To bring a slightly different perspective here: we’re not coping.

Our suicide rate has increased 60% since 2011 among youth and young adults. Rates of mental illness have doubled in young people. About 1 in 5 young people in this country will experience depression.

Our rates of overdose deaths have doubled since 2011. Over 100,000 people died from drug use in this country in 2021.

One in five of our kids go hungry. One in five Americans live with mental illness.

When you look at these data they are absolutely alarming and the opposite of most other countries, whose rates are falling. We are not coping, people are just dying these “deaths of despair.”

Name dropping TU Delft is surprising to me! ETA: found more info here, but not about the lawsuit piece.

https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/a-no-thank-you-to-the-person-who-assumed-i-was-the-coffee-lady

Former influenza epidemiologist here and the answer is probably not. Our current influenza vaccines in the US (and in almost all countries) are trivalent, meaning they have 3 strains: an influenza A H1N1 (aka swine flu), an influenza A H3N2, and an influenza B (Victoria). Fun fact, they used to include 4 strains, but COVID actually wiped out the second B strain and it hasn’t been detected since 2020.

Unfortunately, the current bird flu is H5, a separate influenza A strain. Typically there isn’t a lot of shared clinical protection overlap between genomes this different. This is why influenza vaccines typically use 3 (and formerly 4) different strains of the virus, to confer the most protection.

However, unless you work in dairy or poultry, I would not worry. I am not particularly worried. I know it’s making headlines, but only 66 human cases are in the US so far, and all but 2 had direct contact with those animals. Currently there is no documented person-to-person transmission and certainly nothing like what we saw early on with COVID.

If you want my personal take, I still mask at large events / crowded places / airplanes to avoid flu and COVID altogether. I still encourage everyone who is ill to mask and stay home, even though it’s out of fashion. I think we will see egg, dairy, poultry, and beef prices rise with H5, as farmers are forced to cull animals. Also, we may see cases from raw milk and backyard animal husbandry - please don’t drink raw milk, pet cows, kiss chickens, touch dead birds without gloves, etc. right now and you probably won’t get bird flu.

Hope that helps, happy to answer any other influenza or respiratory infectious disease Qs!

Edited to add: The fact we have human cases at all is because farm workers - usually immigrants with limited English - are routinely exploited, denied PPE, or put at risk in unacceptable ways. Farms are basically self regulated in the US, though they are officially regulated by the USDA. It is extraordinarily difficult to get farms to cooperate with pandemic preparedness. You have to pay them federal money to do anything. There have been documented cases of farm workers being told to cull infected birds with zero PPE, and that’s unacceptable. These vulnerable people are the ones paying the price for our H5 knowledge right now, and it’s not right. It’s disheartening to have worked on pandemic preparedness for decades, fumble COVID altogether, and still fail to prepare for the next one. As climate change continues unmitigated we expect to see more human-wildlife interaction and more zoonotic diseases. We can’t just do good science; we also must address workers’ rights, capitalism, and climate change.

For now? Lease as much of that land as you can. Cover crop the rest. You do not want bare, tilled soil sitting there for a year+ as you figure out bigger plans.

Idk how to format, but I want to save you from reading if you need that. So here’s a brief list of claims in the article:

• she frequently and repeatedly recruited homeless, impoverished female fans to provide childcare without any payment
• she repeatedly left these women alone with Gaiman, without the child present
• she warned Gaiman to “keep his hands off” at least one woman
• she said that at least 14 women had come to her for help with Gaiman
• she subsequently wrote a song about how much of a chore it was for her to deal with the multiple “suicidal mess”es Gaiman created
• she routinely controlled employment/housing of these women and knew Gaiman was, at best, sleeping with them (this cannot be consensual when housing/employment are in the mix)
• when notified of an assault that happened with her child present, only questioned whether the child was “wearing headphones”
• refused to cooperate with at least one police investigation
• refused any material help to assaulted women after repeatedly assuring them she would “take care of” them, get different housing/employment set up, etc.

Just…awful stuff, and this is best case scenario, FFS. She is fucking trash.

Let me introduce you to Tirana, Albania which has done exactly as you suggest! They elected a former painter as mayor in 2000, and the rest is history. So many of the brutalist buildings in the city are now covered with bright colors, murals, patterns, and more. You can check out some before and after images here: https://blog.ted.com/9-views-of-tirana-albania-with-its-bright-multicolored-building/

In a word: orientalism. This art movement was predicated on the exoticism and “othering” of subject matter and the bystanders serve as a proxy for the audience of the art itself.

I didn’t heed the warning and regretted reading the whole thing - there are very detailed and gruesome first hand accounts of his alleged assaults on multiple women. Excellent reporting throughout, which only makes it more sickening.

Also, as a former Amanda Palmer fan, fuck her, too. It’s clear she enabled this and committed, at minimum, wage theft crimes. Both of them deserve to do jail time with even the most generous best-case-scenarios. I’m sure she was also abused by him, but that is not an excuse to abuse other women. Some feminist.

Monarch 👑 I love them!!

Ha. Anyone who’s farmed knows that ag leases are such a different scenario and very negotiable, especially if you are working with someone who wants to see the land in production or help young farmers etc. I WISH there had been more willing landlords when I was farming, it took me two years to find a place at all. Lemmings can hate once they’ve negotiated their own ag lease 👀 👩🏻‍🌾

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

But seriously, it’s the gay musical Olympics, what’s not to love? (Unless you’re from Germany/UK in which it’s a point of national pride to dismiss Eurovision, lol?)

