What’s The One Thing Only You Noticed?
As you know, I am passionate about sweet things. All different kinds. So imagine my dismay back in 2017 when I discovered the recipe for Heath Bar Klondike had been changed to remove any trace of Heath Bar bits from the Klondike. It wasn’t just one box of Heathless wonders neither, it was box after box, which I kept buying like some kind of fool. This post has a point past petty dessert-themed grievances, I stg, bear with me. But first, look at this nonsense. (If you want the point, just skip to the last paragraph.)
2017 was a time when Google still worked so I searched to see if anyone else had noticed this change and didn’t find anything. I am not a narcissist, but I can spin a yarn, so the narrative I told myself was I was the only person in the world with the following traits: 1) cares a lot about desserts 2) likes Heath Bar Klondike Bars 3) is stubborn enough to buy a product multiple times after being so wronged and 4) is perceptive enough to notice the lack of Heath Bar bits on the Heath Bar Klondikes.
I did what was customary at the time and complained to Klondike on Twitter. Klondike put me in touch with customer service who insisted my lying eyes hadn’t seen what they saw, and the recipe hadn’t been changed at all. It clearly had because sometime in late 2018, I tried another box and the Heath Bar bits were back. Still not as prevalent as they had been, but back nonetheless.
All this to say at some point, my friend Mike, on the other side of the country, also noticed the lack of bits on his bars and mentioned something about it, which thus made me feel less crazy for noticing it. I was no longer alone.
My most recent example of this phenomenon, is Irish Spring changing the formula in 2022, which many people have mentioned online because the scent changed. I don’t care about any of that, but what does bug me is you used to be able to marry an old bar with a new bar. That is, if you put the sliver of your old bar on to the new bar, it would melt into the new bar. After the formula change this doesn’t happen anymore. You stick the old bar on the new bar and never the twain shall meet. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY.
Anyway, I was wondering if any of y’all have any bugaboos like this where you feel like you’re the only one who knows this is happening. Put it in the comments and feel less alone.
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My daughter watches a lot of garbage youtube. I finally got around to blocking it on the AppleTV (which doesn't adhere to screentime limitations...) by creating a rule in Unifi to block "youtube.com" from the AppleTV. I learned that this breaks ad feeds in MLB.tv and Paramount+. If I pause the block rule, everything runs as expected. It's really weird because I looked all over the interwebs and cannot find any indication of why this would be the case or that youtube is even responsible for serving ads on those services.
Yes this is exactly right.
Oh my god, my daughter and her garbage YouTube on the AppleTV. 🤦🏼
The problem is that I also watch YouTube on the Apple TV (not garbage, of course, only high-quality content) so I can’t outright block it.
Mine comes from childhood. An avid reader of The Hardy Boys, I began to notice some unstated rules: No one could ever swear, but a character could be described as swearing (Frank swore beneath his breath); no one could die in the course of a case; no romance beyond the mention that Frank and Joe had girlfriends.
Later, when the series was updated for modern readers, the rules changed: It seemed a single death was permitted per book, for example.
To this day I believe there must be a document out there, somewhere, that served as a style guide for the series’ many uncredited ghostwriters. I’d genuinely love to see it…but have never had any luck trying to unearth one.
The secret Hardy Boys style guide.
if you want to dig (or maybe you already have), Yale has records for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the publisher - https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/530
Mike, thank you for that! I’m going digging.
I found out awhile back that a struggling Canadian writer wrote most of the early Hardy Boys books under the pseudonym Franklin Dixon and hated them deeply: https://mathewingram.com/work/2020/05/25/the-little-known-canadian-author-behind-the-hardy-boys-series/
The quality in the writing of the original Hardy boys, good sentence structure, and a respectable vocabulary for a young reader. And I’m still pleased that I had several of my own childhood copies. I could pass on to my son. As he was growing up, I gave him new Hardy boys books. Unfortunately, sentence, structure, and vocabulary were much weaker. Sigh’
I use Apple Music, the app on Mac, A LOT. As in I am one of those nerds who has a lot of fun creating tons of smart playlists and I organize my music with custom tags, genres, etc. I adore it. But, there are some things that drive me up a wall about the app - one of the big ones being that if you sort an album listing of a specific artist by name, things work great! But if you sort the albums by year (which is what I would prefer), the first track of the next album is always attached to the previous album! So, albums start with track 2! Drives me up a wall and seems like someone at Apple would have noticed by now. But, I also have searched and doesn't appear that anyone else seems to notice.
This would drive me bananas.
If you mostly play by album, I highly recommend the Albums app. I have been using it almost exclusively since I discovered it. Apple Music has a bunch of pathological behaviors when playing by album, and this app has almost none.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/albums-music-library-player/id1469948986
I so wish Apple Music let you make a playlist (or smart playlist of albums and let you shuffle through them.) Albums does this which I like but I do wish it was on the Mac as well (apparently there are API limitations which block this.)
I also want that old albums Cover Flow view back. Or just like let me see my albums like big records on a carpet and I have to shuffle through them and pick them up and put them in a virtual record player or something.
I might just be weird.
I cannot believe Apple won’t fix that . That is an insane glitch. I kind of hope how they’ll never fix it tbh bc it’s kind of amazing.
Before anyone mentions it, LOTS of people have noticed the most popular version of Five Little Monkeys on Youtube features a doctor who looks like Hitler.
No one remembers except those of us who do. But Dunkin' Donuts used to make a cake Cruller. A beautiful, twisted, dense confection, plain or glazed, in vanilla or chocolate. The gentle twist allowed for a perfect percentage of glaze-to-cake. It was sublime. Double D killed it. Then they introduced the cake "Stick." (I mean, WTF) As if it was the same thing. As if--since it too wasn't round--we couldn't tell the difference. But it was not the same because the twist was gone ergo the Glazed Golden Ratio was gone ergo perfection was gone. Twenty years later, I've been known to mention them to the Dunkin' employee behind the counter. No one seems to know what I'm talking about. But I do. RIPP.
