Well, you can't stay atop forever

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Last week I posted on the meal delivery company HelloFresh’s decision to advertise the availability of high-fiber anal sex prep kits for its gay (well, I suppose for any of their rear-ender) customers.

Today, NYPost columnist Bethany Mandel offers her own opinion on the controversy:

HelloFresh should take notes from Bud Light — embracing Pride typically precedes a business freefall

You can always count on Pride Month for an unsolicited and unwelcome window into the sex lives of people you barely know.

This year there’s a twist: Meal-prep delivery services are getting in on the act, plastering their social media accounts with graphic messages that link cooking with sex. 

It started when HelloFresh indulged in vulgar sexual innuendos last week, posting: “For those of you who are … prepping … we have an extensive lineup of high-fiber recipes available. Happy Pride.” 

This is a subscription-based company that sends ingredients to your door with instructions for how to cook them.

It caters to busy families short on the time needed for meal planning and food shopping.

[You know, like the family they show in their other ads — FWIW}:

Now those families are left to associate the brand with explicit sexual content. 

The response to this post winking at a high-fiber cleanse ahead of gay sex was an immediate and negative tidal wave.

“Subscription. Cancelled,” one customer posted, one of thousands of similar reactions.  

 “I wanna know the numbers; how much money have y’all lost???” went another comment.

In a rational world, the HelloFresh marketing department would have received an immediate call from corporate brass demanding the post’s removal.

Instead, they doubled down and posted a follow-up, offering the discount code BOTTOMSUP just to drive the point home. 

And a few marketing “experts” sent HelloFresh their praise.

“Hi, I work as a marketing manager,” Instagram user HomeWithHildy gushed, “and I just wanted to say that whoever plans your content and campaigns is a genius and deserves a raise. They have made your brand unforgettable.” 

The campaign is indeed unforgettable, but not in the way Hildy seems to mean.

We’ve seen this play before: Recall Bud Light’s partnership with controversial trans activist Dylan Mulvaney in 2023.

The impact of that debacle was immediate — and did measurable harm to InBev’s bottom line.

Bud Light experienced a sharp decline in sales — an 11% drop in the first week of the backlash, growing to 21% percent in the next week — that lingered for years. 

But wait, it gets better! Blue Apron jumps into the group grope: “Bend over, Bruce, and hold our beer”

You’d think competing meal delivery services would learn from HelloFresh’s mistake and refrain from sparking a similar firestorm.

That’s not what happened, though, because millennial marketers see their jobs as social-justice engineers rather than salespeople. 

After several days of bad press for HelloFresh, its top competitor, Blue Apron, decided to join in.

It posted a message formatted to mimic its rival’s, labeling it as an “OFFICIAL STATEMENT.”

Its content was just as smutty: “While eating out can be exciting, there’s something to be said for diving head first into a satisfying box at home. Happy Pride to everyone who appreciates a good box.” 

…. This problem is bigger than Pride Month.

Corporate marketers live and work inside a cultural bubble that treats social-media engagement as success — regardless of whether it translates into revenue.

They’re rewarded for going viral, not for selling meal kits. 

…. A meal-kit company is supposed to deliver dinner. When it starts treating activism as the product, investors have every reason to wonder whether management has forgotten what business they’re actually in.

FWIW:
The effect of HelloFresh’s woke marketing department the company’s executives that set it loose is already reaping dividends – reducing them. actually.

I asked Google how the company’s doing and got the answer: not well — the stock price has dropped 93% from its 2021 high. And that’s before this latest blunder.

Summary by AI of a March 18, 2026 article in the Guardian:

Q: Is HelloFresh struggling right now?

A: AI Overview

Yes, HelloFresh is navigating a major operational and financial struggle. Following a pandemic-era boom, the company has faced years of falling demand and customer retention challenges.

Key challenges include:

  • Financial Slump: Total annual revenues declined, and the company projects a further 3% to 6% decrease in revenue. Its market value has plummeted over 90% from its 2021 peak.

  • Massive Cost Cuts: The company has laid off hundreds of employees and closed delivery centers to cut costs.

    The Guardian

  • Market Exits: HelloFresh has completely withdrawn from markets like Spain and Italy, citing a lack of clear paths to sustainable profitability

    .While HelloFresh remains a dominant player in the meal kit and ready-to-eat space, they are actively downsizing and attempting to pivot their strategy to stay profitable in a shrinking market.

Morons.

Pending on Laub Pond Road

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Or as the realtor would have it, 33 Cliffdale Road. Fully renovated in 2017, the owners put it up for sale in 2017 at $2.495 million, without success. They tried again in April 2025 with a new price of $4.5 million, and stayed at $4.5 million for the following year. Now it’s pending, and it will be interesting to see whether the sellers finally got their price or whether they conceded to the market.

