.

As we look back through history, there are lessons todays leaders can use to recognize change, understand their organizations role in that change, and adapt to the evolving environment. This involves purposeful pivots that serve both commercial success and society at large.

Recognizing Transformational Change

Retrospectively, transformational change is easily recognized. Yet in the throes of the actual tumult, industrys critical direction is not so transparent. Take, for example, the Pullman Palace Car Company which, during its peak in the 1920s, ran a network of 9,800 sleeper railcars. Pullman sleeper cars were the de facto transportation method for business travelers. And yet, after a century of successful enterprising, the advent of commercial air travel in the 1950s ran this railcar behemoth into the ground, despite nearly two decades of indicators on the coming rise of air travel.

What lessons can we learn from this and the myriad other transformations that have occurred in the past 307 years since Thomas Newcomen introduced the industrial steam engine?

First, monitoring and distilling what is really changing is often relegated to the realm of the futurist, with little consideration given to the everyday practitioners, customers, and experts whose constant exposure gives them unique insights into an organizations minutiae. Todays leaders need to establish communication channels to gather feedback from key constituents employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors and blend that with the company vision in order to build and maintain an inviolate strategy.

Had the leaders in Pullmans case been attuned to these signals, the company would have been positioned to pivot to a new mode of transportation for a new era of growth.

In a way, its understandable that many organizations want to fast-track past this evaluative step. After all, as leaders, were cognizant of which transformations are in flight. But the most successful organizations undergoing transformation exist in the uncomfortable position of self-awareness and humility.

Netflixs transition to streaming from mail-order discs is arguably the most prominent example of this self-awareness in action. And because 80% of CEOs believe they are creating a compelling customer experience, with only 8% of customers agreeing, it is important for leaders of established enterprises to more humbly approach the true risks that exist for the organization in tumultuous times.

One brilliant example of a constantly adapting organization on the lookout for industry trends is that of Cirque du Soleil. Point in fact: Cirque du Soleil has encouraged the use of cell phones and a cloud-based app during their performances of Toruk to improve audience participation.

Defining Purpose

Once an initial signal is detected, we can combine our new awareness with an understanding of our organizations strengths and weaknesses. This equips todays leaders to be able to define a purpose that we our leadership team, people, customers, shareholders, and stakeholders can stand behind in good conscience.

At its core, this process involves understanding our people not as self-interested actors but rather as core change agents with a desire for influence and a genuine higher purpose. These impactful individuals will stand behind an authentically redefined purpose for an organization that strives to address the experience gap. It is this pool of change agents that must be leveraged as we strive to put our purpose into action.

Recognizing Whether Were Driving Efficiencies Or Creating a Whole New Business Model

Not all transformations are the same. Industry transformations affect an organizations core assets and activities differently. Organizations change by either introducing entirely new business models or driving efficiency within existing or adjacent models.

The latter, the improvement of efficiency, is the traditional transformation that has been well documented since the 1990s with the advent of enterprise software systems. In the words of Thomas Davenport, The long-term productivity and connectivity gains created by enterprise systems are often so compelling that not adopting one is out of the question. While no longer top of mind for many leaders, this approach remains a powerful option for many organizations, particularly those in active cycles of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures in which significant productivity gains have yet to be realized.

The transformation that most organizations are grappling with in todays context is more existential similar to that of Pullman, Kodak, and Xerox, in which industry disruption puts the entire entitys health at risk.

These paradigms require boiling down the essence of what an enterprise can do and building a new business model that provides the framework to address the industrys step change happening right now. The traditional principles of developing good business models hold true and are well documented.

Navigating The New Purpose, The Middle Transition, And The Final Pivot

The art in this process, particularly when entirely new business models must be built, lies in the execution. And implementation begins with the identification and buy-in of a new purpose from our pool of change agents.

Arguably the most challenging step is to win in the medium term, while both our old and new models must concurrently exist. This is a necessary phase that is best minimized for long-term organization health.

And lastly is the final pivot, in which the changes are fully brought to fruition and the organization is carrying out the purpose, strategy, and business model that have been established. At least, until the next transformational signal is detected.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We invite you to explore how SAP is helping deliver the Intelligent Enterprise, a strategy that allows you to transform data into action across all lines of business driving process automation and innovation, unlocking new areas of growth, and delivering exceptional experiences.

Read the rest here:
How to Recognize and Adapt to Transformational Changes Happening in Your Industry - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM SAP - Harvard Business Review

Donald Trump has been a smothering presence on Twitter since long before he became President. Back in the day, he would use the site for things like attacking Rosie ODonnell and obsessing over Kristen Stewarts love life.

