DL Open Thread Sunday Magazine: March 8, 2026

McMeh.  CEO grudgingly nibbles at McDonald’s new sandwich:

Social media can be so cruel…:

“When the CEO calls it product instead of food you know its got less nutritional value than the napkin.”  (Well, those are whole grain napkins…)

“Watching the McDonald’s CEO tentatively nibble on the Big Arch like it’s a radioactive artifact from the dollar menu, calling it ‘product’ instead of food, is the most unintentionally hilarious endorsement fail since New Coke.”

“Is this his first day being human? Did they use an AI clone (so he didn’t have to take an actual bite)? Does he desperately want people to think he is the same lizard species as the pre-updated Mark Zuckerberg?”

“I thought about that, but then I thought who’s gonna tell the CEO ‘we can’t upload it because you come off like you’ve never eaten a burger in your life’?”

In (what passes for) fairness, I wouldn’t eat it either.  It would be my last meal on Earth as I would never survive the heart attack that would inevitably follow.  Average price?: $8.88, better, granted, than $6.66.  1200 calories, thing weighs a pound.  BTW, just curious, what’s with the CEO for McDonald’s looking like someone who considers a carrot stick a splurge?

Disco–In Pictures.  Not gonna lie–disco was never my thing.  But, these pictures…check ’em out.  I’ll share just one to lure you in:

The band Labelle comprised singers Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Patti LaBelle,

seen performing on Cher, a music and variety show fronted by the singer, in 1975Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images

Six Bizarre Movies That Are Fun To Watch.  I’m kinda drawn towards this one:

Iron Sky is the sort of movie that demands a long-form investigation into how many hallucinogens were consumed during its production. The premise: Facing defeat in 1945, a group of Nazis flees to the moon and establishes the Fourth Reich, waiting for the right time to retake Earth—that is, until they are inadvertently discovered by an American astronaut. One of the most expensive Finnish films ever produced, this science-fiction farce has everything: a swastika-shaped Nazi base on the dark side of the moon, a U.S. space warship named after George W. Bush, and an American president who sends people into space as a reelection stunt, complete with campaign posters on the lunar lander (a move that no longer seems so implausible).

It’s on Prime video–I have that one!  You bring the hallucinogens, I’ll provide the TV set.  Deal?

A very late addition.  The ‘AI’ recommended this, and, well, it blew me away.  An entire live concert from I’m With Her.  Just, wow:

What the ‘O’ In O’Clock Stands For.  I never knew.  Did you?:

The origin of “o’clock,” however, goes back much further than the Gilded Age. It doesn’t stand for “hour,” and it’s not derived from some whimsical Irish surname, either.

“O’clock” is a shortened form of the phrases “of the clock” and “of clock,” which people began using to communicate the time after the invention of clocks. Saying it was five “of the clock” essentially meant five “according to the clock.”

“When mechanical clocks became more widespread in Europe around the 14th century, people needed a way to distinguish the hour shown on a clock from other ways of telling time, such as by the sun or church bells,” said Esteban Touma, a cultural and linguistic expert at the language-learning app Babbel. “If someone said ‘three,’ that could once have meant three hours after sunrise or simply a rough point in the day. Saying ‘three of the clock’ clarified that you meant the specific hour indicated on a mechanical clock face.”

The phrase “of the clock” appeared in writing as early as 1384 (as “ten of the clokke”), with “of clock” showing up in 1419 (“eyghte of clok”). There’s recorded evidence of the shortened “o’clock” ― written as “four oclock” ― dating as early as 1560.

“The contracted form, ‘o’clock,’ became standardized in Early Modern English, around the 16th and 17th centuries, and has remained in everyday use ever since,” Touma said, describing the term as “a fossil ― a surviving fragment of a much longer medieval phrase that we no longer use in full.”