CBS says:

Comprehensive data on cyclospora outbreaks is lacking. But available information shows only a small number of documented outbreaks in the last 20 years have surpassed 1,000 cases. That short list includes a 1997 outbreak tied to Guatemalan raspberries that sickened more than 1,000 in the U.S. and Canada, and a 2019 outbreak linked to Mexican basil that sickened more than 2,400.

Source

So, yeah, this one is the most serious outbreak we’ve had in a long time by quite a bit.

Which one? Seriously, there are too many at this point.

It’s not like they can selectively erase the ink that’s already there.

Why do people take the time to cut exes out of photos instead of just throwing the photos away? Sometimes it’s about the pleasure of forcibly removing every trace of them from your life. It can be cathartic.

But I also acknowledge that it could also be about the cost and/or difficulty of removal. Not all removal procedures are 100% effective. If you’re not entirely sure it will work, a cover-up could be a more effective choice.

As with all things, I’m sure the association fades over time. Sure, the new tattoo might remind you that the other one is there for a while. But then it becomes its own thing and you think about the old one less until one day you just don’t think of it at all.

I’ve recently been reading about them, and this is honestly pretty accurate. (Keeping in mind, of course, that even the least problematic klan was still extremely problematic on an objective level. It’s just relative in this particular statement.)

They were super anti-Catholic, which feels almost quaint now. But they were their own worst enemies and eventually the greed and excess at the top caused the collapse of their entire pyramid scheme.

Strangely, that gives me hope for the US right now. History could repeat itself with our far-right techno-oligarchs.

My mom was a control freak in the kitchen, and now I hate cooking. Every time I make anything more complex than a very simple pasta, I’m subconsciously growing more and more tense because I’m just waiting for someone to yell at me.

My undergraduate institution had an undetected americium spill that turned out to be a problem. I believe they ended up providing the means for every staff member who had been in the room to be tested for pulmonary damage.

Definitely don’t do it.

Well, let me know when that happens. It sounds like the kind of district management I could really get behind.

Hey, fellow educator, I see you. I know that you and everyone in your school are doing your best to work within the constraints that have been dictated by your state legislature. Keep doing what you can to support your students, and don’t forget to take care of yourself in the process.

In my rural midwestern US family, “dinner” meant the largest meal of the day, frequently with our extended family, almost always at my grandparents’ house.

“Sunday dinner” was midday, right after church. This was typically pot roast in the cold months and barbecue in the summer.

On weekdays, dinner was in the evening after everyone came home from work and school. We had a big family dinner at least a couple of times per week when I was a kid. (My grandma and sometimes my great aunts would do the cooking. In hindsight, I think my mom and my uncle struggled financially after their respective divorces, and this was the older generation’s way of helping them out.)

Holiday dinners were usually midday, unless someone had to work and we needed to plan around that.

If we were talking about the meal at a specific time of day, we used “lunch” or “supper,” since “dinner” was ambiguous.

I have not experienced that, but I have had a Bloody Mary that qualified as a meal.

… every person has a right to know of everything related to them in the highest possible extent.

I emphatically disagree with your proposition.

About a bajillion different people are credited with saying some variation of, “What other people think of me is none of my business.”

It must be exhausting to care about what everyone thinks of you. That’s a burden you are not required to carry. It’s also a burden you should not foist on someone who hasn’t asked for it.

Thank you for your clear and concise overview of Shakespeare’s most misunderstood play.

It’s really unfortunate that we have teenagers read Romeo and Juliet in high school. I think the story could only be romantic to teenagers.

When you consider the fact that the whole story lasts five days, it’s absurd that it could be the pinnacle of love. They barely know each other. Romeo was utterly in love with Rosaline at the beginning of the play, and five days later he had committed suicide because of Juliet.

But Shakespeare’s satiric themes of teenage impulsivity as a contrast to traditional courtly love are lost on a teenage audience, and i think very few people ever go back to read or watch the play when they are older and better versed in the ways of the world.

