On the heels of the unveiling of the new iPhone 13 models, we decided to take a look back at every iPhone ever. Dating back to the first model in 2007, Apple has released 33 versions of the iPhone.
Many were smaller than the giant iPhone 13 Pro Max. Some were bigger than the iPhone 13 mini. But, overall, they were a lot less expensive than the current models. Ah, the good ol’ days.
Every iPhone ever. Credit: IAN MOORE / MASHABLE
Every iPhone 13 compared. Credit: Ian Moore / Mashable
Confused why the comment sections on TikTok are flooded with chair emojis? You’re not alone.
In the past week TikTok users have started replacing the laughing emoji with the chair emoji. Yes, the unassuming chair emoji released in 2019.
A week ago TikTok user @blank.antho posted two videos to his over one million followers announcing his inside joke of replacing the laughing emoji with the chair emoji. He welcomes users into the joke by saying “if you’re watching this you’re part of the inside joke.”
This video has over 120,000 views and 17,000 likes.
Credit: Screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho
@blank.antho has tried to launch other inside jokes on TikTok before, but none have caught on like the chair emoji has.
Credit: screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho
While it isn’t the funniest joke, it has successfully caused lots of confusion and trolled some TikTok users.
Tweet may have been deleted
Twitter users speculated that this use of the chair emoji started as an inside joke between popular YouTuber and TikTok user @ksi and his followers because he posted two videos with the chair emoji as the caption to his over seven million followers. Distractify also pointed to @ksi’s YouTube video from November 2020 where he laughs as at a chair to prove his laugh is contagious as possible evidence for his involvement in the inside joke.
Tweet may have been deleted
But looking back at @blank.antho’s first TikTok announcing the inside joke, @ksi appears to be @blank.antho’s first target. The video ends with @blank.antho saying “we will be raiding the legend himself @ksi.” However, @ksi was tagged in the caption of the video, so he and @blank.antho may have been in cahoots from the start.
Two days after @blank.antho posted his first chair video, he posted a video announcing that @ksi is in on the inside joke.
This video got over six million views and 900,000 likes.
Credit: screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho
Taking over TikTok feels a little dramatic.
Credit: screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho
Considering there is lots of confusion over who started the chair emoji joke, the new use of the chair emoji may have extended beyond the confines of the inside joke.
Of course an emoji can mean various things, so no one single usage is correct.
This isn’t the first time emojis have strayed from their intended meaning. Gen Z uses the skull emojis to represent laughter and there are also a slew of emojis that have taken on NSFW meanings, including the chair.
It’s unclear how popular this use of the chair emoji is or how long this inside joke will last, but it has definitely caused confusion. In the meantime, we will be sitting back and sticking with the traditional laughing emoji.
When it comes to ripping off investors, decentralized technology still hasn’t managed to disrupt the tried and true methods pioneered on Wall Street.
OpenSea, the self-described “largest” non-fungible token marketplace, admitted Wednesday that an employee had been secretly buying NFTs in advance of their listing on the site’s front page. Using this non-public information, the employee was able to swoop up NFTs before their prices skyrocketed, and presumably make a hefty profit flipping them at a later date.
Think of it as investor front-running, but for the digital pixel-art age.
“We are taking this very seriously and are conducting an immediate and thorough review of this incident so that we have a full understanding of the facts and additional steps we need to take,” read an OpenSea blog post.
Notably, OpeSea suggests that it was only after this incident was discovered that the company implemented internal policies to ban this kind of behavior.
“OpenSea team members are prohibited from using confidential information to purchase or sell any NFTs, whether available on the OpenSea platform or not,” the company explained.
We reached out to OpenSea in an attempt to determine which employee used confidential information to game its system, and whether or not they are still employed at OpenSea. We also asked how many NFTs the employee flipped in this manner and how much profit they made doing so.
We received no immediate response.
Meanwhile, the NFT community has pointed its collective finger at Nate Chastain, OpenSea’s head of product. We reached out to Chastain over Twitter direct message to ask him about the allegations, but received no immediate response.
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
OpenSea is a vital piece of the multi-billion dollar NFT market, giving investors and collectors a forum to buy and sell the digital tokens. Noted NFT projects, like CryptoPunks, have seen sales as high as $7.5 million.
