pileofcrapola

If you live in a seriously cluttered house, downsizing all at once can feel like an impossible challenge. Wise Bread shares a simple tip to do it gradually: get rid of one (or ten) things every day.

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Coffee grounds work great as fertilizer and insect repellant in the garden. You can combine all these uses into a biodegradable flower pot that can go from the windowsill to the ground without repotting.

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A good cup of coffee starts with the right beans , but from there you also need the right tools to get the best possible result. Sure, we have our favorite coffeemakers , but we want to build a solid list of the best coffee-making gear you could have at home. Let's get started.

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Even the most motivated people can get stuck, frustrated, and lose hope during the process of behavioral change. Why can't you force yourself to go to the gym before work? Or get high-priority tasks done before checking email? We become so fixated on specific tactics that we lose sight of the fact that many methods could lead to achieving their larger strategic goals.

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Standing. It's just something you do, right (like breathing )? The truth is, there's a perfectly aligned and balanced way to stand...and the imbalanced way many of us do.

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Reading comics on your computer or tablet is awesome , but if you'd rather read them on a more eye-friendly screen—like your Kindle—Know Your Mobile has some instructions on how to make that happen.

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Dear Lifehacker,
I have an [insert Android or iPhone of choice] and I'm still running [some older OS version]. When am I going to get an update to [X new operating system version]?

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It's every photo-taker's nightmare: After taking loads of precious pictures, your memory card is completely toasted. Digital Photography School offers several tips for reducing the likelihood of memory card corruption.

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Peanut butter and jelly. Strawberries and chocolate. Bacon and anything. Some food combinations are just meant to be. Esteemed chef Thomas Keller offers six tips for food synergy, including adding sourness to "bowl foods."

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Completing your weekly shopping trip used to mean going to one store and purchasing the one brand of tomato sauce offered. Today, consumers are bombarded with a plethora of decisions before they even write up their grocery list, from hitting up the health food store or the supercenter to going with the tired and true name brand of the generic store brand products.

Consumer trends have always shaped grocery shopping. When we wanted more options we created supercenters, when we wanted healthy foods we created health-food stores. And the evolution of grocery shopping doesn’t appear to be letting up anytime soon, Business Insider reports.

“In the 1990s and the beginning years of this century, the greatest threat to supermarkets and grocery stores came from supersized ‘one-stop shopping’ venues like supercenters and warehouse clubs,” the market research firm Packaged Facts wrote about emerging grocery trends. “Today the threat is spread out among all retail channels, including drugstores, dollar stores, limited assortment chains, and — the elephant in the room — e-commerce.”

Traditional grocery stores such as Safeway or Kroger aren’t the only places consumers flock to for their weekly groceries. Packaged Facts found that consumers stop at, on average, five different types of stores, including supercenters, drug stores and speciality stores, during each shopping trip they make.

The extra stops are made because consumers can’t find everything they desire, instead, the stops are made to find the precise mix of value, quality and specific brands.

Brand identification is another emerging trend in the grocery shopping game. According to a Packaged Facts survey, store-branded grocery sales are projected to nearly double in the next two years.

The trend of purchasing house brands, which are typically cheaper, stems from the recent recession when consumer were looking for more wallet-friendly products. In addition to lower prices, consumers believe that the quality of the products are actually better.

At one point in time, shopping at supercenters that offered every product under the sun was popular and convenient. Now consumers say the experience can be overwhelming.

“When a customer walks into a store of 40,000 items and only wants to buy 30 of them, that’s a terrible customer experience,” Chad Arnold, president and CEO of the online grocery service Door to Door Organics tells Business Insider. “Companies are now scaling back stores and getting them more focused to specific customers, instead of a one-store-fits-all approach.”

Since 2006, the average square footage of a supermarket has shrunk to 46,000 square feet. Even stores that became popular as supercenters are scaling back. In the past several years, Walmart has downsized with their Neighborhood Markets.

So, with all the choices consumers face before hitting the store, what’s the number one reason they decide on a specific store?

Nearly 75% of consumers surveyed say the quality of products available in the produce department is the most important. The second most important aspect is the freshness of meat, poultry and seafood.

