•  ‘FAUXDUCTIVITY’ IN THE WORKPLACE refers to ‘faking productivity, and which turns out to be more so from C-suite execs and Managers than from their employees.  Latest survey by Workhuman (conducted among 3,000 U.S., UK, and Ireland employees) found that 38% admitted they fake it for five reasons: “work-life balance, feelings of burnout, not enough work to do, unrealistic expectations, and appeasing upper management.” While 32% of non-manager employees acknowledged fauxductive performance, the majority of their managers recognize but attribute it to “distractions, burnout, personal responsibilities and/or just laziness.” Optimal workplace culture would allow all employees to “be human and say when they’re struggling, not turn to performative productivity,” but obviously that’s not happening.  [HRM AMERICA, HCA MAG – 8/30/24]
  • CRYPTOCURRENCY FRAUD COMPLAINTS represent nearly half of all financial losses reported to FBI last year – some 70,000 complaints with Californians representing 20% of losses and over $1 billion lost. Principal scammers use social media platforms, dating apps and networking sites to build trust with victims who invest funds, then are sent fake profit reports to encourage further investments plus payment of phony fees & taxes. Other biggest forms of fraud, hitting seniors above age 60 hardest, include impersonation of customer tech support, and companies claiming they can recover lost cryptocurrency for upfront fees. Americans lost $5.6 billion last year, up 45% from 2022.  [EPOCH TIMES – 9/10/24]
  • THE WHITE HOUSE CLAIM OF DECREASED VIOLENT CRIME is completely bogus!  One of the Dept of Justice measures is crime reported by local & state authorities, which is down a few percent during this Administration. However, the DOD also releases a Victimization Survey from Bureau of Labor statistics which combines total nonfatal violent crime reported plus Unreported which shows a 42% increase.  The difference is that (thanks to liberal politicians, prosecutors & judges) the new soft-on-crime approach ignores acts which never get reported by local authorities to the federal agency– especially in LA, NYC and Chicago, which unsurprisingly are the highest crime cities in America .  [TOWNHALL – 8/8/84]
  • COVID LOCKDOWNS IMPACTED ADOLESCENT GIRLS MORESO THAN BOYS.  MRI scans of 160 aged 9-17 kids pre and post covid found that girls brains had prematurely aged by four times greater than boys, based on ‘‘cortical thinning – an important part of brain maturation & specialization which underpins social cognition, with roles in processing emotions, interpreting facial expressions and language comprehension, all critical for communication. The finding reflects impact of girls’ greater dependence on social groups and interactions for their well being and healthy neural, physical & emotional development. The downside risk is loss of cognitive flexibility that could potentially affect learning.”  [THE GUARDIAN – 9/9/24]

THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

  • With less than two months until the most critical election in our lifetime, America’s enemies are ramping up their influence operations. Reminder to always be suspicious. Don’t automatically believe anything you read or see, particularly if on social media. And be sensitive to the reality that we are all biased towards believing stories that support what we already believe. Be skeptical. Doubt. Don’t trust. Verify. And remember that your vote should be about leadership policies more so than personalities.  
  •  “The world today is more fractured and unstable than at any time since the end of the Cold War, and by all indications we are heading for a period of protracted systemic instability, with Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific increasingly at risk of descending into a wider general war… During the two decades of the Global War on Terror and ‘overseas contingency operations’ we seem to have forgotten the basic verities of great power politics, i.e., that there is no substitute for hard power, and that in a state-on-state near-peer conflict a country’s military capabilities ultimately rest on its manufacturing capacity, its manpower reserves, and its human capital, for without them no nation will have the requisite resilience to deter and, if need be, defeat its enemies.” A scary scenario:  https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/09/06/phase_zero_of_the_coming_war_1056517.html
  •    5 minute profound perspective on Life’s purpose & balance: https://biggeekdad.com/2024/08/5-minutes-for-the-next-50-years/