Also the dunkin jelly stick donut. That was one of my favorites.
edit: wrong place
Others must have noticed, but I may be the only one to complain about it: Dunkin' Donuts no longer sells the original "dunking" donut, the one with the handle
The cruller was really amazing. And sometimes they would dip it in chocolate.
If you're ever in Milwaukee, go to Cranky Al's - they make the best crullers I've ever had!
I also miss the cruller
Dunkin did have a donut with a handle. Wow.
Yeah, that Dunkin' Donut with the handle was the best. The recipe for it gave it a slightly sour taste that for some reason I loved. Their "plain" donut didn't have that.
Cruller RIP
I signed up for an account just to reply here.
So it sounds like you’re talking about a cake cruller. But for years in my neck of the woods Dunkin discontinued the french cruller. It was a bit of a Sunday morning tradition: kids hockey game, medium Dunkin, French cruller. We were heart broken when we were told the cruller was permanently off the menu.
Cut to this past summer on a quick road trip to the Southern Tier area of NY. Dunkin stop. holy s they have crullers?! Did these people always have crullers? Were they blind to our pain? Or was this a recent re addition and they were still enjoying the post cruller euphoria?
Back home, two weeks later, the cruller was back on our menu, like it had never left.
Would love the back story on cruller black out era.
In Captain America: Civil War, the Avengers were split over a gov't initiative that required superheroes to register with the UN. Tony Stark supported this, while Steve Rogers did not.
An Avengers battle ensued, during which Tony Stark brought in his secret weapon, Spider-Man, an unregistered superhero.
Haha, I love this! I hadn't noticed that before!
Harry's brand of men's shaving and grooming products had a bar soap which was notable for its dimensions - it was a blockier shape than the typical bar. It ws dense, produced a crazy rich lather and the bar lasted a long time. They switched to a bar which is more traditional in shape and less dense, making it dissolve faster. There's a shrinking grey market for the original bars on Amazon which I used for about a year after they discontinued them, but the price has gone to silly levels now and alas I've had to settle for the new bar soap.
I think about this more than I probably should: Mezzetta whole peperoncinis in the 16oz jars are often crunchier (read: tastier) than their brethren in 32oz jars. This is a problem because of my level of pepper consumption and how I would really prefer to be more efficient in my purchases but I also want the tastier pepper. Mezzetta sadly does not have a factory tour where I can visit to learn more about this situation.
I wonder if the 16oz jars move faster so you're more likely to get old pepperoncinis if you buy the larger jars? I feel like this calls for an expiration-date-controlled study.
As a fanatical Mezzetta-brand peperoncini consumer, I have noticed this difference, too. If Mezzetta ever offers a factory tour I would be so on board.
My theory would be that the bigger jars have to be heated for longer in the canning process to get the internal temperature high enough, resulting in them getting more cooked. Total guess though!
Every time I mention the deep friend apple pies from McDonalds- which they stopped making sometime in the 90s, and switched to a baked apple pie (which are gross) - almost nobody seems to know what I am talking about. It's not like the two types are similar, this wasn't a small change!
Anyway, if you know what I am talking about, and remember the molten core of the pies and the crispy bubbles on the outside with fondness, Whataburger has the exact same pies! I had one and I felt like I'd time traveled. It was great.
In 2004 I visited a McDonalds in Inverness Scotland and was thrilled to discover that they were still deep-frying their apple pies.
Yes! I have family in England and I realized that too! I wonder if they still have them, or if they also succumbed to the lure of the badly baked pie?
I can attest that Hawai`i McDonald’s still have the fried pies!! Aloha!!
I'm heading to Hawaii for the holidays, and my colleague told me, "I know this is strange to say, but you have to go to McDonald's while you're there..."
I worked for McDs in HS in the 80s and I remember that they were deep fried too. We had to be specially trained to not fry the pies in the same vat as the filet o'fish.
The fried apple pie was unreal.
A deep fried pie was the last thing I ate before going to the hospital for diabetic ketoacidosis, as a newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetic. My blood sugar was so high they couldn’t get an accurate measurement.
Those pies were great, and, no, they didn’t cause my diabetes.
They also had cherry pies, but they weren’t as good as the apple.
I always get Dairy Milk chocolate bars when I visit my family in England. Sometimes I'll buy the huge packs in the airport's duty free. I know exactly what it tastes like. But one day, I bought a Dairy Milk at CVS in Manhattan, and when I took a bite, I spat it out. It tastes like wax. That's when I realized that the Dairy Milk chocolate made in the UK or Portugal (you can see where it's made on the wrapper) tastes very different from the Dairy Milk chocolate made in Hershey, PA. Now I check the wrapper before buying them, and will only eat the Euro ones!
i have a story for you
Canadian chocolate bars are more like European chocolate. I've tried to eat them in the US but I just can't do it 😀
Cadbury’s dairy milk “drinking chocolate” has just been withdrawn from shelves in Ireland because they’re in breach of EU laws (insufficient cocoa solids to be labelled chocolate)…. I care less about the name and care more that this stuff let me get one big portion of milk into my picky eater’s daily diet. We’re hoping they just rename it and keep selling it, but we’re a tiny market compared to the UK, so I guess I’ll be bringing a supply back from my travels
I'm not sure if this counts exactly but for a few years the Phillies consistently had one more dollar hot dog day per year than the Nats. Both dollar hot dog days were sponsored by Hatfield, a company based near Philly. Coincidence or conspiracy!!!
I love Planters' Dry Roasted Peanuts, straight up. I don't like the unsalted ones. I don't like the lightly salted ones. The OG. A few years back, they started selling them in plastic jars, switching from glass. They simply are not nearly as good. But, rather than being angry, I'm sad. I miss them when I sit down with a newspaper, in front of a football game, or with a whiskey one evening with my father-in-law. I miss the tennis ball can-like hiss when opening a jar. Now it's just a wimpy little poof of air as you pull back a paper seal.