He also used Twitter to frequently criticize Barack Obama over pretty much anything and everything he could think of. Which is why, now that hes found himself in the position of having to run the country, there are few situations he can find himself in that he hasnt already mocked the way he too ends up handling them.

Like how he blasted Obama for playing what he saw as too much golf.

Or when he thought Obama was getting too much credit for killing Osama Bin Laden.

During his incredibly meandering press conference this week following the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump made it clear he thoughthe actually deserved more credit for Bin Ladens death. Hes said this beforethat he knew about Bin Laden before anyone else and that he tried to warn people and no one listened. (Thats not true, by the way.)

I dont get any credit for this, he told reporters. But thats OK, I never do.

But I dont think weve ever gotten a Trump Contradiction Tweet with as short a turnaround as this latest one. Trump tweeted or retweeted complaints about the impeachment inquiry 15 times yesterday, including this claim that the Democrats inquiry is tanking the stock market:

And then, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, he tweeted this today, not even 24 hours later:

If impeachment has this much control over the stock market, then good job, Democrats! Keep going!

(image: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

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Continue reading here:
There Really Is a Trump Tweet for Everything - The Mary Sue

Part of working with others is the expectation that people dont behave the same way that you do. We all have different levels of comfort when it comes to workplace interactions. We also all have different senses of humor. What is hysterically funny to your coworker may leave you scratching your head in wonder.

We all have our own issues. Your coworker may need everything on his desk in a particular place, or it is difficult for him to concentrate. Some coworkers have phobias or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If an employee has PTSD, loud noises or sudden movements may cause an exacerbation of symptoms. In the last ten years, over 750,000 people in the U.S. were injured by gunshots. We just dont know what people we work next to every day have been through in their lives.

When does an office prank cross into bullying and harassment? In 2014, 27% of workers reported being bullied at work, either currently or in the past. Another 21% of workers said they have witnessed the bullying of a coworker. What you consider to be a harmless joke could meet the definition of harassment.

The television show The Office has provided a treasure trove of what not to do in the office. Behold the boss, Michael, pranking his receptionist by telling her she is fired. While Michael is the stereotype of the boss that has no self-awareness, there have been worse pranks on others in real-life workplaces. One can reasonably assume that pranking can backfire very quickly, especially in an office setting. An imbalance of power takes prank to bullying much faster. If an employee speaks out against the incident and then gets punished, for example being teased about his reaction, being shut out of a promotion, or stonewalled during team meetings, it escalates a claim of harassment.

In the U.K., a company is available for hire during the week of Halloween to prank your employees and coworkers. What service do they provide? They will dress like terrifying clowns (Pennywise from It is one of their examples) and scare people in your office.They will also film it so people can relive the experience later. Its safe to say that this could cause pandemonium in your office, and cause psychological harm. Quite a few people have an aversion to clowns, and some have a phobia of them. Fear of clowns is known as coulrophobia, and it can result from an evolutionary adaptation, past frightening experience, or have no known cause. When someone has a phobia, their adrenaline system kicks in, enacting the fight, flight, or freeze response. If you tell someone, Oh, its just a person in a costume, dont be scared, phobias just dont work like that. When you have a phobia you are terrified of the thing or event it goes beyond controllable fear. If an office prank has the potential to demean, injure, or otherwise cause an employee discomfort, do not do it. And never give false bad news to someone at the office as a prank.

Dont assume that just because no one told you the prank was obnoxious or harmful at the time that it was okay. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a victim of harassment is not only the person who was the target of the prank, but also an employee that witnessed the prank and is affected by it. If your employee initially laughs as a reaction to a prank, it does not mean your employee did not feel bullied or harassed. Laughing is a defense mechanism when a person is experiencing fear, and your employee may not want to let his coworkers know at the time that he finds your behavior hostile.

Consider also that your employees may have diagnoses of PTSD and phobias filed with human resources. You have now engaged in a prank that specifically exacerbates an employees documented medical condition.

If you are wondering why all the fun has to be taken out of work, you probably need to change your definition of what is considered fun. If you consider something to be a prank, run the idea past upper management and see if it flies. If an office prank has the potential to demean, injure, or otherwise cause an employee discomfort, do not do it. And never give false bad news to someone at the office as a prank. If you identify as a prankster that has a need to scare or surprise people, really think about how it could impact others. For some pranksters, there is an element of having power and control over others that keeps the pranking going. There is a reasonable expectation of decorum and safety at the office. And on that note, you might want to check on how your family and friends feel about your pranks too.

