• ‘BACK TO OFFICE’ OPERATIONS HAVE BEEN FINDING CONFLICT between ‘Clock-Time’ workers sensitive to deadlines and ‘Event-time’ workers who feel they need more time to complete a task or project. This is because Remote work necessitated by the pandemic in many cases increased effectiveness for people whose personal engagement in a task or project is based on doing it best by starting when it feels right and ending when felt completed. This style quite differs from a generally more efficient working style of office scheduling based on what time it is or how much time has passed. People necessarily combine those two styles in life balance in order to coordinate with others, but “when it comes to how one organizes their life and ideally plans their days, research suggests that people are born with a tendency toward one style or the other. Clock-timers rely on more external clues (such as calories for deciding what to eat) compared with Event-timers who look inward and are tuned-in to their inner feelings, positive emotion, and are more deeply engaged – even to point of becoming perfectionists.” [PSYCHE – 4/30/24]

• “THE MENTAL HEALTH OF YOUTHS IS DETERIORATING RAPIDLY.” Estimates are that a quarter of children aged 5 through 7 in Britain and America now have a smartphone, with over 30% regularly using TikTok. Despite it’s supposed platform policy that age 13 is required for sign up, more than 20% of underage users have an adult profile which allows them to access all content on major platforms (TikTok/ Instagram/ Twitter-X/ Facebook/ YouTube/ etc.), and by age 12 the adverse role of media “increases dramatically as the dopamine culture of fast-paced scrolling and swiping behavior promoted by Big Tech instills addictive behavior which keeps users’ eyes glued to their screens, destroying millions of lives.” [HONEST-BROKER.COM – 4/28/24]

• AS TEENAGERS, ANOTHER ASPECT OF TECHNOLOGY IS BECOMING PROBLEMATIC: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. A.I. is presenting society with unprecedented challenges as it improves at imitating humans. But “whether our minds, relationships, and concept of reality can itself cope is of concern to psychologists who suggest that our brains might not be ready for the impacts – especially Deepflake images and videos which can alter one’s very sense of what’s real and what’s fake, and once exposed to fake info, evidence suggests it can have a permanent impact (even if later revealed false), patching into long-term memory. This is of particular concern for teenagers who increasingly spend less face-to-face time with others – a factor linked to decline in their levels of empathy and intelligence.” [ABC.NET.AU – 4/30/24]

• TECHNOLOGY HAS ALSO CREATED TODAY’S ‘SCAM WORLD’ – “the seedy layer just beneath the world we live in every day, cluttered with bogus text messages, spam calls and phishing attempts, where any digital engagement with a stranger is a risk, as Spoofing cloaks the identity & location of a computer or phone being used.” Text scams alone trick Americans out of some $300 billion annually, with 18 – 24-year-olds losing more money to scams than any other age group, according to Better Business Bureau. “Sophisticated tech makes all kinds of deception possible since, thanks to outsourcing and automation, the typical communication sent by genuine customer service departments of large companies has become indistinguishable from a phishing scam,” with over 600,000 ‘Imposter’ scams reported in the U.S. last year, costing over $2 billion according to FTC. Reality is that while “humans are wired to reciprocate when having received a favor or help (as in exchange with a customer-service rep), surrounded today by information & noise, we need to second-guess ourselves every day. So, strategies we’ve used to ward off risks in the analog world may not apply to the new digital reality: the Scam World.” [NEW YORK TIMES – 4/21/24]

• THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

America’s last chance before Collapse! – Victor Davis Hanson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Aq2xd6ccgE

FYI: China is presently hosting talks with Russia “to facilitate Hamas’s inclusion in the Palestinian Authority, which would result in a Hamas-influenced government in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” [INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR – 4/30/24]

A humorous explanation of the Generational differences: https://biggeekdad.com/2023/05/every-generation-explained/