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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Good lord that isn’t how commodity prices work. There’s no cabal with complete control over global oil and gas prices. There are groups with varied interests depending on the amount and quality of oil they possess, but even that gets complicated. It boils down to what is on the market and how it’s bought and sold on contracts by global energy traders. Yes, OPEC and Saudi Arabia have some power over prices by increasing and decreasing supply on the market, but that’s been reduced with how much supply has come online over the years in the US and Canada. Russian supply cuts to Europe had a pretty obvious ripple effect, but after a year or so, supplies and relative demand have shifted. This reductionist take is so tiring and is such an obvious sign of lack of understanding how commodities markets, and quite likely economies themselves, actually work in the real world. It sounds almost as crazy as the right wing conspiracies about global cabals.








  • It’s worse unfortunately. Even if we stopped using plastic materials today the effects from this will carry on for many generations. Fortunately, I’m confident we will also find ways to mitigate the issue over time as well, but it’s a far greater challenge than lead. Perhaps as a positive the symptoms might not be akin to the violent behavior lead caused around the world. We shall see.