I had heard the news about the earthquakes in Venezuela earlier today, but I’d only seen the text headlines and hadn’t looked closely at the reports. That was until I scrolled through Instagram and saw the devastating footage: collapsed buildings, people filming the destruction, and a voice off-camera screaming for his mother toward the rubble.

In another video, a young man sat atop his home, which had been reduced to a pile of ruins. The video was shot in HDR and incredibly high-definition—a crispness that formed a jarring, almost surreal contrast with the devastated background behind him. Even though I didn’t understand the language they were speaking (presumably Spanish), you only needed to look at the screen to understand exactly what had happened.

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At the Alma 1 restaurant at KU Leuven, they clearly had chicken cutlets, but they absolutely refused to let you buy one separately, stipulating that you could only buy it as part of a set meal (5.6 euros for students).

If the set meal didn’t include the combination you wanted, and you just wanted to add something extra—for example, the set meal originally included a chicken cutlet, vegetables, and rice, but you only wanted the chicken cutlet—that was absolutely impossible there. You had to buy a whole set meal. But by then, I had already eaten lunch and couldn’t possibly eat a second one.

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