ABL! Always be learning. Here are some new-to-me terms I’ve come across recently…

🔖 enshittification - how digital platforms become worse and worse

The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok:

Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

🔖 public solitude - the ability to behave like you're alone when you're in front of a room full of people staring at you (source)

Constantin Stanislavski in An Actor Prepares:

“In the circle of light on the state in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone... This is called solitude in public... During a performance, before an audience of thousands, you can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell... You can carry it wherever you go.”

🔖 specieist - prejudice or discrimination based on species (also: the term that split up Elon Musk and Larry Page)

Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit:

A.I. was the big topic of conversation when Mr. Musk and Mr. Page sat down…The tone that clear night soon turned contentious as the two debated whether artificial intelligence would ultimately elevate humanity or destroy it…[Page] described his vision of a digital utopia in a whisper. Humans would eventually merge with artificially intelligent machines, he said. One day there would be many kinds of intelligence competing for resources, and the best would win.

If that happens, Mr. Musk said, we’re doomed. The machines will destroy humanity.

With a rasp of frustration, Mr. Page insisted his utopia should be pursued. Finally he called Mr. Musk a “specieist,” a person who favors humans over the digital life-forms of the future.

That insult, Mr. Musk said later, was “the last straw.”

🔖 prosoché - the attitude and the practice of attention, also mindfulness

Great ideas are always floating past you.

There’s a Greek word that describes this attitude: prosoche. It’s the practice of observing your sensations, thoughts, and emotions and focusing your awareness on the present moment. The first step is developing this awareness, and the second step is capturing the ideas that you start to notice. Write it down. Whether it’s annotating as you read, taking notes on your phone on a midday walk, or recording a conversation with a friend, be prepared to capture your ideas. 

🔖 moralistic fallacy - assuming that an aspect of nature which has socially unpleasant consequences cannot exist.

Steven Pinker: What is the Naturalistic Fallacy vs. the Moralistic Fallacy?

The moralistic fallacy is that what is good is found in nature. It lies behind the bad science in nature-documentary voiceovers: lions are mercy-killers of the weak and sick, mice feel no pain when cats eat them, dung beetles recycle dung to benefit the ecosystem and so on. It also lies behind the romantic belief that humans cannot harbor desires to kill, r@pe, lie, or steal because that would be too depressing or reactionary.

🔖 chalked - graffiti made by vandals who lacked spray paint

The Return of the Big Lie: Anti-Semitism Is Winning:

In a Dallas suburb, teenagers told me, shrugging, about how their friends’ Jewish fraternities at Texas colleges have been “chalked.” I had to ask what “chalking” meant: anti-Semitic graffiti made by vandals who lacked spray paint. Synagogues are often chalked too. 

🔖 overharvesting - exploiting a natural resource until its supply is so diminished that its exploitation is no longer sustainable (in terms of media, the damaging that the investor class has done to the chain newspaper marketplace)

A journalism professor blames Wall Street for the newspaper industry’s collapse.

Overharvesting suggests that a news organization or newspaper chain exists solely to maximize shareholder profits or line private investment funds’ pockets rather than to keep citizens informed, and in the process of reaping the profits, the investment firms leave behind a barren wasteland. I certainly recognize that profit has been part of American newspapers as long as we’ve been a country, but profit in the name of democracy looks much different than profit made in spite of it.

🔖 gate lice - what airline employees call passengers who get in line before they’re called

Why do ‘gate lice’ line up early for a flight? Psychologists explain.

While gate agents will give clear, boarding group-specific directions, there remains a strong contingent of passengers who either get in line before they’re called or wait in their seats until they’re the last to board. While the latter type of traveler often hangs back to avoid standing in line altogether, the motives driving the former group can be harder to place.

Airline employees even have a nickname for these types of fliers: gate lice.

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Quickies

🎯 Kinda crazy that being a celeb now ain't enough - you gotta also run a vineyard, make skin cream, or sell some other iffy merch. Then: "Artists don't sell out!" Now: "Music is how I sell my $80 bottles of tequila."

🎯 "Show me a beautiful woman and I'll show you a man who's tired of sleeping with her." Well, that's how I feel about all these people born in America who complain about it constantly. I need these folks to travel more so they realize just how good we’ve got it here.

🎯 Gal I met tied a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue which is so hot because my kink is having my 🍆 tied in a knot. #soulmate

🎯 A big problem with dating content is women keep taking advice from other women and men keep taking advice from other men. The whole point is for us to complete each other. It's like no one out here's ever seen Jerry Maguire.

🎯 Fun game: Try explaining "love bombing" to any man over 60.

🎯 I shudder to think how many of these things I ate as a teen. We just didn't know. #labtotable

🎯 People used to just leave the babysitter at home with the kids. No cell phone. No nanny cams. Nothing. We just let these nannies run wild. They were probably drunk on power (or just drunk).

🎯 Social media gives us the same tribalist mindset jail gives prisoners. Twitter etc. are basically the prison yard: Better find your gang because it’s a jungle out there.

🎯 The pricing on Apple accessories is wild:

mattrubycomedy

A post shared by @mattrubycomedy

🎯 It's weird how much people who love the environment constantly try to deny the realities of human nature. Us destroying everything around because it fires serotonin in our brains couldn’t be more natural.