4 Ways American Grocery Shopping Is Changing Forever [Business Insider]

Warning: If you are prone to squees of delight and shrieks of adoration, the below story might not be safe for your coworkers’ ears. Because how could you not utter at least one “aww!” when faced with tiny newborn kittens named Mouse and Wifi that survived traveling 100 miles packed in a box shipped to a warehouse?

Two kittens so young they still had the umbilical cords attached were found in a box shipped to Cox Communications in Los Angeles from Chula Vista, which is about 130 miles away, reports ABC 10 News.

A worker who watched as his fellow employee unpacked that box says they’re lucky they’re surviving and now thriving.

“They were very, very lucky that they didn’t fall out of it in transport or when we were unloading the truck,” he said, adding that he’d thought he’d seen it all in his 34 years at the warehouse.

He called his nephew, who coincidentally is an investigator with the San Diego Humane Society, and the kittens were taken there to recover. And lest you be looking around for a bad human to blame, look instead to the kittens’ mom.

“What we think happened was the mom had the babies and she put them in a safe spot … and she left,” says one of the Humane Society workers who’s been taking care of the kittens, and helped with their telecom-inspired names. “Then they got boxed up and they got shipped.”

The kittens are extra lucky in this case — if they’d ended up in another city, there might not have been the resources to care for such young animals.

“We’re actually one of the only around-the-clock kitten nurseries in the country,” explains
a San Diego Humane Society spokeswoman. “Most shelters don’t have the resources to provide around-the-clock care that kittens need.”

These two fortunate siblings are on the mend though, and will spend the next few weeks growing fat and happy in the nursery before heading to a foster home. Once they’re eight weeks old, they’ll be ready for adoption.

Now for that video that might prompt a few shrieks of delight:

Kittens accidentally packed in box, shipped from Los Angeles to San Diego [ABC 10 News]

Companies want customers to engage with them online as if they’re just another pal on Facebook or Twitter, one that can offer downloadable coupons and promote contests with attractive prizes. But in new language recently added to General Mills’ website, consumers who interact with the company online will be agreeing to give up the right to sue the company in the future.

The New York Times reports that the food company behind brands like Cheerios, Betty Crocker and Nature Valley recently updated the legal terms in its privacy policy online, effectively limiting customers who bring a dispute against General Mills to arbitration or other negotiation.

A gray bar at the top of the Privacy Policy page highlights the change:

We’ve updated our Privacy Policy. Please note we also have new Legal Terms which require all disputes related to the purchase or use of any General Mills product or service to be resolved through binding arbitration. For more information on these changes, please click here.

In the newly updated Legal Terms, General Mills doesn’t mince any words in outlining what kinds of actions will bind customers to arbitration. Basically, if you download coupons, enter a General Mills sweepstakes or interact with it at all, you can’t sue — not if you get a chunk of glass in your bowl of Wheaties and not if you think a product has misleading labeling. Specifically (bolding ours):

These terms are a binding legal agreement (“Agreement”) between you and General Mills. In exchange for the benefits, discounts, content, features, services, or other offerings that you receive or have access to by using our websites, joining our sites as a member, joining our online community, subscribing to our email newsletters, downloading or printing a digital coupon, entering a sweepstakes or contest, redeeming a promotional offer, or otherwise participating in any other General Mills offering, you are agreeing to these terms.

While there’s no reason to guess why a major company would seek to protect itself from lawsuits, in this case the change in terms happened shortly after a judge refused to dismiss a suit against General Mills by consumers in California claiming that the “100% Natural” claim on Nature Valley granola bar packaging is false and deceptive. Those products contain processed and genetically engineered ingredients, the judge said in allowing the case to continue.

The NYT points out that while other companies have sought to impose what some call “forced arbitration” on consumers — AT&T’s legal win in 2011 forbidding class-action lawsuits paved the way for many others — this might be the first major food company to do so.

General Mills declined to be interviewed by the NYT about the changes, instead saying in a statement that’s it a great way to resolve things for consumers — they won’t have to pay for any silly legal battles as the company will foot the arbitration bill most of the time:

“While it rarely happens, arbitration is an efficient way to resolve disputes — and many companies take a similar approach. We even cover the cost of arbitration in most cases. So this is just a policy update, and we’ve tried to communicate it in a clear and visible way.”

