It's Fat Tuesday — at least according to the Catholic calendar — but feel free to skip the religion and indulge in paczki, a plump jelly doughnut with a long Eastern European tradition.
And now for a special expressive interjections edition of Eater Today, featuring Yelp (itself a cross between an expressive interjection and an onomatopoeia); a new and improved alcohol warning poster not from the CDC; even more unfortunate news out of Flint, Mich.; Amazon's new sommelier service; and ugh, people are still talking about Payton Manning's favorite beer.
But first! A gif that will make you go "aw":
— Today in news that will make you go "mmhmm": Remember last week when the Center for Disease Control and Prevention decided to put out a poster suggesting that drunk women are responsible for their own unwanted STDs and pregnancies? Well Brokelyn fixed that mess:
— News that will make you go "eh": Yelp — the site well-known for its restaurant reviews but better known for restaurateurs who hate Yelpers and their ilk — released its quarterly earnings for the last quarter of 2015 and first there was some sort of snafu with how and when the press release went out and then CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and company were super vague on the webcast presentation for investors. Yelp says their Seatme brand, a restaurant reservations software, is slowly stealing marketshare from OpenTable (which is about 80 percent bigger than Yelp), but they wouldn't disclose any real numbers. Meanwhile, the company's food delivery service Eat24 saw 24 percent year over year growth, which is good but basically means its not yet in a place to compete with Seamless/Grubhub and might not be fleshed out enough even to compete with upstarts like UberEats and Amazon. Yelp plans to spend 14 million on advertising in the first quarter of 2016 though, so who knows what will happen.
— News that will make you go "ugh": While a city under his purview suffers from widespread lead poisoning due to incredibly disgusting politics and suspect budget cuts, the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, celebrated his wife's birthday this past weekend by buying her an elaborate cake decorated with luxury goods.
— News that will make you go "ew": People are somehow still talking about Payton Manning's favorite beer and whether or not he got paid to shill for one of the country's biggest beer companies. Either way, it's annoying.
— Finally, new to make you go "huh?": According to the Verge, Amazon Japan just launched a phone-based sommelier service. Users curious about any bottle of wine on the site simply request a call from a sommelier and almost instantly they're connected with a personal, professional wine consultant. No word on if the service will ever hit the U.S.