After releasing his highly acclaimed film “Get Out” in 2017, Jordan Peele followed up with another horror film that captivated the audience and kept them on the edge of their seat. The film chronicles an alternate world where every person has a doppelganger living lifeless in the underground. These lifeless doppelgangers break free from their chains and come to the forefront of the world, wreaking havoc and terrorizing their “twins”. While the film is classified as a horror film, it is much more than jump scares and violence. As in his original film, Peele is trying to send a message to his audience to look deeper than what is in plain sight. New York Time’s had a similar viewpoint, detailing how “Peele uses the metaphor of the divided self to explore what lies beneath contemporary America, its double consciousness, its identity, sins and terrors. The results are messy, brilliant, sobering, even bleak” (Dargis). They justify their claims by noting how Peele incorporates excerpts from Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad”, connecting the revolution in the movie to slaves escaping from subjection.

Works Cited

Dargis, Manohla. “’Us’ Review: Jordan Peele’s Creepy Latest Turns a Funhouse Mirror on Us.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Mar. 2019, http://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/movies/us-movie-review.html.

Travis Kalanick, co-founder and former CEO of ride-sharing company Uber, has been wrapped up in controversy as a result of his unethical business practices and treatment of his employees. Despite the Kalanick’s tireless efforts in building the foundation for this company, investors at Uber, including his fellow board members and co-founders, urged Kalanick to remove himself from his position as CEO ultimately leading to his resignation. While some of his questionable behavior can be attributed to his capitalistic motives putting his company’s interests ahead of his employees, others are due solely to his immaturity. He persistently reinforced an informal and inappropriate culture through emails promoting employees sleeping with each other at company events. On a company trip in South Korea, Kalanick was caught visiting an escort bar.

Furthermore, under Kalanick’s authority, numerous scandals were swept under the rug in order to protect the public opinion of his company. After an employee publicized her struggles facing sexual harassment in the workplace as well as how the Human Resource department entirely overlooked the situation. She specifically cited how Kalanick’s encouragement of a so-called party atmosphere in the workplace facilitated this sort of behavior to continue. In addition to the sexual harassment of employees, customers continually face similar issues with this ride-sharing app. For instance, a customer in India was brutally raped by a driver and sought legal action against the company. Rather than looking out for the customer’s best interests and helping her in a time of need, Kalanick and his advisors decided to acquire the medical documents in order to defend themselves against the victim by claiming the rape never happened. Another scandal in Brazil also resulted in Kalanick acting out of the interests of his company instead of basic human rights. Customers in Brazil were allowed to pay anonymously  with cash rather than the standard credit card transaction before the ride. As a result, numerous drivers were robbed and even killed with no trace of these criminals. Rather than coming out publicly and admitting his mistake, he continued to allow these cash transactions for five months after finding out about the first murder of a driver. Although Travis Kalanick may not have acted out of ill will, his decisions as CEO of Uber were truly unethical and forfeited the basic human rights of numerous stakeholders. 

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.