#;the acrimonious cohort

[zahri-melitor]

Ok more thoughts on Hawkgirl #1 as it’s bouncing around my head.

I think it rang really true really quickly to me for a couple of points:-

This is a book about ADULTS. The characters feel like 30 somethings. They were all characters I mentally assign to being 30+. They’re all OLDER than the Titans cohort. They’re fully grown with careers under their belts. Peej is teasing Kendra about the benefits of having a Masters.

Kendra keeps flashing back to being curled up crying beside her couch, and my first thought, especially with the discussion of Carter, was “I’ve been there”. Well actually, I was sitting next to my best friend as she bawled her eyes out on the kitchen floor during the very acrimonious breakdown of her 10 year relationship as they were both moving out into new homes, and my friend had lost it at the fact that her ex had taken the fridge. It was that sort of heartbroken, bottom of the well moment of “I had plans. It all went wrong. I have to start again. How do I start again?”

And dammit there simply aren’t enough DC comics that feel like they’re about Millennial adults. Not to want to be specifically catered to, but this is very much catering to me personally.

Also it’s queer in a Millennial way, because these characters all do have backgrounds where there was a lot more performative heterosexuality and masking when they were younger. They had realisations beyond their teens. It feels…natural to me in a way the hyper supportive microlabelling acceptance of the generation below me doesn’t. (Like that’s cool and wonderful for you kids, but believe me that was not MY teen years)

[ayejayque]

The War for the Resources in International Business

Limited resources and unlimited consumption We inhabit a world of limited resources. Many of these are consumed at a frightening pace. Given the fact that emerging markets like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are linking with the advanced countries of the West, both in terms of living standards and also in terms of economic progress, it is unavoidable that the insatiable appetites and cravings for consumption in these nations would lead to extended and acrimonious wars over resources and possessions. A tendency that has been seen lately amid worldwide businesses is that the explosion of businesses that are scouring the world for resources is leading to a winner-take-all, grab-all for the world’s resources. For example, both the Indian and Chinese governments are aggressively involved in the Middle East and Africa purchasing assets and land, which they believe can be used to endure the consumption of their people in the years to come ahead. China’s winner takes all resource grab The Chinese government has taken a lead over other nations as far as the clash for resources is concerned. It has financed projects aggressively in the MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa) region for the whole shebang starting from oil and minerals to metals and agricultural goods. This has incited intimidating reactions from the Americans and Europeans. They see this land grab and resource grab as a blatant attempt by the Chinese to snip a march over them in the years to come ahead. With the Chinese government having huge dollar reserves, it is easy for it to give substantial assistance and other forms of incentives, not to mention the cash needed to acquire large territories of land and obtain rights over oil deposits, metal mines, and mineral reserves. The global resource grab and its repercussions The consequences of these resource battles are being felt in the capitals of the industrialized and emerging world with apprehension and nervousness, as this race to the bottom can simply turn into a full-fledged armed conflict and be encountered confrontation from the local people in those countries. After all, who would like to see the resources that belong to an innate nation being hauled away to some far-off land? This was the root cause of the resource wars in past times and this is the bottom line of the now quickening wars for the residual resources of the world. It is important that many international businesses are now energetic cohorts with their administrations in this worldwide grab for resources. Cooperation as a substitute for competition The other consequences of this resource grab lie in the detail that if there is a concentrated action by the administrations of the world, it is natural that the fight would get horrible. This is because resources are required by all and sundry and hereafter, it is human nature to contest for the portion of the resources. In this background, there is a necessity for a worldwide gathering of concurring people to change mutual strategies instead of resource wars. Collaboration should be the key to a replacement for competition.   Read the full article

[radonspecter]

inhales

[music899]

By Andrew Das

March 8, 2019

All 28 members of the world champion United States women’s national team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation on Friday, a sudden and significant escalation of a long-running fight over pay equity and working conditions that comes only months before the team will begin defense of its Women’s World Cup title.

In the lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles, the 28 players accused the federation — their employer and the governing body for soccer in the United States — of years of what they labeled “institutionalized gender discrimination.” The issues, the athletes said, affected not only their paychecks but also where they played and how often, how they trained, the medical treatment and coaching they received, and even how they traveled to matches.