That one of the largest players in the cryptocurrency-adjacent space had a problem with insider data access should come as no surprise. In 2017, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was forced to issue a statement concerning insider trading following speculation related to price surges in Bitcoin Cash immediately before it hit the exchange.
And in March of 2021, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported that an early Coinbase employee had artificially driven up interest in the cryptocurrency Litecoin. Perhaps coincidentally, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee was Coinbase’s director of engineering from July 2015 to June 2017.
SEE ALSO: So you spent millions on an NFT. Here’s what you actually bought.
It seems that even in the complex modern world of cryptocurrency and NFTs, the old tricks still work best.
If you go all the way to the top of LG’s new Direct View LED home cinema line, you’ll see a 325-inch 8K behemoth that costs a cool $1.7 million. (LG confirmed to Mashable that is indeed the real price.) The dollar amount is obviously eye-catching, but let’s not ignore the physical mass of the TV. It’s 27 feet across diagonally and weighs more than 2,000 pounds. Good luck convincing a friend to help you move it.
LG’s DVLED screens range in price from $70,000 to $1.7 million depending on screen size and resolution. They come as “small” as 108 inches and come in every resolution from HD to 8K.
The reason they’re so expensive is the DVLED technology. Without getting too bogged down in technical details, these TVs are made up of tiny lights that are both significantly larger in number and smaller in size than those in a typical living room TV.
This is most likely not a product that will show up in living rooms across the nation this holiday season, but it is a neat glimpse at what a TV that costs more than 1 million dollars looks like. The good news is that you can get something that’s still pretty good for just a few hundred bucks.
Hulu’s upcoming original series Dopesick examines how one company triggered the worst drug epidemic in American history. Dopesick looks at the opioid epidemic from a variety of angles, from the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma, who marketed OxyContin as non-addictive, to a distressed Virginia mining community witnessing the horrors of addiction first-hand.
Based on the book by Beth Macy, Dopesick is executive produced by Danny Strong (Empire) and Michael Keaton, who also stars. Keaton is joined by Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Will Poulter, John Hoogenakker, Kaitlyn Dever, and Rosario Dawson.
The first three episodes of Dopesick premiere on Hulu Oct. 13, with new episodes streaming weekly.
When Facebook spent $1 billion to buy Instagram in 2012, it sought the customers key to its continued growth: teenagers.
As adolescents and young adults fled Facebook for platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook knew its long-term survival depended on winning over that demographic. But the savvy business move had a different, less public price tag.
Caught up in recommendations from a powerful algorithm designed to keep them engaged, some teen girls found Instagram worsened their body image, according to a new Wall Street Journal investigation. Users even pinned feelings of increased depression, anxiety, and suicidal thinking on the app.
The Journal found that studies conducted privately by the platform to better understand how Instagram affects young users led to alarming results. Internal research documents from the past few years, which the Journal reviewed, revealed that a third of teen girls who already felt bad about their bodies said Instagram made them feel worse. For teens who expressed suicidal thinking, 6 percent of U.S. users and 13 percent of British users identified their experience on Instagram as a reason for those feelings.
“Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves,” read one slide posted to an internal Facebook message board.
“Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.”
Evidently, Facebook, which prefers to point to its lofty ideal of doing good by connecting the world while minimizing the platform’s real and potential harms, has known since at least 2019 that its product does real damage to some young people, particularly girls. Aside from acknowledging that some users said “like” counts made them feel anxious, the company disclosed almost nothing about its research. In a statement published in the wake of the Journal‘s revelations, an Instagram executive said the company wanted to be more transparent about internal research in the future.
For years, child safety advocates and journalists, including myself, have tried to offer youth and their parents guidelines for using social media wisely, and coping skills for when things go wrong. But that approach has limits. The Journal‘s reporting makes clear that children and their caregivers are up against a ruthless business model in which Facebook, the companies that advertise on Instagram, and the influencers who stand to make a fortune from amassing impressionable followers all profit off the vulnerability and insecurity of its teen users.
What’s happening on Instagram for young girls is the age-old marketing tactic of inviting the customer to compare their life to someone else’s and compete for the better existence, but on steroids.
