I can understand why the style may seem offputting, but the thing to understand is that it has been traditionally very hard to engage with the public on this topic of robotic advancement. In fact, I know a bit about this myself, having been in the robotics space for over a decade. But my own struggles in the field only reflect a longer trend, which I can even trace back to my grandfather.
Growing up in a strict Lutheran household in the southwest England town of Flenkelshire, Elias Nathaniel "Kazoo" Pendleton III did not immediately stand out among his peers. Born with dull red hair, one leg three inches shorter than the other, and shoulders that somehow resembled cornish hens, young Elias was a frequent target for the town bullies. A child at that time has only three options: fight harder, run faster, or invent some kind of device that would enable him to escape his tormentors. Luckily (by chance or by fate), Flenkelshire was home to a radio-electronics store, Bundleron's Radio and Horseshoe Supplies, which gave young Elias just the right ingredients to hatch his escape plan. And hatch a plan he did, though it would take twenty years for the town to understand exactly what had happened.
The first trap was set in the Fall of 1951. Winston Churchill had returned to power. The Festival of Britain had just wrapped up and lit the imagination of attendees and non-attendees alike. And Elias Nathaniel "Kazoo" Pendleton III, now well-armed with a stock of electronics, metalwork, and several years of intense study, went into action...
SeriousEats. It’s truly amazing. Most of their recipes are split into two pages, one is just ingredients+steps, and the other is a “story” - but not an irrelevant story of a person, dish, or how it tastes on a warm summer day, but instead it lists different experiments the author tested, results, dispels common myths, …
That hits so close to home. I’ve given up searching for recipes online because of this. And I’m not even mentionning all the ads you have to scroll through.
It's viewed as a DRM measure. Recipes are not copyrightable unless they are attached to a story. It's probably an urban legend, but can't blame poor food bloggers from acting on it.
Based on this reasoning, the United States Copyright Office Compendium, the Office’s manual for examiners, states that a mere listing of ingredients or contents is not copyrightable, as lists are not protected by copyright law (chapter 314.4(F)). The Office has also stated that a “simple set of directions” is uncopyrightable.
In addition, courts have found that recipes are wholly factual and functional, and therefore uncopyrightable. As the Sixth Circuit described in Tomaydo-Tomahdo, LLC v. Vozary, “the list of ingredients is merely a factual statement, and as previously discussed, facts are not copyrightable. Furthermore, a recipe’s instructions, as functional directions, are statutorily excluded from copyright protection.”
I just think they're part of the non-fiction fantasy genre of entertainment alongside cooking, travel, and house buying + renovating shows.
They're ostensibly informational, but 99% of people consuming them aren't genuinely looking to cook the thing, travel to the place, or buy and renovate a house.
Not much extra work surely. Most recipes are on sites that use the same template for every recipe so it's pretty easy for a scraper to find the ingredients and method. The structure is usually even labelled with meaningful class names on the elements.
Yes - it's not specifically that the recipe sites have changed to do this, but rather, that Google is preferring to show you sites that are doing this.
I dislike this story in journalism and podcasts too. I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts:
> Before Y was murdered, they lived in X. X is a quiet town, the type of place where you don't need to lock your doors. Y has a happy upbringing collecting flowers along the river at...
Like we get it, this is the first half of every 1-hour long true-crime podcast. Also quite often the first half of every long-form article.
I don't mind it as much in true crime podcasts when it's done well. Totally agree that the generic "it was a peaceful town where nobody locked their doors blah blah blah" can get old quickly. But hearing about the unique lives of the victims in murder cases can definitely add to the story. And in podcasts more focused on the investigative side (ex. Someone Knows Something) knowing the background info can even be critical to solving the puzzle so to speak.
Oh gosh I hate this about wondery business wars[0]. Very informative but also very annoying when they conjure up complete/narrated conversations between people e.g. a tech CEO and an investor or customer. This happens a LOT in the show.
Maybe I'm off base here, as it's no small feat by any means, but it's especially jarring to read when "first-website-building-SaaS" has so little to do with industrial robotics at its surface.
I had a similar impression. It was jarring to say the least and made me ask so many questions that had nothing to do with the story. Does this person lead every tech related conversation with, "When I was the CEO of Moonbeans, the world's first SAAS blockchain beanbag chair crowd sourcing platform" just to buy some credibility? Why do they feel the need to tell us that? Do they have inadequacy issues or is it the opposite? I can barely remember what that article was about. Robotics? Oh, right, shame it's an Alphabet subsidiary. It's bound to end up in the Google graveyard when it fails to be one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world. Even if they do great things and make a great product, it's the fate which will inevitably follow most of Alphabet's projects until the SEC breaks them up, this being one of many good reasons.
I like inverted pyramid style too, but it’s a very brief intro and letting the CEO of a new company introduce themselves doesn’t seem so bad? You could skip the first paragraph.
I hat this too. Especially for newsletters. They tease you with an interesting headline and then let you scan the entire thing to find maybe just a link to the topic teased.
When typesetting a printed newspaper, the leading (pronounced like “ledding”) is the space between lines of text, originally physical strips of lead (Pb).
The lede (“leed”) is the most important statement in the story. The word comes from “lead” (also pronounced “leed”), because it's the statement that everything else should follow. It's conventionally spelt differently to avoid confusion with “leading”.
Off-Topic: I would recommend aspiring writers to read, or better still, write, academic papers. Once you get the hang of what makes a good paper, it helps with all forms of non-fiction writing.
I agree. First two paragraphs are completely irrelevant and offer no support to the actual topic. Just flexing on career. Kinda sounded like typical LinkedIn content these days
Edit: I'm not alone, https://style.mla.org/dont-bury-the-lede/