The moment when you realize that the Repubs weren‘t mad that Hillary had a private email server, they were mad that them and their Russian counterparts couldn’t locate the server to hack into it.
10 ways the grocery store is tricking you into spending more money
1. Purposefully disorienting customers
Stores are intentionally laid out in a disorienting way so that it takes more time to find what you’re looking for. And the more items you walk by, the more likely you are to make impulse buys.
2. “Charm pricing” and false promises
Grocery stores deliberately price items to make you think you’re saving money when you’re not really: There’s “charm pricing,” where an item is one or two cents below a round number (like $9.99).
3. Giant shopping carts
Those gargantuan shopping carts are intentionally designed like that to trick your brain: When you double the size of a shopping cart, consumers will buy 40% more, marketing consultant Martin Lindstrom told Today.
4. “Open the wallet” pricing
This technique involves placing seemingly cheap items (a big “SALE” sign must a mean big discount — right?) in proximity to the entrance, so you are tricked into believing you’re starting your shopping expedition by saving money.
5. Playing music — with a slow beat
In one study on the influence of music on consumers, published in in the journal Procedia Economics and Finance, respondents said pleasurable music in the background increased the likelihood they’d spend more time and money in the store — and thwarted their negative emotions.
6. Placing dairy far from the entrance
Dairy is one of the most popular grocery categories — and you may have noticed it tends to be miles from the entrance. That’s not a coincidence. This forces the consumer to walk by more grocery items and, you guessed it, exposes them to more opportunities to buy things they don’t need… like an ergonomic, bacteria-free sponge.
7. Putting popular items in the center of aisles
The most popular items and brands are often placed in the middle of aisles, which forces you to walk by way more products than you otherwise would. All those extra goodies you’re exposed to on your shopping mission increase the likelihood of an unplanned purchase. You came for the toilet paper, but left with a plate of pitted dates. Good for your fiber intake — bad for your budget.
8. Presenting a feast for the senses
The smell of freshly baked bread and rotisserie chicken is a more well-known tactic supermarkets use. When were hungry, we’re more likely to buy more. This effect is compounded by colorful produce up front, which can be pleasing and exciting to the eye. The combo of nice smells and pretty colors puts us in a good — or at least better — mood, making us more willing to make unplanned purchases.
9. Overwhelming shoppers with options
Literally tens of thousands of items are on offer in your average supermarket. And that demands a lot of decision-making. Brains scans examined by Bangor University, Wales, reveal that we can only keep this up for about 40 minutes, at which point we kind of get tired and give up. Once we’ve given up, we start to make emotional purchases — aka impulse buys — and this can lead to as much as 50% of purchases being unplanned.
10. Narrowing the checkout lanes
Grocery stores have also made their checkout lanes purposefully narrow. This is so that when you’re unloading, if you suddenly realize you’ve impulsively and regretfully thrown in a $15 small bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice, it’s too hard to get out of the checkout lane to go and put it back. Read more
Today, we mourn a loss in our #LGBT family... Today, we honor them by choosing to #LOVE... This month we celebrate #Pride... Go out and celebrate harder than ever before because in the face of hatred and violence, we are stronger than those who would do us harm... Our love and our pride is stronger than their hate, it's not a gay thing, it's not a straight thing, it's a human thing... #prayfororlando #chooselove
Even if your registration is screwy, you might still be able to cast a ballot.
New York’s state and county boards of elections have been inundated with complaints from confused voters this primary season. Election officials blame voter ignorance of New York’sclosed primary system, and the occasional clerical error, whereas many voters, particularly Bernie Sanders supporters, view registration irregularities as evidence of rampant skullduggery. In any event, New York’s newly relevant primary is on Tuesday, April 19th (polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.), and heightened interest coupled with these registration problems could cause long lines and major confusion at the polls.
It’s too late to get an absentee ballot, and it’s down to the wire for fixing any registration issues. Still, it’s a good idea to check your registration status, which you can do by searching your information here.
A few notes before we go on: March 25th was the deadline for new voters to register. If you’ve never voted before and didn’t register before then, sorry, you can’t vote in the primary.
