Northern Lights and Stuff

The Arora borealis was visible in Britain a few days ago. There was a purple and green smears in the sky, it looked out of place and a bit bizarre. 

Shortly before we had the northern lights, Mc Donald's were adding miniature Uno playing card decks to their happy meals. My 5 year old isn't interested in that game but it's fun for all ages, even adults; I thought it was a good idea. Uno is a straight forward game to play, you are given 5 cards from a shuffled deck, one card is placed facing up on the table and each player has to find a card  that is related to the card on the table, the number, colour or icon can be used. The goal of the game is to lose all your cards before the other players. It's a bit like dominos. Your card becomes the card on the table if it is related to the target card. 

These days I order my food with an app on my phone and I can use a table number as a reference. One thing all fast food restaurants have in common is their ice cream machine stops working often.  I don't know why. Perhaps the moving parts overheat or something like that. 

Little Perks

Recently McDonald's in Britain relaunched their double peel monopoly game. They attach two small tabs to certain menu items, when you peel the tabs off you expose a small laminated playing card that is slightly smaller than a stamp with a prize or monopoly property on it. The tabs resemble a monopoly property card in miniature but they also have a unique key code that identifies them in the app game. 

If you gain all the properties of a district, you unlock a prize. Sometimes the tab doesn't have a monopoly piece but just a prize like a meal item for free. The most I have won on McDonald's monopoly is a skystore voucher, it lets you buy a digital movie for up to £10 in value. Quite often I will win an apple pie or free drink. To bank the property piece you must go into the McDonald's app and enter the code. You can scan it with your camera. 

The districts I would like to unlock are the 100k ones and the electric car. I don't care too much about the holiday or experience voucher.  Perhaps the large online store vouchers would be a good treat. 

Playing McDonald's monopoly is very much like playing bingo; you have to complete a whole section to win the prize. It is fun 😊

It is clever marketing because people will associate the monopoly board game with McDonald's and McDonald's with monopoly. The two products are helping us to remember them together. They both start with the letter M. 

Happy meal book

When I get a McDonald's Happy meal for my son, I choose the free book over the toy. When I first got the book, I thought it would be a silly glorified leaflet or a tacky book with very large font and a few pages, I was wrong. It was a 50 page comprehensive story book from a famous brand in standard font. 

I was very impressed by the quality you get from the book and I even enjoyed reading the book to my son. The only thing I worry about is if I get a duplicate book next time. 

It was while I realized that McDonald's children's books are good that I learned that Tucker Carlson cut a deal with Elon Musk to be a Twitter platform top man like Joe Rogan is for Spotify. I'm not sure how they will do it though, will he have his own box or panel on the site or will it just diligently distribute his videos to everyone, I don't know. 

Freedom of speech wins this time. 

Raids and views

I saw a viral video of about 50 young teenagers raiding a McDonald's restaurant in Nottingham. I thought to myself, how can 50 young people come together and agree to do it. They even threatened the staff. They jumped over the counter and went into the kitchen and stole the food. The sad thing is the police won't be able to do much because they look like they are too young to face prosecution. I feel like my country is turning into a lawless mess. People are getting stabbed, there is armed robberies happening everywhere and crime is rising very high. The mind has to be somewhere else, I feel scared of the winter months because it will be my first winter paying over 10p per killowatt-hour for gas, heating a home will be challenging. 

I had a look at the 'James Webb' space telescope website jwst.nasa.gov, I noticed they have been looking at Jupiter recently. I thought they were wasting time because there is already a Juno space probe going around the planet. They also zoomed into the cartwheel galaxy and saw structures that were hidden from other telescopes. The hubble telescope can see infra-red light but it can't see mid infra-red so there is a whole other spectrum that is visible with this new telescope. I'm just wondering when they're going to zoom into 'Proxima B' our nearest known exoplanet that is going around the Proxima Centauri red dwarf star, the nearest known star to the Sun. 

Mcdonald's win

Over the last month I have been playing McDonald's monopoly. To play, you buy McDonald's food items and peel off the tab that is stuck on the meal packaging.

I have won a few trivial things and collected some tabs. I have won food items and vouchers. The best prise I have won is a £10 sky store voucher, I can get a free digital movie or TV show.

I like the game because it is better than scratch cards because you always get something. If you loose,  you still have the food or drink you bought and a collectable tab that could be used later.

I try to get one every day so I will see what happens. It is very fun and I think it is a very good idea.