We were recently in Vancouver, and people were happy to have us! You shouldn’t worry. We did some extra shopping in solidarity and they appreciated our support.

• Ireland and Italy offer citizenship by descent, but it is a long process
• The Netherlands and the US have a treaty called DAFT that allows you to start a business in NL
• France offers a self employment visa
• Check skill shortage lists for countries of interest - almost all European countries need skilled trades, truck drivers, etc. that wouldn’t require a degree
• Study abroad; it’s possible you could apply and receive funding for a degree since many countries have free education + work study arrangements for your living expenses
• Teach English abroad
• Look at international NGOs, you could possibly get hired as an admin/etc. without a degree but that might be a stretch

This is funny, but also fake - unless this person was truly pissing off the cooks! Their actual salads come in little wooden bowls and look like salads. You can image search it. They give you packets of dressing and everything. I’ve never ordered one, but eaten with friends who had dietary restrictions. They never got a plate this hateful, lol.

I don’t know about the notes, but I wanted to say that it takes time and effort to unlearn this idea that we are supposed to be productive all the time. This is a lie that many powerful people want us to internalize so we work ourselves to death, and it’s very insidious and omnipresent. It’s become a perverse “value” in our society at large and something to be proud of.

But you are not a machine. You’re a person. And that means you need and deserve rest and comfort.

You have inherent worth outside of your productivity, how hard you work, or how much money you make.

Those metrics don’t tell us anything about how you are as a person, your values, your kindness, your strengths, the joy you bring others.

ALL of that stuff has value. Real true value. You have to start challenging these beliefs about your worthiness. Because you are already worthy.

Some further reading/resources:

1. The Body Is Not An Apology
2. Rest is Resistance
3. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

Hi! I’m a wedding florist and educator in the US. I also have PiHole running at home (thanks to my partner) and feel the same way about social media - absolutely hate it, no personal accounts, and it’s only for the business.

Edited to add: I draw a hard line in my business with paying Meta or Google to advertise. I have never paid Zuck a dime. I also refuse to use TikTok because it’s a privacy nightmare.

Here’s how I handle different marketing channels:

SEO - my bread and butter - allows me to blog useful things and not feel slimy. Try to blog about things “upstream” from your services that couples would hire first - venues, planners, caterers maybe.

Instagram - I’m a florist, it’s a must. I used to use a separate device but after forgetting it at a wedding for behind-the-scenes shots, and the having to transfer everything over, I just gave up. I have Instagram on my main phone and it annoys me. I have mic/photo permissions turned off unless I post a story/reel. I use Tailwind for IG and Pinterest static posts.

Facebook - I don’t use the app, just desktop. have a FB page but I rarely log in. Tailwind allows me to post my IG post to FB without logging in.

Pinterest - I don’t use the app, just desktop. And I use Tailwind to schedule. To be honest I do not get any leads from Pinterest, so I stopped caring about it.

Networking - This is another key source of leads for me. We have several local wedding vendor groups here, and I belong to all of them. And I go to meetings regularly. I highly encourage you to go out and meet the people who will eventually refer you! (But never ask for a referral/preferred vendor until you’ve worked together at least once.)

The Knot/WW - Worth having a free listing. Only worth having a paid listing if your service is low cost and you’re interested in volume. Are there French sites like those you could be listed on, some kind of directory?

Wedding shows - I’ve never done a wedding show but some people have lots of success. Whatever you do, make sure you make them book a consultation with you right there at the booth. Otherwise you will lose them. It’s not enough to gather emails (although, do that too) because they will be getting a billion emails after the show from vendors. Be the first in their inbox. Have an incentive for scheduling their consult that’s not a discount (e.g. bigger photo book if they end up booking with you or something).

Hope that helps! Never keep doing a marketing method that isn’t bringing you the right people. It’s a waste of your time and you can’t do all these things, you’ll go mad! Please DM me if you have questions or wanna chat more, I’m happy to help. Je parle français aussi, mais seulement après café :)

The former! I’m not currently worried about contracting it, and neither should anyone who isn’t hanging out on an animal farm. That said, of course flu and other viruses can jump species, and flu mutates a lot faster than some other viruses. There is never any way to rule out a wild flu mutating into something that can impact human health more broadly.

To your second point about goalposts moving - I’m not sure specifically what you’re referencing, but perceived risk is inherently personal and can never be a one-size-fits-all calculation. We might have a tidy risk ratio in a paper that pertains to a certain population, but it doesn’t always translate to the general public. Typically we leave that stuff to CDC, because they have whole committees full of brilliant people to synthesize the evidence and argue about what to tell the public and how. Science changes and so do recommendations as we learn more. I would recommend getting further H5 “news” and updates directly from CDC. You can sign up for the MMWR which will have weekly stats and case details.

It’s also that there are a LOT of elderly people living there, many of whom should not be driving. Combined with a lot of immigrants and poor people who are walking or biking, and the hostile pedestrian infrastructure / car-centric sprawl and culture, it’s a recipe for disaster. (The wealth inequality down there is next level.) We were once in a car accident when visiting family there because some woman just backed into oncoming traffic (us). That’s the level of situational awareness for over half the drivers down there, 100% of the time. It’s harrowing Mad Max shit in a car, let alone as a pedestrian or biker. I’m sad my family member passed away, but so relieved I never have to go back to South Florida ever again.

An Assassins Creed game as rich as Odyssey, but set in the Mali empire. Hanging with Mansa Musa? Visiting scholars at Timbuktu? Desert frontier towns, gigantic markets within cities, and everything in between? That period of history is so fascinating and it would be incredible to have the art budget to bring it to life.