Blog dedicado a la formación en todos sus ámbitos: presencial, online, a distancia
In most places, you could be standing on your own property swilling a tasty hot toddy or sipping an ice-cold beer, but should you step out onto a public street, you’re breaking the law. That’s not the case, everywhere, however. At the risk of inspiring a mass migration to these magic places (not that we condone overdoing it ever and don’t drink and drive), there’s a handy list of towns where it’s actually legal to drink in public.
The Huffington Post has a brightly colored map of the United States, all color-coded and illustrated with happy little stars to show where these towns are.
Some cities allow it everywhere or mostly everywhere, while others only allow it in special “Entertainment Districts.” If you want to give yourself a pat on the back for living in one of these locales or perhaps you’re looking to move, check out the lists below.
Towns that allow public drinking in most or all areas:
Hood River, Ore.
Sonoma, Calif.
Las Vegas
Fredericksberg, Texas
Fort Worth, Texas
Arlington, Texas
Indianapolis
New Orleans (duh, and helloooo Mardi Gras)
Gulfport, Miss.
Erie, Pa.
Savannah, Ga.
Towns that allow public drinking in special Entertainment Districts
Lincoln, Neb.
Kansas City, Mo.
Louisville, Ky.
Memphis, Tenn.
Huntsville, Ala.
Birmingham, Ala.
Montgomery, Ala.
Mobile, Ala.
Take a look at HuffPo’s map in the link below to see where imbibing in public is definitely not allowed anywhere in the state. Hint: Most of you are gonna be sad and better stick to your porch tippling. And do you want to hear us say it again? Don’t be a dummy and over indulge. No one wants you to ruin the fun of being outside with a beer.
Here’s Where You Can Drink In Public In America [Huffington Post]
Sears wouldn’t explain exactly what went wrong with this transaction to CBS Sacramento. Maybe they don’t know, or they just don’t want consumers to know. Some errors are going to happen during the busiest shopping time of the year, and that’s understandable. This dilemma was one that our readers frequently face here at Consumerist, though: it makes us so, so sad when we lose a great deal because it only existed because of a retailer’s error.
In this case, there were early warning signs of trouble. The order wouldn’t submit through the Sears site, so he hopped online with a customer service chat representative. When e-mail confirmation showed up in the customer’s mailbox, it had the wrong color dishwasher. Sears would have been happy to change the order…if he paid the $360 difference in price between the white dishwasher he was getting and the stainless steel one that he wanted.
In this case, the error wasn’t on a shelf tag or a price sticker or even a website: the chat representative chose the wrong dishwasher.
Call Kurtis: When Do Companies Have to Honor Big Sale Prices? [CBS Sacramento]
Back in the Dark Ages, someone who found a well-loved stuffed critter would have only one option: drop it off in the lost and found. That’s what the woman who found this stuffed lion was going to do after finding it abandoned in King’s Cross station in London. That would give it the best chance of being reunited with its owner. Wouldn’t it?
Maybe there was another way. She tweeted a photo of the critter (which she thought at first was a bear) and posted it to Twitter. The image propagated across the Interweb, spread by thousands of people who remember what it would have been like to lose a stuffed toy as beloved as this little lion looked.
In the meantime, the lion had a nice vacation.
#lostbear's journey back to London. Lost property awaits. http://t.co/pvcudP9u8C—
Lauren Bishop Vranch (@laurenannbishop) December 14, 2013
Within only a few days, the picture came across the screen of the owner’s father. The mystery “bear” was really Roar the lion, and he even had photos of the now-famous lost lion with his daughter.
What did we learn? Social media is powerful, and the world is very small now. People, though–we don’t really change. We all remember the heartbreak of losing a favorite toy.
Twitter reunites cute bear with owner after passenger finds it on King’s Cross train [Metro] (via Business Insider)
The dream is over.
It all started out so optimistic: When AOL’s chief executive Tim Armstrong came onboard from Google, his dream of a network of local news sites that would cover all the comings and goings of communities across the country seemed like it could work out. Patch got $50 million and the high hopes of its fans at AOL in 2009, but now the company says its days are numbered.
Armstrong doesn’t sound like he’s entirely giving up on Patch, notes the New York Times’ David Carr, pointing out that he called it “an asset with optionality” last week.
“Patch has more digital traffic than a lot of traditional players have,” he said in a phone call on Friday, still defending his pet project. “The long-term vision was clear: If you get the consumer, can you get the revenue? And we have a whole bunch of Patches where the answer is yes. But we rolled it out on a national basis and we’ve had to adjust based on the investor commitments that we have made.”
Patch has lost hundreds of millions since it started and laid off hundreds of workers, according to reports, and no matter what happens next, it won’t be what Armstrong envisioned.
That vision was getting the local news to consumers in order to sell local advertising right along with it. And Armstrong wasn’t the only one who believed it could work, a former Patch editor tells Consumerist of the Patch dream.
