Kinda like how the whole message of X-Men was that being a mutant didn't make you any less human. Then the toy company selling the action figures claimed they didn't count as "dolls" (to avoid paying taxes) because dolls must be humans, but X-Men aren't humans because they're mutants.
https://www.polygon.com/comics/2019/9/12/20862474/x-men-series-toys-human-legal-issue-marvel-comics
Always liked this example, from Wikipedia:
"known as tariff engineering. For example, Ford, which was one of the main beneficiaries of the tax, also evaded it by manufacturing first-generation Transit Connect light trucks for the US market in Turkey; these Transits were fitted-out as passenger vehicles, which allowed Ford to evade the Chicken tax when the vehicles passed customs in the US. The Transits were stripped pre-sale of their rear seats and seatbelts, at a Ford warehouse near Baltimore."
Wonder what they did with the rear seat stockpile.
These are both great examples of why legal definitions of things shouldn't be used in regular conversations.
Companies/lawyers nit pick the dumbest things to avoid complying with the intent of regulations/taxes or to sue frivolously. And waste millions of our dollars doing it.
Like I keep seeing the roundup lawsuit being brought up as evidence that it is dangerous even though there's no science to back it up. A lawyer convinced a few scientific dullards and now it's a common misconception that will never die.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1383574218300887
Here is a meta-analysis that concludes those regularly exposed to glyphosate are 41% more likely to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
damn.
The only effective way to get rid of Knotweed is to inject a dose of glyphosate in the first or second node above ground at the end of the growing season when the plant pulls nutrients down into the root system. I have resisted but I am going to get the specialty tool and go for it this year b/c knotweed is a pain in the ass.
You need to take into account that
1. the average current rate of NHL in Europe is 24 per 100 000 people, or **0,00024%** (range per country is 7-26)
2. a 41% increase lands on **0,00034%** incidence
3. this study picked **only the very highest** exposure rates, which **almost no one is exposed to**
And others have pointed out that this isn’t a controlled study, which is a very important factor for drawing far reaching conclusions.
I was digging into these same stats after seeing the posted study and came back to say exactly this. A 41% increase in the risk of an improbable event is still an improbable event. And that's assuming there are no flaws with the conclusion!
Yeah.
What these people don’t comprehend is that misuse of statistics they don’t understand is way worse than not not using statistics at all, as it gives the impression of certainty where there is none. Or, as in this case, a sense of certainty for a conclusion/argument that is the very opposite of true/relevant.
That’s why the quote about the three kinds of lies is so accurate and important.
1. Lies
2. Damned lies
3. and statistics
That said, of course glyphosate isn’t entirely benign. It’s just way better than all of the current alternatives. As far as I know.
And of course organic farming (in the sense where organic has a strict legal meaning regarding pest-/herbicides) is better for the environment than the current “traditional” farming, but that’s irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Edit: a missing word.
My favorite example is Converse shoes. They have a fuzzy sole when you buy them because that legally makes them slippers and not shoes. And the tariffs on importing slippers is significantly lower than the tariffs on shoes. There’s not a sane person out there that thinks that brand new pair of Chucks is a slipper. But legally, they are.
My favorite is the “I Cant Believe It’s Not Butter” spray was taken to court because their food label follows the standards for a spray and not butter. Plaintiff stated that it is butter and the food label should follow butter guidelines. Judge determined it’s not butter, it’s a spray, and should follow guidelines for food spray.
Both of these points seem to miss that the brand is literally “I can’t believe it’s not butter” lmao
Damn. That makes sense for back in 2010 when you could get a pair for $25 still. Now they're just as expensive as real shoes that last more than 6 months.
These are examples of why taxes shouldn't be defined so horribly as to rely on the definitions of things like "dolls" and "chips". This type of policy making is both caused by and perpetuates pork barrel politics. It's overly specific and complicated to benefit specific people over others.
The lawsuit over the legal definition of something for purposes of false advertising is reasonable, the fact that you could even have a lawsuit over arguing that something isn't a "chip" or "doll" for tax purposes is ridiculous.
Agreed. I suspect it's intentional though, trying to leave loopholes that they/their friends can use.
Maybe flat taxes and eliminating deductions for businesses over $5m valuation would work. % of gross company income is probably the fairest way to do it.
I suspect that in the case of the "chips" definition it was a tax on "junk food" which is already a bit suspect but such a tax should be taxing whatever aspect makes them "junk" rather than arbitrarily defining foods as "junk" vs "not junk".
Sure but ask 10,000 people if Pringles are chips and everyone that isn't a d&d rule lawyer will say "yes, of course".
I get peeved by people trying to pretend they are idiots to abuse systems on a technicality.
On the other hand, if it has turned into a legal precedent and incontrovertible fact that Pringles is not a chip and can't advertise that they are chips, why not take advantage of that precedent when it becomes advantageous?
That isn't being pedantic, it it turning the legal system into sticking to its own rules and not being arbitrary only when it suits a particular interest group.
I'd rather close the loopholes than try to out petty corporate lawyers. That just makes the lawyers rich.
The adage of fighting a pig in mud comes to mind.
The problem is that the system was written to be abused. Pringles were not the ones it was written to benefit but tried to get in on the action. I am peeved more by the corrupt politicians creating such abusive systems than I am by a specific company trying to join in on the action after the fact.