The lawsuit’s points mirrored many issues raised in a wage-discrimination complaint filed by five United States players with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2016. The lack of a resolution, or even any noticeable action, on that now three-year-old complaint led the players to seek, and receive, a right-to-sue letter from the E.E.O.C. in February. The decision to take their case to federal court effectively ends the E.E.O.C. complaint.

The players — a group that includes stars like Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan but also reserve players — have requested class action status. They are seeking to represent any current or former players who have represented the women’s national team since Feb. 4, 2015 — a cohort that could grow to include dozens more players — and are requesting back pay and damages and other relief: a potential award that could reach into the millions of dollars.

U.S. Soccer, which had not seen the complaint, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The players’ action is the latest flash point in a yearslong fight for pay equity and equal treatment by the national team, which has long chafed — first privately but, more recently, increasingly publicly — about its compensation, support and working conditions while representing U.S. Soccer. The women’s players argue that they are required to play more games than the men’s team, win more of them, and yet still receive lesser pay from the federation.

The American soccer players who filed the suit are some of the most well-known female athletes in the world and their prominence and willingness to leverage their profiles and their enormous social media followings to their cause has paid dividends already: the team has not played a match on artificial turf, a surface many players dislike, since 2017, for example, and its union holds biweekly meetings with U.S. Soccer to keep the team informed of everything from upcoming opponents and training camps to hotels and travel plans.

Direct comparisons between the compensation of the men’s and women’s teams can be complicated, however. Each team has its own collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer, and among the major differences are pay structure: the men receive higher bonuses when they play for the United States, but are paid only when they make the team, while the women receive guaranteed salaries supplemented by smaller match bonuses.

One of the biggest differences in compensation is the multimillion-dollar bonuses the teams receive for participating in the World Cup, but those bonuses — a pool of $400 million for 32 men’s teams versus $30 million for 24 women’s teams — are determined by FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, not U.S. Soccer.

Still, the American women have made significant gains at the negotiating table in recent years. In 2017, after more than a year of acrimonious negotiations and a lawsuit by U.S. Soccer that blocked a potential players strike on the eve of the Rio Olympics, the team forged a new collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer. The players opted to surrender on their push for absolutely equal pay, though, in exchange for a deal that included not only better compensation and changes to working conditions but also carveouts that now allow the players to pursue commercial opportunities through their union.

[newtownpentacle]

altogether ignorant

Thursday – photo by Mitch Waxman Thanks. Thanks have therefore been given, go shop now. The good news is that we’ve made it to another Thanksgiving. Personally, I’m thankful that most of my friends have made it through Covid with not much more than a few scars, although there’s a cohort of folks who aren’t with us anymore. I’m not thankful for the acrimony and weird ideations which have become…

[jobinterviewghost]

Diego Maradona was God's gift to a generation of sportswriters during his legendary football career - ABC News

At first it might seem strange to note that Diego Maradona, who died in Buenos Aires this week at age 60, did not play muse to a notable cohort of writers in the way that other 20th century sporting greats were.

Where Ali had Norman Mailer, David Remnick and Mark Kram, and DiMaggio had Gay Talese and Richard Ben Cramer, there is no standout contender staking literary claim to the Argentinian hero.

One obvious explanation is that in both personality and playing style, Maradona was a figure too lurid and unbelievable for the restrained pens of respectable journalists and writers.

Also, there was his ubiquity in international football's first era of blanket television coverage; his most outrageous moments were readily accessible and endlessly replayed, making them harder for writers to relay with any fresh new spin.

Some claim it is more a question of language barrier: the most insightful accounts of Maradona's deeper significance simply weren't written in English. Among those that were, old treasures remain.

How about Patrick Barclay on an 18-year-old Maradona's evisceration of Scotland in July 1979, when the world first awakened to his genius.

"Maradona is formidable to even behold: dark, stocky and with a middleweight's muscularity," Barclay wrote.

"He moves so quickly that the spectator gets eye strain. You expect an Argentinian to have virtually total ball control, but few can dribble like Maradona whose brain, being capable of reading three opponents' minds at once, can render even tackling in groups futile.