The reason this is so noteworthy when compared with forced arbitration in the mobile industry or in credit card disputes lies in the fact that these are products we eat, products that could include health risks if there’s mislabeled packaging,for example.

So a person who’s allergic to peanuts and eats a cereal that failed to list peanuts as an ingredient? If he gets sick or dies, his family might not be able to sue if General Mills shows he “Liked” the company on Facebook.

“When you’re talking about food, you’re also talking about things that can kill people,” a lawyer at Public Citizen explains to the NYT. “There is a huge difference in the stakes, between the benefit you’re getting from this supposed contract you’re entering into by, say, using the company’s website to download a coupon, and the rights they’re saying you’re giving up. That makes this agreement a lot broader than others out there.”

General Mills has a track record of just the kind of class-action lawsuits consumers can bring,including a lawsuit it settled for $8.5 million over positive health claims made on the packaging of its Yoplait Yoplus yogurt last year. Then there was a suit in 2012 it settled by taking the word “strawberry” off its packages of Strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups, because they didn’t contain any actual strawberries.

It won’t be a total cakewalk for General Mills to prevent lawsuits, however, as arbitration experts say courts will likely make the company prove that a customer knew of the policy before bringing a case against it. The policy is so broadly written that there are likely many legal issues that will be raised the next time someone tries to sue.

For now, if you want to protect your right to sue General Mills at any point in the future, you can opt out of the arbitration agreement by informing General Mills with written notice by emailing it at legal.terms@genmills.com. Include your first and last name and the year you were born in the email.

But again, you’ll also have to not use any of its sites or communities, unsubscribe to any emails, avoid participating in any contests and don’t download coupons. Basically, pretend General Mills doesn’t exist online.

When ‘Liking’ a Brand Online Voids the Right to Sue [New York Times]

Here at Consumerist, we love and hate holiday mashups. Here’s one that has been around for a while, but was new to us: easter egg nog. Makes sense, doesn’t it? A holiday for which the decorations include brightly-colored eggs, and a festive, occasionally boozy, holiday beverage. Yet it seems so very wrong.

This product came to our attention through one of our favorite blogs, and we just had to check into it. These new products are from Hiland Dairy Foods and Prairie Farms, but it turns out that Easter egg nog is nothing new: Turkey Hill also markets a springtime nog, and dairy giant Dean Foods has apparently been selling it since at least the ’90s. Promised Land also sells Easter nog, along with other baffling milk flavors like “cookies ‘n’ cream” milk and chocolate nog.

Even if we begrudgingly accept this expansion of nog into other seasons, much as we have come to accept Reese’s peanut butter eggs and marshmallow Peeps being available more or less year-round, the other seasonal milks raise many questions. Isn’t jellybean milk just milk with a bunch of sugar and fruit flavoring in it? Doesn’t that make it simply what milk tastes like after all of your Froot Loops are gone? Someone has already covered that concept, except without the holiday spin.

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Walmart’s one-stop-shop just gained new ground. Instead of traipsing to Western Union or another money transfer storefront, you can just send dear old grandma a few bucks once you’ve finished grocery shopping at the superstore.

Walmart-2-Walmart allows shoppers to transfer money to and from 4,000 Walmart stores nationwide for up to 50% less than competitors, Forbes reports.

The service, which will be operated by electronic payment company Euronet, comes with two pricing tiers, officials with Walmart say. Customers can transfer up to $50 for $4.50 and up to $900 for $9.50.

Walmart has been dipping its feet in the financial game for quite a few years, with a number of products.

The new service will compete with MoneyGram, who operates Walmart’s current money transfer service. It’s unclear what’s in store for the future of the contract between Walmart and MoneyGram.

Walmart also operates Walmart MoneyCenters where customers can cash checks for $3 at local stores and manage reloadable Walmart MoneyCards online.

Additionally, the company partnered with American Express to offer alternative debit and checking accounts called Bluebird. The accounts come with no minimum balance requirement and no monthly maintenance, activation or annual fees, and target customers who are fed up with increasing fees at traditional banks.

Walmart Unveils ‘Walmart-2-Walmart’ Money Transfer Service Between Stores With Euronet [Forbes]

The reason cranky adults yell things like “Get off my lawn!” at teenagers isn’t just to protect that lawn. No, we’ve learned in our wise old age that it’s just easier than yelling “Please think about your decisions and how they will affect those around you before you do something just because you think it’s funny!” Case in point: A 19-year-old who’s wasted 38 million gallons of drinking water just because he apparently thought it’d be hilarious to pee in it.