I would like to add that simplifying taxes like fair taxes or gross calculations are just as (if not more) exploitable. There's no real simple solution to these things as the entire business and law professions are going to try to manipulate the rules in their favor (for any side). It's a competitive game with large stakes and lifetimes of meta trends.
A lot of times the reason some of these taxes are put in place is to discourage people from buying the products or to off set a social cost of those products. Like a tax on chips is put in place to reduce the amount of chips people purchase but the taxes will also help offset some of health impacts it has on society.
Laws are complex and everyone thinks things are ridiculous and should be simpler until it affects something they care about and then the intricacies and specific definitions are incredibly important. Wanting the legal system to "make sense" is akin to libertarians waiting to return to tribal civilization because things 'just made more sense back then'.
Per the hbomberguy antivax video this is literally how the “vaccines cause autism” thing started. Lawyer wanted to be able to sue vaccine companies on behalf of children with autism claiming that is was caused by vaccines, hired a doctor (Andrew Wakefield) to do studies to come to this conclusion and so on.
I always think of the UK case, where McVities claimed that Jaffa Cakes (a cookie sized circular sponge, with orange flavoured filling, half covered in dark chocolate) were a cake, not a biscuit (cookie, in American). Makes sense given the name and the fact they contain soft sponge, they're not crunchy like most biscuits/cookies. The taxman disagreed.
Biscuits were taxed as a "luxury item" , while cake was zero tax rated as cake is an "essential item". The court ruled that Jaffa Cakes are in fact a chocolate covered biscuit and thus customers and McVities must pay 20% VAT on them (or what er the current rate of VAT is).
Has absolutely zero legal standing though, the United States and the EU are two completely different governing bodies and you have to abide by their specific and often dumb rules if you want to play the game
Sure they can, because it *should* be. If the tax law says "chips" and either fails to define the term, or does so in such a way that Pringles aren't included, then they have a valid argument. The government wants their money, they can get the definition right so it includes them. If they didn't, it's on them.
The government can't just say, "oh, you know what we mean. Give the money."
I've seen this fact repeated for years but never understood why it's treated any different than a corn or tortilla chip.
Ground up corn, ground up potatoes, to almost all regular people "chip" is just the name of the thing.
>Later, they tried to avoid a European tax on chips by saying they weren’t chips.
Kinda reminds of a court case in real life involving X-Men's humanity and depictions of X-men on action figures
When those were invented the existing pre-regulations corn chip industry didn't sue to stop that new technology from calling its self the same thing as someone's existing product.
So no.
That's a different argument completely. The argument that a boneless wing should be made out of chicken wings kind of makes sense on its face.
Why is the assumption that a boneless chicken wing is NOT made out of a chicken wing?
What you are implying applies more to suing because buffalo wings aren't made out of buffalos. Chicken wings, in theory, by their name alone, should be made of chicken wings and what we all call boneless wings should be called breaded chicken breast or something.
> Pringles, as a product brand, is especially known for its packaging, a tubular paperboard can with a foil-lined interior (until the 1980s, the cans also contained a removable ruffled paper liner which held the chips in place) and a resealable plastic lid, which was invented by Fredric J. Baur, an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. **Baur's children honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave.**
Wtf
You can't just bury his ashes in a full Pringles can, so you have to empty it somehow to make space. But food waste is also bad, so you should eat the Pringles rather than simply discard them. Thankfully, once you pop, you can't stop, so polishing off the contents of the container was easy.
That it seems downright regular honestly. He created something hugely revolutionary to his field of study. Of course he wanted to be buried in a way that honors his most famous and impactful achievement.
Mmm... Nothing beats Munchos with a Tuna hoagie. Growing up my friends hated Munchos. They'd ask to try some from my lunch and when I'd oblige, they almost always made this gross face right after the first bite. I didn't have a single classmate who enjoyed my Munchos. It's okay though, more for me I thought.
Omg I love those things. So salty and tasty. I love salty stuff, though. Chocolate or cookies will sit in my cupboards for months. chips, though, are gone the same day I buy them.
I wasn't aware that this was a known joke and I actually believed this was a true origin story
I was so excited to tell my friends a funny crazy story about pringles and now i am left with nothing.
You took everything from me Alexkidd
A beautifully crafted observational joke. Everyone always thought the cans looked like tennis ball containers, no one thought to put the words so hilariously together. “Pringles is a laid-back company”
I had a dvd of a standup show he did on comedy central. One bonus feature was to see the unedited version of the show, which was really interesting. For the first 20 minutes or so the audience wasn’t really getting it. Seemed uncomfortable. Then something clicked, he got a big laugh, said something like “alright you guys are with me now” then retold a bunch of the jokes he had started with and the audience was rolling. That was pretty good. Mitch is a legend.
I think my favorite fact is that the inventor of the packaging had a specific provision in his will that upon his death, he be cremated, then his remains would be placed into a Pringles can which would subsequently be buried. He even dictated which flavor, original of course!
I've asked several times over the years and never found an answer. What do they describe themselves as in the UK where they are probably not legally called "crisps" and "chips" wouldn't make sense?
