Android Has Caught Up To The iPhone, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: It doesn't matter what brand of phone you own, restaurant hype is a scam and staring into the sun will burn your retinas.
It Doesn't Matter Which Phone You Own
The funny thing about buying something reasonably expensive is that you will always find ways to justify it for yourself. Realizing that you just wasted $1,000 or more on something? Honestly, that's a bummer.
So it's no surprise that when it comes to phones — something that both costs a lot and people use multiple times per day — people, if only to maintain some illusion of control over their lives, love to justify why their phone of choice is the best.
This is the sentiment that Fast Company's Mark Wilson is responding to in his recent personal revelation that Google's Pixel 2 is fine. Surprisingly, a phone produced by one of the world's largest technology companies (that has invested billions into developing a smartphone) is fine to use.
I'm not trying to make the tech-positive point that the smartphone industry has matured to the point where just about everything is good. I mean, this is obviously true, but it still doesn't change the fact that our phones have always connected us to people. They have always had the ability to receive a call from someone who informs you your grandfather is dead. They have always had the ability to receive emails which inform you that the school of your choice is unable to offer merit-based financial aid. They have always had the ability to receive unexpected texts from someone telling you to come outside, please. They have always had the ability to connect you to the terrifying hellscape of social networks.
Sure, the choice of notification badges between the two might differ. Maybe you have a preference between the two! But, really, it's window dressing to an always-on screaming portal to the worst of humanity.
People Just Want To Think They Like Cool Stuff
We all just want to feel cool, don't we? Like the whole thing with the phones above, it's nice to be validated on our tastes for just about everything. I don't think it's bad to admit that. A good and cool way to make friends is when one person says they like something, and then you tell them that hell yeah that thing whips ass.
Where we run into trouble is when, well, you start to pretend that something whips ass. Vice's Oobah Butler is very good at exposing the posers. A few months ago he did it a Paris Fashion Week, posing as luxury jeans designer Georgio Peviani. Everyone ate it up. Now he's gone after the fine dining set.
Through the sheer power of false reviews and refusing to answer requests for reservations, Butler's The Shed at Dulwich the highest-rated restaurant in London on TripAdvisor. As it turns out, what people crave isn't the highest quality ingredients produced by the most skilled chefs in the world. They crave the exclusivity.
And, one way or another, Butler gave it to them. In fact, even after some of them ate macaroni in cheese in the backyard of a stranger, they wanted to come back. Banksy strikes again, I guess.
[Vice]
America's Farmers Are Killing Themselves
There are few things more American than romanticizing the humble farmer. They're salt-of-the-earth types who work like hell and provide something crucial to society. And yet, as Debbie Weingarten explores for the Guardian, there's nothing more American than letting our farmers down.
You're probably going to shout at me for making an extreme generalization, but for most jobs, the consequences of failure are either low or so far removed it's hard to fully grasp the extent of them. For me, failure is writing something bad or unpopular or wrong — in which either strangers online or myself shout at me for having the gall to think that I deserve a job in media. For farmers, failure is not providing enough food for society, and then going poor and losing your land which further compounds your initial failure — which, most likely, was due to something outside of your control like the weather or global seed corporations.
So, it's no surprise that farmers in America aren't feeling all too swell at the moment. It's almost as if the government were able to step in and regulate the price of a basic human necessity, like food, rural farmers wouldn't continue to be squeezed out by market forces beyond their control. Or maybe we can just ignore it and hope the market decides it's tired of people killing themselves.
Staring At The Sun Will Damage Your Retinas
It feels like Obvious Week here on What Would Happen If, so what the heck: Hello and welcome to Obvious Week on What Would Happen If. We close with something extremely obvious: The Verge picked up a study about a woman who stared into this year's solar eclipse with her naked eyes. damaging her retinas.
Of course, doctors were not surprised. Because this happened in the year 2017, however, doctors were able to get the most detailed images of solar retinopathy known to modern medicine. So, uh, score one for the medical books.
