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.
Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. https://t.co/hQP0No142P
We've recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there's always been one other feature you've been asking us to add to the web version of Google Earth, just for fun...
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i think spacex browser game just fixed my fried focus, lol
spent 20 min last night manually docking a crew dragon to the iss and my head went dead quiet for the first time in weeks.
it's the real spacex sim, free, runs in the browser, no install. ease the translation in, null your rotation rate, hold the crosshairs dead center, soft capture.
and that's the actual manual procedure the crew falls back on if autonomous docking ever drops.
https://t.co/sbbkQINbds, go dock something tonight.
I finally made it to WAFFLE HOUSE.
The staff are always friendly, and when I asked if they would sell me a menu, they sold me one for $5.
Next time, I’ll be back at 3 a.m. for fight time.
#WAFFLEHOUSE