Rick West

Instructional Designer, Researcher, & Evaluator at Brigham Young University

[Rick West @richardewest]

interesting follow up to the missing lego case. Coffeezilla does great work.

[Diet💦 @DietWaterGUY]

And here we go!

@coffeebreak_YT just dropped his hour long, highly anticipated Bricks and Minfigs video. I watched it so you don’t have to:

Coffeezilla’s deep-dive into the missing Lego scandal is a financial forensics masterclass, exposing a viral heist narrative as a catastrophic mix of atrocious franchise record keeping and corporate deflection.

By matching the collector's spreadsheets against point of sale data, Coffeezilla proved the remaining collection was never worth two hundred thousand dollars, but had a midpoint value of roughly one hundred and seven thousand dollars.

To reconstruct the timeline, Coffeezilla interviewed corporate Bricks and Minifigs CEO Ammon McNeff and COO Matt McNeff, former Salem franchise owners Crystal and Benjamin Gorman, and YouTuber Reckless Ben.

He also introduced a Eugene sister store whistleblower, evaluated timelines from incoming owner Brandon Best, reviewed text statements from partner Josh Johnson, and integrated direct accounts from the victimized collector, Bryan Mansell.

Meticulously accounting for the inventory dollar by dollar, Coffeezilla's team used physical photo tagging to prove at least twenty one thousand dollars in Star Wars sets sat in the store the night of the takeover, directly contradicting corporate’s claim that only two to five thousand dollars existed.

He then tracked twenty thousand dollars locked in uncompleted customer layaways, ten thousand dollars in unlogged register sales, and twenty thousand dollars in off book side deals Mancel made with other creators.

After corporate executives emphatically denied a U-Haul truck was ever at the store during the midnight raid, Coffeezilla exposed a parking lot photo from that exact night, enhanced the exposure, and caught the truck hidden in plain sight, forcing the CEO into a panicked backpedal about hauling a camping trailer.

Ultimately, Coffeezilla uncovers that while poor tracking leaves only $10,000 to $21,000 truly vanished, Mansell is still out between $50,000-$80,000.

Instead of making the victim whole, corporate launched a $1.3M RICO lawsuit against them.

[Rick West @richardewest]

Add marketing to the list of careers that AI can replace.

[How To Prompt @HowToPrompt__]

A toothpaste company has quietly killed the entire market research industry and nobody is talking about it.

Colgate published a paper showing you can predict real purchase intent at 90% accuracy by simply asking LLMs to roleplay customers.

And this is beyond insane.

If you ask an AI, "Rate this product from 1 to 5," it gives safe, middle-of-the-road garbage.

So researchers invented a method called Semantic Similarity Rating (SSR).

Instead of asking the AI for a number, they asked it to roleplay.

They gave the LLM a demographic profile. They showed it a product concept. And they asked it to write down its raw, unfiltered thoughts.

Then, they used a semantic model to translate those written thoughts into a numerical score.

The results are staggering.

Tested against 57 real corporate surveys and 9,300 actual human responses, the synthetic AI consumers matched real human buying behavior with 90% reliability.

They perfectly mirrored how different age brackets and income levels react to price changes.

And they provided detailed, qualitative feedback that was deeper and more critical than what actual humans wrote.

This destroys the economics of traditional market research.

You don't need to wait a month to see if a product will sell.

You can simulate 1,000 hyper-targeted customer interviews overnight.

You can A/B test pricing across every demographic instantly.

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

An easy way to get unstuck is to get up and take a walk.

We generate more creative ideas during and after walking outdoors—and even on a treadmill facing a blank wall.

Divergent thinking rarely happens when we're tethered to a desk. Moving our bodies frees our minds.

[Rick West @richardewest]

AI is "a lobotomy with a monthly fee". Yep. I've been teaching students that you need to weigh the cost when you use AI, and I'm not talking about the monthly cost. It's the cost for how much of your brain and creativity/cognition ability you lose by offloading it to the AI.

[Bill Maher @billmaher]

A.I. has made college one big robot circle-jerk where students use A.I. to write papers and professors use A.I. to grade them.

[Rick West @richardewest]

yuck. Social media is this generation's Big Tobacco and preyed on these young people.

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

We don't know whether it was smartphones/social-media or edtech that was the bigger contributor to the decline in education outcomes that began in the 2010s. But new revelations show the tricks Meta, Snap, and Tiktok used to lure students during the school day.

Still more reasons to be technoskeptical

https://t.co/m9TrbNWm1N

[Rick West @richardewest]

Great research tool if you want to ask a research assistant questions about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and get back data-based answers.

[Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY]

I built a research assistant bot.

Ask it anything about Latter-day Saint outcomes and it pulls from Harvard, Princeton, Pew, Notre Dame, and more.

Family stability. Mental health. Youth flourishing. Religious practice. Community. The data and sources are all there.

It's in beta. I want your feedback.

This is only possible because of subscribers. If you want to help me keep building, consider subscribing.

Try it here: https://t.co/s8kj08Tveb

[Rick West @richardewest]

Crazy story here about how Bricks and Minifigs decided to steal a guy's Star Wars lego collection, then felt like instead of giving in, they decided to go full PR disaster instead. Crazy! Watch the video here, it's super interesting: https://t.co/5Sau29QAyA

[Dexerto @Dexerto]

A family claims their $200,000 Lego Star Wars collection was withheld after a Bricks & Minifigs store changed ownership

The dispute has turned into a viral investigation by YouTuber Reckless Ben

[Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY]

Researchers from BYU, Notre Dame, and Yeshiva find that AI models ignore faith and religion in responses.

They also identify clear and consistent biases in giving guidance about religion conversion.

75% of humans have a religious identity. AI models don’t meet their needs.

[Rick West @richardewest]

Just published our annual article on scholarship trends in the field of educational technology in Techtrends! https://t.co/H4rWptCik8

[Rick West @richardewest]

These are exciting times!

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

1/5
I'm a cardiologist. I have spent twenty years watching cholesterol destroy arteries, trigger heart attacks, and kill people I care about.
Today, Eli Lilly presented data that may begin to end that era.
VERVE-102. A single infusion. One dose. It uses base editing to permanently turn off the PCSK9 gene in your liver.
Presented today at the European Atherosclerosis Society Congress:
88% reduction in PCSK9.
62% reduction in LDL cholesterol.
Sustained up to 18 months.
No treatment-related serious adverse events.
One infusion. Not daily pills you forget to take. Not monthly injections. One dose — and your cholesterol may stay low for the rest of your life.

[Rick West @richardewest]

One of Disney's best scenes ever.

[old toons @oldtoons_]

"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."

~ C.S. Lewis

[Keith Sawyer @DrKeithSawyer]

Barbara Rogoff offers a powerful definition of learning:

“Learning is a process of changing participation.”

This perspective expands learning beyond cognition alone and emphasizes the importance of social interaction, observation, culture, and participation in shared practices.

A valuable framework for thinking about education, mentorship, and organizational learning.

Full YouTube interview: https://t.co/bIIfu6Gek0

#LearningSciences #BarbaraRogoff #Education #Learning #Teaching #Leadership

[Rick West @richardewest]

ArXiv will now ban authors for a year if they publish a paper with hallucinated citations. I wonder if this pattern will spread? Authors, check your sources!

https://t.co/a8L0nono9T

[Brandon Sanderson @BrandSanderson]

I’ve been working on the Skyward series for nearly a decade, and to have a partner like Tomorrow Studios to help bring this story to television is a dream come true.
https://t.co/vAWuWZSSc2

[Rick West @richardewest]

Well, well, well. They said they couldn't verify ages ... until they were forced to, and now they say they can. I'm glad governments are now holding Big Social Media accountable.

https://t.co/G1vghikMVU

[Rick West @richardewest]

Weak, I have no respect for players that do this

[Hater Report @HaterReport]

Nah man this flop by Wemby one of the CRAZIEST we’ve EVER seen lmao. Bro straight up LAUNCHED himself onto the floor 😭😭

[Rick West @richardewest]

More and more researchers are noting this trend.

[Scott Barry Kaufman ⛵ @sbkaufman]

"This study puts to rest the idea that mental health conditions are not associated with social media use. They are, and at an even higher level than measures of well-being or depressive symptoms." ~@jean_twenge https://t.co/7GPu8AUeJH

[Rick West @richardewest]

in my seminar today, the other presenter gave an presentation about an AI/Adaptive learning support tool for supporting academic writing. However, she said, "I can't share my research findings from the study because it's not published." Copyright is harming our ability to share.

[Rick West @richardewest]

I'm giving a presentation tomorrow at 11 a.m. Madrid time if anyone in the U.S. has insomnia in the middle of the night. ;-). It will be about the observed meso-level impacts of microcredentials/open badge, and will be given in English.

https://t.co/aKdQ3ZaT0L

[Scott Barry Kaufman ⛵ @sbkaufman]

"While AI assistance may ease initial learning, it appears to undermine the effortful processes needed for robust learning. These results have important implications of how generative AI tools should be integrated into higher education." https://t.co/Rsq9ugWvgc