Water bureau officials in Portland, OR are beyond peeved at the teen who they say was caught urinating through an iron fence at a water reservoir in the wee hours of Wednesday, reports NBC News. Two others are seen on camera trying to scale a fence.

And rather than cross their fingers and hope that those millions of gallons of treated drinking water are just fine — usually a little bit of pee in so much water wouldn’t pose a risk to the public — officials decided it’s better to drain than be sorry. Just imagine dumping out 57 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

“Our customers have an expectation that their water is not deliberately contaminated. We have the ability to meet that expectation while minimizing public health concerns,” David Shaff, Portland Water Bureau administrator, said in a statement.

There will still be plenty of water to drink, he added, and that particular reservoir has been taken offline during testing.

The suspects have been cited for trespassing, with the alleged peer getting an additional citation for public urination. The county district attorney’s office is mulling whether to press criminal charges as well.

You can see the kid pretty clearly cozying up to the fence to do his business, it would seem, around the 2:00 mark in the surveillance video below.

Portland Reservoir to be Drained After Teen Pees in Water [NBC News]

Because the Consumerist team is strong in the ways of the Force, I know you’re probably thinking something like, “How can someone accidentally steal a car?” Maybe if that person thinks they’re actually just moving the car they were told to move, because hey, these keys work so it must be the right one. Except that it wasn’t.

A Brooklyn woman flew her mother up to the city using her airline miles one weekend while she was away, so that her mom could help out by taking care of her dog. There were also three cars she was tasked with moving while the group of friends was away, reports New York — the woman’s Fiat, a CRV and a green Honda, she told her mother.

Mom dutifully attended to the vehicles and texted her daughter, “I’m so proud of myself,” to which I’m hoping her daughter drowned her in gratitude for being nice enough to perform such a task.

As it turns out, there is more than one green Honda in Brooklyn, and apparently any old Honda key will work, something long rumored and true at least in this case. When the woman and her pals returned, the green Honda’s owner couldn’t find her vehicle. Instead, a green Honda that was not hers was in its spot.

The mother explained that she used the keys she was given on the car, and that because it had a bunch of necklaces — she “wears a lot of necklaces,” mom said of the true car’s owner — she figured it was the right one. Luckily enough, the real car was in its same spot and had escaped a ticket.

Her daughter then started posting signs around the neighborhood to find the car’s owner after the police weren’t very helpful at first.

“I called the cops,” she says. “They were like, ‘I’m sorry, this sounds suspicious, and I don’t really believe you.’”

She wrote:

“Is this your car or do you know whose it is? Looking for the owner who potentially wears a lot of necklaces and enjoys San Pellegrino sodas. I didn’t steal your car but I think my mom may have. It’s a long story. I’ll explain, but your car is safe and sound.”

Police have now confirmed that the car was in fact, reported stolen on the day the mother moved it, and an officer was sent to recover it and try to get in touch with its owner.

How This Brooklyn Woman’s Hapless Mom Managed to Accidentally Steal a Green Honda [New York Magazine]

How much would you pay per month for an unlimited coffee pass? If you drink coffee daily and don’t brew it at home, that could become a pricey addiction. Yet CUPS, an app out of Israel, recently expanded to this country. Its premise is simple: subscribe and get discounted or even unlimited coffee from independent coffee shops for a discounted price.

Whether this is appealing or not depends on a few things: first, a participating shop needs to be convenient to your home, work, or some point in between. Yet one of the program’s selling points for coffee shop owners is that they can stop participating whenever they feel like it if the program isn’t working for them.

Also, the base price doesn’t include espresso drinks: an unlimited plan for those costs $85 per month. (That’s still a bargain if you have multi-latte workdays.)

In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the company has been a few hundred shops signed up. They find that customers claim they drink about 20% more coffee than they did before, and save about 30% off the sticker price. Are they really saving money if they wouldn’t have bought those extra drinks in the first place? Who knows? Wheeee! Caffeine!

It’s only in New York for now, but could expand to other dense cities later.