I pretend they taste the same, and I still can't stand them without a ton of salt, but, man, they don't taste the same!
They are the best! I did not notice a reduction in quality with plastic jars per se but I encounter bad batches much more frequently these days. I assumed they were reducing the amount of salt or whatever the magical "glue" that adheres that delicious salt to the peanut as a cost-cutting measure. Something definitely changed though.
Costco has a 2.5 lb tin of Roasted Extra Large “extra crunchy” peanuts that you might enjoy. They have the tennis ball seal.
Certainly, the seasonal Hershey's kisses wrapped in Easter, Halloween and Christmas foils taste richer and more chocolatey than their silver-clad brethren.
This is true of the seasonal Reese’s cups too! Maybe they’re just more fresh?
You can buy peanut butter cups that come direct from the factory. They are fresher and you can taste the difference. I was skeptical but I bought them anyway and was blown away with the difference.
https://www.chocolateworld.com/blog/reeses-direct-factory.html
I love Reese’s cups, but have noticed for years that I’m more likely to get old, worn-out ones when I purchase from the usual places. I’m definitely investigating the direct-from-factory option…!
One of my favorite Reddit stories recently was a woman who got only solid chocolate cups in a king size package of Reese’s, and when she posted about it Reese’s sent her five jars straight from the factory of the special peanut butter filling.
I recently read about the switch to a new formula for Butterfinger (https://www.foodandwine.com/news/butterfinger-new-recipe-taste-test) and was worried I wouldn't like it. Last time I had a Butterfinger was probably when I was a teenager! But, we decided to try the new one (I hardly buy these kinds of things these days) and was pleasantly surprised - I actually liked the new formula. It doesn't taste radically different but I did notice a difference.
In 1989, I met comic book artist Todd McFarlane at a signing. He showed photocopies of some upcoming work, including a Spider-Man comic with Captain America on the cover. I noticed that he made a mistake in the artwork. He forgot to draw the stripes on Cap’s costume. I pointed this out and he made a note to fix it himself before the colorist catches it and does it wrong. When the comic book finally came out, it was corrected. I assume it’s all because I pointed out the mistake. You can see the before-and-after here.
Not all heroes wear capes. (Including Cap and Spidey.)
The stroke widths on the various NYTimes Games icons used to be slightly different (though not drastically so), and it drove me absolutely batty. I also noticed that one of the square icons had an inconsistent corner radius—thankfully, that's been fixed now. Every time I opened the app to play the Bee or the Mini, it was all I could see. I couldn’t fathom how an art director at that level let that slip through!
Did you noticed when in Strands they started rippling the board every time you tried a word? Drove me crazy.
Didn't they thicken the borders in the crossword by like one pixel a couple weeks back? I swear it's different.
There is a jingle, ubiquitous at least in the Boston area radio market, for Kars4Kids. The lyrics include the phone number to call, and then it says, "Donate your car today," except they put the emphasis on 'NATE,' as in "Duh-NATE your car today." They could just as easily sing, "DOUGH-nate your car today," and thus sing it like everyone actually pronounces the word in real life, but they do not. It drives me, and only me, batty.
I live near Green Bay Wisconsin, the home of the Green Bay Packers NFL team. Troy Aikman says the city name with an emphasis on the Green part (GREEN bay) whereas us locals put the emphasis on the Bay portion (green BAY). Subtle but weird.
American football: DEE-fense. Every other occasion: de-FENSE.
Sadly that's a nationwide commercial.
I can't make the emphasis on the first syllable work for my ear, it feels like I'm trying to catch up and rushing the "your car" part. Unless I'm thinking of a different version.
On the TV show The Good Place, this is the national anthem for The Bad Place (i.e. hell.)
1 877 Kars for Kids
Donate your kid today
Huh, is it spoken or sung? I was thinking it was an accent thing, like how JFK said "de-CADE" in the moon speech.
This summer, I noticed that an exhibition label at the Walker Art Center misstated the year of Andy Warhol's death. The docent I flagged down was shocked.
Also, if you zoom in on the red heart in a liked post on Bluesky's iOS app, there's a faint circle around it.
Speaking of ice cream related groceries, I just want Chilly Bears to come back. Aaron, you must remember.
Lol at least we still have the Little Debbie's Christmas Trees
You kids in the crowd may not believe this, but when Apple Cinnamon Cheerios were first introduced, they had real bits of real apples stuck to the Cheerios Os.
The sugary collection of apple bits that you got at the bottom of the near-empty box....that was some suh-weet (literally and figuratively) cereal!
Them sunsabitches at General Mills took them away at some point. I shall forever curse their name (while still buying their pale imitation apple-juice-infused abomination that still bears that name for some reason).
I remember. And I remember when Kix and Honeycombs were good.
Wait, what happened to Kix? It was one of my favorites as a kid but I haven't had a bowl of cereal in like 20 years so I am out of the game.
@Jason they're not good anymore. lost the thin sugar veneer. Now they get soggier easier.
Butterfingers have also gone on a roller coaster of formulas in recent decade(s). I think it tastes fine right now (2024) but there have been years where they tasted different. I'm not sure if they were "bad" tasting but it wasn't what I expected.
Now, either I'm used to the new flavor or they've drifted back toward a flavor I live. Who knows.
> Butterfingers have also gone on a roller coaster of formulas in recent decade(s).
Paula Poundstone recorded a song about the Butterfinger recipe change! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aearfRY3S4
Decades ago in another country, I happened to be reading Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before while also reading The Other World by Cyrano de Bergerac, both in their English translations.
There is a passage, about two pages long in my memory, that is nearly identical in both books. Not just an homage — of course Cyrano was exactly the type to whom Umberto might pay secret tribute — but something more clipboard-y. Or so it seemed to me back then.