"He demands obedience; merely by stopping, turning and feinting to pass, he can change the entire shape of play."

The Observer's late, great Hugh McIlvanney seemed well matched.

During the 1982 World Cup, McIlvanney wrote: "The foul that caused Diego Maradona to be ordered from the field was so violent that it might have ended the sex life of Brazil's Batista there and then … Maradona's changes of direction are so devastatingly sudden and extreme that they must impose a huge strain on his lower body. Surely there has not been such a pelvis since Elvis Presley was in his prime."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Watch

Duration: 39 seconds39the acrimony that followed its quarter-final win over England.

Before it, McIlvanney had a prescient warning: "If there is an effective way of killing off the threat of Diego Maradona by marking him, it probably involves putting a white cross over his heart and tethering him to a stake in front of a firing squad.

"Even then there would be the fear that he might suddenly dip his shoulder and cause the riflemen to start shooting one another."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Watch

Duration: 52 seconds52s

Rarely among his peers in the British press, McIlvanney later found it hard to condemn Maradona for his hand-ball transgression: "Considering the emotional intensity of the bond that links Maradona to the team he leads and inspires, it would not be astonishing if he preferred to risk condemnation from the rest of us rather than invite their resentment and disapproval … I hope he tears [West Germany] apart.

"Where genius is concerned some of us are unashamedly prejudiced."

Novelists had a go too.

Colm Toibin once wrote a profile of Maradona for Esquire, which included lengthy digressions on the class divisions in Argentina, and the racist dismissiveness of upper crust attitudes to Maradona's humble origins.

"His wedding was, in the words of one member of the establishment, perhaps the most vulgar occasion ever held in Argentina," Toibin wrote.

To the Spanish novelist, journalist, poet and devout Barcelona FC supporter Manuel Vázquez Montalbán — whose fictional characters namechecked the Argentinian wizard — Maradona "epitomised the mystique of the working-class revolution: aloof and arrogant like the 1980s".

Among historians, David Goldblatt captured Maradona's appeal most evocatively, writing of his 1986 zenith: "It was the last World Cup where the crowd actually stormed onto the field at the end of the final.

"Maradona would be the last captain to hold the trophy aloft in not merely a scrum of FIFA bureaucrats and the global media, but with the people who came to see him. When they write his history again in future worlds, will writers be tempted to say that this was the moment of his ascent to another realm?"

'Frighteningly brilliant'

Was Maradona or Pelé the best?

British sports writing great Richard Williams had a stab.

"Maradona bent matches to his will in the way no one had done before, and that if we were trying to decide on the very greatest, a stupid but fun thing to do, then this might be the truest measure," Williams wrote.

In the end, it was Maradona's opponents and teammates who produced the descriptions that will probably stand the test of time.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Watch

Duration: 32 seconds32s

Of Maradona's second goal in the "Hand of God" game — the goal many consider the greatest ever — England's Gary Lineker said: "Heart-stopping, tremendous, frightening almost. Frighteningly brilliant, that is. Especially that first little pirouetting turn on halfway that set him up for the run. Your heart and mind could only erupt with applause at such a goal."

Yet it might have been so different if Maradona had followed through with a plan to pass the ball to teammate Jorge Valdano, who recalled the moment to the British writer David Winner.

"He told me that at that moment, he remembered a game seven years earlier at Wembley when he'd been in a similar position and had played the ball to (Peter) Shilton's left and missed the goal," Valdano said.

"He assessed the current situation and decided that he didn't need me; he could solve the problem of scoring himself. In a quarter-final of the World Cup, after a 70-metre run, he was able to recall a situation from years earlier, analyse it, process the information and reach a new conclusion.

"And he did it in a fraction of a microsecond."

Valdano later became a sportswriter himself and was well qualified to add a line employed by many colleagues before and since: "That is genius."

