The 11th Hour Dispatch — Tuesday, July 24, 2018
YOUNG MONEY
Snapchat’s VP of Hardware Mark Randall has left the company to start his own. Randall joined the company in 2016 to focus on development of Snapchat’s camera-enabled sunglasses called Spectacles. The product, of which a second revamped version was released earlier this year, hasn’t found its footing quite yet (in fact, last year, the company lost $40 million on unsold inventory of Spectacles). On top of that, Snapchat has had a string of leadership shakeups in this department, including Randall himself replacing Steve Horowitz (who served under the title of VP of Operations) last September.
BINGE WATCH
Over 118K people have signed a petition to cancel Netflix’s yet-to-be-released show Insatiable. The comedy series stars former Disney star Debby Ryan as an overweight bullied highschooler who loses a large amount of weight after getting punched in the face by a homeless man, forcing her to get her jaw wired shut. When she returns to school thinner after summer break, she uses her newfound positive attention from her classmates to get revenge for their previous treatment of her. Critics of the show’s trailer have called it “tone deaf” and accused it of “fat shaming.” However, Ryan and co-star Alyssa Milano have each taken to Twitter to argue that the comedy is satirical and is actually critiquing fat shaming itself. Ryan, who states that she has struggled with body image issues for 12 years, said that she “was drawn to this show’s willingness to go to real places about how difficult and scary it can be to move through the world in a body, whether you’re being praised or criticized for its size, and what it feels like to pray to be ignored because it’s easier than being seen.” No word from Netflix at the moment, but as of now, the series is still set to premiere on the streaming service on August 10.
BIG BUSINESS
The New York Times is taking a page from BuzzFeed’s Tasty and creating its own customizable cookbook. The book taps into the NYT’s recipe archives to allow consumers to select seven chapters with individualized recipes, as well as a custom dedication page. The New York Times says that there are nearly 350K possible combinations of recipes. BuzzFeed’s product, which is scarily similar, allowed fans to combine their favorite Tasty recipes in a single hardcopy book. According to Fast Company, the company sold over 20K of the cookbooks in the first week it was launched in 2016. Who would’ve thought a green bean casserole recipe would pay more than those good ole online ads…
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
Watch out children. That’s a lot of salmonella in your Goldfish Crackers.
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