I didn't know what to do with this discovery at the time, and tbh I still don't. Even years after Eco's death, I sometimes search their two names to see if a little literary scandal finally broke out.
I am 40 years old. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand has been a favorite play of mine since high school. I've read it in English and French and seen multiple film versions (including stories "inspired by" the original).
It is just now, from this comment, that I learned that the namesake for the play was a real person.
Even after mentioning it for years to Adobe folks, the fact that the field in the metadata is called Creator in Bridge but Author in Photoshop just drives me nuts.
Feels like every app that Apple makes uses a slightly different phrase to represent saving a photo: "Save to Photos," "Add to Photo Library," etc. If I were Tim Cook for a day, I'd skip over all the meaningful and valuable bugs they have to fix, and tell them to fix that.
I quit drinking while reading the book I purchased at this link (Amazon). It was called “Stop Drinking Now,” by Allen Carr. I wrote a review saying it changed my life etc. At some point in the years after, the book at the link was swapped (?) for another Allen Carr book, “Allen Carr’s Quit Drinking Without Willpower.” I’m sure it’s also good, or even almost the exact same, but it makes me insane. I wrote to the people at AllenCarr.com asking what the deal was (also thanking them for changing my life!) and they said “I believe it's the same book with the same ISBN but has just been updated and re-titled.” Anyway. The actual book I read can now be found here. But the whole thing made me feel crazy & like the ground was shifting!
His OG Easy Way to Stop Smoking worked for me. Weird, magic combination of behaviorism and hypnosis in a book.
This is nothing personal toward you are anyone else, but the idea of hypnosis still draws my interest. The mere idea of hypnosis used to drive me nuts, actually make me angry. I didn't believe it can be done (and still don't). However, now that I've mellowed as I've aged I realized that it doesn't matter. If it helps people (the process being real or not) it's a good thing and it shouldn't both me.
Mike: I'm skeptical as they come, but the repetition in these books is kinda hypnotic, and it works. It's not that they leave you in a permanent trance like Peter Gibbons, but rather that they hammer the point in order to break the hardened assumptions we all have about the difficulty of changing a habit. Carr gets a shoutout too in Atomic Habits, which has a sciencier approach that gives context to what Carr is doing.
That I agree with completely. You can have your core ideas pushed in one direct or another with exposure to new perspectives if they repeatedly hold up to cross-examination. Repeating this process only pushes you toward the tipping point (think Malcom Gladwell) of a change. I was talking more about Peter Gibbons style hypnosis. Also, love the reference. My wife and I both love and reference Office Space (he made a million dollars!, what do ya do here?, I celebrate his entire catalog).
About ten years ago it seems like all restaurant servers started saying “how is everything tasting?” instead of just “how is everything” and I truly hate it. It’s a weirdly intimate question (“what’s happening in your mouth right now?”) but also seems like they’re asking for a compliment?
So googling reveals that I’m not the only person who feels this way, which is maybe a relief?
Also: Where did "What can I get started for you?" come from?
This drives me crazy! I feel it is an effort on the part of restaurants to limit feedback about the whole dining experience. As if the part not said out loud is something along the lines of, "Yeah we know our service is slow AF, we don't care that you don't like our loud music, and sure the food is cold and rubbery, but does it TASTE ok???" Boy have I become an old curmudgeon!!
I had a feeling this phrase could be tracked back to Danny Meyer and I was right lol! (I think restaurants do it because they genuinely want to engage with the diner to provide more hospitality. Even if not everyone likes it.)
I've noticed in the last couple of years that when you walk through the door of shops, salons, restaurants, etc, they say "Welcome in." Always seems odd — an incomplete thought, and too self-consciously fashionable.
This feels like the equivalent of the (to me) continental shift from people saying 'thank you' to 'I appreciate you'—a touch too warm and personal for my frosty New England soul!
I dislike all of these new sayings in hospitality and retail too. Add me to the curmudgeon list!
It seemed like, right after people started referring to software programs as "apps", servers started asking, "Would like to hear about our apps?" Not really, Mackenzie, but do you still have the truffle fries?
Meanwhile diners will place orders by saying “I’ll do…” e.g. “I’ll do the burger.” Even people i know and love will say this. Once I noticed it started to drive me crazy so now I’m always careful to order by saying “may i please have the burger? Thanks!” and I’m sure the servers are like “get a load of those old fogey”
More recently, restaurant servers have taken to asking if you have plans for the rest of the evening as you’re paying the bill. WTF? It’s like they’re actually your friend or something.
Apparently John C. Reilly feels the same way!
(Instagram link to his new @subwaytakes appearance)
Glad someone else pointed out the "Welcome in" thing. As an American overseas, this hit me like a tidal wave on a recent visit, and it's all I can do not to crack up when someone says it.
I've also noticed the attenuator "at all" appended to questions and requests, both in personal and retail situations. "Would you like a take-home box at all?" I feel like the precise (if snide) response would be to assess the level of my desire for a take-home box. This would probably be funny .
"only to me" got left off the end of my last sentence, which really makes me look like a heel.
I love how consumerist driven most of these are. People really hate when things change don’t they?
For the longest time I wanted a Talking Heads tshirt that didn’t suck. The only options seemed to be crappy knockoffs or overpriced vintage tees that were always only size XL and like one Etsy fan created shirt that wasn’t terrible. I eventually caved and bought a used Urban Outfitters Talking Heads ‘77 tee even though it was several sizes too big. This whole time I kept thinking, why isn’t someone making better official merch, there is definitely a market for this…
Someone else eventually did notice, and now I own a great and official Fear of Music shirt 😂
I'm a HUGE Talking Heads fan! What is your source? I just put a big movie poster for Stop Making Sense in my fitness room. Gotta love the big suite.
https://store.talkingheadsofficial.com/ ! They seem to do a lot of preorders and special edition merch, if you get on the mailing list.
I mean… can you make the giant tshirt work like the giant suit in Stop Making Sense? Some ridiculous shoulder pads?
