The antisemite of the week is… 🥁

Mark Ruffalo!

He spoke out against Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion plan to buy Warner Bros. Discovery which led to pro-Israel influencers putting his head on a Piker.

wrote, “[Ruffalo’s criticism] never had to say ‘Jewish.’ The framing of the argument, targeting a Jewish family connection to Israel, said it for him.”

Noah Tishby wrote, “This week, Mark went after David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison over the Paramount—Warner Bros. merger, and in doing so engaged in age-old antisemitic tropes.”

Those are two of the more reasonable Israel stans too. (Don’t get me started on the NY Post’s insatiable headline hatemongering.)

Typical caveat here: I’m a Zionist Jew and my dad is from Israel blah blah blah.

That said: Just because I think Ruffalo is a BDS ridicuwoke, please don’t make me carry water for creepy oligarchs who aim to serve as lube for an authoritarian regime here in the USA. Anyone paying attention to the Ellisons has to be at least a tiny bit suspicious about their motivations. That’s not being antisemitic, that’s being aware.

Also: Sigh.

Increasingly, the whole pro-Israel vs. pro-Pali debate is making me realize the thing I detest most is propaganda, regardless of which side it’s advocating. I don’t need an incessant stream of tribalist hokum that tells me my side is right while incessantly dunking on the enemy. Gimme the truth, goddamnit. I’m a grownup, I can handle it. (Et tu?) I crave the nuance of reality as opposed to the simplicity of lazy binaries. Sadly, this is putting me on a very lonely island lately.

When you’re a pro-Israel hammer, everything looks like an antisemitic nail. Ruffalo may be a loon when it comes to Israel (i.e. never any admission of complexity and, in comparison to Gaza, it’s odd how little genocides in China/Myanmar matter to him), but there are plenty of good reasons to oppose this merger and the Ellisons (see: that FCC goon, 60 Minutes, Colbert, Kimmel, etc.).

I wrote about the Ellisons’ agenda here:

The Guardian gives background: “[Larry] Ellison is also close to Netanyahu and has donated heavily to the Israeli military through the non-profit Friends of the IDF. He gave the organisation its biggest-ever donation at the time.” Ellison was also a witness in Bibi’s graft trial, hosted Bibi on a vacation at his island, and, according to The Financial Times, was drawn to put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News because of her “pro-Israel stance.”

And then there’s the whole Trump connection. Larry Ellison has a decade-long history with the Republican party and a close relationship with Trump going back to the president’s first term. Ellison has frequented Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for dinners and met him in the Oval Office…Trump said, “[Ellison’s] an amazing man and an amazing business person.” As for the son, I’m gonna take a wild guess that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree – the one bankrolling his whole life.

I don’t hate the idea of this merger because I’m antisemitic, I hate it because I love America. And democracy. And freedom of speech. And not being ruled by a corrupt, delulu, narcissist con man who wants to use a secret ballroom bunker as his catering truck while the rest of America flies on the decoy plane.

I’m just so tired of dumb binary thinking. I believe both Mark Ruffalo and Larry Ellison are schmucks. Extremely online tribalists may not be capable of handling this level of nuance, but I swear it’s not that hard.

🔌 No AI. Independent thinking. Sanity + Comedy. Isn’t this a good time? Help support by going paid. You’ll get bonus stuff too. I appreciate you.

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Gems

💎 NY Times: “Why is everybody under the age of 30 these days dressed like an actual lunatic?”

💎 Pretty sure half of these “rushtok” vids are just GAP ads from the 90’s.

💎 At this rate, I'm honestly kinda surprised he didn't sell off the naming rights and call it Lake Polymarket, Lake Skyrizi, or Lake Smoothie King.

💎 Been tearing up at Dolly clips all week. Got me thinking: Can we make Dolly day an annual thing? Been the perfect timeline cleanse. She was so talented, silly, bold, and unique. And constantly giving back too. Truly refreshing to see someone who just acted like Christ instead of constantly prattling on about him.

💎 An “I’m freezing my eggs” announcement is like watching someone apply for a job. Congrats and all that, but let’s see if it works out.

💎 I hate it when finance people are so evil that they force me to learn about finance. Fine, I’ll finally learn what private equity actually means.

💎 The WNBA commissioner must be so disappointed that all this trans trolling is squeezing out the league’s attempt to be ground zero for a race war.

💎 Slightly disappointed that RFK Jr is just nuts and not a grifter. We should have RFK Jr brand lettuce on the shelves by now.

💎 It’s like the worst Beach Boys song ever…

🎶 We’ll have fun fun fun till our Donny takes the tariffs away 🎶

💎 Hahahahaha. The chutzpah of this guy…

From him? Seriously? It’s the tech world version of this:

💎 “Was going away not an option?”
-Me every time I see Hunter Biden getting interviewed

💎 It’s fun when everyone going to Burning Man tries to rent out their NYC apartment at the same time. There should be some kinda exchange program where finance bros get to experience Bushwick for two weeks…but hmm, they’re all in the Hamptons. Maybe let some DSA folks crash there? But they’ll probably never leave because “property is theft” or whatever. Anyway, if you’re okay with an apartment filled with glitter, platform boots, hula hoops, and unread books about shamanism, now is your time to experience NYC.

💎 I just heard two music critics on a podcast arguing about nepo babies and industry plants and all I could think is how the conversation around art now gives me a headache. So many filters to run stuff through. I never had to think this much about, say, Led Zep when I was a kid. I heard John Bonham’s kick drum and I just KNEW. No one ever had to debate if Iggy Pop was a psy op. That we even have to ask these questions now feels like all the answer you need.

Rock on. 🤘

-Matt

The problem is they don’t talk, they write. And that means they continually invent terms that ignore how human beings actually speak.

Human beings like to cut to the chase when they’re speaking. Yet the woke/tolerant/PC/whatever-we’re-calling-it-now way is almost always the long cut. It shouldn’t be faster to say the hateful word or phrase than the correct one and yet…

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Me:

Um, paging Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.1

Look, if you’re taking psychedelics and you’re still right-wing…THEN YOU DIDN’T TAKE ENOUGH.

I’ve never been tripping balls on shrooms and thought, “We need more masked agents grabbing people off of the street and putting them into unmarked vehicles! Now crank the Khruangbin, man.”

According to the piece, the psychedelic spotlight is now shining on Ibogaine. Why? One big reason is because no one knows what the hell it is – and the real drug our society is addicted to is novelty. We long for things that are “BREAKING,” the latest trending topics, and anything else that comes without the baggage of history.

In this case, the focus on Ibogaine conveniently lets Rick Perry and crew rave about the healing power of plant medicine without having to deal with messy hippies prattling on about peace and patchouli. After all, Gabon, the African country where Ibogaine originates, is literally far out.

Meanwhile, the other hot substance du jour is 5-MeO-DMT. That’s too processed for me…I only lick farm-to-toad.

Anyway….

This whole “the GOP is trippin’” premise is pretty rich considering the right flank are the folks who brought us the war on drugs (not to mention all the other unwinnable wars America’s been fighting).

A guest raised what he saw as the central contradiction of the evening: preaching “just say no” to kids while the attendees sat at a fund-raiser for ibogaine. “Most of the people in this room are probably conservative, and we’ve had to take a position that is almost the opposite of where we were, say, five years ago,” he said.

How can you preach “just say no” to kids while advocating for plant medicine? Here’s an idea: Stop putting all drugs in the same evil bucket. We’re able to cheer on antidepressants while criticizing heroin usage. Embrace nuance a bit. After all, ayahuasca is often a way for people to beat their addiction.

And speaking of wars, pro-legalization orgs like MAPS focus their PR efforts on how plants can help heal veterans. The goal is to get the PTSD & BBQ set onboard in order to grease the legalization wheels. Start with these Texas good ‘ol boys and the rest of the dominoes will fall (in theory).

I get the strategy; the psychedelics industry thinks veterans with PTSD are the guards and tackles to get clinical trials/legalization over the goal line. Sure, whatever it takes. But c’mon, don’t make me pretend there’s depthful alignment with a right-wing political philosophy so wildly disconnected from the lessons plant medicine teaches.

That said, I’m onboard with whatever it takes to get those injured soldiers the help they need. And my psychedelic dream is one day we’ll stop focusing so much on giving plant meds to PTSD vets and give them to the guys who keep starting these wars instead. Let’s sign up the board of Halliburton for a jungle retreat in Peru, y’know?

As I’ve argued before, I also wish the emphasis wasn’t constantly on the ways plant medicine can cure PTSD, addiction, and “deaths of despair.” Of course, go for that. But the result is so much energy going toward toxic stuff when betterment of the well is glorious too. Michael Pollan discussed that here…

[Researcher Bob] Jesse was ultimately less interested in people’s mental disorders than in their spiritual well-being—in using entheogens for what he calls “the betterment of well people”…

The first time I raised the idea of “the betterment of well people” with Roland Griffiths, he shifted in his chair and chose his words carefully. “Culturally, right now, that’s a dangerous idea to promote,” he said. And yet, as we talked, it became clear that he, too, feels that many of us stand to benefit from these molecules and, even more, from the spiritual experiences they can make available.

“We are all terminal,” Griffiths said. “We’re all dealing with death. This will be far too valuable to limit to sick people.”

“Culturally, right now, that’s a dangerous idea to promote.”

Bummer sentiment. We’re a spiritually sick society and plant medicine might be our best hope for chaging that. Feels like it’s actually more dangerous for us to not promote that idea. If the antidote to all this venom is out there, let’s not hide it away.

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Comedy

Come see me headline in Arlington, VA on Friday, August 21. Tickets here.

And I’ll be back in Narrowsburg, NY on Tuesday, September 1st (with Mark Normand). Tickets here.