“I bought into the idea of Patch,” she tells Consumerist. “I drank the Koolaid, and for a long time it was awesome. In the areas I covered, Patch really did seem to make a difference. People loved the daily local news.”
But despite that positivity, she says it soon became apparent as time wore on that AOL saw Patch as a failure, and with that kind of attitude, it was going to fail.
“Those that had championed the product were jumping ship, and that didn’t leave much hope for the rest of us,” she recalls.
Patch isn’t making AOL’s investors any money, and part of that could be because though the product might’ve been right, there just wasn’t enough time — Armstrong had promised investors in May 2012 that he could make it profitable by the end of 2013. We’re there now, and profitablity isn’t in sight.
That short timeline is definitely part of the problem, the former editor tells Consumerist. Basically, it was a nice dream while it lasted, but it needed more time.
“I think Patch was given a small window in which to succeed, but with rushed expansions and a deadline to be profitable, it wasn’t an adequate amount of time,” she says. “The idea of Patch was great and something a lot of people could get behind. However, the execution is beyond disappointing.”
While Patch is on its last legs, it’s not over until Armstrong says it’s over. And as of Friday, he still insists it’s “moving toward” profitability with new partnerships.
“At the end of the day, could Patch have been run better? We don’t know,” he said. “We were doing this while we navigated turning around the rest of the company. Patch was one of the big bets that we made, among others, and I still believe local will be a big opportunity whether it is Patch or someone else.”
AOL Chief’s White Whale Finally Slips His Grasp [New York Times]
All it took for a stranger to plunk down $20,000 at a Florida Walmart was overhearing a customer saying she’d have to cancel her layaway purchases. The so-called “layaway angel” was at the store buying bikes for a charity event and decided right then to extend his generosity.
Instead of about 80 customers having to pay down their own layaway balances, the man donated $20,000 toward taking some of the sting out of those purchases.
From what the Orlando Sentinel says, it sounds like it was an emotional, albeit somewhat confusing scene, with one woman asking if the man was actually Ashton Kutcher because she felt like she was on Punk’d.
There were “tears rolling down all of our eyes,” said an assistant manager at the store. “A lot of these people were going to have to cancel their layaways. All week long we’ve been running across people [saying] ‘I really wanted to give this to my kids, but I can’t afford it.’ “
The man paid off the entire accounts of about six customers, and paid half the balances for anyone with accounts of $200 or more.
“My wife and I don’t want for a bunch of things and we know a lot of people do. I have a lot of people who work for me who are single moms,” the man explained. “It just hit me the right way at the right time. It was just a special thing to be able to do it.”
While we’ve heard of layaway angels in the past, a donation of this amount isn’t even close to the usual amount.
“It’s extremely rare” to get such a hefty amount, a Walmart spokeswoman said.
‘Layaway angel’ pays $20,000 worth of bills at Villages Walmart [Orlando Sentinel]
We’re guessing that there was more to this feud than just the Employee of the Month contest. However, a sheriff’s department spokesperson told the local CBS affiliate that the feud started with bad feelings after the victim won the honor.
The alleged shooter argued with the Employee of the Month about their current workload shortly after the award was announced. According to the sheriff’s office, surveillance cameras caught someone rolling down a rear car window and firing a gun into the victim’s car in the store parking lot. The victim was not in the vehicle at the time.
The alleged shooter is no longer eligible for the Employee of the Month honor at that Walmart, since he no longer works at the store. “I think we see why he wasn’t chosen as employee of the month,” observed the sheriff’s spokesperson.
Investigators know about the argument that took place hours before the shooting, but aren’t sure why the dispute escalated to violence against an innocent car.
CBS4 Exclusive: Wal-Mart Employee Arrested For Shooting Co-Worker’s Car Over Award [CBS Chicago]
Adios.
In the email sent to users, GrubHub explains what will happen next for those who still have prizes or plays left:
1. If you’ve got prizes waiting to be redeemed, don’t worry – they’re still yours. They’ll expire on their normal date. Any available prizes will be appearing as you browse menus.
2.If you’ve got saved Yummy Rummy plays, they’re yours too, but only until December 29th. So hurry up and test your mettle on the rocky rapids of fortune.
And if you’re still upset, you can express your dismay in this GrubHub survey.
The Food and Drug Administration has been under pressure for some time now to take a closer look at antibacterial soap to see whether we should actually be slathering the stuff all of over our hands and bodies every day. And now it’s proposing a one-year period for manufacturers to prove that yes, the soap is safe for everyday use and in the long-term.
The FDA’s proposal would require companies to show that their products are also more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illness and the spread of infection. Any company that can’t prove safety and effectiveness will have to either relabel the product or reformulate it.