Sometimes my laptop will slow way down, like app-to-app doesn't go fast anymore, beyond just internet performance badness. So I look at my phone and lo and behold I tap an app and it takes entire seconds for the app to spring to life. It is in these moments that I'm certain I've noticed the side effects of an electro-magnetic pulse and I'm the only person in the area who knows we're all about to be obliterated by a neutron bomb explosion.
Yesterday both my Mac and my iPhone began behaving in the strangest ways—the Mac wasn't responding to clicks, but the keyboard worked; the iPhone wasn't scrolling correctly in any apps. I restarted both devices and no issues, but I'm really curious what kind of crazy bug that was (if it wasn't a bizarre coincidence).
Me, conscientious allergy parent, checking pack of chocolate-covered Hobnobs: okay, all good, no trace of nuts
Me, now certain I know the answer, checking pack of regular Hobnobs: may contain nuts wait what
The irrational pricing structure for dumbphones for sale in the US.
I don't know if ONLY I've noticed this, but given the market segment's smallness, there may be vanishingly few of us who can be made to care.
You can get a flip phone for $20, or you can get a flip phone for $350... what's the difference? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Some small things of course, less irritating OSes etc, but not many and how does one value those differences? By these orders of magnitude?
Full disclosure: I'm an old school crank who's a gold star dumbphone user so I actually watch this market with deep personal interest, especially when my carrier is in the process of shutting down networks.
Curious anectdata point: Today in downtown Chicago, however, I saw not one but two!(!?) other dumbphones out and in the hands of people younger than me. Do you know how hard it was to not whip out my nokia and salute them with it?
Regular Cheerios used to have only 1 gram of sugar per serving, which was even touted in their marketing for a while. Several years ago they quietly doubled it to 2 grams. That's still low compared to most other breakfast cereal, but an annoying sneaky change nonetheless.
I'm not literally the only person to have noticed this, but it seems like we're a small group. The beings at the end of the Spielberg movie "AI" are not aliens, they are the future evolution of the robots. (Also, "Mission Impossible 2" is an almost scene-for-scene remake of the Hitchcock film "Notorious" and the Danny Boyle film "28 Days Later" is an uncredited adaptation of the John Wyndham book "The Day of the Triffids".)
My 13yo also realized that a second 2 episode of Clone Wars is also a remake of Notorious. Some scenes are shot-for-shot. We searched and learned that others have noticed it too.
That "AI" thing was clearly expressed in dialogue! Annoying how many people missed it. (But then, if they were like me, they were probably too busy being utterly mystified. I swear "AI" is twice as good a movie if you fade to black when he's sitting underwater asking the Fairy to make him a real boy.)
I don't know if I'm the only one to notice this, but none of my acquaintances or family had, so I think I'm part of a small minority at least.
In one of the Charmin' "bears crap in the woods" (my nickname) commercials, the small boy bear is at the breakfast table. The box he is holding is labeled "Salmon Flakes" and I think "well played, commercial artists, well played".
Having type 1 diabetes, I'm pretty attuned to the carbohydrate content of food. Per the FDA, I've noticed that apples average about 11 grams of net carbohydrate per 100 g, pears average 12 grams net carbohydrate per 100 g, but Asian pears which feel like an average between apples and pears have a mere 7 grams of net carbohydrate per 100 g. What's up with that?
I'm actually surprised it's not more. Apples and pears have almost doubled in sweetness in the last 10-20 years. Does that include the skin or without? The skin on an Asian pear is pretty fibrous.
Asian pears have the highest water content of any pear and higher than most apple. I wonder if that has something to do with it?
For a while our favorite family playlist was Stevie Wonder Essentials on Apple Music. I would play it for the kids once or twice a day. I would usually play in on shuffle, for variety, but 9 times out of 10 the first song to play was "Signed, Sealed, Delivered".
I've noticed that Spotify sometimes shuffles playlists in the same order like there's an order that is calculated and used multiple times.
I think this an algorithm thing — they're making it less random, and optimizing it for songs that they know you like, or failing that, that everyone likes. Spotify is definitely guilty of this, particularly after skipping a track, they try to play something that will hook you.
It all reminds me of when folks accused iTunes of playing favorites back in 2005, and Apple responded with Smart Shuffle. Steve Jobs took care to note that "We're making it less random to make it feel more random."
Back in the iTunes days of 2008ish, my husband always listened to everything on shuffle. At one point he started getting irate that the Decemberists and Matisyahu were seemingly always playing. Eventually we sorted by play count and realized these albums were played dozens of times more than any other album!
[Spolier alert, I guess?] There is a moment during the interrogation scene in The Usual Suspects when Verbal Kint essentially admits to being Keyser Soze by saying "I did . . . I did kill Keaton." Chazz Palminteri's detective character had shoved Kint to the ground and is shouting something like "You're lying, you do know who killed Keaton!" Kint corrects himself--sputtering something like "I sweart I didn't see Keaton get shot"--butPalminteri keeps shouting and doesn't catch on.
In the pre-streaming days, trotting out this observation was a big party trick for me. The scene is available on YouTube now, which somehow spoils the mystique. Instant, costless rewatching kinda devalues obsessive scrutiny.
But could this be taken as Verbal's confession, not Keyser Soze's? Verbal all along is trying to mislead Agent Kujan by appearing to protect Keaton, which only stokes Kujan's certainty that Keaton is the mastermind. If Verbal can get Kujan to believe that the mastermind (Keaton) is dead, then Soze is scott-free. Such a great movie, I love it so much.
Possibly! Though Kint immediately switched to saying he saw someone shoot Keaton, so if it was purposeful he didn't press it very hard.
❤️
In the NYC metro area, McDonald's doesn't offer mustard on their burgers, even if you ask. They just don't have it. As I discovered in this reddit thread, it's a regional preference, so I'm far from the only one to notice. But as a WI-to-NY person like Mr. Kottke, this was an unpleasant surprise.
