This is a harbinger of things to come, some already here.

On the surface, Epicurious eliminating beef recipes is like when CVS stopped selling cigarettes, cutting off some recurring (addicted) foot traffic.

Just a calculated business decision?

No.
👇🏼
nationalobserver.com/2021/05/05/opi…
Whatever you think of the urgency of climate change, the best solutions, or effectiveness of this specific move (⬇️ beef), this move is the product of powerful climate narratives manifested in the real world by adherents (Epicurious employees/mgmt).

This is just the start.

2/5
I suspect it's just a matter of time before Google adjusts its algorithms to make finding beef recipes as hard as they did to find funny photos of portly people (to make fun of myself).

3/5
In this clip from The McFuture podcast you can hear the publisher of Psychology Today explain how a study showed Google and Facebook shifted voting patterns with their algorithm.

4/5
Today and increasingly, in the digital future, truth will be **decided and enforced** by algorithms. They'll be based on the values of those who write them.

---
Sign up for more on The McFuture newsletter & podcast at stevefaktor.com

5/5

PS: As for Epicurious, there'll be plenty of sites w/beef recipes. You might need new ways to find them. A new search engine? Or newsletter that Gmail buries in a "promotions" folder?

Like alt. social networks (Gab or Parler), they'll only exist at the pleasure of tech titans.
PPS: The young are drawn to social change, making an impact. But they're impressionable & exploitable. Some causes will be noble (civil rights), others terrible (communism). Digital tools make both equally viral & convincing. They'll linger as truths inside every product we use.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Steve Faktor

Steve Faktor Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ideafaktory

4 May
Top 5 reasons educated people crave indefinite lockdowns:
40% Education=conformity, not critical thought
30% Valid excuse for failure
20% Politics as religion
5% Get off on controlling others
5% Self interest, live how/where you want, skip work (teachers)
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Education=conformity, not critical thought
Read 7 tweets
13 Apr
THE NEW ERA OF DATA INEQUALITY

"Data wants to be free."

...is a common but silly trope.

Data was briefly liberated by bad decisions of analog companies navigating the .com boom.

Now, #data returns to its native protected state. (And not for the best.)

A thread... Image
First let's start with data itself. It has no ambitions or aspirations. It doesn't want to go to college or have a baby by age 30. Data's "desires" are those of its creators, purveyors & consumers.

Offline, there are few private sector examples of free information because of friction & cost.

Even online, most "free" data is used to sell something.

"Free" services sell our data or monetize our attention.

And Wikipedia relies on patronage by people & companies.
Read 11 tweets
4 Apr
Officially, inflation is 1.5%, below the Fed's 2% target.

In reality, some assets, esp financial ones & homes, are ballooning, as are some cherry-picked commodities, but not the overall commodities index.

What's going on...?
👇 ImageImage
There are several ways govt measures CPI (Consumer Price Index), which is the price of a "basket" of goods tracked across time.
bls.gov/cpi/overview.h…

The official calculation is controversial because it excludes energy & food. There's also lots of issues w/housing calculation.
Also, there was a secret bipartisan effort in the 80's to underreport inflation & lower official CPI as a stealth cut to entitlements (social security, medicare, medicaid), which are tied to inflation.

You can hear @EricRWeinstein discuss this on his latest @joerogan appearance.
Read 13 tweets
23 Feb
Verifiable, digital-only art is the trend of the moment.

AKA “crypto art” or “#NFTs” (non-fungible tokens), this work lives on the blockchain. Here's one of the better arguments for it.

A few critical thoughts...

one37pm.com/grind/money/th…
1) I'm all for artists having more ways to make money from their work & access more buyers who value it, in whatever form or medium.

2) There are two main perks crypto brings to the table: verifiability of ownership & elimination of middlemen, eliminating friction.

#NFT
3) The downsides of #NFT are linked to the purpose art historically serves: a) investment, b) status, c) decoration. (Order varies per collector)

The immediate problem is (c), which precipitates problems with (b). You need to print it out to show off in meatspace. In digital...
Read 6 tweets
18 Feb
I was a huge radio fan growing up. Listened to Howard Stern, sports talk (WFAN), liberal (Lynn Samuels, Alan Colms), conservative (Bob Grant), crappy sex talk (Dr. Ruth) hosts. Even tried catching far away stations late at night.

I first heard Rush Limbaugh in college.

1/
A friend from NYU made me Rush cassettes, hoping for a conversion.

Unlike cranky local NY conservative Bob Grant, Rush was a showman. He had the flair of a preacher. Not hard to see why he attracted evangelicals.

Unlike preachers, there was no feigned piety or niceness.

2/
Rush was more menacing, with a thin veil of what he considered humor, like bad puns ("Feminazis") or cliche jokes about Chinese or blacks.

Having listened to Howard & watched standup on TV, I was not amused. Nor did I care about his targets. Back then, life wasn't politics.

3/
Read 7 tweets
16 Feb
GLITCH IN THE GAMES WE PLAY (thread)

There are 3 types of games all of us play:

1) Foundational
2) Covert
3) Willful

Each is different, but they share one very important characteristic that rules our lives and emotions. And it's wrecking us!
1) Foundational games are ones we can't opt out of. For example, procuring money to buy essentials - food, clothing, shelter. In fact, survival is the ultimate foundational game & capitalism its economic avatar. Traffic laws (really, most regulations) are mandatory games.
We may not be happy playing foundational games, but opting out is virtually impossible since they are enforced to one degree or another everywhere.

2) Covert games are ones we don't realize we're playing. Most social norms fall under this category.
Read 11 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(