Thank you. That’s about what I suspected. And an email may not technically be a paywall but imo if they’re going to sell it or even just use it to spam me with shit that’s just another form of payment. I could make a fake email address or something but honestly I’m not going to go through all of that for what seems like a clearly shitty article from that parts that I can see.
Paywall link + no context given as to what actually occurred other than someone claiming that they are being silenced. That very well may be true but without more context I can’t make that determination. It may also well be true that the claims by the DoJ are true and that the narrator of this article is an unreliable narrator.
If you want me to think or feel a particular way then don’t lock the article behind a paywall and give actual context so that I can come to my own conclusions.
That is one of the most disgusting websites I’ve ever seen. If you’re reading this please don’t click the link.
There is a big difference between getting a solid idea for what will happen before testing and literally being able to see the future as clearly as the present. If a software developer literally can see the future and already knows what error will occur if he tries to run the code then he would not run it. Or to use the engineer example, let’s say someone is creating a humanoid robot which is still in the early phases of development but the creator believes that it has just reached a point where it is able to sort of balance for a second. First of all, he can’t KNOW that it’s at that point without testing. And even if he has a very good idea that it is probably at that point he certainly won’t know exactly how it is going to fail eventually during the test. If the designer is all-knowing then he would literally know every force that is applied to the robot as it attempts to stand, the exact way that it will stumble down to the minutiae, etc. There is no reason, not for fun, not for learning, literally no logical reason to run that test in that case.
I also agree that religion is a bunch of BS but if I were to try to come up with a justification to the question of why an all-knowing creator would test their creation, I would say that it isn’t for the sake of the creator but rather to teach the person they are testing about themselves or some BS like that. That being said, I think there are many many ways that you can poke holes in the logic of a creator being all-knowing, just, and all-powerful; all three of which are claimed by believers. Alternatively, you can also focus on the all-knowing aspect specifically by illustrating that it is impossible for free will to exist if god is all-knowing. At least not the version of free will that most people refer to. If you want to claim that free will can exist even if there is only one possible time line then that’s another argument.
“The researchers found that Sky was also reminiscent of other Hollywood stars, including Anne Hathaway and Keri Russell. The analysis of Sky often rated Hathaway and Russell as being even more similar to the AI than Johansson.”
As someone that has used ad blockers for just about as long as I have been able to, I would like to think that this is true. However, I’m not entirely sure that it is. I’ve heard that a surprising percentage of people just don’t even know that ad blockers exist. If that’s the case then they may be very well aware of what is happening. (Using made up numbers for the sake of argument since I don’t have real numbers) Like if only 5% of users use ad blockers and doubling the number of ads they show only brings that to 10% then it is certainly worth it financially. I doubt that if you were to graph that curve it would be linear - there is certainly a point where you inundate users with so many ads that even non-technical people will start learning about ad blockers. Regardless of what the real numbers are, I would be very surprised if they are making decisions this big without at least being aware of what those numbers might be. And if they can make a small amount of money indefinitely but they have evidence to suggest that they can make even more money also indefinitely then the financial motivation is obvious. Not all infinities are the same size.
Yes, that is my point. Whether someone is vegetarian, “trying to be more ethical” but still eating meat, or just a meat eater that has never even considered ethics, there is nothing that says you have to go through all of those steps to becoming vegan. In my experience, regardless of how far along you are in those “steps” once you make the connection between the food on your plate and the animals that it comes from and you realize that they are suffering for you, you go vegan. That could be meat eater to vegan, “ethical” meat eater to vegan, or vegetarian to vegan. My point is that in my experience that process does happen overnight.
What he said
In my experience they often do go vegan overnight though. The key tends to be actually connecting the food on your plate with where it came from and accepting that animals are capable of suffering. Once that connection is made, animal products simply aren’t seen as food anymore and going vegan overnight is the only logical conclusion.
Some people may be further along the spectrum towards being vegan when this connection is actually made but regardless of if you are vegetarian, “only eat free range meat”, or an unapologetic meat eater, once the connection is made they are vegan.
Unfortunately that is simply not true. If you had to take a guess, how long does a chicken live that is born into the animal agriculture industry and what does its life look like? Go watch Dominion ( https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko ) and learn what modern animal agriculture looks like because I promise you it is not a life free of abuse where they are safer than they would be in the wild with plenty of food to eat. If you are paying for animal products then you are not only paying for the animal to be murdered but are also paying for the abuse that it suffered for its entire short life before that point.
