Links: Sept. 13, 2022

~ Laura

Full day here of work and family chores, I have some royal links for you, but first let’s talk about something else.

Have you adjusted your spending to compensate for inflation? We need to reduce our restaurant spending. Ian’s burger and fries costs over $20 now. But the real political question is whether inflation will impact November’s elections.

Do you decorate your hallway?

In ‘Strangers to Ourselves,’ a Revelatory Account of Mental Illness “For her first book, the New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv probes her own and others’ lives to suggest how the stories we are told by the medical profession about our struggles can both help and harm.”

Some people actually care that Columbia’s ranking should really be 18 and not 2.

Published by Laura

10 thoughts on “Links: Sept. 13, 2022”

  1. Inflation doesn’t really seem to hit us much except that I can’t really buy a car. Everything I’m interested in is out. Maybe it’s better to wait to see if Chevrolet really can make a $30k, 300 mile range, electric car.

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  2. Gas is under $3 now (yay!) but bread is weirdly expensive. I’m not used to spending $4-$5 for a loaf of basic sandwich bread.

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    1. I watch for sales of bread and freeze it. I’m usually able to get it for $2 /loaf or less. However I don’t have a family of hungry kids to devour it as fast as you.

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  3. Fruit and veg prices are up 15% year-to-date here in NZ.
    This is a country which *exports* agricultural produce.

    We seem to be being hit by the price inflation caused by the Ukraine war (no Ukraine grain exports, mean that grain from elsewhere is more expensive – so prices go up internally as well as externally). Which is why your loaf of bread is a lot more expensive than usual.

    Inflation (7-8%) is hitting ordinary families hard – and it’s very much an election issue (our election is just over a year away – so parties are pre-positioning).

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  4. I don’t pay attention to food prices. I’m not as bad as a person who would hand their nanny a 50 to buy a banana for their kid on a walk, but, pretty bad in knowing what things cost.

    And, our bigger effect right now is feeding two with the groceries and restaurant meals, rather than 3 or 4, so that’s a much bigger effect (of course, we are paying for the kids’ board, but that doesn’t show up in our food bill).

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    1. I have done all the grocery shopping for the house since covid started. Some things go up, some go down. The weekly bill hasn’t changed since summer 2021. I do buy more of what’s on sale and less of what has gone up, but that’s just shopping. Restaurants got more expensive here before everyone started worrying about inflation. They don’t seem to have changed since then.

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  5. I admit I’d rather have five dollar gas than three dollar gas. Half of everyone around me took the money they saved by not traveling during covid and a $60,000 truck that gets 10 mgp. They don’t fit in the parking places, they are too wide for our old streets, and the fronts are so high that anytime they hit a pedestrian, the pedestrian’s head gets cracked. Saw that once with my own eyes.

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  6. I just saw the CRAZIEST thing on youtube from about 35:45 to about 41:00.

    Prigozhin, the infamous head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, has long been rumored to be flying around Russian prisons, personally recruiting felons to fight as mercenaries in Ukraine, and here he is doing it on film. I expect somebody will provide official subtitles eventually, but here’s some of what he says:

    –no surrendering: Wagner men are expected to blow themselves up with grenades in a pinch
    –Prigozhin says the fighting in Ukraine is much heavier than in Chechnya or Afghanistan
    –Wagner has tanks and aircraft (?)
    –they retrieve bodies of their dead and transport them back home
    –any prisoner who fights for Wagner for 6 months and survives will get their freedom
    –Wagner will shoot anybody who wants to quit.

    I wish there were subtitles, but you get a sort of combo Tarantino-Batman villain-movie Nazi vibe from Prigozhin.

    Related! The infamous Gazprom “y’all gonna freeze” video:

    It starts around 0:55 and there are subtitles.

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  7. https://mobile.twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1570493649284378628?cxt=HHwWiMDR-ebpwcsrAAAA

    Julia Davis has a compilation from the Russian propaganda shows. It has English subtitles.

    Their reaction to recent Russian military setbacks is that Ukrainian civilian infrastructure (utilities and trains) need to be destroyed, Ukraine needs to be plunged into darkness, and 20 million Ukrainian refugees need to be dispatched to the European Union.

    They think that this is necessary because Ukraine has a Nazi government.

    I plan to inflict this on as many of my family members as I can round up.

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