Wednesday Potpourri

First, another nail in the coffin of DEI. This time, it comes from Jamie Dimon, CEO of the JP Morgan Chase Bank. Dimon has decided that DEI programs are a waste of money and of bureaucracy:

Bloomberg reports:

I was never a firm believer in bias training,” Dimon told employees, adding he was “pissed off” at excessive spending on diversity initiatives.

This marks a major shift from JPMorgan’s $30B racial equity pledge, as corporate America rethinks its DEI commitments.

Second, I would never have imagined that it was this bad. That is, the extent to which Democrats support Hamas and derides Israel.

Guy Benson

NINE percent of Democrats say they’re more sympathetic to the Israelis in the conflict. A plurality sympathize more with the Palestinians. A deep moral rot & genuinely frightening.

Third, bottom story of the day. An opossum ate a Costco chocolate cake. It had to be hospitalized.

The New York Post reports:

An opossum with a sweet tooth was hospitalized after it annihilated an entire Costco chocolate mousse cake that was left outside on the porch of a Nebraska real estate agent’s home this week.

Fourth, the latest from the world of public education. In New York City. The schools are failing. Parents are abandoning them. They continue to stay open.

The New York Post reports the dismal news:

Troubling news keeps piling up for New York’s public schools. Kids keep performing poorly on standardized tests, fueling a race to the exits by parents seeking better opportunities.

That’s led to school enrollments well below capacity. Yet these schools remain open, draining dollars — without boosting achievement.

  

For taxpayers — and parents seeking better schools — it’s pure madness.

Take the just-released National Assessment of Educational Progress (a k a, the “nation’s report card”): It finds just 23% of eighth-graders in the city are proficient in math, and 29% in reading.

Only a third of fourth-graders are proficient in math, and even fewer, 28%, in reading.

Data released by the National Center for Education Statistics show the state lost 5.9% of its students between the fall of 2019 and 2023, more than all but four other states.

It lost 3.6 percentage points more students than did neighboring Pennsylvania, for instance, and even 0.7 points more than California. 

Over 80% of New York school districts are still below their pre-pandemic enrollment levels.

Given New York’s demographic trends, including fewer kindergarten enrollments and lower birth rates, student counts are unlikely to rebound in the years to come.

As such, lawmakers and taxpayers must closely monitor whether school districts are closing under-capacity schools when necessary.

  

It’s not surprising that New York public schools are also losing students at some of the fastest rates in the nation.

Fifth, whatever you do, don’t keep missing those workouts. The benefits of exercise are legion, beyond the physical. This comes to us from Greater Good Magazine:

Around the world, people who are physically active are happier and more satisfied with their lives. They have a stronger sense of purpose and experience more gratitude, love, and hope. They feel more connected to their communities, and are less likely to suffer from loneliness or become depressed.

Fifth, and then there is a CBS journalist, by name of Margaret Brennan.By now you have seen the clip where she attempted to explain to Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, that the Holocaust was caused by weaponizing free speech.

No one with a brain believes such nonsense, but apparently someone at CBS thinks that when it comes to slander and defamation, anything goes. 

And that includes making yourself look like a blithering idiot.

Sixth, from the world of therapy, I had long since known that smiling is good for your mental health. It is good even if you do not feel especially joyous.

Now, via Eric Dolan at PsyPost, we learn that science affirms what we have always known:

Smiling, often associated with happiness and joy, might be more than just a simple expression of positive emotion. A recent study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology suggests that smiling during moments of pain can have a noticeable effect on our bodies and minds. Researchers discovered that people who spontaneously smiled while undergoing a painful task 

experienced a lower heart rate throughout the experiment and reported feeling better emotionally afterward. This suggests that smiling could be a natural coping mechanism that helps us manage physical discomfort.

The idea that our facial muscles can actually affect our emotions is known as the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. While we know people sometimes smile when they are in pain or distress, it wasn’t clear if this spontaneous smiling had any real benefits in managing pain. The new study aimed to explore whether these naturally occurring smiles could play a role in how we handle painful experiences, both physically and emotionally.

Seventh, Trump sent his envoys to Saudi Arabia to begin peace talks with Russia. For reasons that no one understands, prior administrations had chosen not to talk with Russia.

The outcome, reported by the Daily Mail, was thus:

Rubio said that the U.S. and Russians agreed on four principles during their meeting as they start the initial steps toward a deal. 

First, he said the U.S. and Moscow will work to reestablish their respective diplomatic missions in each other's countries so they can move forward with more communication.

Second, Rubio said the U.S. will appoint a high-level team to help negotiate, and third, they will begin to discuss geopolitical and economic cooperation that could help resolve the conflict.

Fourth, he said that the five people who were involved in the first meeting will remain engaged, so they know it is moving along 'in a productive way.'

In principle, Ukrainian president Zelensky was supposed to travel to Saudi Arabia to engage in further discussions. Instead, he threw a tantrum and called off the meeting. 

Finally, I now have some open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, write me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.