5 comedy videos I’ve posted recently:

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5 quotes I’ve spotted recently:

🗯️ Ted Gioia on Anthony Bourdain: “He worked inside the system, but the system never owned him.”

I can’t imagine a more ideal ambassador. One who listens more than he talks. One who has such strong core values—but never lets that prevent him from learning and expanding his horizons.

He worked inside the system, but the system never owned him. It hardly seemed to touch him. So Bourdain always came across as more real, more honest, more trustworthy than other media stars.

Every time I saw him, I asked myself: How can I learn from this? I’m still trying to do that.

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🗯️ Frank Ostaseski summarized the insights he’s learned from the dying as “five invitations to be present.”

1) Don’t wait. 2) Welcome everything, push away nothing. 3) Bring your whole self to the experience. 4) Find a place of rest in the middle of things. 5) Cultivate don’t-know mind. For 2), Ostaseski quoted James Baldwin: “Not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.” 

🗯️ Grief can be a powerful mind-altering substance.

In the darkest of my days, I felt like I was on a low dose of LSD at all times — time was weird, my vision was odd, I threw up for no reason, my emotions were out of control. Even eating was an intellectual exercise (chew, chew … swallow? Is that what you do next?). I generally felt like I was tripping.

🗯️ In venture capital, you are what you fund.

Andreessen and Horowitz understand this, even embody it. But they aren’t just funding the issues they discuss on their podcast; they are funding Trump and Vance. That means those donations are anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and possibly even anti-democracy because that is what the Trump / Vance ticket stands for. These are not subsidiary issues: these are now what two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures now stand for, too. 

🗯️ Billy Joel on meeting Axl Rose:

Joel said he first met Rose years ago in Los Angeles at a club on the Sunset Strip, where the tattooed hard-rock lifer quizzed him about his catalog. “He was dying to talk to me,” Joel said, raising his eyebrows to underscore his surprise. While Rose was inquiring about Joel’s hard-luck tune “Captain Jack,” a lineup of women awaited Rose’s attention. “They’re leaning over in front of him, like displaying their goods,” Joel remembered. “And I’m like, why are you talking to me?”

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That’s it. Enjoy your weekend!

-Matt

P.S. As you may have noticed, I’m messing around with the frequency of the Rubesletter. Basically, I’m trying out sending shorter emails more frequently instead of one big email per week. Feels easier to digest. Lemme know what ya think.