More on psychedelics

🍄 Men need psychedelics to realize things women know innately. And women need alcohol to experience the unearned confidence men feel innately.

🍄 Babies love peekaboo because our entire lives are peekaboo. Time went on for centuries before us and will go on and on after us. Our lives are but a mere blip. The universe: “Now you see ‘me,’ now you don’t.”

🍄 Men learn empathy from shrooms because we’d rather listen to the woods than women.

🍄 People are afraid to do psychedelics because they might have a bad trip. But then they doomscroll all day long which is the ultimate bad trip.

🍄 “I’m afraid to try psychedelics.” One thing to note: Fear is often ego in disguise.

🍄 Psychedelics people talk a lot about how ya need to “shake the snowglobe” which is weird ‘cuz that sounds much more like something coke people do.

🍄 Some people say doing psychedelics is like 10 years of therapy in a single day. And to those people, I offer this humble suggestion: Your therapist might suck.

🍄 We treat psychedelics like GLP-1s for the brain. “Flip the switch” and you’ll no longer be an addict, depressed, have PTSD, etc. But let’s get real: Actual change usually comes with time/effort.

🍄 I keep changing the channel yet always wind up back at the default neural mode network.

Thanks for reading. ✌️

-Matt

P.S. Plenty more on psychedelics and my ayahuasca “downloads” in the archives.

She keeps giving interviews that make her seem like a psy op designed to make people dislike the DSA. After listening to her, I feel like DSA members probably watch Die Hard and root for Asian Dawn.

I guess we’re pendulum swingers that must go from far right to left now. My hatred of all things 🍊 is giving me mixed feelings…because do we really have to swerve all the way to the other pole of kooky extremism?

The more you live inside your phone, the more convinced you are that America should either be socialist or fascist. I still don’t understand how we’re expecting a country that won’t even go for unions to be cool with swing state socialism. Like, how about we do unions first? Wouldn’t that be a good step in…eh, forget it. That’s just me and my dumb logic brain.

But maybe they can sell it because…AIPAC.

ICYMI: AIPAC is to the DSA what trans is to MAGA…and “say genocide” is their “cry uncle.” In addition to proving you are a moral superhero, condemning AIPAC is basically code for “get money out of politics” which okay, sure, but maybe we could save some of that vitriol for the 190 other lobbying groups that spend more than AIPAC?

Re: “genocide,” I can’t help but wonder if antisemites realize that endlessly arguing over the legal definition of a word is actually the most Jewish behavior imaginable.

But they can’t help it. “Platforming,” “lived experience,” “genocide”...these are all words you can just drop into a convo and then you automatically win and the other person needs to DO BETTER. Pretty magical stuff.

Btw, have you noticed how the people who love all this the most are under 40? My theory: Gen Z didn’t experience the last century, which is why they keep trying to bring back things like socialism, antisemitism, and jorts.

Gems

💎 I know how to get affordable housing built: Start referring to it as “AI data centers.” The big wigs will find a way.

💎 If dogs could speak, I feel like the first thing they’d say is “Actually, we hate bandanas.”

💎 Those who can, do. Those who can’t, podcast.

💎 fitness rage bait = fit bait

💎 DC! (Well, Arlington.) I’m coming at ya live August 21. Tickets here.

💎 My big conspiracy theory is segregation was started by water fountain manufacturers. Blame Big Water Fountain!

💎 I always set mousetraps using organic peanut butter because the little guys deserve a gourmet last meal.

💎 It’s no coincidence that low T rhymes with goatee.

💎 We eliminated bullying and look at us now. I feel like we owe bullying an apology.

💎 I wish to live inside the Venn diagram overlap of “looks impressive” and “not a lot of work.” For example: Big ice cubes. People are wildly impressed by them even though it’s still just frozen water. I talked about that here:

💎 Watching p0rn is illegal in Texas. More like LONGHORNY if you ask me.

💎 Everyone on social media haaaaaated journalists so damn much until it came time for someone to find out if Mitch McConnell is alive. Now, it’s 24/7 kvetching about the lack of the profession we furiously attacked for years. Maybe if everyone didn’t crap all over “the lamestream media” for a decade, there’d still be some old school reporters with contacts inside that hospital.

💎 No one drinks or has sex anymore. GLP-1s mean we don’t gorge on food. Gambling apps are everywhere. So of course Las Vegas is struggling.

💎 You’re into ethical non-monogamy? I get it. I’m into artisanal shoplifting and respectable identity theft.

💎 You’ve seen my last special, right?

Gonna be taping another one soooooon.

💎 Hoops talk: When pundits say you have “one of the best contracts in the league,” that likely means you have one of the worst agents in the league.

💎 Lip filler ladies look like they put their mouth in a Swedish pen1s pump.

💎 Non-neurodivergent is a lot of syllables to say normal.

💎 The human brain was not built to handle social media. It’s wild to expect people to process jokes, hate speech, activism, news, and unlikely animal friends in rapid fire succession.

💎 The Odyssey is rebooted IP. Totally the same plot as The Warriors.

💎 Nini Munoz (“science communicator”) on Fauci:

I am reminding folks: science is the process of reducing uncertainty, or, put another way, becoming progressively less wrong.

And somehow, people keep treating evidence of that process as evidence that scientists were lying (This is about Dr. Fauci...AGAIN).

Science begins with observations and hypotheses that are tested as we collect evidence. Then it discards those that don’t survive, refines ones that do, and updates conclusions.

The right way to talk about science (and a lot of other things too) is less emphasis on “was it always right?” and more on “does it keep getting more right?”

💎 You know how Triumph ends sentences with “for me to poop on”? I’ve started doing that with new technology, but I use the phrase “if you’re a shut-in.” This new app that makes it so you never have to [go outside, talk to someone else, etc.] is really great (if you’re a shut in).

💎 You never hear about gay incels. Pretty good advertisement for going gay.

💎 Can you be an anchor on MSNOW who does NOT wear glasses or is that not allowed by the network?

The race war will begin in…the WNBA!?

This post outraged people:

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This is how I use AI. Pretty punk rock, eh? At least it’s a better image than…

That just seems like an ED pill ad targeted at seniors.

Btw, I was gifted a couch recently:

🎶 Got time, time to wait for tomorrow / To find it, to find it, to find it 🎶

We have fun. Here are some more goofy/legit music musings…

🥁 “Disco nap” is a great way to use music to cover up depression. Let’s do more of that: ”I’m not having nightmares, they’re jazz dreams.”

🥁 It’s odd that I love when black people sing about Jesus, but I can’t take it when white people do it. Aretha? Hell yeah. The Killers? Nah, I’m good.

🥁 I am allergic to karaoke. I find it unbearable and ideally suited to people who hate music. My thought whenever I’m invited to any karaoke event: “I wish I too was tone deaf, but I hear the nails on the chalkboard. Enjoy your mutual hostage situation.”

🥁 Imagine the residuals Semisonic has collected on “Closing Time.” Conclusion: Songwriters should write more songs that serve a functional purpose for bars/restaurants. “We’re All Out of the Special,” “86 The Soup,” and/or “Time to Change the Keg” could be huge moneymakers.

🥁 “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” didn’t even mention AI or climate change. Good try, Michael Stipe.

🥁 I’m not sure how or why, but I feel like we need to blame Arcade Fire for polycules.

🥁 Thankful Bruce Springsteen wrote songs before the age of electric cars and e-bikes. This just doesn’t hit the same: 🎶 Just wrap your legs around this LCD display / And strap your hands ‘cross my lithium battery 🎶

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🥁 How much people liked record scratching for a decade is rather baffling.

🥁 The big problem in music by decade:
1980’s: I love dancing but I’m tired of doing it by myself
1990’s: I’m a loser/creep/basket case
2000’s: I’m better off since you’ve been gone (you shoulda proposed)
2010’s: My lover is bad for me
2020’s: My pu**y is too wet a**

🥁 Shaboozey, Lil Nas X, and Beyonce are all culturally appropriating rednecks…but for some reason, we’re fine with it.

🥁 Kings of Leon was replaced by impostors before the release of that “your sex is on fire” song. It’s the only explanation.

🥁 “Be My Baby” got me wondering why the hell there aren’t more castanets in pop music.

🥁 Just found out Tupac's fam moved from Baltimore to Oakland for a better life. Sounds like the plot to some kinda Temu version of The Fresh Prince.

🥁 It’s a Clipse clips eclipse! (I’m watching TikToks about a legendary hip hop duo as the moon passes between the sun and earth.)

🥁 The rain washed me clean and I had no idea and now I demand Stevie Nicks give me a refund.

🥁 We need a term for people and things you respect but don’t actually enjoy. Maybe Zappa’d.

🥁 Love these lyrics (and the song):

🎶 We could go kick down some doors together
Stay out til morning sharp as knives
The new war will get you, it will not protect you
But I will be there with you when you turn out the light
Said I will be there with you when you turn out the light 🎶

“Paper Tiger”
Spoon ‧ 2002

🥁 Audio engineer is really straining the credibility of the word “engineer.” (Same with PhD and “doctor.”)

🥁 Bring back jazzercise, but really go for it with some Miles and Coltrane.

🥁 The curve of musical growth is starting off thinking Eric Clapton is the heart of Cream and then realizing it’s actually Ginger Baker until one day you conclude it’s really Jack Bruce.

🥁 Wedding bands do a great job at making rock n’ roll seem like cheerleading practice.

🥁 Friend asked me to describe Noah Kahan: I texted, “grocery store stomp-clap Male-r Swift for froyo girlies.” (Note: I've only ever heard one song by him but was pretty proud of Male-r Swift.)

