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ScottS

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Posts posted by ScottS

  1. 2 hours ago, immamac said:

    @jimmyjazz

    https://www.co.lampasas.tx.us/page/lampasas.District.Clerk

    Go here when they are open, walk in, walk out, eat lunch and drive home. 

    Does every county court house have a passport office?  I just looked on the website for my county court house and did not see anything about a passport office.

    I live in a more rural county, so it would not totally surprise me if not every county court house has a passport office.

    I need to update my passport but I have no travel plans so this is not anything I need to do right away, but it is something I've been meaning to do and have been unable to overcome my inherent laziness.

  2. What is their Surly handle?

    We’re addicted to naked cruises and have already spent $40K — here’s why we’ll never do a clothed one again

    Quote

    Strips ahoy.

    A couple who have embarked on nine clothing-optional cruises claim to love them much, they’ll never set sail the standard way again.

    “I told my wife that from here on out I won’t do any clothed cruises,” Michael Brown, 56, a retired government enforcement officer from Wilmington, Delaware, told SWNS.

    Brown and wife Laurie, 50, have been nudists for their entire 20-year marriage. They spend the majority of their time at home in their birthday suits. They cook, clean, eat and are raising their two children, aged 12 and 14, sans attire.

    The duo decided to take their NSFW lifestyle to the high seas by going on sex-pensive cruises specifically chartered for sealoving Adams and Eves.

    “It’s the polar opposite of a clothed cruise,” Michael explained matter-of-factly, describing the pastime’s appeal. “You’re paying for the premium of being naked.”

    After embarking on their inaugural nude voyage in 2015 for a couple’s vacation, the duo has gone on one of these floating bacchanalias every year since.

    To date, they’ve dropped $40,000 on the pants-free pilgrimages, which have taken them everywhere from Aruba to the Dominican Republic.

    Their latest seven-day cruise — run by a company called Bare Necessities — departed Florida, sailed around Mexico and Honduras, and set the nautical nudists back $2,000 each.

    What does one do aboard this floating nude beach? Basically, you enjoy all of the same cruise activities — yoga, gym sessions, photography sessions, comedy sets, shows, and gambling in the casino — just without attire.

    Nudists can even work up a sweat – much like these naked exercise enthusiasts — by enjoying the “big slides, the waterpark, putt putt golf and a running track,” Michael explained.

    Unfortunately, not every part of the boat is clothing optional; voyagers are required to wear attire while dining.

    “If you’re in sit-down dining rooms or paid restaurants, they ask you to be clothed but in the buffet, you’re welcome to be naked,” Michael said.

    “You can be eating dinner at the sushi restaurant in clothes and you’re watching people marching back naked back and forth outside, which seems a bit hypocritical,” he pointed out.

    There are also certain areas where pleasure boaters aren’t allowed to snap photos, specifically the ninth deck where the pool and sun loungers are located.

    Despite the “Playboy Mansion”-evoking environment, hanky panky is verboten aboard the voyages.

    “They are pretty strict on the fact that it’s a naturist environment…there’s no sexual activity at all,” warned Michael.

    What’s the appeal of the pastime? Michael said he finds nude cruisers much friendlier than their clothes-on counterparts.

    “I find people to be rude on clothed cruises and everyone has their face in a phone,” he told a reporter. He added that by, contrast these nude cruisers are “courteous and hyper-aware of being kind and friendly.”

    “A lot of clothed cruisers go for the ship, or the harmony of the sea, whereas the nude cruise its the opposite,” he added. “It’s not about the boat — you’re going because of the people and the friends you’re going to meet.”

    Michael claims that he even met two of his closest friends aboard a nude cruise.

    The voyages have been a high water mark for Michael, who has been a nudist ever since he was a young kid.

    “My mother was always chasing me around trying to get clothes on me,” said the Delawarean, who baptized his wife into the lifestyle.

    “My wife was also comfortable with going topless but never full social nudism,” he explained. “So when we got married, I introduced her to her first nude experience and that was pretty much it.”