Is this a new trend? GMLS listing only, and not on the Internet?

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15 Willowmere Circle, Riverside. It’s only Ole’s Creek tidal waterfront, but what do you expect for under $20 million?

15 Willowmere Circle was recently put up for sale on the Greenwich MLS, but was not posted on the internet. I’m not sure of the strategy behind that decision, but it certainly hasn’t hurt its prospects: today its price was raised from $17.5 million to $18.5.

I realize I know nothing about military or foreign policy, but what the hell is this man doing? (Updated)

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bom-bom-bom, bomb-bomb iran

Thursday:

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the U.S. has "just made a great settlement of the war with Iran" and that a deal is nearing completion.

  • Trump said the agreement would ensure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon and that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen.

  • Trump added that Vice President JD Vance is expected to attend a signing ceremony, which he said could take place in Europe as soon as this weekend.

Friday:

Trump blasts leaked Iranian deal terms, 'very dishonorable' negotiators

President Donald Trump on Friday ripped Iranian media reports about a potential deal to end the war, adding that the regime in Tehran better “get their act together. 

“The terms that Iran leaked out to the Fake News have NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing. What they said, including their weak and pathetic statement on having a deal, bears no relation to the truth,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.  

“Very dishonorable people to deal with. With them, there is no such thing as dealing in good faith. AMAZING! Also, their totally rebuffed Drone attack last night against Indian Ships leaving the Hormuz Strait is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. They better get their act together, and FAST!” he added. 

Iranian state media earlier Friday shared purported details of the possible memorandum of understanding that could be signed with the U.S., according to Reuters. 

It cited the IRNA news agency as saying that under the agreement, Iran would make no commitment regarding the transfer of the management of the Strait of Hormuz.  

Instead, the future administration of the Strait reportedly would be decided through dialogue and joint decision-making between Iran and Oman, a country in close proximity to the area.

The IRNA news agency added that discussions about the future of Iran’s nuclear program would take place within a 60-day period after the agreement is signed, Reuters added. 

It seems so obvious, as it has for months, that Iran is merely playing a waiting game until its allies in the US: the Democrats and the flying monkeys of the media, can halt the war and things can go back to Obama normal. What am I missing?

UPDATE: Maybe what I’m missing is this: we lack the weapons to go all out?

Defense industry leaders preparing to meet with Trump as worries over missile supply grow, sources say. “The president has expressed anger to aides and allies over thinning American stockpiles, the people said. Trump is considering whether to restart major combat operations in Iran, which downed a U.S. Army helicopter Tuesday. The crew was rescued and the U.S. launched new attacks in Iran in response.”

Grab your popcorn, this is going to be fun

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Plans Proposed to Demolish & Reconstruct Historic Building at 2 Greenwich Ave, Plus 2 Adjacent Buildings

You can go to the link to read the developer’s proposal and how they intend to build an “evocative” replacement for what is arguably the town’s most iconic landmark.

To be fair, I had my own office in this building years ago; it was obsolete and dated then, and hasn’t improved since.

But ooh, the battle’s that about to start; the developer paid $8 million for the building, and will likely spend that much again in carrying costs, legal fees, design and redesign (and re-redesign) charges.

I predict we’ll not see a new building on this site for another ten years, if at all.

Johnny can't read (or count), but he's off to college anyway.

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Professors at top California college forced to radically alter coursework as students struggle to read

Published June 11, 2026, 8:18 p.m. ET

Humanities professors at one of California’s most prestigious universities say they are assigning fewer pages, replacing full books with excerpts and rethinking coursework as students increasingly struggle to keep up with reading-heavy classes.

The concerns, raised by faculty at University of California, Berkeley, come amid a broader debate across the University of California about whether incoming students are arriving on campus academically prepared for college-level work.

Several professors told student newspaper The Daily Californian that reading expectations have steadily declined over the past two decades, prompting some instructors to scale back assignments in order to maintain meaningful classroom discussions.

Carlos Noreña, a history professor specializing in ancient history, said the amount of reading he can reasonably assign has fallen dramatically since he joined the Berkeley faculty in 2005.

“We are now reaching a crisis point where if the number (of pages) goes down further, it’s unclear to me whether my discipline of history can really be taught,” Noreña said.

According to Noreña, upper-division students once received roughly 100 pages of reading each week, with professors expecting them to complete most of the material. For a course he plans to teach this fall, that number will be closer to 35 pages per week.

Other professors reported making similar adjustments.

“Part of this is to spare students the cost of purchasing books, but part of it is also acquiescing to my sense of — and complaints about — the amount of reading assigned, though those complaints, curiously, haven’t gone away as I’ve shrunk the number of pages assigned,” Brilliant said.

And then there’s AI: ….

