Putting chicken in boiling water makes chicken soup. So isn't coffee really just roasted bean soup?

No, I’m not stoned. I’ve just got soup on my mind.

It’s because of this: “Climate Activists Throw Soup on Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ to Protest Fossil Fuels.”

C’mon. If these activist kids knew anything about art they woulda thrown soup at an Andy Warhol. I mean, the dude did soup art.

Or they could have thrown it at a Jackson Pollack. No one would have been able to tell the difference at first. They woulda just bloviated, “It’s as if you can sense the passion in every drip…(sniffs) wait, is that mulligatawny?”

Btw, I love the word bloviate. Definition: To talk in an inflated way (acc to Apple’s dictionary) or to speak/write verbosely and windily (acc to Merriam-Webster)…

…I like how it means inflated/windily and “bloviate” actually sounds like what you do when you blow up a balloon – except the balloon is merely your own ego. 🎈

Anyway, my big complaint with these soup tossers is the target. Don't throw minestrone on a Van Gogh; throw it on the CEO of Goldman Sachs when he's doing one of his dumb DJ gigs.

Speaking of scary DJs, did ya see this pic of the North Korean dictator rocking a Tulum-esque fit?

OK, I added in the turntables. But only ‘cuz he looks like he’s ready to take the 1am shift at Mayan Warrior: “Right after Blondish, it’s DJ Kim Jong Spun.”

Bottom line on Soupgate: Don't hate these kids throwing tomato soup at “Sunflowers,” hate the tons of social media accounts that reposted the video on their feeds to garner Likes/Follows thus proving “dumb and provocative” is an effective strategy nowadays since social media is built on the monetization of rage and it’s better to surf a slipstream of hate than it is to be polite and ignored.

It’s the most painful part about this, Kanye, Trump, etc.: Given the parameters of modern media, they’re actually doing the right thing. Saying stuff people hate is wise because, in an attention economy, “they’re talking about what a jerk I am” still registers as a victory.

Quickies

🎯 American government is legacy software that can’t be updated. We all keep tracking the bugs but no one's able to upload any fixes.

🎯 Call me old fashioned but I'm whiskey and sugar with bitters and an orange slice.

🎯 Your body is a temple? Well, my body is a synagogue – it's elderly, filled with complaints, and no one wants to be there.

🎯 Maybe rom coms are unpopular now because there’s no way to reconcile “seduction” with “enthusiastic consent.” He pursued her for months? Gulp. Nowadays, we need both parties to sign a consent agreement upfront or else it's a form of trauma.

🎯 Stop putting "Silicon" in front of things. "Silicon Gulch" or "Silicon Volcano" or whatever doesn't make me think you live somewhere that's a new hotbed for startups. It just makes me think you're desperate for ANY business to open up there.

🎯 Never seen as much backstabbing/gossiping as what goes down in the "wellness" space and the psychedelic "community." Woo woo koo koos acting spiritual on the surface yet behaving like Real Housewives in the group chat.

🎯 The secret recipe to (most) wealth: Be good at business stuff and have a loose moral compass.

🎯 I’m convinced comedians are gonna start hiring hecklers and other sorta sh*t-stirrers as audience plants just for the vid content..."Is this your tour manager?" "No, he yells out racial slurs and then I dunk on him. It's my big closer."

🎯 This "celebs being jerks at restos" convo is reminding me that when I lived in Chicago Scottie Pippen was famous for stiffing servers to the point where people around town knew him as "No Tippin' Pippen."

🎯 The most surprising thing about Herschel Walker is that his IQ is most likely completely normal for a US Senator – and they've never even been concussed.

🎯 We want extraordinary results but rarely recognize the actual level of effort required to get 'em. Ex: Everyone wants to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Watch docs about him and you learn he CONSTANTLY had a guitar in his hands. Always playing, riffing, exploring. Same thing with Steph Curry and shooting hoops. The real q: Are you willing to devote your life to it?

🎯 Man, / really ate ÷'s lunch.

🎯 You should only be allowed to call a joke offensive if you can first prove you’re funny. You shouldn’t be able to give out speeding tickets if you can’t even drive.

🎯 He knows when you’ve been sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been good or bad. He’s surveillance capitalism!

🎯 I don’t like drones, robot dogs, cookies, VR goggles, or the Metaverse. Stop pretending like any of this is good for us. I just want three channels, real puppies, and democracy.

Comedy

😈 NYC tonight (Oct 18): Misguided Meditation. $5 off with code “guru” here. Featuring comedy, visuals, music, and more.

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

Tue Oct 18 @ @caveatnyc Misguided Meditation with Matt Ruby Feat. special appearance by Lonnie Dama, Business Shaman 👇 $5 off with code "guru" here: bit.ly/tixcaveat

5:07 PM ∙ Oct 15, 2022

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😈 Albany this week:

Vooza @voozahq

Albany. Come fly* with me at @overit. * Q&A Details: bit.ly/3EOQ7QX

4:54 PM ∙ Oct 18, 2022

Invite me to perform (and/or do Q&A) at your conference, venue, etc. Just hit reply or email me.

😈 Recent posts at Funny How, where I post about the craft of standup:

😈 I post brief comedy clips regularly on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Check ‘em out.

5-spotted

🗯 Robert A. Heinlein on what humans should know/do.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

🗯 “We've been living in the metaverse for 15 years. We live in a technology-mediated reality. There are no facts. Narrative is the only thing that matters,“ according to a ghostwriter for hotshot VC’s [paywalled]. Here, he explains how to get a million followers:

There are a couple of different pieces of advice I might give to them. There is something that happens every week that becomes "the current thing," as Marc Andreessen called it. You need to have a take on that thing — and a take on the takes. You need to be reasonably contrarian and also be Straussian about it; encode your meaning in a set of memes that people already understand. You should never say what you actually want to say. Instead, you should make hints and oblique references. Think of it as Playboy, as opposed to porn. You want to leave some work for your readers to do. It can get repetitive, at times. Read the timeline for long enough and you'll start to realize that most of this is just cribbing other people's jokes.

🗯 Nick Gillespie offers a nuanced view on Vanderbilt Medical Center temporarily pausing gender-transition surgery for minors.

It’s one more sign that passions are cooling and rational discussion of costs and benefits are starting to matter, if not necessarily prevail. I’m not unequivocally against gender-reassignment surgery for minors, pending the fully informed participation and approval of parents or guardians. But I’m troubled by the way in which dissent and discussion of sexual identity has been anathematized by trans activists who equate any and all reservations with phobia and hate. We should also be troubled by the way in which parents’ role in raising their children continues to be chipped away by a growing number of experts, activists, and agencies, all of whom purport to know kids better than the very people who gave them life in the first place. 

🗯 What if the cure for our current mental health crisis is not more mental health care?

I am not arguing that mental illnesses are fake, or somehow nonbiological. Pointing out the medicalization of social and political problems does not mean denying that such problems produce real biological conditions; it means asking serious questions about what is causing those conditions. If someone is driving through a crowd, running people over, the smart move is not to declare an epidemic of people suffering from Got Run Over by a Car Syndrome and go searching for the underlying biological mechanism that must be causing it. You have to treat the very real suffering that is happening in the bodies of the people affected, obviously, but the key point is this: You’re going to have to stop the guy running over people with the car.

🗯 Bruce Lee on flowing:

Until next time. 🥣➡️🖼

-Matt

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