I noticed that when I was a kid in the 80s on car trips from Long Island to Florida. I wasn’t used to the mustard, and didn’t like it then. Now I prefer it.
Egads. This is only related due to mustard, but, one of the best airport burgers you can have is the double with cheese at the Billy Goat outpost in ORD. Get it with onions, pickles and mustard. I think the buns are made of OG-Twinkie-like synthetic materials, which might be why it all works so well. But, damn! So mustardly good!
Growing up in the 80s I was addicted to Macgyver. A few years ago (30+ years later) I rewatched the first season. When I hit Episode 3 - Thief of Budapest, I paused midway through the last scenes and was like "This isn't Macgyver, this is the Italian Job." They weren't just using the same story, they literally were playing scenes from the 1967 version of the Italian Job as if it was Mac's brilliant idea to use 3 mini coopers to get to Austria. Guess no one noticed back then. You can see a clip of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQLztMN05iU .
That’s hilarious. I’d love to track down the origin of this, and also if they did this in other episodes and/or if it was common practice back then.
Ahhh, to return to the low-standards days when we were fine with shots and plots just being reused willy-nilly… wait, never mind, that would be horrible. Let's not do that.
It seems that every recipe published past 2000 or so calls for "Kosher Salt" instead of just "salt". I know, I know, there's a whole deal with crystal size and packing theory and weight vs. spoonfuls etc... BUT!! Don't tell me to only use Kosher salt for precision and then also ask me to put a 1/4 cup of chili crisp on something. That's goofy town.
On Apple Music, one of their curated playlists in the “Moods and Activities” library is called “Ping-Pong.” There’s also another playlist titled “Table Tennis.”
They feature the exact same songs in a different order.
Bahaha holy shit.
That’s just hilarious 🤣
As an avid mountain biker in Marin County, USA, I've noticed that most rides result in a ratio of 1 mile > 100 feet of elevation gain. Of course there are deviations, but much of the fire road riding (up and down) results in a profile like that. A 15 mile ride will end up having about 1500 feet of climbing, etc.
I have a suspicion that there is a manual for making fire roads as part of some US Forest Service material that describes this 1mile:100 feet ratio when grading roads. It probably has a set of cool illustrations and written rationale depicting this, but I've never gone down that particular rabbit hole. Might have to rectify that.
I ride road bikes around the Santa Cruz Mountains west of the SF Peninsula, and we usually end up somewhere around 100'/mile for a ride. We call it "The Ratio". Given we're on roads it's not a Forest Service thing. Maybe something about the size & shape of the mountains/hills around here?
Can confirm, this is also true in Chicagoland, but the ratio is 1:1
Years ago I met a cyclist from Chicago who told me he trained for climbs by going to a parking garage, slipping the attendant a fiver, and doing repeats up & down the ramps. He also said bike racers there are all sprinters built like football players because there's no hills to slow them down.
I swear there was a scene in E.T. when I saw it in theaters as a kid in which Elliot, in some kind of long distance mind-meld w/ E.T. back at home, begins auto-writing off the chalkboard and onto the walls of his classroom. This scene has been scrubbed from all memory— I look for it every time I see this film and it's never there. Did I dream it?
You didn't - it's a deleted scene and a picture of it shows up in the E.T. Storybook!
Well look at that, Colter's right.
https://youtu.be/eG4sC5mIN5I?t=649
I've noticed certain sites rejecting my payment method, most specifically sports ones - adidas, converse, reebok, but also sephora. I CANNOT FIGURE IT OUT. I have tried different cards, paypal, browsers, etc. No one online seems to have a solution either. Unless someone tells me differently, I'm going to continue believing it's a virus created by Bezos to force me to buy from Amazon.
Just remembered another! Surely I’m not the only person to notice that THREE of the Hs in the White House Briefing Room seal are upside down and have been since 2007?
Related. There's an sign on the northbound Baltimore-Washington Parkway where the N in NSA was upside down and backwards. I would have mentioned it in this thread, but apparently someone else noticed and they actually bothered to fix it.
In the 1985 movie Teen Wolf, a person wearing a red shirt in the stands has the fly undone on their pants through the whole scene, he finally notices and zips them up (on camera!) during the final hugging after the game winning shot.
you can see him notice and zip them up around the 8:13 mark in this youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjff7tS8MxY&t=493s
We could go down a "Hollywood goofs" rabbit hole, but the first one I thought of was the end of "Back to the Future 3," when one of Doc Brown's sons (Jules or Verne) is repeatedly pointing toward his penis. Story I heard was that the actor had to pee, vs. just being a rude little shit, but who knows.
I’m a photography nerd and mine is colorization. I loathe this, think it’s corrosive to the culture and to history. In part because people don’t notice and the colorized version then becomes the version. Black and white is both beautiful to look at and has essential information. When I see a Dorothea Lange photo colorized I feel a tiny injury.
Speaking of Lange, the story of her iconic Migrant Mother photo is interesting in terms of photographic alteration, etc.
That's an interesting story and our concept of "documentary photography" has changed over the decades. The changes Lange (or Walker Evans) made is part of the history of the image we inherit. My issue is when a person in 2024 does it, then circulates it and then this becomes the image found in books. On the culture side, I think the urge to see old photos in color taps into the part of the brain that gets pleasure from nostalgia and schmaltz. (And I've seen all the incredible 'early color' autochrome images and I've used and love Kodachrome.)
I remembered another one! But this is my sister noticing, not me - if you look at all the A's on an American passport, they have stars in them. It's mind blowing when you look closely.
Hi Yen! Could you tell me where this happens in the American passport? I couldn't seem to find it in mine.
I'm a southpaw and recently needed a chainsaw. Turns out there are ZERO left-handed chainsaws in the world. No wonder our life expectancy is years shorter (allegedly, let's talk after)!