Some professors also expressed concern about students relying on artificial intelligence tools to summarize texts instead of engaging directly with the material.

“I found that very upsetting, because I’ve read the AI summary of my own book, and it’s all wrong,” history professor Trevor Jackson said. “Even a good summary is still not grappling with the text.”

The discussion comes as UC faculty elsewhere have raised alarms about academic preparedness in other subjects.

On Thursday, the University of California announced it will study whether to reinstate SAT and ACT testing requirements, six years after eliminating them from admissions the LA Times reported.

The review follows mounting pressure from more than 1,400 faculty members who argue that many students are entering college without the skills needed for rigorous coursework.

In a recent open letter, professors warned that preparation gaps have become so severe that some instructors are reteaching basic math concepts while attempting to cover college-level material.

The concerns were echoed in a 2025 report from University of California, San Diego that found a sharp increase in incoming students whose math abilities tested below high school levels.

How bad is the situation? Even a leftist rag like the Atlantic has (finally) noticed (and admits it:

Atlantic: The UC System Made a Mistake Getting Rid of the SAT

John Sexton, HotAir:

The Atlantic is pretty late to this particular party. Both David and I have been writing about this topic since last fall. In any case, they published a story yesterday titled, "The University of California System’s SAT Folly."'

"The University of California System’s SAT Folly."'

Zvezdelina Stankova has taught mathematics at UC Berkeley for nearly three decades. But in 2023, while teaching introductory calculus for the first time since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, she noticed that something was quite wrong. The bottom 25 percent of students were not just struggling with the coursework, Stankova told me; “people were in freefall.” Teaching was becoming impossible. “With one hand, I am teaching a complex integral, and with the other hand, I am telling them how to solve a simple linear equation like 7x – 2 = 5,” Stankova said.

Mina Aganagic, a string theorist at Berkeley who has taught calculus for 20 years, noticed something similar. “I realized that for students to follow me,” she told me, “I had to start reviewing basic algebra stuff, like fractions.” The lack of mathematical fluency, Aganagic said, extended even to “the meaning of equals in an equation.” Both professors said their students came to office hours and still tried hard to pass—often by trying to commit equations to memory when they could not understand them. But however hard they worked, most of the students who arrived to calculus class without knowing algebra failed.

Sexton:

“The obvious question, the one that anyone would ask, is why? And the answer to that question is no mystery. The UC system did away with SATs, not simply making them optional but forbidding students to submit them.

“That is the practical explanation for why many incoming UC students can't do high school (or middle school) math, but it's not the final explanation. It doesn't explain the motive behind the decision to ditch the SAT. To his credit, the author doesn't dodge the real explanation.”

…. Sexton: “I wrote about this last November when a UC Berkeley professor wrote an opinion piece for Inside Higher Ed rejecting the need for the SAT. As Saul Geiser sees it, the decision to drop the SAT has been a good one because now there are more Black and Hispanic students at UC schools.”

At the top of the applicant pool— where the chance of admission is greatest—Latinos and Blacks comprised 23 percent of the top GPA tier but only 5 percent of the top SAT tier. Similar differences were found for low-income and first-generation applicants. Far from leveling the playing field, the SAT steepens the climb.

Sexton: “As I argued at the time, this does not prove that GPA is a better metric for admissions, only that it is easier to get A's than to get high SAT scores.”

“Schools and even individual teachers within schools grade classes differently, especially in the wake of the pandemic. Some schools and teachers give out A's like candy and do their best not to fail anyone. Other schools and teachers are much more competitive and actually make kids work pretty hard for top grades.

“And it's not just the grades that differ. One calculus class might go through 50% of the material in a given year. Another class might get through 90% of the material in that same year. In that case, getting an A in the first class is going to be a breeze compared to getting an A in the second class. In fact, a kid who got a B in a tough class with no curve might actually know the material better than a kid who got an A in an easy class with a teacher who curves every test.

“My point here is that grades and expectations from school to school may differ widely, but SAT tests do not. With the SAT, everyone is getting more or less the same test at the same exact time. 

“So I think what the chart above is showing is that, if you really test students from different schools with one consistent standard (the SAT), you'll find out that a lot of the kids with top grades at Podunk High can't get top test scores because they haven't actually learned that much. (A top 10% test score on the SAT would be 1350 or above)...

…. “The Atlantic piece seems to confirm my own intuition about this:”

Grade inflation has, after all, eroded the signaling value of a strong high-school transcript: More than 25 percent of those taking UC San Diego’s remedial math course in 2024 had a 4.0 GPA in high-school math.

…. Sexton: “To bring this back to where we started, the result is a bunch of incoming students who were accepted based on their 4.0 GPA's but who can't do middle school math.”