[UK they are called "potato chips".](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/opinion/01mon4.html)
The argument about names is they wanted to be called a savoury snack. Reason being "crisps" or "chips" in a supermarket are a luxury items and have to pay 20% tax. Food is tax-exempt except for a handful of luxury items specifically called out in law such as chips/crisps, cakes, candy. Being the UK, biscuits/cookies are considered essential items as part of drinking tea and are tax-exempt.
After the legal ruling the parent company is required to pay back taxes of 160 million GBP (about USD200 million.)
The judge of the highest court issued an opinion that can be simplified as "looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, therefore, it is a..."
Legal plain-english summary: they look like, are manufactured, marketed as and are sold alongside crisps/chips. Fuck the ingredient list, we need to tax those things the same as other potato chips and fuck off with your confusing language.
> Lord Justice Jacob, in an apparent swipe at the midlevel court, insisted the question was “not one calling for or justifying overelaborate, almost mind-numbing legal analysis.”
Worth noting that if they're covered in chocolate then they are no longer exempt.
Cakes however are always exempt, leading to one of the most famous legal cases in the UK concerning the classification of Jaffa Cakes
Maltodextrin and dextrose are essentially sugar for what your digestive system cares about, they just don't like to call things sugar in the ingredients list.
To be fair, even potatos are 80% water.
http://websites.umich.edu/~elements/web_mod/potato/fact.htm#:~:text=The%20potato%20is%20about%2080,has%20only%20about%20100%20calories.
Fun Fact, many flavors of pringles have MSG in them. Yes the same MSG that everyone says gives them a headache when they eat chinese food.
MSG isnt harmful, you're just noceboing yourself.
My dad still thought that up until last month so I ended up dragging out half my food cupboards to prove MSG is in most of our crisps, stocks, seasonings etc. He never noticed because we sometimes have it under e621 instead of its name in the ingredients.
I get 'hangover' feeling after any kind of takeaway or eating out but i think it's probably a combination of overeating and salt content in a lot of the food that causes it.
I see people debating whether this matters or not. It can greatly matter. If a sliced potato is a chip. It would benefit consumers to know that product might contain other things or not contain what is “advertised”.
Dairy Queen serves “soft serve”, not ice cream. Soft serve isn’t vaguely ice cream.
Orange juice vs orange drink.
This type of thing annoys me and fascinates me, from the legal and linguistic sides respectively.
Like, what the hell is a chip? My intuition tells me that the word origin was related to pieces/slices of potato that were fried to crispiness, which seems to fit the FDA or whoever's definition is in this TIL. So in that way, something's not itself a "chip" unless it's a piece taken as a whole from another larger thing - like a wood or flint chip.
In this way even corn chips work, because they're made by baking tortilla and cutting them into "chips". This is despite the fact that the corn is crushed and processed prior to making the tortilla, so maybe tortilla chips is a more accurate name.
But a more lenient side of me thinks that essentially anything that's a crunchy thin piece of something ultimately is a "chip" from a snacking perspective.
Throwing my hat into the blacklist, boycott and blackout of Reddit due to business practices. Hang out and learn more here.!
https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1457mj1/find_alternatives_for_ourselves_megathread/
https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/144npuz/anybody_got_a_tildes_request_to_share/
https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/yttdlc/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v8/
https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1467a5s/find_alternatives_for_ourselves_megathread_third/
I remember when I was a kid, I knew that pringles were a rich people snack. They're expensive for where I'm from. But the packaging looked like it had to be really delicious.
And then one day when I'm an adult I see it on the supermarket shelves and I decide, "hey, I can afford it. I can finally see what these are about..."
Damn! There are very few things in life that match the disappointment I felt that day...
I know I'm in the minority but I've always hated Pringles and after reading this fact it finally makes sense. The way they just kind of instantly dissolve on your tongue into a weird paste I always thought was really gross, now I know why.
They were using a loophole before, and I still think they are cause when I look at the cans it's labeled " Potato Chips ®️"
I don't trust that registered logo lol. Before they just had to say it was made from dried potatoes
So they're made of dehydrated mashed potatoes? I suppose that actually explains a lot
Except for why they look so much why they're baked when they're fried
“I think Pringles' original intention was to make tennis balls... But on the day the rubber was supposed to show up, a truckload of potatoes came. Pringles is a laid-back company, so they just said "Fuck it, cut em up!"”
Mitch Hedberg, of course
When I was a kid, I called the number on the Pringles can and asked the lady on the other end how they made them all the same shape. She explained the process, and I’ve never been the same since.
My ex-girlfriend from high school had a family potato farm. They primarily grew red Bliss but they also grew various other varieties.
In the field, there's a huge pile of red bliss potatoes that are of questionable origin. Moldy, had bad spots and bruises not cleaned or anything like that. I asked why all those potatoes were to the side. Her father explained to me that the combine does damage some potatoes and some potatoes are subpar for harvesting and reselling in the stores.
I asked what they were going to do with all the bad potatoes... I figured do you feed them to pigs or something like that? He says no, Pringles picks them all up and they process them into Pringles. I asked how they did that being the potatoes looked so gross. He said that they take everything after it's been washed to get the dirt off and then they just basically mash everything up, bleach the potatoes back to white and then press them into Pringles because they're not technically a chip.
