Lettuce Pray

Remember when IBM was most associated with a corporate name and not a simple statement of fact? Well, the cat is out of the bag. And so is everything else. Welcome to 2026 America, where thousands of citizens across the country are repeatedly racing, trotting, and running to the bathroom in a hopeless attempt to cut loose from the bowels of hell, only to find the stool has been pulled out once again, the GI bill has come due, the motion has been passed, everyone is full of crap, the shit never gets cut, the bile never ends, and the promises about food safety we once believed are now null and void, and void, and void. I know there must be a metaphor here somewhere, but in this case, the literal is a more urgent matter. As the cyclospora outbreak has exploded across 47 states, it’s probably a reasonable moment to pause (to the extent possible) and assess the ways in which bags of lettuce could have bagged so many victims. If nothing else, this makes for some interesting bathroom reading. NYT (Gift Article): 9 Vulnerable Moments in the Life of a Bagged Salad. For example, there’s number 6: “Labels like ‘pre-washed’ and ‘triple washed’ on bagged lettuce mean that it has been cleaned, often in a trough-like machine that tumbles the lettuce through flowing water to dislodge any soil or other debris, and through a food-safe sanitizing solution to kill microbes. If there is too much debris in the water, the chemicals can’t kill all of the pathogens — and the standard chemicals in these solutions, like chlorine, don’t kill cyclospora.” (I know we’re just shooting the shit here, but it sure feels like America’s salad days are over.)

+ Meanwhile, the FDA announced a recall of frozen fruit bars sold nationwide because they may contain glass.