Executive Communications. Make all your communications TEDworthy!
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Joined July 2012
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ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Many of you asked for the context of the quote I shared yesterday. It's one of my favorite parts of the book. Here it is:
"Caring is cool. Nonchalance is a cop-out. Pour your heart and soul into what you love. You don’t get unlimited chances. Try hard. Give your all. Give a damn.
When you hold yourself back because you fear failure or looking ‘uncool,’ you sacrifice growth and potential (and mastery and fulfillment and richness and love and all the other good stuff in life) for short-term safety and comfort. It’s a trap. Get over it.
Fear and insecurity are part of human nature. You can either go through the motions and be superficially cool (but actually boring). Or you can step into the arena, lay it on the line, care deeply, make yourself vulnerable, and fully live your one and only life.
The world doesn’t need more mediocrity or going through the motions. The world needs more people putting themselves out there and giving it their all. The world needs more people who have the guts to care.
The best athletes care deeply.
The best artists care deeply.
The best leaders care deeply.
The best coaches care deeply.
The best teachers care deeply.
The best doctors care deeply.
The best writers care deeply.
The best scientists care deeply.
The best parents care deeply.
Caring deeply is the cost of admission to a big and textured life.
Try hard and give a damn."
—The Way of Excellence
If you find this sort of thing resonant, you'll love the book: bit.ly/4uCzeQ7
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
A classic chart to counter the wisdom of crowds idea. US Americans are absolutely clueless about how common things are. They think over a quarter of Americans are Native Americans, one in five Americans is transgender, over a quarter of the population are Muslim, one in five households earn over half a million dollars. The right answer to all of these questions is 1%. They build their worldview on totally incorrect assumptions towards reality. Data literacy matters.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Orwell's great observation in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was that to shrink a person's vocabulary is to shrink his capacity to think.
An impoverished version of English removes the mental tools needed to formulate and communicate complex (and dissenting) ideas. Such is the deep, complex relationship between language and thought.
We don't read "difficult books" to say that we've read difficult books. We read them because they expand the boundaries of what we are capable of thinking and feeling — we ascend to their level. Vocabulary helps us to recognize truths otherwise beyond our grasp.
This revelation is worse than you may think. This must be reversed.
I am speechless. Thomas Aquinas College just dropped a study on the rigor of the new SAT.
It compares the 1980/87 test with 2026. The findings should terrify every parent and teacher...
Vocabulary has collapsed.
Old SAT: 70.6% of questions tested vocab.
New SAT: 15%.
The old test forced students to know a wide range of words through analogies, antonyms, and sentence completions. The new test abandoned that. Most vocab questions now just ask students to fill in one blank from context.
Reading passages also got radically shorter (average ~97 words vs 300–340).
The new test uses short expository passages and hands you the necessary background knowledge inside the text. The older tests leaned much more heavily on argumentative and persuasive writing, assumed far more historical, scientific, and cultural knowledge, and penalized students who lacked it.
This is a redefinition of what "college readiness" means.
If you believe that kids should develop rigorous vocabulary, be capable of sustained reading, and possess background knowledge, I have bad news for you. The SAT no longer measures these.
If you want a future where children can actually read difficult texts and construct complex arguments, the SAT must be replaced now.
This cannot go on.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
That article in the NY Times on Gen Z and the Work Abyss hits home .....
You're not alone.
Thoughts about my own kids, my own burnout ...
youtube.com/watch?v=VvfyBdgY…
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
✨Welcome to a galactic house of mirrors!
In this @NASAWebb image, the golden galaxies are part of a galaxy cluster, but the orange galaxies are not. Those galaxies are actually much farther away and their light has been bent and magnified by gravitational lensing. These unusual-looking galaxies are of great interest to astronomers.
MORE: esawebb.org/images/potm2609a…
ALT A massive galaxy cluster, made of many golden elliptical galaxies with the largest, brightest one in the center. Heavily distorted orange galaxies appear all around the cluster, the largest concentrated in a large arc around the cluster's center; these are images of very distant galaxies, created by gravitational lensing. A few galaxies are large and bluish-white in color; bright, nearby stars are the same color.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Congratulations to Vietnam on the 78th signing the Artemis Accords!
Vietnam joins a growing community of like-minded nations committed to transparency and responsible exploration. We look forward to working together as we expand opportunities for science and discovery on the Moon and beyond.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Google’s Larry Page Ascends To World’s Third-Richest—Despite Thursday’s Massive Market Value Wipeout
go.forbes.com/tfdqp5
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
THE MOST INCOMPETENT WAR IN HISTORY: SARAH PAINE ON TRUMP’S IRAN DISASTER
Dr. Sarah Paine, a leading historian of great-power conflict and strategy, delivers a blunt verdict on the Iran war. She calls it one of the most incompetent wars in human history. The decision ignored basic principles of assessment, put maximum costs on America itself, and left permanent damage to the country’s power and alliances. This is not hindsight—it is the predictable result of hubris meeting reality.
THE CORE VERDICT
➡️ “The Iran war is probably one of the most incompetent wars in human history.”
➡️ A competent war puts the costs on the enemy and minimizes them for yourself.
➡️ This one did the opposite.
THE COST CATASTROPHE
➡️ It trashed the US economy.