Citing the encyclopedia to describe love is like reading a dictionary to find out what the color red is. You’ll get a technically correct definition, but it doesn’t necessarily help with practical understanding.

I like the way Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it:

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvëd point,—what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Belovëd,—where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

• Sonnets from the Portuguese XXII

You may have loved her, in the sense that you felt affection toward her and wanted good things for her. Good friends, I would argue, should love one another in that way.

But this need to “confess” your feelings, seemingly out of the blue, after a long time apart, is not indicative of simple friendly, platonic love. This sort of “puppy love,” as we might refer to a youthful romantic interest or infatuation, is different from a true and lasting romantic love that grows from a mutual relationship.

Puppy love is not bad. It’s a normal part of growing up and learning to navigate romantic feelings and relationships. I’ll bet that most (if not all) of the people responding to you have experienced it, and as we have had more experiences with relationships and actually “falling in love” with other people, we have learned to tell the difference.

I can definitely point to a couple of long-term friends with whom I was infatuated as a teenager. I still feel a warm, platonic love for those people … but after having actually fallen in love, I can definitively say I was never “in love” with those people. I certainly don’t feel the need to reach out after years (decades, even) to tell them how I used to feel.

If you have not talked to this woman in years and she lives thousands of kilometers away, you have about a 1% chance of anything positive coming from your confession. If you’re not familiar with the Dobler/Dahmer Theory, it’s pretty simple. A grand romantic gesture will be well received if the recipient already finds the giver to be an acceptable potential romantic partner. If they don’t think of the giver in that way, it just comes off as creepy.

You have said that this woman was not romantically interested in you while you were acquainted. So that tells me you have better than a 50% shot of ending up on the “Dahmer” end of the scale.

Channel your energy into something more productive. Maybe get out into your community and find some affinity groups (hiking, coding, discussion, gardening, whatever floats your boat) and find some people you can connect with in the present instead of dwelling on the past.

Good luck!

(Apologies for the link to the random blog, but it’s the best source I found for explaining the phenomenon instead of just discussing the show where it originated. I heard about this theory years ago but I only learned today that it came from a sitcom.)

Or maybe they just hoped that we were more desensitized to constant surveillance.

I stopped being interested in high-schoolers as friends or romantic interests by the time I graduated from university. Our frames of reference were too different for meaningful connection.

Somewhere around 30, I became actively disgusted by the idea of someone my age socializing with teenagers outside of a familial, educational, or mentoring role. (That one guy who graduated from high school 12 years ago and still gets invited to students’ parties because he is willing to bring beer? He’s gross. And so is the 35-year-old teacher who ran off with one of his students the day after she graduated.)

I’m in my mid-40s now and my feelings haven’t changed. I don’t expect that another 60 years of life experience is going to bring me around to the other side.

And that is why I will never understand why Arwen Undómiel would give up her immortality for a man nearly 2,700 years her junior. Even if that man was the legendary Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the most heroic hero I’ve encountered in my literary life.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is the Democrats’ fundraising arm specifically for Senate races. It has been an entity for more than 100 years.

It’s not “what Schumer and the neoliberals still control after losing the DNC.” I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.

It’s important because it’s one of the major three national Democratic Party committees that collect and spend funds on federal-level elections. (Republicans have parallel committees, too.)

Withholding funds from a specific Senate race is a pretty serious step for the party to take.

I don’t know a lot of people who wait to sell an old phone before they get a new one. Usually, they decide to sell after they already have the new phone set up.

In the little corner of Latin America where I live, if people are making a concerted effort to be inclusive in writing, they end a word with @s to include both -os and -as endings: amig@s, chic@s, etc. But that is very uncommon, and I have not encountered a spoken equivalent.

As a non-native speaker, I find Spanish to be quite a bit more flexible than English. It’s very context-dependent, so I think a lot of Spanish speakers just have the mindset that you figure out the meaning of a word through its context. Words ending in -o can be for everyone or for masculine people, and you figure out the speaker’s intention by the context.

But also when your blender has a gender (it’s feminine, for people who don’t know), maybe it takes some of the gravitas out of the conversation about gendered language.