samhexum

Over the last few years, Burger King has faced a series of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings from several of its franchisees, reflecting the broader economic challenges and consumer slowdown that have disrupted the overall fast-food industry. In response, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), Burger King's parent company, has made a bold move that its late-night fans have long been waiting for, creating a win-win situation for both the brand and its customers. To get Burger King back on track, RBI (QSR) completed a $1 billion all-cash deal to acquire all of Carrols Restaurant Group's shares in January 2024. Carrols was Burger King's largest U.S. franchisee, operating 1,022 restaurants across multiple states. This acquisition is part of RBI's "Reclaim to Flame" program, first announced in September 2022, which aims to accelerate Burger King's growth in the U.S. through a $700 million investment by the end of 2028. The initiative includes increasing advertising, digital enhancements, restaurant remodeling and relocations, kitchen equipment upgrades, and operational improvements. To increase traffic and sales while meeting consumer demand, Burger King announced that it will extend operating hours at more than 1,200 restaurants nationwide. Over the past few months, the fast-food chain has gradually extended its hours at various locations where it has seen high demand during late-night hours. RBI noted that this move contributed to an increase in the fast-food chain's U.S. comparable sales by 1.5% during the second quarter of fiscal 2025.

John Oliver had the best line... "he doesn't have to bother wearing a mask... there's no @$&#ing way anyone's gonna recognize him!"

You know, your avatar suggests you're trying to hide a secret...

Chip City’s new ChocoLOT Thinwich is a chocolate lover’s dream QNS.COM If you’re looking for something short and sweet to indulge, then Chip City has just the special treat for fans of... I went into a diabetic coma just looking at the picture.

I'm happy for you but am guessing that he would rather you had not made that information public.

How Kentucky bourbon went from boom to bust APPLE.NEWS Tariffs, oversupply and teetotaling Gen-Zs have all contributed to the downfall of one of America's most... As American as apple pie, Kentucky bourbon was booming after the last Great Recession ended. But as the economy has waned post-Pandemic - and with multiple trade wars on the horizon - the market may be drying up. Although the whiskey, which is traditionally made with corn and aged in charred oak barrels, has roots going all the way back to the 18th century, it wasn't until 1964 that it became an iconic piece of Americana, when Congress passed a law declaring it a "distinctive product of the United States".

that sounds vaguely political

I had posted about this on another forum when it happened, but figured if I did it here, I'd be excommunicated. My post was: Dean Cain has announced he has joined ICE. Brooke Shields has announced she wants her virginity back.

I don't know who you're talking about...

FamilyInsanity.wav

Kevin Daniels, who has recurred as the APD detective — and Angie’s sponsor — since Season 1, has been elevated to series-regular status ahead of Season 4, Deadline reports. He joins returning regulars Ramón Rodríguez (Will Trent), Erika Christensen (Angie Polaski), Iantha Richardson (Faith Mitchell), Jake McLaughlin (Michael Ormewood) and Sonja Sohn (Amanda Wagner). As TVLine previously reported, Gina Rodriguez, who joined the ABC drama as a series regular ahead of Season 3, will not return for Season 4

