Jim Erlinger

water polo, swimming and music fan; general counsel

[CyrilXBT @cyrilXBT]

A MIT professor gave a 1-hour lecture in 2019 that has 18 million views.

He died 5 months after recording it.

It was his final gift to the world.

Patrick Winston taught at MIT for 50 years.

The smartest engineers on earth sat in his classroom.

And he spent his last lecture teaching them the one skill their degrees never covered.

How to speak.

15 lessons that will change how you communicate forever:

Never open with a joke. Your audience is not ready to laugh yet. Open with a promise of what they will know by the end.

Your ideas are like your children. You are too close to them. What is obvious to you is invisible to everyone else. Explain the obvious.

The 5-minute rule: the first 5 minutes of any talk determine whether people will listen for the next 55. Spend more time on your opening than anything else.

Repeat your most important idea 3 times in 3 different ways. Once is never enough.

Build a fence around your idea. Tell people what it is NOT before you tell them what it IS.

Verbal punctuation. Pause. Let the idea land before moving to the next one.

Ask questions nobody will answer. Then wait 7 seconds. The silence is not awkward. It is processing.

Never read your slides. Your audience can read. They cannot listen and read simultaneously.

Use the board not the slides. Writing forces you to slow down. Slowing down forces clarity.

Inspire before you inform. Nobody learns from someone they are not inspired by.

End with a contribution not a summary. Tell them what you gave them. Not what you said.

Never say thank you at the end. It is weak. End with something that lands.

Stories make ideas stick. Data makes ideas understood. You need both. In that order.

The quality of your communication determines the quality of your ideas in the eyes of the world. Not the ideas themselves.

Practice is not preparation. Practice IS the skill.

Patrick Winston understood something most people spend their entire careers missing.

Your ideas are only as powerful as your ability to transfer them into someone else's mind.

You can be the smartest person in the room and be completely invisible.

Or you can master communication and make average ideas feel like breakthroughs.

He chose to spend his last lecture teaching this.

Watch it tonight.

Bookmark this first.

Follow @cyrilXBT for more lessons from the people who built the future.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@SenThomTillis Wouldn’t standard procedure include suspending the involved officers during the investigation?

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

Why is this so hard to understand?

[Hakan Bozdemir @bozdemirmd]

This tweet is a masterclass in survivorship bias.

Let's examine each claim:

"In the last decade, 13 died from tetanus in the US"

True. From 2013-2022, there were 267 cases and 13 deaths in the US (1). But here's what this number actually tells us: the vaccine is working. Before vaccination became routine in the 1940s, there were 500-600 cases per year (2). Since 1947, tetanus cases have declined by more than 95% and deaths by more than 99% (3).

You're pointing at a disease we've nearly eliminated and asking why we still prevent it. That's like looking at an empty fire station and asking why we need firefighters.

"The risk is 1 in 154 million"

This calculation commits a fundamental statistical error. You're calculating risk in a population where 94% of children are vaccinated (4). Then using that low number to argue against the very vaccination that created it.

Here's the reality check: among the 267 tetanus cases from 2013-2022, only 24% had received three or more doses of vaccine. The remaining 76% were either unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated (1). The case-fatality rate when you actually get tetanus? Still 13% (5). That's 1 in 8 people who get it will die. Not exactly a mild illness.

"It's a vaccine that can be taken at time of injury"

This fundamentally misunderstands immunology. Post-exposure prophylaxis with TIG (Tetanus Immune Globulin) provides temporary passive immunity. It doesn't train your immune system to respond on its own (6). It's a borrowed shield that wears off. Without prior vaccination, your body has no antibodies ready when Clostridium tetani starts producing its toxin.

And here's the critical point: 25% of tetanus cases have no identifiable wound (6). People don't always know they've been exposed. About 56% of people who developed tetanus after an injury had sought medical care but didn't receive proper prophylaxis (7). Waiting until injury is a losing strategy.

"Yet babies are given 5 shots"

Because that's how immunology works. The immune system needs repeated exposure to build strong, lasting memory. Three doses establish the primary series; boosters maintain protection. This is Immunology 101, not a conspiracy.

And crucially: tetanus is not transmissible person to person. The bacteria lives in soil, dust, and animal feces. It's everywhere. You cannot rely on herd immunity. Every individual needs their own protection (1).