While there are numerous products that simultaneously trigger feelings of self-confidence and self-loathing, there is no parallel to Instagram. Fashion and beauty magazines aimed at teen girls have historically sold triumphant narratives to its readers while also peddling self-improvement through consumerism. Yet a reader cannot find her friends chatting in real-time, in ways that could include or exclude her, in those same pages. Hollywood television series and movies, which often depict unattainable looks and lifestyles for teen girls, stop after a certain length of time. Viewers don’t wait for a glamorous celebrity to speak directly to the crowd, then chime in with their own comment and wait eagerly for someone to notice.
Instagram likes to think of these dynamics as simply a reflection of our shared reality.
“Issues like negative social comparison and anxiety exist in the world, so they’re going to exist on social media too,” Karina Newton, Instagram’s head of public policy, said in the company’s statement.
Yet, Instagram has arguably changed real life itself by ratcheting up the stakes of teen girls’ digital social lives and interactions. The Journal interviewed teens who said, among other things, that Instagram intensified the feeling that high school is a popularity contest, and drew them to content that heightened negative emotions about their body.
One 19-year-old said that when she searched Instagram for workouts and found examples she liked, the algorithm kept surfacing photos of how to lose weight on her Explore page.
“I’m pounded with it every time I go on Instagram,” she told the Journal.
SEE ALSO:
Lil Nas X honored for talking about suicide, mental health
While every family can do its best to learn about digital safety and well-being, the truth is that those efforts are hardly a match against a company that has designed an addictive, ever-present product capable of making users feel both good and bad. The users, meanwhile, never know which experience they’ll get on any given day, or hour.
Still, teens return day after day for reasons that Facebook and Instagram cite as a defense of their product. They want to socialize with their friends. They’re participating in activism and social change. They found a community that accepts them for who they are. There may lots of benefits and no harm in these scenarios, but Facebook and Instagram haven’t been particularly interested in letting users know when the platform causes pain. In fact, it seems content to withhold its own internal findings while emphasizing the uncertainty of independent scientific research that fails to establish a causal relationship between social media use and poor well-being. (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly called such research contradictory.)
The evidence presented by the Journal suggests that Facebook can and will conceal its teen users’ negative experiences if they threaten the company’s bottom line. Instead, Instagram has partnered with nonprofits to create content promoting “emotional resilience.” According to the Journal, one video made as part of that project recommended teens use a daily affirmation — “I am in control of my experience on Instagram” — for a more positive experience.
The Journal‘s reporting, however, makes it obvious that users aren’t really in control. Through Instagram, Facebook has provided a platform for advertisers and influencers to leverage an algorithm to take advantage of girls’ insecurities in ways that simply weren’t possible in the past. Everyone is in it for the money — except for the girls.
If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts,Crisis Text Lineprovides free, confidential support 24/7. Text CRISIS to 741741 to be connected to a crisis counselor. Contact theNAMI HelpLineat 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET, or emailinfo@nami.org. You can also call theNational Suicide Prevention Lifelineat 1-800-273-8255. Here isalistof international resources.
Is Nightbooks for kids? For grown-ups? After the fifth genuine jump-scare within 20 minutes, I’m scratching my head while covertly turning the sound down (an expert scare management move).
But whoever it’s for, my heart rate is up, folks.
Based on J. A. White’s 2018 book of the same name, Nightbooks focuses on a kid called Alex (Winslow Fegley) who writes scary stories, but is determined to burn them all of a sudden. But before he gets the chance, he’s lured into a magical apartment with a piece of pumpkin pie and The Lost Boys, then locked into a situation that has him writing for his life.
An evil but exceptionally style-conscious witch, Natacha (a gleefully over the top Krysten Ritter), orders him to write a new scary story every night or it’ll be The End for him. When he meets fellow prisoner Yasmin (Lidya Jewett), they’ve got to try to figure out a way out of this travelling apartment that has an insidious habit of trapping kids forever.