    He added, “She was very apprehensive about it when we got together but she took to the idea of it very quickly.”

    The couple are even raising their kids to be nudists as well.

    “With our kids, it was a process that both my wife and I agreed upon jointly,” he said.  “I wanted to raise good respectful, well-balanced, body positive daughters.

    Contrary to the stripteaser-like stigma surrounding the practice, Michael says going clothes-free is conversely about “removing the mystery and mystique behind it.”

    Their training appears to be having the desired effect.

    “Our eldest is 14 and our youngest 12 — they now don’t bat an eye at nude people,” Michael said.

    There are pictures in the linked article for the curious.

  3. Personally speaking, for me to give a shit about the other SEC teams (at least the ones outside of aggy and arky) then the SEC had better do a 9 game conference schedule and some sort of regular rotation so we see the other SEC teams on some sort of frequent basis.  Hard to work up any kind of hate for a team if Texas will only face them once every 12 years and will come to Austin once every two decades.  

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  4. Went with a frozen pizza for dinner.  Pulled it out of the oven and cut it into 8 pieces.  Turns out the amount of Cholula left in the bottle was only enough for 7 slices.  Managed to push through the pain and consume the last piece.

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  5. On 4/1/2024 at 7:41 PM, hookemATL said:

    Welp you made me spit up my gingerale as I’m sitting on the tarmac in Vegas, so thanks for that!

     

    On 4/1/2024 at 8:11 PM, MissingInAction said:

    Now you have a dip cup.

    Or, if you are on an Air New Zealand flight, a handy urinal.

    Man charged after urinating in a cup on Air NZ flight

    Quote

    A man has been charged and fined after he was caught urinating in a cup on a flight next to passengers.

    The 53-year-old was removed from a flight from Auckland at Sydney Airport in December, after receiving a report the man had urinated into a cup while in his seat.

    Australian Federal Police told Stuff Travel the man was charged with acting in an offensive or disorderly manner affecting safety, contrary to section 91.525(4) of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998 (Cth).

    The matter was heard in the Downing Centre Local Court on Thursday, 21 February. The man was fined AU$600 (NZ$655).

    A mother and daughter who were on the flight next to the man told Stuff Travel they were left “humiliated”.

    Passenger Holly was flying with her 15-year-old daughter from Auckland to Sydney to visit Holly’s sister.

    They were sitting in the middle and aisle seats, with the man sitting at the window.

    Holly said when they landed in Sydney they did not have a gate so the plane sat on the tarmac for 20 minutes or so. The engine had been turned off so it was much quieter while they waited.

    “We heard him do it [urinate]. There was no mistaking what the sound was and I just looked straight at my daughter and my daughter looked straight at me. It was very obvious what was happening.

    “So yeah he pulled his naked penis out next to us at least three times.

    “That just makes my skin crawl.”

    She and her daughter went to the back of the plane and told the flight attendant what had happened.

    “And because I guess we had moved he then got up after us and was carrying another full cup. I guess his intention was to pour it out in the toilet. Then as he was walking, he was obviously quite drunk by this point, he spilled a good amount of his urine onto the flight attendant at the end of the plane as well, because he tripped.

    “So then he went into the toilet, we had told them obviously what had happened, or what we thought had happened, and then it was kind of solidified by the fact that he had this cup of urine and had spilt half of that on her.

    “When he came out of the bathroom, the crew pulled him aside and essentially, I guess, asked him not to do that any more.”

    Holly said the plane was then further delayed to wait for the Australian Federal Police to arrive.

    “We were humiliated by being escorted off the plane.

    “I said, no, I don't want to make a police complaint. I just want to go home and get off this plane.”

    She did however give a statement but said since then, she had not heard from the police.

    After making a complaint to Air New Zealand Holly said she only received an automatic, ‘thank you for your complaint’-type message.

    After hearing nothing more, she submitted three more complaints over a number of weeks.

    An email was sent to Holly by Air New Zealand on Tuesday, three months after the incident, saying compensation was not an option. She has since been offered a gift basket.