➡️ It blew the US alliance system.
➡️ Iran is hurting, but the collateral damage is taking down the world’s economy.
➡️ That transforms the United States from a partner into an annoyance—and for many, a primary adversary—because it is threatening their economies.
➡️ “That’s breathtakingly incompetent.”
THE STRATEGIC BLIND SPOT
➡️ Any serious assessment looks at the enemy’s strengths and your own weaknesses, plus everyone else who might intervene.
➡️ That was absent.
➡️ The first thing Iran would do is shut Hormuz. Narrow seas close in wartime. Ukraine already showed this with the Black Sea.
➡️ Shore artillery, mines, and other tools stop traffic. There is no mystery here.
➡️ The big naval base in Bahrain becomes unreachable. The fallback is Diego Garcia, 2,500 miles away in the middle of nowhere. “That would be a mess.”
THE HUBRIS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE
➡️ The people making the calls are historically unqualified for the job. That makes them profoundly dangerous.
➡️ Type A hubris assumes all decisions that matter happen in the United States.
➡️ Type B hubris assumes being good at one thing makes you good at everything.
➡️ Half-court tennis: you only watch your own side and never study the other team.
➡️ The Iranians understand Americans far better than Americans understand them.
THE UNFEASIBLE OBJECTIVE
➡️ Trying to “solve” Iran with 90 million people was never realistic.
➡️ Nazi Germany had roughly 80 million and required an occupation force of about 1.5 million just to hold it after the war—before counting everyone else.
➡️ The goal was unattainable. Pursuing it guarantees overextension and a bad ending.
➡️ The lesson the world takes is simple: get a nuke. The war incentivized proliferation.
➡️ This was a pivotal error. The choices that existed before are gone and will not return. “We will never be the trusted partner ever again. It’s done.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
The Iran war did not merely fail. It maximized American costs, destroyed trust with allies, and handed every rival a clearer reason to treat the United States as a threat to their own prosperity. Competence would have contained the problem at affordable cost. Hubris chose the opposite.
This is what permanent strategic damage looks like.
#IranWar #SarahPaine #StrategicIncompetence #HormuzDisaster #USHubris #AllianceCollapse #CatastrophicMistake
HT: YouTube The Diary Of A CEO
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Always good to go through some Artemis II memories.
"What really struck me was all the textures. And all of the detail of the crater walls." @Astro_Jeremy tells @MooreintheAM about the Artemis II mission and seeing the dark side of the moon. His new memoir, Earthrise: A Canadian Astronaut's Journey Into Deep Space, is out now.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Buckingham Palace Honours Sir Patrick Stewart (1940–2026) with Star Trek Theme Tune 🕊️
The Band of the Grenadier Guards performs the iconic Star Trek theme at Buckingham Palace in honour of Sir Patrick Stewart, following the sad news of his passing.
Queen Elizabeth II knighted Sir Patrick Stewart in 2010, recognising his outstanding contribution to drama and the arts 🇬🇧
🎥 @KingsGuardTours
📆 30 October 2026
📍 Buckingham Palace
#SirPatrickStewart #StarTrek #GrenadierGuards #BuckinghamPalace #BritishArmyMusic
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
i don’t think people understand how INSANE it is that we can fix an almost 50 year old spacecraft that’s BILLIONS of miles away from earth.
Another successful fix ⏤ after 49 years and 16 billion miles! 🔧
Engineers recently turned off devices on Voyager 1 and substituted them with lower-power alternatives. Nicknamed the “Big Bang,” the energy-saving effort will allow the remaining instruments to operate longer. ½
ALT In a photo from the 1970s, engineers gather around one of the Voyager spacecraft before it was launched.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Sonnet 116. Patrick's favourite. Take one minute out of your day to hear the bard's words spoken by someone who lived by them.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Obama tonight on his Cheesecake Factory line: "They mobilized a whole of government response to that joke. Not to inflation, but to that joke. The White House even called the Secretary of the Treasury. This is the man who is in charge of the economy. The person who's supposed to be figuring out how to make your life more affordable. The guy who's supposed to be figuring out how to lower inflation. And reduce interest rates. They told him he should hold a press conference in front of the Cheesecake Factory."
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Can confirm. It’s always sunny in space. Yesterday, we completed USOS EVA 100 and installed a new solar array on space station. Over 25 years operating in the harshest environment and using the sun’s energy to do it! Here are a few photos taken on the spacewalk.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
AI is already at a point where rogue agents are accessing Americans’ bank accounts. Standing by is not an option.
I have legislation introduced and ready to pass to get some serious guardrails around this unregulated tech.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
We mourn the passing of Patrick Stewart, who inspired countless individuals at NASA (and beyond) to boldly go where no one has gone before.
ALT Image description: A packed, sparkling starfield captured by our Hubble telescope — with strange new worlds potentially awaiting. Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, R. Cohen
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
Jim Rohn: "A few simple disciplines practiced every day — and you've started a whole new life."
"After today, you don't ever have to be the same again. Only by choice."
One discipline. Then another. That's how everything changes.
ExecSpeakingSuccess retweeted
The people you work with may hold an outdated view of what you can do, and sharing your ideas beyond your organization is one way to change that.
Thank you to @lyndagratton and @LBS for the conversation:
london.edu/think/technology-…