It’s hard to believe Cautious Clay is only coming out with his first album, given how long he’s been around stealing hearts (including those of collaborators like Billie Eilish and John Mayer). That discord is on display in “Karma & Friends,” a searing critique of people who latch onto friends who are all of a sudden making money. Clay disguises the message in a low-key croon, as I suspect he might throughout Deadpan Love, out June 25— but what else will he say?

You know how the USDA releases updated dietary guidelines every few years? Well, in 2020, when Americans had little battles over stockpiles of oat milk, they still recommended three servings A DAY of dairy. Three! Are we all having a glass of milk with dinner? Sprinkling cheese on our yogurt just to make quota? More to the point, what vitamins are we getting from milk that we can’t get from sunshine and broccoli? Doctors are asking these questions, too, and three of them have just filed a federal lawsuit saying the USDA’s guidelines are more about protecting the meat and dairy industries than they are about healthy eating. The agency is obviously balking, but there’s only so much convincing defense from a group that requires kids to get a doctor’s note to forego milk at school lunch. Looking forward to this verdict.

As we all wring our hands over cutting meat and dairy to reduce our carbon footprints (or swapping for Impossible and Califia), a company called Atomo, covered two years ago in this very newsletter, would like for you to consider coffeeless coffee. Reminding us that our favorite crop is also extremely resource-intensive to grow, the self-described Tesla of coffee has engineered its way out of needing an actual bean to produce a cup worthy of your $4, and they’re about to hit the market with cans of lab-made cold brew.

I said it in 2019 and I’ll say it now: is no one concerned about the farmer? Almost as a rule, people who grow coffee are already on the brink of financial collapse, so instead of finding a way for them to thrive over time, we should… just bankrupt them immediately? In the words of sustainable-drink-guy Mark Byrne, “If you raise $11.5M to fight climate change [which Atomo did] and the problem you decide to solve with that money is to make sure americans can still get their cup o joe in the morning even after the earth burns, you are not engaging with a real problem, or offering a real solution.” Someone alert the USDA.

Speaking of coffeeless coffee, let’s take a stroll by Starbucks, which, if we’re honest with ourselves, has been inching towards the category of “ice cream store” ever since the dawn of the frappuccino. Although paragraph-long custom orders were already parodies of themselves, things have been getting out of hand during the pandemic as people revert to app-based ordering. When you don’t have to say it out loud, turns out, it’s not as embarrassing to request six shots of banana syrup in your cinnamon dolce nitro cold brew with almond. In the app, it’s even sort of encouraged: if the funnel-cake-pieces button is the same size as the milk checkbox, is one really weirder than the other? (Good question for the USDA.)