A little over 10 years ago, while teaching English in northern Cambodia, Samir Lakhani had a soap epiphany. “I saw a village mom bathing her newborn kiddo, but unfortunately, she was scrubbing him with laundry powder, which can be quite harmful to the skin.” It was all the mother had to use. According to UNICEF, 2.3 billion people around the world do not have handwashing facilities with running water and soap available at home. This has consequences. It’s estimated that the simple act of using soap to wash hands, for example, can prevent up to 1 million deaths and can reduce the risk of respiratory illnesses by up to 21% in both children and adults. What Lakhani witnessed in Cambodia changed his life. “Ever since I have wanted to work in soap and to connect people with proper soap,” he says. He came up with a smart but simple idea: rescue used soap from hotel trash bins and deliver it to communities where it could save lives. Reasons to be Cheerful shares the story of what Lakhani and others are doing to reduce waste and share resources with people around the world whose resources are scarce. Hotels have stringent hygiene protocols that require toiletries, regardless of whether they’ve been opened or used, to be thrown out at the end of a guest’s stay. The founder of Clean the World, Shawn Seipler, estimated that globally, 5 million hotel soap bars are tossed every day. Ending up in the landfill, they join a melee of other products emitting harmful greenhouse gases, such as methane, into the atmosphere. Many of the oils used in the manufacture of soap are biodegradable, but when added to a compacted pile of trash and deprived of air, they do not decay quickly. Some soaps also contain dyes or phosphates that are not naturally decomposable. In 2014, Lakhani founded Eco-Soap Bank, which has since diverted over 14 million pounds of soap from landfills around the world. In its early years, Eco-Soap built a global network of more than 1,000 hotels to intercept this waste. Then came the pandemic, and many of those hotels shut down as people stopped traveling. “We needed to find another source of soap to recycle, and we began to reach out to soap factories,” Lakhani says. “We uncovered a dirty truth.” Annually, about a quarter-billion bars of soap go directly into landfills because of small manufacturing or aesthetic defects that make them unsellable. Rescuing and recycling the entirety of this soap factory waste stream could prevent the emission of approximately 44 million tons of CO2e and save over 29 million gallons of water per year, according to research conducted by Eco-Soap Bank. Eco-Soap is not alone in its mission to rescue soap and get it to those who need it the most. In Australia, the nonprofit organization Soap Aid collects, sorts, cleans and reprocesses soap from accommodations across Australia and New Zealand into fresh, hygienic soap bars. These soap bars are then redistributed to communities in need throughout the southern continent and the world. Since its inception in 2011, the organization has kept over 380 metric tons of soap out of landfills. When discarded soap arrives at the organization’s recycling facility in Melbourne, it’s sorted, any packaging is removed, and it’s fed into a hopper that sends it through recycling machines that grind it into small noodle shapes. “These noodles are heated, blended and reformed into new bars,” explains Laura O’Leary, partnership engagement office. In Canada, Soap for Hope, based in Victoria, British Columbia, also upcycles soap but uses less rigorous methods. “Bacteria doesn’t grow on soap,” notes the organization’s founder, C. Anne McIntyre. The soap bars received by Soap for Hope are hand-scraped by the organization’s battalion of volunteers, who also sort and repurpose other materials like old hotel linens and amalgamate new bottles of shampoos and conditioners from half-used ones rescued from hotels throughout British Columbia and Alberta. As with Lakhani, it all started when McIntyre had her soap epiphany in 2015. “I used to do international aid and we were sending soap overseas with disaster kits, and [it] just seemed very obvious that people needed that,” she says. However, the liquid amenities such as shampoo, sometimes received with the donations of soap, could not be sent overseas. McIntrye took it upon herself to take those products to shelters in Victoria. “They were ecstatic to receive it,” she recalls. This joy at receiving a simple bottle of shampoo made her realize that her own community also lacked access to hygiene products. She decided to do something about it. Flash-forward to 2025, and McIntyre has built partnerships with regional hotel chains such as the Fairmont and Marriott, and the nonprofit provides hygiene products to over 500 community service organizations in British Columbia and Alberta. In 2024, the British Columbia-based hotel brands Hotel Zed and Accent Inns worked with Soap for Hope to divert nearly 6,500 pounds of waste from landfills, according to Peter Dohan, manager of operations at Hotel Zed and Accent Inns. In Vancouver, Mom2Mom, a nonprofit service organization supporting low-income families, receives donations of toiletries from Soap for Hope. According to Caitlin Creaney, food program and participant engagement coordinator, mothers will forgo things such as scented body wash or skin care for themselves to stretch the budget and make sure their children have what they need. This, though, can have dire consequences. In January 2025, Soap for Hope sponsored Canada’s first Hygiene Poverty Survey. Polling their database of service organizations in British Columbia and Alberta, almost 98% of respondents reported that their clients experienced negative mental health outcomes, including stress, anxiety and depression, due to hygiene inequity. In addition to basic hygiene products like soap, Soap for Hope also offers body washes and skin care products. Many are collected from hotels, and others from community drives in which bins are set up in local malls and the general public is invited to drop off donations of unused or half-used hygiene products. According to McIntyre, receiving body wash, moisturizer or even shaving lotion goes a long way in helping to restore an individual’s sense of dignity, health and self-confidence. At Soap for Hope, the motto “nothing goes to waste” extends beyond soap to include the plastic containers that once housed body wash, shampoo or conditioner. Containers that can’t be repurposed by Soap for Hope are sent to a recycling depot, which grinds the plastic down into filaments that can be embedded into cement to make it more durable. Creating hygiene equity in sustainable ways, though, is a challenge. “When Soap Aid was founded in 2011, the concept of the circular economy was still emerging,” says O’Leary. There was, as she points out, little awareness about hygiene waste or the environmental cost of discarded hotel soap. It’s only in recent years that the conversation around sustainability and corporate social responsibility has emerged. In the beginning, according to O’Leary and Carol Bellew, Soap Aid’s general operations manager, just setting up a recycling plant was a significant achievement. Most commercial soap machinery is designed to work with uniform, factory-grade inputs. Recycling bars that vary in size, brand, texture and condition requires fine-tuning. The machinery was sourced from multiple manufacturers and had to be tested multiple times to make sure it could do the job. McIntyre also admits that fundraising to keep Soap for Hope solvent is difficult, especially during economic downturns when donations go down but needs go up. But perhaps her biggest challenge has been proving to the skeptics that she could bridge the gap between sustainability and hygiene inequality. “I can’t tell you how many people told me I was so crazy when we started,” she says. “But it just made such perfect sense to me. Everyone needs soap.”

