Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

This fight is for everything.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: There’s Always A Market for Food Faddism

Open Thread: There’s Always A Market for Food Faddism

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When the ancient appetite for hummingbird-tongue pie and pearls dissolved in vinegar filters through childhood memories of Captain Picard demanding “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”… From the NYTimes article:

… Is it a juice-ordering app? Is it just another kitchen-counter contraption? Or is it a 111,000-square-foot food processing factory, staffed by dozens of hourly workers, washing and slicing up fruits and vegetables in Los Angeles?

It is all of these things. “It’s the most complicated business that I’ve ever funded,” said David Krane, a partner at GV, formerly Google Ventures. “It’s software. It’s consumer electronics. It’s produce and packaging.”

Many of the tycoons who inhabit Silicon Valley are obsessed with health and longevity while harboring the conviction that technology can improve anything, even one of nature’s most elementary foodstuffs — in this case, juice. And they believe that niche trends, if properly disrupted, can become billion-dollar markets. Juicero is the latest expression of these techno-utopian impulses…

The machine itself is a white plastic slab roughly the size of a food processor. To get some juice, you insert a pouch that resembles an IV bag and press a button. A couple of minutes later, a thin stream of vividly colored liquid squirts into a glass.

For health nuts willing to pay a premium, Juicero promises the platonic ideal of juice. Plus, the machine never needs to be cleaned.

But getting from farm to glass involves a daunting mix of hardware, code and food processing. The arrangement relies on a smartphone app, always-on Wi-Fi, QR codes, high-tech packaging and an army of workers slicing fruits and vegetables in very particular ways…

How long after it hits the market will it take for some tv comedian to bait C-list celebrities with a fake Juicero dispensing doses of V8?

For that matter, how long before Ronco comes out with a $19.95 ‘Youceroo’ that sits on your kitchen counter and dispenses V8, Welsh grape juice, or Motts from ‘convenient storage paks’?

Reader Interactions

147Comments

  4. 4.

    JGabriel

    NYTimes:

    The machine itself is a white plastic slab roughly the size of a food processor. To get some juice, you insert a pouch that resembles an IV bag and press a button. A couple of minutes later, a thin stream of vividly colored liquid squirts into a glass.

    So … basically it’s a Keurig K-Cup for juice instead of coffee? And they’re going to charge $700 per unit rather than the $150-$225 most Keurig K-Cup machines run?

    I don’t see this being a big success, at least not at that price point. Even the guys who put together Soylent kept in mind that they had to price it in the same ballpark as Ensure and Boost to be competitive. I can’t think of anyone outside of Megan McCardle types who will pay $700 for a juicer – which is maybe enough people for a marginally profitable niche product, but it sure as hell won’t be disrupting any markets.

  5. 5.

    Ruviana

    Those tech bros are crazy! Remember the Soylent dude? He didn’t like the effort of cooking and all the icky germs that could be on food.

  6. 6.

    Joulupukki5000

    This reads like an early April Fool’s Joke.

    From the NYT article

    “He approached Ms. Mari and some of the original backers of Organic Avenue, who invested enough money for him to keep going. “Then, I got an introduction to a partner at Kleiner Perkins through a vegan fashion designer who knew someone at the Humane Society who knew them,” said Mr. Evans.”

  7. 7.

    Bill

    If you want fresh juice why wouldn’t you go to your local Target and buy a juicer for a hell of a lot less than $700?

  10. 10.

    shortribs

    > How do you measure life force? How do you measure chi?

    You don’t. Now, give me $700.

    Besides, someone already cornered the tech-healthy-food-in-a-glass market with that Soylent stuff that came out a year or so ago.

  13. 13.

    MattF

    So, the Wi-Fi… does what, exactly? Besides recording and preserving your juice preferences for eternity. Does it mean that when you switch from orange juice to grapefruit juice, all your pop-up browser ads will also switch from goes-with-orange to goes-with-grapefruit? And for only $700…

  14. 14.

    Tracy Ratcliff

    Haven’t looked at the article yet, since it’s still too early to start drinking, but /requires/ wifi /and/ a smart-phone app? Having just left a tier-1 ISP tech support job, I can tell you that there are not a lot of consumers competent to get the thing set up. Good lord.

