• UNMET EXPECTATIONS ARE AMONG THE BIGGEST REASONS PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY, “since we project what’s important to ourselves onto others. This emotional reaction is usually triggered by a feeling that our Value system has been violated” and key reasons this results include: (1) Failing to have clarified and clearly communicated our expectations & priorities, especially since messaging easily & often get misinterpreted; (2) Forgetting that people perform according to their expectations/ work ethic/ level of engagement, not ours; (3) Failing to ‘ask’ about status before a task is completed, since people seldom volunteer what’s going well or not; (4) Forgetting that people “expect to be treated with respect, and that disrespect generates negatively on performance, morale & culture,” all of which translate to impact on our level of happiness.  [SMARTBRIEF – 8/17/21]
  • “INFLATION IS AS MUCH ABOUT PSYCHOLOGY AS ABOUT ECONOMICS since expected inflation begets inflation, as people think prices are going up so, in turn, raise their own prices.”  Economists cannot agree on forecasted timing or impact of today’s direction, but major factors include opposing assumptions about: (1) While demand now exceeds supply, constraints will be from diminishing backlog & bottlenecks in production & supply lines, availability of air flights, re-opening of day care centers, increasing workforce (as freebie ‘stimulus’ payments end), and reduced ‘urgent’ stock up of goods;  (2) While the 5.4% increase in last 12-month Price index is largest since 2008, investor markets still reflect expectation for half that rate ongoing; (3) The level of unsustainable government debt will cause further depreciation of the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies – just another form of inflation; (4) Rising appreciation in real estate tends to have self-fulfilling momentum – as well as housing costs, particularly for rents (now three times normal in some locales) as investors pass on price increases to tenants.  [KELLOGG INSIGHT – 8/6/21]
  • SENIOR ALERT: OVER $40 BILLION OF MEDICARE’S 2020 BUDGET WENT TO SCAMMERS OR FRAUDULENT BILLERS. The latest massive nationwide scam is a Robocall offering “precautionary genetic cancer screening” for anyone over age 50, “not covered by insurance or administered by doctors because of pandemic restrictions on mouth swabs… without request for medical records or doctor name to prequalify, and unless acting soon, may label you ineligible, they only need your Medicare number.” [AARP – Aug/Sep 21] 
  • “MODERN AMERICANS ARE ENDLESSLY TOLD TO ‘CELEBRATE DIVERSITY’ but are also hectored to treat other peoples as if they are interchangeable, all behave in the same ways and want the same things. This bedrock assumption of Wokemerica is the ultimate shoal on which the Afghan war foundered. To express any doubt that a fundamentally pre-modern people with entirely different experiences and expectations from a State Department bureaucrat or NGO do-gooder – especially to suggest that democracy might not be an easy sell in the Hindu Kush – was instantly to expose oneself to the charge of ‘racism’ or ‘Islamophobia.’ What first was deemed unsayable soon became unthinkable. Since it was ‘racist’ to see Afghanistan as it actually is, it soon became obligatory to see it as the exact opposite, with the only option to make policy based on unreality. The result? In this case, 20 years, two trillion dollars, 2,500 American deaths, and 20,000 more casualties. All for nothing.”  [AMERICAN MIND – 8/17/21]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:  

     Phishing attacks using computer-generated ‘deepfake’ technology will soon be finding their way to zoom conferences. Now dubbed ‘zishing’ – video-based scams which can now match mouth & eye movements in real time, with overlays or avatars to convincingly look like completely different people. Be aware and cautious responding.

      The U.S. Space Force, which monitors satellites/ spacecraft/ pieces of space junk, reports about 1,600 ‘close passes’ weekly – objects passing with six-tenths of a mile of each other – of which 500 involve SpaceX Starlink satellites.  When the now-estimated tens of thousands of satellites are all launched, the 12,000 Starlinks are expected to be involved in 90% of all close approaches.