I enjoy reading the Washington Post, but one thing I've noticed post-Bezos is how trite the articles in the section "The Post Recommends" are. They really are linkbaity, even if they link to articles on the Post. I mean, I can be reading The DC Sports Bog [sic] incognito, and the Post will recommend, "The sobering thing doctors do when they die."

Post recommendation on The Sports Bog

But I guess it's working. Today, I finally gave in and read an article that's often โ€œrecommendedโ€, "The baffling reason many millennials donโ€™t eat cereal". Iโ€™d already read The New York Timesโ€™ version, so might asd well see what the Post has to add. Basically, the answer appears to be that millennials don't want to clean the bowl.

But there is another thing happening, which should scare cereal makers โ€” and, really, anyone who has a stake in this country's future โ€” more: A large contingent of millennials are uninterested in breakfast cereal because eating it means using a bowl, and bowls don't clean themselves (or get tossed in the garbage). Bowls, kids these days groan, have to be cleaned.

Wow. I mean, I often eat cereal because all I have to clean is the bowl! It's not that difficult. Itโ€™s just milk. Rinse, wipe well, and leave it out for tomorrow morning.

Sad enough, right? But the real take home is the last sentence of the piece:

Maybe Soylent is the future after all.

And I was pretty sure I knew what Soyent is... Seems like Iโ€™d read an article on how popular the soy shake had become in place of meals in Silicon Valley. From todayโ€™s Wikipedia, it looks like Iโ€™m remembering correctly:

Soylent is a meal replacement beverage, advertised as a "staple meal", available in both liquid and powdered forms. Its creators state that Soylent meets all nutritional requirements for an average adult, but some critics claim otherwise. It was first created and tested by software engineer Rob Rhinehart as a self-experiment in nutrition. Subsequently, the powdered version of Soylent was developed into the first product line of the company Rosa Labs, who currently markets and sells the formulation.

What a weird product. You couldnโ€™t engineer a better hipster food, which tells me thatโ€™s essentially what it is. I mean, look at these "use" images.

Soylent use images 8 July 2016

Itโ€™s essentially the equivalent of six slices of bread worth of calories. I canโ€™t tell how many they expect you to drink to equal a meal, but Iโ€™m guessing one at $2.69. I guess thatโ€™s pretty cheap, compared to going out for lunch, but compared to a loaf of sandwich bread, well, even this bottle of calories isnโ€™t insanely cheap. And thereโ€™s some waste, no matter what theyโ€™d like you to believe. Itโ€™s pretty โ€˜Murican, if you ask me. Folks pay a small premium for convenience and hipsterness, and somebody profits.

But thatโ€™s not โ€˜Murican enough. Take another look at this image, from Soyentโ€™s site (oh, even more hipster. Itโ€™s hosted on heroku via fastly! Well done, Soyent):

insert alt text

Really? Mr. Skinny New Hat, Hipster Sunglasses, Hipster Facial Hair is dribbling Soyent all over his chin. Is he drinking anything? Not only do we not have time to eat, we have so freakin' much disposable income we can't possibly drink our meals respectfully. We have so little time to waste, unless it's time taken to be wasteful.

'Murica. Come on Soyent. Be classy.

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