Tag: Forbes

Welp, Looks Like I’m Having Taco Bell for Dinner

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Forbes – Taco Bell today announced that delivery is now available nationwide, a day shy of the one-year anniversary since parent company Yum! Brands announced its partnership with Grubhub. That partnership included Yum’s $200 million investment in the delivery company to accelerate expansion of its network.

With today’s announcement, Taco Bell delivery via Grubhub is now available in 65% of its restaurants across the nation. 

I love me some Taco Bell. I don’t just like it, I love it. But the biggest problem with Taco Bell, at least in the Boston area, is that they are almost nonexistant. There’s the one in the Cambridgeside Galleria and then there’s one in Saugus. Other than that the only one I can even think of is in Quincy. Whichever one I choose becomes a goddamn expedition that James and the Giant Peach wouldn’t even attempt. So now I can have this delicious beef paste delivered hot to my door? Goodbye summer bod and any human interaction.

“There’s no doubt that the consumer wants delivery. There’s no doubt that they’re prepared to pay for delivery. There’s no doubt we see a higher check. There’s no doubt we see an incremental transaction,”

Having less locations in Boston than there are Infinity Stones will actually work to Taco Bell’s benefit if they can hire enough delivery drivers to not make this a complete cluster. More and more fast food restaurants in particular are getting into the delivery business, but there’s no way I’m paying a premium for McDonalds because I drive by like 3 of them on my way home from work. But Taco Bell? Hell yea I’ll pay $12 for a Crunch Wrap Supreme, a Doritos Locos taco, a Baja Blast, and a spicy chicken burrito.

With a smile on my face.

And you better believe I am picking up some fresh Taco Bell apparel at the flagship cantina when The 300s does Vegas next month. (I went there twice in one day that last time I was in Vegas)

Unfortunate News: My Guy Reggie Bush Just Came Out as an Anti Vaxxer

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Yahoo – Now enjoying retirement following an 11-year NFL career, Reggie Bush took to Twitter on Sunday with a question he wanted his 2.88 million followers to answer: Do they believe this extremely anti-vaccine video he just found?…the 33-year-old linked to a video of a retired nurse castigating a CDC panel over its vaccine regulations and pushing the widely debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. The video has since been deleted for violating YouTube’s terms of service.

Anti vaxxers are the absolute worst. Listen if you don’t want to take scientifically proven medicine that’s fine, but don’t push that onto your kids so they can become Patient Zero in the next Polio outbreak.

The common misconception among anti vaxxers is that vaccinations don’t necessarily protect you, they protect literally everyone else around you. If you get a vaccine, it prevents you from getting polio and all sorts of weird diseases. If you don’t get a vaccine then you’re likely to 1.) get the disease and then 2.) pass on a new mutated strand of the disease that literally nobody else is vaccinated against. You’re just creating mutant strands of diseases to more easily wipe out the rest of your kids school. Smart.

I’ll let Bill Nye explain it a little more succinctly below.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so terrifying. Literally just look at recent cases in Minnesota, and North Carolina, and California where parents decided vaccines weren’t for their family and what do ya know?

“What’s sad about this – tragic, really – is that we eliminated measles from the U.S. in the year 2000, thanks to the measles vaccine. As this CDC graph shows, we’ve had fewer than 100 cases every year since.

But we had 644 cases in 27 states in 2014, the most in 20 years.”

One of my favorites was this old Kmarko headline about just how bad anti vaxxers had gotten in one California neighborhood: “Hollywood Schools Have Lower Vaccination Rates Than The Sudan Because Parents Say Vaccines “Don’t Make Instinctive Sense” – Now Everyone Has Whooping Cough”

And before you say what’s wrong with starting a friendly debate? Reggie was just trying to start a civil conversation like we all do on Twitter! Except for the fact this isn’t a debate, it hasn’t been for a long, long time.

Like Mike Leach before him, Bush took a video and tried to host a conversation with his followers about the topic, even though hosting a neutral conversation is borderline impossible when you begin with a video espousing an extreme and demonstrably false premise.

Bush, who currently works as an analyst for NFL Network, spent the next few hours retweeting and replying to followers from both sides of an argument in which every reputable scientist and doctor stands together.

In one tweet in which Bush’s beliefs are hard to ascertain, he asks one user what was the last reported case of measles or smallpox. The answer is yesterday.

Now listen I love Reggie Bush, the guy was an absolute joy to watch at USC and then at New Orleans before slowing down and playing out his days in Miami/Detroit/SF/Buffalo. But the guy was ELECTRIC. Doesn’t mean I want to get medical advice from him though. Maybe the guy who’s been getting hit in the head for the better part of the past 15 years is not the person to be handing out advice that goes directly against what the CDC recommends. Come on Reggie, be better.

At least we’ll always have the back juke highlights from USC.

Fill In the Blank: Millennials Are Now Killing ____

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You could really put in anything there and you’d probably win this game. It’s become the running joke of the internet for anyone thats a Millennial. Today we’re killing Applebees and Buffalo Wild Wings. Seriously, just google “Millennials are killing”

Well first off, FUCK malls, office parks, home ownership and everything else us Millennials are killing. The kids have come home to roost. Baby boomers and Gen X saddled us with a shitty economy, crippling student loans, destroyed social security, the list goes on.

