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I had originally included a fuller excerpt from the David Chang podcast that might help contextualize his comments a little more. The "ring" is the trademark in his metaphor, not the product:

Here's the full excerpt:

Marguerite Mariscal, CEO of Momofuku: "If we were to let the trademark go, the term chili crunch can be claimed tomorrow by anyone... more likely another company w/ the resources and the desire to actually litigate everyone who's using the mark currently. So that would be us, chili crunch with an "e," and everyone else in the space using the world."

David Chang: "... how I started to understand what was happening and our options at play was fellowship of the ring with Bilbo and what do you do with the ring that you can't destroy and you gotta get rid of it and you wanna just bury it so no one can get to it... Once we understood the power of this thing... it was like, oh, we gotta get rid of it... But we can't give it away and we can't destroy it... There were a couple other options. Number one, I was like, well, then let's just share it. We'll all wear this fucking ring together... Let's just give it to everybody and we'll carry this stupid trademark together."

Mariscal: "... that is something that's not allowed by the USPTO."

Chang: "How I interpret it, in Tolkien speak, there's no way to destroy it... So we just gotta hide this fucking thing and that's what we gotta do... And I don't want this to be seen as being inactive or being apathetic to this situation, or us trying to have monopolistic powers or anything like that. Our activity here, our choice, is to do nothing... no enforcement, no policing of this trademark."

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I put the excerpt back into the body of the email <3

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I'm a sucker for hilariously mistranslated subtitles. Where can I find more of those LoTR screenshots? And do you remember this blogpost from 20 years ago? https://web.archive.org/web/20170126021932/http://winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html

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This recipe looks amazing, I'm breaking out the Su chili crisp tonight! Also LOTR bootleg subs bring back all the memories 😭🤣

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