• Scrubbles
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    3 months ago

    Always remember what really happened with the McDonald’s lady who sued because her “coffee was too hot”.

    McDonald’s themselves started the campaign that the issue was laughable, and seeded the notion that it’s ridiculous, how could she not know coffee hot?

    What really happened was that the coffee was:

    • Served well above safe ranges to maximize profits, so the coffee could be served longer
    • Was served near boiling temperature
    • Was so hot that it FUSED HER LABIA requiring extensive surgery to repair.

    She sued only for her hospital bills.

    They started a smear campaign against her to convince the public that she was a moron and she just wanted a payday.

    Don’t trust corporations. Ever.

    • @Nommer@sh.itjust.works
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      2303 months ago

      Not to mention they were warned many times before about serving coffee that’s too hot. The woman got such a huge settlement because the judge was tired of McDonald’s crap

      • @butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world
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        1073 months ago

        Also they calculated the cost of lawsuits like that and decided they would make more money selling it that hot than they would lose in lawsuits over how hot the coffee was.

    • The Picard ManeuverOPM
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      3 months ago

      What’s that old quote? “A lie can make it around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”, or something like that? I believe that was pre-internet too.

      It also happens with politics. I constantly see provocative headlines get lots of attention in one circle, and then the later corrections only get passed around in the opposite circle, if at all.

      • Scrubbles
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        213 months ago

        Look at just yesterday. One clickbait site said Beyonce was going to perform at the dnc, and by the time the truth and correction made it around it was already past time

      • @Facebones@reddthat.com
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        143 months ago

        Plus those corrections only show up as a footnote on articles without it being altered or removed. Its laughable.

        • @ulterno
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          13 months ago

          That’s weird. Ideally you should put it right next to the title, that there has been an addendum and the following might be incorrect/outdated.

          • lad
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            63 months ago

            That depends on what your goal is, I think

            • @ulterno
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              23 months ago

              I’d consider the goal be to:

              1. Keep the original article for historical and reference purposes
              2. Make sure that anyone who only cared to read the first sentence, didn’t leave with confident misinformation.
              • lad
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                33 months ago

                Your goals are too honest for mass media 😅

      • Possibly linux
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        133 months ago

        Its even worse in science. Lots of crazy headlines that are later debunked quietly

          • Possibly linux
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            23 months ago

            I wasn’t talking about vaccinations. I was talking about fusion and other buzzy topics.

          • Possibly linux
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            53 months ago

            Which directly impacts funding

            That’s the big issue. If a project doesn’t have big headlines frequently it is killed.

            • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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              13 months ago

              I think more likely is that the news outlets need the revenue from clicks, and are willing to trade their reputation to get them. Accurate science journalism doesn’t pay, capitalism is a race to the bottom.

    • @Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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      643 months ago

      Also, she got second degree burns, and she was not the first person to be injured by the coffee, and McDonald’s was told multiple times that they served their coffee too hot.

      During the trial, McDonald’s showed zero care for the the people they injured, to the point that most of the fine that McDonald’s ended up paying was punitive damages

        • shrugs
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          13 months ago

          Tbh, I don’t get it. How can a coffee, that can be max 100°C cause such burns? I would have never believed hot/boiling water is that dangerous, without that story.

          • @SoJB@lemmy.ml
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            403 months ago

            That’s literally a temperature you would cook meat with

            What do you think people are made of?

            • @ulterno
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              13 months ago

              TIL, videos saying “cook meat at 180°” actually meant 180°F and not 180°C.

              Now I have to check what my induction stove means when it reads 180 in deep frying mode.

              • lad
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                63 months ago

                Afaik it means °C usually, but when boiling meat it will be cooked at 100°C give or take.

                But since well done steak is supposed to be 71°C, everything hotter than that would sooner or later cook the meat.

                • @ulterno
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                  03 months ago

                  Considering that Google says 350°F - 375°F for deep frying and that I am in a °C country, I would lean more this way.

                  Of course, I have never cooked meat and have no idea what deep frying meat at 180°C would do.

                  • lad
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                    13 months ago

                    Ah, I don’t know about deep frying, I was speaking about boiling, baking, and air frying, rather. Maybe my point is not valid in that case

              • @XTL@sopuli.xyz
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                23 months ago

                Hot air/gas, hot water/liquid, and a hot solid behaved very differently. The numbers depend a lot on what’s being measured. There’s also a big variable of time.

                • @ulterno
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                  -23 months ago

                  The cheap induction stove is not really measuring anything.

                  Its PWM has been tuned to get to the temperature the user selects, under whatever testing conditions they had while R&D. The displayed temperature is just the user selected temperature.

                  But setting it to 120(whatever unit) manages to make good enough french fries, so that’s fine by me.

          • @bran_buckler@lemmy.world
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            323 months ago

            Boiling water is extremely dangerous! Water at 140°F (60°C) will cause a serious burn in 3 seconds. Even water at 120°F (49°C) will cause a serious burn within 10 minutes. Source

            • @ulterno
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              3 months ago

              deleted by creator

              ∵ oopsie replied to the wrong comment

          • Scrubbles
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            173 months ago

            Well, scalding hot water, some of the hottest you are legally allowed to have set out of a water heater, is about 130 degrees F, or 54 degrees C. That will scald you in a few seconds.

            Her coffee was near double that. So, ice at 0, can burn you at 54, and then around 100 degrees… Yeah.

          • @Avanera@sh.itjust.works
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            53 months ago

            I mean, it’s easy to believe when you consider what might happen if you put your hand into a boiling pot of pasta, for example.

    • @FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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      3 months ago

      I dont understand this, coffee is generally made with near boiling hot water. Many coffee machines make the coffee in front of your eyes. Of course its served boiling hot, no?

      I mean her accident is extremely unfortunate, but her needing money for medical bills is a problem with society, not mcdonalds.

      • Scrubbles
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        3 months ago

        Coffee is brewed near boiling, but the hottest it should be served is 60 degrees C, or around 140 degrees F. Basically her temperature was the same as it was literally coming out of the machine, no one takes a big gulp of coffee the second it comes out of the machine.

        McDonalds kept their coffee as hot as possible to give the illusion it was fresher than it was. By keeping the coffee at 190-200F then they believed that customers would feel that the coffee was fresher, even though they knew it was unsafe to serve coffee that hot.

        Larger places follow the same rules here, while coffee is brewed extremely hot it usually rests for a bit before serving unless a customer explicitly asks for it. In restaurants it’s served for you. Even Starbucks most of their drinks are milk based which cools the coffee, except for Americanos which are just espresso and hot water, and you’ll usually see those with an insulator cup to highlight that

        Found this, which explains serving coffee better than I can. https://mtpak.coffee/2022/08/takeaway-cups-coffee-temperature-ideal-serving/

        https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts

        McDonald’s admitted it had known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years. The risk had repeatedly been brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits.

        • @FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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          13 months ago

          Many places here you get your coffee straight from the machine that brews it (as in you press the button yourself), far too hot to drink immediately.