It’s a solid premise for a scary fairy tale, and (intentionally) one that’s been done many times before. Brightburn director David Yarovesky brings to life Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis’ script, and for a film that seems aimed at younger viewers (or at least starring two of them), it wields some genuinely scary scenes. Perhaps I’ve forgotten how frightening things were as a kid (I was afraid of even the X-Files theme song), but this feels like something you might want to be ready for kids to have nightmares about. It’s no surprise that the film was produced by Evil Dead horror legend Sam Raimi. No spoilers, but there’s a shot involving candy-hued projectile vomit that feels extremely Evil Dead. Plus, the film is filled with jump-scares. While they aren’t quite at the constant, hammering level of Yarovesky’s superpower horror Brightburn, these scares will catch you unawares.
The strength of Nightbooks, aside from the set decoration which we’ll get to, is the cast. Ritter spectacularly leans into the campy chaos as the witch, Natacha. The first scene in which we meet her is quite frankly terrifying, and somehow Ritter delivers a consistent level of genuinely murderous threat to Alex and Yasmin while being impossibly…cool. Thanks to Leslie Ann Sebert’s glitter-loving makeup team and costume designer Autumn Steed, Natacha boasts one of the most covetable, sequinned villain wardrobes out there. Sorry, Cruella, I’ll take one pink raincoat with winged combat boots and parasol, please. Or a pearl cage collar/neckpiece and pink platform combat boots.
Casual. Credit: netflix
Attempting to escape from Ritter are the two young leads, Fegley and Jewett, who both deliver strong, balanced, fun performances as Alex and Yas — in fact, between moments of terror and battling satisfyingly squishable adversaries, they both get emotional monologues that are utterly convincing amid their ridiculous magical surroundings.
SEE ALSO:
13 of the best Stephen King short stories you’ve never read
Nightbooks, being a film about writing scary stories, pays notable respect to their long history and the core of what makes a good one. If you didn’t absolutely hate the Goosebumps movie (whatever, fight me) and its wild ride through the source material and the idea of “writing for your life,” you might enjoy how Nightbooks plays with this — and the theatrical way Alex’s nightly stories are presented. Natacha even “edits” Alex’s stories as he reads, chastising him for not sticking to the rules already established in scary tales. “Every good story hints at truth,” says Natacha, criticising one of Alex’s stories that got a little too creative. “The more truth, the more powerful the story. From now on, get your facts straight.”
Alex (Winslow Fegley) and Yas (Lidya Jewett). Credit: netflix
Finally, while the film’s context may be pretty dark at times, Nightbooks‘ set decoration is an absolute treat, with much of it set in a towering library decked out with spiral staircases and cobwebbed books. There’s a fluorescent “night nursery” for magical plants (perfect for throwing glowing splatters everywhere), a sweetly familiar-looking house you might have read about, and even a pink, glittering, cake of a prison at one point. It’s honestly the most delicious looking cell you’ll ever see on screen.
Amid all this glitz and witch-battling, Nightbooks reminds us that the things that really haunt us aren’t necessarily always magical. Buuuuut yeah, sometimes they are, in which case, you’d better read up on how to beat ’em or be able to write your way out of it.
Depending on which mobile browser you use, it might not be immediately obvious how to do a reverse image search from your mobile device. The most simple solution we’ve come up with is to download and use Google’s free Chrome browser for iOS or Android. This particular browser has a quick and easy built-in method for carrying out reverse image searches.
We’re taking a look at how you can do this in this simple explainer.
Reverse image searching 101
Google’s “Search by Image” functionality is a useful feature that carries out a reverse image search, allowing you to look for related images by uploading an image or an image URL. This is done by using advanced algorithms to analyze the image you’ve submitted and find others that look like it.
On a desktop, computer reverse image search is simple. Just go to images.google.com and click on the little camera icon in the search bar.
Credit: Screengrab: google
Now you can either paste in the URL for an image you’ve seen online, upload an image from your hard drive, or drag an image into the search box.
Reverse image searching on a mobile device
If you want to carry out reverse image searches on your iOS or Android phone or tablet, you need to download Google’s Chrome browser for iOS or Android.
Credit: screengrab: google
The browser is available for free from Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Now, when you’re on your phone using the Chrome browser app and you find an image you’d like to look up, you simply need to press and hold on the image.
Credit: screengrab: google
In the menu that will appear on your screen after you’ve done the long press, simply tap “Search Google for This Image” and Google will carry out its clever “Search by Image” functionality.
Earlier this year, Amazon did something worth applauding. The trillion-dollar company introduced a new mental wellness benefit for its 950,000 employees, including warehouse workers.
