• IN A MATTER OF MONTHS, SOCIETY HAS CHANGED FROM PERCEIVING REMOTE WORK as a “luxury, or even ‘freelancer lifestyle,’ to realizing the vast majority of jobs today can be done from home. Video calls have gone from being a suboptimal alternative to a core function of the way people can communicate, and the impact is here to stay… Implications are that: (1) Productivity will now be evaluated more objectively, as tasks left unfinished will become more obvious to workteams (whereas in an office setting it’s easier to appear ‘busy’); (2) Team habits that nurture team alignment will be front & center, utilizing enterprise integration tools that can assist in seamlessly integrating office staff with remote teams; (3) Companies will seek to provide emotionally supportive benefits to help overcome remote employees feeling detached from the rest of their team. The learning curve was abrupt, but most have adapted and the future of work will never be the same. [FAST COMPANY – 5/27/20]
  • ONLINE VOTING IS “THE DREAM OF MANY VOTING REFORM ADVOCATES (especially in light of ‘social distancing’ which may still be in effect come November), but is “the nightmare of cyber & national security experts, because there is no room for error with foundational democratic exercises like voting, where process is more important than the outcome… Uncertainties surrounding the technical security needed to ensure confidence in online results include: (1) malicious actors, foreign or domestic, who could alter ballot forms or trick voters via fake websites; (2) electronic databases which can be tampered with on a scale far beyond threat to a single ballot box or polling place; (3) election day ‘Denial of Service’ attacks which could shut down the system; (4) phishing schemes which could trick people into providing private data and/or embed damaging malware; (5) absence of timing to allow for appropriate controls & auditing features. Much more secure is the vote-by-mail model which has been effective in many states for many years. [THE HILL – 6/5/20]
  • THE STOCK MARKET IS TOUTED BY MEDIA AND PERCEIVED BY MANY AS A “BAROMETER OF NATIONAL PROSPERITY, but viewed by others as an emblem and engine of American inequality… by essentially having become a mechanism for draining capital out of the economy in order to funnel ever more of the nation’s wealth upward… High-frequency trading, in which players dart in & out of the market seeking to profit from the tiniest price discrepancies, lend credence to perception that the market is now little more than a glorified casino.” Meanwhile, the sector of our economy being hit hardest by Covid-19 (and exacerbated by the rampant protests & looting) is the Mom/Pop small business community, “not represented in stock indexes which track the fortunes of big companies, and are unmoved by sentimentality or by closure of a corner coffee shop which means one less competitor for Starbucks.” The media essentially ignore the reality that coronavirus not only kills older and health-comprised people, it also kills off businesses and fuels the rage & disillusion of people whose lives and economic survival are now in perhaps permanent jeopardy.  [THE WEEK – 6/12/20]
  • “NEARLY HALF OF TWITTER ACCOUNTS SHARING INFO ABOUT CORONAVIRUS ARE LIKELY BOTS.” More than 200 million tweets, identifying 100 types of inaccurate stories, were analyzed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, including “misinformation about potential cures, conspiracy theories, stay-at-home orders, and ‘reopening,’ which looked like propaganda which definitely matches Russia & Chinese playbooks… Of the top 50 influential re-tweeters, 82% were likely bots, as were 62% of the top 1000.” [LBN EXAMINER – 6/7/20]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

     “In life, it’s important to know when to stop arguing with people and simply let them be wrong.” Here’s a genuine perspective on the hypocrisy and shame of American “protests”:  https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBGjRKXg2EI/?igshid=1aem0bznfg3wb    “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” – Albert Einstein

     “Crowding people into small spaces is always going to be a recipe for disaster when it comes to infectious diseases. Washing hands and clean drinking water are key to lowering infection rates. Many more people will be living in the suburbs and rural areas in coming years.”  https://biggeekdad.com/2020/05/cesspools-of-disease/

     The pandemic has recast education and will be disrupting education of children across the country when schools reopen. A May USA TODAY/ lpsos poll surveyed more than 500 teachers and 400 parents of K thru 12 children to find that nearly one in five teachers say they aren’t likely to return to teaching next fall – one in four over age 55 – all concerned with absence of protective vaccine, difficulties enforcing compliance with social distancing, and worry about being able to do their jobs ‘properly.’  

     For a change of pace, 8 minutes of really clever & funny sheer cinema parody, see The Gunfighter!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWs4WA–eKU