So, yea all those ridiculous things like paying for a newspaper subscription can kick rocks. Technically Millennials are the majority now and it would seem we’re weeding out all the shit that no one wants or needs. SEARS? Fuck outta here with a store that sells khakis, dryers, and garden hoses.

And this isn’t about participation trophies that everyone over 40 seems to think Millennials line their shelfs with. It’s about combatting a shitty perception thats been put on an entire generation. What started out as lazy descriptions for 20 somethings like entitled, impatient, or too dependent on technology has morphed into those same older generations dumping their shit on Millennials.

I think some of it is just straight up resentment, which is normal for any older generation facing an upstart younger generation. The fact that any 21 year old dickhead can start a company from their parents basement with nothing but a laptop probably breeds that contempt. I feel ya, if you’ve been working at the same company for 30 years hoping to get that gold watch at retirement, that’s frustrating. But Millennials are pretty woke to the fact that anyone can get canned at any time (see ESPN) so more and more people are looking to work for themselves in some form or another.

But with that contempt comes the outrageous articles blaming Millennials for killing department stores like Macy’s. No, Macy’s killed Macy’s because they run 100,00 fucking square foot stores with too much overhead selling shit no one needs. Solid business model. Let me introduce you to Blockbuster and cab companies, you morons.

This all brings me to my final point; the Avocado Toast story. This shit has become an ironic rallying cry for Millennials who can’t help but laugh when these hit pieces pop up every other week. Millennials now can’t afford to buy houses because they buy avocado toast and Starbucks. Or maybe its the amazing advice that is continuously doled out to young people. I saw a recent CNBC package titled “Millennials not saving for homes.” What was the sage-like advice from CNBC? Move out of cities like NYC to cheaper, shit holes like Cleveland, get a tiny house, or buy an RV. That’s their advice.

 

Welp, appreciate the wise words, but I think we’ll take our chances and see what other shitty industries we can successfully kill off along the way.

College Enrollment is Falling as People Start to Wise Up

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Yahoo – “Despite aggressive efforts nationwide to boost the number of people who attend college, enrollments declined this fall for the fifth straight year as better job prospects for older potential students and a stalled pipeline of new high-school graduates were compounded by continued woes in the for-profit college sector.”

Good. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. College is the biggest scam going and is 1,000% the next bubble to burst. Now don’t get me wrong, I think college is extremely valuable if for nothing else than life skills: learning to live on your own, dealing with issues w/o your parents help and even making some money on the side to supplement your hobbies (drinking).

But that is not a skill set that is worth 200k+ (cue the kids chirping who went to trade schools). And the costs keep rising as if the colleges don’t even seem to realize this is a problem that will ultimately kill their racket. From when I was a freshman in college years ago to now, the yearly tuition at my school has gone up at least 12K. So you’re now paying 50k+ a year at some schools for degrees in fields that don’t have the supply to meet the demand. Which is why you have millennials living in their parents basements until their 30 and no one buying a house until their 40.

“The trend of prices continuing to rise faster than inflation is beginning to have more and more of an impact” on enrollments, especially among low-income and first-generation students, says Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, a nonprofit aiming to increase college attainment. He says affordability concerns are outweighing projections about the economic benefits of a college education.

Now obviously its a sliding scale. If you’re becoming a doctor or a lawyer, then yes clearly you need a college degree. And yes, of course I know a college degree has given me and my peers opportunities we just wouldn’t have been able to get without a degree. But for an English Lit major, going 200k in debt is a terrible, terrible idea. And not to be a blameless millennial, but letting a 17 year old make the decision to take on that debt for the rest of their life is an unbelievable lack of judgement on everyone’s part.

So I’m glad college enrollment is falling. Maybe when it starts to fall at 10% per year colleges will start to realize, oh shit maybe they can’t charge 65k a year for a Communications degree so I can work at the Gap.

But probably not. Higher Ed will push prices higher and higher until it explodes and no one can afford it OR everyone defaults on their loans. Should be a fun decade to watch the world burn. My kid is gonna be a plumber no doubt.

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Amazon is Now Taking On the Bane of My Existence: Grocery Stores

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Forbes – On Monday, in the midst of what will likely be its largest holiday season in history, Amazon.com AMZN +2.43% unveiled a video for Amazon Go, a supposedly new store that will allow customers to walk in, pick up items and leave without having to pay in a traditional check-out line.

Amazon, did we just become best friends? Yup. With apps for ordering food from my couch, calling a taxi from the barstool and streaming full on movies from my phone, Amazon was falling behind a bit. That is until they decided to take on the goddamn bane of my existence: the grocery store. The grocery store is where men go to die.

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Sure, free 2 days shipping is cool, I guess. But uhh, thats not really gonna get the juices flowing. A grocery store free of useless employees and horrifically long lines just so I can CHECK MYSELF OUT? Sign me the fuck up.

Legit nothing worse than the Sophie’s Choice of do I A.) Wait in line for 10 minutes so the teenager can ring me up and slowly pack up half my stuff or B.) Go do the grocery store employees’ job for them in self checkout? I almost always choose option A because as Will Hunting once said, because fuck him thats why.

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I’m gonna get my money’s worth. Any discussions of the misery that is a grocery store has to include the Bill Burr bit that is A+ material. “Here I was, I thought I was a comedian. Apparently I also work at a grocery store.”

Come on Amazon don’t screw this up. I need this. You need this. But more importantly the world needs this.