  15. 15.

    Ken

    dispenses V8, Welsh grape juice, or Motts from ‘convenient storage paks’

    OOOO. Will I be able to make my own mix of flavors, like with those new soda machines with thousands of options?

  17. 17.

    Peale

    @JGabriel: Not really. It’s more like a keurig for Cool-aid and Crystal Light. Powder does not make juice. It makes colored liquid.

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    @Tracy Ratcliff:

    Haven’t looked at the article yet, since it’s still too early to start drinking, but /requires/ wifi /and/ a smart-phone app? Having just left a tier-1 ISP tech support job, I can tell you that there are not a lot of consumers competent to get the thing set up. Good lord.

    I suspect that being technologically skilled enough to set the system up — or rich enough to pay someone to do it for you — is part of the Juicero cachet.

    Anybody with a fiver can score some cold-press organic juice from the Kwikee Mart cooler, but only the elite can make their $700 juicer send a record of their preferences to The Cloud…

  25. 25.

    boatboy_srq

    @Iowa Old Lady: Well, the last few Panera outlets I’ve visited have been pig sties, so “clean food” may be to offset the dirty restaurants. IYAM it sounds like whitewashing for what goes into their product.

  27. 27.

    boatboy_srq

    @Linnaeus: I’ve had grape juice in Wales…. but IIRC grapes disappeared from Britain for about 1000 years or so, and only recently returned, and Wales isn’t exactly ideal to grow them….

  28. 28.

    Andrey

    @Peale: To be fair, this isn’t powder in water, it’s actual juice – the packs are actual fruits and vegetables that are actually pressed to produce the juice. Still a $700 juicer, though.

  31. 31.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Sweet cartwheeling Jesus. One of my two appalling senators apparently more or less said he’s okay with guns in the R convention.

    The Secret Service must be chugging malox.

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @Peale:

    Powder does not make juice. It makes colored liquid.

    It sounds as if they aren’t using powder. They’re actually putting fruits and vegetables in the packs, and the machine presses them to create the juice. The reason they “need” the WiFi connection is so they can check the packs against a centralized database and reject ones that are past expiration or recalled due to contamination.

  33. 33.

    boatboy_srq

    @MikeJake: the future is a calcium-deficient rotund blob in a hoverchair slurping down a cupcake-in-a-cup.

    It’s not the technology necessarily. It’s the occupants of the future that are dumb: making work longer and more pervasive/intrusive, while demanding leisure that’s both passive and on-demand.

  35. 35.

    MattF

    @Iowa Old Lady: When I hear stories on this theme, there’s a voice in the back of my head that says “Well, we’re hearing the voice of the people. If it’s what they want, then it’s what they should get.”

  37. 37.

    Brachiator

    @Pogonip:

    Is Welsh grape juice better than English grape juice?

    And why is there no Cornish grape juice?

    Could you have Welsh grape juice with Yorkshire pudding?

  39. 39.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Aimai: What did kelp ever do to you?

    All of this (juice/juicer/price thereof) for my money, ignores an important piece of information. Juice, freshly squeezed being the ideal, is a pleasant (generally) beverage. It is a wasteful and less than entirely healthy way to consume fruits and vegetables; they contain fiber for a reason. Removing and discarding it completely changes the physical response to consumption. And that’s before you get to the waste – that’s a lot of edible material heading to your compost pile.

    I’ll just note that and duck.

    IANAMD, but I do have strong opinions.

  41. 41.

    Peale

    @Brachiator: The problem with Welsh juice is that once you buy it in the store and get the can home, it turns out to be empty. The company promised that it would give you juice, but decided at the last minute that it wanted to go double or nothing.

  47. 47.

    dp

    Unless I’m missing something, that is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of anyone investing money in.

  49. 49.

    Mike J

    @boatboy_srq:

    the future is a calcium-deficient rotund blob in a hoverchair slurping down a cupcake-in-a-cup.

    The Slitscan audience.

    [Slitscan’s audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

    Wait, were we talking food or politics?

