POLITICS Inflation /General Finance Insanity

My wife loves to grocery shop (without me). That is her thing. I embrace and support it. Based on the above OP, I am relieved that in our household, this is the way.

 

Lots more blood stains to remove nowadays I suppose. I just had to use a gallon for my trunk. Prices are crazy

 

It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

doubtful prices ever really go back down in any meaningful way but the rate of increase will slow eventually.

 

Pro-vax, pro-drag queen and now you're anti price gouging too? I'd say you've gone full commie already

 

Shopping at Costco is like traveling through a portal to 2010. Inflation tamer

 

Got 2 dozen eggs fridee for $6

 

Does one have to be a "member" to shop at this Costco place?

 

Yes

 

This train derailment story in Ohio is wild, and I’m afraid the carnage will be far worse than we can begin to imagine.

And shocker, it may not have happened if common sense regulations were in place, but they were shuttered after lobbying by the rail industry. Another shocker, railroads bought back like $20 billion in stock last year.

 

I was talking to my wife about it. It is eerily similar to the movie "White Noise," which was filmed... there. In and near East Palestine. The main plot point of the movie is a train derailment releasing a mysterious toxic plume that triggers evacuations, but no one knows the nature of the threat and for some reason the rest of the world doesn't seem to care much.

Weird, surreal movie that ends up not really being about that but more about human nature. It is on Netflix.

 

I didn’t know about the movie, that’s kind of eerie. It’s shameful that corporate media is basically ignoring it, but it’s not surprising.

 

Trailers were a bit misleading imo.

 

Yes, agreed

 

A quick Google search of “train derailment” shows all local and national news networks with coverage of the accident.

 

Coverage detailing what happened, sure.

Are they asking why it happened? If it was preventable? Covering the series of events that prevented regulations being in place that very well may have prevented it from happening? Asking how railroads used cost as an excuse to not implement necessary safeguards while buying back billions in stock? Are they sufficiently investigating the full range of the effects on the health of people, wildlife and the environment?

 

Like a lot of stories, it is getting very superficial treatment and little scrutiny. Specific example: the air testing is being touted as the reason why there is no wider danger to people. But vinyl oxide doesn't persist in the air for long, and instead contaminates soil and water. One would not expect the air to test for vinyl oxide days after the fact, and it is meaningless to assessing the environmental hazard. The fish kill indicates there is a persistent hazard. But you aren't hearing that on the news.

It is similar to how it was said in the week after 9/11 that there was not a persisting threat from the dust cloud from the collapse... while technically true, anyone exposed to the dust inhaled lots of abestos and the incidence of lung disease in the decades since show this.

 

There's also no sexy gotcha for anyone to point a finger at. Rail is not my thing, but corporations and industry are always pushing back on regulation, sometimes rightly so. If regulation gets rolled back or amended, usually it isn't too juicy.

 

In this instance, a car was seen and detected as being on fire, and a decision was made to continue on. 20 miles later, the explosion/derailing occurred in a more populated area. That decision and sequence of events deserves investigation and consideration. They could have stopped the train and disconnected from the car. But that would have made trains late.

 

So it appears a short term cost due to delays was avoided in favor of risking long term, even generational, damage which may be even genetically passed down.