The benefit, known as Resources for Living, provides employees and their family members with a certain number of free counseling sessions, crisis and suicide prevention support, and an app that includes mindfulness instruction and computerized cognitive behavioral therapy.
“Providing access to—and awareness around—mental health care is a critical responsibility for employers,” Beth Galetti, senior vice president of People eXperience and Technology for Amazon, said in a company announcement about the program. “This new offering will help us remove barriers and unnecessary stigma around getting help, to ensure our employees and their families feel safe and supported during this pandemic and beyond.”
On its own, Amazon’s move is important for the very reasons Galetti describes. Yet the company has also long denied accusations that its corporate and warehouse workplaces are the epitome of toxic: extractive, punitive, and sometimes discriminatory. Indeed, a few weeks after Resources for Living publicly launched, the New York Times ran a disturbing portrayal of life inside New York City’s fulfillment center JFK8, where pickers say they raced to pack online orders and struggled to interact with human supervisors when the company’s management app fails them.
It sounded like a worker’s nightmare: unrelenting demand, little to no control over scheduling and working conditions, and limited empathy from higher ups. People seek therapy for numerous reasons, including parenting challenges, mental illness, grief, and trauma. But for Amazon employees negatively affected by the company’s practices, it’s plausible they’re reaching out for help because their employer has designed a work environment rife with inescapable stressors, which can lead to anxiety, depression, or burnout, or compound the distress they’re already experiencing.
This is the crux of the broader and long overdue corporate awakening about the importance of employee mental health. American workplaces know they have a wellness problem, but most won’t do what’s required to fix it.
Instead of looking inward at emotionally bankrupt leadership philosophies, lackluster or nonexistent training for managers, and policies that emphasize productivity over physical safety and emotional well-being, companies bet on new or enhanced mental health benefits as the key to improving their employees’ mood and coping skills. Therapy and other wellness resources can be a valuable tool for surviving a challenging or toxic work environment, but what really needs to change is the workplace itself.
What’s happening behind closed doors?
Amazon is one of many companies that looked at the seemingly endless waves of stress, anxiety, and trauma unleashed by the pandemic and introduced new or expanded mental health and well-being benefits. In general, they’ve emerged as a prime perk, particularly for corporate employees.
Nike, for example, recently gave staff at its U.S. headquarters a paid week off prior to Labor Day, a gesture that one manager at the company described in a LinkedIn post as an opportunity to “unwind” and “destress.” In June, the dating app Bumble similarly gave its staff a weeklong vacation to help them recover from burnout. Last year, the software company Zendesk signed onto Modern Health, a popular platform that offers employees access to coaches, licensed therapists, and “self-service wellness kits.” As the pandemic unfolded, Google gave its employees more days off and a one-time $500 “wellbeing” bonus to spend on whatever helped them relax and reset, in addition to other resources, like video tutorials on how to be more resilient.
Such policy changes may lead to flattering press coverage and celebratory press releases, but they often put a temporary gloss on deeper cultural problems. Google employees, for example, have said it’s common for managers and human resources to respond to complaints of discrimination and harassment by urging the accuser to seek therapy or go on medical leave for mental health reasons without sufficiently investigating their claims. Google has denied that a pattern of offering counseling instead of probing complaints exists at the company.
“When you go to H.R. to seek help and you’re told, ‘Well have you considered counseling?’ that ultimately is communicating that you’re the problem,” a former Google manager who says she experienced harassment at the company told The New York Times. Google provided Mashable with a list of initiatives and policies meant to support employee mental health that were implemented during the pandemic. That included conversation guides and coaching through the company’s online learning and development platform to help managers have better one-on-one conversations with their direct reports about their well-being.
Three things employers could do differently right now
Time and again, Dr. Leslie Hammer, Ph.D., a psychologist and professor at the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences, sees the same formula used to solve the problem of employee well-being. Companies start with a Band-Aid approach, emphasizing the importance of exercise, eating well, and other lifestyle behaviors without stopping to evaluate how their policies contribute to poor health and job dissatisfaction.
“A lot of people are concerned that it’s kind of a blame-the worker-approach,” says Hammer, who has spent her career researching organizational change in the workplace and is co-director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center.
