These days, everyone wants to be a loser. In America, the vaccinated are easing their way back to events they’ve avoided for more than a year. But for some, the promise of re-entry is being preceded by urgent efforts to shed some of those pandemic pounds. The new FOMO: Fear of Maxing Out. NYT: In recent weeks and months, as people have ventured out more often, business has jumped for companies that sell plans to help lose weight. And Americans can be a little gluttonous even when it comes to dieting products. “Demand is so high that customers are reporting delays in their orders and shortages of popular foods, and bidding wars have popped up on eBay for out-of-stock snacks.” I was husky going into the quarantine, and if anything, I think I lost a little weight constantly running around the house trying to avoid my family.

+ “The buffet as a concept still remains—it’s merely adapting to our collective belated realization that routinely sharing tongs with strangers is perhaps not ideal, germ-wise.” FastCo: RIP, all-you-can-eat buffets: A eulogy for a pre-COVID-19 pastime I’ll weirdly miss a lot. (I don’t care if I have to wear a hazmat suit and intake food via a sterilized tube. I’m going back to the Sizzler salad bar. The radical anti-buffet movement will not cancel my lunch.)