• PRIVATE COMPANIES CAN MAJORLY INCREASE THEIR VALUE BY ENGAGING BOARD ADVISORS and/or DIRECTORS who provide guidance and oversight by jointly participating in regular meetings.  Productiveness is optimized when: (1) Agendas identifying strategic matters are well-planned, and delivered in advance to all leaders or committee members responsible for presenting the updates/ issues/ etc; (2) “A facilitator is appointed (not necessarily the Board Chair) to manage time, and who is empowered to keep conversations focused, record group decisions & future action items, and to address any unproductive behavior or emotional outbursts (which may occur, especially during Family business board meetings); (3) Members focus their role — not about drilling down into operational details, but rather guiding and monitoring managements’ performance in achieving targeted objectives.” DCG have served companies in all facets of Board support for decades. Let us help optimize company value. [PRIVATE COMPANY DIRECTOR – 3/22]
  • HOME PRICES HAE RISEN UP TO A THIRD DURING THE PAST TWO YEARS in some of America’s 3000+ counties, mostly in “warm suburbs with the right combination of ‘affordable’ housing and industries friendly to remote work… Lifestyle changes had biggest effects, because city dwellers who could not meet face-to-face chose to disperse to suburbs, especially bidding up homes in areas where it seldom rains, summers are balmy or winters mild (with weather explaining 16% of gap in price gains between California and Minnesota).”  The other major factor has been remote labor – appealing alternatives in counties with tech or online work-at-home options, versus counties relying on industries like construction in which people have to commute and show up to work.”  [ECONOMIST – 4/30/22]
  • SHORT-TERM MEMORY – aka ‘Forgetting stuff,’ like names/ numbers/ keys/ why standing at this drawer – has been presumed to be “merely a glitch in the Memory System. But latest science now suggests that Forgetting is a fundamental aspect, that without it the Memory System wouldn’t work… and that its purpose is really to help us make The brain, in the course of a single day, registers hundreds of thousands of bits of information, some relevant but much of it utterly inconsequential, which without culling would: (1) fail to tune out useless info to allow focus on the relevant; (2) make it hard to actually do the job of predicting what comes next; and (3) preclude a good night’s sleep, which quite literally produces a clearer mind… Without Forgetting, neither the anger at a slight, the pain of grief, or feeling of love & attraction would fade, making it impossible to move on from relationships.” So, attributing CRS (Can’t Remember Shit) to Middle-Age or Senior status is still a good excuse, but reality is evidently that it’s just your brain “clearing the debris.” [TIME – 5/9/22]
  • BUSINESS EMAIL COMPROMISE ATTACKS CONTINUE TO INCREASE DRAMATICALLY, targeting execs, managers and vendors in wire-fund-transfer positions, along with their personally identifiable details (account numbers, wage/tax forms, crypto-wallets) which can further lead to personal identity theft & fraud. The FBI warns that reported losses thru last year have exceeded $43 billion, as remote workers surged due to the pandemic, and as cryptocurrency transactions became fashionable. FBI recommendations for key protection steps are: two-factor authentication; careful view of web addresses for misspellings, etc; and refrain from supplying log-in credentials. [TECHSPOT – 5/9/22]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: “The problem with political jokes is that they get elected.”

   “With seven more months before the midterms, expect more ‘disinformation’ ministries, censorious czars, and hack grandees to emerge from the shadows, trying to convince us that high gas prices are welcome; negative growth is good; borders are ossified ideas; unaffordable housing aids the economy; inflation can prove useful; a declining stock market is encouraging; crime is a mere construct in the eye of the beholder.”  [VICTOR DAVIS HANSON – https://heartlanddailynews.com/2022/05/hanson-the-new-disinformationists/]

    Dumb but alternative uses of English: Abdicate – to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach; Avoidable – what a bullfighter tries to do; Burglarize – what a crook sees with; Circumvent – opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men; Counterfeiters – workers who install kitchen cabinets; Eyedropper – a clumsy ophthalmologist; Paradox – two physicians; Pharmacist – a farm hand; Rubberneck – what you do to relax a lady;

   The Faculty of the Environment at the University of Waterloo in Canada is seeking applicants with experience in geography/ earth or environmental science/ sustainability “who self-identify as women, transgender, non-binary, or two-spirit (a gender-variant that derives from Native American culture).”  [VANDEMANCO]     We’re living in the Age of the Absurd!   https://dennisprager.com/column/the-age-of-the-absurd/