“So it’s your job to fix your own well-being as opposed to the workplace taking the responsibility. The reason why workplaces do that is because it’s a lot easier. It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Ok, you know what, you go and work on your lifestyle changes and that will make you feel better and…that will make your psychological health better.'”
“A lot of people are concerned that it’s kind of a blame-the worker-approach.”
What Hammer’s work and other research shows, however, is that three key factors play a decisive and significant role in employee well-being: decreasing the demands of work, increasing employee control over where, how, and when they work, and improving social support.
These findings might suggest that each employee should dictate the terms of their employment to guarantee their well-being, but Hammer draws a different conclusion. The workplace, she says, must be designed to reduce hazards to workers’ emotional and mental health the same way that we protect them from physical safety hazards. In other words, employers should grasp that it’s paramount to offer jobs with a reasonable workload, give employees fair control over their working conditions and schedule, and train managers to respond to employees with empathy and flexibility. Hammer has found that social support from supervisors, managers, and leaders, in particular, is linked to engagement, job satisfaction, turnover, and other outcomes that are directly tied to individual well-being.
Hammer has conducted research in diverse settings like information technology workplaces, grocery stores, nursing homes, and the military. Often, she and her colleagues teach supervisors an approach she pioneered known as family-supportive supervisor behaviors. These strategies hinge on empathy skills that increase emotional support, logistical resources for flexible schedules, and creative management tactics that focus on adapting to challenges, like the temporary or long-term absence of an employee.
Supervisor role modeling is a vital part of this training. A manager’s behavior sets the tone for everyone else, but often employees in those roles don’t receive substantive or relevant training for how to manage people. Instead, they interact with staff based on what they experienced in the past or their personal communication style, which might be adversarial, dismissive, demanding, or inflexible. Faced with unrealistic expectations from their own managers, supervisors might take out their frustration or feelings of helplessness on their direct reports. So much of employee well-being depends on a company’s culture, its business model, and whether supervisors and managers are supportive. Therapy for an individual employee can help them better cope, but it can’t fix any of those things if they’re broken.
SEE ALSO:
After COVID-19, we’re going to need more than therapy
Hammer’s team is also exploring the importance of “sleep leadership.” When executive and senior leaders, along with middle managers, demonstrate the value of sleep health by doing things like talking about how seriously they take sleep, modeling a healthy work schedule, being receptive to employees’ scheduling requests, and encouraging them to catch up on lost sleep after a period of high demand it can improve employee sleep, according to Hammer’s research.
Hammer says that business tactics like highly-controlled performance scheduling and productivity monitoring are simply not compatible with employee well-being or healthy sleep.
“The practices of such tight control over workers’ schedules and behaviors lead to higher levels of employee stress and strain through excessive pressures to perform and the inability of workers to adjust work schedules as needed to accommodate non-work life and responsibilities such as parent or child care,” Hammer wrote in a follow-up email.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos appeared to recognize the seriousness of worker complaints in his annual letter to shareholders, published in April following a failed unionizing drive at an Alabama fulfillment warehouse.
“I think we need to do a better job for our employees,” wrote Bezos, who described the company’s productivity goals as not unreasonable but “achievable.”
When asked about whether Amazon offers managers and its executive team training in skills like family-supportive supervisor behaviors and sleep leadership, the company told Mashable that all managers participate in onboarding and development. Training programs focus on creating high-performing and inclusive teams, making “high-velocity” decisions, coaching employees, and developing talent. While the company said there is training related to empathy and wellness, it provided no further details.
What it means to start at the top
In the first month of the pandemic, the video conferencing company Zoom went from 10 million daily meeting participants to 300 million. Amidst the unprecedented growth and pressure to connect hundreds of millions of people in quarantine or lockdown, Zoom’s chief people officer Lynne Oldham says the company’s CEO, Eric Yuan, asked her a question: How can we help our employees?
To learn more about employees’ needs, Oldham and her staff held focus groups with managers and their teams, with a specific focus on caregiving obligations. Facilitators led conversations that Oldham says brought both tears and laughter. What she and her team drew from these discussions was the overriding importance of empathy in communicating with and supporting employees.
