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Daily Bafflements

This morning, we got up early, on the right side of the bed, and had a strange new idea. We thought, just this once, we might showcase some of the good ideas the tech industry has proffered recently. After all, you’ve got to look at the bright side occasionally, right?

• Though you may have heard about the fancy corporate perks enjoyed by employees at Facebook and Google—from free juice bars to on-campus massages—a growing group of tech sector workers is shooting for something a bit more ascetic. The members of WeFa.st are eschewing the free meals provided by their corporate overlords and finding self-actualization through intermittent fasting.

These mostly young, mostly male, hype men for biohacking have built an ethos around the diet, which promises peak productivity and readiness for a future where technology is king and the smartest man wins. If tech is becoming a lifestyle brand, then intermittent fasting is its Master Cleanse, and these are its Gwyneths.

We can’t wait for the day when man and company achieve true synergy, when even lunch breaks will be unnecessary.

• According to our friends at The Verge, Apple’s got one or two more tricks up its sleeve after the latest iPhone release, most notably the pitch perfect “magic show” it uses to release its products into the world. Of course, you’d hardly need need magic to sell a savvy customer on the (of course massive and totally game-changing) differences between the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus.

• It’s April Fool’s Day and Google, our favorite multinational corporate rascal, has really gotten one over on users this year. The company added a “mic drop” option in place of the send button on Gmail, featuring blocked messages and a “sassy gif” response that sent some spoilsports into a tizzy, like the commentor who whined “I send a legal document which affects mine and my family’s life and you stick that button in the place of a send button.” What a whiner.

If you find our new embrace of “digital culture” a bit unsettling, just remember that once this peculiar holiday has passed, we’ll be back to piss in the cornflakes of the New Economy in our usual style.