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  • Great. When do they start calling me essential then require me to work while everyone else is on lockdown?

    • Being called a hero want enough reward for you? /s

    • Can someone post the article, it's completely paywalled for me.

      • Covid-like shortages for US consumers ‘within weeks’ Shipping data shows container traffic from China to the US is collapsing A shopper looks at nearly empty egg shelves in a grocery store. Apollo Global Management said there “will be empty shelves in US stores in a few weeks”, similar to those of the pandemic, and warned of “significant layoffs” next month

        President Trump claimed he has already struck “200 deals” on tariffs with foreign leaders — even as one of America’s biggest asset managers warned that a fall in trade between the US and China will lead to Covid-like shortages within weeks.

        Apollo Global Management, which manages about $700 billion of assets, said analysis of China shipping data showed container traffic from there to the US is collapsing.

        The consequence “will be empty shelves in US stores in a few weeks and Covid-like shortages for consumers and for firms using Chinese products as intermediate goods”, Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, said.

        • Trump: I’ve made 200 tariff deals and spoken to President Xi

        The White House claims that scores of trade deals are close to completion but has yet to release details of any. In an interview with Time magazine, Trump said that trade negotiations with foreign powers could be “finished” within “three to four weeks”.

        “Ultimately, I’ve made all the deals,” Trump said in the interview to mark his first 100 days in office. “I’ve made 200 deals.”

        Trump said that China’s President Xi had called him, despite China denying any contact between the two governments over the trade war between the economic superpowers. The president did not say when he and Xi spoke or what the two leaders discussed. “He’s called. And I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf,” Trump said.

        Trump has placed punitive 145 per cent tariffs on imports from China, while Beijing has retaliated with 125 per cent levies on US goods. “There’s a number at which they will feel comfortable,” Trump said, referring to China. “But you can’t let them make a trillion dollars on us.”

        Explaining his approach to the tariff policy that has triggered weeks of ­turmoil on global markets, the ­president compared the US to the world’s department store.

        “I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there,” he said. “And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, ‘If you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.’ ”

        The White House suspended tariffs on other countries for 90 days this month as foreign leaders vowed to negotiate with the Trump administration, but it has not spared China.

        Vowing to “fight to the end”, Beijing has restricted exports of rare earth minerals that are vital for manufacturing batteries and high-tech devices.

        Apollo warned that a collapse in trade between the US and China would lead to “significant lay-offs in trucking, logistics and retail” next month.

        The White House has softened its posture towards China in recent days, claiming that trade talks with Beijing were moving the right direction. China dismissed the claim as “fake news”.

        Markets were subdued on Friday. US equities rallied earlier in the week, with the S&P 500 on Thursday posting its third straight gain of more than 1 per cent and the Nasdaq its own third straight gain of more than 2 per cent

  • This rhetoric is just trying to butter us up for the impending next round of price gouging.

    If something seems too expensive, don’t buy it and opt for goods with less headway for markup. Start cooking scratch meals and cut out the prefab stuff; you’ll take more time for food prep, but it will save you thousands in medical bills later on.

    • Man, I'm really hoping our OT provider is able to help my kid overcome ARFID, because feeding him is hard enough as it is. We try to home cool stuff, but the tism gets the best of him and he won't eat a lot of 'normal' foods. Good times.

    • Yup. Your new best friends are rice, beans, white sugar, molasses, (did you know that brown sugar is just white sugar plus molasses?), salt, all purpose flour, oatmeal, and lentils. Bought in bulk. And use your local ethnic markets for spices and bouillons; They’re often 3-5 times cheaper than your local grocery store.

      You can just buy one or two things per paycheck, if you can’t afford all of them at the same time. Or hell, get some friends together and split a bulk bag. I have a 10 pound bucket of rice (split from a larger 25 pound bag) that I have been working on for literal months. A 20 pound bag of rice can keep you full for so fucking long, as long as you store it properly.

      Then you just add extra things when you can. Maybe you have potatoes, an onion, a clove of garlic, and some pork this week. So you make a loaded baked potato soup. Also, learn to dress up instant ramen. A scoop out of a giant bag of diced frozen veggies will do a lot. If you can afford it, add a soft boiled egg too.

      “Nobody has time for flour, cuz you need to wait for it to rise!” Use baking powder recipes, or flatbreads instead. Learn to make biscuits and scones, if you want to bake. Tortillas are stupid easy to make; They’re literally just flour and water, pressed flat (fucking use an empty wine or beer bottle if you don’t have a rolling pin) and cooked on a flat hot surface like a skillet. I could literally fit the entire tortilla cooking process, from raw flour to finished tortillas, into an uncut 5 minute TikTok tutorial if I wanted to. Congrats, now you have tortillas for 2¢ each, instead of a 10 pack for $5. And they’ll fucking taste better than the store-bought ones, because they’re fresh and hot.

      “I don’t have a rice cooker so I can’t make rice!” Do you think people have been using electric rice cookers for thousands of years? My brother in Christ, people have been cooking rice using the “just put a fucking vessel over fire” method for over nine millennia now. Will you likely fuck it up the first time, and accidentally make porridge? Yeah. But that’s a learning opportunity, and you only spent like 5¢ making that mistake because the rice is so fucking cheap.

      “I can’t afford fancy cookware!” Go hit your local thrift store. I guarantee they have an entire shelf full of cast iron cookware and baking sheets for like $1 each, that you’ll be able to hand down to your grandchildren.

      • How I make rice - it turns out quite nice every time -

        1 cup of rice, 2 cups of water. If we plan on eating a lot of rice, 2 cups of rice, 4 cups of water.

        Boil water. Add a pinch of salt, depending on my mood. Once water is boiling, turn heat down to lowest possible setting, put in rice, and put on lid. Set timer for 18 minutes. Do not open lid. When timer goes off, turn off heat, take off lid, fluff rice.

        We could surely find a rice cooker, and probably a very fancy one, but I don't really see much use for it and it's just another appliance we have to find a place to put...

        Also - it's weird you bring up the molasses thing - my wife just told me about this in the past year when she mixed up a batch of brown sugar. I've lived for decades and had no idea.

      • I havnt finished reading Ive just gotten excited when you mentioned the sugar and molasses information.

        For years I've only bought pure cane sugar. It is interchangeabe with white sugar, it also still has its molasses. If a recipe calls for a half cup of white sugar and a half cup of brown sugar, I just use a full cup of cane sugar. This works beautifully. Even a recipe that calls for caster sugar. I have placed it in the food processor and ran it for a bit to make it more fine, no issue there. It worked in the recipe beautifully. I do have molasses in my cabinet for its purposes, because they are some, but I don't understand why today we need white sugar and brown sugar differentiated when we have regular cane sugar. To bake a white cake (The only instance I can think where you would need white sugar at the moment) is pure vanity, not practicality.

        I'm so glad you've mentioned it here

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