Also I’d definitely argue that murder is a form of abuse. Defined as: “treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.” If you wanted to discuss semantics it would be more accurate to say that it is impossible to murder an animal since the most common definition would probably be “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another”. There is a second more loose definition though that uses the language “kill (someone) unlawfully and with premeditation”. I would argue that an animal IS a “someone” as they are an individual with their own unique perception of the world. As such I do believe that it is possible to murder an animal. That being said, it is completely irrelevant to the morality of what is happening whether we call it murder or abuse or we come up with all new words to describe what’s happening. No matter what you call it, we are creating unfathomable amounts of completely unnecessary suffering by forcefully breeding (aka raping) animals and forcing them to live unimaginably awful lives which are ended very very prematurely because money and yummy.
There are tons of great content creators in the coffee world. One of the one’s that I felt I learned a lot from in the beginning especially was Lance Hedrick. Here’s a shorter overview sort of video that will help a lot to get started (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohzsOjkYf5M). And a slightly longer more in depth guide that he’s made as well (https://youtu.be/kVEvII6YalE?si=1VZG48hkWNszD-kN). Emilee Bryant is another great content creator that makes similar videos.
As far as what equipment you need goes, it sounds like you probably have everything you need to get started. I don’t know what the milk jug looks like that comes with that machine or if it even does or if you’re using it, but I will say that I think that having a quality milk pitcher can make your life easier. That’s not to say that you can’t use what you have because you almost certainly can. But if you’re looking for cheap ways to improve your setup that might be where I would start but again, it is almost certainly unnecessary to see improvement. Ultimately, making latte art is just something that you have to practice. Where the videos and advice from other people comes into play is knowing how to practice. But you’re still going to have to put in the work.
Some general advice that I can give: latte art is a result of many small variables all being controlled at once. Some of the variables have a smaller impact on the final product and others are much more crucial to focus on, especially in the beginning. Knowing what went wrong and how to fix it is a skill all on it’s own, but in order to get to that point, first you have to even be aware of what those variables are. Some of the big ones off of the top of my head that I think would be good to focus on as a beginner
-Milk texture: If you don’t have good milk texture it will be much harder or potentially impossible to make art. There are plenty of videos talking about how to steam milk and what good texture looks like for latte art. I would recommend looking that up if you are interested in learning more about that. In fact, as a beginner I would say that you should really put most of your effort into working on this before anything else. Here’s a video on the topic to get you started (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTC3dJvwgUI)
-Spout proximity: When you are adding your initial milk to the espresso before you start your art you want the pitcher to be high up so that the milk builds up speed from the fall and sinks below the surface and incorporates with the espresso to make your drink. When you start your art you want the pitcher to be very close (think approximately 1 cm) to the surface of the drink so that you can gently “place” the foam on top and it doesn’t have time to pick up speed and fall through. I see many beginners try to make art with the spout of their pitcher way too high and no design appears as a result. In fact, if you place a blob of foam down first and then intentionally lift your pitcher up, you can actually sink that blob of foam.
-Flow rate: the velocity of the milk coming out of the pitcher at various stages of the pour is an important factor in your art. I won’t go into how and when and why you should be pouring faster or slower since it’s honestly really not the thing to focus on now and there are plenty of videos that could do a better job anyway. Just be aware of flow rate as a concept and notice how flow rate affects the way the milk behaves in different situations.
-Timing: This is a bit of a broad category, but generally speaking, there are several critical moments when pouring latte art that we should be thinking about. First of all, when you let milk sit in the pitcher the foam will start to separate from the more dense liquid. We don’t want that. So as a general rule of thumb, once you’ve steamed your milk you should be trying to keep it moving by swirling it in the pitcher to prevent that separation. What you described as “a blob circle of foam that pours into the cup at the very end” could very well be caused by letting it separate before pouring. What happens when you do that is the liquid all comes out first and only at the end does the foam come out. It could also be a milk texture issue or spout proximity issue though. Once you’ve actually started pouring, knowing when to stop incorporating milk and to start your art is very important too. If you do it too soon, you won’t have added much foam in the cup yet and the design will flow across the surface of the mug like water and hit the far wall. If you do it too late the foam will be stiff and you won’t have much room left in the cup meaning you will have a hard time getting any momentum at all, causing a small design.
Anyway… I’m done rambling now I suppose, lol. Apologies for the wall of text. To summarize, you don’t need any more equipment to see improvement. I would focus on milk texture as a pretty high priority, but also at least start thinking about these other things as you’re pouring even if you can’t control every variable at first (hint: you won’t be able to and that’s okay). At least that way you have something to actually think about and ask yourself afterwards, “was the milk too foamy? did it separate too much? how was my spout proximity? did I start my art too early/late?” etc.
Good luck!
https://youtu.be/zHbv2YQ6yF4
Good video covering the incident in detail