@userr2684291 It's okay, I know enough German to get the joke :-)

@GWarner No, someone else. Did Trump say it? Maybe it was a subtle reference I didn't get.

@GWarner It's one week. It's been two weeks since another moderator took any moderator action. And that's totally, okay, by the way – I'm not trying to diminish their contributions, just pointing out we're a little bit understaffed over here in the mod department.

Before that I was handling about 90% of the flags and such, but it's been up to 100% for a couple weeks.

I asked SE about holding elections again. I know our community was hurt badly by both moderators and some of our best users resigning in protest last year, but I also know that we have some really capable folks who've stuck around, and I'm hoping that some of them care about the site and want to help out with moderation.

Yeah. That's a big thing, and I'm sure it's on everyone's minds. Hope everyone's doing okay.

Me personally, I'm stuck at home, and I've got a lot of time freed up by what's been going on, so I'm going to have enough time to do some moderatorly stuff every day for the foreseeable future.

I'm trying to focus on the positives. I already cooked my own meals before the quarantine, but now I've had a bit more time to spend on cooking, and it's been nice.

There are a lot of negatives right now, and it's easy to focus on them. It might even be important to focus on them enough to stay aware, but I think that for mental health reasons it's a good idea to limit how much time you spend on that, and to turn your mind to something positive when you can.

@AIQ Existing moderators stick around, if they want. Moderator elections are basically a way to find new people who want to help out with moderating the site.

@GWarner J.R. was appointed as a pro tem moderator in 2013, and then once the site graduated, he was elected in 2015. Colleen and I were elected in 2016, and Em. was elected in 2018.

@AIQ Not exactly. It's based on what we, and SE, feel like the site needs to handle the site's moderation.

@skullpatrol I was actually doing 90～100% of the moderation on Japanese.SE for quite a while, so it's not an unfamiliar situation for me. Fortunately, we were able to elect several great moderators over there. Any of us can step away for a break whenever we want and the others will keep things running just fine.

There are four of us over there right now.

I feel like sometimes just being able to talk things over with your fellow moderators can help you make better decisions, too. Like, I'm trying my best here on ELL, but I do recognize that me doing things alone might not be the best situation for the site.

But in the meantime, I can always ping SE if I need help.

@AIQ It's been about three months since his last moderator activity.

Nah, I really don't want to diminish anyone's contributions when I report facts like that. The thing is, it's not a job you get paid for, and people have lives. He was elected back in 2015, and he contributed quite a bit to the site both as a regular user and as a moderator, and even if he never handled another flag I'd still appreciate that.

There's no obligation to keep on moderating a site for free for all time. If you're here and you're helping with moderation, hopefully it's something you enjoy or find rewarding in some way, and if real life ever happens, well, real life has to come first, right?

I have no ill will toward any of my fellow moderators, all of whom have helped out tremendously with the site and the community over the years.

So please don't take what I said as a complaint about anyone else on the team. They're all great. I just want to have elections soon, that's all :-)

Yeah, I like cooking :-)

I do tend to eat relatively simple meals. I’m making some eggs and rice right now.

I love to cook with hot peppers.

Oh, I love all sorts of peppers, but habaneros are my favorite! :-)

And it's not just because they're particularly spicy. I just love their citrusy flavor.

By the way, I learned today I've always pronounced sepia wrong. It has the FLEECE vowel, but I pronounced it in my head with the DRESS vowel. I've had this experience quite a few times, since I learned a lot of words by reading rather than listening.

Yeah, same here!

I heard someone say it and thought "That can't be right!" So I checked the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary and a couple others for good measure, and they all agree that it's the standard pronunciation.

Oh, yeah, I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced that way regardless of accent. The LPD doesn't list it as an alternate pronunciation, either.

Of course, everyone's hearing that word lately, as you point out.

But you know, everyone has different experiences, and we all learn things in a different order, and that includes native speakers as well. You and I just learned about sepia at roughly the same time :-)

@skullpatrol Yeah, though be careful of the etymological fallacy. You might argue that it's only a pandemic if it's affected all people on the planet, but that's not the case.

We do use epidemic specifically for human populations, like you said. We have enzootic, epizootic, and panzootic for animals, but those aren't common words.

I remember reading that it's thought the 1918 influenza pandemic passed from humans into pigs, who likewise had no immunity and suffered a panzootic. I don't know how accurate that is, but I did read it once.

@AIQ I finished eating my eggs and rice. I steamed some medium grain brown rice, put some soy sauce on it, and mixed in some scrambled eggs with just a little bit of seasoning. It was tasty :-)

I'm not a really fancy cook, but I've been cooking for myself for most of my life, and I've managed to learn to cook stuff I like.

@AIQ I've been ordering grocery delivery about once a week. I'm doing my best not to go out at the moment.

We're under a soft lockdown here in California. I say "soft" because there are all sorts of exceptions, and I think a lot of people still don't take it seriously and just ignore the rules.

Yeah, I think it varies a lot from place to place how much people follow or deliberately flout the rules.

I'll try to make some progress on the Close Votes queue over the next few days.

It currently has 112 questions: ell.stackexchange.com/review