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Want to know how much you spent on Uber Eats this past year? If the answer is no, bad luck. Just days after Saturday Night Live dropped a satirical skit about an “Uber Eats wrapped,” Uber brought the feature to life with a year-end recap. Around this time each year, platforms from Spotify to YouTube start rolling out personalized recaps, breaking down how users spent their time over the past 12 months. The next logical step? A full accounting of every Uber trip taken and every guilt-ridden Uber Eats order placed this year. On Monday, the company launched its new year-in-review feature called YOUBER, which compiles users activity across both Uber and Uber Eats. The recap shows where you went, how often you splurged on Uber Comfort, and just how frequently you returned to the same takeout spot. If you rank in the top 1% of a restaurants customers, YOUBER will let you know, whether or not that realization fills you with pride or shame. In the SNL sketch, one character learns hes eaten more chicken nuggets than 99% of users worldwide. Another is assigned an Uber Eats agea riff on Spotifys listening ageonly to be told his is Dead. Better than mine, his wife replies. 52 and fat. The parody recap also shows users the compromising and unflattering ways they appeared to the delivery driver while grabbing their food from their doorway. Finally, the app shows personalized messages from customers most frequented restaurants, and calculates the total spent on deliveriesin this case, $24,000. Ubers real version is slightly less brutal. The YOUBER featurecurrently available only in the U.S.can be accessed via a banner in the app and presents users with a card of their stats. That includes total rides, top order, most-used ride type, Uber rating, and one of 14 assigned Uber Personality Profiles, such as Do-Gooder for Uber Electric loyalists, Rise & Shiner for early-morning riders, or Delivery Darling for users who live for deliveries of all kinds. Of course, all shareable on social media if youre brave enough. Alongside individual recaps, Uber also shared global highlights from its 2025 data. The longest ride of the year stretched nearly 700 miles from Austin, Texas, to Pensacola, Florida, taking around 11 hours. Meanwhile, Uber Eats largest order of the year was a Chinese food delivery containing more than 180 items.
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E-Commerce
The proposed $85 billion merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads has lost the support of two unions that represent more than half their workers over concerns it will jeopardize safety and jobs, raise shipping rates and consumer prices, and cause significant disruptions. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division are among the most prominent critics of the deal to create the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. When they officially announce their decision Wednesday, they will join the American Chemistry Council, an assortment of agricultural groups, and competing railroad BNSF in raising concerns the merger would hurt competition. The deal has the support of the nation’s largest rail union, which represents conductors and hundreds of individual shippers, and President Donald Trump has said the deal sounds good to him. The U.S. Surface Transportation Board will weigh the opinions of all stakeholders to determine whether the merger is in the public interest once the railroads file their formal application, which is expected later this week. Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena has argued that creating a railroad that stretches from coast to coast would be good for the economy because without the need for a hand-off between railroads in the middle of the country rail shipments would move faster, meaning it could better compete against trucking. But after months of meetings with Vena and other executives, the presidents of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division unionsboth affiliated with the Teamsterssaid they have serious doubts about the potential benefits, and warned the promises Vena made to preserve jobs aren’t detailed enough to be reliable. The unions say there’s nothing to keep the companies from transferring jobs hundreds of miles away or to prevent the sale of some UP lines to short-line railroads that pay less. Union Pacific said in a statement that every employee with a union job at the time of the merger will continue to have one. Weve formalized this jobs-for-life agreement with five unions. Vena has acknowledged that the number of employees at the combined railroad could still shrink through attrition, if workers leave on their own. Rail unions worry about safety and shippers This proposed monopoly will end up costing businesses more and those costs will be passed on to consumers, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen National President Mark Wallace said. “We believe this transcontinental railroad will make shipping by rail less attractive as the merged carrier passes off rail lines that serve small towns, factories and farms to short line railroads while running miles-long slow-moving trains on the main line. For rail customers it will be a choice between Hell or the highway.’ The unions say they are worried that safety could deteriorate after a merger, because Union Pacific hasn’t made the same improvements Norfolk Southern has in the two and a half years since the disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Vena and Norfolk Southern CEO Mark George have said they are optimistic the merger will be approved because they believe it will be good for the country, their customers and rail workers. Shareholders of both railroads overwhelmingly support it. Deal faces stringent review The Surface Transportation Board will review the deal under a tough new standard it adopted in 2001 after a series of disastrous rail mergers in the 1990s that led to shipment delays of weeks or even months. These untested rules require any merger of the six largest railroads to be in the public interest and show that it will enhance competition. When the Surface Transportation Board approved the first major rail merger in more than two decades two years ago, it used a less stringent standard allowing Canadian Pacific’s $31 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern. Transportation expert and DePaul University Professor Joe Schwieterman said many people have questioned the Union Pacific merger because of its scope and the likelihood that it could trigger another merger, resulting in only two American railroads. Everyone will examine the merger application closely, Schwieterman said. Currently, Norfolk Southern and CSX serve the eastern U.S. while Union Pacific and BNSF serve the west, and the two major Canadian rails compete where they can with their tracks crossing Canada and extending into the United States and Mexico. A merged Union Pacific would likely control more than 40% of the nations freight. This merger is like nothing weve seen before. Its creating a railroad of such enormous scope that its somewhat of a paradigm shift, Schwieterman said. Competitors question the benefits BNSF’s Chief of Staff Zak Andersen said his railroad, which is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is convinced this merger would be bad for competition and lead to higher rates and fewer options for shippers. No customer is asking for this. This is strictly a Wall Street play for shareholders, Andersen said. Earlier this fall, Buffett and CPKC’s CEO both said they weren’t interested in any kind of rail merger right now. Instead, they believe the railroads should continue to find ways to cooperate to deliver shipments more quickly, which can be done without all the complications of a merger. Still, CSX decided to replace its CEO this fall with an executive who has a background leading companies through major mergers. Josh Funk, AP transportation writer
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Fernando Moreno has been on dialysis for about two years, enduring an “unbearable” wait for a new kidney to save his life. His limited world of social contacts has meant that his hopes have hinged on inching up the national waiting list for a transplant.That was until earlier this year, when the Philadelphia hospital where he receives treatment connected him with a promising pilot project that has paired him with “angel advocates” Good Samaritan strangers scattered around the country who leverage their own social media contacts to share his story.So far, the Great Social Experiment, as it was named by its founder, Los Angeles filmmaker David Krissman, hasn’t found the Vineland, New Jersey, truck driver a living kidney donor. But there are encouraging early signs the angel advocate approach is working, and there’s no question it has given Moreno new optimism.“This process is great,” said Moreno, 50, whose own father died of kidney failure at 65. “I’m just hoping there will be somebody out there that’s willing to take a chance.”Moreno is part of a pilot program with 15 patients that began in May at three Pennsylvania hospitals. It’s testing whether motivated, volunteer strangers can help improve the chances of finding a life-saving match for a new kidney particularly for people with limited social networks.“We know how this has always been done, and we’re trying to put that on steroids and really get them the help that they need,” Krissman said. “Most patients are too sick to do this on their own many don’t have the skills to do it on their own.” Seeking a blueprint for the future The Gift of Life Donor Program, which serves as the organ procurement network for eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware, is supporting the pilot program with a grant of more than $100,000 from its foundation.So far, two of the five patients in the program through Temple University Hospital have found kidney donors, and one is preparing for surgery, according to Ryan Ihlenfeldt, the hospital’s director of clinical transplant services. One of the five patients at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Harrisburg has also undergone a transplant.The approach Krissman has developed is something new, said Richard Hasz Jr., Gift of Life’s chief executive, and may help identify the types of messages that attract and motivate potential live kidney donors.