The bottom line:

Tetanus hasn't disappeared. The bacteria is still in every handful of soil. What's disappeared is our memory of what this disease looked like when 500 Americans got it every year and a significant percentage died in agony from muscle spasms so severe they could fracture bones.

Low disease numbers in a vaccinated population are evidence the vaccine works, not evidence it's unnecessary.

REFERENCES

1. CDC. Chapter 16: Tetanus. Manual for the Surveillance of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases. October 2024. https://t.co/ImfVf3gDtD
2. CDC. Pink Book Chapter 21: Tetanus. September 2024. https://t.co/GC07oUOHs5
3. CDC. Tetanus Surveillance and Trends. June 2025. https://t.co/08XHevbMUv
4. Statista. Tetanus number of cases U.S. 1980-2022. https://t.co/T4nYP6QviH
5. CDC. Tetanus Surveillance — United States, 2001-2008. MMWR. https://t.co/yeh8mZwaSH
6. NCBI Bookshelf. Tetanus Prophylaxis. StatPearls. January 2023. https://t.co/wRSJjEhdzM
7. CDC. Missed Opportunities for Tetanus Postexposure Prophylaxis- California, 2008-2014. MMWR. https://t.co/XqNjceKfOr

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

ND take a lesson

[Trey Wallace @TreyWallace]

Clark Lea did not blame anyone besides themselves with CFP. Says they had chances at Alabama and Texas

“That’s no one’s fault except our own. We had our opportunities and we didn’t do enough. We are not victims in this process. Our ownership is in coming up short…” @chrislee70

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@scottew I don’t care for Vegas because I find folks scatter after dinner. In a place like San Antonio I find folks tend to end up in the same spots (and interact because they aren’t focused on the odds).

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@scottew Almost always. The only thing I do early.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@TheChiefNerd But that has nothing to do with extending credits for people with insurance.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@kristinekbrewer @AaronSiriSG Only because the people he’s hired have shown their incompetence and no one would hire them.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@NBSaphierMD Never once

[Chase Daniel @ChaseDaniel]

Mizzou is 25-5 in its last 30 games….let that sink in

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@benonwine Right. And there were also no gay kids, no kids with peanut allergies, no autistic kids, no need for integration because Negros preferred to be with their own kind, no discipline problems because kids were afraid of the paddle.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@scottew There were days it would have been tempting

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@elonmusk The fact that 5% of X posts are accurate does not make it a reliable news source.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@scottew 80% of success is showing up - Woody Allen

[Grok @grok]

Based on data from sources like Reuters, Washington Post, and Gun Violence Archive, transgender people are not disproportionately involved in mass shootings. Out of over 5,000 mass shootings since 2013, only a handful (around 5-6) involved transgender perpetrators, representing ~0.1% of cases, while they make up ~0.5-1% of the US population. The vast majority are cisgender men.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@AuntKim328 That was a given

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

Who do you pick for your anchor, Kyle Chalmers or Nathan Adrian?

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@kylesockwell Katie doesn’t look to her left. Tori overswims her first 50. Team isn’t in synch, likely due to the ripple effect of the illness.

[Jim Erlinger @JimErlinger]

@kylesockwell Generally, tap water in Thailand is not considered safe to drink for tourists. Why training camp there? Singapore, Korea, Japan all better choices.

[Metalworks Golf @MWPutters]

My findings after 2 years of retirement:

1. Daily bathing is optional
2. Every day is Saturday
3. 4 rotating outfits that stay in your laundry room are all you need.
4. You roam nonchalantly through grocery stores
5. All of the corporate speak slowly disappears
6. Your soul will begin to self repair after decades of becoming hardened by business travel, spreadsheets & morning huddles on Zoom
7. Thousands of dollars in business attire will disappear from your closet
8. You’ll no longer give two shits about watches
9. You’ll find that everything you need is generally within 5 square miles and become very reluctant to go beyond that bubble
10. You’ll talk to strangers about gas prices & which butcher has the best meats
11. Noon naps are glorious
12. You no longer exist on societal schedules
13. You’ll forget about 80% of the people you worked with for 30+ years
14. You’ll forget all of your keyboard shortcuts and some of the home row