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.
Here's what the fake V8 engine/revving noises sound like in the new all-electric Mercedes AMG GT 4-Door Coupe.
Mercedes says the car makes “exhaust burbles and pops" like a gas car.
The all-new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé: experience the raw power of a hypercar and the legendary emotion of an Affalterbach V8, paired with charging times that rival a racetrack pitstop. Four doors. No compromises. Pure AMG 🙌
Loving this book of '90s rave flyers from Japan. There's such a wonderful hodgepodge of disparate art styles, collaging, and blatant copyright infringement. The perfect visual analogue to the plunderphobic nature of the whole scene.
Over the almost 6 years developing the visual style for Marathon I put +100 boards like this together, directed at various areas of the game & tone. In this example: Winter olympics, NeoTokyo (the game), Koji Morimoto, Nike Move to Zero, and a chip design.
hot marathon take. the WSTR and the Misriah should swap places in terms of rarity. imo a pump shotty would be easier to balance as the more common weapon instead of continuously nerfing a rapid 2 tap weapon.