Can you believe we’re four months away from 2022? Can’t blame it all on #2020 anymore, right? FML. Equally annoying, but obv. not comparable, is learning that Jeff Bezos just had a soft-serve ice cream machine installed at his pad (spaceships, islands, superyachts, this dude has it all).
The real question here is why the billionaire’s understandable predilection for sweet sugary goodness is considered newsworthy… umm, are headlines like: “Bezos ate an Apple, Apple shares tank,” going to become the new norm? Nah, only when Elon does it, AMIRITE? Mmmmkay. So what else is happening in techlandia worth knowing?
Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the Bay Area in your inbox every week.
The next big fight for remote workers is getting some legs: Reddit and Spotify have announced all employees get paid the same, regardless of location. If everyone else signs up, cities, as we know them, could change forever (San Francisco pay without San Francisco rents.. in perpetuity??)
Staying in the new work/life vein, the August, Two Truths and a Lie, the Silicon Valley Startup Edition has a remote work spin. Out of the following three remote work startups, which is fake?
A company that offers remote work office space at sea.
A company that sells high-tech treehouses for work-from-homers.
crowd.
A company that sells work from home desks with included cat perch for pet owners.
(Scroll to the bottom for the answers.)
Know of some ridiculous stuff happening in tech? Email, DM, or tweet me to include it in next month’s edition.
SquarEat wants you to eat one square-shaped meal a day
Maybe you’re one of the many people who took up baking in the pandemic. You hunted down a sourdough starter and posted ugly doughy pictures to Instagram. Or maybe you doubled down on your Doordash orders and tried every Michelin star in the city (yes, they do takeout now). Even if you took neither option, it’s likely you didn’t suddenly bulk order Soylent (exceptions for early pandemic preppers allowed) because the last thing ANY of us felt like was gaining. EXTRA time to sit around and twiddle our thumbs. Well, maybe you shoulda, going by the can’t believe this is a thing hype surrounding SquarEat, a Miami-based startup, whose philosophy is one square, one life, or something equally chirpy, vacuous, and earnest in that vein.
For the price of around five to eight bucks for a six-pack, you can (eventually, post crowdfunding) chow down on a “gourmet, innovative 50g square,” reports Eater, each compressed mouthful made by pulverizing tasty ingredients into oblivion. Think baby food, but for adults. Mmmm, delicious. square options include beef square, hazelnut square, sea bass square, sweet potato square, asparagus square, quinoa square... One major difference from the Soylent/Slim-Fast shakes of yore: diners are encouraged to consume four to six squares a meal —necessary when you realize that the company’s chicken square clocks in at a mere 68 calories.
Whaddya think, would ya try it?
Happy cat, happy life with the tably app
In 2020, the American cat population went up by approximately a zillion* (*unverified number) thanks to the stay-at-homers desperate for cuddles, and without the wherewithal to pass those fiendish dog adoption exams. But thanks to the all-round lack of in-person contact, people’s interpersonal relationship regression has bled into their feline ones. So many new cat owners, so little cat know how… Think of it this way; masks make it hard to tell if someone is smizing or has allergies… how does that translate in the cat world? Cats are *pretty* guarded to begin with, so it’s easy to get their mood wrong, y’know.
Enter Tably, the AI-powered app that reveals if you have a grumpy cat, reports Peta Pixel. Snap a picture, and Tably’s algorithms analyze the photo and cleverly deduce your kitty’s mood. Like, srsly. I feel like I’m being punked, but the interwebs says this is real — the magic sauce they’re using is something called the Feline Grimace Scale . This is a vet-designed assessment that breaks down your cat's expressions — from whisker and head position to muzzle tension — to detect any pain or discomfort your kitty is feeling, apparently with a 97% accuracy rate. TBH, this feels more of a “tell me how miserable my cat is” than “Mr. Whiskers thanks you for his organic dinner but requests chicken next time,” but I guess the end result is what matters. The app’s user reviews are positive, if somewhat disturbing:
“The Tably Ap was fairly accurate the more I used it. Based on the results I had an animal communicator and vet come to my house and the decision was made that my two cats were not able to share a home. Both are extremely happy now that they are living separately.” — L. Schroeder. (no comment, because I CAN’T EVEN).
Currently, in beta, you can sign up here.
The Taliban’s clubhouse channel
Before I get into this clusterf**k, I know there’s a pressing question y’all have: how did the Taliban, of all people, swing those coveted Clubhouse invites (the audio only social network) before they were publicly available? The Silicon Valley glitterati fought tooth over claw for those, so it’s weird that those ne-er do wellers nabbed them before the YCombinator crew, y’know? Can’t answer without going down a conspiracy rabbit hole that’s best avoided…
Anyhoo, the news here is that the Taliban peeps — officially — have been gathering in various Clubhouse chatrooms,discussing such wonderful topics such as how “human rights” believers — y’know, people who stand for equality, education, lack of stoning — are deserving of death, and other similarly messed up sh*t. Topics covered included discussed the insurrection and religious plans for the future of Afghanistan reported The New York Post
“The Taliban called me rude and cut my mic after I spoke the truth about them,” a shaken Haanya Saheba Malik told the AFP about her Taliban Clubhouse experience. Other protestors were muted or banned. Obviously, this all violated Clubhouse’s T&C’s, but when have tech companies EVER been quick about addressing this sort of stuff?
Admittedly, not an easy task, but still… Clubhouse eventually banned the channel — and others like it — but it’s a somber wake-up call to how dissension breeds on social media… and how, inadvertently, tech companies often facilitate insurgent organizing.
D**k you, Alexa. No, that Alexa…
In 2017, twenty bonny ‘lil Siri’s wailed their way into existence across America — at a ratio of one Siri per 100,000 newborns. That same year, 3,883 baby girls were named Alexa (207 per 100,000 babies). But times they are a-changing. Thanks to the ubiquity of Amazon’s smart assistant, the popularity of naming your kid Alexa has plummeted; in 2018, year, only 3,064 babies were so blessed, and in 2019, this dropped to 1,995, reported GeekWire. IRL Alexa’s report bullying and playground tainting — to such an extent some parents have legally changed their names.
In 2020, only ten parents named their tyke “Siri.” Like, I get it — the amount of time I’ve cussed Siri out — seriously, how does “play Let it Go from Frozen” sound like “play Metallica’s greatest hits,” — makes me reluctant to burden a kid with that moniker. This trend has also been noticed amongst the Karen’s and Chad’s of the world — in 2020, just 325 Karen’s were born, representing 0.019 percent of total female births in 2020.
In 2003, those figures were 2,331 and 0.116 percent respectively. There are fewer baby Donald’s these days too…See, the world can learn…
Answers to Two Truths and a Lie: The work from home treehouse startup is the false one. Hurtigruten Expeditions provides a Work From Ship package to remote workers, and Dino’s sells the delightful cat+ Human desks.
