It’s the most basic life advice there is: Don’t sh*t where you eat. In fact, some caveman probably said it first.

And yet…

Thanks to recent technological “advancements,” we keep swimming in our own stink.

See:

Black sludge

”Go ahead, use sewage as farmland fertilizer,” said the federal government. It’s rich in nutrients! It’ll keep sludge out of landfills! What could go wrong?

Well, guess what? Turns out something called “black sludge” ain’t great for humans (or animals).

A growing body of research shows that this black sludge, made from the sewage that flows from homes and factories, can contain heavy concentrations of chemicals thought to increase the risk of certain types of cancer and to cause birth defects and developmental delays in children…In some cases the chemicals are suspected of sickening or killing livestock and are turning up in produce. Farmers are beginning to fear for their own health.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Glad that’s not me.” Eh, keep in mind this same sludge is also found in everyday items like microwave popcorn bags, nonstick pans, and stain-resistant carpets. [Slowly puts down popcorn.]

Of course, science is hard. How could they have known?

Um, perhaps the literal smell of death should have been a bit of a 🚩.

A farmer had applied the sludge to his fields, and two neighboring ranchers lodged a complaint about the smell. [Dana Ames, an environmental crimes investigator,] drove out to investigate.

“I rolled down the window and I literally almost projectile vomited in my vehicle,” she said. “I’m accustomed to smelling death. This was worse than death.”

Don’t sh*t where you eat.

Meanwhile…

Roll over, Beethoven

A Reddit poster recently shared the Google search results for Beethoven. Here’s what Google thinks Beethoven looks like:

The weird thing here: Actual portraits of Beethoven exist. So why are we seeing this AI-generated garbage?

Because we keep training AI with AI slop. Garbage in, garbage out.

Ted Gioia wrote about this AI pollution and the “tech mindset that prefers zonked-out fakery over historical accuracy.”

As AI images like this spread over the Internet, they will inevitably get used to train the next generation of bots. This creates a race to the bottom.

Studies show the dangers of training AI with AI inputs. The results get worse and worse. But how can you prevent it when AI content is everywhere, and almost never disclosed as such?

Those huge AI companies have caused this by making the most boneheaded mistake of them all. As any ranch hand can tell you, you don’t dump your waste products into your drinking water.

But that’s exactly what’s happening with AI contamination in the culture—the degraded outputs become inputs for the next round of bot technology.

It’s not hard to understand the risks. We’re feeding our robots with garbage, so don’t expect them to regurgitate it as a gourmet meal.

In fact, AI is out here telling us to put glue on pizza. And when we point out that’s a bad idea, tech companies give us a bunch of whoopsies and insist these are mere “hallucinations.”

And that is where I draw the line. Dear tech overlords: Stop perverting the term “hallucinating.” Through drug hallucinations, I’ve discovered profound truths and seen the interconnectedness of the universe. But you know what’s never occurred to me while hallucinating? To put glue on goddamn pizza.

I get it. These companies need more data for their language models. Fine. But going out and ingesting every Reddit comment ever and then spitting it back in our faces with some fine print “buyer beware” caveat is just leading us deeper into dreck. It’s the digital equivalent of using sewage as fertilizer.

Don’t sh*t where you eat.

Slop and enshittification

We’re all smelling it too.

Ryan Broderick recently wrote "The Age Of Slop," detailing how there is worthless content, generated in bulk by machines, everywhere we look:

We’re the little piggies and it’s the gruel in the trough…It not only feels worthless and ubiquitous, it also feels optimized to be so…Slop is only slop when you remember what real food looks like and the anxiety we’re all feeling right now is that if our slop era lasts any longer we won’t anymore.

Oink, oink.

But hey, whatever it takes to please “Aunty Algo.” 🤮🐽

Cory Doctorow has gone viral by explaining how ‘enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything.

We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralising. It’s even terrifying…The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botsh*t, crap gadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand names and cryptocurrency scams.

It seems clear. We’re increasingly surrounded by botsh*t.

And that begs the question: If there are piles of 💩 everywhere, where the hell are we supposed to eat?

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Comedy

🃏 Get jokes on my social media: Instagram – TikTok – Threads – X – Substack Notes.

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🃏 Watch my standup at YouTube. I post new Shorts there on the regular and got a new special coming soon. Here’s a clip about food fashion:

🃏 New NYC show alert: GOOD EGGS is going uptown! It’ll be every Monday night at 7:30pm at the new NY Comedy Club on the Upper West Side. My other weekly shows: HOT SOUP at Comedy Cellar and GOOD EGGS (WED) at NY Comedy Club (East Village).

Quickies

🎯 Why do they call it crypto? ‘Cuz if you’re trying to attract a woman, talking about it is like kryptonite.

