Category: Tech

Barber documented the mad dash to secure a 40-ounce Stanley tumbler in one of the limited edition colors — Target red and “cosmo pink” — and said other customers were “starting to argue” over them. The clip garnered more than 873,000 views.

Other TikTokers captured the lines — reminiscent of Black Friday — outside several Target stores in the early morning hours before the cups were unveiled. As stores opened, customers stampeded toward the Stanley display.

One video captured people frantically grabbing several cups at a time despite a disembodied voice noting that there was a limit of two cups per person.

Target did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The fervor for Stanley-branded drinkware isn’t surprising, given their cult status among young people. But the chaos captured in these viral videos could also be, in part, a result of how profitable the resale market for them has become — especially for limited edition colors of its largest tumblers.

Within days of its release, listings on eBay and Poshmark showed the red and pink cups going for over $100. One Poshmark seller already sold a set of the two cups for $190.

Despite their shiny profit margins, many commenters on TikTok say they’re appalled and “embarrassed” by such behavior.

“Grown ass adults behaving like 2 year Olds over a cup. it’s a cup,” one person wrote. “This is almost as embarrassing as rae dunn people,” another said, referring to the aggression some customers showed trying to secure Rae Dunn home goods at T.J. Maxx stores.

Stanley obsession has seemingly hit a fever pitch. But a youth consumer trend analyst recently told Business Insider that she thinks this is the zenith of its hype, and she predicts that the Stanley tumbler will no longer be as coveted in the coming months and years.

“They are absolutely on their way out. This is peak Stanley. There’s no up from here,” Casey Lewis told BI’s Katie Noutopoulos.

Stanley did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

• Harvard Corporation says it accepts now-former President Claudine Gay’s resignation “with sorrow.”
• Gay showed “resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks,” a statement says.
• The search for new a president will begin “in due course,” the board says.

After weeks of controversy, including accusations of plagiarism and criticism for her response to a question about Jewish genocide during a congressional hearing, Claudine Gay has stepped down as president of Harvard University.

Her resignation was accepted “with sorrow” by the Harvard Corporation, one of the university’s two governing boards.

Gay, the first Black president of Harvard, took over in July of last year. She — alongside the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania — faced criticism after a disastrous congressional testimony that saw her waffle on whether calls for Jewish genocide violated school policy.

Gay, facing calls for resignation, later apologized for the answer. (Penn’s president resigned in December; MIT’s remains.)

More recently, past plagiarism accusations against Gay came to light. While the Harvard Corporation and faculty members backed Gay, the pressure continued. Gay appeared to allude to the plagiarism allegations in her resignation letter.

She also said that it was “frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” which the Harvard Corporation also seemed to address in its statement.

The full statement from the Harvard Corporation reads:

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

With great sadness, we write in light of President Claudine Gay’s message announcing her intention to step down from the presidency and resume her faculty position at Harvard.

First and foremost, we thank President Gay for her deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence. Throughout her long and distinguished leadership as Dean of Social Science then as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences – where she skillfully led the FAS through the COVID-19 pandemic and pursued ambitious new academic initiatives in areas such as quantum science and inequality – she demonstrated the insight, decisiveness, and empathy that are her hallmark. She believes passionately in Harvard’s mission of education and research, and she cares profoundly about the people whose talents, ideas, and energy drive Harvard. She has devoted her career to an institution whose ideals and priorities she has worked tirelessly to advance, and we are grateful for the extraordinary contributions she has made – and will continue to make – as a leader, a teacher, a scholar, a mentor, and an inspiration to many.

We are also grateful to Alan M. Garber, Provost and Chief Academic Officer, who has served with distinction in that role for the past twelve years – and who has agreed to serve as Interim President until a new leader for Harvard is identified and takes office. An economist and a physician, he is a distinguished and wide-ranging scholar with appointments at Harvard Medical School, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. We are fortunate to have someone of Alan’s broad and deep experience, incisive judgment, collaborative style, and extraordinary institutional knowledge to carry forward key priorities and to guide   the university through this interim period.

These past several months have seen Harvard and higher education face a series of sustained and unprecedented challenges. In the face of escalating controversy and conflict, President Gay and the Fellows have sought to be guided by the best interests of the institution whose future progress and well-being we are together committed to uphold. Her own message conveying her intention to step down eloquently underscores what those who have worked with her have long known – her commitment to the institution and its mission is deep and selfless. It is with that overarching consideration in mind that we have accepted her resignation.

We do so with sorrow. While President Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them, it is also true that she has shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks. While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls. We condemn such attacks in the strongest possible terms.

The search for a new president of the university will begin in due course. We will be in further touch about the process, which will include broad engagement and consultation with the Harvard community in the time ahead.

For today, we close by reiterating our gratitude to President Gay for her devoted service to Harvard, as well as to Provost Garber for his willingness to lead the university through the interim period to come. We also extend our thanks to all of you for your continuing commitment to Harvard’s vital educational and research mission – and to core values of excellence, inclusiveness, and free inquiry and expression. At a time when strife and division are so prevalent in our nation and our world, embracing and advancing that mission – in a spirit of common purpose — has never been more important. We live in difficult and troubling times, and formidable challenges lie ahead. May our community, with its long history of rising through change and through storm, find new ways to meet those challenges together, and to affirm Harvard’s commitment to generating knowledge, pursuing truth, and contributing through scholarship and education to a better world.

The Fellows of Harvard College
 
Penny Pritzker, Senior Fellow
Timothy R. Barakett, Treasurer
Kenneth I. Chenault
Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar
Paul J. Finnegan
Biddy Martin
Karen Gordon Mills
Diana L. Nelson
Tracy P. Palandjian
Shirley M. Tilghman
Theodore V. Wells, Jr.

Russia’s state-run media service TASS reported the politician was found dead in Toblosk, the city where he lived. Baza, an unofficial Telegram channel with links to national security services, clarified that the politician was found dead in the courtyard outside his home, per CNN’s report.

An autopsy is underway to confirm details of Egorov’s death, which couldn’t be confirmed by investigators at the time, Kommersant reported. Investigators found no “external signs of criminal death” on his body, the outlet said.

Egorov’s death adds to a string of mysterious high-profile deaths in Russia, which include public figures and prominent businessmen falling out of windows, death by suicide, or otherwise dying of unclear or bizarre circumstances.

Some of those figures have been noted to be vocal critics of Putin. Patel Antov, a policymaker who criticized Russia’s war with Ukraine, died falling from a hotel window in late 2022.

Ravil Maganov, an energy oligarch who was also critical of Russia’s war, died falling out of the window of a hospital room, which law enforcement said was likely a suicide.

But not all of those who have died under mysterious circumstances were overtly anti-Putin. Anna Tsareva, an editor at a pro-Putin newspaper who was found dead in her apartment in mid-December, TASS originally reported. Her death comes about a year after the death of her boss, editor-in-chief Vladimir Nikolayevich Sungorkin, who was also known to be a Putin supporter.

“Reese’s Pieces Pumpkins are pictured on the product label as containing carved out eyes and a mouth as follows,” the lawsuit says. “However, the actual Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins product contains no carvings for the eyes and mouth.”

Hershey did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider on Sunday.

The lawsuit also takes issue with the Reese’s Peanut Butter Footballs, which have carved out laces on their packaging, but instead “look like an egg” when viewing the actual product.

The complaint claims that the products’ labels are “materially misleading” and that “numerous consumers have been tricked and misled” by their packaging.

The suit includes links to several YouTube videos of people who opened Reese’s products and were disappointed in the product inside compared to the one pictured.

“Reese’s what are you doing! Look at the picture on the packet. It’s like a pumpkin with faces and a little mouth — then you open up the packet and you are presented with that monstrosity,” the lawsuit quotes from one YouTube reviewer.

The lawsuit also quotes another reviewer who said they were “a little disappointed” to find that the pumpkin had no face carved into it and was instead a “chocolate blob”.”

The lawsuit alleges that Hershey changed the packaging of Reese’s products to “boost sales and revenues” within the last three years.

Consumers are suing brands for what they say is deceptive advertising

Hershey is not the only company slapped with a class-action lawsuit for misleading advertising this year.

In March, a man sued Buffalo Wild Wings claiming the restaurant’s “boneless wings” were “more akin” to chicken nuggets.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, previously told BI that the suit against Buffalo Wild Wings is weak because in order to justify a class action lawsuit, damages have to be “substantial.”

“You’re getting all white meat chicken breast,” Rahmani said. “Have you really suffered any damage?”

Kelly’s lawsuit against Hershey claims that it falls under the class action jurisdiction because the “matter in controversy” exceeds the amount of $5 million and affects more than 100 people.

• Airbnb temporarily banned parties in 2020 and made the ban permanent in 2022.
• The company said it uses AI that checks “hundreds” of factors on an account before blocked an attempted booking.
• Last year, the company said it blocked 63,550 US New Year’s Eve bookings.

Airbnb is using AI technology to crack down on people using its properties to host wild New Year’s Eve parties.

Airbnb first banned parties temporarily in 2020 and has introduced a variety of measures to stop them since, BI previously reported. The company made the ban permanent in 2022 and enforces it particularly strictly around holidays like Memorial Day, Halloween, and New Year’s Eve.

For Memorial Day in 2023, the company said it added restrictions to some one and two-night reservations and blocked reservations that it deemed high risk based on the user’s past ratings and their distance from the booking, as well as if their reservation was made at the last minute.

Last year, the company blocked 63,550 New Year’s Eve bookings in the United States, 13,200 in the United Kingdom, and 5,400 in Australia, the company said in a December 18 blog post.

In the post, the company said it will be activating “proprietary AI and machine learning technology” to block booking attempts for full homes over the holiday weekend that “could be potentially higher-risk for a disruptive and unauthorized party.”

“When it comes to how we use technology like AI, we’re focused on taking a thoughtful approach that aims to benefit Hosts, guests and neighborhoods,” Airnbnb head of trust and safety, Naba Banerjee, said in the post. “We’re optimistic these measures will help have a positive impact for the communities we serve.”

The company said it will be using the program over the holiday weekend in the United States, including Puerto Rico, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand.

The technology scrapes through “hundreds” of different factors for each potential booking, including the duration of the trip, how far the booking is from their location, and if the reservation is being made at the last-minute, according to the post.

The post states that the company will block some bookings for full homes that are one to three days in length if they are deemed “high risk.” Those who are able to successfully book an Airbnb locally over the weekend will be asked to confirm that they know Airbnb bans parties.

Workers at the historic catacombs of Paris are rebuilding a wall containing remains of martyrs from the French Revolution. The massive underground gravesite houses up to 7 million bodies transferred there after centuries of cemetery overflow.

• Some Americans are choosing where to live based on the risk of climate-related disasters.
• For example, cities in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana are prone to flooding and extreme heat.
• Insurance broker Policygenius ranked the US cities with the most climate risks. Here are the worst.

Cities in America’s Sun Belt often top lists of great places to move.

Spots in that region, which stretches from Florida in the Southeast to Southern California in the Southwest, are often lauded for their good weather and relatively lower cost of living.

But they’ve got issues, too: The climate crisis is predicted to turn the very sunshine that draws people there into extreme heat in the coming years, and being close to the beach puts people and homes at risk of flooding and damage from rising sea levels.

Online insurance marketplace Policygenius evaluated the climate risks of America’s 50 most populous cities based on their likelihood of experiencing the following issues by the year 2050: heat and humidity, flooding and sea level rise, air quality, and frequency of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires.

Policygenius also judged the cities’ social vulnerability, or likelihood of death and disruption as a result of these conditions, and community resilience, the ability to prepare for and adapt to a changing climate. It used publicly available data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other studies as laid out in its full methodology.

People are increasingly taking the risks of climate change into account when moving. Read on to find out more about the cities most at risk, and why.

• When shoppers buy store-brand pasta and premium sauce, Walmart says they’re “value hacking.”
• The retail giant said consumers are using the strategy to save a few bucks on their grocery bills.
• It’s an approach that has proven popular with Costco members and the Kirkland Signature brand.

