TheRealKuni

Literally a Weird Al song.

One day the Vatican library will go up in smoke and we’ll have once again lost some of our history.

Plenty of which no one is allowed access to anyway, IIRC.

Pronounced “shitter.”

Or which other countries play, but we don’t include them.

Looking at you, baseball.

Recently I saw someone complaining that he’ll always be a virgin and will never get laid. In my advice I recommended making changes to improve himself, like being kind and generous, learning to be better socially, and taking up hobbies that involve being around people.

He said I was telling him to “fake himself.”

All of the “just be yourself” and “you’re perfect just the way you are” platitudes are meant to improve confidence, but unfortunately it means some people genuinely don’t think they need to fix things. That they are just, like, owed success from society or something.

Obviously there are aspects that you don’t need to change, like you don’t have to pretend to like things you don’t, and you don’t have to try to change your orientation or identity, but if you’re an asshole you should try to not be an asshole. If you smell bad you should shower. If you suffer from social anxiety there are both medical and practical ways to address that.

No one is perfect. We can all stand to improve things about ourselves and thus progress towards whatever goals we may have. And the more we lie about not needing to change, or indeed not being able to change, the more we let people wallow in self-pity. I don’t have data to back this up, but I suspect this sort of thinking leads in part to the wave of loneliness and incel-ness we see in our society today.

Well, sure, but that’s not the point. I’m just saying the tax money that I pay to fund the library is something I specifically pay to fund the library. If we didn’t have the library, my taxes would be lower by the amount of my taxes that goes towards the library.

(Obviously, libraries are a fantastic use of tax money and I would never vote not to pay the meager amount I do to fund them.)

Again, where I live, yes. If we, as voters, decided not to approve the library millage, we would no longer pay that specific tax which funds the library.

The library would coast for a bit, but would eventually shut down unless we voted to start paying that tax again.

I know this is true because it literally happened a few towns over where a bunch of dipshits voted to stop funding their library over LGBTQ books. Fortunately the library was kept afloat by donations until a millage was eventually approved to keep it funded.

Taxes are not direct payments and taxes would be collected regardless of the existence of libraries.

I dunno about where you live, but where I live libraries are funded by millage. We vote to fund the libraries specifically with a tax. So if we didn’t have the libraries, we wouldn’t pay that millage.

Taxes would still be collected, but not THAT tax.

😂 I don’t really know, so I googled it.

There are plenty of cheap machines that don’t have the grinder. My current one is a De’Longhi. It’s a pain in the ass to get the grounds out of the portafilter, but it works. Had a Gevi that worked pretty well but I destroyed it on accident (long story). Anything around the $100 mark if you don’t want to spend a lot. And like I said, these cheaper machines are good for beginners because many have pressurized portafilters that produce crema regardless of how well tamped or ground the coffee is.

At some point I will probably upgrade to something better, but honestly the cheap ones work fine for what I need them to do.

I wouldn’t bother getting a grinder, honestly, until you know it’s something you really want to do. Because to get a burr grinder that does espresso consistently you have to pay quite a bit.

Instead, just get your coffee from a shop and ask them to grind it for espresso for you. I’ve never found a shop that won’t grind it for free if you’re buying the beans from them. Even at Starbucks, you can bring a bag of the whole bean version of their espresso blend to the counter and ask them to grind it fine for espresso, and they will (though honestly, at Starbucks I ask for Turkish grind because I’ve had mixed results with their espresso grind).

(I actually mostly use Starbucks coffee, but that’s because they’re the only shop within reasonable walking distance of my house. And it’s fine.)

Obviously this will result in some loss of flavor, since you aren’t grinding it when you use it, but if you’re putting syrup and oatmilk in it I don’t think it makes much difference.

My most recent recipe:

3 shots espresso
1 pump Torani English Toffee
2 pumps Torani Puremade Almond
A decent amount of ice (I don’t measure this, I eyeball it)

Shake well, then pour into a cup/glass

Shake up your carton of oatmilk and fill the rest of the glass. It gets a nice foamy top and the oatmilk spreads beautifully down the glass.

I use Oatly Full-Fat oatmilk (the Barista Edition is just too expensive and you don’t need it unless you’re doing hot drinks), but any other brand’s creamiest oatmilk will also work.

Honestly pretty much any syrups that sound appealing to you will probably work well in this type of recipe.

The one I was most proud of involved taro powder (for boba drinks) instead of syrup, and a pump of chai syrup, but it has a LOT of sugar.

As far as suggestions for a cheap espresso machine…I haven’t had amazing luck, because you get what you pay for. I’m on my second and at some point will probably replace it with a more expensive one. But they last long enough to pay for themselves. Also the cheap ones are good for beginners, pressurized portafilters make it really easy to get right.

I’m a big fan of their shaken oatmilk espresso drinks.

I realized at a certain point that I could buy a bottle of syrup, a cheap espresso machine, espresso ground coffee, and oatmilk, and this would all pay for itself within a relatively small number of drinks. Like, I dunno, 30-40 drinks depending on the oatmilk and the syrup.

I’ve gotten pretty good at making my own Starbucks-esque drinks, and it means I can control the sugar better.

Do you know why they call it the Xbox 360?

Cause when you see it you turn 360° degrees and walk away! GOTTEM.

But they really only unfreeze people who knew Richard Dawkins and Mrs. Garrison. Then laugh at you when you want to play Nintendo Wii.

Just gotta lower the clock speed enough for us not to notice. As long as we don’t interact with the outside world, just other stored human brains, it can be slow as molasses and we won’t notice.

I dunno, looks fine on a mug.

I called this about 10 years ago when working in a call center during college.

I said, “In 10-15 years, this job will not exist. It will be done by AI.”

People disagreed with me. Said, “There are ways I can get a survey complete that you can’t program an AI to do.” And “People don’t want to talk to robots, they want to talk to real people.”

No, no one wants to talk to robots OR real people. They hate us. Also, anything you can do (at a call center job) a properly trained AI can do, and probably better. It was just a matter of time for machine learning and voice generation to get there.

I’m sure as this type of AR tech evolves that’s the kind of thing we’ll see. It’s pretty cool.

Apple Vision is not the game changer, it’s an expensive dev kit. The tech still needs to shrink quite a bit.

Ma-Ma La Malt-o-Meal S’mores Cereal.

(That shit is delicious, don’t judge me.)