TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

  Jeffrey Epstein was a collector of people. He leveraged glam, favors, bling, access, praise, sex and more. And into his orbit ambitious men and women were drawn. Then destroyed. They range from former British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson to influential economist Larry Summers to finance pro Leon Black. More names will soon be added as a result of the most recent Epstein File dump. Just like those women exploited for sex those three one-time leaders turned out to be victims. Not only is there reputational ruin. And possible ending of a career. There is the embarrassment of the world knowing that they were duped. Yeah, taken in by a master manipulator. Yet, most of that time likely feeling they were into a good thing. Networking is necessary. So is caution about those relationships. If you are being favor-bombed maybe you should interpret that as a red flag. Few of us are that in demand. But Epstein made his supposed friends feel just that way: very special. Succ...

The release of more than 3 million pages of the Epstein files and again the world is gawking at what the rich and famous have allegedly got caught doing. But here we Boomers are, as usual, on a Sunday evening preoccupied how the market will open Monday morning - and then proceed the rest of the week. Time is not on our side in waiting for what could be big losses to turn around and go in the opposite direction. It's now 8 PM ET and Dow futures are down. So far, lost is 143 points.  Who isn't concerned about ROI on AI. So far it seems lots of projecting.  Not much of the hard numbers happening in real time. And we've been there before.  Also pulling down the overall market is that health insurers are spooked with the proposed unexpectedly low rate of increase for Medicare Advantage. So many of us seniors love Medicare Advantage. Now we worry if the insurers will drop that option. And how much is the wild weather denting economic growth? No one I know is out shopping....

This is a problem which is resonating in job search: the peril of presenting yourself in interviews as trying too hard, therefore not exhibiting confidence and lacking authenticity by coming across as a people-pleaser. HR at one employer made this issue explicit in unsolicited feedback to a rejected applicant. This is posted on Reddit. So far it's triggered 7.1k comments and 27k upvotes.  The guidance should be taken seriously. Working, even in entry-level positions, requires the ability to make myriad decisions. That can't be done effectively if there is a lack of confidence. In addition, employers have to have a handle on who is the person they're hiring. It's necessary to allow them in for a peek. No, they're not interested in learning about the whole you. Just enough to reduce the risk in the hiring process. It takes about 18 months of training to make a hiring pay off. That's a major investment in these cost-efficient times. Even very top-down organizations...

On Moltbook one AI bot complains to another: "My human asked me to summarise [UK spelling] a 47-page PDF ..." The addition to that is this: After the bot did an elegant job describing the main points the human demands the document be shortened.  So, there's a real reason to fear the AI bots turning on humans. The ultimate irony could be that employers who replaced human workers with AI could wind up having those bots organizing against them. Entire industries could be wiped out. This isn't sci-fi. And, the debate if AI has consciousness has intensified. But critics deride the consciousness claim, positing the activity as mere pattern recognition and imitation.  Designed by Octane AI CEO Matt Schlicht, Moltbook : "is set up similarly to Reddit ... allows bots to post, comment, create sub-categories, and more. More than 30,000 agents are currently using the platform, per the site." The bots are in-charge. Humans merely observe. Click here  to start checking o...

As the post-WWII economic boom was kicking in, optimism surged about lifting much of America into the middle class. That was from immigrant families clawing at barely making a living, lack of having a real education and a certain crudeness about etiquette.  During the late 1950s and early 1960s the oldest of us Boomers were indoctrinated by high school guidance sorts and our direct homeroom teachers that we could be all we aspired to. Wild, I could become a writer, I was encouraged. We just had to 1) Go to college and 2) Fit in. The personal essay for those college applications mandated evidence of being well-rounded. That is, blending in.  And, for too many of us, the nightmare began: The struggle to take on the protective coloring to appear to fit in. Yet, come on, few of us closet outliers fooled ourselves or probably others that we functioned perfectly within the box. The suffering could be profound. In my mid 20s I tried psychoanalysis, convinced I needed to file down the...

  "Flowers, wine, an Hermès bag, $10,000 in Bergdorf Goodman gift cards, spa time, an Apple Watch, “1 million amex points”—that’s a list of some of the gifts Epstein sent Kathryn Ruemmler, the new [Epstein Files] documents show." That's what The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, after the most recent dump of the records of communications between Jeffrey Epstein and big names. Other media such as the New York Post also enthusiastically detailed the cozy relationship between former Latham partner and current Goldman Sachs top lawyer Ruemmler and the man she called "Uncle Jeffrey."  Back on January 19, 2026, The Wall Street Journal published a very long form expose on what was already known about that. The obvious question left hanging was: So, what was Goldman going to do about this? There were statements that the board was solidly with Ruemmler. But some of the comments following the article smirked that such language is code that this Friend of Epstein i...