Zorro
Zorro's JournalInside Amazon's Push to Crack Trader Joe's--and Dominate Everything
When Amazon was working on a new private-label food brand called Wickedly Prime, members of the team pitched management this vision for the brand: to replicate the top 200 items sold at Trader Joe’s, the grocery-store chain with a rabid fan following.
To help in its quest, the team recruited a senior manager from Trader Joe’s snack-foods business. The recruit wasn’t told specifically what she’d be working on when Amazon conducted her interview in 2015.
But during her first week she walked into a conference room at headquarters with brown paper covering the windows and door to ensure privacy, and she started piecing things together. The mysterious conference room was filled with boxes of Trader Joe’s snack foods piled high on shelves, which Amazon had bought up to study for its own brand. This alarmed the employee, who was eventually told she was hired to help create the product assortment for Wickedly Prime.
The problem was that Trader Joe’s secrets were well guarded. The grocer doesn’t offer online shopping, so there is less known about the company’s top sellers than about products sold by retailers that sell online, which have customer reviews. Much of what Trader Joe’s sells, it makes itself—interesting concoctions that fly off shelves, like cinnamon bun spread and rosemary croissant croutons. Amazon wasn’t sure exactly which 200 items to copy, but a manager on the team was determined that their new employee would help them figure that out.
https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazon-the-everything-war-dana-mattioli-4966915d?st=vxghhoahike437s&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
A narco revolt takes a once-peaceful nation to the brink
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — The investigation was called “Metastasis,” a sweeping probe into links between parts of Ecuador’s political and legal establishment and the country’s ruthless drug gangs. On Dec. 14, Ecuador’s attorney general announced the arrests of 30 people, including senior judges, prosecutors, police officials, prison officers and prominent defense lawyers. All of them, she said, were part of an organized criminal scheme to benefit one of the country’s top drug traffickers.
“Fellow citizens, the Metastasis case is a clear X-ray of how drug trafficking has taken over the institutions of the state,” Diana Salazar Méndez, the country’s top law enforcement official, said in a video address from her fortress headquarters.
She warned that it was only a matter of time before the gangs struck back.
That response came on Jan. 9, and Ecuador, a country of 18 million people, seemed for several hours to be on the verge of collapse.
https://wapo.st/43YBh4Y
2 Men Fined $1.25 Million for Robocall Scheme to Suppress Black Vote
Source: New York Times
Two right-wing political operatives who used a robocall campaign to try to discourage Black New Yorkers from voting in the 2020 election will pay up to $1.25 million for their actions, the New York State attorney general’s office announced on Tuesday.
During the summer of 2020, around 5,500 New Yorkers received robocalls falsely claiming that if they voted by mail, their personal information would be sent to law enforcement agencies, debt collectors and the government. The calls were made at a time when many states were encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic.
One New Yorker was so disturbed by one of the calls that he experienced “severe anxiety and distress and ultimately withdrew his voter registration,” according to the attorney general’s office.
The office said the calls came from a “sham” organization called Project 1599, which was created by the operatives, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/nyregion/robocalls-black-voters-wohl-burkman.html?ugrp=u&unlocked_article_code=1.jU0.mRuq.vo4gwVAJa_u7&smid=url-share
The Black Market That Delivers Elon Musk's Starlinks to U.S. Foes
A salesman at Moscow-based online retailer shopozz.ru has supplemented his usual business of peddling vacuum cleaners and dashboard phone mounts by selling dozens of Starlink internet terminals that wound up with Russians on the front lines in Ukraine.
Although Russia has banned the use of Starlink, the satellite-internet service developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, middlemen have proliferated in recent months to buy the user terminals and ship them to Russian forces. That has eroded a battlefield advantage once enjoyed by Ukrainian forces, which also rely on the cutting-edge devices.
The Moscow salesman, who in an interview identified himself only as Oleg, said that most of his orders came from “the new territories”—a reference to Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine—or were “for use by the military.” He said volunteers delivered the equipment to Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
On battlefields from Ukraine to Sudan, Starlink provides immediate and largely secure access to the internet. Besides solving the age-old problem of effective communications between troops and their commanders, Starlink provides a way to control drones and other advanced technologies that have become a critical part of modern warfare.
https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/starlink-musk-ukraine-russia-sudan-satellite-communications-technology-f4fc79d9?st=2jq7m7rk1pvaiwz&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Trump turns his trials into a soapbox. Does he know he's channeling Hitler?
When Adolf Hitler was convicted of treason on April 1, 1924, for leading an armed insurrection against Germany’s democratically elected government, he discovered something remarkable: Courtrooms can make excellent soapboxes for political grandstanding. In real time, 100 years later, we’ve been watching another political leader, former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, do the same. The echoes are uncanny and disturbing.
During his monthlong trial in March 1924, followed by his conviction, Hitler railed against Germany’s democratic leaders and constitutionally anchored legal system. He chastened his judges. He threatened his prosecutors. He insisted that it was not he who had committed treason against the state but the Weimar Republic’s political establishment who had betrayed the German people.