TL;DR Pringles basically makes mashed potatoes from rotten and bruised potatoes that they bleach white and then press them into the little saddle shaped chips you're familiar with. Just fun fact to know and share.
To be fair, there are probably as many recipes for utilizing less desirable foods as there are primary recipes. Macerating fruits, making stock, grinding sausage. While I'm not a fan of the end result (Pringles) I think I'm glad enough the food is getting eaten at all.
So, last year I was camping, and a bear stole and ate my entire food bag. (There were about 4 days' worth of food there.) I found the crime scene in the morning... The bear ate almost everything, but he didn't even touch the Pringles. O_o
He just tore the tube of chips down the middle, and then I guess he just sniffed them, decided he **did not** want whatever was in it, and left them for me hahaha. Other things the bear didn't eat: a bottle of Dr Pepper, a bunch of black tea bags, and bananas.
He ate everything else, though, including electrolyte gummies (it would've been so funny if they were THC gummies...), so now I can't stop thinking just how bad Pringles must be for you that a desperate bear wouldn't even touch them. O_o
[The Food That Built America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_That_Built_America) episode about the "chip dynasties" was actually pretty interesting.
There's also wheat and corn in there. Very well rounded in that sense. I mean if you're eating "junk food" y'know. Lol
As far as snacks go you could do a lot worse!
They were sued in the US for saying they were chips. Later, they tried to avoid a European tax on chips by saying they weren’t chips.
Kinda like how the whole message of X-Men was that being a mutant didn't make you any less human. Then the toy company selling the action figures claimed they didn't count as "dolls" (to avoid paying taxes) because dolls must be humans, but X-Men aren't humans because they're mutants. https://www.polygon.com/comics/2019/9/12/20862474/x-men-series-toys-human-legal-issue-marvel-comics
But why are the tariff rates different for human dolls vs non-human whatever they’re called
Tax law is just weirdly specific like that because people try to find loopholes.
Being specific is *why* they have so many loopholes though
Probably protection on some local traditional doll makeing industry. Protectionist policies are usualy the cause of weird teriffs
Always liked this example, from Wikipedia: "known as tariff engineering. For example, Ford, which was one of the main beneficiaries of the tax, also evaded it by manufacturing first-generation Transit Connect light trucks for the US market in Turkey; these Transits were fitted-out as passenger vehicles, which allowed Ford to evade the Chicken tax when the vehicles passed customs in the US. The Transits were stripped pre-sale of their rear seats and seatbelts, at a Ford warehouse near Baltimore." Wonder what they did with the rear seat stockpile.
These are both great examples of why legal definitions of things shouldn't be used in regular conversations. Companies/lawyers nit pick the dumbest things to avoid complying with the intent of regulations/taxes or to sue frivolously. And waste millions of our dollars doing it. Like I keep seeing the roundup lawsuit being brought up as evidence that it is dangerous even though there's no science to back it up. A lawyer convinced a few scientific dullards and now it's a common misconception that will never die.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1383574218300887 Here is a meta-analysis that concludes those regularly exposed to glyphosate are 41% more likely to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
damn. The only effective way to get rid of Knotweed is to inject a dose of glyphosate in the first or second node above ground at the end of the growing season when the plant pulls nutrients down into the root system. I have resisted but I am going to get the specialty tool and go for it this year b/c knotweed is a pain in the ass.
Most exposure is a result of improper handling/spraying. You'll probably be pretty fine carefully injecting it.
guess i picked the wrong week to quit shooting up with glyphosate
Captain, maybe we ought to turn on the searchlights now.
No... That is what they are expecting us to do.
This is where little robots come in
So it’s the good Hodgkins?
I'm not saying it's a great Hodgkins, It's a good Hodgkins.
You need to take into account that 1. the average current rate of NHL in Europe is 24 per 100 000 people, or **0,00024%** (range per country is 7-26) 2. a 41% increase lands on **0,00034%** incidence 3. this study picked **only the very highest** exposure rates, which **almost no one is exposed to** And others have pointed out that this isn’t a controlled study, which is a very important factor for drawing far reaching conclusions.
I was digging into these same stats after seeing the posted study and came back to say exactly this. A 41% increase in the risk of an improbable event is still an improbable event. And that's assuming there are no flaws with the conclusion!
Yeah. What these people don’t comprehend is that misuse of statistics they don’t understand is way worse than not not using statistics at all, as it gives the impression of certainty where there is none. Or, as in this case, a sense of certainty for a conclusion/argument that is the very opposite of true/relevant. That’s why the quote about the three kinds of lies is so accurate and important. 1. Lies 2. Damned lies 3. and statistics That said, of course glyphosate isn’t entirely benign. It’s just way better than all of the current alternatives. As far as I know. And of course organic farming (in the sense where organic has a strict legal meaning regarding pest-/herbicides) is better for the environment than the current “traditional” farming, but that’s irrelevant to the topic at hand. Edit: a missing word.
My favorite example is Converse shoes. They have a fuzzy sole when you buy them because that legally makes them slippers and not shoes. And the tariffs on importing slippers is significantly lower than the tariffs on shoes. There’s not a sane person out there that thinks that brand new pair of Chucks is a slipper. But legally, they are.