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
    There are some strong counter-arguments about the advantages of juicing. One of the disadvantages of eating fruits and vegetables raw and whole is that all the fiber interferes with your ability to absorb the nutrients they contain. This isn’t some hippy-dippy idea; nutritionists will tell you that many vegetables are healthier cooked than raw despite the loss/destruction of some vitamins and minerals because the cooking makes the remaining nutrients easier to absorb. Juicing gives many of the same benefits in digestibility without the cooking step to destroy nutrients, and a juicer with a really powerful press- which the one being discussed here certainly has- is able to squeeze the fruits and vegetables hard enough so that the remaining pulp is pretty much pure fiber. I won’t argue, as some juice fanatics do, that you should consume nothing but juice, but it’s actually a pretty good way to supplement your diet with extra fruits and vegetables.

  52. 52.

    Chip Daniels

    And of course, on the back end of this, there is a small army of minimum wage immigrants working in sweatshop conditions, none of whom could ever dream of being able to blow 700 bucks on something so stupid.

  57. 57.

    PurpleGirl

    @Chip Daniels: I was thinking that too. The whole idea is such conspicuous consumption, perfect for people with more money than they can use in a lifetime unlike the rest of us.

  60. 60.

    debbie

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I’m almost ashamed to tell you how long it took me to realize that slow food was local, not crock-potted. Why did they stop naming things what they are???

  61. 61.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Meanwhile, kids are starving not only in Africa, but in this country, but high-tech fuckwits can’t be bothered to care about that.

  62. 62.

    ? Martin

    @JGabriel: Kitchen Aid has sold a fuckton of mixers at $500 a pop. That’s what mine cost 25 years ago when I got married. If I were a juice person, I’d use it every day rather than once a week.

    I will also point out that many of us are older and our value calculations are getting fucked up a bit. There’s a HUGE number of people out there that are spending $10-$20 a day on stuff like this – from fancy coffee to hipster donuts and all that. If you get a $5 juice daily, that $700 juicer probably pays off within a year. Yeah, it’s not a low-income indulgence but it’s solidly middle class for people that put health relatively high in their discretionary budget.

    $700 used to be a fairly significant purchase but it’s not so much any longer. Hell, even in China $700 isn’t an exorbitant price for a consumer good.

  64. 64.

    ? Martin

    @Chip Daniels:

    And of course, on the back end of this, there is a small army of minimum wage immigrants working in sweatshop conditions, none of whom could ever dream of being able to blow 700 bucks on something so stupid.

    Apple is selling nearly 50 million $700 iPhones in China every year. One in 3 US adults owns a $700 smartphone.

    Of course there are people who can’t afford a $700 gadget like that. Does that mean we should banish the sale of $700 gadgets simply because the majority but not the entirety of the population can afford them?

  66. 66.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    @Iowa Old Lady: it’s to highlight the problems of Chipotle.

    I was at a shopping center the other day and stepped into a juice bar. I used to go to Jamba Juice once in a while but haven’t been in one in a few years. This place had their juice choices and the prices along with the sizes. Keep in mind,this is Arizona,not NY or SF but the prices were $6,$8,$10 – 16oz,24oz,32oz. These were regular juices not anything exotic. Seriously, WTF? Who pays $10 for a large juice. Jamba Juice prices used to be ~ 3.50/4.50 for a reg/lg. I’m not tight with the money I spend on food, but I’m not spending $10 on a large juice. Not in AZ anyhow.

  67. 67.

    boatboy_srq

    @? Martin: Key difference: it’s a lot easier to justify a smartphone if it replaces cable, internet and land-line. It’s a tool – and in a world where a home bundle goes for north of $300 a month to serve maybe $5000 worth of electronics, a $700 device with a $40/month service you can take anywhere is comparatively cheap.

  68. 68.

    dedc79

    So George Mason Law School is being renamed The Antonin Scalia School of Law (ASSLaw for short):

    George Mason University has renamed its law school after late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Richard Kelsey, an assistant dean at the 500-student law school in Arlington, made it all but official in a tweet Thursday afternoon before the formal announcement:

    The move had been reported earlier by NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg. Along with the renaming, the law school also announced $30 million in contributions from two donors. The larger donation is a $20 million gift from an anonymous giver who approached GMU through the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization of which Scalia was a patron saint. The other $10 million comes from the Charles Koch Foundation, which has previously made other large donations to parts of GMU, including the Mercatus Center, an economic think tank that specializes in free-market policies. The university has been the top recipient of higher-education donations from the Koch Foundation.

