March 30, 2021

When the spark went out of

When my daughter realised it wasn’t a giant Barbie doll, she freaked out and said it was gross — but now she’s old enough to share Mayu’s clothes. "My wife was furious when I first brought Mayu home.The life-size dummy, called Mayu, shares his bed under the same roof as Ozaki’s wife and teenage daughter in Tokyo, an arrangement that triggered angry rows before a delicate truce was finally declared."After my wife gave birth we stopped having sex and I felt a deep sense of loneliness," the 45-year-old physiotherapist said.
When the spark went out of Masayuki Ozaki’s marriage, he found an unusual outlet to plug the romantic void — a silicone sex doll he swears is the love of his life. "They’re very selfish."But the moment I saw Mayu in the showroom, it was love at first sight," blushed Ozaki, who takes his doll on dates in a wheelchair and dresses her in wigs, sexy clothes and jewellery.
These days she puts up with it, reluctantly," he added. He also admits to 3.5 mm to quarter inch being turned off by human relationships."Japanese women are cold-hearted," he said while on a seaside stroll with his silicone squeeze."Ozaki is one of an increasing number of Japanese men turning to rubber romance in a country that’s lost its mojo.

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March 11, 2021

A stretch target could be to export

Legislating minimum wages and benefits for this segment is lazy policymaking and can end up having a regressive impact due to weak oversight capacity. The "lal battis" (red beacons) have gone, and it’s time now to puncture some sarkari egos further and spread the accolades for social and economic achievements. Both Indian companies and the government routinely advertise for engineers even when an experienced mechanic is needed.So how can the government help create new jobs and preserve existing ones? Kickstarting infrastructure projects; promoting "Make in India" and resolving the bad loans burden of banks — are all great government initiatives for new employment. Individual employers, with a track record of employing more than five workers and banking wages of more than Rs 10 lakhs per year, should be publicly recognised as "social growth enablers".
The government can step in with near-time transactional measures for light-handed regulation of such employment.Third, introduce disincentives for layoffs. Only when we consciously make the paper chase redundant will we value real-life skills accretion, where the maximum potential for human jobs exists. Instead, the government should promote the payment of wages into bank accounts to generate big data on such employment..First, extend the H1-B strategy, used to great advantage in the US, for temporarily exporting Indian workers overseas. But companies can be incentivised to be socially responsible employers. This unfortunate social milieu engenders "qualification creep". Technology is fast eroding the capacity gap between the unique attributes of human labour and machines.Ask any of the 68 government departments in New Delhi what they are doing about private sector jobs, and each will point at the other for an answer.Last, the optics must be right.But does the private sector have incentives to produce jobs.Second, build respect for skilled work by venerating those who have these skills. The government needs to step away from the colonial pedestal of being the "mai baap" (supreme preserver). Rich countries, with ageing populations who need the workers, but fear the cultural dilution associated with permanent immigration would be the targets. Yes, flexibility in workforce management is a must for employers. Instead, there is a stigma attached to it, as being fit only for those who cannot afford the high cost and long incubation period for becoming a doctor. Why is a Bachelor of Ars degree needed to become a bank clerk — a high responsibility but a routine, people skills-oriented job? Only a select few, intending to teach at the college level or do research, should need a master’s degree. Good nursing vastly reduces the workload for doctors — specially in the emergency room for the care of trauma patients. But their impact is medium term. But this noble, highly skilled profession is not a first choice today.
The truth is that governments have not been held accountable for job creation since the 1980s, when neo-liberalism took root. Looking purely at the bottomline, machines are superior to humans. Tests and interviews for jobs should focus on personality and psychological attributes, rather than educational qualifications, which are rarely aligned with job skills anyway. Around 300 million workers are employed in the agrarian and household sector as daily wagers or long-term help by individuals — farmers, rich and middle class urban households.Fourth, the Niti Aayog has taken the lead to plug the data gap on jobs in the informal sector, that will generate most of the incremental employment. No one advocates going down the horribly inefficient public sector job creation route again. So it is up to the private sector and self-employment to absorb our surging army of millennials — almost 10 million strong annually — which is equal to the entire Australian workforce. Consider the irrational gap between the wage for a nurse versus a doctor. The associated fiscal costs are outweighed by the social and economic benefits from repatriated earnings alone. Those who go beyond watching their "bottomline" to retaining and growing their employees should be rewarded through tax breaks, access to cheaper finance and publicly recognised as nation builders. Bots will progressively replace humans, more so in logically-executed routine jobs. Why not devise an index to assess social leadership qualities of company honchos before they get awards and honours, get invited to Rashtrapati Bhavan; preferential access to our ambassadors overseas or get nominated on to government committees? We need to publicly distinguish between narrow-minded private employers who only watch bottomlines, and truly transformative business leaders, if the private sector is to lead in job creation. Siri (Apple), Cortana (Microsoft), Google Now and the mellifluously named Maluuba are all cheaper than hiring a real-life assistant and are on call 24x7. Here are four options.
A stretch target could be to export a million workers over the next three years. If costs are shared between the bank and the government, a budget outlay of Rs 5,000 crores can pay for this incentive and China Stereo Adapters for sale bank annual wage payments of an estimated Rs 18 trillion, much of which is in cash today. They also come with financial incentives for capital investment — cheap bank finance and accelerated depreciation for tax purposes — which boost the bottomline. In the near-term, the government needs to preserve existing jobs. Not only are human services more expensive, but they come with enormous social and economic costs for housing, transport, education, health and security. Assign targets to our ambassadors posted in these locations to negotiate with their host countries to allow temporary immigration, lightly monitored by the government and directly supported, under the Skills India initiative, to acquire local language and cultural skills. An incentive of Rs 5 credited back to the employer’s account for every Rs 1,000 paid into an employee account could help. Our caste and hierarchy-ridden Brahmanical social norms devalue skills and overvalue "intellect" — both in the public and private sectors.