    “I understand and accept totally they can't control passengers, but I do think that the crew should have noticed he was drinking. I do think that the crew should have not put us or subjected us to being police escorted off the plane.

    “I think they're not responsible for his behaviour but they are responsible for their customer service.”

    “I want to be able to show my daughter that actually this is so abnormal, look how above and beyond they've gone to apologise. I found that really odd.”

    Holly said her daughter now does not feel comfortable to fly alone, jeopardising her school holiday plans to visit her aunty.

    “My daughter won't fly alone because she's absolutely terrified that she's not safe.”

    Chief operational integrity and safety officer, David Morgan said he “can’t comment on this specific incident.”

    “However, if behaviour like this were to happen on our aircraft, our normal process would be to call the local law enforcement agencies and do our own internal investigations. Unless there were exceptional circumstances, this sort of abhorrent behaviour would lead to the passenger being banned.”

    Morgan said Air New Zealand issues between five to 10 ban letters to customers each month for a range of disruptive and unacceptable behaviours, repeated failure to follow crew instructions and intoxication.

    “We will not stand for abhorrent behaviour that impacts other customers and our staff. It’s frustrating for us to have to deal with behaviour like this from a small number of people when most of our passengers are fantastic.

    “We apologise to any customers who have experienced poor behaviour from a fellow passenger and would like to reassure our customers we take issues like this seriously.”

    Coincidentally, on the same day in December, 2023 a New Zealand couple flew with Qantas from Bangkok to Sydney sitting in seats covered in a child’s urine.

    They initially thought it was water, but when they discovered a pair of children’s underwear under the seat they put two and two together.

    After a back and forth, Qantas refunded the couple.

    - Stuff

     

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  6. Texas leading the way in number of bee colonies and it is not even close.

    Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?

    Quote

    Where in the unholy heck did all these bees come from?!

    After almost two decades of relentless colony collapse coverage and years of grieving suspiciously clean windshields, we were stunned to run the numbers on the new Census of Agriculture (otherwise known as that wonderful time every five years where the government counts all the llamas😞 America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high.

    We’ve added almost a million bee colonies in the past five years. We now have 3.8 million, the census shows. Since 2007, the first census after alarming bee die-offs began in 2006, the honeybee has been the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country! And that doesn’t count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over.

     

    This prompted so many questions. Does this mean the insect apocalypse is over? Are pollinators saved? Did we unravel the web of maladies known as colony collapse disorder?

     

    But let’s start with the most important question: Is there, in fact, a bee boom?

     

    We consider the census from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to be the gold standard, but another data set from those quantitative crusaders, the annual honey report, actually shows bee colonies losing ground.

    Agriculture Department economist Stan Daberkow, who helped write the definitive comparison of these sources, retired in 2008 but continues to follow the beekeeping business closely. When we tracked him down, he dove headfirst into our data mystery, sending us theories and exchanging emails at 1:35 a.m. and beyond.

    Like any source produced by humans and constrained by budgets, Daberkow said, the honey report and Census of Agriculture have their limitations. The honey report focuses on operations with five or more hives, while the census includes every farm in the country. In this case, “farm” means any plot of land that sells at least $1,000 of agriculture products in a year, a measure that could include more hobbyists and dabblers in the buzz biz.

    Inflation also increases the share of beekeepers who qualify for the census: The Agriculture Department’s $1,000 farm definition hasn’t changed since 1975. So as honey prices, pollination fees, hive prices and other sources of bee revenue rise, more hobbyists will magically transmogrify into “farmers.” Some of those new farmers, plus others discovered through census outreach efforts, might get added to the honey report. So next year’s honey report could paint a sunnier picture.

    Daberkow said he was somewhat “leery” of the latest census data. Given less-than-ideal recent honey prices, major producers shouldn’t have much incentive to expand their operations. “Any growth would likely have come in smaller operations, a demographic USDA goes to great lengths to track down for the census,” he said.

    Sure enough, the census shows the number of operations with any bee colonies has ascended far faster than honey production or bee-colony counts — about 160 percent since 2007.