  70. 70.

    ? Martin

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Meanwhile, kids are starving not only in Africa, but in this country, but high-tech fuckwits can’t be bothered to care about that.

    You sure about that?

    Among possible causes to be considered, the first and most controversial is the role increased international trade, or globalization, has on the decrease. The movement of capital, people, and goods around the globe has increased dramatically over these decades. But trade occurs not only between developed and developing nations, and underreported story has been the remarkable increase in trade among developing countries themselves. The UN report observed that trade among developing countries constituted less than 10 percent of global trade in 1980, yet now constitutes over 25 percent of global trade.

    Finally, the possible role of technology in the decreasing poverty rates should not be overlooked. The technological changes that set the ground for industrial revolution of the 19th century played a significant role in the era’s economic development; and technological changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries likely play a role in broadening the gains of production throughout the world.

    So free trade and technology (mostly coming from those same high-tech fuckwits) are two of the leading candidates for reducing poverty. There are untold accounts of how poor individuals, by being able to connect through smartphones and apps and services, are able to create economic opportunities for themselves when the usual corporate gatekeepers are unwilling to do so. For example, Uber has been in Africa for 4 years and operates in 400 cities. Google has been laying fiber all over Africa.

    Not everything is about donating to Feed the Children.

  71. 71.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @dedc79: Well, those sources are all you need to know. People who are outright enemies of the Constitution.

  72. 72.

    gogol's wife

    @Gin & Tonic:

    It’s a Slavic thang. My Slovak father loved it. The rest of the family used to leave the house while he ate it, alone at the dining room table.

  73. 73.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @? Martin: It would be helpful if the 1% didn’t behave the way they do, basically pissing on all of us and telling us it’s raining.

  75. 75.

    ? Martin

    @boatboy_srq: You can justify these things in any number of ways. The point is that people do justify them, and we shouldn’t be the arbiters of whether that justification is valid or not.

    I just lost 40 lbs. It was hard. Go ask Mayhew if a $700 appliance that if used regularly but would improve health outcomes is a good macroeconomic trade against the cost of treating a comparable number of cases of diabetes or heart disease or whatever. If $700 made me a healthier person, it’d be pretty fucking cheap against most of the alternatives.

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    @Iowa Old Lady: I have been wondering the same thing! It’s like the old fast food place that was called “Hot and Now” – I always figured if that was the best you could say about your food, you were in trouble.

  78. 78.

    ? Martin

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    It would be helpful if the 1% didn’t behave the way they do, basically pissing on all of us and telling us it’s raining.

    Very, very fair point. But I don’t see a lot of that from the tech community. If anything they are yanking California further left, not right. The traditional industrialists are the more likely targets here.

  79. 79.

    ? Martin

    @redshirt: Big change in diet and walking/running 40 miles a week. Took about a year across the 3 attempts. Each time I made progress and then the whole plan fell apart in a heap, and a few months later cobbled it back together again. It’s currently in a very big unpleasant heap. If $700 would get me back on track, I’d spend it today, but the problems are a lot bigger than that at the moment.

  82. 82.

    Amaranthine RBG

    It’s funny, thread below was filled with folks femmesplaining why its totes reasonable and not at all extravagant for Hillary Clinton to spend $1,200 on a haircut.

    In comparison to that, a $700 juice machine is a bargain.

  84. 84.

    SteveA

    Can we just lock this guy in a cell and give him the choice of blood sausage or starvation?

  85. 85.

    ? Martin

    @redshirt: That was a component of the diet change. But also just cutting calories, shifting to a more vegetarianish diet, and a few other things. Each one was pretty simple in itself but they all reinforced each other. It worked really well overall.

  89. 89.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Felonius Monk: hops, barley and malt. You can float a grape in it if you want, on a hot summer day.

    Counts as a serving of fruit that way.