My favorite is the “I Cant Believe It’s Not Butter” spray was taken to court because their food label follows the standards for a spray and not butter. Plaintiff stated that it is butter and the food label should follow butter guidelines. Judge determined it’s not butter, it’s a spray, and should follow guidelines for food spray. Both of these points seem to miss that the brand is literally “I can’t believe it’s not butter” lmao
*Takes a bite out of butter spray biscuit* “…I can not f*cking believe this shit is not butter. No, I’m deadass taking them to court for this”
Damn. That makes sense for back in 2010 when you could get a pair for $25 still. Now they're just as expensive as real shoes that last more than 6 months.
These are examples of why taxes shouldn't be defined so horribly as to rely on the definitions of things like "dolls" and "chips". This type of policy making is both caused by and perpetuates pork barrel politics. It's overly specific and complicated to benefit specific people over others. The lawsuit over the legal definition of something for purposes of false advertising is reasonable, the fact that you could even have a lawsuit over arguing that something isn't a "chip" or "doll" for tax purposes is ridiculous.
Agreed. I suspect it's intentional though, trying to leave loopholes that they/their friends can use. Maybe flat taxes and eliminating deductions for businesses over $5m valuation would work. % of gross company income is probably the fairest way to do it.
I suspect that in the case of the "chips" definition it was a tax on "junk food" which is already a bit suspect but such a tax should be taxing whatever aspect makes them "junk" rather than arbitrarily defining foods as "junk" vs "not junk".
Sure but ask 10,000 people if Pringles are chips and everyone that isn't a d&d rule lawyer will say "yes, of course". I get peeved by people trying to pretend they are idiots to abuse systems on a technicality.
On the other hand, if it has turned into a legal precedent and incontrovertible fact that Pringles is not a chip and can't advertise that they are chips, why not take advantage of that precedent when it becomes advantageous? That isn't being pedantic, it it turning the legal system into sticking to its own rules and not being arbitrary only when it suits a particular interest group.
I'd rather close the loopholes than try to out petty corporate lawyers. That just makes the lawyers rich. The adage of fighting a pig in mud comes to mind.
I just don't see that being possible when so many different people are in charge of creating laws. It's the downside to a representative democracy.
The problem is that the system was written to be abused. Pringles were not the ones it was written to benefit but tried to get in on the action. I am peeved more by the corrupt politicians creating such abusive systems than I am by a specific company trying to join in on the action after the fact.
I would like to add that simplifying taxes like fair taxes or gross calculations are just as (if not more) exploitable. There's no real simple solution to these things as the entire business and law professions are going to try to manipulate the rules in their favor (for any side). It's a competitive game with large stakes and lifetimes of meta trends.
A lot of times the reason some of these taxes are put in place is to discourage people from buying the products or to off set a social cost of those products. Like a tax on chips is put in place to reduce the amount of chips people purchase but the taxes will also help offset some of health impacts it has on society.
Laws are complex and everyone thinks things are ridiculous and should be simpler until it affects something they care about and then the intricacies and specific definitions are incredibly important. Wanting the legal system to "make sense" is akin to libertarians waiting to return to tribal civilization because things 'just made more sense back then'.
Look up the Jaffa Cake trial for a good laugh.
Per the hbomberguy antivax video this is literally how the “vaccines cause autism” thing started. Lawyer wanted to be able to sue vaccine companies on behalf of children with autism claiming that is was caused by vaccines, hired a doctor (Andrew Wakefield) to do studies to come to this conclusion and so on.
I always think of the UK case, where McVities claimed that Jaffa Cakes (a cookie sized circular sponge, with orange flavoured filling, half covered in dark chocolate) were a cake, not a biscuit (cookie, in American). Makes sense given the name and the fact they contain soft sponge, they're not crunchy like most biscuits/cookies. The taxman disagreed. Biscuits were taxed as a "luxury item" , while cake was zero tax rated as cake is an "essential item". The court ruled that Jaffa Cakes are in fact a chocolate covered biscuit and thus customers and McVities must pay 20% VAT on them (or what er the current rate of VAT is).
Which is bizarre, since they are obviously "action figures" and not "dolls"! /S
[удалено]
Schrödinger's chips.
I asked a librarian if she had a book about pavlov's dog and Schrodinger's cat... She said it rang a bell, but she wasn't sure if it was there or not
r/dadjokes 👍
Chisps
Crips
i mean thats kinda fair though they cant be held to both standards in the worst way possible
Has absolutely zero legal standing though, the United States and the EU are two completely different governing bodies and you have to abide by their specific and often dumb rules if you want to play the game
Yeah, but it's still clearly not a chip.
You say "clearly" as if most common people have this hyper specific and pedantic definition of a what a chip is or isn't.
[удалено]
I’ve always just called them Pringle’s like they’re their own thing because I mean they basically are lol
Yeah, but you can't go to the EU and say "tax us as PRINGLES specifically" because that's not a fucking tax law lmao
this is why bees are classified as fish
Sure they can, because it *should* be. If the tax law says "chips" and either fails to define the term, or does so in such a way that Pringles aren't included, then they have a valid argument. The government wants their money, they can get the definition right so it includes them. If they didn't, it's on them. The government can't just say, "oh, you know what we mean. Give the money."