     

    Much of the explosion of small producers came in just one state: Texas. The Lone Star State has gone from having the sixth-most bee operations in the country to being so far ahead of anyone else that it out-bees the bottom 21 states combined.

     

    Our data showed the biggest increases in north Texas, a region not traditionally considered a honey hotbed. So we started dialing beekeepers to ask what was going on. The first thing we learned? Our job would be half as hard and twice as joyful if all our sources were Texas bee boosters. Every last one seemed genuinely thrilled to pick up the phone.

     

    Consider John Talbert of Sabine Creek Honey Farm, age 85. A past president of both the Association for Facilities Engineering and the Texas Beekeepers Association, Talbert takes a spoonful of honey before bed each night and brings a jar of wildflower honey to every politician he meets. He does the same for his doctor and his dentist.

     

    “That’s so small that it couldn’t be considered a bribe,” Talbert told us. “It’s just a gesture of good faith!”

     

    Talbert is such an infectious evangelist, we suspect that he and his many protégés could have propelled the great American bee resurgence by enthusiasm alone. But the Texas beekeepers all pointed to one clear reason for the bee boom — and that reason answered the phone on our second try.

    Dennis Herbert wouldn’t strike you as a political mover and shaker. A retired wildlife biologist, Herbert, 75, boasts of no fancy connections and drops no names. But in 2011, after keeping bees for a few years, he went to the Texas legislature and laid out a simple hypothetical.

    “You own 200 acres on the other side of the fence from me, and you raise cotton for a living. You get your ag valuation and cheaper taxes on your property. I have 10 acres on the other side of the fence and raise bees, and I don’t receive my ag valuation. And yet my bees are flying across the fence and pollinating your crops and making a living for you,” Herbert said. “Well, I just never thought that quite fair.”

     

    In 2012, the Herbert Hypothetical gave rise to a new law: Your plot of five to 20 acres now qualifies for agriculture tax breaks if you keep bees on it for five years.

    Over the next few years, all 254 Texas counties adopted bee rules requiring, for example, six hives on five acres plus another hive for every 2.5 acres beyond that to qualify for the tax break. Herbert keeps a spreadsheet of the regulations and drives across the state to educate bee-curious landowners.

    Herbert himself doesn’t qualify for the exemption. His modest homestead in the tiny town of Salado, about an hour north of Austin, isn’t big enough. But, he says, “more bees provide more pollination, and so I get to eat a little better. I get my watermelon during the summer. And that doesn’t make me anybody special at all. I just, I like my watermelon.”

     

    While Herbert never intended it, Texas bee exemptions have become big business. That has created an opportunity for Gary Barber, a former newspaper photographer.

     

    Barber got bit by the bee bug after he left the Dallas Morning News in 2014. His firm, Honey Bees Unlimited, now leases and runs 1,500 hives for 170 clients in eight counties north of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. As developers split the once-rural countryside into five- and 10-acre ranchettes, he’s signing up new clients faster than he can split hives to place on their land.

     

    “It’s crazy, the blanket of bees over these counties!” Barber said. “Honestly, it’s not bee country: You’re not going to make it like a traditional beekeeper. But it’s really great because … now we’ve got pollinators all around!”

     

    Barber has risen to become vice president of the Texas Beekeepers Association and promotes the industry alongside Herbert — especially every other year when the Texas legislature is in session.

     

    “There’s usually some legislator that wants to mess with [the tax break], and we’ve got to go tell them why it’s great,” Barber told us. “And luckily, while our two political parties don’t agree on much, they all seem to want to save bees.”

     

    These Texans helped explain the rise in beekeeping operations. And they built our trust in the Census of Agriculture as a purveyor of weird truth. But even with its army of small producers, Texas still ranks only sixth in the number of actual bee colonies. To find the true core of the bee boom, we had to make like the Village People and go west.

     

    When the census was taken in December 2022, California had more than four times as many bees as any other state. We emailed pollination expert Brittney Goodrich at the University of California at Davis, who explained that pollinating the California almond crop “demands most of the honeybee colonies in the U.S. each year.”