CUPS [Official Site]
For $45 Per Month, All the Coffee You Can Drink [Bloomberg Businessweek]

In a publicity stunt that rivals its original stunt from 50 years ago, Ford perched a shiny yellow Mustang on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

To celebrate 50 years of the iconic Mustang, Ford once again assembled the car atop the Empire State Building for revelers to gawk at while taking in the views of New York City, CNet reports.

Back in 1965, Ford came up with the clever idea to showcase its newest vehicle by assembling a white convertible on the observation deck. Today, a brand-spanking new 2015 yellow Mustang convertible sits waiting for car enthusiasts and tourists. Unfortunately, the visitors will only be able to look at the vehicle from afar.

Following six weeks’ worth of planning, which included trial runs getting the vehicle’s pieces through 3-foot door opening and up 86 floors, crew were able to assemble the Mustang in six hours during the middle of the night.

The car will be on display until the observation deck closes in the early morning of April 18.

Ford builds Mustang 1,000 feet up on the Empire State Building [CNet]

When I was a little girl, I dreamed about standing in really long lines to get into a place filled with blaring music and people packed so tightly your ribs felt like they’d never be whole again. That’s not true (my dreams involved drinking legally at the annual summer music festival) but then again, I didn’t grow up in New York City, where kids these days can fulfill all (or most) of their clubbing dreams at a young age.

And while there’s no alcohol allowed for the underage set because duh, these monthly dance parties take place at real NYC nightclubs, with a real (kid) DJ, hopefully complete with tiny bouncers manning mini sets of velvet ropes. They’d be in charge of boosting self-esteem instead of the other way around, if I had my way.

Anyway, a company called Fuzipop puts on these events for kids under 12 during clubs’ off-hours, reports CNNMoney. The husband and wife team behind it started the company after throwing a birthday party for their son at a club where the husband worked, and the idea caught on with other parents.

“This is what we used to do all the time but don’t get to do anymore,” he explains.”Plus, everyone is always looking for family entertainment and we know the kids will have a blast.”

As for the adults hanging out these kid soirees, there’s a full bar available to pass the time while 200 children scream along with whatever Kylie Cyrato song is on. You know, the ditty about coming in like a forklift or a construction site? That one.

New York’s hottest nightclub… for kids [CNNMoney]

Reader David was walking down a street in Brooklyn when he noticed this unfriendly-looking retail establishment. He called it the “least welcoming front door ever on a jewelry store,” and we have to agree. It would be less welcoming if it were locked, maybe.

The video surveillance and no cell phone signs are premade and common, but what are we to make of the homemade addition, “Please don’t come in to Waste Our Time“?

We’ll dispatch a reporter from Consumerist’s Brooklyn bureau to check out this store and find out how friendly it really is.

It’s been a long four years since we first met the KFC Double Down. And while many fast food frankensandwiches have since sought to bottle that starshine and bring it to their own offerings, nothing we’ve seen since has captured the country’s interest quite like that bacon and cheese sandwich with fried chicken “buns.” And now it’s reportedly coming back to delight/disgust the nation yet again.

Its reign will be brief this time as well, with the sandwich returning to KFCs nationwide on April 21 and exiting again on May 25, ostensibly for another four-year cicada-like slumber underneath our feet, or wherever it is sandwiches hibernate.

USA Today was the first to report the sandwich’s return this morning, saying the company announced the news this morning.

A KFC spokesman confirmed the news to the Huffington Post, saying the 540-calorie offering will be back on the menu for another brief stint. Unless, of course, people clamor for it to stay.

“At this point, we’re thinking about this as a limited-time only kind of product,” the spokesman said. “We’ll have to see what America thinks.”

You guys are American, right? Let’s see what you think now:

Take Our Poll

Exclusive: KFC brings back the Double Down [USA Today]
KFC Double Down Is Coming Back Day After 4/20 [Huffington Post]

Follow MBQ on Twitter if you’d like to discuss whether or not cicadas would eat a Double Down: @marybethquirk

Since 2012, we’ve been telling you about the mysterious case of Company Doe, a business that had sued the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission over the agency’s SaferProducts.gov database and had convinced a court to let it do so anonymously in order to protect the company’s reputation, setting a dangerous precedent that would allow manufacturers to file such lawsuits completely out of view of the public. But a federal appeals court has sided with consumer advocates and ordered that Company Doe’s identity be revealed.

