They’re doing construction on my building. I’m on the top floor. And what I’m realizing is how much scaffolding is like death: It starts off in the distance. You hear just a faint rumble. But slowly, it grows closer and closer, until the ruckus of pipes clanging and boards clunking becomes inescapable. Then, one morning, it reaches you and you wake up and see a mustachioed man in a white hardhat, right there at eye level, outside your window. The light diminishes and that is how you know: It is time. Alas, it’s the only way for the construction of the new. 

Maybe I’m thinking morbid thoughts because the bug finally caught yer boi…

…so now I’m in…

Isolation Joy Division

…Nothing too rough, thankfully. Btw, have we considered Covid just really likes to celebrate the holidays? Because this timing is getting uncanny. Anyway, let’s go RapidFire™️ for this edition of the Rubesletter…

At least it’s playoff time so I’m watching a lot of 🏀🏀🏀. Charles Barkley is somehow starring in 1/2 the commercials, they’re artificially inserting creepy corporate logos all over the court, and Kyrie is must-see-TV flipping Celtics’ fan the bird, “boo hoo” wiping his eyes, and threading crazy passes between defenders like this one…

NBA TV @NBATV

What a pass by Kyrie 😳

April 17th 2022

112 Retweets781 Likes

…Thankfully, I’ve still got my taste/smell. I’ve been cooking, but I’m def not making this vegan cacio e pepe recipe the NYT is pimping (“but mama, it’s Sicilian nutritional yeast”)…

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

This @NYTCooking recipe will get you deported from Italy 🤣

April 19th 2022

…Also, catching up on my celeb news:

Spray tanner: "How tan should we make you?"
Kim: "I want my skin color to match the bags under my boyfriend's eyes."
Spray tanner: "Got it."
👇

…and I’ve also been reading about the whole “um, well, what if we say pretty please?” RTO employer conundrum. This is an amazing paragraph in how it somehow manages to keep escalating in offensiveness! 😂

Clions! Desks moved closer to windows so employees can glimpse a sliver of nature! Foosball table workstations! So you can have meetings while playing foosball! And the kicker: Quote is sourced to the “vice president of people.” Yup, that all def feels “more like home.”

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I read a poem that reminded me of a classic Mitch Hedberg joke…

So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that's funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn't funny.

…here’s the poem:

…Still, you should try hard to write stuff down. Just remember, no matter how much you build up a good name, they’ll still mess it up down the road:

Standup: I’ll be in New Orleans at Comedy House NOLA on May 27 and in Chicago at Lincoln Lodge on June 16. Here’s a clip of me talking about how I’m at a strange age…

mattrubycomedy

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@mattrubycomedy)

This weekend, I went ahead and redesigned my MattRubyComedy.com site because, well, what else was I gonna do?

Not exactly web3, but it’ll do. Speaking of…

Vooza @voozahq

psst. web3 is complete bullsh*t. so is the metaverse. tech innovations don't come top-down from people using umbrellafied names, they bubble up from the trenches/get named AFTER they succeed. all this "buzz" is just classic PR/VC/hustle-porn misdirection designed to milk naifs.

April 14th 2022

3 Likes

Or as Scott Galloway put it: “All the same crypto-web3-decentralized BS that has resulted in few real products or services, but has secured billions of dollars for VCs and (other) grifters.”

“Do you think the algorithm likes me?”
-All of us, constantly

Speaking of, it’s wack how we view the algorithm as something that mysteriously happens to us when it's actually the result of a series of intentional decisions made by a platform's executives. It’s a smokescreen. We’re not trying to please “the algorithm,” we’re trying to please Zuckerberg.

I ride the subway late at night. And it’s got me realizing it was a lot easier to hate on cops when we were all locked down. Talked about that here:

mattrubycomedy

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@mattrubycomedy)

In NYC? Starting on 4/27, I’ll be filming “Substance,” a series of performances on Wednesdays at the GOOD EGGS show at NY Comedy Club (East Village). Every Wednesday for a month, I’ll perform under the influence of a different substance. Things should get, um, intriguing. $5 tickets available here with the code SCRAMBLED.

Quickies

🟥 It feels pretty passive aggressive whenever someone tells me about the importance of passive income.

🟥 Studying history teaches you that people never learn from history.

🟥 The term "enthusiastic consent" was clearly coined by a non-married person. "Consent? Sure. Enthusiastic? Ah, those were the days."

🟥 Can’t believe we rely this much on oil pipelines, which sound like the idea of a third grader:
“We’ll dig underground and put a huge pipe there and send all the oil from here to waaaaay over there!”
“Or we could just use solar panels.”
“No, pipes in the ground! And then we’ll build a pole that goes all the way to the sky and slide down it!”

🟥 "Stop blaming me. I didn't make you do anything. You're awful all on your own. Own it and leave me out of it! I'm busy trying to make some deals over here."
-The devil, probably

mattrubycomedy

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@mattrubycomedy)

5-spotted

🗯 Warren Buffett on “the orangutan effect” and how teaching/writing helps you clarify your own thinking.

Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.

Another good Buffett bit: “Seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money.”

🗯 Great paragraph from Matt Taibbi on why Twitter sucks and how journalists “no longer see themselves as outsiders who challenge official pieties, but rather as people who live inside the rope-lines and defend those pieties.”

The current version of Twitter is the professional journalist’s idea of Utopia: a place where Donald Trump doesn’t exist, everyone with unorthodox thoughts is warning-labeled (“age-restricted” content is seems to be a popular recent scam), and the Current Thing is constantly hyped to the moronic max. The site used to be fun, funny, and a great tool for exchanging information. Now it feels like what the world would be if the eight most vile people in Brooklyn were put in charge of all human life, a giant, hyper-pretentious Thought-Starbucks.

🗯 The millennial/zoomer understanding of mental health is completely destroying people's lives.

I have met and helped and treated numerous individuals now who are my peers in age - anything from 18-early 30s. And so many have internalized a generational "understanding" of mental illness that is toxic and worthless beyond condemnation. Our youngest generations' understanding of mental health enables, encourages, and at worst glorifies mental illness. I can not understate the number of times I've met a young woman who has made being mentally ill, and polysexual, and queer, and autistic, et cetera, their identity.

Accountability is absent to the nth degree. But more importantly, a lack of any accountability has deprived these people of personal empowerment and agency. Mental illness is no longer something to recover from and fight against. It is an identity and a definition of life itself… 

They fail to understand that suffering itself is not a rare condition, but a universal one, and that attempting to represent theirs as deeper because it supposedly stems from very uncommon conditions will do nothing to make them feel better. And that is the point, always, with mental illness, not to publicize it or revel in it or derive identity from it but to manage it, to reduce pain and instability.

🗯 Margaret Atwood gives her own twist to the ol’ equation of Tragedy + Time = Comedy.

“[Everyone] ‘writes’ in a way; that is, each person has a ‘story’—a personal narrative—which is constantly being replayed, revised, taken apart and put together again. The significant points in this narrative change as a person ages—what may have been tragedy at 20 is seen as comedy or nostalgia at 40.”

🗯 The Imperfectionist on the “reverse golden rule.”

The philosopher Iddo Landau brings this all into focus with what he calls the "reversed golden rule": don't treat yourself in ways you wouldn't treat others. This seems to me an admirably down-to-earth, schmaltz-free sort of principle. It's not about convincing yourself you're special or unique. It's just a matter of extending to yourself the same decency you already show everyone else.

Thanks for reading.

-Matt