If the process and tradition of it appeals to you, then sure. You can find a cheap matcha set for under $20 (I think I saw one on Amazon a while ago for $10), so it’s not like you need to spend a ton of money to try it out.

I’m kind of lazy so I use one of those electric milk frothing whisks instead of a traditional bamboo one. But if you use that type of electric frother just be sure to use it in a vessel with high sides and a fair amount of extra room otherwise you’ll be wearing your matcha instead of drinking it.

I could have sworn some billionaire already tried this a few years ago, and it failed miserably.

At this point I’d be genuinely surprised if Elon Musk could successfully build a Lego set.

Behind the Bastards did a four-parter on him last year. It was a pretty wild ride.

I think that pretty much sums up the entire ethos of Silicon Valley these days.

Brittany Petterson is the congressional representative for Colorado’s 7th district. Not Utah. It’s literally the first full sentence you’ll read if you google her name, and it says so on the page her name links to in the article, in case you wondered what level of fact checking and editorial oversight we’re dealing with here.

Looking at this with adult eyes, no I don’t think you’re a jerk. It sounds like you’re trying help him see the reality of the situation before it causes him any undue emotional (or financial) suffering. It’s not, however, very hard to imagine how from his point of view he might feel like you’re being jerk, or maybe a bit hypocritical.

Is there any way you can get him playing with kids who are good enough to go pro? If he can start playing against people who genuinely have the goods, it’s probably not going to take him very long to figure out for himself whether he can keep up or not. And that way you don’t have to set yourself up as the bad guy as much, and you can play a more supportive role and be there to guide him to an alternative path once he gets sick of the other kids running circles around him. At least that’s how it worked for the couple of kids I knew growing up who were good enough at basketball or American football that they really thought they could go pro. It was playing against people who were the real deal that made them realize they didn’t have the shot they thought they did. It was pretty obvious that these other kids had something extra, and were playing on a level my friends felt they were probably never going to reach.

Not even a year. It’s only his first fiscal quarter.

Systematically driving down the wages of the people you expect to catch a bullet for you by gig-ifying their industry seems like a pretty terrible idea if you’re someone who depends on armed security for your continued existence.

I guess I’ll go make some popcorn.

Do you think when he went to the barber he specifically asked to look like a ventriloquist dummy who is also a sex criminal, or was this just the best he could do?

Not off the top of my head, but the paint color is called “TV Yellow.”

I think a big problem is a lot of the explainers for new users, at least the ones that were around back when I first joined Mastodon, were or are absolute dog shit. They were all existential explanations rather than practical ones. I was trying to figure out which instance to join, and why one might be better for me than another, and every explainer I saw was basically a variation on, “iT’s JuSt LikE EmAiL. wHy Is tHaT hArD? sToP bEiNg So sTuPid, DuMmY.” None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those. It was like asking someone how to use chopsticks and them telling you, “It’s easy. Just put food in your mouth with them. Works just like a fork.”

Technically true, but it omits some pretty crucial information.

Once you’re into it and have the lay of the land, it seems really simple in retrospect. But if you’re coming in cold with no idea how any of it works, and the only help you get is some dickhead shouting, “EmAiL! iT’s LiKe EmAiL!” then the learning curve seems a lot steeper than it actually is.

Those old black and white television cameras had a lot of limitations. For instance, things that were white and glossy would cause an extra-bright flare effect that would leave trails across the screen whenever it moved, and it was even worse on video. Guitar companies had to invent a brand new shade of yellow for musicians who performed on TV that still looked white on camera, but didn’t light up like a road flare under the studio lights.

Which is a long way of saying that when it comes to those old cameras I would expect the light from a blowtorch to cause some weird artifacts.

Much like the word “woke,” MAGA conservatives have stripped DEI of its original meaning. As conservatives use it now it’s basically just a socially acceptable stand-in for the N-word (or the F-word, depending on context). Like just a couple of days ago I was at a burrito place and the guy a couple spots ahead of me in line said, “This DEI cashier better not fuck up my order again.” It was very clear what he meant was, “This N-word better not piss me off.”

Any time you hear conservatives say “woke” or “DEI,” you can almost always mentally swap it with the N-word or the F-word and what they’re saying will make a lot more sense.

CFPB = Consumer Finance Protection Bureau

Yeah, black weirdly tends to be easier to see in the dark than some other colors. It often ends up looking darker than the surrounding darkness. Slightly lighter colors like brown and gray don’t contrast with the background as much and are much harder to pick out in the dark. People who have owned a black dog and a brown dog at the same time will have probably noticed that effect. At least that’s where I noticed it.

Definitely the Internet’s superior source ofl Star Trek memes.

Great Britain is the big island of the UK which contains England, Scotland, and Wales. The United Kingdom is Great Britain plus the six counties of Northern Ireland, The Isle of Man, and (I think) some of the islands in the English Channel.

A Briton is a person from Britain.

IDK, man. Canada be weird sometimes.

Yes, it’s its own country.

Canada, along with Australia and a bunch of other former colonies, belong to what’s known as the Commonwealth, of which the British monarch is the head. It’s basically an association of countries that used to be ruled by Britain, but Britain no longer has a say in their laws or how they’re governed.

Australia didn’t have a revolution. Australian independence was a long process that lasted from 1901 to 1986. You may want to check the “The steps to full sovereignty” section of the “History of Australia” wikipedia article.

No, Britain is not all the same country. As previously stated, the island of the Britain is England, Scotland, and Wales, which are separate countries, but members of the United Kingdom, and are governed by the UK Parliament. The six Irish counties that make up Northern Ireland is still part of the UK. The rest of the Ireland, known as The Republic of Ireland, is very much not part of the UK. They did have a revolution, and won independence in 1922.

The Democrats have had an entire decade to offer some kind of meaningful opposition and didn’t bother. Why would they start now?

The frustrating thing is that Trump didn’t even get more votes this election than he did last election. There wasn’t a bunch of new Trump voters that came out of the woodwork and turned the tide. He was absolutely beatable. He only won because 15 million of the people who voted for Biden last election just didn’t bother this time.