Also, if you have been registered for a while but wanted to change parties this go-round, the deadline to do that was early last October. That may sound fucking crazy—okay, it is fucking crazy. But it’s also the truth. See, New York is one of 11 states in the U.S. with a closed primary system, meaning Republicans can’t vote in Democratic primaries and vice versa—and independents can’t vote in anybody’s primaries—and our party-change deadline is the earliest of anywhere, a provision meant to prevent last-minute sabotage by activists from outside a given party.
If you didn’t miss the new-voter deadline or the party-change deadline and there is a problem with your listing, try calling your county Board of Elections, which you can find here. If there’s still a problem with your registration on Primary Day, you have one of two options.
One is to try to get a court order stating you should be allowed to vote in a certain party’s primary. As difficult as this sounds, the city Board of Elections actually stations judges at offices in each of the boroughs on Primary Day to do exactly this. For reasons unknown, this information doesn’t appear on the board’s website, but a spokeswoman provided a list of locations and hours judges will be at them, which goes as follows:
The Bronx
Bronx County Board of Elections
1780 Grand Concourse
7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Brooklyn
Kings County Board of Elections
345 Adams Street
Fourth Floor
7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Lower Manhattan
New York County Board of Elections
200 Varick Street
7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Harlem
State Office Building
163 West 125th Street
Eighth Floor
9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Queens
Queens County Board of Elections
126-06 Queens Boulevard
7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Staten Island
Richmond County Board of Elections
1 Edgewater Plaza
6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
At most offices, two judges are covering the day, trading off in seven-hour shifts. In Harlem, though, Judge Tanya Kennedy is holding it down for a full 12 hours, and in Staten Island, three judges are there for a staggered four-hour, seven-hour, four-hour schedule. The Board of Elections didn’t respond to a request for guidelines about appearing before these judges, but it’s probably a safe bet to bring as much documentation of your registration history as possible, particularly that which is relevant to your issue.
If a judge thinks you should be allowed to vote, you should be given some paperwork to that effect, which you can then take to your poll site and show to the workers to get a ballot.
The other option, if you get to the polls and your name is not on the list of registered voters for the area, is to vote using a provisional ballot. To do this, you need to ask poll workers for a provisional or affidavit ballot. From there, you will fill out the ballot and explain your case in writing. The envelope with your provisional ballot is then supposed to be set aside and, as election commissioners tally the votes, they are supposed to also look at your ballot and consider whether you are indeed eligible to vote at the polling site that you did in the primary that you did, and if so, count your vote. If you are deemed not eligible, you are supposed to receive a mailed notice saying so, with a registration application attached to get you signed up for next time.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has set up a hotline for voters to report problems at the polls. The number is (800) 771-7755. New York’s U.S. attorney’s offices will also be taking complaints at (718) 254-6323 (for Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, and Suffolk counties) and (212) 637-0840 (for New York, Bronx, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, and Westchester counties). The FBI is also fielding reports of election law violations at (212) 384-1000.
Local United States Attorneys will also take complaints today: For Manhattan, Bronx, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Westchester counties, call (212) 637-0840; for Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau and Suffolk counties, call (718) 254-6323.
Got all that?
Oh, and to find out where the polling place is for your neighborhood, search your address here. And as always, if you’re upset with the our state’s electoral system operates, let your locallegislators know.
Finally, you can take photographs of your ballot and inside the polling location.
N.B.: Last month we brought attention to postcards that the city Board of Elections had recently mailed to 60,000 newly registered voters, misleadingly stating that “the primary” is in September. The postcards were referring to the September 13th state and local primary, but made no mention of that detail, or of the upcoming presidential primary. At the time, board director Michael Ryan blamed voters for being confused by the cards, saying, “You can bother to educate yourself.”
Since then, though, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sent the board a letter demanding they fix the screw-up, and the New York Times reports that the board has sent followup notices to 43,000 Democrats and Republicans, correcting the error.
One other revelation sure to cause head-scratching ahead of Primary Day: since November, the number of registered Democrats in Brooklyn has dropped by 63,500, and no one seems able to explain why. WNYC reports that the decrease is the greatest of any county in New York, and that Kings County is only one of seven counties that have seen a decline in registered Democrats.
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