🎯 Stoicism is the caveman diet but for ideas.

🎯 Bratty thoughts:

• Kamala Harris is not BRAT.

• Charlie XCX is not BRAT.

• Only Liam Gallagher is BRAT.

🎯 Re: Liam and Noel…

🎯 Silver lining: Low information voters in swing states will totally be on the front lines if there’s a civil war. Darwin effect in action.

🎯 Can’t believe this Tenet payola story! Also: I think what China is doing is super cool. They should be able to control Taiwan. And communism rocks. General Tso should get statues in America too. Brilliant military/spice strategist! 🇨🇳 (Xi: my venmo is @rubymatt)

🎯 Society has lost “Rated R” as a category. Everything now is either G or XXX. You can get Disney/TikTok clean or OnlyFans/hardcore filth, but almost nothing in between. We don’t make things for grownups anymore. It’s all for children or freaks.

🎯 My problem's no longer with Caitlin Clark's opponents. It is with her teammates who think complaining is enough of a reaction in response to Clark getting roughed up repeatedly. Ask any teammate of Gretzky or MJ what's supposed to happen when your meal ticket gets walloped.

🎯 The tolerant people have never been so intolerant before.

🎯 Tech unbundled everything, including our democracy.

🎯 My message to women who complain they can't find a man: Just pretend you're a fan of Joe Rogan.

🎯 Can’t believe people need a book to teach them how to not give a f*ck.

🎯 We used to have water cooler conversations. Now, we all just carry around our own lil' water coolers. It’s a metaphor for so much of what’s happened to our society.

🎯 I've never seen a female magician. But I have seen a woman pull more things out of a purse than I ever could have believed possible, so maybe I have?

🎯 We rarely talk about one of the most effective cures for depression: repression. Sure, you'll wind up with back pain or some other manifestation of bottled up rage. But at least you got to kick the can down the road for a little while. It’s like a psychological snooze button!

🎯 I really appreciate it when athletes are open about their mental health struggles. And yet, every time I hear one go public about something like that, my first thought is “I really hope they don’t get traded to Philadelphia.”

🎯 One of the main features of non-boat activities is the ability to go home any time you want.

🎯 No one gets away with fat shaming more than cardiologists.

🎯 The "mainstream media" is the boogeyman for faux intellectuals.

🎯 Unpopular take: It's fine to post nothing about Israel/Gaza. Not everything needs to be performative. Grief, outrage, heartbreak, etc. It's okay to keep it offline.

🎯 I never feel lonelier than when someone tries to discuss the weather with me. All I can see is how little they think of us as a conversational duo. C'mon, man, we can do better. BELIEVE IN US!

🎯 Inflatable swans don't get enough credit for how much they've done for influencers.

Podcast

Listen to Kind of a Lot with Matt Ruby:

Kind of a Lot with Matt Ruby Stereoactive Media 37 episodes

Here’s a clip from the latest ep:

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5-spotted

🗯️ Choose. Irvine Welsh in Trainspotting:

Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

🗯️ Douglas Rushkoff: “People don’t listen to facts, anyway.”

They find the facts they need to fit their story, whether or not the facts are contextual or even true. Saving ourselves and each other is not a matter of convincing anyone of anything. What we need to offer each other manifests less like words than an embrace. It happens in real life, and through artistic or spiritual interventions that bring us together in pre-cognitive ways — before our belief systems mangle the essential transmission.

🗯️ John Krasinski, after seeing a film, told Paul Thomas Anderson, “It’s not a good movie.” The “Phantom Thread” director chastised him.

“He so sweetly took me aside and said very quietly, ‘Don’t say that. Don’t say that it’s not a good movie. If it wasn’t for you, that’s fine, but in our business, we’ve all got to support each other,'” Krasinski said. “The movie was very artsy, and he said, ‘You’ve got to support the big swing. If you put it out there that the movie’s not good, they won’t let us make more movies like that.'”

🗯️ Why Mireille Silcoff paid her daughter to read a book.

It wasn’t about optimizing her brain function but about being privy to a certain subtle magic. You know when an author sums up a feeling you didn’t even know you’ve had, and a hundred lightbulbs go off on the top of your head in a kind of epiphany? I wanted her to have a chance at feeling that. As Neil Postman wrote in 1982 in “The Disappearance of Childhood,” a screen-based medium like TV or video can’t create this kind of relationship because, by its nature, the medium must fill in all the blanks for you. Books leave space for blanks — and for the internal invention they can inspire.

🗯️ Tyler Cowen: The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations.

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous. This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life."

Thanks for reading. Share it if ya cared for it. ✌️

-Matt