uCold Weasel Salad Is Not A Thing, Not Even In Englandr

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  Here’s the problem with eating plants: they come from outside, where animals also live. Sometimes, animals want to try our food, too, and the safeguards meant to keep animals that we didn’t mean to eat off our plates fail. That’s when we end up with dead baby weasels in our salads.

  Don’t click through to see the pictures unless you really want to be put off salad: I was just starting to eat non-local lettuce again after last year’s salad beetle saga.

  Well, one woman in England ended up with a dead baby weasel in her salad, and she was not pleased. She told reporters that she threw up, actually, not expecting to see a dead, wet, mangled weasel in her salad.

  She thought it was a mouse at first glance, since it’s hard to tell exactly what the animal is. She probably didn’t want to look closely at it. The Yorkshire Post reports that the store where she purchased the salad, supermarket ASDA, offered a £5 voucher ($7.22), later increasing their offer to £100 after tests showed that the animal was real and that it was a baby weasel.

  “It has caused me a lot of trauma,” she told the Yorkshire Post. “I initially thought it was a mouse, and for about a week afterwards I had weird dreams about mice coming out my mouth.”

  Let’s hope that the salad supplier improves their quality controls, and may all of the nurse’s future salads remain weasel-free.

  Bradford nurse finds baby weasel in her Asda salad [Yorkshire Post]
  What on earth is this disgusting furry creature a nurse found in ASDA carrot salad? [Mirror]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uInteresting Things Happen When Verizon Gives You Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Old Numberr

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  If you’ve ever gotten a new phone line with a number that previously belonged to someone else, you know how annoying it can be to repeatedly tell callers that “No, this isn’t Carl. Yes, I’m sure I’m not him. No, I can’t pass him a message.” But when you get the former number of a ’90s rap superstar, the calls and texts are slightly more interesting.

  The Seattle Times has the story of a local lawyer who has spent nearly four years fielding calls on a Verizon number that once belonged to a true Seattle legend: Sir Mix-A-Lot, the man whose music gave voice to big-booty lovers around the world.

  The man says he got the number back in 2012 when he was in law school. That’s when he started getting unsolicited calls from luxury car dealers in the area asking him to test drive expensive Jaguars, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis.

  There were also people pitching him their music and YouTube clips, pictures of bikini-clad women in suggestive poses.

  And let’s not forget promoters offering free concert tickets and backstage passes. Those would be easy to take advantage of; just accept them and then show up claiming to be Mix’s agent or manager, right? But the lawyer says, in spite of being egged on to cash in on the confusion, making that sort of false representation would get him in trouble with the bar association.

  One August afternoon, he finally figured out just who all these messages were meant for. There were a ton of “Happy Birthday” notes and calls — including some from those scantily clad ladies — and references to “Baby Got Back,” the Sir’s 1992 ode to the gluteus maximus.

  A bit of Googling showed that it was Mr. Mix-A-Lot’s birthday, which suddenly made all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

  When reached by the Times about the story of Not Sir Mix-A-Lot, the rapper seemed both amused by the news and sorry for the guy who’s had to deal with the deluge of incorrectly sent messages.

  In terms of advice, the rapper (real name Anthony Ray), tells the owner of his old number, “Don’t check any text messages in front of your wife.” And as for all those car dealerships texting the lawyer for a test drive, Mix says to not “answer any texts by saying ‘Yes,’ because people take ‘Yes’ differently with me. And usually you end up opening your wallet.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uTwitter Reportedly Working On Platform That Turns Users’ Tweets Into Adsr

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  Take a quick look at Twitter at any given time and you’re sure to see a slew of brands, or celebrities and other influencers, shilling products and services with short 140-character messages. While promotional Tweets might be easy to spot now, they could be more difficult in the future, as the social media platform is reportedly working on a new product that would turn everyday users’ Tweets into ads for brands. 

  Digiday reports that Twitter is on the cusp of offering a new ad platform that aims to make it easier for advertisers to promote consumers’ messages about their products to a wider audience.

  Under the product, which was shown to advertisers during last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Twitter would create a repository of brand-related Tweets for advertisers to pick from.

  To ensure that users are okay with their thoughts being blasted for all to see, Twitter will send a direct message to the Tweet’s creator asking for permission to use the message before reposting it.

  Sources close to the project say it gives brands the ability to Tweet recommendations from everyday users located located near a viewer versus a celebrity.

  The idea behind the program, Digiday reports, is that some consumers may view other Twitter users as more trusted than celebrities or other pitchmen.

  It’s unclear when the new ad product might be available to companies. Twitter declined to comment on the product, Digiday reports.

  Twitter’s new pitch to brands: Turn everyday fan tweets into ads [Digiday]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uAmazon To Open Fifth On-Campus, Offline Location At University Of Pennsylvaniar

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  Amazon has spent the last year expanding its challenge to the existence of college bookstores, opening pickup locations on campuses scattered across the country. There, students can pick up things that they ordered on Amazon, and… that’s about it. A new pickup point at the University of Pennsylvania will also offer study and collaboration space for student use, and will provide same-day or next-day pickup for members of Amazon Student or Amazon Prime.

  The first Amazon store was at Purdue University, and since then they’ve expanded to UMass Amherst, UC Santa Barbara (Isla Vista), and the University of Cincinnati. Amazon also has a real-life bookstore in Seattle, and has more campus-based pickup locations planned at UC Davis and UC Berkeley.

