Just in Case it Matters to You

• BEGINNING OF A NEW YEAR IS A GOOD EXCUSE TO REFOCUS DAILY ATTENTION ON STRATEGIC PRIORITIES, which so often get pre-empted for ‘crisis’ management which turn out to be someone else’s ‘urgencies.’  How often is your daily work routine disrupted responding to manufactured fire-drill issues, with cell phone calls or texts or emails or someone else’s questions or comments, while your priorities for the day get pushed?  DCG can help guide you with Time Management tips; call for courtesy consult.

•  FIVE BEST STEPS FOR AVOIDING FLU THIS SEASON:  (1) Wash hands often; Avoid touching face;  (2) Keep indoor spaces ventilated, with humidity between 40 – 60%, since low humidity makes exhale droplets float in air longer and travel further;  (3) Exercise with aerobic and/or resistance training, which releases proteins supporting immune function;  (4) Maintain at least 10 micrograms of Vitamin D3 daily;  (5)  Consider vaccination for kids under age 5, whose immune systems are still developing, with smaller airways making them more prone to serious complications (like bronchitis & pneumonia), and who have the highest rate of hospital admissions.  [SCIENCE FOCUS]

• NEUROSCIENCE HAS RESHAPED PERSPECTIVE REGARDING THE BRAIN, which today is considered simply an organ of regulation – “a prediction-driven control system with nervous systems helping the body to anticipate and avoid trouble, via perception and action to keep the body alive and experiences from being disembodied. It does this by wrangling the body, narrative and world into a coherent stance, binding stories to sensation. Today’s neuroscience no longer considers the brain to be made of celestial material, as philosophers and earlier scientists presumed, but rather to be simply tissue and salt water, warmed, fed and continuously informed by the rest of the organism – a dynamical system that can model its own future, argue with itself about responsibility, suffer the absence of meaning, and feel like someone rather than something.”  A fascinating analysis:  https://www.google.com/search?g=3+philosophical+debates+from+the+20th+century+that+neuroscience+is+reshaping&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS1127US1127&oq=3+philosophical+debates+from+the+20th+century+that+neuroscience+is+reshaping&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggAEEUYOzIGCAAQRRg70gEINDc3MWowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

• NEW 2026 IRS LIMITS ON RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS & WAGES:    Defined Benefit – $290,000.  Defined Contribution – Additions – $72,000, Deferrals – $24,500, age 50 catch-ups – $8,000, age 60 catch-ups $11,250; IRA – $7,500, age 50 catch-ups $1,100; Compensation limits – Annual – $360,000, Thresholds — Employee – $160,000, Key Employee – $235,000, Roth – $150,000; Social Security taxable wage base – $184,500.

THOUGHTS FOR THE LAST WEEK OF 2025

• The terrifying ways that social media is altering teenage brains:   “Social media is the perfect recipe for kids to become addicted to their smartphones.”    https://bigthinkmedia.substack.com/p/the-terrifying-ways-that-social-media?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=2863167&post_id=182029576&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=5l3fru&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

• “The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence has exacerbated threats to nuclear stability. One fear is that a nuclear weapons state might delegate the decision to use nuclear weapons to machines.  Yet AI poses another insidious risk to nuclear security. It makes it easier to create and spread deepfakes— with convincingly altered videos, images, or audio that are used to generate false information about people or events. And these techniques are becoming ever more sophisticated.”  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-deepfakes-could-lead-doomsday?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=How%20Deepfakes%20Could%20Lead%20to%20Doomsday&utm_content=20261229&utm_term=A

• The sad reality, for those feeling confident about a ‘Peace Plan’ ever being implemented & sustainable in the Middle East:   “The Covenant of the HAMAS Islamic Resistance Movement — 18 August 1988 //  In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah, Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the greater part of them are transgressors… They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory) … This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realized.”