вторник, 12 января 2016 г.

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


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  • (Jackie Alpers)
    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]



ribbi
  • 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 been texting Sir Mix-A-Lot and he hasn't responded since 2012, you probably need to update your address book.
    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.”



ribbi
  • by Chris Morran
  • via Consumerist


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


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  • (Tom Raftery)

    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]



ribbi
  • by Ashlee Kieler
  • via Consumerist


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


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  • This is Amazon's store at Purdue, but with the counter and lockers, the Penn version is the same idea.

    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.



ribbi
  • by Laura Northrup
  • via Consumerist