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, April 21, 2017

Daily Bafflements

A worthless juice machine and an email server worthy of the Gipper himself
Some testimonials from customers of the Ronald Reagan email server. / reagan.com

• Today in tech: Elon Musk engages in some “consensual telepathy.”

• The Juicegate saga continues. In case you haven’t been keeping up with the story of the century, the company that produces a $400 juicer called Juicero has been taking some flack from customers who found out you can also extract juice from the company’s proprietary pulp packets by squeezing them . . . with your hands. But wait! cries an anguished CEO, Don’t juice with your hands. In a Medium post, Juicero CEO Jeff Dunn explains the true value of his product:

The value of Juicero is more than a glass of cold-pressed juice. Much more.

The value is in how easy it is for a frazzled dad to do something good for himself while getting the kids ready for school, without having to prep ingredients and clean a juicer.

It’s in how the busy professional who needs more greens in her life gets App reminders to press Produce Packs before they expire, so she doesn’t waste the hard-earned money she spent on them.

These are just a few examples of the value that the Juicero system offers, and we’re just getting started. As I said, this is a long-term vision and we’ll encounter bumps in the road, but our team and our investors understand the important problem we’re trying to solve, and they’re committed to helping us get there.

Look, the transubstantiation of food into luxury good is nothing new, as Heather Havrilesky observed in a recent issue. But one Baffler staffer (who shall remain nameless) is eagerly after a Juicero for our HQ for, uh, research purposes:


So think about helping a little magazine out.

• “You believe having control of your privacy is important. You also believe Ronald Reagan was the greatest president in your lifetime—a man who honored the Constitution and the Rights expressed therein.” If this describes you, you may need your very own @reagan.com email address, starting at just $33 per year! Of course, Reagan enthusiasts have been up to such fascinating shenanigans for years. Just ask Rick Perlstein and Daniel Tucker.