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March 02, 2021

These systems will be adapted

The movement spread to the United States, with AT&T and Verizon pulling ads from Google.The British government subsequently put its YouTube advertising on hold, saying in a statement, "it is totally unacceptable that taxpayer-funded advertising has appeared next to inappropriate internet content.The tech giant also said it would work with third parties to help advertisers protect their brands from unwanted placement."As part of our commitment to provide even more transparency and visibility to our advertising partners, well be working with trusted vendors to provide third-party brand safety reporting on YouTube," a Google spokesperson said on Monday.Google chief business officer Phillip Schindler recently apologized and said the company was taking a "tougher stance" on hateful, offensive, or derogatory content while ramping up safeguards to make sure ads only appear with acceptable material from legitimate creators.
The analysis found more than 200 anti-Semitic videos, and that Google had failed to remove six of them within the 24-hour period mandated by the European Union after it anonymously signaled their presence.The boycott began in February after the Times newspaper of London found BBC programs were promoted alongside videos posted by American white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke as well as Wagdi Ghoneim, an Islamist preacher banned from Britain for inciting hatred.The move come as the internet colossus scrambles to derail an advertising boycott of Googles money-making engine.Google has continued to downplay the effect of the boycott.A solution may not be easy.Google said it was using new machine-learning or artificial intelligence systems to enforce its policies, to help content objectionable to advertisers.Google on Monday said it will apply machine smarts and outside eyes Wholesale headphone plugs manufacturers to help ensure brands dont find ads paired with hateful videos on YouTube. Google needs to strike a balance between pleasing advertisers and those who upload videos to YouTube and are free to take their creations elsewhere if unsatisfied with their shares of ad revenue.
These systems will be adapted to advertiser preferences, Google said.California-based Google, which has seen a slew of companies withdraw ads fearing placement alongside extremist content, has introduced new tools to give firms greater control."Others to pull the plug included the BBC, The Guardian newspaper group, McDonalds UK and the British arm of the major advertising agency Havas.

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