French press is always going to have some “mouth feel” because of the mesh filters.

I can highly, highly recommend the “Clever” dripper which James Hoffmann reviewed here. It’s very similar to French press in method, great for single serve, almost totally foolproof, and uses paper filters for a very clean cup. I use Hoffmann’s recipe and basically always have a good cup. There’s a similar device called the Hario Switch which some people like more but I haven’t tried it; the Clever has been great.

As for grinding your own, do it. Pre-ground coffee starts to go bad after a day, and just isn’t as good. Start with an inexpensive burr grinder if you don’t want to invest hundreds of dollars right away, but be aware that price/performance increases roughly linearly up to like $250, so spending more gets you a better result. Hand grinders like 1ZPresso can be even better for the price but are a little more work. The nice thing about immersion methods like the Clever though is that they’re more forgiving of bad grinds, so you won’t need to spend too much unless you want to use a drip method like V60.

You’ll also need a cheap scale for weighing beans if you want consistent results. I recommend getting one that goes to 0.1 grams for single serve, with a large enough surface to hold your cup. It shouldn’t cost more than about $20. I use this one.

You’ll also want to experiment with beans. Modern coffee enthusiasts drift towards light to medium roasts instead of dark roasts, because you can extract more subtle interesting flavors and less bitterness. I have a penchant for very light, “natural” processed African coffees for their tart berry flavors. But it’s all personal preference. There’s way too much to get into in terms of processing, country of origin, blend vs single origin, etc. Try everything and see what you like. Coffee subscription services like Trade and Mistobox can be a convenient way to try a lot of things, or you can do what I do and just find a great local roaster to order from.

Btw, welcome! Check out James Hoffmann’s channel on YouTube, it’s my favorite coffee resource on the Internet. He has a ton of great advice in general. If you like print, he also has a small book called “How To Make The Best Coffee At Home” which is excellent and really all you need.

The Economist is also known for attempts at “wit” in some of their headlines. The title is surely riding the line of satire intentionally.

I mean, yes, that too. But think of the even more horrifying implications of such a belief.

Sorry, not really into God fanfic anymore.

Right? How many mass-murdering psychopaths has God raised up in authority? What an idiot.

Yeah. I hate Nancy Pelosi. I hate Trump MORE, but I hate him more than just about anyone. Pelosi is still a garbage person.

Oh, so since I’m not breathing ten centimeters from your face, does that mean now?

When do we stop wearing masks, in your estimation? Never, since airborne diseases will always exist?

I was on Reddit for 17 years. It was my home on the Internet. I used to go to Reddit meetup days and hang out with other Reddit nerds. It’s natural for people to have sentimental feelings about something that’s been such a big part of so many of our lives.

I haven’t been back since the Lemmy exodus, except by accident a few times. But I miss what it was.

I agree with the mods’ decision, because they have to CYA. Whether a law is right or not is immaterial, they need to protect themselves and Lemmy.world from being taken down by law enforcement, web hosts, or what have you. At the end of the day, “morality” (which we all disagree on) simply doesn’t matter - but material consequences do.

However - piracy is not stealing. Stealing means depriving someone else of something. Cf, “You wouldn’t download a car” - which was hysterical, because of course you would, if it was free and deprived no one of anything.

And is it morally wrong? You assert that like it’s a fact, but obviously many people disagree. What formal system of ethics are you, personally, basing your morals on? Christ? I don’t remember intellectual property mentioned in the Bible. Kant? Maybe - in a world with a categorical imperative to pirate, there might be less incentive to produce piratable content. But I’m not necessarily convinced, because stories, songs, and art all existed prior to the invention of copyright.

Piracy is just copying data around. The moral or ethical implications of that are a matter of personal belief and social norms, which have informed the creation of law (and vice versa). But the history of IP is a lot more complicated than simply “enforcing morality”.

If copyright law had existed contemporaneously with the advent of the printing press,the dissemination of books to the masses would have been much slower and more expensive, and we would likely not have seen the huge jump in literacy across Europe at the time. Once copyrights (called “monopolies”) started to be granted they were not used to protect authors, but were weaponized as tools of censorship, suppressing works seen as subversive. Additionally, they were often granted as privileges to the landed gentry and those in favor with the ruling elite, further consolidating power and control over information and knowledge.

Some people believe that piracy, especially of scientific studies and materials that subvert harmful power structures, is not only moral - but a positive good for society, by democratizing access to information. I think that’s hard to argue with. Of course, not all piracy meets such lofty criteria, but I think it bears more examination than simply dismissing all piracy as “morally wrong”.

What even is your point? Does one protester’s desire for violence justify the Chinese government’s violence?

Man…it’s been years, so I don’t remember, but honestly it felt like it at the time. Everyone hated their massive V4 redesign, so people just…left. The Reddit situation is different, because it only really affected third-party app users, not every single user of the site.

Edit: I looked it up, and yeah, there was a “quit Digg day” on August 30, 2010 when pretty much everybody just left for Reddit and didn’t look back. It helped that people actively bombed Digg’s front page with links to Reddit that day, letting people know where to go. Two days later Digg’s CEO was ousted by the board, two months later they laid off 37% of their staff. They basically died overnight. That’s not happening to Reddit.

It’s worth noting that Reddit has been around a lot longer than Digg had at the time, and has way more traffic than Digg ever did. Unseating Reddit is going to be a lot harder than quitting Digg was.

17 years. Probably the only site other than Google I’ve visited almost every day since then. It’s extremely depressing to lose Reddit after all that time. But I’m enjoying Lemmy, and hoping we can grow it Digg-exodus-style.

I’ve never heard about this drama, but I also intentionally didn’t follow the game too closely so I can go into it relatively blind. This sounds strange to me, though.

As far as I’m concerned, there are many ways to play video games, and many ways to play D&D, and none of them are “wrong” (as long as they don’t harm real life people in some way). If you want to minmax then go for it, that is a valid way to play.

As a “Johnny” in the MtG sense I like to play broken/unintuitive/combo type characters. Not necessarily minmaxing, since it’s not just about efficiency, but…efficient creativity. So I’m looking for a build that’s “fun” in an unusual way, viable, but not necessarily “optimal”.

Before you’re going to launch a tirade about the absolute necessity to be progressive diverse non-fascist

I’m going to regret asking this, but… What?

That’s kind of the inverse of “confidence”, which is a requested feature for comment sort.

Here’s some of my favorites in Massachusetts:

Rail Trail Roasters in Maynard (very small)

Broadsheet in Cambridge

New discovery from the Berkshires (western Mass): No. Six Depot

Voyager (formally Wefwef) is doing this. You can favorite communities and it will push them to the top. It’s been useful for monitoring smaller communities.

What I do not understand about this take is that they can already collect all of this data, today. They don’t need to federate with the rest of the Fediverse to scrape basically all of the data they want. The only problematic thing they’d need an instance for is linking votes to users - which is something they could do just by spinning up a Lemmy instance. And they probably shouldn’t be able to, Lemmy should try to figure out a way to anonymize votes.

Threads joining the Fediverse does not significantly increase their ability to collect data about existing Fediverse denizens.

I’m really not sure how you got that from what I wrote, so I don’t know how to respond.