USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
Never seen before and likely never seen again.
SIXTEEN.
STRAIGHT.
ROUNDS.
One total T-side round won on Mirage.
@BIGCLANgg are the final team to advance to Stage II of the Cologne Major.
Team Liquid CEO Steve Arhancet 🇺🇸 on how data has impacted their roster building:
"There's analysis on each player, there are scores associated with past performance in different leagues and regions"
"If it's a player, it's all of their solo queue information, and then we feed all of that into different models."
"It's like a giant workbook of really great intel essentially"
Via CEO Roundtable by Sentinels on Youtube
Gundam, the iconic franchise that launched a global phenomenon, is now in production.
The live-action film starring Sydney Sweeney and Noah Centineo follows rival mech pilots at war across Earth and its space colonies.
Apple has landed the rights to Brandon Sanderson's 'Cosmere' universe
• ‘Mistborn' will be a film franchise
• 'The Stormlight Archive' will be a TV series
• Sanderson will have creative control of the projects
(via @THR)
Apple has landed the rights to turn ‘MISTBORN’ into a film franchise & ‘THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE’ into a TV series.
Brandon Sanderson will write, produce and consult on all projects.
(Source: https://t.co/Ka6RvxmT3S)