    ETA: I had a Breville juicer for a while, cost about $200. I gave up on it because it was just as much work to wash and cut up the vegetables for eating, and a lot more work to clean up after, and the whole fiber thing.

  90. 90.

    ? Martin

    @redshirt: My phone does that pretty well. I didn’t really keep specific daily goals (I don’t need any additional commitments in my life) but I’m good at managing the overarching direction and had a good sense if I was doing well or not. Most days I’d rack up about 6 miles walking and about 3 5K runs per week. I’d use it more for making sure I wasn’t overdoing it on the runs than anything else.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @Amaranthine RBG:

    Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the roar of your totally practical $50K pickup truck.

    But I’m not surprised that you still don’t get the point that “boy toys” like a high-tech juicer get way more automatic respect than “girl toys” like a cut, color and highlights.

  93. 93.

    Chip Daniels

    @? Martin:

    I’m not sure what your point was.
    I didn’t say we should ban expensive and silly gadgets.

    What needs to be repeatedly pointed out, is that we live in a winner-take-all economy, a casino where a tiny few get fabulously wealthy with minimum effort, while an enormous majority labor extremely hard for very little.

    The tech gizmos are not intrinsically evil, but the tech industry is an extremely winner-take-all sort of place, where certain things become viral sensations while others die a quiet death.

    And worse, the public face of the tech industry- new, shiny, wonderfully egalitarian- belies the old fashioned sweatshop foundation upon which it is built.

    Behind every Iphone there are overworked and underpaid retail clerks, minimum wage warehouse workers toiling in appalling conditions, sweatshop Chinese workers in dormitories outfitted with suicide screens, and African children slaving away in backbreaking labor to mine the precious metals.

    Again, this isn’t unique to Apple, smart phones, or even high technology. Its endemic to the worldwide global system of trade, whose rules are written not by the workers who produce the value, but the rentier class and their captive politicians.

    So yeah, it always seems unfair to pick on some inventor of some shiny new bauble, but they are part of a massive system that is trying very, very hard to get us to ignore the slavery supporting cheap stuff.

  94. 94.

    redshirt

    @? Martin: Get a Fitbit. It tracks your pulse so when you give it your weight, height, and age, it calculates your calorie burn along with plenty of other stats. You can download it into a database if you want. It’s your data, your literal sleep and waking periods and everything contained within.

  98. 98.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Amaranthine RBG: @Mnemosyne: The fact that you think a juicer is a manly accoutrement speaks volumes.

    even with all the stiff competition, I would say you’re solidly in the running for both Most Obnoxious Bernista, and Flat Out Weirdest Bernista.

  101. 101.

    boatboy_srq

    @redshirt: Boost Mobile. Or MetroPCS. $40/mo, unlimited talk/text, 3 GB data before throttling (unlimited quantity but reduced bandwidth after). No contracts. From there hulu/netflix/whatever direct-to-smartphone. Best with a Samsung Note or similar large-format device.

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    @? Martin:

    If you get a $5 juice daily, that $700 juicer probably pays off within a year.

    Probably not in this case, because that $700 juicer doesn’t make juice from produce you buy at the farmers’ market. It makes juice from $4-$10 packets of pre-processed produce that they have to ship using expensive shipping so they don’t spoil before you can press them. What you’d want if you were trying to save money is a juicer that will let you use your own produce, like a $350 Beville Juice Fountain, or, if you really want a high-end juicer, a $2500 triturating juicer.

  106. 106.

    SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer

    @ruemara:

    It’s already April Fool’s Day in some parts of the world. This could be an international juicer jape.

  107. 107.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @Roger Moore: Hell, as I look out my window now I see a juice kiosk in San Francisco that charges, no joke, $11 for 8 ounces of juice. And there is a line several times a day. Not even fresh squeezed or just made – they prepare it somewhere off site and deliver the bottles in the morning and the customers can pay extra for a “boost” or a “shot” of this or that faddish mumbojumbo to turn that $11 juice into a $16 juice if they want.

    I’ll have to check tomorrow to see how many lumberjacks and hunky fireman stand in line so I can see if juice is this new manly obsession …

  108. 108.

    SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    One of my two appalling senators apparently more or less said he’s okay with guns in the R convention.

    … And since one of your appalling senators is a She, that’s not too hard to narrow down.

  109. 109.

    SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer

    I hate April 1st. Have to wake up remembering to say “rabbit rabbit rabbit” before uttering any other word. Have to remember to pay the rent. Have to remind self to disbelieve everything I see online or hear on air.

    It is always a day fraught with challenges.

  115. 115.

    SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Someone on a thread last night suggested that I was a tough, take-no-prisoners mob enforcer, so I decided to try it out for a little while. But in actuality I am such a polite, shy, self-effacing, and completely non-confrontational person that I may abandon it before long.

  117. 117.

    Gin & Tonic

    @redshirt: By measuring how many calories you burn and sharing that data with their partner companies and affiliates.

    I like the part in their TOS when they say “if we are going to share your data we will do our best to notify you.” Hey, thanks, that’s great. I’m delighted you will “do your best”. How about letting me own my own data and deciding what to do with it? Oh, sorry, can’t do that, it hinders our ability to make a buck.

    Fuck them.

  123. 123.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: Huh, I thought the most “Trumpian” moment for a Dem candidate was St Bernard saying he didn’t know if he would fundraise for downtick races– ETA, you could almost hear the implied “if I’m treated fairly”. But they are both narcissists. Saying Obama should withdraw his nominee if St Bernard is the nominee was pretty Trumpian, too. Maybe more McConnellist, agreeing that Obama’s presidency expires when he, Bernie, says so.

  125. 125.

    Amir Khalid

    @Roger Moore:

    The reason they “need” the WiFi connection is so they can check the packs against a centralized database and reject ones that are past expiration or recalled due to contamination.

    Put a clock/calendar and a reader for the label on the fruit/veg pack in the juicer, and you don’t need the WiFi connection anymore.

  127. 127.

    SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer

    @boatboy_srq:

    Luv ya, SD [[hug]]

    Thx, bbsrq, luv ya 2. I’d hug you back, but you know us mob enforcers can easily break bones if we hug someone just a little too hard.

  128. 128.

    SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I guess I’ll have to ask efgoldman if you were packing heat when you came up here.

    He’ll never tell. I made sure of that.

  129. 129.

    debbie

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Except that it’s dishonest to blame it all on Sanders. I have issues with her accepting money from Goldman Sachs et al, as well as her ties to Wall Street in general, and I didn’t get either from listening to Sanders.

  131. 131.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: But your cool with Bernie! blowing off down ticket races? The one man revolution works for you?

    You agree that abortion is not an important issue, because Bernie! says so?

    You think the Republicans are right about Obama and the Court, because now Bernie! says they are?

  132. 132.

    Gin & Tonic

    @redshirt: We’ll never know, will we, because they won’t tell you how much they’re making off yours, and I won’t give them mine.

    Also why I don’t use “free” e-mail.

  137. 137.

    Pogonip

    @redshirt: My father low-carbed his way off insulin at age 86. The home-health-care nurse tried to enlist him to go around and speak to diabetes classes, but he’s too shy. He’s now 89 and still off insulin.

  144. 144.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Have to agree with you about FitBit, and most other hi-tech gadgets. I bought an Android gadget, had to set up a Google account, which I have never signed into ever. Google is a nice search engine, has good mapping tech, etc. But if I want to search and keep my data to myself, DuckDuckGo is better. Because there is no data sharing.

  145. 145.

    Cleos

    No surprise here. If people will actually pay $20-$28 a pound for single-serve coffee pods, they can be talked into buying anything.

  146. 146.

    Katdip

    Late to the thread, but despite the flimsy organic fig leaf, this is an environmental disaster. Let’s count the eco-fails here: need to ship packaged fruits and veggies by air, to be used in equipment that needs significant energy and resources to make and is eventually e-waste, and then encasing the food waste in non-compostable, non recyclable multilayer packaging. If they included the embedded carbon cost of this product it would be twice as expensive!

  147. 147.

    boatboy_srq

    @Katdip: In other words, perfect for the conspicuous consumption Elect types who still want to look like they’re health and nature freaks.

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