    Every February and March, something like 170 million almond trees unite in one of Earth’s great synchronized acts of sexual reproduction — made possible by the migration of the bees.

    Pollination — not honey prices — has been the true rocket booster strapped to the back of the modern beekeeping industry. And almond pollination is responsible for $4 of every $5 spent on bee fertility assistance in the United States, according to NASS.

     

    America’s almond acreage has more than doubled since 2007 as the world’s food firms race to stuff the nut into every conceivable granola mix, nut butter and milk substitute. So it seems reasonable to assume the honeybee population doubled along with it. After all, those almonds aren’t pollinating themselves.

    (Editor’s note: Some of those almonds are, in fact, pollinating themselves. But self-pollinating trees remain a small minority.)

    So the situation on the ground seems to confirm the census: We probably do have a record number of honeybees.

    Sadly, however, this does not mean we’ve defeated colony collapse. One major citizen-science project found that beekeepers lost almost half of their colonies in the year ending in April 2023, the second-highest loss rate on record.

     

    For now, we’re making up for it with aggressive management. The Texans told us that they were splitting their hives more often, replacing queens as often as every year and churning out bee colonies faster than the mites, fungi and diseases can take them down.

    But this may not be good news for bees in general.

     

    “It is absolutely not a good thing for native pollinators,” said Eliza Grames, an entomologist at Binghamton University, who noted that domesticated honeybees are a threat to North America’s 4,000 native bee species, about 40 percent of which are vulnerable to extinction.

    Grames helps lead EntoGEM, a collaborative effort to sift through more than 120,000 often-obscure scholarly articles worldwide in search of hidden insect-population data. Grames said the consensus holds that pollinators, like all insects, are in decline — losing probably 1 to 2 percent a year.

    (“Pollinators” is not a synonym for “bees,” by the way. Legions of insects have evolved to help native plants with long-distance reproduction, including butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, midges and gnats. Many aren’t even fully known to science, so we can’t say with certainty they’re declining. But optimism would seem misplaced.)

     

    Many of the same forces collapsing managed beehives also decimate their native cousins, only the natives don’t usually have entire industries and governments pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting them. Grames compared the situation to birds, another sector in which maladies common in farmed animals, such as bird flu, threaten their wild cousins.

    “You wouldn’t be like, ‘Hey, birds are doing great. We’ve got a huge biomass of chickens!’ It’s kind of the same thing with honeybees,” she said. “They’re domesticated. They’re essentially livestock.”

     

    Mace Vaughan leads pollinator and agricultural biodiversity at Xerces, an insect-conservation outfit that has grown from five to nearly 80 employees during his 24 years there. Vaughan says it’s not a zero-sum game: For native pollinators to win, honeybees don’t have to lose. If we focus not on tax breaks, but on limiting the use of insecticide and promoting habitats such as meadows, hedgerows and wetlands, all pollinators can come out ahead.

     

    “We’ve got really well-meaning people who are keeping honeybees because, ‘Oh, I’ve got to save the bees.’ That’s not the way you save the bees!” Vaughan told us. “The way you support both honeybees and beekeepers — and the way you save native pollinators — is to go out there and create beautiful flower-rich habitat on your farm or your garden.”

     

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  7. I mean, there is kill, and then there is overkill.

    2 Georgia men indicted on charges of setting off bomb at woman's home and plotting to release python to 'eat' her daughter

    Quote

    2 Georgia men indicted on charges of setting off bomb at woman's home and plotting to release python to 'eat' her daughter

    The men allegedly used the internet to find the victim's home and plotted to mail dog feces to the residence, shoot arrows at her front door and release a snake inside, prosecutors said.
     

    Two Georgia men have been federally indicted in connection with a "sinister" plot they allegedly hatched last year to release a python to devour the daughter of one of their ex's, prosecutors announced.

