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Why In-N-Out is the best fast-food restaurant you probably can't eat at.

In-N-Out fans are completely right to brag to their East Coast friends.

In June 2015, I wrote an article titled "5 incredibly delicious chain restaurants you should never, ever eat at and 1 you should but can't." In it, I explained why — despite the scrumptiousness of the meaty, cheesy, and meatcheesy creations at Papa John's, Sonic, Wendy's, Cracker Barrel, and Chick-fil-A — you should really resist the demonically primal urge calling you to eat there. (Spoiler alert: They're up to no good.)

But there was one chain restaurant that soared high above the rest. One swan in a gaggle of ducks. One Beyoncé in a sea of Kelly Rowlands and Michelle Williamses. And sadly, you also probably can't eat there — but not for the reason you might think.

Here, excerpted, adapted, and updated from that earlier piece, is the entry on the king-mommy-daddy-el-preidente of them all: In-N-Out Burger.

(We weren't paid to run this, by the way. I know it might seem that way, but In-N-Out just has an ... effect on people.)

It gives me no pleasure to break this to you, but you probably can't eat at In-N-Out Burger.

Photo by Zink Dawg/Wikimedia Commons.

You may not realize it yet, but this is a problem for you.

If you don't currently want to eat at In-N-Out Burger, you should want to eat at In-N-Out Burger.

This is what a triple-triple from In-N-Out looks like.

Stop it. Photo by Christian Razukas/Flickr.

This is it. The most delicious burger on the planet. You can keep your Shake Shacks, your Five Guys, and your Smashburgi. This is truly, madly, deeply the one.

The meat is fresh, juicy, and savory. The cheese is drippy and salty. The lettuce adds texture. Texture!

If you actually took one of those burgers and put it under a microscope, this is what you would see.

If you zoomed even further in, you would learn the exact moment you were going to die. To this day, no one has done it. Painting by Johann Liss/Wikimedia Commons.

And the best part? The burgers are super cheap.

There aren't enough superlatives in the world to do the place justice. There is no greater pleasure in this world than the taste of an In-N-Out cheeseburger. That's a fact.

And I've been to a Bon Jovi concert.

More importantly, In-N-Out proves that it is possible to operate a profitable, reliably delicious fast-food chain in 2015 and not be a complete ethical idiot.

Sure, In-N-Out is a multimillion-dollar meat factory like the rest of 'em. But, relatively speaking, In-N-Out has a lot going for it. A lot going for it.

It is one of very, very, very few high-profile companies in America owned by a woman.

Its food is also reasonably locally sourced and fresh, even earning praise from "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser.

And, perhaps, most importantly:

The average In-N-Out crew associate makes $11.61/hour(as of June 2015, according to a Glassdoor survey. Not bulletproof data, but a decent ballpark estimate). That's ... not amazing in the grand scheme of things but a fortune by fast-food standards.

According to a CBS report, store managers can make in excess of $100,000.

The ingredient sourcing is so quality, rapport between employees and customers is so friendly, and working conditions are so baseline satisfactory, that a former employee recently praised the company as the "best fast-food chain in America" in Business Insider — supporting her claim with a series of mouthwatering, behind-the-scenes (and in-front-of-the-counter) Instagram photos.

Now, I'm certainly not suggesting that all In-N-Out employees feel this way, but the fact that even one does is a pretty big data point. I've worked a lot of places. I would be pretty hard-pressed to call any of them the Best Anything in Whatever Country, even the ones that paid me on time and had free snacks on Thursdays.

(If my boss is reading this, which she is, because I am a writer and she is my editor, Upworthy is the Best Media Company in All Countries Ever In History.)

To get a vote of confidence like that, the chain must really be doing something right.

Plus, let's not forget...

#Neverforget. Photo by Christian Razukas/Flickr.

Do not forget. Never forget.

So what's the problem? Why can't I eat at In-N-Out??!?!

You can't eat at In-N-Out Burger because you are probably among the approximately 76% of Americans who don't live in California, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, or Texas.


Oregon! Photo by Dave Sizer/Flickr.

As your West Coast friends probably never fail to remind you every single day of your life, In-N-Out burger is their secret special thing.

Dear God. Please. Shut. Up. Image via Thinkstock.

And as much as I hate to admit it, they're basically right. As of July 2016, In-N-Out burger is only available in six states. And, statistically speaking, you probably don't live in one of them.

When asked when the chain would ever go public or franchise — moves that could signal a possible expansion east — In-N-Out president Lynsi Snyder had a not-so-ambiguous reply.

