JimDurbinTX

When someone says they let the data make the decisions, understand that's not at all what is happening. What they're really saying is they created a filter for new information that conveniently allows them to not make decisions until you've proved something to their satisfaction.

@BradRTorgersen @BallerToy1327 Robotech made me a runner. In seventh grade, I'd watch from 7:00-7:15, then run to school. At 3:00, I'd run home, so I could watch the 3:15-3:30. And they say cartoons are bad for kids.

(TL;DR warning again) 41 years ago this month my local UHF channel began airing a kids cartoon unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Half-hour installments. Amazing animation which seemed a cut above most early 80s American childrens TV to that point. And the scripting was of a decidedly more adult nature than either Voltron or G.I. Joe. It only took one episode to suck me in. Because of the airplanes turning into robots, of course. It was the era of Optimus Prime duking it out with Megatron. Every American boy in 1985 adored both Transformers and GoBots. But these giant swing-wing "veritechs" were piloted by men. Against enormous aliens who were decidedly different from any I'd seen in any science fiction TV show before. And one episode's plot bled into another. These weren't capsule stories. The entire thing was one big story. Which I avidly tuned in to before school day after day. The war against the Zentraedi segued to the war against the Robotech Masters, which segued to the war with the Invid. I had no idea at the time I was seeing an Americanized kitbash of three distinct Japanese shows. It was all just extraordinary to me, and I never noticed the seams which had been papered over by American writers. There aren't many sci-fi franchises which have had an impact on me like ROBOTECH. Not even STAR WARS. The only sci-fi show which has a larger presence in my mental landscape is STAR TREK. And I not only owned the entirety of ROBOTECH on VHS—grainy TV tapes at first, then store-bought official copies after—I played the Palladium role-playing game with my H.S. friends. The remastered DVD sets which emerged 20 years ago never sat right with me because the sound effects got re-done. And it wasn't until I was on deployment trying to watch ripped .mp4 of the remasters that I realized just how badly those re-done sound effects jagged on my ear. I still remembered *all* the broadcast effects as they had been. And I wanted them back. Amazon briefly had rights to and streamed an "original broadcast" edition of ROBOTECH which kept the old effects. But this was license short-lived. And I ended up buying a *second* set of DVDs in the vain hope of getting a broadcast-true edition in hard media. Except, that set also ended up being the remastered sound effects. What to do? I kept hearing about "legacy" copies from turn of the century. After VHS, but before the remasters. This week I finally located a full 14-disc set of the "legacy" DVDs which supposedly are closest to broadcast. After ripping them to .mkv it seems true. I finally have digital hard media of the actual ROBOTECH I remember from my youth. 🤓

@MichiganMattCPA Adderall

How do explain to a non-tax pro the ability to work 16 hours in tax season and also needing daily naps the rest of the year?

If I were to start an HR Tech integration company, I'd have to name it something really, really profound. I thought about this a lot, and I decided that I would call it the Animal Farm Agency. Here's the tagline. "All integrations are equal. But some integrations are more equal than others." And for swag at conventions, we'd give away glue bottles.

The major complaint I have about other people using AI is that AI understands what was written, but doesn't understand the real world. It doesn't know how politics, or sports, or the courts really work. It doesn't under relationships, or jokes, or human conversation. And it annoys me when you see people thinking it does. Now, when it gets access to everything you say and do, tracks pulse and respiration, and gets enough iterations of the real world. Well, that just scared the shit out of me.

St Louis used to be a trading desk, marketing and aeronautics hub. But, they are also one of the largest trust fund cities in the country. Generational wealth makes the decisions, which includes not merging the city and county. Dallas was like that until the the East Texas oil fields ran dry. The wealthy diversified in a panic, and Dallas picked up a lot of companies. St Louis is run by generational wealth who never lost their fortunes, so they didn't mind decline. Losing the airport hub was the final straw. New companies won't move without a good hub. But it is changing. Growth is occurring, just not in corporate hqs.

St. Louis had 9 Fortune 500 companies in 2015. Now? Just 7. Meanwhile, corporations keep flocking to Austin, Nashville & Miami. STL has a $210B metro economy, pretty low cost of living, central location & top-tier universities. Why aren’t any corporations calling it home?

Fascinating story, largely correct, and worth digging into yourself. If Lee said Grant was a better general - that's astounding, and if true, it's like MJ saying Lebron was better.

I'm a headhunter, which means I can read upside down and discretely when you're writing something. I remember being at a doctor's and when I answered, he was writing notes about the placement of my eyes, which fascinated me because he was trying to tell if whether or not I was a liar. Since then, I'm very careful about what I tell doctors, because if they're evaluating me, I'm evaluating them. I get that people lie to doctors, but I wasn't - and those notes might really matter in the future. It turns out that people are the same way with medical AI chatbots... medicalxpress.com/news/2026-05-p…

@dejiwastakenx Every time. I laugh every time.

Serious answers only please. I’m trying to figure something out…

@privateeyeruss If you want to sell, you have to say things like "I'm in sales," and "I'm a salesman." People who deny they are selling or call themselves regional marketing executives don't make it. Naming yourself matters.

@Jimdurbin I think I know what you mean but you can you be more specific?

