I dunno, it sucks and its painful. You're constantly worried and people who at first try to support you then get pissed off at you for something you can't really control. I hope you can find your way through it.

Of course, everything in California is too damn expensive and that can't be ignored. You can put up all the tax credits you want, the overall price level is a tough headwind for production in LA.

One, the quality of the saffron makes a big difference in price. Longer deeper red strands are much more expensive than shorter and more yellow strands. I suspect they are not using the most expensive saffron in their teas.

Two, there's a lot of markup purchasing saffron from most retailers, especially here in the US. You can get that amount of saffron for far less than $10,000 if you know someone who has a connect.

Three, as you said the majority of saffron production is from Iran. Some friends I know are getting their saffron from the UAE but I'm pretty sure its being re-exported from Iran.

Four, those videos are ultimately productions. If you compare the earlier videos to the later videos on some of that channel you can tell they've upgraded their digs. They might just be exaggerating for the camera.

1. Angst will probably always be the teenage condition but I don't think the distance between what's being recorded and what teens and young adults are feeling is as great as it was in the 90s.

2. Music listening is so much more fragmented now that even if some artist hooks into some underserved emotional need, it might just grab its group of followers and then sorta descend into its own little subculture, safely away from the mainstream. The third and fourth lines on any contemporary festival act list has a lot of acts that fall into this category.

3. Kurt Cobain was this unusual combination of wanting to be anti-authority, anti-establishment, alternative on one hand, but then very ambitious and seeking fame and record deals on the other. It's paradoxical but he was that and that combination of attributes is really good for changing the mainstream music scene but I don't think most people can live in that contradiction for that long and therefore people like that are rare.

In my view, we're in a sort of repeat of 00s R&B. Lot of substanceless tunes with honestly seriously vulgar lyrics but immensely catchy and fun. The main difference is this version is less danceable (but also more subject to dance routines on TikTok!). And I don't mean it in a pejorative way, not every good song need to be meaningful.

Of course, it also coincided with a supply chain shock but we ought to be honest that we cannot guarantee a tight labor market will result in Americans being materially better off.

Although I think part of the bleh feeling is just having to subconsciously adapt to the imperfections of a headset. For example, you can't just glance at anything and expect to see it, you have to shift your head for some things. Or like the headset itself moving ever so slightly on the face and your eye moving out of the way of the center of the lens. It gets exhausting and you don't know you're doing it unless you're actively paying attention.

I will say most of the advertising shows people interacting with 2D interfaces in 3D space so maybe this is how they're getting around it combined with just better build quality, better thought out straps, etc.

Look it just makes sense to start out connecting Threads users to a pretty active user base which creates content for Threads users. Then as Threads grows, maintaining federation with Pubiverse will have a high marginal cost relative to the shrinking piece of pie users outside of Threads is. Compatibility will get worse and worse as the Threads devs allow their federation code to rot until eventually they make a clean break to focus their resources elsewhere.

Meanwhile if you happen to be a poster on the Mastodon side of the fence, you're going to have to get on Threads and start posting there to keep up with the audience you've gathered, it just makes sense. That network effect of posters needing to follow their audiences would hollow out a post-break Mastodon.

All this being said, I don't think Mastodon instances should resist a Threads federation. Focus on a superior user experience by really trying to empathize with the average user. Don't let yourself be relegated to power users or enthusiasts because, Threads federation or not, when push comes to shove people want to talk to people and they will go where people are.

But more importantly, it's morally wrong to suggest we shorten and make our lives worse for some short term stimulant spike.