🥁 Michael Jackson's drummer was named “Sugarfoot”!? Next level nickname. Also, the man’s cymbal game was on 🔥:

🥁 When he was asked what he knew at a later age that he wished he had known at 40 or even at 20, Leonard Cohen replied:

I think there is a wisdom appropriate to every age. I think there’s a 17-year-old wisdom, and a 40-year-old wisdom, and a 60-year-old wisdom. And I don’t think they necessarily have any rapport with one another. So I don’t necessarily have a sense that I blew anything that I could have avoided blowing. I think the problem is with vitality, with conserving the capacity to art and to be the custodian of this energy. I don’t know how much I would tell my 40-year-old self if I could resurrect him. The thing seems much more immediate, the sense of living on the front line of my own life has become very immediate, and the capacity to develop strategies, certainly the capacity to give advice, is very, very limited.

🥁 An oral history of the Empty Bottle. I lived across the street from this Chicago rock ‘n roll bar and let’s just say it played a big role in my 20’s. Here’s my old band Plastics Hi-Fi playing there:

Behind the paywall

Let’s get into The Beatles and The Stones…

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Lessons

🌱 You seek to be overwhelmed so your lesson is in subtlety.

🌱 Effort is the tax you pay for the outcome you desire.

🌱 Tell everyone you love how much you appreciate them. It’s free yet still the most valuable thing in the world. Crazy.

🌱 If you’re doing what you want to do, your entire life is a vacation.

Wounds

🌱 Your past will eat up your bandwidth until you process it. It’s like those files that take up all your iPhone storage. Purge and you will gain capacity.

🌱 “Find somebody’s struggle and you will find the plot.”
-Brandon Stanton

🌱 You can be lucky and still have a wound. After all, we are all wounded; the strength comes from processing it. Weave a crown from the weeds.

🌱 The wounded healer.

The wounded healer theory, coined by psychiatrist Carl Jung, is an archetype suggesting that a therapist’s or helper’s own personal struggles, trauma, or pain become the very source of their ability to help others heal. Vulnerability transforms into profound empathy, allowing them to deeply connect with patient suffering.

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Parenting

🌱 My mom had a roomful of masks…in every way. She also loved discussing dreams. She was a translator. The job was translating myths into truths. And now it’s mine. They never tell you nepo baby can break this way too.

🌱 A family is a dictatorship ruled over by its sickest member (by me). Excerpt:

Originally, the “dictatorship” line seemed to me a statement on individual dysfunction. But as time has passed, I’ve come to see it as a reveal of what it means to be a family. The phrase isn’t about the sick person, it’s about how everyone else rallies around them and makes it work. It’s an acknowledgement of the relationship between family and friction. The obstacles are the point.

🌱 We spend our lives dancing around the pain instead of confronting it. There’s a wounded, small voice crying for help and protection. And most of us gag it with “behavior modification.”

Body

🌱 The mind refuses to believe the body has a lot of the answers. What an egomaniac.

🌱 Drop into sensation. Don’t grip. Stop thinking and feel it.

🌱 It’s not about words. It’s not about words. It’s not about words. It’s not about words. It’s not about words. It’s not about words. (Had to write that down.)

Advice

🌱 If you desire visitors, build as many bridges to your island as possible.

🌱 All those guys who keep gambling all the time: Just do drugs. Do. The. Drugs. What you really love is dopamine. And, at this point, drugs are actually a wiser path to obtaining it.

🌱 Can someone please tell everyone to stop crying so much and just be thankful for being alive?

🌱 But also…
“Live to the point of tears.”
-Albert Camus

🌱 Poet David Whyte:

Weeping may be the closest experience human beings have to an experience of enlightenment. Because in weeping, you’ve given up. You’ve broken down. Whatever control you wanted over the world has slipped out of your hands. Whatever way you wanted to keep heartbreak at bay, whatever way you wanted to keep grief at bay, those perimeters have all been broken down by the grief, the loss, the person leaving you, by the diagnosis you’ve just been given in the hospital. You’ve actually dropped down below this perimeter, and it breaks apart through that overflow of emotions.

The reason you’re weeping is because you haven’t built a body that can hold that revelation, but now you’re just about to do it. You’re breaking open this controlled edge that you’ve had. You’ve surrounded it, and it’s breaking out of there. You’re actually becoming larger through the weeping…

That’s an invitation to feeling everything as much as you can feel it all the time, in beauty and in sorrow. Don’t hide it from yourself. Don’t just try and feel everything. It’s because we’re afraid of the consequences of feeling that we won’t allow it.

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Plants

🌱 The plants will eat us in the end. Meanwhile, we eat the plants.

🌱 There is technology in robots and chips. But there is also technology in plants, religion, and ancient wisdom.

🌱 People are like, “Do you believe in God?” And it’s like: “Yes, I’ve done drugs.”

🌱 The plants will tell you if you listen. But they whisper.

Zen

🌱 “Love everybody, serve God, and tell the truth” is one of the most famous teachings Ram Dass received from his guru, Neem Karoli Baba.

🌱 My entry point to Buddhism was the book “Buddhism Plain and Simple” by Steve Hagen. Read it decades ago. This excerpt rocked my world and has remained top of mind ever since:

Pick up a flower-- a beautiful, living, fresh rose. It smells wonderful. It reveals a lovely rhythm in the swirl of its petals, a rich yet dazzling color, a soft velvety texture. It moves and delights us.

The problem with the rose is that it dies. Its petals fall; it shrivels up; it turns brown and returns to the earth.

One solution to this problem is to ignore the real rose and substitute a plastic one, one that never dies (and never lives). But is a plastic rose what we want? No, of course not. We want the real rose. We want the one that dies. We want it because it dies, because it’s fleeting, because it fades. It’s this very quality that makes it precious. This is what we want, what each of us is: a living thing that dies.

Talk talk

🌱 Nonviolent Communication (NVC):

• 1. Observations (What is happening): State the concrete, factual events you observe without adding criticism or evaluation.

  • Instead of: “You are always ignoring me.”

  • Try: “When I see you looking at your phone while I’m speaking...”

• 2. Feelings (What you are experiencing): Identify and express your actual emotions (e.g., hurt, frustrated, joyful) rather than thoughts about what the other person is doing.

  • Try: “...I feel hurt and frustrated...”

• 3. Needs (What is missing): Connect your feelings to your underlying universal human needs (e.g., respect, connection, support).

  • Try: “...because I have a need to feel valued and heard in our conversations.”

• 4. Requests (What you want to happen): Ask for a specific, actionable, and positive behavior that enriches your life, framed as an opportunity rather than a demand.

  • Try: “Would you be willing to put your phone down and give me your full attention when we talk?”

🌱 “Radical honesty.” Eh, you can just put radical in front of anything. Forgiveness, confusion, salesmanship, etc. Radicalize everything because why not?

🌱 Seinfeld on the two voices you need to write well:

The key to writing, to being a good writer, is to treat yourself like a baby, very extremely nurturing and loving, and then switch over to Lou Gossett in Officer and a Gentleman and just be a harsh prick, a ball-busting son of a bitch, about, “That is just not good enough. That’s got to come out,” or “It’s got to be redone or thrown away.”

So flipping back and forth between those two brain quadrants is the key to writing. When you’re writing, you want to treat your brain like a toddler. It’s just all nurturing and loving and supportiveness. And then when you look at it the next day, you want to be just a hard-ass. And you switch back and forth.

Music

🌱 I once did a hilltrek tribe in northern Thailand. Every person in that tiny remote village had the most beautiful singing voice. How? No one there ever said, “I need to learn how to sing.” They just knew. Maybe that’s what living with circadian rhythms does to you. I imagine it’s the same in the Congo with dance. Everyone there knows how to move their body to the music. The lesson: You don’t need to learn how to dance. You need to forget how to not dance.

🌱 You have to let it go. John Lennon nailed it in “Watching the Wheels”:

People say I’m lazy
Dreaming my life away
Well they give me all kinds of advice
Designed to enlighten me
When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall
“Don’t you miss the big time boy, you’re no longer on the ball?”
I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

🌱 Real community is a tapestry. It’s woven threads that turn isolated weakness into collective strength and safety. And diversity is baked into the experience. Like an orchestra, it all fits together. Play your instrument, do your part, and harmonize with your partners.

🌱 Singing: The Key To A Long Life by Brian Eno.

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness and a better sense of humor.

Behind the paywall

More plant downloads, a couple of rants, and wise words from the Gene Keys, Pema Chodron, Fiona Apple, and Peter Gabriel.

Read more

Why is all this happening? Well, there’s the whole “people are dumb and lazy” thing. But we also need to examine the incentives at play. These platforms need to monetize attention – and the written word is actually too efficient at expressing ideas.

In effect, writing is a compression algorithm. A 1,000 word essay that takes ten minutes to read frequently contains deeper ideas than three hours of pundits pontificating. That’s good for reasoning but terrible for an advertising model built on capturing attention. So they keep shoving us into less efficient ways of transmitting ideas that generate more watch time because…ka-ching.

Video wants you to streeeeeetch, writing wants you to wrap it up.

Writing is hard because writing is thinking – and that’s why so few people want to do it anymore. Writing imposes a tax while talking requires no such toll. Of course, that’s also what makes the written word so valuable.

Want to know whether I take an influencer/podcaster seriously?
Show me something they’ve written.
Oh, they don’t write?
Some thinker.

We should reframe writing as the respectful way to express ideas. After all, it requires the author spend time, thought, and consideration upfront. It’s not just plugging in a mic and riffing between ad reads for BetterHelp. In the end, that means more ideas/minute get expressed and consumed.

The business of attention is throttling society’s bandwidth. We’re seeing the horrific effects of that everywhere. And we’ll keep getting more of the same as long as we optimize for minutes consumed instead of ideas transmitted.