  Placing an Amazon pickup point with study space right on campus is a handy advertisement for Amazon, but also has an added bonus for the university: letting students and faculty pick up their own darn packages alleviates pressure on campus mail rooms. E-commerce is creating logistical nightmares for campus mail services and apartment complexes.

  “The preference by today’s students for on-line shopping has led to a significant increase in deliveries. When we looked closely at the shipping activity, we discovered that almost half of all packages delivered to Penn student mail rooms were from Amazon,” Marie Witt, the Vice President of Business Services at Penn, explained in a statement.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uDelta Moves Past United To Snag No. 2 U.S. Airline Spot By Trafficr

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  When you’re a major U.S. airline, there’s only one direction you want to go, and that’s up. Which is why Delta Air Lines is likely in a celebratory mood and United Airlines is perhaps a bit down in the dumps today, upon hearing the news that the former has passed the latter to become the No. 2 carrier based on traffic for 2015, behind American Airlines.

  Delta passed United in 2015 based on traffic figures for paying passengers that the airlines released for the year, reports The Wall Street Journal: American came in first with reported traffic of 223 billion revenue-passenger miles, a 2.4% increase over the previous year; Delta ended 2015 year with 209.6 billion miles flown by passengers, a 3.3% increase from 2014; and United’s final numbers amounted to 208.6 billion miles, a 1.5% bump from the year prior. Those figures take into account regional-carrier partners the airlines work with.

  It seems United is having a bit of trouble playing catch-up while it’s in the process of tying up all the loose ends of its merger with Continental back in 2010. While Delta stayed mum on its success, United said it’s “continuing to focus on running a reliable operation and investing in the tools and services that allow us to deliver the flier-friendly experience our customers deserve and expect.”

  These numbers aren’t the be-all, end-all measurement for airline success, however, though it’s one of a few useful tool for comparing airlines. You can rank the airlines by the number of passengers carried (American, 201.2 million; Delta 19.4 million; Southwest 144.6 million; and United 140.4 million in 2015), or you can stack them up based on annual revenue, where Delta remains in second behind American before 2015.

  Delta Surpasses United for No. 2 Airline Spot by Traffic [The Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uAmazon Prime Now Includes 20% Discount On Video Game Pre-Orders & New Releasesr

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• For years, Amazon was able to win over some video game fans by guaranteeing release-day delivery of new titles. But now that gamers can pre-order digital downloads of their games (for the same price) so that they’re available right away when they go live, Amazon is going after customers who want to save money on these pricey new releases.

  Amazon announced today that Prime subscribers will now be able to save 20% off sticker price, not just on pre-orders, but also on new titles during their first two weeks of release.

  That second part is important, given the number of high-profile games that have been rushed to market with broken content, this two-week window means that Amazon customers can wait to see if the game has crippling problems (or horrendous reviews) before they buy.

  Amazon is putting a number of conditions on the deal.

  For example, the games must be bought through Amazon itself, and not through any of the many sellers (even the Prime-eligible sellers) that use Amazon to reach consumers. It’s also limited to disc-based games. Digital download codes will not be sold at the lower price. And you can only buy one copy of a game with the discount.

  If you’ve already pre-ordered a qualifying title, Amazon says it will apply the discount automatically.

  Polygon notes that Best Buy and GameStop offer similar discount programs that cost significantly less than the $100 annual price for Prime, meaning people who only want the discounted games might want to check those programs out before they fork over the money for Prime. But if you’re already a Prime member, this is a nice add-on to the existing benefits of free shipping, and video and music content.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uCalifornia Rejects VW Proposal To Fix Emissions-Cheating Vehiclesr

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  The California Air Resources Board has rejected Volkswagen’s recall plan for thousands of 2-liter vehicles sold in the state. The regulators also presented VW with a formal notice of air quality violations for its use of “defeat devices” to cheat on emissions tests in these cars.

  CARB determined that VW’s proposed recall plans for 2-liter sedans sold in California between 2009 and 2015 are “incomplete, substantially deficient, and fall far short of meeting the legal requirements to return these vehicles to the claimed certification configuration.”

  VW submitted the proposal on Dec. 15, requesting “substantial” additional time to submit complete recall plans, according to CARB. However, California recall regulations require “expeditious action, and VW’s proposed expiation is not acceptable,” the rejection letter [PDF] states.

  Specifically, the 2-liter vehicle remedy proposal failed to adequately identify and describe the affected vehicles; provide a sufficient method for obtaining owners’ names, address, and related information; describe the remedial procedure for affected vehicles; contain the impact of proposed fixes on fuel economy, drivability, performance, and safety, among other things.

  “Volkswagen made a decision to cheat on emissions tests and then tried to cover it up,” CARB Chair Mary D. Nichols said in a statement. “They continued and compounded the lie and when they were caught they tried to deny it. The result is thousands of tons of nitrogen oxide that have harmed the health of Californians. They need to make it right. Today’s action is a step in the direction of assuring that will happen.”

  The EPA issued a statement on Tuesday saying they backed CARB’s decision to not approve VW’s recall plan.

  In addition to rejecting VW’s proposal to fix certain vehicles in California, CARB also formalized the company’s notice of violation [PDF] related to air quality standards.

  The notice outlines VW’s violation of state laws in causing “substantial excess, illegal, and on-going emissions and harm that have impacted, and continue to impact, public health and the environment in California.”

  The violations are essentially a repeat of the agent and the Environmental Protection Agency’s findings announced in September.

  CARB says it will continue to seek “to ensure that VW brings the vehicles into full compliance with State emissions standards and mitigates past, current, and future harm to the environment.”

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist