Hey, author here; it's mentioned in here—same magazine as the Consumers' Research Bulletin, its name just evolved over time. If it was the 1970s, it was before Consumers' Research became an astroturfing organization.

I think it depends on the market, honestly. Trader Joe's and Aldi coexist in DC, where I'm at, though TJ is seen as more of an upmarket brand so it tends to be near Georgetown, in Bethesda, and on 14th Street, while the Aldi in DC is in the Northeast part of the city.

Easy: Because I wanted to mention Public Image Ltd.! (I like my references somewhat obscure.)

It's essentially the sriracha of spreads. Tasty, addictive, and once you get it, you suddenly want to use it on everything.

I wish I had some cookie butter right now, in fact. ;)

Thanks for throwing up my piece, Miss C!

Per an NPR piece from 2011 that featured an interview with the format's key creator, Karlheinz Brandenburg, the codec's format was well in production in 1993, but the format was not common by that point. On top of this, Brandenburg himself specifically dates the birth of the MP3 file—as in files with the ".mp3" extension—as 1995:

"We had a time in 1994 – 1995 where we really identified the Internet as a big application area for Layer III. We needed a file extension, so we have some birthday — on 14th of July in '95 — we decided in Erlangen to use the file extension "dot m-p-3" for all our software encoding or decoding: .MP3. It really has a birthday in July."

There's a degree of splitting hairs here, but when it comes down to it, that Depeche Mode album was most likely not encoded in MP3 format, and the date of its leak predates the MP3 naming convention closely associated with the format.

You got it! :) Thanks for being a reader, by the way.