Marc Puyol Iniesta

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Matthew McConaughey was paid less than $200,000 for the role that won him an Oscar. A year earlier, he'd turned down $14.5 million to keep playing the same charming guy in the same kind of movie. He walked away from that money on purpose.

For most of the 2000s, he was the actor you hired when you needed a handsome man to chase a woman around a beach for ninety minutes. The romantic comedies were the only films of his that reliably made money, so they were the only scripts coming in. Movies like The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, each one clearing $100 million. He was a safe bet, and he was bored out of his mind.

So in 2010 he told his agent he was finished. No more rom-coms. He went home to his ranch in Texas and waited.

Then the offers started climbing. An action comedy came in at $8 million. He passed. They raised it to $10 million, then $12 million, then $14.5 million for the same script with funnier jokes. He read that one twice and still said no. After that, the phone went quiet for almost two years. He stayed on the ranch and waited it out.

The part that finally pulled him back was a real man named Ron Woodroof, a Texas electrician who was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and told he had a month to live. The film, Dallas Buyers Club, was dirt poor. Its entire makeup budget was $250. The makeup artist couldn't afford fake skin, so she drove to her mother's house, grabbed grits and cornmeal, and used them to paint rashes onto healthy actors to make them look like they were dying. She later won an Oscar for that work.

McConaughey lost 47 pounds for the role, dropping from 183 down to 136. He was paid under $200,000. He'd just said no to $14.5 million, and now he was taking home less than two cents for every one of those dollars. The whole movie cost $5 million to make. It went on to earn $55 million and win three Academy Awards, with Best Actor going to him in early 2014.

The math only works if you look at what came next. That small, brutal role changed what every director in town thought he could do. The same year he won the Oscar, he was the lead in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, a space movie that earned $746 million. His five highest-grossing films have now pulled in around $2.3 billion between them, and almost none of them are the kind of movie that made him famous.

He gave up $14.5 million to earn $200,000. That trade bought him a career he could never have paid for.

[Jack @Jackkk]

Matthew McConaughey reveals the three words his dad said that changed his life

“I said dad, I don't want to go to law school anymore. I want to go to film school and after about a 5 second pause, he goes, ‘Are you sure that's what you want to do?’ I reply yes sir”

“Another long pause. Then I hear, ‘Well, don't halfass it’”

“I remember just beaming, hopping up just like Yes! My dad not only said okay. The way he said don't halfass it, it was also, okay. Let's go big boy. Own that shit. Get some leverage. Get some horsepower behind where you're going. Go do it”

“I remember to this day and I've learned this later I think from becoming a father, part of what I believe happened to him and why he said that to me that way on that call was the way that I asked him. I wasn't really asking. It was, ‘I don't want to go to law school, Dad. I want to go to film school.’ I didn't stutter. He heard his son saying this is what I want to do”

“What I think happened to him in that moment is what I think any father, any parent loves. You raise your kids in a certain way and you give them a guideline, a ladder to climb and here's the guidelines and if you do it this way, you're most likely going to have some success in life and it'll work out for you and then when we do it that way, we can be proud parents”

“But what do we really want to happen when our kids are out of the house and they're on their own? We kind of want them to call one day and go, ‘I'm breaking out. I'm going my own way.’ And as a parent, we go, as much as it may scare us, we're going, ‘Yes!’ I gave my kid the confidence and the courage and the foundation to say they're going to go their own way”

“In a way, I think every parent honors and loves that moment. I heard my dad, when he didn't hear me stutter, when he heard me directly say what I said. I wasn't really asking him. Even though I was out of respect asking him, the way I said it, I wasn't asking him and I think he felt that”

“Don't halfass it”

[Jack @Jackkk]

Matthew McConaughey reveals how turning down a $14,500,000 movie offer changed his career

“This offer comes in for this action comedy. $8M offer. I read it and said no thank you that's the stuff I'm not doing... they come back with a $14.5M offer. I said let me read that again”

