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What’s in a Subway tuna fish sandwich? In January two Subway customers filed a class-action complaint against the sandwich megachain, alleging that its tuna — which is grayish and spreads perhaps a little too easily for comfort — has been misleadingly marketed. Rather than the “high quality” skipjack tuna Subway advertised, the suit claimed that the product was a franken-mash of “various concoctions.” Investigations ensued. The company tried to restore its good name (and put an end to the “something’s fishy” jokes) with SubwayTunaFacts.com, and a judge soon dismissed the lawsuit. But that didn’t stop the plaintiffs from filing a new version in November, which Subway has called “reckless and improper.” The plaintiffs’ claim this time? That samples of Subway’s tuna contained DNA from chickens, pigs or cows. Yikes.
Opinion | 2021: Covid, Wokeness and Other Debates That Defined the Year - The New York Times
nytimes.com
This comment reminds me of the central thesis of Red Plenty [0] - that all the mathematical or algorithmic sorcery in the world frequently fails on contact with actual human beliefs and desires. We seldom have simple enough utility functions to meaningfully optimize in real life - all of our philosophies, theologies, and other cultural debris have evolved to manage those complexities (often imperfectly).
My Left Kidney | Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com
The introduction of platforms, and especially publisher-platform partnerships, has created new forms of legal and technological lock-in on the publisher side, with dependencies on platform infrastructure posing serious barriers to publishers independently selling ebooks directly to consumers. Platforms have few incentives to support direct sales models that do not require licensing, as those models do not easily support tracking user behavior.
The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy
nyuengelberg.org
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