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Jeff York on The Establishing Shot: “I USED TO GO HERE” FINDS THE FRESH IN THE “OLD SCHOOL”

Vaulted author Thomas Wolfe famously wrote You Can’t Go Home Again but cinema seems to absolutely adore stories about people who try. In I USED TO GO HERE, the naif who thinks she can reclaim past glory is a 35-year-old writer named Kate (Gillian Jacobs). Her life is unraveling so she returns to her alma mater, hoping to find some sort of solace there to soothe her savaged ego. The stunted adult who needs to grow up is a familiar trope to even the casual filmgoer, explored in everything from  GROUNDHOG DAY or BRIDESMAIDS, and while writer/director Kris Rey hasn’t made a gem quite as special as those classics, her new film nonetheless shines brightly.

As the story starts, novelist Kate has had her first book published but it’s bombing in the marketplace. So much so that her literary agents have canceled the publicity tour for the tome. Kate’s already in the doldrums, having recently broken off an engagement, and this setback crushes her fragile ego. Feeling alone and more than a little desperate, she heads to her alma mater to give a book reading there, thinking that her return as a minor celebrity will kickstart her confidence.

Kate is a self-saboteur however, finding fault in almost every situation and taking self-deprecation to extremes. When college folk at the University of Illinois – Carbondale compliment her on her book, she’s far too quick to trash its less than stellar jacket art. Put up at a bed & breakfast, Kate openly bemoans that it’s not an Airbnb. Sure, she may throw her bitter asides away with aplomb, but her negative vibe rubs everyone the wrong way. Even her back-home preggo sister Laura (Zoe Chao) is exasperated as she haplessly tries to cajole her into a good place.

As an actress, Jacobs is wise to not play Kate too disgruntled, though there is a bit of a Larry David feel to her holier-than-thou misanthrope.  Kate is quite unlikeable at times, rolling her eyes, snidely commenting on the minutiae around her, and openly pining for the now married professor (Jemaine Clement) she crushed on back in the day. She’s even a pickled pill when it comes to guiding  students like April (Hannah Marks) coming to her for advice. Her wisdom is doled out with healthy dashes of acrimony.

But just when one might think that the film might be zigging Kate towards an affair with her prof or ultimately becoming besties with sexpot April, the story nicely zags. Kate ends up becoming friends with a mix of students instead that she meets at the house she used to live on campus. She bonds with them through a series of casual adventures that change her for the better (of course) and keep the movie from ever feeling stale.

Along the way, Rey has a field day directing the talented cast she’s put together to play the host of quirky characters she’s written. Relative newcomers Brandon Daley, Rammel Chan, Josh Wiggins, Khloe Janel, and Forrest Goodluck all graduate with comedic honors as they play the students that Kate befriends.

Clement is hilariously droll as you’d expect, sometimes getting huge laughs just standing there staring at a dingaling student. Jorma Taccone stands out too in a couple of hilarious scenes as well. He’s also given the most outrageous line in Rey’s script, an admission about self-pleasure that is a jaw-dropper. Taccone is on a roll this summer, as he and his Lonely Island cohorts Andy Samberg and Akiva Shaffer helped produce this sharp film opening on VOD today, as well as Max Barbakow’s hit comedy film PALM SPRINGS that dropped on Hulu subscribers last month.

Jacobs’ sly performance is mostly a reactive one and she’s expert at conveying so much with how she holds her curt mouth or nonplussed eyelids. There’s a touch of menace in those eyes of hers too – she could almost be Emma Stone’s bitter sister.  Despite Kate’s grievances, Jacobs makes us care for her as she earns her degree from the school of hard knocks. Back-to-school comedies are nothing new on the big or small screen, but thanks to Rey, Jacobs, and a fresh and funny cast, I USED TO GO HERE manages to make “old school” feel surprisingly new.

from The Establishing Shot https://ift.tt/2DLDgRO via IFTTT

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2PBLBKJ via IFTTT

[moneyhealthfinance-blog]

Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka quits after criticism from founders

Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka quits after criticism from founders

[BANGALORE] Infosys said Vishal Sikka has resigned as chief executive officer after heightened acrimony between the board and its cohort of founders led by former chairman NR Narayana Murthy. Pravin Rao, currently chief operating officer, will become interim CEO with Mr Sikka to become executive vice chairman until a permanent replacement is hired, Bangalore-based Infosys said in a statement…