“I'd read it again. It's the same words that were in the $8M offer that I said no to but it was better written, it was funnier, I could see myself in it. I could make this work”

“Anyway, I ultimately said no. I don't have any proof of it but I think that me saying no to that $14.5M offer, a year into me leaving and saying no more romcoms, I think me doing that sent the message to Hollywood”

“Oh, McConaughey is not bluffing. What’s he up to? He’s turned down $14.5M. Oh, he’s not for rent. Oh, maybe a little more attractive”

“20 months after I stepped out. All of a sudden those offers came in and I was off and I grabbed a hold of all of them I could and loved doing them”

“Would those have come if I'd have never stepped out? No, they wouldn't have”

[joan tubau @joantubau]

Kapital con Jorge Soley. Un podcast sobre la figura del filósofo conservador Roger Scruton, que buscó la belleza en el mundo para dar un sentido a su vida. La caza del zorro, los pueblos blancos, el Krugerrand de Teseu y muchas otras cosas bellas https://t.co/eqiAblPYyD

[joan tubau @joantubau]

Kapital con @chepauet. Viajar solo, ir al cine solo, comer un menú de mediodía solo. Mucha gente no lo hace porque le da vergüenza o no está cómoda mentalmente, pero algunos momentos de soledad son imprescindibles para descubrir quién de verdad eres https://t.co/RZZb810lmC

[joan tubau @joantubau]

A pesar de todo, el alma perdura. En pequeños negocios, en pequeños proyectos, en pequeños países. Así se salva el mundo, así empieza la reconstrucción

[Naval @naval]

New podcast on AI (full episode). Links below.

A Motorcycle for the Mind

0:00 If you want to learn, do

2:13 Vibe coding is the new product management

6:49 Training models is the new coding

10:13 Is traditional software engineering dead?

13:07 There is no demand for average

14:12 The hottest new programming language is English

18:36 AI is adapting to us faster than we are adapting to it

22:56 No entrepreneur is worried about AI taking their job

26:46 The goal is not to have a job

29:49 AIs are not alive

32:55 AI fails the only true test of intelligence

36:49 Early adopters of AI have an enormous edge

39:37 AI meets you exactly where you are

43:02 Always leverage the best intelligence

44:37 If you can't define it, you can't program it

49:37 The solution to AI anxiety is action

[Nicolas Noriega. @NicolasNA27]

Un estudio de Harvard de 43 años con 130.000 personas acaba de revelar una noticia importante sobre el café de la mañana.

Es más que un estimulante. Es la mejor manera de prevenir la demencia. Sin embargo, hay una gran desventaja.

Esto es lo que descubrió el estudio de JAMA: (1/11)

[Dalton (Analyze & Optimize) @Outdoctrination]

Vitamin C drastically lowers stress and inflammation in clinical trial.

After an ultra marathon race, 500-1500 mg of vitamin C decreased:

⬩Cortisol
⬩Adrenaline
⬩Markers of inflammation

Orange juice, bell peppers, kiwis, guavas, greens are the best food sources.

[PEoperator⚡️ @PEoperator]

The world is changing rapidly. Assumptions of the past are being challenged on so many fronts…

- AI destroying workloads for white collar workers across nearly all domains
- Robotics coming for repetitive labor (and more)
- Private Equity is going through a pivotal chapter
- Access to information is a nonissue
- Access to power is a major constraint
- Crypto is evolving- banks coming soon
- The S&P “500” is driven by 7 companies
- Self driving vehicles could completely change car ownership and habits
- Real estate has been flushing out bad investments
- Tariffs are changing economic decisions and challenging the globalization assumption
- College may no longer be a high (or even positive) ROI endeavor
- Home ownership for first time buyers is increasingly a challenge
- People are getting married later and having kids later in life

Established industries and paths are being upended.