Algorithm Blues
by Matt Ruby

crypto
slop bowls
fake lips
feet pics
weed vapes
deep fakes
prop bets
brain meds
AI
looooong sigh

poppin’ gummies
scrollin’ mummies
culture chewed
people screwed
robot prose
QR codes
IVF fertility
NFT tranquility
putting CBD
on your OCD
woo woo chews
podcast news
subscription dues
got me singing those
algorithm blues

Media

• Generally speaking, I find people who say “comms” to be terrible at communicating.

• Social media is largely incapable of comprehending art that isn’t propaganda.

• It’s the golden age of mental illness disguised as moral superiority.

• The big problem is there’s no way to grift online by being a reasonable centrist.

• Tell them things they either love or hate and you’ll get rich. Tell them things that are true and you’ll go broke.

• The internet has murdered persuasion, negotiation, seduction, and compromise. All these things are essential to a functional society. Yet online, they’ve come to be considered as forms of weakness.

• Every voice note you leave subtly communicates “my time is more valuable than yours.”

• I like when Wordle asks me if I want to “admire puzzle,” like it’s some kinda Rembrandt painting instead of me needing five tries to get puppy.

Tech

• We overindexed on optionality and destroyed commitment. Now we’re all hunt and no peck.

• Let me get this straight: You think the robots will take over the world AND you’re installing one of those Japanese toilets in your bathroom? Um, where do you think the robot takeover will begin!? You’re dangling your junk over the enemy every day. Good luck with that.

• “Shotgun!” Feels archaic now because smartphones changed car seat physics. Passenger seat used to be prime real estate. But now, it means ya gotta talk to the driver (yawn!) when you could be in the back seat scrolling the whole time.

• Longevity is all the rage. OK, but it’s kinda odd how much these middle-aged guys are trying to live forever while also complaining about how their elderly parents are in a home, have dementia, etc. These longevity bros better figure out how to start cloning Filipino home healthcare workers too.

• I think we’re 1) not supposed to be anonymous, 2) should live in groups of ~150 people, and 3) die before we’re 80...and everything that’s going wrong in society is because we ignore all that. We defy nature and pay the consequences.

• Emolution: The evolution of emojis…

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Now that’s how you big up the Rubesletter. Thanks, Sean. Go ahead and share this if you wanna help spread the word too…

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Jokes

On the right

• Racism is a way for poor people to cosplay as elites.

• I’ve found a good way to end wars is to not have real estate developers doing the negotiations.

• Iran is the Road Runner and Trump is the coyote.

• “Hate all you want, but I rock with this administration. It’s been wonderful for us!”
  -Measles

• “In the future, everyone will be on the phone with Mitch McConnell for 15 minutes.”
  -Republican Andy Warhol

• I feel like gay men know exactly what happened to Lindsey Graham. So I guess he died the same way he lived.

• It’s amazing how much people think the elites are incompetent and can’t be trusted…yet also believe they’re able to pull off stunning conspiracies and keep them covered up forever. Pick a psyop lane.

• Outrageous! Pete Hegseth just announced you can only serve in the military if you remind him of this Burt Reynolds centerfold…

On the left

• “Gen Z doesn’t realize they’re ushering in Sharia law.” Hmm, really? So I looked up what Sharia Law means: No drinking. Clothing that hides your body. No premarital sex. Censored speech. Severe punishments for thought crimes. Wow. Got some bad news: I’m pretty sure Gen Z is already living under Sharia law. 😂

• The far left: “Stop Asian hate.”
  Me: “Israel is in Asia.”
  The far left: “Well, we can make an exception.”

• If you love wombs and hate testosterone, are you a feminist or transphobic?

• All these tough guy beverages (Liquid Death, Monster Energy, etc.) got me thinking we need more Lib-coded drink options...
  - Simp Energy Drink
  - Snowflake Coffee
  - Safe Space Seltzer
  - AOC IPA

• Spotted in Tribeca the other night. It’s like an Edward Hopper painting but for the girlies:

Behind the paywall

Musings on the news, mannequins, physics, bad lettuce, climate change, soccer fans, and more…

Read more

After a few minutes, Domingo moseyed over toward me. He had a brown coat and downcast eyes.

What I knew about Domingo: Before coming to his new home, he’d been a racehorse and then a workhorse for the Amish, who are notorious for grinding horses down by overworking them. He was the newest here and was continually dominated by one of the other horses (who was working through a whole different set of issues).

Domingo seemed guarded but was willing to stay put and let me pet him. I stroked his sides and noticed the twitch of his muscles as he tried to shoo flies from his fur. He gently nudged me with his snout.

S. came over and asked me how I would describe this horse. “Shy and a little bit scared. Still trying to find his place here. But underneath it, I think he’s playful. And that will come out once he’s more comfortable.”

S. replied, “And who does that remind you of?”

I knew the answer before she finished asking. Damn. OK.

I explained how that description sounded like me when I was a kid. Folks now consider me an extrovert, but I wasn’t always that way. With my late December birthday, I was always the youngest in my class. I clammed up in social situations. No one came to my little league games. Nor my high school basketball games. I mean, I wasn’t getting much playing time so why would they?

Plus, my parents weren’t exactly helicopter parents showering me with attention. I tell a joke about how they were more like submarine parents: cold, distant, kept everything under the surface, could go nuclear at a moments notice, etc. An exaggeration based on truth.

At least I was smart, though. That seemed to please my parents. I remember them touting how I was in our school’s gifted and talented program. At ten years old, my grandmother encouraged me to go to Harvard. So OK, be smart. That makes them happy.

The rest? I pushed it down. Or so I thought.

But that’s when I started thinking about my adult life and how I seek attention, especially onstage. I’ve done it thousands of times now (first in a band, later as a comedian). I always smelled the ego in that, so I’ve tried my best to deserve that attention. I’ve tried to make quality stuff. I want to be worthy of people noticing me.

And then there’s women. I took some comfort there, I do declare. A pretty girl on my arm offered a sweet hit of affirmation. However, all that means I’ve spent a lot of life force chasing things that couldn’t (or didn’t) love me back.

I leak energy chasing validation.

“What did that child want?” asked S. I discussed all of that. He wanted to be told he was worthy of attention, regardless of the hoops he jumped through. That he was good enough, deserved love, and it wasn’t his fault that people were sometimes mean to him.

S. suggested I take all that and make it my intention during the plant ceremony that night. To go back and give that child, me, the nurturing parenting he longed for back then.

A few hours later I was on a mat after sipping the tea. When the medicine hit, it was blissful anarchy, a combination of kaleidoscopes, waterfalls, casinos, jungle kisses, doors opening onto other doors, MC Escher ladders turning into each other, spinning rims, and Greek gods. Everything was beautiful and silly. I felt like I was being injected into the cells of a forest root system.

I remembered S.’ advice that you can steer the medicine. You can instruct it to show you what you need. So I went back to that childhood version of myself. Painful data points I hadn’t thought about it in years reemerged from my memory.

It’s strange how much the negative stuff lingers. I used to fake injuries during soccer games, stopping the game so the adults would gather round me.

I would get teased by classmates and face the laughter of my peers. In middle school, an older student brought his dad’s hunting knife to the playground and held it to my throat while his buddies egged him on.

For perhaps the first time in my adult life, I stared down these things. And I saw the child on the other side of them, the scared one wondering, “Do I deserve this? Is there something wrong with me? Is that why this is happening?”

And that’s when I began purging. The bucket caught all that pain and buried fears. I turned to my trusty friend analysis. I tried to examine what was happening. And then I gave up on that.

I realized there was no thinking here. Something stored in my body was leaving. A residue had been scraped loose and was finally washing away. I wasn't discovering an idea. I was ejecting pain. This wasn’t words or ideas, this was body.

Finally, I put the bucket down. I now felt lighter. I imagined myself as a boy and tried telling that kid all the things I wished I had heard. “You are worthy of attention. You deserve praise. Even if you aren’t super smart or talented, you are still lovable and loved. You are doing a good job. Everything is going to work out alright. In fact, so many of your dreams will come true. Just you wait.”

And I had empathy for my parents, too. I also saw them as children and realized how much their parents didn’t give them what they had secretly needed. It’s a chain we carry forward. We all go around spackling holes from our childhood.

Afterwards, there was a second cup of medicine offered. I went up and spoke with S. I was going to tell her what happened, but I sensed she already knew. I nodded and she returned a knowing look. The only thing I could say: “It wasn’t about words.”

I considered taking a second cup and then realized I didn’t need more. I’d had enough.

As I walked back to my mat, I thought about Domingo. One day he’ll stop letting that other horse push him around. He doesn’t know his own strength yet. He’ll get there.

This video was filmed by and you should check out his Substack for cool photography, videos, nature/culture stuff, etc. This vid is a decent summary of my worldview re: tech and humanity – and there’s a couple more clips like it below too.

Transcript:

Screens make everyone feel like some kind of emperor. “I should get what I want when I want. I’m right all the time. Anyone who disagrees with me is the enemy.”

You see it manifesting everywhere, most obviously in politics. You’re a progressive, you’re Antifa, you’re evil, you need to be stopped. You’re MAGA, you’re steering us into fascism, you need to be stopped. But get those same people in a room actually talking about what should happen at the school district and, a lot of times, some compromise could be reached. But online, it’s just two rams butting heads.

The same thing is happening in dating. All these men are listening to other men tell them how to feel, and all the women are listening to other women tell them how to feel. When really, men should be listening to women and women should be listening to men — because that, in my opinion, is the magic of having different genders. The duality. The yin and yang. Completing each other.

Instead you’ve got incels listening to each other: “These gold-digging women, all they want is this or that, screw them.” And you’ve got women: “Everything’s a red flag, everything gives me the ick. I didn’t like the way he put his ChapStick on, it was weird.” Well, you might have to get used to that. That’s part of life in a relationship — compromising.

