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Technology

X is now blocked in Brazil after an intercontinental feud

X users in Brazil gotta move to Facebook I guess. After Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued a court-imposed deadline requiring the social media platform to appoint a local legal representative was missed, X was banned in Brazil over the weekend.

• According to Emarketer, the platform has over 40 million monthly users in the country, and is X’s third largest user base.

• It also closed its offices in Brazil last month after its legal representative was threatened with arrest if she did not comply with the order.

X says it is being penalized for defying Moraes's "illegal orders to censor his political opponents." Further lighting the fire, Brazil’s top court froze all bank accounts related to Starlink, SpaceX’s internet service provider founded by Musk.

What happened exactly?

The feud between Judge Moraes and Musk started earlier this year, after Moraes asked the platform to ban several accounts he claimed had been spouting misinformation, which Musk said would be an act of censorship.

• Opponents of both Moraes and the recently elected president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, have said that they utilized the legal system as a means to suppress political expression.

  • Numerous accounts that were targeted had ties to Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil.

As the country’s municipal elections are nearing closer, free speech (especially online) has been an even larger subject of debate as the conflict between Moraes and Musk moves further.

• App stores and local internet providers have already removed or blocked the platform across the country.

• Brazilians that want to skirt the ban would have to use a VPN, but in doing so risk an almost $9,000 fine (for each daily use).

Instead of taking the fine… Brazilians have now begun using Bluesky, a microblogging platform, which said on Saturday that in just the last two days, it added over 500,000 new users in Brazil.

It’s not going anywhere: Judges of Brazil's Supreme Court possess broad authority to render rulings on their own, in contrast to numerous other nations. However, yesterday Brazil’s top court unanimously upheld Moraes’ decision, meaning the ban won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Food

Popular deli meat linked to 9 deaths after contamination found

I was going to make a ham and cheese after this but I think I’ve changed my mind. A nationwide recall of deli meat was prompted after dozens of violations at a Boar’s Head processing facility in Virginia were linked to a listeria outbreak.

The recall marks the worst listeria outbreak in over a decade. 57 individuals have been hospitalized and at least nine people have died across 18 states. All were linked to recalled products from Boar’s Head, according to the CDC.

It’s worse than you think

Boar’s Head is going to have to do some serious damage control after this one. Over 7 million pounds of meat have been recalled across 71 of the company’s products, all from the Virginia plant.

The USDA had previously noted over a dozen violations which used “impressively disgusting turns of phrase,” Salam Kalaf wrote in a Defector article.

Here are some of the things the USDA found:

• “Heavy discolored meat buildup was found on the pump… [which] built on the floor” with some of it being “grey/white in color.”

• Random pieces of meat were found everywhere, with “pieces of wood, plastic, a brown mud like substance and trash” mixed in the buildup.

• A “black mold-like substance” was found all along the walls and working spaces along with mildew on the worker’s sinks.

• Condensation was found dripping into products (which were exposed), along with large quantities of “blood in puddles.”

• Insects were found “crawling on the walls and flying around the room.”

Well, I hope you’re ready for breakfast.

Just check your meat… especially any Boar’s Head products with an October sell-by date. Anything that has the USDA mark "EST. 12612" or "P-12612" within the container needs to go, unless you want a taste of what was mentioned above.

Is the sausage section empty? Then we’re in a weak economy

If you’re at the grocery store and there isn’t any sausage left I have some bad news for you. A meat producer polled by the Dallas Fed saw a rise in sausage sales, which the manufacturer said is often associated with a poorer economy.

Since sausage provides meat at a cheaper price than beef or pork, people who want to save a little cash typically buy them as an alternative when they're in a pickle. This correlates with retailers, like Target and Walmart, increasingly offering heavy discounts, reporting that consumers are hungry for a bargain.

The baked Big Mac popcorn lipstick bean index

Although it may seem odd that financial analysts are using bratwurst purchases as a sign of economic well being, there have been far stranger indicators in recent memory:

• Economists have used the famous “lipstick index” to measure a rough economic stretch.

• The buttered popcorn index lists movie theatre attendance, with rises in tickets sold usually correlating with hard economic times, as people want an escape.

• The Big Mac index, created by The Economist, has been used as an alternative way of gauging purchasing power between countries.

• Historically, when the economy has been struggling, Marine Corps advertisements have been more edgy as recruiting becomes less difficult during times of recession, which resulted in the Marine advertisement intensity index.

• The baked bean index implies that consumers flock to canned goods to save money during economic turmoil.

The list of unique economic indicators could go on and on (see more here) but unfortunately they aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.

And, if we’re being frank (get it), analysts running around looking for an economic indicator that matches their sentiment typically doesn’t make for concrete findings. But maybe that’s just me.

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Grab Bag

Gen Z really likes their sick days

Kids are calling in sick more than ever. Not like actual kids but Gen Z. Over the past few years people have increasingly been taking more sick days, and now, they take than ever before, especially Gen Z.

According to Business Insider, there was a 42% increase in white-collar workers taking sick days from 2019, when 21.1% of took an absence, compared to 30% of workers last year.

Gen Z is driving the change

While sick leave among all employees has shot up 55% from 2019 to 2023, according to Dayforce, younger people are the ones who are pioneering the shift:

• According to the HR platform Gusto, younger people aged 25-34 are taking more absences than their older counterparts.

• According to Dayforce, the number of sick days taken by individuals under 35 has increased by 29% since 2019, while the number for those over 35 has only risen by 16%

The trend doesn’t end with sick days: Gusto discovered that employees between the ages of 22 and 26 were most probable to have taken a sabbatical, followed by those between the ages of 27 and 34.

While there is no specific reason why younger people are taking more time off, experts mainly attribute the change to a cultural shift on taking care of oneself, especially after the pandemic.

Locked products are making consumers flock to Amazon

I love it when I need an employee to get my shampoo for me. Consumers are being driven to online shopping because they don't want to ask employees to unlock glass cases. As pharmacies increasingly use strong deterrents to prevent theft, its boosting Amazon's sales, says CEO Andy Jassy.

Behind closed doors

While it may seem like a pretty logical sentiment (I know my friends and I hate asking an employee to get some toothpaste), Jassy’s statement has some proof to back it up:

• 71% of consumers stated that glass cases discouraged them from visiting a store regularly, according to a 2023 Harris Poll.

  • 89% of Gen Z participants agreed (told you).

• Over the past few years, hundreds of Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid stores have shuttered, and some of these closures link with the company's decision to put products behind a lock and key.

• Joe Budano, CEO of Indyme, a technology business that combats theft, says having products locked behind a case can decrease sales between 15% and 25%.

Jassey went on to say that shopping in pharmacies, and now other big retailers like Target who have dealt with higher rates of shoplifting, is “a pretty tough experience with how much is locked behind cabinets.” The stats say that most people agree.

Fast Facts

Artifact Accident: A four-year-old boy accidentally broke a 3,500-year-old jar that dated back to the bronze age in a museum. Bad karma.

New Natives: Illinois passed a law preventing HOAs from banning native plants in homeowners’ yards. Now we just need them to allow giant marble statues of Bigfoot.

Fishy Firsts: After some rock dams are removed, salmon will be able to swim in a portion of the Klamath River at the California–Oregon border for the first time in over a century.

Movie Meltdown: The illegal streaming platform, FMovies, which was the 11th-most-visited entertainment site on the internet in 2023, was shut down by Vietnamese police.

Wells Fargo(ne): Police are investigating the death of a Wells Fargo employee who was found dead in her cubicle four days after she clocked in.