The rest is here:
When Is An Office Prank Considered Harassment? - Forbes

Depression is a subject the theatre is obliged to confront. The big question is how you dramatise it. In Reasons to Stay Alive, based on Matt Haigs book, April De Angelis set up a dialogue between the heros two selves. In this new American play, Jacob Marx Rice shows what happens when a manic and a depressive fall for each other; the result, while highly watchable, rarely shocked me into a new awareness.

Rice presents us with two characters. Steph is a long-term depressive who, having dropped out of Brown University, works in a bar. Jamie is a high-flying Washington-based student of foreign affairs who experiences unipolar mania that leads him to obsessive overwork. The pair meet at a psychiatrists office, are instantly attracted to each other and start dating. But when Jamie tells Steph he is in love with her, she warns him Im a destructive person its who I am and that their relationship can only end in one way.

The play, in Alex Howarths production, shows how a couple on different rhythms can bond physically and, at times, complement each other: when Steph senselessly breaks 200 glasses in her bar, Jamies management skills allow him to quickly repair the situation. Rice makes you like and care about the couple but never fully explores the treatment they are getting, and works on the assumption that depression is inherently incurable. It doesnt help that much of the clinical information is gabbled into hand-held mics by the performers and is not easily comprehensible.

When they are not rushing their fences, the two actors are very good. Caoimhe Farren shows how Steph slides from being a sharp, witty, self-aware figure, who announces she grew up in a family of chemical imbalances, into a woman who suffers from a paralysing inertia. James Mear captures equally well Jamies determination to conquer his mania and his guilt-ridden powerlessness in the face of his partners depression. But at heart the play is a love story more remarkable for its tender compassion than for what it reveals about mental illness.

See the article here:
Chemistry review a warm story of love in the face of mental illness - The Guardian

Mackenzie Davis, the future soldier of our dreams. Photo: Kerry Brown/Paramount Pictures

In the decades since James Camerons Terminator 2: Judgment Day premiered, the man behind the machines has been sitting back, watching as a trio of lackluster sequels failed to capture the imagination of audiences in the way the originals did. Salvation is probably best remembered for the leaked audio of Christian Bale yelling at someone on set, and if youve spent any time thinking about Genisys, it was likely to ponder that criminal use of a y in the word Genisys. But this weekend, the sixth Terminator arrives naked and in a ball of electricity to remind us all that this franchise is still kicking.

In Terminator: Dark Fate, Mackenzie Davis stars as a future soldier sent back in time to protect another key to humanitys future rebel alliance against the machines. Her name is Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), who eventually gets an explosive introduction to Linda Hamiltons Sarah Connor, and together, the three must fight to save everyone from obliteration by robots in the future. It all sounds a little familiar, but I assure you this sequel isnt like the others. Dark Fate is actually a T2 follow-up, meaning it intends to wipe all the pieces off the board that have been placed since (and during) Rise of the Machines. What does that mean for Terminator continuity? Conveniently, that you can forget most of it! But just in case youve got questions, weve got answers. Heres what you need to know about the Terminator franchise ahead of the sixth installment, Dark Fate:

So, how is James Cameron involved with this movie?The franchise creator is returning to Terminator lore after nearly 30 years of no involvement; again, he didnt have anything to do with the sequels that came after Judgment Day. But when the head of Skydance Media, David Ellison, pitched a 2019 revival that would retcon all the films that went on without Cameron, the filmmaker agreed to start breaking a new story alongside director Tim Miller and Ellison. Early on, they also decided they wanted Sarah Connor back, but only if Hamilton agreed to reprise the role. To help persuade her, Cameron (also a producer on the movie) wrote a long, rambling email begging for her participation. And it worked.

Tim Miller directed Dark Fate? Isnt that the Deadpool guy?It sure is!

Edward Furlong is back in this movie, too, so what does that mean for John Connor?Do you want to watch the movie, or do you want the whole thing just spelled out for you ahead of time? Youll see!

What do I need to know about John Connor?That he is the son of Sarah Connor, and that historically he is the leader of the human Resistance fighting back against the machines. This is why Sarah has to keep running from and killing Terminators that get sent back in time to wipe out their opposition before it even starts: John is why Sarah is in the fight, but Sarah is why John lives to fight another day!

What do I need to know about Sarah Connor?Pretty much the same answer as the John Connor question, but well just add that: Shes been through absolute hell. Existing as one of the only people on Earth who knows about and is trying to prevent the apocalypse is a stressful way of living.

What do I need to know about Arnolds Terminator?Just that he tried to kill Sarah in the first movie, but he was defeated, and then the same model was sent back from the future to be Johns protector in the second Terminator film. T2 Arnold was melted to death in the end, and well leave his new role up for your discovery in Dark Fate. You can just ignore whatever he did in the third and fifth movies.

