Course IDs vary from university to university—when I was an undergrad, lower div classes were <100, upper div between 100 and 199, and grad level classes 200+.

Translation:

If someone can be made to smile, let’s keep shining, Hanpen.

SNES for me, and rather frequently.

Bald eagles are sometimes considered kleptoparasites, and I’ve always found that fitting for the USA.

The old 4chan way: shoe on head with handwritten date/time stamp.

When you both shit hard enough together at the same time and wonder to yourselves “was that splashback mine…?”

If Boston is the armpit of the Commonwealth, Worcester is the butthole.

Quench your thirst with sausage infused water by throwing a respectable number of Vienna sausages in one of those infuser bottles.

Wtf did I just read?

Oh I know this game. I’ve always thought it would be funny to use raw onions in the place of apples in caramel apples and pass them out on Halloween.

A crow eating chicken and a human eating beef are actually really good parallels. Crows and chicken are 91 million years diverged while cows and humans 94 million years diverged.

I grew up in the 90s and went to public school, so I didn’t have this experience. What I did experience was using the shittiest scissors in the classroom, and having to share it with 3 other kids because there was exactly one left handed pair.

Also lots of criticism about my handwriting.

CMD ` (backtick) will switch between application windows, if that’s what was frustrating you.

Was this ‘foreign object’ a certain social media founder’s rat penis?

Let’s unpack this.

Do you mean that convicted baby-eater and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who died 17 days ago at the age of 153, had rat’s penis transplanted onto him?

Or do you mean that Mark Zuckerberg, sole founding member of Rat Penis Enthusiasts’ Quarterly, had a rat transplanted onto his penis?

I’m asking because the details matter in these trying times.

I’m not particularly good at any one thing. I have a PhD, but not in a subject that’s “practical” in the post apocalypse. I’m physically fit enough, but I’m not a paragon of strength or agility. Relatedly, I’m in my mid30s, so not old, but not spry either. I’m handy enough to fix things with instruction and some light jury-rigging, but I’m hardly a Macguyver-type. I’ve never fired a gun before, but I can probably learn to use one.

Assuming I’m not killed instantaneously, or shortly thereafter, I’m an extra set of hands or an additional mouth to feed, depending on your perspective. Charitably, I’m analytically-minded and useful enough in the field, low to middle management type; less charitably, I’m an NPC type that happens to have some amusing dialog.

In a movie or tv show following a group in the post apocalypse, I think I’d be like the 4th to die; dignified enough to have established a minor story arch, but certainly not enough to be a main character. Also not so unimportant that I’m killed off screen (or worse yet, ret-conned).

I think I agree with you in general. My point is more that we tend to forget that wild animals are among us everywhere and we really do need to take care to be aware of that, but maybe I didn’t communicate that well.

Im not discounting the comment OP’s observation, but I think it’s also important to consider the inevitability of an outbreak like this in light of invasive species, non-species, and not-so-genetically diverse farm animals.

What’s often missed by the lay-folks is that there’s plenty of wildlife that is capable of contracting and transmitting these diseases. Sure, many zoos have intense quarantine protocols, but if zoo animals have any overlap with local wildlife, they are potentially exposed to disease. Many zoos (at least that I can think of) do not keep out local wildlife—be it pigeons, house sparrows, or squirrels.

Bags of chickens from a local, shitty farmer trying to get rid of sick birds? Possible, if a little conspiratorial. Ubiquitous wild animals interacting with zoo animals and livestock? Probably a little more likely (at least to me).

Source: me, I’m a biologist, albeit not a disease ecologist.

Dollar Store John Travolta: I Shit Myself Edition

Also worth noting that people tend to refer to autism as if it’s a singular set of phenotypes, when really there’s a bunch of ways that autism can manifest; hence autism spectrum disorder.