The company then launched an internally-designed empathy training called Connecting Through Conversations specifically to help managers listen and respond to pandemic-related concerns. Though it wasn’t mandatory, human resources nudged managers who hadn’t taken advantage of it. Oldham says the company also wanted non-managers to know they “had a safe space to talk about what their challenges were.”
At the same time, Zoom rushed to hire and onboard workers to meet demand and alleviate the pressure rapid growth put on existing employees. Prior to the pandemic, the company had already provided its employees with Lyra, a platform that connects people with licensed therapists, as well as a meditation and goal-setting app. During the pandemic, it added access to TaskHuman, a wellness coaching app where users can connect to professionals who can help them practice self-care and stress reduction.
Zoom, which already provides training programs called “Managing Happy” and “Leading Happy,” focuses on drawing a direct line between how one’s behavior affects someone else, whether that’s a co-worker or customer.
“We talk about delivering happiness, and delivering happiness to our customers but also to our employees,” says Oldham. “We developed our internal programs along those lines.”
Former and current Zoom employees know best how much the company lives up to its own gospel, but there’s a lesson in its approach to well-being: Efforts to improve it must start with leadership and workplace culture, rather than tacking on new benefits that put the onus on the employees themselves. Otherwise, policy changes have the effect of wellness washing — or dressing up — a culture that may, in fact, be inherently hostile to employee happiness and well-being.
“I actually think training top leadership in supportive behaviors is absolutely where we need to be.”
If starting at the top sounds foolishly idealistic, it’s actually what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommend. The two federal agencies promote “Total Worker Health” approaches to employee safety and well-being. That means starting by eliminating workplace conditions that cause or contribute to illness, injury, or poor well-being, then replacing those practices with safer ones, followed by redesigning the work environment to optimize safety, health, and well-being. The last step is to encourage personal behavior change.
Few business leaders ever want to admit they’re the problem, or that their supervisors lack empathy skills, or that their business model may harm employee well-being despite being financially successful. Fear of failure and the enormity of looking inward are what stand in the way of “total worker health” becoming the norm rather than the exception.
“I actually think training top leadership in supportive behaviors is absolutely where we need to be,” says Hammer.
Malignant is a stupidly great movie — one that gets even more stupid and even more great every time you watch it.
In theaters and streaming on HBO Max thru Oct. 10, the frightful new flick from director-producer James Wan set the horror-loving world ablaze with its absurd narrative and fearless execution. At first, the hellish journey of Madison Miller (Annabelle Wallis) seemed to prospective viewers like your average possession plot, akin to past Wan works like The Conjuring or Insidious.
But as anyone who’s actually witnessed Malignant’s utterly unhinged contents can tell you, this movie is unlike anything you’ve seen before or will see again — sequel notwithstanding. Concocted by Wan, executive producer Ingrid Bisu, and screenwriter Akela Cooper, Malignant’s outrageous story is better left unspoiled. So if you’re gearing up for an inaugural watch, cease reading immediately. But if you’ve leveled up from newbie viewer to veteran obsessive, carry on.
Here are 6 incredible hidden details in Malignant you almost definitely missed the first time, but should absolutely double-back to find. (Get it? “Double-back”? He he.)
1. The opening credits reveal almost the entire plot
Wow, they really just come out and say it. Credit: screenshot: Warner bros.
For a movie whose biggest selling point is its twisty-turny plot, Malignant takes a massive risk in its first 5 minutes.
After that combat-laden flashback at Simion Research Hospital, which intros the movie and its slasher villain, pay attention to the opening credits. Behind the names and titles, you’ll see medical documents detailing the plot’s biggest reveal: That homicidal maniac Gabriel (voiced by Ray Chase) is actually Madison’s parasitic twin, nestled at the base of her neck and slowly taking over her body. Seriously, they just come out and say it.
Not only are there diagrams detailing the anatomy which physically connects Gabriel and Madison, but there are also documents and medical charts explaining their birth and some of their early childhood treatment. What’s more, it’s intercut with footage of their ghastly separation, which we learn more about from Gabriel later in the film.
The images go by fast enough that it’s not likely to spoil anyone on their first watch, but knowing the ending you’ll be surprised how boldly Malignant announces its plans in the first act. No “time to cut out the cancer” like the present, I guess?
2. Gabriel hijacks Madison’s brain for two full days in the beginning
Madison’s not home, detective. Credit: SCREENSHOT: WARNER BROS.