Online you never have to settle. You’re always told you’re right. It’s constant ego inflation, non-stop. And then real life becomes untenable because you go out into the world and suddenly you have to negotiate, compromise, persuade someone else. Online, you’re just told you’re right all the time.

It keeps popping up everywhere: I can live in my screen and have my ego stroked, or I can get off my screen and negotiate things that are tricky, uncomfortable, and human. And that friction — that’s why people just plug back in.

Be an outsider

It’s the inside people vs. the outside people (also filmed by Noah):

Transcript:

I think eventually we’re going to descend into inside people and outside people.

The inside people will just stay inside and live life on a screen. Their whole life is a video game. They’re plugged into AI, they’ve got a robot girlfriend, they dunk on each other online on social media.

Then there’s the go-outside people who actually touch grass, go into nature, go to comedy shows or concerts or church, go out dancing — people who exist around real human beings and have to negotiate interactions with other people in real life.

There’s going to be a fork in the road where people either plug into that video game life or actually live a farm-to-table life.

I think there’s a middle ground now, but I wonder if it’s going to slowly evaporate. Going offline will become a luxury item — the same way you can pay money to buy something that makes your phone not work, or there are luxury resorts with no Wi-Fi, or comedy clubs that take your phone away and lock it in a pouch. The luxury item becomes having technology taken away from you.

And then, in order to prevent a revolution, the poor, suffering people will just plug into constant stimulation — fed slop all the time that keeps them satiated and not noticing what a bummer the rest of their lives are.

🔌 If you find yourself looking forward to The Rubesletter, the best way to support is by becoming a paid subscriber. You'll get access to subscriber-only posts, the archives, and you'll help keep the newsletter going strong. Otherwise, the robots win.

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Instagram vs. IRL

From Ep 99 of Artists of NY podcast:

Transcript:

Technology is ripping us apart at the seams. Poisoning our minds. Turning us into morons. Making us all hate each other. Making us unable to understand nuance or tolerate complexity in any form — in favor of tribalism and ego stroking. We just exist on devices all day that tell us we’re right about everything and anyone who disagrees is the enemy.

You go to Instagram and everyone’s more beautiful than they are in real life. You go to a podcast and everyone’s more interesting than they are in real life. You go to ChatGPT and it tells you how amazing and thoughtful you are.

And then you come home to your wife and she’s telling you that you load the dishwasher wrong. And you’re like, “How do I mute you? You’re not as pretty or as interesting as what I’ve been consuming all day.”

So I think technology is turning us away from being human. Away from understanding other human beings. Away from empathy and compassion. And I think that’s the root cause of so much of what’s going wrong in society right now.

So now I just have to figure out how to make that funny. That’s all.

Funny How

Over at Funny How newsletter, I’ve been writing about the craft and business of comedy: whether YouTube or Netflix is the better home for a special, how artists actually make a living, why bombing matters, what the algorithm wants from comedians, the enduring appeal of roasts, lessons from comics like Roy Wood Jr., the Adam Carolla joke that Jerry Seinfeld loves, and more. If that sounds up your alley, come check it out…

Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian

Comic Matt Ruby offers standup comedy philosophy, advice, and inspirational quotes from great comedians. Some praise for posts here...Judd Apatow: "Great." Gary Gulman: “Love this!”

By Matt Ruby

Adios.

-M.

P.S. Two more related bits…

1) Here’s a bonus segment of “Substance” that relates too. It’s about the antidote to all this screen addiction and why the stage feels like a holy space to me.

2) Similar themes here too…

What that interview really proved: Everything is rebooted IP now.

Also…

Vocal fry: It’s not just for women anymore.

But is the hate for these consultants warranted? I mean, I get it. Clearly they suck at vetting, Platner turned out be a gross bum, and the Dems may now lose that Senate seat. (And yes, I’m patting myself on the back because I was never onboard with him.)

However…

Didn’t these consultants almost pull off a legendary political heist? They scraped the lobster pots, found an unknown mustache, got him on the ticket, and turned him into the face of a political movement. People around the country were rallying around him big time.

I gotta think that whole scenario (i.e. manufacture a candidate from scratch and watch the public buy in) is the wet dream of every political consultant. It’s a cinematic plotline a la Trading Places, The Manchurian Candidate, or Being There.

The obvious caveat is they did a godawful job figuring out who the guy actually was.

Still, it feels weird to act like they didn’t do anything right when they clearly “read the room” masterfully and almost Chauncey Gardinered a 🦪🧑‍🌾 into a Senator.

Again, I never bought into Platner and I hope Susan Collins loses. But I guess I feel the same way about these consultants as I do those Louvre thieves: They may not have gotten away with it, but it’s impressive they managed to even come that close.

More on politics:

🗣️ Any other lessons to takeaway from Platnergate? A: It was his voice that sucked people in. Dude always sounded like he was narrating a pickup truck commercial…and wow do rural folks like pickup trucks. So Dems: Run more men with deep voices and just hand ‘em voiceover scripts that sound like a Ford F-150 ad:

Built to work. Built to govern. And the power to leave it behind. If you’ve been seeking a way to stick it to the elites, look no further than me, a lumberjack they plucked from a dive bar in Bangor. I can wield an axe, pull a lot of weight, and still leave the herd behind. Confident, rugged, and resilient. If you haven’t looked at the Democrat ticket lately, look again. [This message was not sponsored by AIPAC.]

Can I be a political consultant now too?

🗣️ OK, one more Platner joke:

The US Senate is no place for a man credibly accused of sexual assault. He’d fit in way better on the Supreme Court.

It’s funny because it’s…sad.

🗣️ I usually trot this one out for disappointed 🍊 voters, but this week it’s for disappointed Platner fans too…

🗣️ Oh, and the other big story in politics: Mitch McConnell is probably dead and the GOP is covering it up in order to hang onto his seat. Honestly, I get it. That level of cheating in order to horde power is the best way to honor his legacy.

🔌 This was written by a human, not AI. If you want more of that, maybe support, y’know? You’ll get bonus stuff and archive access too. Thanks.

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Comedy

New set on YouTube: Jokes about emojis, dragons, stalkers, the masculinity crisis, parole board dating, Skyrizi, scapegoats, and why men need mushrooms. Get some.

Yellow Cards and VAR

World Cup: There’s a lot of chatter going on about why the US Men’s Soccer team sucked again. I think it’s because soccer codes as female to Americans. I mean, compare it to basketball…

• Basketball has triple doubles. Stats count. Soccer has clean sheets. Thread count.

• Basketball: “Posterized.” So visual. Soccer: “Nutmegged.” Sounds like a boost to your pumpkin spice latté.

• Basketball ends when the clock hits zero. Soccer ends when the referee feels like it.

• In basketball, a player gets whistled for a technical. In soccer, the ref goes, “I got you a card.” It’s all about drawing boundaries: “Yellow means what you did gave me the ick. Keep going and it’s a red fla–, er, card.”

• In basketball, the scoring never stops. In soccer, the whole game is players who are almost there. It’s downright tantric. 90 minutes of edging and then everybody celebrates a 1-0 finish.

• In basketball, players constantly reach for blocks. In soccer, they keep their arms behind their backs…“You got handsy…penalty!”

• In basketball, the ref reviews instant replays on the sideline. In soccer, the ref consults three other Video Assistant Referees (VARs) in a booth – it’s basically the ref going to the group chat to find out what the girlies think.

More soccer:

⚽️ Soccer fans in Europe are hooligans who behave awfully, But bring ‘em to America and they’re all good vibes and friendly celebrations. Turns out ranch dressing and Big Gulps hath charms to soothe a savage breast.

⚽️ [Dons analyst hat] I used to think top scorers in soccer were like the great scorers in basketball. But watching Messi/Haaland this tourney, I’m realizing they’re actually closer to great rebounders, like Charles Barkley, Josh Hart, or Dennis Rodman. They just seem to have a sixth sense for where the ball is going to be. Their savant-level understanding of physics/angles/game-flow allows them to live in the future.

⚽️ All these countries hate immigrants until…

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Quickies

🎯 MC in MC Escher stands for Maurits Cornelis which stands for MC in MC Escher which stands for Maurits Cornelis which stands for MC in MC Escher which stands for Maurits Cornelis which stands for MC in MC Escher which stands for...

🎯 Nothing is surprising anymore. And that shocks me.

🎯 A lot of “authenticity” is just selfishness in disguise.

🎯 It is what it is. Everything happens for a reason. That’s just the way things are. (We can stop talking now, right?)

🎯 Smartphones taught us an important lesson. The thing we fear most isn’t tyranny, loneliness, or anxiety. The thing we fear most is boredom. We are willing to let all those other things slide into the abyss as long as we remain entertained.

🎯 Technology is truly disruptive. For example: This is the first time history is being written by the the losers.

🎯 Automatic captions really cannot handle the word “milquetoast.”

🎯 You know Shawshank Redemption is fiction because it’s a prison where no one cares about race.

🎯 Our brains love stories so much that they keep telling them even after we go to sleep.

🎯 Going to TikTok or Instagram to fix your mental health is like going to the demolition derby to get your car repaired.

🎯 I still can’t get over Jeff Bezos saying poems must rhyme.

🎯 I feel like human beings are not meant to pivot instantly from engagement ring photos to choreography to “I have cancer” posts. Yo Meta, give us a palate cleanser in between ‘em for chrissakes.

🎯 Kinda funny how much people on social media love that “man in the arena” quote. Dude, you’re complaining via tweet 24/7. It’s not exactly “doer of deeds” heroism.

🎯 Your ego is a balloon and your phone is the helium tank that fills it. On your screen, you are the center of the universe. IRL you must orbit around others – and, for many, that has become untolerable.