I feel people haven't noticed the change in soda containers. 12 oz cans, in both vending machines and at corner stores, have been replaced by 20 oz plastic bottles over the last 20 years. 12 oz cans have been relegated to the top shelf of coolers, making them unreachable by kids. Nobody asked for this, and most people don't even realize it has happened. Anyone who complains sounds like a nanny-statist, but it's pretty sickening. 20 ounces of soda is a mathematical absurdity, and almost none of that plastic is getting recycled. As a society we have messed this up badly. It's almost as bad as that scene in The Founder where Ray Kroc says they'll do away with dishes and dishwashers by making everything disposable. Ray Kroc was the Robert Moses of trash.
I agree with you! I also feel STRONGLY that Diet Coke in a can tastes different and superior to Diet Coke in any other container… but it’s harder and harder to buy a single can out in the wild. It’s one of my favorite treats.
This goes along with the thing I’ve noticed - Laundry detergents and dishwasher detergents in the U.S. are now packaged in thick, plastic containers. I’ve managed to still purchase a brand clothing detergent in cardboard, as well as generic powder in cardboard for our dishes, but I am definitely in the minority. I think companies moved to plastic because of their liquid “pod” formulas now, and maybe in a science lab I could measure less dirt on clothes and dishes, but I’m trying to bring less plastic into our home, not more.
And before the plastic bottles were 20oz, they were 16oz. And before that, they were 16oz glass bottles that had those very satisfying-to-peel-off styrofoam labels.
I was on the bleeding edge of the 20-oz transition: my high school was chosen as a promotional location for the new bottles, and for a couple of weeks, they were just handing them out to us for free. (My high school got a mention in "Fast Food Nation," no surprise.)
My bad: it was the McDonald's brothers who innovated on disposable meal packaging. Kroc just operationalized it across the franchise, and every other franchise followed suit.
I'm not sure about other sodas, but Coke tastes completely different based on which container it's in. For me, the 16.9 ounce bottles are king. They are so much crisper and "burnier" (for lack of a better term) than any other container. Cans are high on my list too. 2-liter and 1-liter bottles are in the middle. The 20 ounce bottles are the absolute worst. I would have to be dying of thirst before I'd buy one. Unfortunately, convenience stores in the US never carry the 16.9 ouncers. Just the horrible 20 ouncers.
Those old glass bottles Jason mentioned with the styrofoam labels were the best. The ovalish shape felt so good in your hand. The bottle had a solid feeling to it that you can't get with plastic. And the way the label peeled off in long strips with that perfect sound was so unbelievably satisfying. Sigh.
I agree that 20 oz Diet Coke is the worst form. If I see a 16.9 oz bottle I'll give it a try, but for now it's either fountain or can. I have my husband trained, too.
Some time in the late 1990s I noticed the red light emitted by my Apple mouse projected an image of a mouse–clearly and obviously intentional. I went searching for references (this was long before social media or even widely available digital cameras) but never found a single reference–was it an easter egg? Was it some weird artefact unique to that individual mouse?
I have been a dance teacher for almost 20 years and boy, my profession is confusing for the music app algorithms. They not know what to make of a song that you listen to, over and over, for months, but only for an hour straight every Thursday and often only 30 seconds at a time. Also once recital is over, you never, ever want to hear it again.
Also, YouTube music used to let you buy and download mp3s, which I have to do to send them to whichever dad got roped into running sound for the recital that year. I miss that feature!
At some point in the last 15 years, the Caps Lock keys on Macs, including the standalone keyboards, stopped using the lovely green LED of most Apple things, and switched to a boring, factory-standard yellow-green LED. Haven't seen this remarked upon anywhere, not even by Gruber.
The designer in me is like "Maybe so the power-related LEDs have a specific color language…" But then what about the LED next to the Mac's camera?
OK, can we talk about lifesavers candy in retail stores? It used to be at, say, a 7-11, there would be multiple types of life-savers available. Always there would be the standard 5-flavors, but then you would very likely see several others, including wint-o-green, pep-o-mint, and my all-time favorite, butter rum. In recent years, however, I almost never see individual rolls of lifesavers available in retail, even the classic five flavors. Our local 7-11 no longer carries them. I travel widely, and airport convenience stores don't have them. Instead, there are all-sorts of life-saver spin-off candies: bags of candies, often gummy approximations of the original lifesavers. Or lifesaver-flavored candy canes. Because I'm crazy, I spent some time googling things like "lifesaver rolls discontinued" but there doesn't seem to be anyone else who has even noticed this. It's like it's not happening. Invasion of the saver-snatchers!
Now that you mention it, where the heck are the lifesavers? I'm going to keep my eyes peeled now any time I see a candy display...
On the drive up I-5 from LA to SF you see signs with distances to San Francisco and Sacramento, which are only 1 mile different. But I swear that which one is the farther city changes along the way, though they are still only 1 mile different. Am I crazy?
This shows Sacramento as 1 mile closer than SF https://will-blog-for-food.com/2012/04/10/road-trip-la-apartment-hunting-celebrity-staring-contests-mind-boggling-traffic/
Yeah I've sat (as a passenger!) with Google maps doing distances at least once on I-5 to confirm this. It's one of those things, factually true, but plants a WTF seed in your head, which is why they should change the signs!
There’s a few miles of interstate near Berkeley, CA where 80 East combines with 580 West (which actually goes North). As a fan of the Interstate system, it always bugged me that I could be driving Eastbound and Westbound at the same time (while driving North)!
If you then hop over and take 680S, you will cross over 101 (also N/S) and wind up driving on 280N into San Francisco. even though you’re still on there same road.
I can't believe I've never heard *anyone* question why Palpatine looks like a withered old man in "Return of the Jedi" and a goddamn Muppet in "Revenge of the Sith."
20 years is a lot of mileage when you're running the galaxy.
New York City pretzels from street vendors.
In the 70s, these guys would sell pretzels and roasted chestnuts. They had a fire of some kind doing the roasting, and cooking and slightly charring the pretzels. They had a crusty exterior, huge grains of salt, and a softer center. They were fantastic. To get an idea of the whole scene, look at the cover of Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic.