Shortly after Gabriel kills Madison’s POS husband Derek (Jake Abel), she’s admitted to the hospital. When Detective Kekoa Shaw (George Young) comes to interview her about the attack, however, Madison won’t speak to — or even look at — him. Madison’s adopted sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson) says she’s “been like this for two days,” rationalizing the bizarre behavior as a consequence of grief and shock from Madison losing her husband and unborn child.
It’s later explained that Gabriel is capable of controlling Madison with intense hallucinations. And although it’s never stated explicitly, that’s almost definitely what’s happening to her here. As we see in later scenes, this particularly sinister power of Gabriel’s leaves Madison’s physical body in a kind of zoned-out trance, providing him the opportunity to puppet her limbs while she’s somewhere else.
Was whatever he made Madison see here part of his scheme to kidnap their birth mother Serena May (Jean Louisa Kelly) and sneak her into Madison’s attic? Or was it something…else?
3. Madison actually says the twist, early and more than once
Oooooh, I see you what you mean now. Credit: SCREENSHOT: WARNER BROS.
Sure, we know Gabriel isn’t Madison’s imaginary friend now. But the illusion that he might be lets Madison get away with bluntly saying Malignant‘s most juicy reveal multiple times throughout the film. Finding these metaphors-turned-Easter eggs is fun to do on your own, but if you’re looking for just one: The most notable instance happens around 25 minutes in, after Madison has a scare with a bunch of flickering lights and freaky noises.
“There’s no one there,” she assures herself, through shaky breath. “It’s all in my head. It’s all in my head. It’s all in my head.” It sure is, sister! Right there, chilling at the back of your skull.
4. Gabriel uses his hands and feet backwards
To think, I mistook his twisty-grabby gestures for dramatics. Credit: SCREENSHOT: WARNER BROS.
Gabriel looks strange from the start, but it’ll take freeze-framing a few key scenes to appreciate the weirdest thing about him: He uses his hands and feet backwards.
Because Gabriel can’t use Madison’s eyes (again, she’s in that trance) and his are located on the back of her head, the walking-talking-murdering teratoma twists his body to see and strike simultaneously. His thumbs and toes are often oriented the opposite way he’s looking, as a result, making everything about him just a little extra off.
You can see the most clear instance of Gabriel’s hands going the wrong direction in the scene where he bludgeons Dr. Florence Weaver (Jacqueline McKenzie); specifically, the moment when he grabs the trophy from the table. And you can see the best instance of Gabriel’s feet going the wrong direction when he stabs Dr. Victor Fields (Christian Clemenson) in bed. Yes, it’s bloody, but also extremely cool!
I *almost* feel silly missing this one. Credit: screenshot: warner bros.
5. He even walks backwards when he has to
Via Giphy
It’s not until Gabriel goes full Blade in that jail cell that we’re given the chance to fully appreciate just how unusual his movements are. But keep an eye on those backwards hands and feet throughout the film and you’ll catch some seriously impressive work from Marina Mazepa, the contortionist who acts as Gabriel’s body.
You can catch a great example of Mazepa nailing this tricky balance as Gabriel flees the scene of Dr. John Gregory’s murder (Amir AboulEla). Right as Gabriel rounds the corner outside of Gregory’s apartment, he starts sprinting our backwards/his forwards — but it’s so seamless you won’t catch it the first go-around. Then, Mazepa sticks some incredible stunts on the fire escape well worth watching at half-speed. (Look closely at the end of this scene and you’ll also get a glimpse of Madison’s face on the back/front of Gabriel’s head!)
6. Malignant‘s signature weapon appears in the very first shot
Oh, Florence. This doesn’t end well for you. Credit: screenshot: Warner bros.
Wan does a hell of a job building a slasher icon out of Gabriel; and Gabriel’s weapon — a gold surgical statue that’s been modified into an ornate dagger — is no small part of that. In fact, it’s so central to Gabriel’s and consequently Malignant‘s identity that it appears in the very first shot.
Sneak a glance past Dr. Weaver in her introductory video diary about Gabriel and you’ll see the still intact statue proudly displayed in her office. Yikes!
Malignant is in theaters and streaming with the HBO Max ad-free plan.