🎯 psyoptimist - guy who thinks everything must be a psyop

🎯 I never want to have a conversation with anyone who uses the terms situationship, false flag, psyop, or red-pilled. I get it, you spend too much time online.

🎯 When said aloud, “misogynistic” just sounds like you’re describing someone who really loves massages.

🎯 A lot of the guys we talk about getting “cancelled” were really just given a time out.

🎯 As a kid, cartoon animals sold us cereal (e.g. Toucan Sam, Tony the Tiger, Trix Rabbit). Now, every cartoon animal is trying to sell us life insurance (Lemu Emu, Geico Lizard, etc.)

🎯 The CarFax mascot is Car Fox and I’m sorry, but that’s just a bit too on the nose for me.

🎯 I’m featured in Deadline’s excellent “Comedy Means Business” newsletter (thanks to Matt Grobar). More coming soon there too. And if you want more of my musings on comedy and the craft of standup, you should be getting my other Substack FUNNY HOW.

Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian

Comic Matt Ruby offers standup comedy philosophy, advice, and inspirational quotes from great comedians. Some praise for posts here...Judd Apatow: "Great." Gary Gulman: “Love this!”

By Matt Ruby

Thanks for being stellar.

-Matt

P.S. Video with some highlights from the last Rubesletter…

But am I the only one who kinda enjoys that America sucks at (men’s) soccer? It's for the rest of the world. They're completely obsessed and we only pretend to care once every four years. Unlike the rest of the globe, we won’t even use the word “football” – because the sport we do care about snared it.

Lotta hubris to expect all that to yield results. We don't put in the inputs of effort/focus so why should we expect the output of winning? We've got offshore drilling, Silicon Valley, and stealth bombers. Let the Cape Verdes of the world have this.

Meanwhile the US Women’s team kicks a**. Feels odd. Same sport, same country...wildly different outcomes. My theory on why:

In this piece, Thierry Henry looks at why the rest of the world dominates:

“The only way out of the hood” is tough to compete with. Also shows how the French gotta do everything opposite of us. In America, the suburbs are where you move when you get money. In France, the suburbs are where they put everyone who doesn’t have money.

Of course, the President stuck his beak in the mix which turned out poorly (because of course it did).

Sports competition is about equal opportunity. Do you think Senegal coulda had their President call up FIFA and get a call overturned? If not, 47’s action made the entire competition corrupt and reinforced every negative stereotype the world has about America in the process. Yo Donnie: Just because you cheat at sports (and everything else) doesn’t mean America wants you to do the same on our behalf.

Despite America’s lameness, this World Cup has been a blast. (Have you tried unemployment mixed with the World Cup? It’s the best pairing since chocolate and peanut butter.)

The FIFA feed must be an international pool thing because they constantly zoom in on foreign hotties in the crowd in a way US sports coverage never does anymore (because the Brent Musburgers of the world couldn’t keep it in their pants). And I like announcers with fancy accents. They’re so obsessed with “clean sheets” that they’re starting to remind me of my ex.

The biggest winner so far is Norway, which has become the Knicks of this tournament. Erling Haaland is Jalen Brunson and the next round has them facing England, which is Wemby (sorry, France). I’m running back the glory of June all over again. And that matchup is giving historical vibes…

You’ve seen the Viking row (the bang-the-drum-and-chant Norwegian celebration), right?

Accelerando. That’s a big reason why it works so well. It slowly picks up tempo until it explodes at the end. Reminds me of how great pop songs used to build this way: Come on Eileen, The Chain, and Free Bird, for example.

But you don’t hear that much anymore. Modern music production revolves around click tracks and fixed BPMs so gradual tempo changes are less common. We traded musicians reacting to one another in the same room for layered overdubs.

The Norwegian celebration is a reminder of the primal power of loose rhythm and people syncing with each other. Modern recording’s quest for efficiency and precision often smooths away the humanity that makes things actually feel alive.

Ro!

Meanwhile, some politician in Paraguay said racist crap about Mbappe, but I refuse to dig into that one. I miss the days when I had no idea what Paraguayan senators said.

I once heard someone say the local TV news delivered the worst thing that happened the closest to you. Well, social media provides the worst thing that happened far away. Oh, great.

Morgan Housel explained it this way:

The decline of local news has all kinds of implications. One that doesn’t get much attention is that the wider the news becomes the more likely it is to be pessimistic. Two things make that so:

• Bad news gets more attention than good news because pessimism is seductive and feels more urgent than optimism.

• The odds of a bad news story—a fraud, a corruption, a disaster—occurring in your local town at any given moment is low. When you expand your attention nationally, the odds increase. When they expand globally, the odds of something terrible happening in any given moment are 100 percent.

Speaking of bad news…

Graham Platner accused of…so many things

Yo progressives: Maybe making the PTSD blackout drunk with the N*zi tattoo the face of your cause wasn’t a great idea after all.

These days, having common sense makes you feel like some kinda prophet! This was me a few weeks back…

Call me crazy, but what if the Dems ran candidates who didn’t recently have a stroke or PTSD?

and…

I just can’t with this: “I was an alcoholic with PTSD who behaved badly in all kinds of ways. But hey, that was Tuesday. I’m a new man now! Put me in charge. It’s fine.” Give it a minute (well, decade), please.

He didn’t know the tattoo he had for 20 years was a N*zi tattoo!? Honestly, that might be even worse. You and your crew are a bunch of goddamn fools if you all got inked with Totenkopfs and couldn’t figure it out for decades.

At first, many in the Platner posse leaped to call it all a psyop funded by AIPAC – or some other BS. So this is a good moment to clock who in your timeline is a normal human being and who is an insane, overly online tribalist spouting off about conspiracies in the face of clear evidence.

The reluctance to dump Platner is showing “Believe women” vs. “I hate AIPAC” is irresistible force meets immovable object for some progressives.

The power of love

NEW YORK (AP) — Two people scaled the Empire State Building’s antenna Wednesday and unfurled a banner about “the power of love.”

Pretty sure I know who was behind that stunt…

Reunion tour, anyone?

Actually, it turns out it was two Russians who rode an elevator, got engaged, took selfies, and unfurled a banner with a Jimi Hendrix quote. This is our age’s daredevil behavior? Even our stunts seem AI now. Gimme a guy in a jumpsuit on a rickety motorcycle leaping over a fountain and breaking 60 bones. Now THAT is America.

T. Swift got married

Six thoughts on the big wedding…

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The response to the 🇳🇴 rowing thing feels like proof that social media has zero historical context. There, the same people who detest colonizers have no problem cheering on Norwegians pretending to be VIKINGS. Phew, I got some bad news for these DSA fans about Erik the Red. Proof, yet again, that it all depends on when you start the clock.

Speaking of clocks…

Soccer fans: “How much time is left in the game?”
Ref: “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
Soccer fans: “Couldn’t you just put it on the scoreboard.”
Ref: “Nah. All eyes on me, baby.”

This refusal to show the actual time remaining reminds me of that old Seinfeld joke about 🇨🇳 and 🥢:

I’ll tell you what I like about FIFA: They’re hanging in there with keeping time on the field, aren’t they? You know they’ve seen scoreboards with clocks. They’re staying with “You’ll know the game’s over when I say so.”

Maybe standup should work more like the World Cup: “That’s the official end of my set…but y’all didn’t seem to get my dating material so I’m gonna add on two minutes of penalty time to do an extra bit on Ozempic.”

And how about that Mexican team? Last night was a tough time to dine out in NYC…

“Why is our order taking so long?”
-White people when Mexico is playing in the World Cup

Meanwhile, Brazil’s game winner was scored by Gabriel Martinelli. Dude makes fire apple juice and now this? Impressive range.

While there’s no apple juice, they are letting players drink fluids mid-match now. It’s pretty fun that the hydration break is when the rest of us all get up to p*ss.

Meanwhile, our timelines are filled with foreigners who love Big Gulps, Costco, and American excess. But do we really need the World Cup to make us learn other countries are fun? How about we do “cultural exchange programs,” like they have in high schools, but it’s sending a few thousand folks from one country to another continent on the regular. Could heal the world.

Just be careful with those Vikings, though. The whole thing seems cute for nowwwwwww...

MLB Pride

⚾️ This is why I only put Quran verses on my MLB pride cap!

⚾️ If baseball bros gotta wear gay stuff for Pride month, then it’s only fair that we force gay men to dress up like bikers, sailors, cowboys, construction wor– Oh, wait a minute.

⚾️ Still one of the greatest sports quotes ever:

Behind the paywall

Up ahead: Caitlin Clark controversy strikes again, more on the fantastic Knicks, and political musings on the DSA’s wins and the reflecting pool.

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(Transcript below for those who prefer reading.)

The secret of the manosphere

I don’t think the manosphere is teaching these guys what they think it’s teaching them.

Like, it’s all about looksmaxxing and conspiracy theories and then they attract male followers so they can sell them crypto and supplements. And let’s break that down.

Looksmaxxing, that’s just chasing unobtainable beauty standards. Women have been doing that forever, alright?

Conspiracy theories, that’s just the belief that unseen powers control the universe. And that sounds a lot like astrology. You know who’s been believing that forever? Women.

Attracting male followers, guess who’s been doing that forever? Women.

Crypto and supplements, that sounds a lot like Avon and Tupperware parties. Welcome to multi-level marketing. You know who’s been doing that forever? You got it. Women.

So manosphere bros, I hate to break it to you. They’re not teaching you how to be men. The manosphere is teaching you how to be women.

If you really want to learn how to be an alpha male, start like, looking into feminism, y’know? Listen to Call Her Daddy. Read Lean In. Check out some Gloria Steinem. Listen to Destiny’s Child. They’ll teach you how to be a boss b*tch, which is pretty much an alpha male.