For those coming late to the game, here’s the quick version: SaferProducts.gov is a Congressionally mandated database set up by the CPSC that not collects and makes public safety-related complaints about consumer products. Just like the database run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it gives businesses the opportunity to examine and respond to reports submitted to the site.

In this case, Company Doe made some sort of product (even the nature of the product is redacted in the court documents) that received a complaint or complaints on the CPSC database. Company Doe then claimed that some statement (or statements) in these complaint (or complaints) were materially inaccurate.

After some discussions with Company Doe, CPSC redacted some of what had been posted to the database. That wasn’t enough to satisfy Doe, which then filed suit against the CPSC and its then-chair, Inez Tenenbaum.

But rather than use the public forum of a lawsuit to make its case and clear its name, Company Doe convinced a court to hide every material fact about the case — the company’s name, location, the type of product, its brand name, the names of all individuals involved — so that the entire matter has so far been litigated behind a steel door of secrecy.

Advocacy groups, including our colleagues at Consumers Union, petitioned the court in 2012 to unseal this information, but the court denied that request. Even the groups’ objection to the sealing was kept under wraps by the court.

In Dec. 2012, the groups, led by Public Citizen, took their case to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which finally heard arguments in the case last fall.

After months of waiting, the court has finally issued its decision [PDF], siding with the advocates and ordering the lower court to unseal the records.

“It is well settled that the public and press have a qualified right of access to judicial documents and records filed in civil and criminal proceedings,” writes the court in its opinion. “The right of public access springs from the First Amendment and the common-law tradition that court proceedings are presumptively open to public scrutiny.”

Continues the court, “A corporation very well may desire that the allegations lodged against it in the course of litigation be kept from public view to protect its corporate image, but the First Amendment right of access does not yield to such an interest… A corporation may possess a strong interest in preserving the confidentiality of its proprietary and trade-secret information, which in turn may justify partial sealing of court records. We are unaware, however, of any case in which a court has found a company’s bare allegation of reputational harm to be a compelling interest sufficient to defeat the public’s First Amendment right of access.”

The appeals panel takes issue with the lack of justification for the lower court’s decision to allow Company Doe to litigate anonymously.

“The district court made no specific findings explaining how the information sealed in this case would harm Company Doe’s reputation, and Company Doe does not point us to any evidence that buttresses the district court’s conclusion,” reads today’s opinion. “After scouring the record on appeal, we find no credible evidence to support Company Doe’s fear that disclosure of the challenged report of harm and the facts of this case would subject it to reputational or economic injury, particularly in light of the fact that the district court’s entry of judgment in favor of Company Doe vindicated the company and its product.”

“The Fourth Circuit sent a strong message today that corporations that turn to the courts must accept that public access to the proceedings is part of going to court in an open and democratic society,” said Scott Michelman, the Public Citizen attorney handling the case. “The ruling is a complete victory for consumers and a strong vindication of the First Amendment imperative to conduct litigation in the open.”

Fairfax County Animal Watch Washington Post FAIRFAX COUNTY. The following incident was reported by the Animal Control Division of the Fairfax County Police Department. For information, call 703-246-2253. A gaucho rides a wild horse during the annual celebration of Criolla Week in Montevideo, ... and more »

Two fire trucks heading to a burning home collided Wednesday in a Los Angeles suburb, sending one careening into a restaurant and injuring 15 people, including six firefighters.

- After he was convicted of armed robbery in 2000, Cornealious Anderson was sentenced to 13 years behind bars and told to await instructions on when and where to report to prison. But those instructions never came.

- The man arrested near the Boston Marathon finish line carrying a backpack containing a rice cooker was sent to a state psychiatric facility for an evaluation Wednesday after an initial court appearance.

A sloth bear cub and a seal pup at the National Zoo have new names, the zoo announced.

Many residents are holding out hope that the unusually cold, harsh winter reduced the number of ticks, stink bugs and other pests that will be buzzing and crawling around this summer.

The medium-security Maryland Correctional Training Center near Hagerstown is becoming the fourth state prison where inmates who served in the military help train service dogs for disabled veterans.

Three Fairfax County rescue dogs and their handlers are heading home after two weeks searching for victims of a deadly mudslide in Washington state.