"Never," she told CBS, presumably after rubbing salt in the eyes of a dozen orphans and kicking your dog down a flight of stairs.

Here's my advice.

Move to California, Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, or Texas right now. And go get yourself an In-N-Out Burger.

Photo by Krista/Flickr.

You will thank me tomorrow.

And every day. For the rest of your life.

Pop Culture

Artist uses AI to create ultra realistic portraits of celebrities who left us too soon

What would certain icons look like if nothing had happened to them?

Bored Panda

Mercury would be 76 today.

Some icons have truly left this world too early. It’s a tragedy when anyone doesn’t make it to see old age, but when it happens to a well-known public figure, it’s like a bit of their art and legacy dies with them. What might Freddie Mercury have created if he were granted the gift of long life? Bruce Lee? Princess Diana?

Their futures might be mere musings of our imagination, but thanks to a lot of creativity (and a little tech) we can now get a glimpse into what these celebrities might have looked like when they were older.

Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based lawyer and photographer, created a photography series titled “As If Nothing Happened,” which features eerily realistic portraits of long gone celebrities in their golden years. To make the images as real looking as possible, Yesiltas incorporated various photo editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom and VSCO, as well as the AI photo-enhancing software Remini.

“The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel ‘real’ to me,” Yesiltas wrote about his passion project. “The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks as if it was taken by a photographer.”

Yesiltas’ meticulousness paid off, because the results are uncanny.

Along with each photo, Yesiltas writes a bittersweet message “wishing” how things might have gone differently … as if nothing happened.
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American Cancer Society
American Cancer Society
Science

Meet the researcher shining a light on the “white lens” of medical AI in skin cancer prevention

How we can create equity for all communities?

All images provided by Adewole Adamson

It begins with more inclusive conversations at a patient level

True

Adewole Adamson, MD, of the University of Texas, Austin, aims to create more equity in health care by gathering data from more diverse populations by using artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning. Dr. Adamson’s work is funded by the American Cancer Society (ACS), an organization committed to advancing health equity through research priorities, programs and services for groups who have been marginalized.

Melanoma became a particular focus for Dr. Adamson after meeting Avery Smith, who lost his wife—a Black woman—to the deadly disease.

melanoma, melanoma for dark skin Avery Smith (left) and Adamson (sidenote)

This personal encounter, coupled with multiple conversations with Black dermatology patients, drove Dr. Adamson to a concerning discovery: as advanced as AI is at detecting possible skin cancers, it is heavily biased.

To understand this bias, it helps to first know how AI works in the early detection of skin cancer, which Dr. Adamson explains in his paper for the New England Journal of Medicine (paywall). The process uses computers that rely on sets of accumulated data to learn what healthy or unhealthy skin looks like and then create an algorithm to predict diagnoses based on those data sets.

This process, known as supervised learning, could lead to huge benefits in preventive care.

After all, early detection is key to better outcomes. The problem is that the data sets don’t include enough information about darker skin tones. As Adamson put it, “everything is viewed through a ‘white lens.’”

“If you don’t teach the algorithm with a diverse set of images, then that algorithm won’t work out in the public that is diverse,” writes Adamson in a study he co-wrote with Smith (according to a story in The Atlantic). “So there’s risk, then, for people with skin of color to fall through the cracks.”

Tragically, Smith’s wife was diagnosed with melanoma too late and paid the ultimate price for it. And she was not an anomaly—though the disease is more common for White patients, Black cancer patients are far more likely to be diagnosed at later stages, causing a notable disparity in survival rates between non-Hispanics whites (90%) and non-Hispanic blacks (66%).

As a computer scientist, Smith suspected this racial bias and reached out to Adamson, hoping a Black dermatologist would have more diverse data sets. Though Adamson didn’t have what Smith was initially looking for, this realization ignited a personal mission to investigate and reduce disparities.

Now, Adamson uses the knowledge gained through his years of research to help advance the fight for health equity. To him, that means not only gaining a wider array of data sets, but also having more conversations with patients to understand how socioeconomic status impacts the level and efficiency of care.

“At the end of the day, what matters most is how we help patients at the patient level,” Adamson told Upworthy. “And how can you do that without knowing exactly what barriers they face?”

american cancer society, skin cacner treatment"What matters most is how we help patients at the patient level."https://www.kellydavidsonstudio.com/

The American Cancer Society believes everyone deserves a fair and just opportunity to prevent, find, treat, and survive cancer—regardless of how much money they make, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, gender identity, their disability status, or where they live. Inclusive tools and resources on the Health Equity section of their website can be found here. For more information about skin cancer, visit cancer.org/skincancer.

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