Sometimes the news comes so thick and fast that all you can do is sit back and marvel. And make snarky comments, of course.
Strawberry Pop-Tarts Win Again
Yet another class-action lawsuit failed to make a binding legal contract out of a package photo. In this case, it was a picture of strawberries on a package of Kellogg’s Pop Tarts, and some lawyer was shocked, shocked that the filling also contained apple and pear. The federal judge dismissed the case with the legal equivalent of “get real.”
The lawyer in this case has filed more than 400 similar class-action lawsuits against food products. I’m beginning to think he has nothing better to do.
Let’s Not Jerk the Chinese Around
Frank Shyong, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, opened an ominous-looking email from U.S. Customs and Border Protection about “Animal Food Contraband from China” that warned that “China is affected with Several Contagious and Deadly Animal Diseases.” When Shyong looked at the attached pictures, the “animal food contraband” was beef jerky.
Shyong tried to get the feds to tell him what prepackaged imported jerky could possibly have to do with “contagious and deadly animal diseases,” but got the runaround. His column makes the excellent point that in these days of anti-Asian violence, fanned by politicians who casually toss around references to “the China virus,” sloppily associating China with infectious disease is potentially dangerous: “When you see a clumsily worded press release, I see Asian women getting spit on and pushed in the subway.” (Please, read the rest of his column.)
Token Efforts
Ever see a ridiculous, four- or five-figure price for a bottle of super-vintage wine or brandy and think, How good could that stuff possibly be?
Apparently not as good as a picture of it.
High-end spirits have apparently gotten into the non-fungible token (NFT) game. There’s even a clearinghouse for them, called BlockBar, so called presumably because it uses blockchain technology to authenticate bottles. It works something like this: You buy a ridiculously expensive bottle of something, and along with the bottle, you get an NFT of it. BlockBar stores the bottle professionally, in a warehouse in Singapore, until you’re ready to sell it (or drink it, if you like your brandy at about a thousand bucks a shot). Meanwhile, you get the NFT. Once you redeem the bottle, to sell or drink, you turn in your NFT, which makes the remaining ones of that bottle all the more valuable.
What kills me is how the NFTs – which basically are digital photographs – can be as valuable, if not more so, than the actual bottles. For example, five bottles or a rare 1973 Glenfiddich scotch sold for about $18,000 – but, according to Prestige magazine, their NFTs sold for up to $288,000 each.
Since NFTs are indistinguishable to the naked eye from ordinary digital images, these ones are valued because of their lineage and high-class associations. I guess. Except that same Prestige article talked about NFTs being sold by...McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell.