It will be interesting to see how things develop but one thing seems more true than ever…

Past performance is no indication of the future.

[David Criado @vorpalina]

MEDITERRÁNEO

Durante siglos, mucho antes de los fármacos modernos, los médicos recetaban el Mediterráneo

Los ingleses, alemanes y nórdicos viajan cientos de quilómetros para morir frente a él

Y decenas de civilizaciones lo vistieron de puertos y de templos

Volved siempre a él

[✶ @echoesofworld]

Lake Wanaka, New Zealand

[Marc Puyol Iniesta @MarcPuyolIniest]

@jlantunez @JavierGomaL en @Talantonpodcast sobre la pastilla de la felicidad:

https://t.co/V5s4QrEnKp

[Tálanton podcast @Talantonpodcast]

¿Aceptaríais una droga que os permite una permanente felicidad con independencia de vuestras decisiones individuales? El filósofo más leído en español @JavierGomaL planteó esta y otras muchas cuestiones en @Talantonpodcast en @ambitocultural : https://t.co/g1p5Rw6Ms4

[joan tubau @joantubau]

Kapital con @Recuenco. Segundas partes siempre fueron buenas https://t.co/6h3imrZKMY

[elEconomista.es @elEconomistaes]

👨‍🔬 Científicos españoles consiguen eliminar completamente el cáncer de páncreas gracias a la combinación de tres fármacos

👀 Un avance en modelos animales contra uno de los tumores más agresivos y con mayor tasa de mortalidad.

Toda la información aquí 🔗 https://t.co/T2xJQoKx9r

[David Perell @david_perell]

People imagined the Internet as a utopia because it'd put all the world's information in our pocket, but instead of enjoying the great books and watching the great movies, we've become obsessed with what's happening now.

The majority of what people consume online was created in the past 24 hours. It's good for business, but bad for the soul. News and gossip and your friends' Instagram stories seem important in the moment, but they're little tricksters because of how they pull our attention away from true quality. Sure, some of it is worthy. But the vast majority of it is a distraction. And this, I insist, is a root cause of the anxiety and dizziness that plagues modern life.

We're stuck in a Never-Ending Now, and no matter how hard you try to resist, the Internet pulls you right back into it.

[Jaime Novoa @jaimenovoa]

Interesantes los datos. Publicado hace 3 semanas

https://t.co/KwoJhZlZX6

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Maduro is a dictator who stayed in power by force after losing an election. No one who believes in democracy should mourn his fall. Trump's pretexts and potential geopolitical deals especially w Russia deserve scrutiny, but the Venezuelan people deserve a chance at freedom.

[VraserX e/acc @VraserX]

Jeff Bezos just explained the “AI bubble” better than anyone.

At Italian Tech Week 2025, Bezos didn’t deny the hype, he embraced it.

“Yes, there’s a bubble. But AI is real and it’s going to transform every single industry.”

He called it an industrial bubble, not a financial one.
That’s a crucial difference:
•A financial bubble (like 2008) destroys value and leaves nothing behind.
•An industrial bubble (like AI, the internet, or fiber optics) creates massive value, even if investors get crushed.

“Even when those companies went bankrupt, the fiber stayed in the ground. Society got the infrastructure. That’s what we’ll see with AI.”

Bezos says right now we’re in the “chaotic, beautiful” phase of overfunding, where every wild idea gets money.
Investors can’t tell the good ideas from the bad ones.
But that’s exactly how big shifts happen.

He compared it to Amazon’s early days:

“Our stock went from $113 to $6, while every internal metric improved. The market and the reality had completely diverged.”

His point: bubbles distort prices, not progress.
AI valuations might crash, but the technology won’t.

“This is not a mirage. This is a horizontal technology, like electricity and it will touch everything.”

Bezos isn’t predicting an apocalypse.
He’s predicting a reset, where the hype burns off, and the real builders remain.

AI isn’t a bubble, it’s a boom disguised as one.