The Download: beyond freezing food, and AI mediation

October 22, 2024
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How refrigeration ruined fresh food Three-quarters of everything in the average American diet passes through the cold chain—the network of warehouses, shipping containers, trucks, display cases, and domestic fridges that keep meat, milk,…

Would you trust AI to mediate an argument?

October 22, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I’ve recently been feeling heartbroken. A very close friend recently cut off contact with me. I don’t really understand why, and my attempts at fixing the situation have backfired. Situations like…

How refrigeration ruined fresh food

October 22, 2024
Before you buy orange juice, it probably waited, for as long as two years, in a two-story, stainless-steel tank filled with 265,000 gallons of viscous brown slush. It’s orange juice, but with its water and volatile flavor molecules burned off. The result is a simple syrup six times more sugary than juice and devoid of…