Bottom of the News

“Imagine a world in which your neighborhood, as shown to you on an app, resembles an entirely different neighborhood than the one on your street, where storefronts have nothing to do with what’s available for you to eat. “Eventually the word ‘virtual’ is just going to be dropped,” hopes Alex Canter, co-founder of the virtual restaurant platform Nextbite. ‘It’ll just be restaurants that live online the same way that when you shop online for clothes, you don’t call it a virtual store.’ The draw of a virtual restaurant is that of online shopping: The same products no matter where you are, or sometimes products exclusive to the virtual world. It’s fast food on an even grander scale.” Jaya Saxena in Eater: Is the Future of Food the Future We Want?

+ This is definitely the future of food no one wants: World’s potato shortage affects french fries from Japan to Kenya. No, really. In Capetown, McDonald’s ran out of hash browns and fries.

+ Dogs Can Distinguish Speech from Gibberish—and Tell Spanish from Hungarian. (I just tried to get my beagles to stop barking in Spanish and Hungarian. Nothing.)

+ WaPo: They bought a blender. Three weeks later, their cats continue to hold it hostage.

+ True, I probably missed a cat smoothie joke, but instead I wanted to note that I’m trying a new shorter format today. Let me know what you think. (There’s a chance this could result in some layout or technical issues in the newsletter or app. If so, apologies.)