Almost all the wasabi you eat is actually horseradish.

Almost all the pumpkin pies you eat are actually squash pies.

What are other examples like this?
Almost all the Kobe beef you eat is not actually Kobe beef (h/t @Maxsimile): bonappetit.com/entertaining-s…
Most maple syrup is just corn syrup (h/t @antirobust): washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…
Most truffle oil is actually 2,4-Dithiapentane (h/t @RyanRadia)

nytimes.com/2017/09/15/opi…
"Researchers found 87 percent of the snapper they purchased from stores and restaurants was improperly labeled. Among the most common substitutes for snapper: seabream, tilapia and rockfish." (h/t @10959308a): cnbc.com/2018/09/21/the…
"A 2010 study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that 69 percent of imported olive oil labeled 'extra virgin' did not meet, in an expert taste and smell test, the standard for that label."

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

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More from @AlecStapp

16 Dec
The antitrust complaint against Google from the Texas Attorney General (and 9 other states) is out!

This case focuses on the online advertising market (as opposed to the DOJ's focus on the search market).

Thread with some of my initial reactions as I go through it...
Ugh, the complaint completely misunderstands how targeted advertising works.

It alleges that Google is lying when it says it doesn't sell user data to anyone. But that's true!

Targeted advertising works without sharing personally identifiable data. This is basic stuff.
This section contradicts what we know about the digital ad market.

It says that Google is the "controlling node & central authority for online advertising" & its "monopoly tax" leads to higher prices.

But Google's market share is 29%.

And prices have fallen 40% in last decade.
Read 6 tweets
30 Nov
The Moderna vaccine was designed in 2 days in January.

Every smart person was recommending Human Challenge Trials to speed up the approval process.

The US didn't do it, obviously.

Here's the part I still don't get: There are 195 countries in the world. Why did *no one* do it?
(This was not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely confused — please help!)
We had 39,000 volunteers in 166 countries willing to participate in Human Challenge Trials!

1daysooner.org
Read 5 tweets
29 Nov
“running a leafblower for 30 minutes creates more emissions than driving a F-150 pickup truck 3800 miles”

🤯
Apparently @JamesFallows (author of the above passage) has been on a mission to end two-stroke gas-powered leaf blowers.

He’s written more than a dozen pieces for The Atlantic on the topic over the years.

Godspeed!

theatlantic.com/author/james-f…
Read 5 tweets
28 Nov
Why isn’t @elonmusk the hero of the environmental movement?

He built a $550 billion company that sells electric cars & solar panels.
The plan from day one was to use the luxury market to bootstrap the company and reach economies of scale on batteries (and other critical inputs).

Tesla continues to move downmarket and become more of a mass market solution.

You gotta start somewhere!

Read 6 tweets
20 Oct
🚨 The DOJ's antitrust complaint against Google is out!

Thread with some of my initial reactions as I go through it...
Economies of scale are at the heart of this case:

The pro-competitive story: scale economies mean it's efficient (and good for consumers) to have only 1 or 2 large providers.

The anti-competitive story: Google locks up the market to prevent rivals from reaching adequate scale.
Scale matters, but how much?

Data has rapidly diminishing returns (see chart).

Google has about 90% market share.

Microsoft powers search results for the other 10% of the market (Bing, Yahoo & DuckDuckGo).

Microsoft is a $1.6 trillion company — it can afford to compete.
Read 16 tweets
6 Oct
🚨 House Judiciary Committee report on tech and antitrust is out!

Thread with some of my initial reactions as I go through it...
First highly misleading claim:

"a decade into the future, 30% of world GDP may lie with [Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google] and just a handful of others."

Source is a McKinsey report, which says 30% is literally all B2B and B2C commerce globally.

Not "a handful of others"!!
It's so ironic to me that of the 100 acquisitions Facebook has made, the Instagram acquisition is the one most commonly criticized while also being the only one that was extensively investigated & cleared by regulators in the US & abroad at the time.

Lots of hindsight bias here!
Read 22 tweets

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