    Stephen Glosser, 37, and Caleb Kinsey, 34, of Richmond Hill, were arrested in February 2023 on charges of setting off a homemade bomb at the home of a woman with whom one of them had a previous relationship.

    On Thursday, they were indicted on multiple federal charges related to the bombing and their alleged plot — which included mailing dog feces to the ex's home, releasing a snake in her residence, and scalping her, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Georgia announced.

    They had plotted to acquire and release “a large python into the victim’s home to eat the victim’s daughter,” the release said.

    The men face charges that include stalking, conspiracy to use an explosive to commit a felony, use of an explosive to commit another felony offense, and possession of an unregistered device. Kinsey was further charged with false statement during the purchase of a firearm and possession of firearms by a convicted felon.

    The men had the victim under surveillance from December 2022 to January 2023 “with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate,” prosecutors said in a news release.

    They conspired to shoot arrows into the victim’s front door, mail dog feces or dead rats to the victim’s home, scalp her and blow up her home. 

    Glosser located the victim’s home using internet searches and mapped out a path to her residence, prosecutors said. Kinsey then allegedly acquired and built an explosive device at Glosser’s home using Tannerite, which he purportedly purchased online. 

    Then the two used it to blow up the victim’s home on Jan. 13, 2023, the prosecutors said. 

    On that day, Bryan County emergency services responded to a report of an explosion at a residential structure on Demeries Lake Court in Richmond Hill at 5 a.m., Georgia’s Office of Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire said in a release.

    A multi-agency investigation found the cause of the explosion was an “IED comprised of a binary explosive compound.” 

    No one was injured in the explosion, WTOC of Savannah reported at the time.

    The agency announced Glosser and Kinsey were arrested in connection with the explosion. Kinsey had fled the state and was arrested in Louisiana, and Glosser was arrested locally. 

    Bryan County Sheriff Mark Crowe previously described the attack as "sinister."

    He told WJCL-TV of Savannah that a woman and child had moved into the residence the day before the explosion — and one of the suspects had a prior relationship with the woman.

    Glosser and Kinsey are in custody awaiting further court proceedings. The docket for the federal case did not list lawyers for the men.

    Prosecutors said that, if convicted, the conspiracy charge carries a statutory penalty of up to 20 years in prison, and the charge of using an explosive to commit a felony carries a penalty of an additional 10 years. The release noted, given these are federal charges, the men won't be eligible for parole. 

     

  8. Baywatch reboot lands at Fox

    Quote

    Like the end of a slo-mo music montage on the beach, “Baywatch” reboot has found a home: Fox has closed on a script+penalty deal for a new version of the long-running surf-sand-and-saviors series from Fremantle.

    Fox and Fremantle have tapped Lara Olsen (“Spinning Out”) to serve as showrunner for the new “Baywatch,” which was originally created by Michael Berk, Douglas Schwartz and Gregory J. Bonann. Starring David Hasselhoff, “Baywatch” originally ran from 1989 to 1999 and then was retooled as “Baywatch: Hawaii” from 1999 to 2001.

    Olsen, Berk, Bonann and Schwartz will serve as exec producers on the one-hour drama, which comes from both Fremantle and Fox Entertainment. Here’s the new logline: “Daring ocean rescues, pristine beaches, and iconic red bathing suits are back, along with a whole new generation of Baywatch lifeguards, who navigate complicated, messy personal lives in this action-packed reboot that demonstrates there’s the family you’re born into and the family you find.”

    This isn’t Fox’s first visit to the lifeguard hut: The network also aired the TV reunion movie “Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding” in 2003.

    Besides Hasselhoff, the show’s cast over the years included Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, Alexandra Paul, Erika Eleniak, Nicole Eggert, Parker Stevenson and many others. Hasselhoff also starred in a spinoff series, the private eye drama “Baywatch Nights,” which aired from 1995 to 1997. “Baywatch” was a syndication sensation, airing in more than 145 countries at one point, more than any other TV show. The series’ PR company even made up a stat, calling it the “No. 1 series in the world,” which was then reprinted as fact in publications.