International Cat Day: Espurresso Cat Café offers coffee and cuddles in Bayside – QNS QNS.COM Wishing for a place to unwind with a cup of coffee while surrounded by charming cats? In northeast... A-A-A-CHOO!

Jean Smart on her decades-long career on the screen and stage APPLE.NEWS Emmy-winning actress Jean Smart discusses her role on the hit show 'Hacks,' and her Broadway show... She was interviewed on Morning Joe

https://www.aol.com/hash-brown-casserole-good-made-105500489.html

When I was a young'n one of my friends would spread cottage cheese on toast and sprinkle cinnamon on top.

TWA hotel at JFK Airport takes home trophy as best North American Airport Hotel – QNS QNS.COM On a recent day, the Beatles’ “In My Life” with the line “There are places I’ll remember…” played on the... TWA hotel at JFK Airport takes home trophy as best North American Airport Hotel

https://www.aol.com/over-64-000-pounds-butter-113000302.html Over 64,000 Pounds of Butter Is Being Recalled Nationwide au revoir, guys. It's been nice knowing you all. 😥

A New York City suburb is pushing new development to lower rent APPLE.NEWS Wall Street Journal reporter Rebecca Picciotto joins Morning Joe to discuss her latest reporting on how the... Wall Street Journal reporter Rebecca Picciotto joins Morning Joe to discuss her latest reporting on how the town of New Rochelle, NY is bringing down the cost of rent.

I've got it... that looks like an awful lot of electrical units for a building that size (in front of the window on the left). They must be from the local utility company, there to make sure everyone (err... everything) is connected the right way. His tools are in his sack.

🥰

Jockstrap Realty the supportive agents

Maybe the guy on the right is just a cheap imitation of the original. You know... Budd Light. (I'll see myself out.)

Why do people feel the need to use social media to constantly brag about their lives? I can’t tell you how many pictures of bouquets and dinners and chocolates popped up on my Facebook feed around Valentine’s Day — on top of the already daily descriptions of “perfect boyfriends” and pictures of vacations in real time. When did people stop living life and start just trying to prove to others that they are doing so? And, my main question, how can I stop from getting sucked in to feeling like I need to prove myself to everyone else? I have a wonderful boyfriend with whom I share such a bond that I don’t CARE how big his bouquet is or how much my Facebook “friends” know or see . . . but I almost feel guilty. Like my indifference toward bragging means this relationship really must not be brag-worthy. The first part is easier to answer than the second: Just block habitual braggarts from your news feed. Save your page for people who post things that interest you. Some might say just to stay off social media altogether, a perfectly good and uncluttered solution — but if you see a lot of good amid the bad, then waste a little extra time on your settings to accommodate your peeves. The second question, how not to care? If only that were about adjusting your settings. It is possible you run with a crowd that’s particularly competitive socially, but that presents a chicken-or-egg riddle: Are they making you that way, or did you seek them out because you’re that way? Fortunately, that question becomes easier to answer if you consciously remove yourself from the competition — not just on social media, but in other interactions as well. It’ll take a bunch of small, on-the-spot decisions (and a few mental recitations of an “It’s not a race” mantra) to break a habit of comparing yourself with others socially. However, if you’re able to pull it off enough to step back from your guilty feelings, then you’ll be able to see whether it’s your environment or your emotional makeup that motivates you to measure your happiness against others’. I have a wonderful boyfriend with whom I share such a bond that I don’t CARE how big his bouquet is is that a euphemism?