And all these guys who are trying to teach you how to be an alpha male, they’re just trying to pimp you out. Like, you’re the mark. They’re conning you.

It’s crazy times. The only alpha males left are feminists. What a world.

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Related:

…which is the richest county in the country per capita. So how did I afford it? By staying here:

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I ain’t saying they’re equally bad, but both sides are overflowing with crap. Let’s take a look…

🫏 LEFT BS: How can so many on the left justify the assassination of that United Healthcare CEO?

When you live life online, everything becomes a video game. That’s why so many screen addicts were able to justify Luigi gunning down someone’s dad in midtown (and so much else). Eventually, everyone who’s not you just becomes a NPC in an adventure game. It’s like how you can run over a hooker in Grand Theft Auto and it’s fine. Screens compress reality until everything just feels like pixels.

🐘 Right BS: Why do the elites hate MAGA so much?

Spokesman for the elites here! The thing is MAGA does not have an ideology, it is a cult of personality. That’s why it’s willing to violate its alleged “beliefs” whenever dear leader says so. See: foreign intervention (Venezuela & Iran), 2A (Alex Pretti), free speech (Jimmy Kimmel), government overreach (ICE), etc. Basically it’s for people who want to obey, not think. Also, elites are people who travel, read books, and create art. Those are pathways to empathy and compassion, things MAGA seems allergic to. If the people who do those things and feel those ways fervently disagree with you, maybe it’s time to ask yourself just why that is.

🫏 LEFT BS: Why does the left keep losing the culture war?

Dems could say this: “I love America. Men aren’t inherently toxic. Capitalism is a great system when it’s done fairly. And it’s good when people are religious.” Voila. Instant landslides. Take yes for an answer! But we. just. can’t. Instead, the left marinates in identity, grievance, and purity tests – a formula that yields Likes on social media but iffy-at-best results in any election that isn’t in safe blue territory. Grrrr. Dems always seem to forget the goal is to win swing states, not comment sections.

🐘 Right BS: Many who voted for 47 now say, “This isn’t what I voted for.” Should we forgive them?

First of all, it is what they voted for. They voted for a con man and they got conned. I can forgive them if they look in the mirror and examine how they got fooled. Who did they trust that they shouldn’t have? What media did they consume that they shouldn’t? How did they wind up purchasing a suitcase full of snake oil? Because plenty of us were out here shrieking about it constantly and they somehow managed to either not see us or completely ignore us. I’m like the Backstreet Boys: Tell me why! I need a reckoning with all that before I decide to let bygones be bygones.

🔌 No AI here. Just lil’ ol’ me. Hunting and pecking. Subscribe and share!

Below the paywall: 40+ observations on The Left's BS, The Right's BS, and America's BS. Plus: ambient payola, lawn-owner conservatism, protests vs. rallies, and more.

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Normally, I’m the kind of guy who likes to watch the game at home. I actually want to hear the announcers. I don’t want my view blocked out by a bunch of people ordering nachos.

This Knicks run was different though. I wanted to watch with a group. I wanted to share the positive vibes. I wanted to feel that tension of them falling behind seemingly every game (stress) and coming back in the fourth quarter (joy). It was as if the script for each game followed the hero’s journey. The 2026 NY Knicks: “We don’t wake up until it’s time to close.”

I wanted to high five strangers who were thinking the same thing: Is this really happening? I wanted to jump up and down and hug someone. At the final buzzer, I turned to my friend, hugged him, and said, “We are world f*cking champions! I’m gonna remember you and this night for the rest of my life.”

I’ve never seen NYC so connected. This wasn’t just another team, another run, another playoffs.

We were watching a healing.

This was the Bruce Springsteen concert of sports. “Come on up for the rising.”

During game two of the Finals, I was in a plant medicine ceremony. As soon as it ended, I told the shaman that I needed to find out the score of the Knicks game.

The shaman was amused and said something like, “It’s just sports, don’t worry about it.” I had to explain what was happening with this Knicks team, who they were, and how Jalen Brunson was a healer. I told the story of him being unappreciated and discounted his entire life (e.g. too short, not athletic enough, can’t be the best player on a championship team) and how hard he’s worked to overcome that. And how much he is a shaman too, bringing people together, healing past trauma, and building a container where progress and work could happen, where the past could be forgotten, and the present moment celebrated. This was more than a team. This was a circle where lost souls could come together, where men who were disappointments elsewhere – KAT’s too soft, Mikal wasn’t worth the picks, Mitch can’t make free throws, Shamet can’t play D – could come and achieve their highest level. In effect, the New York Knicks were a healing ceremony too.

Jalen Brunson was not only putting the team on his back every night, he was putting an entire city on his back. He was ending the pandemic. NYC was the center of the world again. The bliss was palpable everywhere you went.

In an ocean of doubt, this team instilled belief. The trauma of the past was purged. No more missed Charles Smith followups or Patrick Ewing off the back of the rim. Finally, it was our turn to be victors. It can happen to us.

Brunson provided the antidote to the loneliness epidemic/masculinity crisis. He was bringing an entire metropolis together around a common cause. And he was demonstrating what true masculine leadership looks like, how it involves not just looking out for oneself, but raising up others and enabling them to be the best version of themselves.

After my rant, the shaman looked at me and said, “Oh, I get it now.”

And that’s when I looked at the box score and found out the Knicks had won.

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Quickies

🎯 Software didn’t eat the world. Pro wrestling did.

🎯 I only get advice from finance bros. It’s called ChadGPT.

🎯 I wanna live with a Persian poet so I can say I have a Rumi roomie.

🎯 Centrist is too dry. In honor of Pride month, I’m gonna start referring to myself as politically vers.

🎯 I’m “guy who meditates” shaved head, not “guy who thinks Jan 6th was complicated” shaved head.

🎯 A lotta women who move to Bushwick come down with a case of rapid-onset bisexuality.

🎯 I’m always late and it’s definitely due to my ADHD and not because I’m an a**hole because that would make it my fault which is unacceptable.

🎯 We already got herstory so I think we need to start talking about sheography (i.e. maps which show all the places a man refused to ask for directions).

🎯 Anyone who talks into a mic for 15+ hours a week can’t be taken as a serious thinker. People who talk that much ain’t thinking.

🎯 By overindexing on optionality we destroyed commitment. We’re all hunt and no peck now.

🎯 These days, I frequently wind up thinking, “I’m not mad at this person for doing their grift, I’m upset with the fools who fall for it.”

🎯 They keep edging conspiracy bros with this UFO stuff.

🎯 The most exciting development of 2026 is the way these college kids boo any mention of AI.

🎯 The most oppressed minority is intelligent people. We’re being suffocated by morons constantly.

🎯 Zombies, sci fi, and horror rule TV and movies. Crazy since we are all walking zombies living inside a dystopian nightmare that is horrifying. I wish Hollywood would gimme a goddamn rom com so I can escape reality instead of doubling down on it!

🎯 Kinda funny how much the Tonys are hated by guys named Tony.

🎯 I am pro-unions because I see how effective the police one is. Amazon drivers can’t even get a bathroom break, yet cops get paid leave after shooting someone. If that ain’t an incentive for workers of the world to unite… 🤷‍♂️

🎯 Love an effective “not” statement:
”Dinner not island”
”Turkey but not for hair”
”Dot not feather”

🎯 My love language is shaking hands while saying, “My hands are wet but clean.”

🎯 I feel like the nerds have gotten enough revenge.

More Hoops

🏀 Big Knicks shoutouts to…

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In reality, the city is filled with joy and unity right now. On game nights, strangers are high fiving each other on the streets. Incredible positive energy. Yet social media would lead you to believe the whole town is a Worldstar orgy of violence.

Let that be a lesson for all of us re: reality vs. the algorithm. So often, IRL is fine yet these platforms want us to believe mayhem rules.

It’s 3%, not 30%

Reality doesn’t get clicks. So we have to inflate it. It’s something I refer to as the 3/30 rule.

You know the Pareto Principle (often called the 80/20 rule), right? It’s the observation that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes.

Well, the 3/30 rule is about how we keep parading outliers as if they’re the mainstream. (Call it The Ruby Rule if you like.)

It’s how we take things that are only 3% of our society and behave as if they’re 30%. (The numbers may vary, but you get it).

It’s not that these things don’t exist at all. It’s that we inflate them to an outsized role that doesn’t align with the facts on the ground. Are all Zionists monsters? Are all Muslims terrorists? You know the answer. Yet all we get online are absolutes.

The algorithm keeps elevating those on the fringe because we are more likely to engage with them. Whether we hate or fear them, we find them fascinating. Click. Click. Click.

When the thin slice becomes the story

Are trans women competing in women’s sports? I mean, once in a while. But on the regular? Nah. Does it deserve the bandwidth we give it? Of course not.

Is there fraud in Minnesota? Sure. Is every Somali person there crooked? Please.

It’s happening with disorders too. Sure, some people have brain chemistry issues. But let’s be real: It’s nowhere near as common as the internet would have us believe. Yet TikTok self-diagnosing and Big Pharma propaganda has us believing 30% of us are disordered.

Do some Dems wanna “defund the police” and murder health care execs in the streets? A tiny percentage but not whatever FOX News is claiming. Socialism? C’mon, even Elizabeth Warren is a capitalist. Are Joe Rogan fans all conspiracy kooks? Nah, the vast majority just like MMA or comedy.

The Libs of TikTok are easy to attack but they ain’t the mainstream of the left. Likewise, the Oath Keepers are abominable, but they don’t speak for the core of GOP voters.

The real danger is in how much we believe the hysterical hype:

Everything online must be inflated

It started innocently enough with “LOL.” Someone said something vaguely humorous and, although it didn’t make us smile, let alone guffaw, we began reporting that we were, in fact, laughing out loud.

