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Daily Bafflements

• In a wide-ranging conspiracy, a rogue USDA official and the American Egg Board were discovered to have launched a covert attack on the Silicon Valley startup responsible for a plant-based egg substitute and Just Mayo, which some argue just isn’t. More than one member of the AEB, a government-backed egg lobbying group, joked in leaked emails about putting “a hit out” on the founder of Just Mayo’s parent company, worked to bar Just Mayo’s sale in Whole Foods stores, and worked to convince the FDA to rule that Just Mayo must change its name based on its eggless status.

• Today in billionaires: in an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, Cullen Godfrey innocently asks, “Why does Bernie Sanders hate billionaires?” In an impressive feat of erasure, Godfrey ignores centuries of economic history to tell us that “billionaires become billionaires because they create things that we all use, love and enjoy. It has always been so.” Oh, well then. Meanwhile, Forbes reports that the world has lost 66 billionaires to the recent tremors in the global markets, some becoming mere hundred-millionaires. Somehow, we’ve managed to hold back our tears so far.

• The world’s moguls have a lot on their mind these days—Elon Musk warns of the coming “robocalypse,” following up on previous comments that artificial intelligence is “our biggest existential threat.” For more CEOs’ wacky futurism, check out Corey Pein’s recent Baffler salvo on Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity University.