Can you explain how time travel works in this universe?We cannot and we will not. Just accept the energy bubbles and the nakedness. Thats the way it is.

Is this movie kinda gay? The trailers make it seem kinda gay.Its not really a sexual movie, unless the dramatic height difference between Mackenzie Davis and Linda Hamilton does it for you, which it might! But Dark Fate is very butch, and thats one of the absolute best things about it. File Davis swinging a sledgehammer under Scenes That Elicit Step on My Neck Levels of Thirst.

Is it as good as T1 and T2?This is the worst way to think about Dark Fate, and as such I dont even want to entertain the question.

What do I need to know about Skynet?You need to know that it exists, but you dont need to get in the weeds of the mythology. But here are the broad strokes anyway: Skynet is an artificially intelligent computer system that became the worlds first Automated Defense Network. As Skynet learned, it decided that humans were a threat to its existence (fair enough), and when it achieved self-awareness (i.e., reached the singularity) at 2:14 a.m. EST on August 29, 1997, system operators at its parent company, Cyberdyne, tried to shut it down. In self-defense, Skynet started a nuclear war, and since it could control everything with a Cyberdyne CPU in other words, everything made by the worlds largest supplier of military computer systems humanity was pretty well fucked. After Judgment Day, Skynet eventually started making Terminator robots to wipe out what remained of humanity. That is more information than you need to know, but if youve missed all the other Terminator movies and want to know the scope of the future devastation that Sarah Connor and company are fighting to stop, thats the overview.

How similar is it to Terminator 2: Judgment Day?I mean, how different are heros journeys in most huge-budget studio action films? This feels like a bad-faith question. Are you one of those people who is going to watch every minute of Dark Fate grading it against how a canonical action movie made you feel when you first watched it at a formative age? Does the existence of Halloween render all other slasher films poor knockoffs, or did a really good movie create a template for other filmmakers to build off of and succeed within a previously established structural framework?

Do I need to know anything about legacy characters like Kyle Reese or Miles Dyson?Only if you like extra backstory. Kyle is Johns dad and Miles Dyson is hugely responsible for building Skynet. But thats more for trivia. It wont really factor into Dark Fate.

How many Terminators are there this time?Technically there are two but functionally there are three. The new model from the future, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), has a matte-black endoskeleton that looks similar to the classic T-800 (a.k.a. Cyberdyne Systems Model 101), but it has a liquid-metal skin like the T-1000 from Judgment Day. The two elements can separate and fight autonomously, which is rude. And then theres Arnold, too.

So, Mackenzie Daviss character isnt a Terminator?Shes an enhanced human, and shell tell you what that means.

Do I need to know what happened in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, or Terminator: Genisys?No. Dark Fate picks up after the events of Judgment Days timeline. But Kristanna Loken was a good Terminator in T3.

What about that show? Do I need to know anything about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles?Only that it was a great show canceled too soon, and that Lena Headey was an excellent heiress to the Sarah Connor legacy.

If I dont like Dark Fate does that make me anti-women?That would be a sweeping generalization about the subjective experience of cinema. But obviously yes it does, and you should be ready to reckon with your internalized misogyny. Just kidding. Or am I? Have fun!

Continue reading here:
Heres What You Need to Know About Terminator Before You See Dark Fate - Vulture

Is it possible to make great art without an intense and profound sense of self-awareness? I can think of no human I would rather have this conversation with than Donald Trump Jr: artist, critic and large adult son. Or as his own Twitter bio has it: EVP of Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization, Father, Outdoorsman. And: In a past life, Boardroom Adviser on The Apprentice. It is quite simply THE great American rsum, easily clearing the likes of Thomas Edison or Roman Roy.

Anyway, back to Don. I wish my name was Hunter Biden, this bearded, faux-jawlined meritocrat told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday night, discussing Joe Bidens son. I could go abroad and make millions off my fathers presidency. Id be a really rich guy.

Preach. Thing about Don Jr, though, is hes got way too much integrity to do that. Hes not about taking leg-ups, selling out, sucking globalist dick and playing to stadium crowds hes about the small venues. Hes about what got him into this gig in the first place. Which is to say: hes about the music.

And so to the US presidents sons review and promotion of Kanye Wests new album one of those sentences that would have been inconceivable to type four years ago, but which now is one of the more normal occurrences in any given news cycle. And yes, this column will feature a separate item about Lindsay Lohans platonic and respectful friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But for now, we hold our focus on Don Jr, who has a huge amount of time for Kanye. And why wouldnt he, given Kanye is a dedicated supporter of his fathers presidency? Last year, Kanye used an entertainment show appearance to wear a Maga hat and suggest that slavery was a choice. He has since rowed a little way back on that one, apologising for the way some people felt about it, although not for the comments themselves. But as he said of President Trump: I feel that he cares about the way black people feel about him, and he would like for black people to like him like they did when he was cool in the rap songs and all this. You know, THAT time.