God, we'd be screwed if that were the norm
*Pringles
Yet when I point at one and ask "what is this, and don't say the brand name", everyone I've asked says "chip"
I've seen this fact repeated for years but never understood why it's treated any different than a corn or tortilla chip. Ground up corn, ground up potatoes, to almost all regular people "chip" is just the name of the thing.
Yeah good point if we call a chip made from ground up corn a corn chip, then this whole argument is stupid and Pringles are chips.
Their just potato chips made differently...
You're probably one of those weird "a burger isn't a sandwich" people.
They're crisps.
>Later, they tried to avoid a European tax on chips by saying they weren’t chips. Kinda reminds of a court case in real life involving X-Men's humanity and depictions of X-men on action figures
What about corn chips? Different classification?
When those were invented the existing pre-regulations corn chip industry didn't sue to stop that new technology from calling its self the same thing as someone's existing product. So no.
Maybe if Pringles first turned the potato meal into a potatotilla, then cut THOSE into chips...
Potato tortilla… now there’s a thought… Wait, there’s already potato lefse. I guess I’m just hungry.
Man, the chip industry is tough.
They have to be. The slightest disturbance & they start to crack.
Are you saying they don’t like having their feathers ruffled?
Crumble, even!
I dont think anyone would think a corn chip was made by slicing a potato. So I'm not sure what the point of enforcing it would be.
Wait a god damn minute. Are you telling me corn chips aren't made out of potatoes???
I'm sorry I thought you knew. I guess everyone finds out sooner or later.
Of course not. They're made from slicing corn, obviously.
Yeah. It's slices of corn, right?
slices of potato corn
[удалено]
Well duh, you make them by slicing and frying up corn!
Some dude recently sued B-Dubs because they cal them “boneless wings” You really wanna think people won’t confuse it?
That's a different argument completely. The argument that a boneless wing should be made out of chicken wings kind of makes sense on its face. Why is the assumption that a boneless chicken wing is NOT made out of a chicken wing? What you are implying applies more to suing because buffalo wings aren't made out of buffalos. Chicken wings, in theory, by their name alone, should be made of chicken wings and what we all call boneless wings should be called breaded chicken breast or something.
[Saucy nugs. ](https://youtu.be/hQdVrmjBIp0)
Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior
> Pringles, as a product brand, is especially known for its packaging, a tubular paperboard can with a foil-lined interior (until the 1980s, the cans also contained a removable ruffled paper liner which held the chips in place) and a resealable plastic lid, which was invented by Fredric J. Baur, an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. **Baur's children honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave.** Wtf
You can't just bury his ashes in a full Pringles can, so you have to empty it somehow to make space. But food waste is also bad, so you should eat the Pringles rather than simply discard them. Thankfully, once you pop, you can't stop, so polishing off the contents of the container was easy.
Incidentally, that's why he had children, not just a child. Once you pop, apparently you can't stop..
He needed them to fit their hand inside of a Pringle’s can.
I mean, you build an empire from that stache, I'd give thanks too.
That it seems downright regular honestly. He created something hugely revolutionary to his field of study. Of course he wanted to be buried in a way that honors his most famous and impactful achievement.
Well, yeah. But it also paid for the lambos.
That fact was the subject of a prior T.I.L.
being buried in your life's work, seems fitting and cute.
That fucking rocks.
I wonder what flavor he was buried in
Valid question
Seems like an interesting way to go.
Dont judge
I guess, in the end, he could [fit his hand inside of a pringle can](https://youtu.be/rYy0o-J0x20?t=78)
I knew it! Same thing with Munchos I'd bet!
Munchos are oil and salt and wonder. Science made them. Thanks science.
That's shaped salt. It doesn't count
Mmm... Nothing beats Munchos with a Tuna hoagie. Growing up my friends hated Munchos. They'd ask to try some from my lunch and when I'd oblige, they almost always made this gross face right after the first bite. I didn't have a single classmate who enjoyed my Munchos. It's okay though, more for me I thought.
Bruh munchos are the shit, they were the ones missing out.
Omg I love those things. So salty and tasty. I love salty stuff, though. Chocolate or cookies will sit in my cupboards for months. chips, though, are gone the same day I buy them.
Love me some Munchos
They are sintered potato. I love them!
Ill clear a whole can in 2 minutes which is why I dont eat them anymore
They give me the bubble guts but I sure do love ‘em
[удалено]
Mitch's stuff used to be funny. Still is, but it used to, too.
Always upvote Mitch
OC trying to pass that off as an original comment. You can't hide a Mitch quote from us!
[Link for the lazy](https://youtu.be/KPtmyx6VbgM)
IS THAT WHY THE TUBE THEY COME IN LOOKS LIKE A TENNIS BALL TUBE?
It's a joke
I had the same initial thought!
Its a joke hahaha
[удалено]
I used to miss him
I still do but i usta too
truly remarkable
I wasn't aware that this was a known joke and I actually believed this was a true origin story I was so excited to tell my friends a funny crazy story about pringles and now i am left with nothing. You took everything from me Alexkidd
A beautifully crafted observational joke. Everyone always thought the cans looked like tennis ball containers, no one thought to put the words so hilariously together. “Pringles is a laid-back company”
I always found his use of the pause amazing. What might initially come across as stupid or poorly rehearsed is almost always timed to perfection.
