Jay Ruston

Record producer, Dog Adopter, Scuba Diver 🇨🇦 Ⓥ 🌱

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

@FilthyArmenian 😂😂

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

@ericweinstein Nice to meet you Eric!

[Skindred @Skindredmusic]

YOU GOT THIS ! UK OFFICIAL NUMBER 1 ALBUM
We are absolutely blown away !
Thank you to our amazing fans & all of those in our extended Family in the rock and metal community for supporting us through thick and thin.
This really is the Fairytale of Newport
https://t.co/a6wbs9c6m6

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

Congratulations to everyone involved in this amazing record !

https://t.co/acr7C9zbmV

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

@BridgetPhetasy @spencerpratt Sadly, my conversations with friends and neighbors have shown they’re pretty much gonna stick with Karen or even worse Nithya. If they even sniff a mild Republican, they will not vote for something new. They will watch the city crumble and burn.

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

For the first time in a few years, I actually saw filming on Ventura Boulevard today. I couldn’t believe it.

[Rambo Van Halen @RamboVanHalen]

I put in 25 years. It would be 26 but I haven't worked yet this year and I'm not sure I'll ever work in entertainment again.

The writing has been on the wall for quite some time. But it's a sad thing--especially since the collapse of Hollywood is (mostly) self inflicted.

Outsiders like to blame the unions and burdensome regulations. That's not exactly wrong, but the big reason is that Hollywood stopped making a product that people wanted to consume.

Film is a funny thing. On one hand it's art. But on the other it's a mass consumer product--like a car, or a soft drink.

But unlike a typical consumer product, it was something we consumed together. We went to a special place, and sat with strangers, and watched stories.

And those stories infected us.

They entered our minds and our souls and they implanted things.

Deep things. Ancient things. Timeless things.

Things like heroism and beauty and love and fear and sex and death and adventure and tragedy and pain and injustice and all the things that make up our dreams.

There's a thing we call "cinematic language". It's how we tell a story with images. (And BTW if you want to learn more about the language of visual media, read Scott McCloud's excellent book Understanding Comics.)

An odd thing about cinematic language is that it's the same language as dreams. There's a scene in Christopher Nolan's Inception where Leonardo DiCaprio is explains to (the tragic) Ellen Page how dreams work.

But what he's really describing is cinematic language. Inception is really a movie about movies BTW.

While it's far from my favorite film, I think it's the perfect film. Because the suspension of disbelief is perfect. You believe the plot about dreams because you're familiar with how movies work--maybe not consciously--but you know.

Everyone knows. Maybe not everyone has seen a movie, but everyone has dreams.

Another odd thing about film: you don't "watch" a movie, you look into it. And you put yourself inside it. Now you're in the dream.

And you're hypnotized.

Because movies do that too.

The motion--the moving images--they hack your brain. We're programed to pay attention to moving things.

Even when the things aren't real.

Even when they're just light reflected off a screen.

So we'd go to these special places--these movie theaters--these temples--and we'd sit, and we'd "watch" and we'd enter the dream.

And we did it together.

And after the movie was over--and the lights came on, and we'd file out over the sound of popcorn crunching under our feet--we were different.

We had become transformed.

Sometimes we were changed in minor ways. But sometimes not. Sometimes we were changed in profound ways.

And we did it together.

Before the movie we were a room full of strangers.

But after--on the way out the door--we all had something in common.

Because we shared an experience. We'd shared the dream. And we'd all become transformed.

And then tech got involved...

Streaming turned movies from a communal experience to a personal experience. And that's an issue, but they did something else too.

They started developing movies as if they were tech products.

But you can't apply a KPI to a dream. At least, not successfully anyway. Because dreams don't work like that--nor does any sort of art.

And that's a funny thing about making movies. You try to make the best film you can, but at the end of the day you have no idea if it's good or if it's going to be successful. You just have to hope the audience likes it.

Now, you can design a movie that will appeal to a preexisting audience. Marvel movies are like this. There's a large group of fanboy nerds that will see every single one.

You can count on them every time.

Just like you can count on the Gay Oscar Bait crowd (for example).

But those movies are slop. But Hollywood became specialists in slop. Because slop is safe. Because you could apply KPI style metrics to slop.

As a result they lost the audience. And the audience is probably never coming back.

I wrote a book in 2024 (that was published in 2025). While writing, I thought of it as my farewell to the industry.

But looking back, what I was actually writing was a eulogy for Hollywood--the place where dreams were made.

And so it goes...

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

@IntuitDome your terrible app isn’t functioning. Can’t access my existing account, can’t open a new account. Have a show to attend !! Wtf.

[dominic dyer @domdyer70]

Gold finches in the snow what a delight

[DHH @dhh]

Smart houses are so stupid. I've regretted it every single time the siren call of technology caused me to install a computer instead of a light switch, a computer instead of a door lock. And the custom integrations like Control4 are THE WORST. Jason is spot on.

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

THE BIG REGRESSION

My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby.

It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state of the art systems. The ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard.

And it’s terrible. What a regression.

The lights are powered by Control4. And require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.

The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling UI just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up.

The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. That part is fine, but here’s what isn’t: It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it to an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? For serious? Worse.

Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other propriety ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. Or is it 68 now? Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.

The alarm system is essentially a 10” iPad bolted to the wall that has the fucking weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.

And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.

Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. Not buying it. It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But that's at least 20 years down the road.

It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human, that’s modern.

[Paul Bronks @SlenderSherbet]

They returned with a search warrant.

[START Rescue @STARTRescueTeam]

LILY was a 6 month old PUPPY and had 2 dislocating kneecaps. The vet said “just make her a lap dog”. We said “find another vet”. Thanks to @15outof10 & people like you, LILY has had 2 surgeries & runs like the wind. Best of all, she was adopted! #RescueDogs #LoveDogs #HelpDogs

[100 Songs That Define Heavy Metal @100MetalSongs]

On our latest episode, @MetalBlade Records CEO @brianslagel talks about Rush’s “Anthem” with @JayRuston.

Subscribe to 100 Songs That Define Heavy Metal everywhere podcasts are found.

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

Protect LA’s Shelter Animals: Make Breeding Restrictions Permanent & Fund Spay/Neuter - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/AVGezJsoIP via @Change

[START Rescue @STARTRescueTeam]

🚨It’s #CryptoGivingTuesday and YOU can SAVE pets’ lives with your crypto gift! 💚🐾 Donate to rescue/transport pets from high-kill shelters to their loving forever homes. https://t.co/QoomVi0T4T. $100 buys a seat, $3k sponsors a whole van! 🐶🐈‍⬛🚐 #CryptoForImpact #RescueDogs

[Skindred @Skindredmusic]

YOU GOT THIS
The new single taken from our forthcoming album “You Got This” on @EaracheRecords .
https://t.co/vuXxq9cgp7

[Theprp.com @theprp]

Avatar Launch "Don't Go In The Forest" Music Video:
https://t.co/8GwPerjcWG

[START Rescue @STARTRescueTeam]

OUT OF TIME⏰
We got the call from a packed shelter - one kitten sick, both on THE LIST. We said YES. They’re safe and headed to the vet. Can you help? Skip-a-cup? Save two lives. #SaveKittens #ShelterCats #AdoptKittens ❤️ https://t.co/grZ6ZNgwSJ

[Jay Ruston @jayruston]

@Sonos I have deleted “trending now “ and “Sonos presents” from my homepage every day for a week and it keeps coming back. The mess you created with this new app continues!

[START Rescue @STARTRescueTeam]

xSNAP SHOT WEDNESDAY - Something to Smile About - MARLEY - https://t.co/gkBsmAbP6l