The lettuce parasite persists but so do we

Lots of Taco Bell locations have removed Taylor Farms lettuce and other produce from some of their menu items because of the ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak. Michigan health authorities were even in touch with Taco Bell’s parent company, the aptly named Yum! Brands Inc. $YUM ( ▼ 0.71% ) , about the outbreak weeks before the restaurant chain alerted customers about it.

So, am I panicking because I ate lettuce last night? Yes. Should I be? Maybe not! USDA data does show a higher-than-usual amount of recalls on meat, poultry and eggs. But if you’re a soy boy like me, there may be less to worry about — USDA and FDA data shows that overall food and beverage recalls so far this year are on pace with recent years.

It’s hard to answer if our food is getting less safe. Experts say the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts are slowing responses to things like this cyclosporiasis outbreak, and hurting food safety overall. At the same time, scientific advances in surveillance, lab testing and more have made us more prepared to respond to contaminations before they become huge problems.

Maybe that doesn’t help you if you’re deciding how scared to be of the produce in your fridge. But this website might. It’s the USDA’s tool for looking up recalls.

In Missouri, where Dave lives, more than 80% of voters rejected a Republican-led amendment. To explain what this amendment sought to do, let’s say Dave wants to pass a tax on Spam that would directly fund the production of whimsical yet informative news videos. Under the current system that’s been in place since 1908, Dave can collect signatures to put the Spam News Tax question on the ballot. If more than half of Missourians vote yes, it passes.

Amendment 4 would have changed that. It would have required these kinds of citizen initiatives to get a majority not just across the state, but in every single congressional district. And that would’ve made it way harder to get those initiatives on the ballot. In other words, it was an effort to limit direct democracy in Missouri.

Why does this matter, even if you don’t live in Missouri? The kind of citizen initiatives that Republicans were trying to limit have been used to legalize marijuana, protect abortion rights and expand Medicaid. Just slightly over half of all US states allow citizen-led ballot measures, and rolling back that right in Missouri could have been used as a template for other states. Instead, voters overwhelmingly rejected it. Now, will they reject the same people who tried to roll back this right when they’re up for election in November?

That brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! If you’re trying to figure out exactly who or what you’re voting on this election cycle, here are some things you can keep in mind.

Trump’s ballroom project, his future presidential library that may have a whole airplane, and his other pet projects all cost money to build. And where does that money come from? The Princess of Darkness, of course.

Trump reportedly gave his fundraiser Meredith O'Rourke that nickname, and she’s getting huge sums of money from companies. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump’s personal control over fundraising and the amount he’s raising for projects like these are unusual.

The money’s not just going to construction projects. It’s also going to Trump’s super PAC, which had $400 million as of two weeks ago. And that super PAC hasn’t really spent money on candidates ahead of the midterms. Instead, POLITICO reports it’s spending on consulting, bank fees, credit card statements and more.

And Trump also happens to do exactly what his donors want a lot of the time. For instance, he met with tobacco executives and interrupted that meeting to call administration officials about easing vaping restrictions. Those restrictions ultimately were eased, surely to the delight of the teenagers I was surrounded by at Lollapalooza last weekend, and Big Tobacco also gave Trump millions of dollars.

So Meta made an AI model, and Meta hired a company called Irregular to test that AI model’s hacking capabilities. And boy, is it capable of hacking. The Wall Street Journal reports that the model made it onto the internet and hacked another company. Which model was it, who got hacked, and how long was this model on the internet for? We don’t know! Meta wouldn’t say. But we do know this wasn’t supposed to happen. Meta said in a statement that a “misconfiguration” on Irregular’s part “inadvertently allowed” the hacking.

Irregular also does testing for Anthropic, which also had AI models hack three other organizations during what was supposed to be an isolated test. Irregular said in a statement to Reuters that it “is developing a white paper to share best practices for containment and securely running cyber evaluations.” It remains to be seen whether a memo about why the robots are going rogue will stop the robots from going rogue.

OpenAI also recently had an AI model get onto the internet on its own and hack another company — albeit under different circumstances than the recent Meta and Anthropic incidents. So, this is a pattern. It happens when companies test their AI models under a set of guardrails. But AI has either found ways around those guardrails or found ways to get online due to errors in the test itself. But researchers say that in all these cases, it’s not like AI is gaining consciousness and deciding to go online; rather, this is all happening under the oversight of real people in charge of AI.