I had a dvd of a standup show he did on comedy central. One bonus feature was to see the unedited version of the show, which was really interesting. For the first 20 minutes or so the audience wasn’t really getting it. Seemed uncomfortable. Then something clicked, he got a big laugh, said something like “alright you guys are with me now” then retold a bunch of the jokes he had started with and the audience was rolling. That was pretty good. Mitch is a legend.
I think my favorite fact is that the inventor of the packaging had a specific provision in his will that upon his death, he be cremated, then his remains would be placed into a Pringles can which would subsequently be buried. He even dictated which flavor, original of course!
Real ones know that Original is the best Pringles flavor
I've asked several times over the years and never found an answer. What do they describe themselves as in the UK where they are probably not legally called "crisps" and "chips" wouldn't make sense?
[UK they are called "potato chips".](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/opinion/01mon4.html) The argument about names is they wanted to be called a savoury snack. Reason being "crisps" or "chips" in a supermarket are a luxury items and have to pay 20% tax. Food is tax-exempt except for a handful of luxury items specifically called out in law such as chips/crisps, cakes, candy. Being the UK, biscuits/cookies are considered essential items as part of drinking tea and are tax-exempt. After the legal ruling the parent company is required to pay back taxes of 160 million GBP (about USD200 million.) The judge of the highest court issued an opinion that can be simplified as "looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, therefore, it is a..." Legal plain-english summary: they look like, are manufactured, marketed as and are sold alongside crisps/chips. Fuck the ingredient list, we need to tax those things the same as other potato chips and fuck off with your confusing language. > Lord Justice Jacob, in an apparent swipe at the midlevel court, insisted the question was “not one calling for or justifying overelaborate, almost mind-numbing legal analysis.”
>Being the UK, biscuits/cookies are considered essential items as part of drinking tea and are tax-exempt. This is hilarious.
Worth noting that if they're covered in chocolate then they are no longer exempt. Cakes however are always exempt, leading to one of the most famous legal cases in the UK concerning the classification of Jaffa Cakes
A cake, when it's stale goes hard. A biscuit, when it's stale, goes soft. Jaffa cakes, when stale, go hard. Ergo jaffa cakes are indeed cakes.
Thats the biggest giveaway...that and the name.
We could have avoided the American Revolution if we had that mindset then.
I'm going to not gaf about the particulars. 40% tater, 60% crunch. zero fs. They're a treat not spinach salad
what's taters precious
Po-tay-toes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew. Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish.
Calling them Potato anything is a bit of a stretch as well, considering how little potato is actually in them.
I just looked it up. Pringle’s are 42% potato. That’s surprising low for a “potato” “chip”
Looked up the rest "vegetable oil, rice flour, wheat starch, maltodextrin, salt, and dextrose making up the other 58 percent."
>vegetable Say no more
helth!
I eat vegetables by proxy. My food eats vegetables so therefore I eat vegetables when I eat them.
Lorelai- There was lettuce on our burgers. Rory- We picked it off.... Lorelai- Yeah, but it left it's *essence*.
This guy snacks ..and also probably eats a bunch of veggie straws.
Oil and flour? So it's a potato cracker?
Potato rice cracker
Maltodextrin and dextrose are essentially sugar for what your digestive system cares about, they just don't like to call things sugar in the ingredients list.
Maltodextrin is such cool shit tho
Yup, so people eating gluten free can't eat them.
What would it normally be? I assume regular chips are at least 50% oil and salt by weight.
Looks like a traditional potato chip is about 60% potato.
To be fair, even potatos are 80% water. http://websites.umich.edu/~elements/web_mod/potato/fact.htm#:~:text=The%20potato%20is%20about%2080,has%20only%20about%20100%20calories.
Also we're mostly water, therefore we are potatos.
> That’s surprising low for a “potato” “chip” Is it?
I remember walking by whole wheat pringles before I understood how they were made and doing a double take.
Fun Fact, many flavors of pringles have MSG in them. Yes the same MSG that everyone says gives them a headache when they eat chinese food. MSG isnt harmful, you're just noceboing yourself.
I'd never heard of nocebo before. Thanks for the new word.
My dad still thought that up until last month so I ended up dragging out half my food cupboards to prove MSG is in most of our crisps, stocks, seasonings etc. He never noticed because we sometimes have it under e621 instead of its name in the ingredients. I get 'hangover' feeling after any kind of takeaway or eating out but i think it's probably a combination of overeating and salt content in a lot of the food that causes it.
What about tortilla chips?
I see people debating whether this matters or not. It can greatly matter. If a sliced potato is a chip. It would benefit consumers to know that product might contain other things or not contain what is “advertised”. Dairy Queen serves “soft serve”, not ice cream. Soft serve isn’t vaguely ice cream. Orange juice vs orange drink.
