• STUDIES FIND THAT EMPLOYEES SPEND UP TO 2½ HOURS DAILY DEALING WITH DRAMA which stems from “complainers – powerless people who blame something other than themselves and expect others to fix their problems – and who know it’s easier to complain than to seek solutions.” Reality is that when co-workers or managers do fix someone’s problem, their weaknesses are encouraged and they’re taught to run back each time. Tips for responding: Coach more, fix less; Ask what they’ve tried so far to resolve; Do not offer solutions (which can also motivate them to pile on other complaints), but suggest other approaches; If getting involved, use ‘we might consider’ for alternative direction; Create a commitment to timeline, if they need further guidance. DCG can help. [LEADERSHIP FREAK – 2/6/22]
  • NOTE, IF YOU’RE AMONG THE MANY NEW ‘DAY TRADERS’ DURING THIS PERIOD OF MARKET VOLATILITY, a federal tax election can provide meaningful benefits for those with Net Losses from securities trades (stocks/ futures/ options/ crypto/ etc.). If the activity is substantial and continuous, cumulative losses can be treated as ‘business’ rather than capital asset transactions, providing: (1) Deduction of business expenses like equipment, software, seminars, subscriptions, even home office, without capital loss or ‘wash sale’ limitations; (2) Offset of unrealized losses at year end, based on market price – i.e., without selling the asset; and (3) Reporting as schedule C business loss offsetable against income from other sources. With many online platforms now providing instant trading, $0 commissions, and allowing margin loan trades, election of ‘Mark-to-Market’ reporting is expected to increase substantially.
  • THE LATEST ‘DEEP LEARNING’ (DL) ADVANCE IS WITH ‘FOUNDATION MODELS’ which now dominate the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These models are “trained using millions/ billions of texts, images & sound clips, to manipulate symbols in disciplines as different as drawing/ creative writing/ computer programming, in order to formulate ‘answers’ based on non-human AI… Increasing concerns involve: (1) the power that DL models consume & emissions they produce; (2) the small number of elite (and biased) tech companies and governments that control such huge amounts of data; (3) Access to the data and potential for nefarious use & abuse… Would you trust a 10-year-old whose entire sense of reality had been formed by surfing the internet? Might AI be recruited to an ideological struggle to bend minds? What will happen to cultures that are poorly represented on line?… Promise & perils are yet to come.”  [ECONOMIST – 6/11/22]
  • “UNLIKE GRAVITY, ‘WAR’ IS NOT A FUNDAMENTAL FORCE OF NATURE. While human history supports the premises for ‘survival of the fittest’ and that military force is the only thing preventing one group or country from wolfing down another, reality is that War is the product of human choices, its existence & intensity dependent on underlying technological, economic and cultural factors … including: (1) The only constant of human history is change, and humanity’s greatest political achievement has been the decline of war, most recently in recognition that global issues – like catastrophic climate change and regulating artificial intelligence or genetic engineering – require compromise; (2) In recent decades violent human conflict has killed fewer people than suicide, car accidents or obesity; (3) Profitability of conquest has declined, as the global economy has transformed from being based on material assets (such as gold mines/ wheat fields/ oil wells) which can be seized by force, to the main source of wealth now being Knowledge… Maybe the law of the jungle is a choice rather than an inevitability.”  [YUVAL NOAH HARARI – 2/9/22]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:    The United States of Dumb-merica – Bill Maher  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dMOfwUP0F0 

Seven in ten Americans say they need “their nighttime environment to be a certain way” in order to sleep best, and in bed before 10:pm to achieve “excellent” sleep, according to a 2000-person survey by Harvard University Medical Division of Sleep.

 Within four years, business Leaders predict their revenues will come from Products, Services and Businesses that haven’t yet been created; also that businesses led by women are more likely to succeed, according to latest McKinsey Global Survey.

 The risk of spreading Covid-19 genes in gyms during high-intensity exercise is 130 times greater than spreading the virus at rest, based on average number of aerosol particles per minute released.  [TIME – 6/20/22]