But Kanyes still wearing the Maga hats and vocally supporting Trump. And he has a new album out, entitled Jesus Is King, which has a pronounced Christian bent. Unfortunately, this latest creative offering has received something of a tepid response from the critics.

Or, I should say, from most critics. Because it takes a strong guy of true integrity to stand alone, and that guy is Don Trump Jr. As the presidents son wrote of the opus: Kanye West is cracking the cultural code. Wow. I dont know what it means, but it genuinely sounds exactly like a lot of music criticism. Maybe weve found the one thing Don Jr can do? I dont know a whole lot about the industry standard, but I do know he already reads like Paul Morley.

Anyway, Don, go on. Kanye Wests new album, Jesus is King, is the epitome of fearless creativity, Little Trump continued, and dangerous, unapproved ideas. Crikey. Are those quotation marks around dangerous, unapproved intended to denote a certain irony? I certainly took them as heavily sarcastic, to the point of having to make the airquote gesture while I was reading.

But closer analysis of Dons writing style suggests he reaches for random quotation marks like his daddy reaches for random capital letters, or random pussies. So well have to take Don at his word: namely, that an embrace of Christianity is dangerous, unapproved in America even if it is a country the rest of the world mostly views as comically, auto-parodically God-bothering. So much so that Donald Trump DONALD TRUMP has to pretend to be religious to be president of it.

Leftists always try to silence those who are speaking truth, Don Jr continues about Kanye West, a man famously stifled by the oxygen of publicity. Languishing in the obscurity of multiple media platform appearances and marriage to cultural unknown Kim Kardashian, West must somehow fight the system that battles daily hourly to censor and withhold recognition from him. Anyway, back to these leftists. Theyre waging a war on our family and our culture, Don concludes. Kanye is a pioneer.

So there you go. Not only is Don Jr the most groundbreaking and important music critic since Lester Bangs, he is the very best son since Jesus who did, lets face it, kind of benefit from nepotism himself.

The number of nations to which Lindsay Lohan has added to the gaiety thereof continues to grow. The latest beneficiary is Saudi Arabia, in the Hollywood stars ongoing expansion into the Middle East. According to several reports, now confirmed by Lohans father, she has a close and mutually respectful friendship with noted local dismemberment fan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Like many other important players in the region Israel, Iran, Qatar Lohans most recent gig was running a Mykonos beach bar for an MTV show. Before that, she was resident on our own shores, enlivening the night of the EU referendum with a series of tweets lambasting places she thought had made the wrong electoral decision. Sorry #Kettering, ran one of these gems, but where are you? Local MP Philip Hollobone was so angered about this that he raised the matter in the House of Commons. It fell to Chris Grayling to respond from the dispatch box. Linday Lohan, said Grayling, as a star of teen and child movies a very entertaining actress at the time hasnt necessarily fulfilled her professional potential.

Takes one to know one, Chris.

Indeed, who should be on the backbenches now, while Lohan is being private-jetted around the world by MBS, who reportedly gave her a gift-wrapped credit card? Please dont get the wrong idea, though. As Lohans endlessly grasping, deadbeat dad Michael explained to the New York Post at a charity ball this week: They are just friends. Lohan has a lot of powerful friends in the Middle East, because she is huge out there. Lohan met MBS because of the work she has been doing in the Middle East. She is working to help people in the region, particularly refugees.

Right. Is this the thing where she said she wanted to have LOHAN-branded spas and refugee camps? Or is this the thing where, in the course of her work as an energy-drink ambassador, she handed out cans of said drink in a refugee camp in Turkey? Or is it the thing where she proposed wrapping the needy in $3,525 Herms blankets?

Its unclear. What her father will say is: She has a platonic and respectful relationship with MBS, nothing more. Asked if he was concerned about his daughter spending time with someone who, barely a year ago, was responsible for the kidnap, murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Michael was dismissive. None of that has been proved to be true, he stated. Inaccurately.

Still, maybe we seek out qualities in our friends that we ourselves lack. For instance, Lindsay Lohan has done community service in a morgue. And Prince Mohammed definitely should have. Meanwhile, he has imprisoned members of his own family. And Lohan must have wished she could have. Looked at that way, it makes total sense so whats not to adore about this unlikely buddydom?

See the article here:
Hallelujah, lets hear it for Donald Trump Jr, the only music critic with integrity - The Guardian