“You can declare us guilty a thousand times,” Hitler defiantly told the judge after receiving his conviction and a five-year prison sentence, “but the … eternal court of history will tear up the indictment and conviction with a smile and will acquit us.” The trial and conviction proved to be a political boon for Hitler, catapulting him and the National Socialist German Workers Party from the fanatic fringe to the national stage. Hitler emerged as leader and spokesman for aggrieved, right-wing nationalists across the country.
In the decade that followed, Hitler was “dragged into courtrooms” (he told his followers at a rally) more times than he could remember. He invariably emerged politically stronger thanks to the toxic alchemy of his courtroom antics and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression. When Hitler lost the 1932 presidential election by more than 6 million votes, he went to court to have the results annulled amid claims of voter fraud and irregularities by state officials. The presiding judge dismissed the case out of hand, observing that the 6-million-vote margin precluded any possibility that irregularities could have changed the outcome.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-04-08/donald-trump-legal-battles-indictments-adolf-hitler
I Am a Noise
This is a revealing, first-person documentary about the life of Joan Baez and her struggles coping with relationships and her personal demons. You will learn things about her that are both familiar and yet very personal. Recommended.
On Hulu.
I work with dying Trump supporters. It's...confusing
I’m driving down a gravel road in rural North Carolina, looking at mailbox numbers. A hospice social worker, I’m headed to meet Petey, a patient dying of metastatic cancer. When I’d called his wife Jackie to schedule our first visit, she’d told me they’d been married more than 60 years. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she’d said, her voice heavy with sadness. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it in this world when he’s gone.”
A few homes down I see a ranch style house with a Trump flag hanging limp from what looks like a homemade flagpole. Hell no, not that one, I think, before realizing the number I’m looking for is on a grey mailbox at a driveway leading to that very house.
My eyes harden with anger. A thought pops into my head that I’m not proud of. “Good, he’ll be dead by November. One less vote for that bloated orange fascist.”
As I roll down the driveway, my mind lights up with stereotypes about the people I am about to meet. Stupid. Gullible. Easily manipulated. Incapable of critical thinking. Racist. Willing to rationalize and/or cheer on violence against people they have dehumanized (Blacks, Muslims, people in the LGBTQ community). I assume they don’t give a damn about democracy and are likely to have negative judgments about progressive-minded people like me (I fail to see the irony).
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/4/6/2233194/-I-work-with-dying-Trump-supporters-It-s-confusing
They came for Florida's sun and sand. They got soaring costs and a culture war.
One of the first signs Barb Carter’s move to Florida wasn’t the postcard life she’d envisioned was the armadillo infestation in her home that caused $9,000 in damages. Then came a hurricane, ever present feuding over politics, and an inability to find a doctor to remove a tumor from her liver.
After a year in the Sunshine State, Carter packed her car with whatever belongings she could fit and headed back to her home state of Kansas — selling her Florida home at a $40,000 loss and leaving behind the children and grandchildren she’d moved to be closer to.
“So many people ask, ‘Why would you move back to Kansas?’ I tell them all the same thing — you’ve got to take your vacation goggles off,” Carter said. “For me, it was very falsely promoted. Once living there, I thought, you know, this isn’t all you guys have cracked this up to be, at all.”
Florida has had a population boom over the past several years, with more than 700,000 people moving there in 2022, and it was the second-fastest-growing state as of July 2023, according to Census Bureau data. While there are some indications that migration to the state has slowed from its pandemic highs, only Texas saw more one-way U-Haul moves into the state than Florida last year. Mortgage application data indicated there were nearly two homebuyers moving to Florida in 2023 for every one leaving, according to data analytics firm CoreLogic.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/leaving-florida-rcna142316
Man Regrets Eating What He Thought Was A Peep
TOLEDO, OH—Expressing revulsion after wolfing down the “nasty-ass treat,” local man Kurt Nelson told reporters Monday that he regretted eating what he thought was a Peep.
“It seemed warm and gooey at first, but then I started to notice the gross crunchy bits,” said Nelson, explaining that his stomach ached badly after eating over a dozen of the imposter Peeps.
“Now I feel stupid for trying to stick four in my mouth at the same time. But to be honest, I’m just annoyed that I wasted calories on these. I guess it might be fun to put the rest in the microwave to watch them balloon up and explode.”
At press time, sources confirmed Nelson sampled a real Peep and immediately went back to eating live chicks.
https://www.theonion.com/man-regrets-eating-what-he-thought-was-a-peep-1850308389
Trump Releases 'God Bless The USA' Quran
DEARBORN, MI—In an effort to raise money to cover his mounting legal bills, former President Donald Trump announced at a campaign event Friday that he was selling the central religious text of Islam in a special new edition called the “God Bless The USA” Quran.
“It’s a very holy book—really the holiest of all the Qurans you can buy—and it’s time for America to bring back the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad,” said Trump, who promoted his version of the scripture sacred to Muslims by standing in the minaret of a mosque and stating through a loudspeaker that the $60 book was the only Quran inspired by country singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood’s signature hit.
“No other Quran is officially endorsed by Trump, so get yours while you can. Order now, and you’ll also receive a complimentary Trump 2024 prayer rug, inshallah.”
The former president added that he would also soon begin offering “God Bless The USA” Torahs, Vedas, Confucian Analects, and Tao Te Chings.
https://www.theonion.com/trump-releases-god-bless-the-usa-quran-1851374740
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