If you’ve ever tried to save a few bucks by picking the store-brand noodles to go with your nice jar of Rao’s marinara, you’re part of a current retail trend.

Walmart’s head of investor relations, Stephanie Wissink, told analysts at TD Cowen that the retail giant was seeing more customers do exactly that.

Their term for this cost-cutting strategy: value hacking.

Specifically, they said the concept applies to mixing and matching premium and what retailers call “private label” products within the same meal.

Wissink even noted that more customers are adjusting their grocery runs to work around the timing of their paychecks.

Since Walmart derives over 60% of its product sales from the grocery category, the company is highly tuned in to how shopping behaviors are changing in the food aisles, especially after years of elevated inflation.

Even as price increases have begun to slow down or even reverse, the cost of many consumer packaged goods from national brands remains stubbornly high, a point that Costco CFO Richard Galanti underscored earlier this month.

By contrast, retailers like Costco and Walmart have been comparatively quick to pass along savings in their private-label offerings.

Where the normal price difference between, say, a block of Kraft cheese versus Walmart’s Great Value might previously have been around 25%, Walmart told TD Cowen the savings has grown closer to 50%.

But rather than loading up their carts exclusively with these lower-priced options, shoppers are using some of those store-brand savings to offset the cost of fancier selections.

It’s an approach that would be quite familiar to Costco members, where the company’s Kirkland Signature products consistently meet or exceed the quality of the same item from a national brand while costing a fraction of the price.

A big part of Costco’s appeal is finding a great deal on a premium brand product, like Wawona’s frozen organic fruit blend, and pairing that with even bigger savings on Kirkland Signature oat milk for a delicious smoothie that doesn’t break the bank.

For most businesses, falling prices pose several challenges, but juggernauts like Costco and Walmart say they’re up for it, especially since shoppers spend some of their grocery bill savings elsewhere in the store.

“If the food prices come down,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in November, “that’ll free up dollars to be spent in general merchandise.”

• In-N-Out’s owner Lynsi Snyder announced on Instagram that the chain had added two new drinks.
• Lite pink lemonade and Cherry Coke are the latest additions to a famously limited menu.
• The new drinks come as fast-food chains add new beverage options.

In-n-Out Burger keeps its menu concise, with a handful of burgers, fries, drinks, and shakes. The California-based chain says the limited menu helps it maintain its high quality and freshness standards.

But last week, the chain’s owner, Lynsi Snyder, announced on Instagram that the chain had added two new drinks.

The new menu items — lite pink lemonade and Cherry Coke — represent the first addition since 2018, when the chain added hot chocolate. Traditional lemonade was added 15 years before hot chocolate. In-N-Out has added new drinks as beverages are becoming an increasingly important part of fast-food menus.

Earlier this month, McDonald’s unveiled details around its beverage-focused concept, CosMc’s, which appears to be competing with beverage-focused chains like Starbucks, Dutch Bros, and newly popular soda concepts like Swig. Taco Bell has also added new beverages.

The chains are all targeting a growing interest in beverages and catering to the “3 pm slump,” when consumers are looking for a sweet or caffeinated pick-me-up.

In-N-Out is taking a small, considered step in this segment.

The chain is also famously cautious when entering new markets. But here, too, the chain has recently expanded. Earlier this month, the chain opened its first location in Idaho, representing its entry into an eighth state. The company’s ninth state is expected to be Tennessee.

The limited menu and restaurant locations help keep In-N-Out’s menu affordable, even as many chains have rapidly increased prices, Snyder has said.

“The limited menu means reduced costs for raw ingredients. The company also saves money by buying wholesale and grinding the beef in-house,” Snyder told Fobes in 2018.

“It cuts out an estimated 6% to 10% of total costs by owning most of its properties — many bought years ago — and not paying rent. In-N-Out picks its locations carefully, clustering them near one another and close to highways to lower delivery costs while also avoiding pricey urban cores.”

Are you an In-N-Out insider with a story to share? Contact Gloria at GDawson@BusinessInsider.com or on Signal or Text 516-721-6598