🎯 Network TV gave us nonstop sanitized happiness for decades and then we whipsawed to social media which gives us an infinite scroll of outrage p0rn. How about we get a little something in the middle?

🎯 So lemme get this straight: Everyone who is excited about AI feels that way because it will let them fire a bunch of people. But also, none of them actually want to consume anything that AI creates. Is that right? Sounds “great.”

🎯 Gotta admire the chutzpah of comedians, a bunch of narcissists incapable of healthy relationships, giving dating advice on podcasts sponsored by BetterHelp. What's next? A MasterClass on ethics from the Fyre Fest guy sponsored by SimpliSafe!?

🎯 “Go woke or go broke,” they say. But I’ve met a lotta not woke people and I can tell ya: It’s not exactly a glide path to caviar and Prada either.

🎯 "My grandparents had a satellite dish. They were the first ones, like, in 1961. It was like a Jewish one: it picked up problems from other families.”
-Richard Lewis (RIP)

Comedy

🃏 I post clips of my standup (and more) at Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and YouTube.

🃏 NYC: Catch my usual weekly shows at Comedy Cellar (HOT SOUP is every Tuesday at 10:30pm) and NY Comedy Club in East Village (GOOD EGGS is every Wednesday at 8pm).

🃏 I’m doing shows in Europe! Stay tuned for ticket info but here’s a look at where I’ll be...

• May 6 - Brussels 

• May 7 - Luxembourg

• May 8 - Leuven

• May 9 - Rotterdam.

• May 11 - Ghent

• May 12 - Utrecht 

• May 13 - Amsterdam

5-spotted

🗯️ On Boring Problems: Tim Kreider discovers a middle age pleasure.

In the course of encountering these tedious new problems, I’ve also discovered some tedious new pleasures—vices subtler and more sophisticated than the whip-its and handjobs of youth, appreciable only to the jaded tastes of middle age—like the decadent pleasure of cc’ing your lawyer. This turns out to be like casting a high-level spell in Dungeons & Dragons: suddenly people who have casually conned and bullied you for years start frantically scrambling to appease you, gibbering that your satisfaction and happiness is their only goal. The exultant, Conan-like feelings of conquest and domination this discovery engendered in me was like the boring grownup equivalent of a speedball.

🗯️ On the Reverse: Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado recently put on an exhibition that featured the backs of works of art.

This exhibition goes beyond the simple action of turning paintings around. Rather, the Museo del Prado is undertaking a complete reassessment of the backs of works in its collections while also identifying relevant examples in other major museums which reveal how appreciation of works of art is enhanced when we do more than just look at the front.

🗯️ Trump Is the Leading Man: It’s not that people love him as much as they hate the people who hate him.

Where did those of us who were supposed to represent the sensible center of the country go so wrong that people were willing to turn to a charlatan like Trump in the first place? I have endless theories, but here’s another one: We tried to change the way people are instead of meeting them where they are. Neocons (like me) tried to bend distant cultures in places like Afghanistan to accept certain Western values. Didn’t work. Progressives tried to push Americans to accept new values on issues like identity, equity, pronouns and so on. That isn’t working, either.

Trump represents a complete rejection of all that. For every American he scandalizes, another one feels seen, heard, reflected and understood by him.

🗯️ Are We Sunsetting @ss and Entering a Golden Age of B00bs? Discusses the reason(s) men love Sydney Sweeney over other starlets (beyond the obvious).

What about Jennifer Lawrence? Taylor Swift? Margot Robbie?” Of course, all of those women are beautiful and talented, but—and I can’t really explain this—it feels like they are here for the girls. Maybe that’s why I like them. Sydney feels like she’s here for the guys, and in a way that feels completely unironic. I don’t mean to say that “hot blondes have gone woke” or anything, but lately I have noticed that popular actresses are expected to couch their hotness and femininity in a blanket of irony—going on Jimmy Fallon and talking about how much you love donuts, theatrically falling over on the red carpet, posing in a magazine eating pizza out of a greasy box, claiming to not know what “who are you wearing” means and instead sarcastically replying “Uh…a dress?” Sydney Sweeney doesn’t seem like the type to do that stuff. I think for a lot of people, mostly men, that’s appealing.

🗯️ The spherical solution. Did orange peels lead to the Sydney Opera House?

Various myths surround the discovery of the so-called Spherical Solution, the unified answer to the problems of buildable shells. The iconic sculptural form of the Sydney Opera House essentially relies on the form of these shells, so the importance of finding the best solution to the roof cannot be underestimated.

As one of the more popular myths has it, Utzon had a eureka moment while peeling an orange. While it’s true that the solution can be demonstrated in this way, it had in fact been architect Eero Saarinen who, over breakfast one morning years earlier, cut into a grapefruit to describe the thin shell structure of the roof of his TWA Building, and later used an orange to explain the shape of the shells to others.

Thanks

Enjoyed this? Have feedback? Hit reply. I dig humanity. You and me, baby. It’s the only shot we’ve got against the machines.

Rage on,
Matt