Mayonnaise liqueur and unmanned AI flights, it’s April 1 again

NOS News•today, 12:29•Amended today, 12:31

Your lace is probably not loose and you don’t have a stain on your shirt either: for all the gullible among us, it’s time to pay attention. It is not only Easter Monday, but also April 1. From a meditation exercise that allows you to charge your phone with ‘positive energy’ to a HEMA Worst Drive-Thru: marketing teams are having fun again.

As usual, some companies respond to social trends with their April Fool’s jokes.

Housing association Staedion in The Hague came up with ‘a temporary promotion’ where people could put their newborn baby on the waiting list for social housing. Then “your little one can leave home when he is an adult.”

Inspired by highway blockades, construction company Tala from Broekland announced that it will install ecological homes on the A1. The company wants to enforce “strict and fair requirements for sustainable construction”. “Post your home or yourself.”

And more attention is being paid to the health of students: Utrecht University of Applied Sciences “will check for scabies in special changing rooms”, according to student magazine Trajectum. Students with the skin disease receive an information flyer with tips from the GGD – ‘in charge of the animal’ – on how to get rid of it.

Trajecumutrecht shares on Instagram how the checks are going:

Artificial intelligence also lends itself to April Fool’s jokes, writes the ANP news agency. Anyone who flies cheaply knows that budget airlines do everything they can to keep costs down. An airline ticket salesman coined “AI(R) flights,” without “human pilots and cabin crew.” A flight that is completely carried out by artificial intelligence.

The Banking Disciplinary Foundation is introducing a “first” with the “first bank employee with AI classification” who will take the banker’s oath. The employee’s name: Chazia Chatbot. “Now that chatbots have acquired their own place within the banking sector, it is more than logical that they too can take the banker’s oath.”

Efteling came up with a new attraction: a storybook with blank pages, “mainly made with an eraser”, to improve the imagination of young people. This would have decreased due to iPad use.

People are proud of Efteling’s creativity:

A meditation app came up with an exercise that allows you to charge your phone with ‘positive energy’, so you’ll never be left with an empty battery again. Blue Band introduced butter that already contains sprinkles, so it doesn’t fall off the plate.

Domino’s came up with a crust-only pizza that you can dip in an ‘After Dinner Dip’. Italians will be happy with that.

And if the introduction of Hugo hadn’t made drink lovers angry enough: Gall and Gall is today introducing mayonnaise-flavored liqueur.