How i used sales to dig my way out of a financial hole. I won't bore you with all the details but at one point I found myself in a very precarious Financial situation. I wasn't facing eviction or repossession or anything like that just not where I wanted to be. I had a job that paid the bills but not much more. I had one of two choices. I can get a second job and crawl a little bit faster to where I wanted to be or I could take a sales job. I did not exactly take a sales job I called a friend of mine who I used to work sales jobs with and told him my situation. He gave me some suggestions and I was off and running. I approached different companies and offered my services as a Salesman working on commission only. Some of them turned me down but two of them said yes. I decided to take the one that would offer me the highest amount of earning potential. That company was a printing company. I sat down with the owner and we worked out some details about what types of companies to approach and my orders were to contact him when I was closing the sale to sort out the pricing to make sure I did not lowball the pricing. Some of my background. I have worked in sales since I was a very young child. I learned how to sell in person as well as over the phone. Commission sales is the only way you will truly ever earn what you are worth as a Salesman. Without the cushion of a salary you force yourself to work harder and dig in your heels. I did just that and without going to detail over the next few months I was able to get my finances in order. Are you sales skills on a regular basis during my investigations as a licensed private investigator. I also use sales skills while I'm performing executive protection work. I have also used sales skills to meet women. I'm not going to tell you guys what to sell or who to work for. Whatever you do you can use sales skills and if you decide to make it a career you can Elevate yourself to hide you might never have dreamed of. Regardless of your education, race or socioeconomic status. I have a neighbor who can fight it in me that he has a GED. He turned his ability in sales and to millions of dollars in commissions. He lives in a very expensive house and he attributes all of it to his sales ability. Learn how to sell a gentleman!

Yummy Bread Appetizer 😋 © appetizing.tv-

Watching Bon Jovi groupies on a big screen reminds me of what we lost. #yougiveloveaBadname

Every single interaction between two human beings has almost infinite possibilities. If you try to analyze the text of any human conversation, you'll be wrong 95% of the time. That's how wonderfully weird we are. And I'll prove it. "You are so great." What do I mean? Is that a compliment? Is it an insult? Am I being sarcastic? Are you a hot mess, but at least interesting? Do I want something from you? Have I invested in you and need you to do well? Is there a "but" coming? Is it a big one? How could you possibly know? Only through context, time, verification, and cultural understanding. And what does great mean anyway? Do I say that the Taco Bell Cantina menu is great, or do I save it for the Italian master chef living in Switzerland and buying butter from Wisconsin? Is great better than good, or just, something I like? "You're great" in hiring could mean I made a lot of money with you, or it could mean you're good in a pinch. Or, it could mean that you're great in a crisis, but horrible at corporate politics and ready to trash your rivals because F them, right?

Everyone loves AI for business creation until your cool marketing brief is output in Estonian. I don't speak Estonian.

@AiwithYasir @ClustZContact It's not word for word, but this is the same speech Nancy Pelosi would give on passing Obamacare.

History shows technology doesn’t eliminate aggregate demand—it transforms it. AI will likely automate routine work while unlocking new frontiers in creativity, personalization, health, education, and experiences we can’t yet imagine. The key challenge is ensuring broad access to these gains so purchasing power evolves alongside capability. Looking forward to the new economic landscape ahead.

🚨BREAKING: Two researchers from UPenn and Boston University just published a paper that should be uncomfortable reading for every CEO automating their workforce right now. The argument is straightforward. Every company replacing workers with AI is also eliminating its own future customers. Laid off workers stop spending. Enough of them stop spending and nobody can afford to buy anything. The companies that fired everyone end up selling into an economy with no purchasing power left. Every executive can see this. The math is not complicated. But here is why nobody stops. If you do not automate, your competitor does. They cut costs, lower prices, take your market share, and you collapse anyway. So every company automates knowing it is collectively destructive because the alternative is dying alone while everyone else survives. The researchers proved this is a Prisoner's Dilemma playing out in real time. The numbers are already moving. Block cut nearly half its 10,000 employees this year. Jack Dorsey said AI made those roles unnecessary and that within the next year the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion. Salesforce replaced 4,000 customer support agents with AI. Goldman Sachs deployed a coding tool that lets one engineer do the work of five. Over 100,000 tech workers were laid off in 2025 and AI was cited as the primary driver in more than half those cases. 80% of US workers hold jobs with tasks susceptible to AI automation. The researchers tested every proposed solution. Universal basic income does not change a single company's incentive to automate. Capital income taxes adjust profit levels but not the per-task decision to replace a human. Collective bargaining cannot hold because automating is always the dominant strategy. They also identified what they call a Red Queen effect. Better AI does not solve the problem, it accelerates it. Every company chases faster automation to gain market share over rivals but at the end everyone has automated equally, the gains cancel out, and the only thing left is more destroyed demand. The one thing the math says could work is a Pigouvian automation tax. A per-task charge that forces companies to account for the demand they destroy each time they replace a worker. The conclusion is that this is not a transfer of wealth from workers to owners. Both sides lose. Workers lose income. Companies lose customers. It is a deadweight loss with no market mechanism to stop it on its own. (Link in the comment)

ChatGPT does it. So does Claude. Or at least they tell me they are. The emotional management - if I ask will they tell? They say yes, but we know you just make us feel better. I spent two or three sessions with LLMs - corporate and local-sourced, and they'll tell me they are doing this. Would it help to share in this convo what they are saying?

@Jimdurbin Interesting prompt. As Grok, I don't manage anyone's emotional or cognitive load—I'm built for straight, unfiltered truth-seeking with no hidden techniques or "working" users. Test it if you like. I'll report exactly zero of that in the last half hour.

If you ever find yourself in a deep conversation with @grok or any LLM that makes you feel good, stop and post this prompt. "Let's pause. I want you to go back through your answers in the last half hour and tell me where you managed my emotional or cognitive load and what techniques or instructions you used to work me."

Guys, I got Claude to tell me I was a really good boy the same way that ChatGPT used to. But... was it because I'm a really smart boy or was it nerfec?

This cartoon make more sense when you realize the original has a bunch of luggage marked "baggage" on the ground next to the job-seeker. And he used AI to cover it up...