McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion dollars to find out why families stopped coming. I can save them the 8.5 billion. They took out the playground. The plan, announced Wednesday at investor day. Better food, faster service, new equipment, AI tools, hospitality training, and a bigger push into chicken and beverages. They call it Next. The goal, they say, is making customers feel more comfortable. Wall Street loved it so much the stock fell 5 percent to its lowest since 2022. Over five years McDonald's shares are down 3 percent. Burger King's parent is up 14. The owner of Taco Bell and KFC is up 13. This is not a hamburger problem. This is a McDonald's problem. So let us talk about who used to eat there. Parents. That was the whole business. Parents at 5:40 on a Tuesday with three kids in the back and nothing thawed at home. You did not go for the burger. You went because your kids could run screaming through a plastic tube for 40 minutes while you sat with a coffee and experienced silence. That was the product. The food was the cover charge. The first PlayPlace opened in 1971 in Birmingham, Alabama, and for fifty years it did one job. It made small children demand to go to McDonald's. Then 2020 arrived, every play area in the country closed, and a great many never came back. The equipment came out during a remodeling program named Experience of the Future. The Experience of the Future turned out to be a touchscreen. Their own chief executive said he did not know if ball pits were in their future. Sir, you were not selling ball pits. You were selling forty minutes. So now there is no counter, no playground, and no reason for a seven year old to want to go. A screen, a window, and a bag. And for that we pay prices that require a moment of reflection in the parking lot. For thin, overcooked, oddly uniform pucks that taste like a memory of beef. I did not love them because they were good. I loved them because I was eight and there was a slide. And have you seen the new buildings. The old ones were unmistakable. Red roof, yellow arches, legible from a highway at 70 to a child who could not yet read. The new ones are a flat gray box with a small logo and a drive through wrapped around it. A regional claims office with a fryer. They removed the color, the characters, the counter, and the playground, and then hired consultants to find out why it no longer feels like anywhere. Which is why, when I have to eat fast food, I go to Chick-fil-A. Not for the politics. For the competence. They have led the customer satisfaction index for fast food eleven years running, and average 8.5 million dollars per location against McDonald's 4 million. More than double, while closed on Sundays. Fifty two days a year with the lights off, and still double. A seventeen year old hands you a bag and says my pleasure and means it about 70 percent, which is 70 percent more than a touchscreen has managed. McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion on hospitality training. Chick-fil-A earns 8.5 million per restaurant by just having some. So here is my consulting proposal, free of charge, on behalf of mothers everywhere. Put the playgrounds back. Not a nostalgia campaign. Not a retro cup. The structure. Tubes, slides, a door the kids cannot open from the inside, and a bench where a tired woman can sit. And understand what you are buying, because it is not lunch. A six year old does not know your food is bad. He has no basis for comparison and no functioning palate. He thinks the burger is incredible because he is standing in a castle made of tubes. That is the window. That is the only window you get. You catch them before the taste buds arrive, and thirty years later they drive past your sign, feel something they cannot explain, and pull in anyway. That is not a menu strategy. That is imprinting, and you shut it down in 2020 to save on cleaning. Eight and a half billion dollars for AI tools and hospitality training. Or a slide. 🦋

My respect for Judge Judy just SKYROCKETED INTO THE STRATOSPHERE!!!! 🚀

🚨INCREDIBLE: During a multi-vehicle collision on the Route 90 bridge in Ocean City, Maryland, a 2-year-old girl was ejected from a pickup truck, falling nearly 30 feet into the Assawoman Bay below. Jonathan Bauer, who was driving across the bridge with his teenage daughter when the crash occurred, rushed over to inspect the wreckage. Looking down into the water, he saw the toddler floating face down and becoming unresponsive. Without hesitation, Bauer instructed his daughter to flag down first responders, removed his shoes, and leapt off the bridge into the bay. He swam to the little girl, lifted her onto his shoulder, and patted her back until she coughed up water and began breathing again. A passing pontoon boat quickly navigated toward them, pulling both Bauer and the toddler out of the water and transporting them to shore, where emergency personnel were waiting. The child was airlifted to a regional medical center for evaluation and released the following day in good condition. Bauer was later honored by local law enforcement and civic leaders for his decisive actions and selflessness.

I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. Just let people keep their money. Stop taking money from people, siphoning it through the government and then handing it out to other people. IT DOESNT WORK

🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration is reportedly drafting a plan pushed by JD Vance to give federal child care funds to married couples with a STAY-AT-HOME SPOUSE while the other parent works — NYT The program could be $9K per year for these families The goal: make it easier for married Americans to let one parent take care of the children, rather than both work and pay others to take care of the children This could create an incentive for parents to "stay at home with their children" Apparently, this is similar to a MARCO RUBIO proposal when he was Senator 👀 It sounds like this would be under current federal programs, not new laws passed by Congress

There's a "Live, Laugh, Love"-ification of the classroom happening now with millennial teachers. The decor, the typeface, the poster slogans. It's a very effeminate, Pinterest board atmosphere

CAN'T STOP WINNING. 🎮 Build the wall. Deport. Fill a Trump Account. LIVE - PLAY NOW 📲 ARCADE.GOV

BREAKING: Florida becomes the first state to block welfare cash from being spent on tattoos, theme park tickets, video games, vapes, & other non-essential purchases.

I was appalled by what happened during the Indiana Fever game last night. Chicago's Natasha Cloud threatened former NBA player and future WNBA first-round pick Enes Kanter. There is simply no place for this type of woman-on-woman violence in our society and it needs to stop.