Nothing that hasn't been said on these pages over the past six years, but the lesson can't be repeated enough

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David Strom:

Yes, This: A Must-Read Piece from Drew Holden About COVID Insanity

Strom: I've written plenty of articles about the COVID madness and the damage it has done. And I found this piece from Drew Holden about one aspect especially useful. It has the virtue of being brief, easy to read, and packed with important reminders of things we should never forget lest we allow the tyrants to get away with their totalitarian ways yet again. 

Oh, who am I kidding? The people who need to be reminded will try again; but remembering ourselves reminds us of what to look out for. 

Drew is doing a series of articles on the COVID years, and this was the first I happened to see and read. It focuses not specifically on the lies, although it certainly reminds us of them and who the liars were. 

The more important point, though, is the construction and implementation of the tyrannical enforcement mechanisms for the arbitrary imposition of restrictions on us. 

What made the COVID years totalitarian was not the authoritarian imposition of arbitrary rules; it was the whole-of-society mobilization that turned ordinary people into informants and little tyrants for the state. We didn't live in an analog of a military dictatorship that simply enforced rules with police powers; we lived in Maoist China, North Korea, or East Germany, where your neighbors became informants and enforcers, hounding us to comply and bow down to the Great Fauci. 

The media, influencers, and the harridan all the street propagated the same message: arbitrary and unscientific requirements, when decreed by Fauci to be The Science™, must be followed without question. As Holden pointed out, Fauci pulled the social distancing "advice" out of arse, but nobody cared to ask about silly things like "evidence." You must comply.

Do you remember the New York Times valorizing self-appointed social-distancing monitors? “Social Distancing Informants Have Their Eyes on You: Largely confined to their homes and worried about the spread of the coronavirus, members of the public are becoming unofficial watchdogs.”

Do you remember when legacy outlets like CBS News jumped in to support Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s Orwellian COVID hotline? “Coronavirus In Minnesota: Where To Call If You See People Who Aren’t Social Distancing.”

Do you remember the how-to guides about the best ways to confront strangers when you think they might not be following social distancing rules (more on those soon), dripping with moral superiority? Not opinion pieces, mind you, but reported news stories. And notice the question isn’t whether but how (or, I suppose, what).

“Neighbors Not Practicing Social Distancing? Here’s What to Do.” New York Times

“Here’s How to Get Others to Follow Social Distancing Rules,” TIME

“How to politely deal with people who break social distancing rules, according to etiquette experts.” Business Insider

“How to talk to your friends who still aren’t social distancing,” Philadelphia Inquirer

“How to talk to people who aren’t social distancing — and get them to listen,” Today

“The social etiquette of social distancing: How to say ‘back off,’ politely.” Los Angeles Times

With social distancing, the Left, the expert class, and the legacy media communicated to a vulnerable and scared public that their fellow citizens were just another vector of disease that they should fear, another threat — often a malignant one, if failing to respect social distancing and mask rules — to their safety.

Strom:

When all of us who were proven right point to other questionable narratives from The Science™, the same attacks are directed at us by people who were not only wrong about COVID, the most important issue of the 2020s, or perhaps the 20th century so far, but they go on the same lines of attacks, calling us flat-earthers. 

They learned nothing, because they think they were right on the big stuff, and justified in hounding us. 

Setting aside all the other problems, all the other deceptions, all the other untruths, this element of combative, insistent, anger toward and hatred of our fellow citizens – across the country or across the street – defined this era of American life, and I can’t begin to quantify how much damage that must have done to our social fabric. I don’t think we’ve even begun to reckon with it.

Obviously, I am far from the only one still furious. Most people who were hounded and ostracized, or who, God forbid, lost friends, family members, and jobs, are still angry. We are told to get over it. It is in the past. Move on. 

Yeah, well, no. The left learned nothing, acts the same way on myriad issues (climate change, anyone?), and will continue as before. 

Forgiveness and redemption to those who have absorbed the lesson and apologized; none at all for the still-present Stasi. 

Related: Remember this one?

Fun series of clips here: don't miss them

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and barbecue!

World Cup Tourists Find Surreal Sporting Goods Store With a Firing Range; Also Discover Buc-ee’s

Tourists from Europe and the U.K. have traveled to the United States to watch the World Cup, and what they're discovering about America as they drive to Houston, Texas, is delightful.

Freddy is here from Germany, and he came across a surreal place called "Outdoor World" where they sell rifles and have an indoor firing range.

Do go to the link and follow them all, including the comments from Americans cheering them on; its a nice break from all the rest of the crap going on.

Liberal tears fill the reflecting pool. Remember their screaming that Trump was ruining it? Now they're complaining that there's no difference. Both claims are untrue.

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But:

Notice that the Reflecting Pool now reflects, thus reclaiming its original purpose. And then there’s the little matter of the despicable Washington Post displaying, once again, its inability to report the truth: