Not. Even. Close.

[Jenise]

You guys have a pretty solid idea of what I eat and what I don't, like my little phobias about eggs and eggy things, cold dairy products and goopy textures, right? So the NYT, which I subscribe to, sent the following hilarious notification today:


We recommend these dishes based on the recipes you’ve viewed:

Hollandaise Sauce
My Favorite Challah
A Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg
Oat Milk Chocolate Pudding
Chicken Teriyaki
Jamie Oliver's Eggplant Parmesan

One out of six!! (I'd eat the eggplant.) No way these are things are in the neighborhood of things I'd have ever looked at.

Fear the AI.

AI probably thinks she's been salivating over egg recipes when she probably flips to another page the minute she sees a raw egg mentioned. I have found a similar thing on other sites - if I spend a few minutes searching out a recipe for a particular thing, all I get for the next while are similar recipes and there seems to be no way to ditch them.

I noticed the same thing when I searched a recipe with gochujang in it and then kept getting Korean recipes thrown at me. That's why I stay largely away from social media - a huge time waster.

[Jenise]

Bill, the closest thing recently might be me asking my husband's son, who stayed with us last week, if oat milk was okay because last time he was here he wanted almond milk for morning cereal. I'd have mentioned in the same conversation that I do sometimes make Bob eggs in the morning. And Jewish food recently came up because I mentioned--in several places, including here--searching for a particular brand of Matzoh and being amused at finding a chocolate syrup product I remember from childhood (Bosco) on the passover display at a local store. Combined, those things are probably responsible for the oat milk chocolate pudding and the challah. The rest I can't account for but it had nothing to do with recipe searches. Other than going to the NYT site to pick up a recipe like the one Dale recommended a few days ago, I haven't actually searched the NYT site recently at all.

...The rest I can't account for but it had nothing to do with recipe searches. Other than going to the NYT site to pick up a recipe like the one Dale recommended a few days ago, I haven't actually searched the NYT site recently at all.

Interesting. Unfortunately these companies are mostly tracking our behavior all across the internet, even when we're not on their sites. But, evidently the algorithms and predicted capabilities have not yet been perfected. Will see if they ever get there! (I would imagine they continue to improve, although who knows how long it will take...)

[Jenise]

Oh clearly this is true. A few days ago I went looking for a particular type of light fixture, and I've been deluged with lighting ads since. It was only slightly more unusual to get a sleazy pitch like that from the NYT, and of course funny considering the errant conclusions reached.

This isn't a new phenomenon by any means. I got a bizarre one over a decade ago at amazon.com. Back then when they gave out book recommendations they told you why they were recommending a particular book ("You recently bought X so you might be interested in Y"). Amazon recommended Bill Clinton's autobiography My Life because I'd recently bought Gary Larson's cartoon anthology The Complete Far Side.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I got a bizarre one over a decade ago at amazon.com.

Weirdly - and stupidly - with Amazon, when you buy something from them, they then bombard you with adverts for similar products.

I've just bought one, they know I've bought one. Why would I buy another right now?

I've just bought one, they know I've bought one. Why would I buy another right now?

Exactly! I never understood the logic.

But, then again, don't credit computers with too much logic: A friend and his lady love took a trip to Ontario and, gracious friend that I am, I heard all about the trip and admired photos on various websites. It took about 6 months before adverts for trips to Canada subsided -- and I hadn't even bought one in the first place.

I think that's a hold-over from their start as an online book shop. If you buy, say, a science fiction book you may well be interested in similar books.

-Paul W.