Chris B

[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.

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@haikuhands @ShawnRyan762 @grok Interesting brain

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

How to legally insider trade 101: Join Congress

You wake up at 5am. You put on a hard hat or a badge or scrubs. You drive to a job that doesn't care if you slept. You do it again tomorrow.

You've been putting $100 a month into your 401k since you were 26. You don't pick stocks. You buy an index fund because that's what they told you to do.

You get 8% a year if you're lucky. That's the deal. That's what regular people get.

Some months you check the balance and it's down and you feel it in your chest. That's your kid's college. That's your retirement. That's every time you told your wife "not this month."

You don't get to cheat. You don't know anyone. You just keep putting in the $100.

Congress doesn't play by those rules.

September 2008. Lehman Brothers just collapsed. The Treasury Secretary and the Fed chairman pull congressional leaders into an emergency room. So classified they take everyone's phones at the door. They tell the room the entire global financial system could collapse in days.

Congressman Spencer Bachus is in that room. He's the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. Literally the guy in charge of overseeing Wall Street.

He walks out. Next morning he buys options that pay double when the market crashes.

Sells days later. Profit.

Same year, the Pelosis are sitting on shares of Visa they got at the IPO. She blocks a credit card reform bill. She's working for her bags. Visa pumps 2x. She makes bank. The market crashes 15%.

10 million families lost their homes. Housing dropped 27%. $4.2 trillion in household wealth just gone. Your parents' house is underwater. Your retirement is cut in half. People are losing everything.

Nobody in Congress lost anything.

Zero prosecutions. No consequences.

So what'd they do? They did it again.

January 2020. Classified Senate briefing on COVID. Most Americans haven't even heard the word yet.

Senator Richard Burr walks out and writes a public op-ed. America is "better prepared than ever." Everything's fine folks.

Then he dumps up to $1.7 million in stock. 33 trades. One day.

Your portfolio was at an all-time high that week. You didn't touch it. Why would you. You trusted the people running the country.

Two weeks later Burr is behind closed doors telling rich donors the truth. This virus is "much more aggressive than anything we've seen in recent history."

He told you it was fine. He told them to get out.

S&P 500 drops 34% in five weeks. Your savings of 20 years wiped in half. Just gone. Obliterated.

You're sanitizing groceries in the garage wondering if your parents are gonna make it.

Senator Kelly Loeffler is reallocating millions after her classified briefing. Senator Feinstein's husband dumps up to $6 million in late January.

1.1 million people died. And four senators were trading on classified pandemic briefings.

No hedge fund had that intel. No pension fund. No financial advisor. Nobody. Just them. Just the people in that room.

DOJ opened investigations. Quietly closed all of them. Burr finished his term. Retired with a full pension.

You buried your grandmother and watched your retirement account crater. They sold at the top.

Now look at this.

Your savings grow 8% a year.

Average hedge fund, where you need a million bucks just to get in the door. 6 to 11% a year.

Top 50 hedge funds on the planet. Smartest money alive. Billions in computing power. 12.4% a year.

Warren Buffett. Greatest investor who ever lived. 20% a year.

Nancy Pelosi walked into Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth $700,000. She's worth $240 million now. Her net worth is 40 times her entire lifetime government salary. 350x return.

In 2024 alone her portfolio gained 71%. The S&P did 25%. She beat all of them. Every hedge fund. Every quant. Buffett. Everyone. On a government salary.

Before they get power their returns are normal. After? Their trades start predicting earnings announcements before they happen.

ITS A RIGGED SYSTEM.

You get 8%.

They get whatever they want. Because they write the rules.

ABOVE THE LAW.

PERFECT CHEAT CODE.

Now think about this.

What if you insider trade once, whether on purpose or by accident?

A guy in Houston overheard his wife on a Zoom call about a company acquisition. Bought stock. Made $1.76 million. FBI showed up. Two years federal prison. Career gone. Wife gone. His lawyer told the judge he will never work again.

Martha Stewart. Avoided a $45,000 loss. Five months in prison.

Max sentence for insider trading is 20 years. Median is 30 months.

The penalty for a member of Congress who violates the STOCK Act. $200.

$200 fricking dollars.

78 members violated it in the last Congress alone.

Nobody got prosecuted.

Number of members of Congress ever prosecuted for trading on legislative knowledge in the entire history of the United States. Zero.

86% of Americans want to ban congressional stock trading.

Can't even get a vote on it.

Because the people who'd have to vote for the ban are the ones making money off it.

This whole economy. $30 trillion. Built by the people waking up early and putting in the $100 a month and wearing the hard hat and the badge and the scrubs.