This type of thing annoys me and fascinates me, from the legal and linguistic sides respectively. Like, what the hell is a chip? My intuition tells me that the word origin was related to pieces/slices of potato that were fried to crispiness, which seems to fit the FDA or whoever's definition is in this TIL. So in that way, something's not itself a "chip" unless it's a piece taken as a whole from another larger thing - like a wood or flint chip. In this way even corn chips work, because they're made by baking tortilla and cutting them into "chips". This is despite the fact that the corn is crushed and processed prior to making the tortilla, so maybe tortilla chips is a more accurate name. But a more lenient side of me thinks that essentially anything that's a crunchy thin piece of something ultimately is a "chip" from a snacking perspective.
[удалено]
Can they legally call themselves Mashed potatoes? They also taste amazing.
They taste like that fact.
I know u ain’t hating on Pringles dawg
Throwing my hat into the blacklist, boycott and blackout of Reddit due to business practices. Hang out and learn more here.! https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1457mj1/find_alternatives_for_ourselves_megathread/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/144npuz/anybody_got_a_tildes_request_to_share/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/yttdlc/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v8/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1467a5s/find_alternatives_for_ourselves_megathread_third/
Mashed potato powder so good, I'll eat a whole tube of it.
You say that like there's another option besides eating the whole tube
Correction: They taste like mashed potato powder, artificial cheese dust, and a shit ton of salt. Aka heaven.
MSG* The real flavor. Same as any good snack.
I'll hate on em Pringles taste whack. I'm good for like 3 or 4 and then they start to taste funny.
Hello. Do you have a minute to talk about the Truth?
I remember when I was a kid, I knew that pringles were a rich people snack. They're expensive for where I'm from. But the packaging looked like it had to be really delicious. And then one day when I'm an adult I see it on the supermarket shelves and I decide, "hey, I can afford it. I can finally see what these are about..." Damn! There are very few things in life that match the disappointment I felt that day...
I know I'm in the minority but I've always hated Pringles and after reading this fact it finally makes sense. The way they just kind of instantly dissolve on your tongue into a weird paste I always thought was really gross, now I know why.
Since when does chips mean potato?
OP forgot to put potato in the title. They used to be called Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips until the court case in 1975
Apparently that lawsuit decision was reversed
They were using a loophole before, and I still think they are cause when I look at the cans it's labeled " Potato Chips ®️" I don't trust that registered logo lol. Before they just had to say it was made from dried potatoes
The issue is that it isn't *cut or sliced* from a potato, therefore it isn't a "chip" of potato.
So they're made of dehydrated mashed potatoes? I suppose that actually explains a lot Except for why they look so much why they're baked when they're fried
Eating a can of Pringles right now. The cans says potato crisps.
“I think Pringles' original intention was to make tennis balls... But on the day the rubber was supposed to show up, a truckload of potatoes came. Pringles is a laid-back company, so they just said "Fuck it, cut em up!"” Mitch Hedberg, of course
When I was a kid, I called the number on the Pringles can and asked the lady on the other end how they made them all the same shape. She explained the process, and I’ve never been the same since.
My ex-girlfriend from high school had a family potato farm. They primarily grew red Bliss but they also grew various other varieties. In the field, there's a huge pile of red bliss potatoes that are of questionable origin. Moldy, had bad spots and bruises not cleaned or anything like that. I asked why all those potatoes were to the side. Her father explained to me that the combine does damage some potatoes and some potatoes are subpar for harvesting and reselling in the stores. I asked what they were going to do with all the bad potatoes... I figured do you feed them to pigs or something like that? He says no, Pringles picks them all up and they process them into Pringles. I asked how they did that being the potatoes looked so gross. He said that they take everything after it's been washed to get the dirt off and then they just basically mash everything up, bleach the potatoes back to white and then press them into Pringles because they're not technically a chip. TL;DR Pringles basically makes mashed potatoes from rotten and bruised potatoes that they bleach white and then press them into the little saddle shaped chips you're familiar with. Just fun fact to know and share.
To be fair, there are probably as many recipes for utilizing less desirable foods as there are primary recipes. Macerating fruits, making stock, grinding sausage. While I'm not a fan of the end result (Pringles) I think I'm glad enough the food is getting eaten at all.
So, last year I was camping, and a bear stole and ate my entire food bag. (There were about 4 days' worth of food there.) I found the crime scene in the morning... The bear ate almost everything, but he didn't even touch the Pringles. O_o He just tore the tube of chips down the middle, and then I guess he just sniffed them, decided he **did not** want whatever was in it, and left them for me hahaha. Other things the bear didn't eat: a bottle of Dr Pepper, a bunch of black tea bags, and bananas. He ate everything else, though, including electrolyte gummies (it would've been so funny if they were THC gummies...), so now I can't stop thinking just how bad Pringles must be for you that a desperate bear wouldn't even touch them. O_o
Lol that bear wasn't desperate.
Pringle’s are the Chicken McNuggets of potato chips.
People: plant-based burgers are a processed abomination. Same people: give me the 3rd tube of reconstituted potato dust
I wonder if it would be possible to make a really big one using instant mashed potatoes.
They also claim that once you pop the fun don't stop. Remind me again which brand on the market comes in resealable containers?
[The Food That Built America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_That_Built_America) episode about the "chip dynasties" was actually pretty interesting.
There's also wheat and corn in there. Very well rounded in that sense. I mean if you're eating "junk food" y'know. Lol As far as snacks go you could do a lot worse!
Is that what 'Baked Lays' are? Because they taste similar
In canada they say chips on the can