Remember “Juicero”? Get ready for “Raw Water.” The Silicon Valley company mocked for its pointless technology replicating squeezing (really) is in the news again after one of its founders was quoted in a New York Times story about “raw water.” It is dumber than it sounds:
You have to read this story, as it’s absurd. Look, after Flint’s maddening water scandal, nobody should fault capitalists for coming up with technology to help folks go “off grid” for water, but Silicon Valley types trespassing to steal spring water is deeply weird.
How the sandwich consumed Britain. Fifteen years ago, a bunch of college friends and I went to London on spring break. Before the advent of real-time banking, we overspent and quickly were low on funds. As a result, we ended up eating a lot of pre-made sandwiches from local stores. The Guardian has a neat history of how quick service restaurants of today owe their success to the humble sandwich.
Read the editor’s copy of Milo Yiannapoulos’s book. It is absolutely brutal. The Microsoft Word copy with track changes was admitted as an exhibit before New York’s Supreme Court in a case against Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Laundry Pods are unlikely to kill you. Nanny staters often campaign against laundry and dishwasher detergent pods because they could be mistaken for candy by children. (Think of the children!) Except NBC reports that Consumer Product Safety Commission data for laundry pods shows they have been responsible for eight fatalities in the last five years, only two of which were children.
It’s an unfortunate fact that curious children will die in unfortunate circumstances, no matter how hard regulators or parents try to prevent it. Six of the eight were adults with dementia. Safety education, not forcing industry to waste millions of dollars, is a better solution.
Washington’s Weird Wendy’s. It’s an old joke that the only way to understand Pierre L’Enfant’s design for the nation’s capitol is to take the rare tour to the top of the U.S. Capitol. But once you’ve been normalized to Moscow on the Potomac, the designs begin to make sense. Except this one traffic circle where this is (thankfully) a Wendy’s. The Washington Post explains how this intersection came to be.
Get ready to pump your gas. Here’s a fun story for my fellow fly-over state brethren who have pumped their gas for decades: Oregon, one of two states that used to outlaw the practice, has now legalized it. And Oregonians are panicking. One voter wrote: “I don’t even know HOW to pump gas and I am 62, native Oregonian … I say NO THANKS! I don’t want to smell like gasoline!” It’s OK, man. You can always move to New Jersey.
Did the Army waste millions on ineffective marketing? That’s what a new audit claims, reported by AdWeek:
Be all that you can be.
Must reads. The big must reads of the day are James Risen’s Intercept report on his career as a NYT reporter in the early days of the war on terror, and the preview of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury book at New York Magazine. Both items are lengthy reads, and there’s a lot to digest and consider, so when you have a spare 30 minutes, do check them out.
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