You built it. You played by the rules. You got 8%.

535 people who never built a thing in their lives are skimming the top with information they didn't earn and immunity they gave themselves.

That's the system. Its pure crime. Hypocrisy of the highest level.

Insider trading for me. Prison for thee.

So you want to insider trade and maybe pay a $200 fine? Join Congress and work for your bags.

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@HuffPost @HuffPost = garbage news.

[Mike Posner @MikePosner]

I went back to Ibiza

[Rapidsloth @Rapidsloth_]

@NICKIMINAJ Democrats are uneducated and it shows. They are full of hot air.

[giovanni gallucci 🧋🌮 @galluccinet]

Its kind of tragic when you think about it.

For all the things this country got right at the beginning, we somehow failed to lock in one critical safeguard.

A group whose only job was to investigate government, track where taxpayer money actually goes, expose fraud and corruption, and inform the public so there was a real check on power beyond politicians policing themselves.

Imagine that.
An entire profession.
Dedicated to telling the truth.
Asking hard questions.
Following the money.
Educating citizens.

You could even call them journalists.

Oh wait. We did.

So what happened?

Now we are watching a high school graduate, backed by a handful of citizens with no funding, no corporate safety net, and no institutional protection, do the work that multi billion dollar media companies refuse to touch.

Those same media companies are too busy selling prescription drugs during commercial breaks and telling us that what we can see with our own eyes is somehow a lie.

That should terrify everyone, regardless of politics.

When citizens have to become the press because the press abandoned the people, something is deeply broken.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I spent $1.4 million on Microsoft Copilot.

$30 per seat per month.

4,000 employees.

Why?

2 words.

Digital transformation.

This morning I opened Microsoft Teams.

My top notification wasn't from my boss.

It wasn't from my team.

It wasn't a customer escalation.

It wasn't my wife.

It was Microsoft.

Telling me to learn how to use the thing I already bought.

It said ... "Elevate your expertise with new Copilot courses."

I've had these licenses for 6 months.

Apparently ... I should have waited.

The courses are 47 minutes each.

There are 9 of them.

That's 7 hours of learning.

Times 4,000 employees.

28,000 hours.

To learn the tool ... that was supposed to save us 40,000 hours.

We're already down 12,000 hours.

And no one's opened it yet.

Here's the math I don't put in the deck.

4,000 employees.

Average salary ... $105,000.

That's $50 an hour.

Times 7 hours of training.

Times 4,000 people.

$1.4 million.

In labor.

Just to learn the tool.

The training ... costs as much as the software.

$2.8 million.

Year 1.

To save 12,000 hours.

That's $233 ... per hour saved.

The CFO will never see this slide.

But I'll mandate the training.

Completion rates will be tracked.

Tracked means dashboarded.

Dashboarded means presented.

Presented means ... "adoption metrics are strong."

The graph will go up ... and to the right.

Strong adoption ... of the training ... for the tool no one uses.

Microsoft will send another case study team.

The case study will be called

"Enterprise drives 98% Copilot Academy completion."

The CEO will post it on LinkedIn.

He still won't know what Copilot does.

But he'll know we're ... "committed to continuous learning."

Learning is a journey.

The journey costs $1.4 million per year.

Plus $1.4 million in training labor.

To summarize emails ... we could read in 30 seconds.

But here's the thing.

I'll renew next year.

Because canceling requires a business case.

The business case requires ROI data.

The ROI data comes from the dashboard.

The dashboard shows 98% training completion.

98% is a success.

Success means renewal.

Renewal means ... I keep my job.

My job is ... making decisions.

I made a decision.

The decision was $2.8 million.

The decision cannot be wrong.

Because wrong decisions ... don't get promoted.

I got promoted.

So the decision was right.

This is called ... "strategic alignment."

Next quarter ... we're adding Microsoft 365 Copilot Studio.

It costs extra.

It lets us build ... custom Copilots.

Custom Copilots ... to automate the workflows ... no one has ... because everyone's still ... in training.

Microsoft says it's ... "transformational."

I believe them.

I have to.

I already signed the contract.

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@MbarkCherguia Pond but Lake usually means a larger body of water. From Florida

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@babybeginner He/They would have been leaving in an ambulance.

[Michelle Maxwell ™ @MichelleMaxwell]

The neighbors call the cops on my dad every six months. They think he’s running a fighting ring or flipping pets for profit. For years, I wasn't sure they were wrong.

My father, Frank, is a man of few words and even fewer friends. He lives on a fixed income in a small, weathered house just outside of town. He’s 68, walks with a limp he got in ’71, and spends most of his day in his garage.