But for about 30 years now, the pretzels are completely different. Smooth, orange exterior, no charring, soft, doughy. A dull, bland carbohydrate.
Nobody else knows what I'm talking about. I talk about this and people think I'm crazy.
Seems he may have had a sterno to heat the pretzels, with the charring being an accidental taste enhancement?
Try this Reddit link for a picture of a vendor - https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1cbizx5/pretzel_vendor_from_30_years_ago/
You are 100% right, they used to be amazing. But they've been declining in quality for a loooong time, so for many people, terrible street pretzels are all they've known.
I suspect the 1990s (when carbohydrates became the enemy) had a lot to do with it, but also, the demographic of the street vendors themselves. German (and Dutch) immigrants brought pretzels to NYC, but over the years they are less represented on the streets. Without that tradition and with lower demand, there is some law of diminishing returns going on.
This paper details some of those cultural trends! https://www.jstor.org/stable/26549623
I wonder if there’s something about open flame being disallowed? Pretzels are definitely steamed now, and almost certainly premade by Sysco or similar.
Those incredible street pretzels and Italian Ice are two of the strongest memories I have as a kind of a family trip to NYC. We drove from Florida to DC, Philly, and then NYC. BTW, we were in DC when the Son of Sam was caught which made my parents relieved but I will never forget those tastes.
Can't comment on those, but used to be that every busy intersection in Philly was manned by someone selling the peculiar soft pretzels of Philadelphia in brown paper bags. When I was young, a $1 got you 4 or 5. At my high school, at 10AM we'd have a 15 minute break where we could buy one of the same Philly Soft Pretzels for 25¢ and a carton of iced tea or chocolate milk. FWIW, this is also when we had a smoking gazebo for students...
You thoughtfully included the chestnut vendors. I love those chestnuts and when in New York or Paris, I seek them out. This past October I walked many miles in my childhood town and NOT EVEN one chestnut cart. Looks like tastes have changed (but not mine).
There’s a pattern in iOS that drives me crazy. When you want to unlock your phone or iPad with your numeric password, you’re presented with numbers laid out like a telephone keypad. When you are doing something at the system level that requires authentication via your numeric password, something that happens much more rarely, you’re presented a numeric keypad with a different layout! I can’t remember exactly what it is, but I believe it’s like a calculator numeric layout, where the lower numbers are at the bottom. Not only does this screw me up (I was locked out of my iPad once due to this) it seems like the most user unfriendly thing I’ve ever encountered in the Applesphere. I’ve never heard or seen anyone else mention it.
Adding to this - it's also a drag when you've created a pw on a computer keypad ergonomically and then have to enter it on your phone
Late to the party here, but when I first heard the Severance theme, I thought it was composed by Thom Yorke/Radiohead. It generally has their haunty sound but I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice it's super similar to Yorke/Unkle's Rabbit in Your Headlights. Then I thought I heard a bit of Pyramid Song in ep1 when Mark gets home and takes out the trash cans. I like the similarity, but it also bothers me because it's a different composer. Is there a Theodore Shapiro-Radiohead relationship or maybe it's a purposeful homage? It doesn't feel accidental.
Go deeper: I used to think that Radiohead’s picaresque mood and sound design were utterly unique, but then I discovered Aphex Twin and figured out that much of this is his influence on them. Not just the electronic stuff either; Richard D. James is quite capable of a haunting piano line. Not to knock Godrich or anyone in Radiohead, they are unique and they still rule. But the inspiration is confirmed by Yorke and easy to hear: “Yellow Calx” predicts Kid A & Hail, and listen to “IZ-US” and tell me that’s not “Reckoner”.
Never having watched Baywatch, this isn't a thing I noticed, but Todd Vaziri loves to point out this "moon-shot" in the opening credits of Baywatch.
(watch the people in the background in knee-deep water). 😂
https://x.com/tvaziri/status/1477070470352490497
Thankfully, it seems to have tapered off, but for a few years in the late 00s and early 10s, some of my American friends would use "anymore" in what was, to me (a Canadian), the oddest way.
"Anymore, I don't like soda."
"Anymore, I've been sleeping okay."
In the first example, it was essentially moved to the front of the sentence which is odd, but I can see it.
In the second, it was more used to mean "lately".
And it drove me absolutely batty. Does anyone use "anymore" in this way nowadays? What made this become a "thing"?
(My friends who said it the most were from Southern Virginia, almost in North Carolina, and New Jersey.)
Fellow Canadian here. I noticed the same thing when I moved to Washington State in the 80s. It really bugged me. Either the use tapered off, as you suggest, or I just stopped noticing it and (probably) started using anymore that way myself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_anymore
I wrote to PNC bank to correct their ad, which reads: "Wealth on your terms are our only terms." Pardon?? Since "on your terms" describes the one entity, wealth, it should read "Wealth on your terms is our only term."
San Francisco, 17th & Valencia, there's a T-Mobile store right next to the vibrator store and I always notice (and giggle a little at) the matchy-matchy pink color schemes of the two brands.
Seems like a lot of these are Apple-related, so here's one more. If you set a weekly reminder for a specific time, you get the reminder an hour later or earlier half the year when the clocks change.
I don't rate David Gilmour's 1984 album About Face as highly as I did as a rabid teenage Pink Floyd fan, but I still appreciate it. So when I recently heard Mark Knopfler's "Wild Theme" from the score of the film Local Hero and its similarity to Gilmour's "Cruise", I was convinced they must have worked together in the mid-'80s and shared part of this tune. Yet I can find no evidence for or even mention of such a possibility. For the record, Gilmour's album came out the year after Knopfler's soundtrack.
I notice when a scene is cutting back and forth between two people having a conversation and suddenly one person has repositioned themselves in a way that feels just slightly off, indicating that the scene has been cut/edited.
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