Hand sanitizers, wipes or antibacterial products used by doctors and the like wouldn’t be affected by the rule, which is part of a larger effort to make sure soap ingredients are safe.
The FDA says there isn’t any evidence so far that proves that antibacterial soaps and body washes prevent illness any better than regular soap and water, and that some ingredients in the products like triclosan and triclocarban could pose health risks.
“Antibacterial soaps and body washes are used widely and frequently by consumers in everyday home, work, school, and public settings, where the risk of infection is relatively low,” said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). “Due to consumers’ extensive exposure to the ingredients in antibacterial soaps, we believe there should be a clearly demonstrated benefit from using antibacterial soap to balance any potential risk.”
Soap companies will have to fork over data to the FDA on their products’ safety and effectiveness, including info from clinical studies that show they’re superior to regular soap in preventing illnesses and stopping infections from spreading.
FDA issues proposed rule to determine safety and effectiveness of antibacterial soaps [FDA.gov]
“I would eat that,” declared an unnamed Consumerist staffer whose name rhymes with Fairy Death Smirk. Indeed, most people would eat that, since we were all six years old once.
Maybe this means that Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, the fictional cereal featured in the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” is even closer to becoming reality.
SPOTTED ON SHELVES – General Mills Chocolate Toast Crunch Cereal [The Impulsive Buy]
Think about it this way: What if you opened up your cupboards and saw only miles of garbanzo beans and pickled sardines? A good place to start, points out xoJane’s Deb Martinson, is to not give anything you wouldn’t want to eat yourself. Because there’s not a lot of choice at a food bank — you’re going to be handed a bag of food and you’ll have to figure out how to make that stuff into a meal.
So she suggests this idea: Give like a hungry person. What would you want to eat, using only non-perishable foods? Think up a day’s worth of food that you would totally chow down on and that’s what you should give to the donation bucket.
Some other great rules to go by:
• Nobody wants dumb stuff: A container of candied fruitcake fruit is the example here. Sure, if someone is hungry enough to eat the rejected white elephant gift you got at the holiday party, they will. But it’s kind of horrible to just dump that on someone else. Ditto with exotic things like escargot and caviar — the average person is probably going to turn green at the thought of canned snails for breakfast.
• Not everyone has a microwave or can opener: If you’re homeless, odds are you don’t have a microwave strapped to your back, so think about donating food that can be eaten on the go without cooking, like tuna, peanut butter, granola bars, crackers etc. Also consider that someone might not have a can opener, so shoot for those cans that have the pull-up top.
• Perishable items will perish: This might seem like a no-brainer but it’s always a good reminder — any food that will go bad sooner rather than later if it’s not refrigerated is likely going to get thrown out at a food bank, unless it’s the kind that also prepares meals to serve.
• Ask what you should give: On that note, there could be food banks that need specific items after perhaps receiving one too many cans of low-sodium tomato soup. Some might even ask you to give non-food items like toilet paper, soap, toiletries, diapers and pet food.
• Thoughtfulness goes a long way: Yes, you should be giving hearty, healthy food to sustain a hungry person. But sometimes a nice little treat like candy or cookies can bring happiness where someone might not expect. Toss some treats in the next time you’re assembling your donation.
Of course, any donation is going to be welcomed and we’re not telling anyone what to do. It’s a good idea, however, to step back and imagine you’re the person receiving that food. Give what you would want to get.
For more tips on donating in general, read How To Not Suck… At Charitable Giving check out the source link below.
HOW NOT TO BE A D… AT THE FOOD BANK [xoJane]
When you dine out and have to calculate a tip, where do you start your calculations? Everyone has a different method, but in this country most people start their mental calculations at 15% and then increase or decrease from there. Yet we’ve spotted another restaurant encouraging customers to start their calculations at 18%.
We’re not going to name the establishment, since it’s not a national chain and this isn’t really about that restaurant. Reader Eric noticed this during an otherwise lovely night out. “This restaurant happens to be beloved by the neighborhood, is always packed open to close and is a favorite of ours so I wish them no harm,” he wrote to Consumerist. “But … I don’t know if others have seen this ‘tip creep’ gaining steam.”
Creep? Eric’s name for this phenomenon comes from “Christmas Creep,” our name for how retailers have gradually begun marketing and decorating for Christmas earlier each year. The date creeps back slowly until there are Christmas carols being played in August. Eric wonders whether that’s happening here: restaurants gradually increasing what consumers think that we “should” tip until…well, what would the breaking point be?
We first noticed this phenomenon at TGI Friday’s more than a year ago, when a reader sent in a suggested tip scale that provided handy calculations for 18%, 20%, and 25%.
Don’t get us wrong: it’s nice when someone does math for us. We just wonder who is behind this effort to nudge the starting point for food service tips up a little higher. Will diners ever latch on to 20% as their starting point rather than 15%? Someone certainly hopes so.