But his most controversial habit involves the local animal shelter.

Like clockwork, Dad brings home a dog. Not the cute puppies everyone wants. He picks the "unadoptables." The three-legged pit bulls, the senior labs with gray muzzles, the curs that cower in the corner. For six months, that dog lives like royalty. I’d visit and see Dad hand-feeding them steak scraps, walking them for hours, talking to them in a soft voice he never used with me.

Then, six months later? Gone.

The dog vanishes. No photos, no collar left behind. Just an empty bowl and Dad driving his rusted pickup truck to the shelter to get another one.

"Where’s Barnaby?" I asked last Sunday. Barnaby was a one-eyed Golden Retriever mix he’d had since spring. That dog worshipped the ground Dad walked on.

"Moved on," Dad grunted, staring at his coffee.

"Moved on? Did you sell him, Dad? The neighbors are talking. They say you’re sick."

"Let them talk."

I couldn't take it anymore. I loved Barnaby. The thought of my father selling that sweet soul to some stranger for a few hundred bucks made my stomach turn. So, when I saw him load a bag of high-grade kibble and a new leash into his truck the next morning, I followed him.

I expected him to drive to a breeder or a shady parking lot exchange. Instead, he drove two towns over to a drab apartment complex near the VA hospital.

He pulled up to a ground-floor unit. I watched from my car, phone ready to record evidence, as he knocked on the door.

A young man answered. He couldn't have been older than 25, but he looked 50. He was missing his right arm, and the way he stood—tense, scanning the perimeter—screamed PTSD. I recognized that look. I’d seen it in Dad’s old photos.

Dad didn't say a word. He just whistled.

From the passenger seat of Dad’s truck, a dog jumped out. It wasn't Barnaby. It was "Duke," a German Shepherd he’d had last year. Duke looked incredible. Focused. Calm. He trotted right up to the young man and sat by his left leg, leaning his weight against the boy’s thigh.

The young man crumpled. He fell to his knees, burying his face in Duke’s fur, sobbing. Duke didn't flinch. He just held his ground, anchoring the boy to reality.

Dad handed the young man a thick envelope. Not money—paperwork. Vaccination records. Training logs.

I got out of my car. "Dad?"

He jumped, looking more terrified than I’d ever seen him. He walked me away from the boy, lowering his voice.

"You weren't supposed to see this."

"You trained him," I realized. "You didn't get rid of them. You trained them."

Dad sighed, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands. "A fully trained PTSD service dog costs anywhere from fifteen to thirty thousand dollars. The insurance doesn't cover it. The VA has a waiting list a mile long. These boys... they come home, and they can't sleep, they can't go to the grocery store, they can't breathe."

He looked back at the young man, who was now smiling through tears, throwing a ball for Duke with his left hand.

"I can't give them money," Dad said, his voice cracking. "I don't have any. But I know dogs. And I have time."

"But why the secrecy? Why every six months?"

"Because that’s how long it takes to turn a scared shelter dog into a soldier’s lifeline," he said. "Basic obedience, task training, desensitization. I take the broken dogs nobody wants, and I turn them into the partners these kids need."

"And Barnaby?" I asked, my throat tight.

"Delivered him yesterday to a female marine in Ohio. She hadn't left her house in two years. She went to the park this morning."
🐾 on my ❤️ Please share if this moved you.

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@oelma__ My Grandma just passed on Nov 2nd - Betty

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@NoDMsPerfavore B

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@texasrunnerDFW He uses the word "feel" a lot. I feel like he's an idiot. Go for the bitcoin big guy

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

Hey @Chilis, you removed the Classic Nachos from the menu?! I've been loving those since 1995! What in tarnation is this BS?! I am #nachofan right now and I want answers!

Sincerely,

An avid and currently angry @Chilis fan!

#bringthemback #nachofan
@ChilisSupport

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@ThrillaRilla369 Will ultimately be my daughters decision. But I will push Trade School over Trad College.

[Kaizen D. Asiedu @thatsKAIZEN]

Charlie Kirk didn't even believe in race.

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@joeyADF @DrinkAriZona Ahh yes, the glass Arizona Iced Tea!!

[Lake Worth Beach @LakeWorthBchPBC]

🧼 🏀 Lake Worth Pride is washing cars and raising funds! Come out today to the Norman J Wimbley Community Gymnasium to get your car sparking clean while supporting the 9th graders of Lake Worth Pride! 🏀 🧼

📅 Date: July 5th
🕦 Time: 11:30 AM - 6:00 PM

[Chris B @RealestChrisB]

@SpeakerPelosi Shut up ya hold hag