Eventually that lie wasn’t enough so we upgraded to “ROTFL.” We were laughing so hard we were rolling on the floor!? Since compliments are like any other drug, we built up a tolerance. And that’s when we turned to the face with tears of joy emoji. What a hoot! I’m crying. 😂😂😂

Except we weren’t laughing at all.

Same with selfies. People started posting photos of themselves looking fine or slightly better than normal. Nonetheless, we told them they were “Gorgeous.” Eventually, that became “Queen!” And when that wasn’t enough, we started typing, “Goddess!!!”

We inflate everything so much that it’s become easy to forget reality. The timeline has hypnotized us.

We’re to blame too. The algorithm knows we’re obsessed with the fringes and bored with the mundanity of reality. And those who wield power know they can use these issues as misdirections. Trans bathrooms? That’s what a magician does when they’re trying to hide something else they’re doing.

Is [insert subject matter] based in reality? Sure, technically. But is it being wildly exaggerated in order to monetize and manipulate people? You bet.

Watch out for them tricking you into thinking the sliver is actually a chunk.

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Comedy

NYC: Mood Board returns to Gospel on Thursday, June 11. Promo code JOY20 gets you discounted tickets.

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5-spotted

🗯️ Yair Rosenberg: ‘The More I’m Around Young People, the More Panicked I Am’

Americans who are middle-aged or older tend to get their information from legacy media outlets, which, for all their flaws, normally have editorial processes that eschew explicitly racist material. Younger Americans, by contrast, are likely to trust and get their news from lightly moderated social-media platforms, which often advantage the extreme opinions, conspiracy theories, and conflict-stoking content that drive engagement. This bifurcation of information has consequences.

🗯️ Zadie Smith talks about how we often think of freedom as simply being able to do whatever we want, whenever we want.

There’s many other forms of freedom that are actually quite valuable. Much of life can feel like a performance, where you’re trying to fit in, impress, or meet expectations. Even close friendships sometimes have this performative aspect where you’re not fully yourself. So anywhere you can go where you’re not on stage, where you’re not having to keep up someone else’s idea of you, where you can just be yourself—that is freedom. For me, at least—that’s a form of being free that is really valuable to me.

🗯️ There’s an entire genre of media coverage best described as “rich guy has an opinion.”

It’s surprisingly common, and once you notice it you’ll see it everywhere: entire news stories dedicated to the otherwise unremarkable opinion of a rich person, or news stories that fold the opinions of rich people into their otherwise neutral coverage. It’s taken for granted in many newsrooms that a person’s wealth imbues their opinions with newsworthiness…It’s not just that elite opinions are bleeding into press coverage, it’s that they are being treated as news per se. It’s journalism consisting of quotes from rich guys.

🗯️ Jason Fried: You shouldn’t have to learn how to use a house.

You shouldn’t need a tech tour and an app (or five) to turn the heat down or clean the dishes. You shouldn’t have to worry that pressing the wrong button will set off a chain of events you don’t know how to undo. All these powerful processors and thousands of lines of code have succeeded in making everyday things slower, harder to use, and less reliable than they used to be.

🗯️ From the Therapist: “Happy wife, happy life.”

This common phrase, offered as marital advice, can lead to a profound sense of dissatisfaction. It suggests that in service of your wife’s happiness, your own needs are negligible. Of course, taking your partner’s happiness into account is both healthy and necessary in any marriage. But “happy wife, happy life” amounts to a costly bargain: Resentment is the price you eventually pay for abandoning yourself.

Thanks for reading. Go Knicks!

-Matt

Also, who among us hasn’t gotten hammered in Croatia and accidentally gotten a N*zi tattoo? Where I’m from, we call that a “whoopzi.”

East/West Meds

Whenever a Gen Z kid tells me about their meds, I make them tell me where they went to college too. That way it feels like that Key & Peele East/West Bowl sketch...

- Mounjaro Finasteride, Texas A&M
- Vyvanse Zepbound, LSU
- Xanax Wegovy, UCLA
- Generic Prozac, East Carolina University
- L’Wellbutrin Abilify, University of Miami
- Dan Smith, BYU

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Monstrous children’s

Time to reconsider Sesame Street in the light of today’s standards…

- The Cookie Monster is an addict who desperately needs Ozempic to curb him from his impulses.
- Oscar the Grouch has undiagnosed depression (and is chronically unhoused).
- Elmo always speaks in third person – classic malignant narcissist behavior.
- Bert/Ernie completely fail the Bechdel Test.
- The Count is definitely autistic.

And we’re just supposed to look the other way? Sorry, Jim Henson…you’re cancelled.

But I do give Kermit and Miss Piggy for being the original Unlikely Animal Friends™️.

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Working Methods

Recently at Working Methods, one of my other newsletters. It’s filled with creativity tips from art legends…

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Working Methods

Advice from legendary artists to kickstart your creative process. Curated by Matt Ruby.

By Matt Ruby

Quickies

🎯 A guy who gives out wired headphones to people with phones playing out loud in public would be a modern day Johnny Appleseed. #hero

🎯 Have we tried putting America in a bag of rice?

🎯 Now that I’ve seen the alternative, I would like to revise my views on gatekeepers. They were basically a slop firewall.

🎯 That’s it. You can no longer be “maxxing” anything. We have maxxmaxxed. It was a fun run, but the suffix must now be abandoned.

🎯 I’m a disruptor. I find around and f*ck out.

🎯 I feel like our entire economy is running on fake lips, gummies, crypto, ED pills, feet pics, prop bets, supplements, and AI. I’m betting that won’t end well (on Polymarket).

🎯 Mocktails are a great way to charge double for juice.

🎯 "Pope Leo Warns of Risks From A.I. in Encyclical." Impressive multitasking. I can barely even text when I'm on the encyclical.

🎯 Fair trade coffee, eh? Lemme hear it from the other guy. The victors write history so color me suspicious.

🎯 🎶 You put your right foot in, you take your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you shake it all about 🎶 Hey HOKEY POKEY, figure it out. I don’t have time for all this back and forth nonsense.

🎯 The Oklahoma City Thunder are the billionaires of basketball. They behave logically (via foul baiting, handsy defense, etc.) inside an ecosystem that refuses to constrain them. My point: Tax the rich and call more floppin’ fouls on the Thunder.

🎯 Was talking about a guy in the Epstein files and described him as “dinner not island,” which feels like the “dot not feather” of sex trafficking. Made me realize it’s helpful to have that kinda “creep not predator” framework. For example: “He was metoo’d, but it was an Aziz not Harvey thing.”

🎯 When you live with plants, one thing you realize is they don’t give a damn about you. The only thing that cares less is every cat ever.

🎯 Matchmakers are to pimps what pharmaceutical sales representatives are to drug dealers.

🎯 Did Heated Rivalry pass the Bechdel Test?

🎯 I get Botox, but know what else makes you pretty? Being able to express surprise.

🎯 Show some respect. Don’t ask adult friends to help you move. Start a GoFundMe to hire movers and tell them about it…like a grownup.

🎯 🎶 Hate to say I told you so
Alright
Come on
Do believe I told you so 🎶

⬇️

Wedding speech

I once officiated a wedding for my friends. This is what I said before pronouncing them man and wife.

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On Politics

📣 Rotten Tomatoes makes me realize why the founding fathers didn’t believe in direct democracy.

📣 It’s less red state vs. blue state, more red meat vs. blue hair.

📣 Judging from how much they pass my phone number around, Dem politicians must think I’m a real slut.

📣 Libertarians never get elected. But our economy now seems largely based on gambling (DraftKings), weed (dispensaries), p0rn (OnlyFans), and fringe speech (podcasters), so I feel like they already won.

📣 I feel like a big part of the problem is we call them “low-information voters.” I’ll bet if we went back to calling them idiots, a lot of them would pay more attention.

🔌 Share this post and get the word out. Every bit helps. Thanks.

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📣 Life is crazy. Now the way to stick it to the man would be to perform on SNL while piecing together a photo of the Pope.

📣 Josh Shapiro is to Barack Obama what Coldplay is to Radiohead.

📣 Extremely online political kooks should be called wacktivists.

📣 Maybe the founding fathers were doing a planned obsolescence thing with America and we just need to trade it in for the new model.

📣 The Republican party wants to bring back firing squads. The Democratic party IS one (i.e. circular).

📣 “How could we have known?” You were warned. Over and over…

• 1930s: 📕 Brave New World

• 1940s: 📕 Nineteen Eighty-Four

• 1950s: 📕 Fahrenheit 451

• 1960s: 📕 The Medium Is the Massage

• 1970s: 🎥 Network

• 1980s: 📕 Amusing Ourselves to Death

• 1990s: 📕 Infinite Jest

• 2000s: 🎥 Idiocracy

• 2010s: 📕 On Tyranny

• 2020s: 📰 The Rubesletter 😜

🔌 Support this newsletter by signing up for the paid plan. You’ll get bonus stuff, full archive access, and my appreciation.

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📣 Mark my words: Years from now, we will marvel at how much everyone in this administration is either drunk or on drugs and how little everyone clocked it at the time.

📣 TOP DEMOCRAT KINKS

• Town hall where Vietnam veteran yells at GOP Congressman

• Joe Rogan badmouthing Trump

• ICE agent slips on ice

📣 TOP REPUBLICAN KINKS

• Shackled in El Salvador

• “Quiet piggy!”

• Blonde woman wearing giant cross gaslights reporter

🚨 Ahead: The truth about the ballroom, Bill Maher’s staying put, the Iran war, the Epstein files, how Saturday Night Fever explains Trump/Epstein, the Supreme Leader, and much more.

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