Of all the crazy things authors have ever written, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s idea that “there are no second acts in American lives” might be one of the most off the mark.
Honestly, just look on LinkedIn. I say this after reading about a new study in which economists tried to use LinkedIn to trace the history of the U.S. labor market over the past few years.
The problem they ran into is something I think most of us probably already realized: LinkedIn profiles aren’t a self-reported history of work experiences, so much as they’re a constantly revised “retcon,” redone over and over in many cases to present the best possible face to the world.
In “Time Travel on Professional Profiles” (great title, by the way), published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Nicholas Bloom and Gideon Moore of Stanford University and Lisa Simon and Caelan Wilkie-Rogers of Revelio Labs used a dataset of 29,448,462 LinkedIn profiles, and came up with a few key insights for our purposes:
First, they found that “19.7 percent of established U.S. LinkedIn users retroactively edit the title or description of a job they have already left.”
Next: “These ‘time-travel’ edits are closely tied to labor market transitions: around such edits, workers are much more likely to change employers as compared to later-editing users.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the specific changes suggest “workers’ beliefs about which skills are in demand. Retroactive edits show sharp post-2022 increases in AI-related language and recent reductions in work-from-home and DEI language.”
And “LLM-associated writing markers surge after ChatGPT, especially among less-educated groups and MBAs from lower-ranked programs.”
Let’s roll past the sick burn from Stanford professors talking about “lower-ranked MBAs” and instead get to the part of this newsletter where I come clean.
Because heck yes, I’ve gone back and edited and rewritten my LinkedIn profile.
Partly, it’s because the things I’m doing now—Life Story Magic, business consulting, and writing for places like Inc.com and of course Understandably—are very different from what I was doing when I first joined LinkedIn.
I don’t think that’s unfair, as long as it’s truthful. Honestly, I don’t even remember when I first joined LinkedIn.
Anyway, I acknowledge: When I first started thinking about this article, I assumed I’d be writing about LinkedIn changes as a cautionary tale.
Something like, “beware the too-on-the-nose job description from 2015,” or the profile suggesting that someone was thinking deeply about artificial intelligence during the Obama administration.
But as I think about this more, revisions might be more of a feature than a bug.
I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who famously wrote: “The only kind of writing is rewriting.”
(Yes, I’m enjoying myself quoting both Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the same newsletter.)
Revisions—again, truthful revisions—suggest to me attention to detail and an ability to communicate and change with the times.
In fact, maybe be more wary of people whose profiles look less like a time machine and more like a time capsule.
We all get second acts—and thirds, and fourths, and fifths ones, too.
At least, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Other things worth knowing …
Yahoo News via AFP: Israeli opposition leaders called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfit to serve after a bombshell report that the UAE had warned him before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Haaretz reported that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan spoke to Netanyahu a week and a half before the attack and told him that Hamas was planning a major operation.
Futurism: A journalist has accused Cleveland.com — the online home of The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper — of publishing an article under her byline without her consent, knowledge, or approval. The article was generated by the “Cleveland.com Express Desk,” which “uses AI tools to assist in producing content.” Reporter Kaitlin Durbin said she’d been away on her honeymoon when her employer published the AI article under her name.
CNN via MSN: Thieves took less than five minutes to steal four paintings from the Renoir Museum in southern France on Tuesday, abandoning two as they fled. The two missing paintings are “Madame Colonna Romano,” worth 2 million euros ($2.32 million), and “Jeune femme au puits,” valued at 200,000 euros ($232,000).
NYT: A little over a month before Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison, she invited a camera crew into her rented Southern California home: Nathan Fielder, the absurdist comedian behind “Nathan for You,” and documentary director Lance Oppenheim. That decision turned into a three-year odyssey and a three-hour documentary called “You Can See Everything” that may upend the documentary genre itself. It premieres theatrically via A24 on October 16.
WSJ: Southwest Airlines is jumping into the airport lounge competition. Four initial lounges are being built, with the first slated to open in late 2027.
NYT: Every time you drive your car is now a chance to get famous. Dash cams were made for safety — but they’ve inadvertently created a whole new entertainment genre.
AP: Pretty much everyone on stage at the Metropolitan Opera must audition — even the snake who will briefly take center stage in an upcoming adaptation of a Mozart classic. In charge of deciding who gets the starring reptilian role is Zoe Ziegfeld, a carnival performer-turned-opera actor cast as the snake handler in the Met’s version of “Così fan tutte,” inspired by Coney Island in the 1950s.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Bharathi Kannan on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments!
hmmm, it's all over the news, AXIOS reported it... Gallop poll showing satisfaction w/ K-12 has hit an all-time low. This could fit under the latest findings & my long-term knowledge of personality tests. Folks love the results of personality tests, & astrology & all that stuff. They say what you want to hear. You answer how you think you want to be. Even w/ Myers Briggs all the twists & turns that that personality test claims will weed out the 'answer the way you want to be' kind of stuff, it really doesn't. I could dig up the latest findings to back that up, but for now I'll get to the point of this education poll. Folks who cannot get out of the education system will be the most prone to say it's ok. They don't want to say anything like 'My child is suffering & I'll just let him/her suffer'. Or they don't answer the poll. When I had my business, way back in the dark ages, working w/ kids in day care centers, some of those centers I visited were, to be quite frank, atrocious. The parents had no choice. That was before stricter regulations were in place, & those parents, w/ no choice, rated those centers as great.
ok, saying all that, here's the link to the Gallop poll, showing an all time low, which could, based on my ramblings, be even lower. Thank you, Teachers' Unions everywhere, even w/ more & more $$$ poured in:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/714017/satisfaction-education-hits-new-low.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication
Oh, there are some places, Chicago?/& or other blue areas?, but maybe since they've been 'caught' they quit, where leaders of the TU, School Board & other higher ups sent their kids to private schools instead of public. ie: Stacy Davis Gates is the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, and she sends her kid(s) to a private Catholic School saying "her family believed a private school offered her son opportunities they couldn’t find nearby in Chicago Public Schools." But she doesn't believe in free choice for other parents.
TX has closed several failing schools. These schools were failing for years, but, hey, the Teacher's Union opposed the way schools were rated & tried hard for many years to not provide the information directly. Rankings were buried in lengthy PDF reports, the media didn't cover it at all, parents didn't know schools were rated. Then in 2019 things changed. The A–F system launched. More understandable for the general public. The state strengthened the “five‑years‑failing = closure/takeover” rule. This rule existed earlier, but enforcement tightened around 2017–2023, especially after a Houston ISD case (Wheatly HS had 7 consecutive failing yrs. Court battles, went to TX Supreme Court, became very public, which led to the state enforcing the five‑year failing rule — even if it means taking over the largest district in Texas.). Districts began warning parents: If this campus doesn’t improve, the state may close it. That was brand new to parents. They, & the public, because the media picked it up, now knew how many yrs each school had been failing, & what was required to show improvement.
As of Aug 2026 at least 150 campuses have closed or been approved for closure in the past three years, and a portion of those closures were directly tied to accountability failures rather than enrollment or financial issues. What the Teacher's Union wants: higher pay for high‑need campuses, more funding for tutoring, smaller class sizes, more counselors and intervention staff, updated materials and technology, competitive teacher pay to reduce turnover, no charter schools which have been approved. In other words: more money & do not take away their control.