“This is the first of its kind that I’m aware of,” Hasz said. “That’s why, I think, the foundation was so interested in doing it studying it and hopefully publishing it so we can create that blueprint, if you will, for the future.”Gift of Life agreed to fund a broader test and helped Krissman identify five patients each at Temple, UPMC-Harrisburg and Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.Hasz said the pilot program’s approach combines social media outreach with Krissman’s storytelling talents and aggressive efforts to mobilize the patients’ own connections.“We know that patients who are waiting don’t always have the energy or the resources to do this themselves,” Hasz said.There have been other ways for patients to set up “microsites” where they can tell their stories and seek a donor match. But the pilot program currently underway in Pennsylvania aims to connect patients with a wide universe of potential donors and produce videos and other ways to spread their message. Potential to ‘snowball’ Krissman’s bout with an illness about two decades ago inspired him to tackle the sticky challenge of increasing live kidney donations. He was debilitated for more than a year before medication helped him recover, explaining, “It gave me my life back. And I never forgot what it’s like to be chronically sick.”After producing a podcast on kidney transplantation, Krissman recruited four patients through Facebook who were waiting for kidneys. He was able to help two of them. A second effort, a pilot program with three patients in North Carolina that ended last year, helped match all three with living donors.Becca Brown, director of transplant services at UPMC-Harrisburg, thinks it might be a game changer.“There’s potential for this to really snowball,” Brown said. “I’m anxious to see what happens and if we can roll it out to other patients.”Some 90,000 people in the United States are on a list for a kidney transplant, and most of the roughly 28,000 kidneys that were transplanted last year came from deceased donors. Living kidney donations are hard to come by about 6,400 were transplanted last year. Thousands die each year waiting for an organ transplant in the United States.Living kidney donations can be a better match, reducing the risk of organ rejection. They allow for surgery to be planned for a time that is optimal for the donor, the recipient and the transplant team. And, the foundation says, living donor kidneys, on average, last longer than kidneys from deceased donors.The National Kidney Foundation says living donors must be at least 18 years old, although some transplant centers set the minimum age at 21. Potential donors get screened for health problems and can be ruled out if they have uncontrolled high blood pressure, diabetes or cancer, or if they are smokers.Many living donors make “directed donations” to specify who will get their kidney. Nondirected donations are made anonymously to a patient. A way to make a difference Francis Beaumier, a 38-year-old information technology worker from Green Bay, Wisconsin, came into contact with the angel advocate program after being a double living donor a kidney and part of his liver.He sees the program as “a great little way for everyone to make a small difference.”Another angel advocate, Holly Armstrong, was also a living donor. She hopes her efforts will plant a seed.“Some people might just keep scrolling,” said Armstrong, who lives in Lake Wiley, South Carolina. “But there might be someone like me, where they stop scrolling and say, ‘This boy needs a kidney.'”A study released last year found that people who volunteer to donate a kidney are at a lower risk of death from the operation than doctors had previously thought. Tracking 30 years of living kidney donations, researchers found fewer than 1 in every 10,000 donors died within three months of the surgery. Newer and safer surgical techniques were credited for dropping the risk from 3 deaths per 10,000 living donors.Temple serves a large cohort of poorer patients who can have difficulty understanding health issues and who suffer from uncontrolled hypertension and diabetes, Ihlenfeldt, who works there, said.“What David’s trying to do is coalesce a network of support around these patients who are sharing the story for them,” Ihlenfeldt said. Rallying for Ahmad At a kickoff event in a Harrisburg meeting room for kidney patient Ahmad Collins, a couple dozen friends and family listened with rapt attention as Krissman went over the game plan, answering questions and describing the transplant processCollins, a 50-year-old city government worker and former Penn State linebacker, has needed 10 hours a night of dialysis since a medical procedure left him with damaged kidneys late last year.His mind was on the strangers who might decide to pitch in.“They can be a superhero, so to speak,” Collins said. “They can have the opportunity to save somebody’s life, and not too many times in life do you have that opportunity.” Mark Scolforo, Associated Press
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