    The show was originally inspired by Bonann’s time as a Los Angeles County lifeguard. Bonann later became an Olympics filmmaker and after years of pitching a show about lifeguards, eventually meeting Berk and Schwartz. They originally developed “Baywatch” for Grant Tinker’s GTG shingle, which had a series commitment at CBS. When the Eye network passed, the pilot “Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier” was sold to NBC, which aired it as a movie — and in success, picked up a 12-episode season.

    “Baywatch” was a flop on NBC, and the producers managed to buy back the rights to the show from GTG in order to produce new first-run episodes in syndication. The producers recruited a variety of investors, including a small distributor, LBS, as well as an earlier version of Fremantle (which had distributed the show internationally and saw the popularity of Hasselhoff in Germany), UK outlet ITV and the Chris-Craft TV station group. All-American TV, run by Scotti Bros. Records, agreed to invest as the show’s guarantor, and then took over as distributor when LBS went bankrupt. Pearson TV later bought All-American; Pearson eventually became a part of FremantleMedia, which was created via a series of mergers by Germany’s Bertelsmann in 2001. (FremantleMedia became Fremantle in 2018.)

    And that is the long road to how “Baywatch” ended up a marquee title in the Fremantle library. A “Baywatch” reboot has been discussed in the past; most recently a “Baywatch” film starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron was released in 2017. That movie grossed $178 million globally.

    As for Olsen, she’s very familiar with rebooting classic TV franchises, having worked on the revivals of “90210” and “Beauty and the Beast,” both at The CW. Her other credits include “Blood and Treasure,” “Reign,” “Life Unexpected” and “Private Practice.” Olsen is repped by Independent Artist Group and attorney Melissa Rogal. 

     

  9. Didn't see this posted anywhere and this looked like the best existing thread based on search.

    Wendy's will soon begin testing surge pricing

    Quote

    The price of a Wendy’s Frosty could soon fluctuate throughout the day as the chain looks to introduce Uber-like surge pricing on its menu.

    The practice, known as “dynamic pricing,” will begin testing in 2025, Wendy’s recently revealed in an earnings call. It’s part of a $20 million investment in new digital menu boards at its US restaurants that enable them to change prices depending on demand.

    Few details were released about the change, but Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner said the new menus will let the fast food chain test “more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and day-part offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.”

    “We expect our digital menu boards will drive immediate benefits to order accuracy, improve crew experience and sales growth from upselling and consistent merchandising execution,” Tanner said on the call.

    The menus were first shown in a mockup of a redesigned Wendy’s unveiled in 2022 that featured new pick-up windows, a more technologically advanced kitchen and a spruced-up interior. The new menus have already rolled out at some drive-thrus, with some TikTok users showing them powered by an automated voice, instead of a human worker, with suggestions for add-ons featured onscreen.

    Surge pricing is common with sports and concert tickets and for ride-hailing apps, with services like Ticketmaster and Uber using sophisticated dynamic pricing algorithms that change minute by minute, based on demand. However, there hasn’t been widespread adoption from restaurants because of the labor it takes employees to change menus.

    But apps and digital menus can easily update prices on the fly, giving fast food chains an easier to way to implement dynamic pricing. Wendy’s expects digital order sales to reach $2 billion this year and is spending $15 million to upgrade its app.

    McDonald’s has also dabbled with dynamic pricing and new order-suggestion capabilities at some of its upgraded drive-thrus and on its app. However, the varied and inconsistent prices at its franchises have ignited outrage recently for affecting the affordability of its food.

    Surge pricing could be a “turning point” in the industry, according to Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of trade publication Restaurant Business. “If Wendy’s idea works, it could get others to do something similar, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see another chain or two test the idea themselves, given what Wendy’s is doing.”

    Maze adds that there’s risk, especially in light of the fluctuating prices of fast food. “The idea that a restaurant chain would potentially raise prices during busy times of day, even if consumers think they’re raising prices, then it could lead to a backlash,” he told CNN. “They’ll have to tread carefully. This is why we haven’t seen a lot of it.”

     

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