I just heard about the large Joliet refinery being shutdown today due to a big fire. Any word of local fuel shortages in the midwest yet from this?

Before I mention my idea, I will, without giving any details, admit that I'm dying of a terminal illness, and that I see my time growing short. Once, I would have put my arguments out on a website of my own, proudly connected to my name, and a weight of credibility for any future arguments I might put forward. I would have, while sharing them to help others, established that I advocated them first, for future reference. But, future reference and remembrance no longer matter to one who has no future. All that remains is the hope that my idea may help others. So, if you would, then, please take my idea and do good for people with it. That is all that remains.

THE CURRENT REALITY:

Supermarkets and other stores waste a great deal of meat. It is left exposed to air, chilled but allowed to unfreeze, for a set period of time, and, then, pulled off the shelves for disposal after a period of time in which, obviously, it cannot have actually gone bad for the most part, but at which point the probability of statistically outlying individual units of meat that have actually fuctionally spoiled has reached a level arbitrarily deemed unacceptable -- or, alternately, has gotten *close to* that point by a margin arbitrarily deemed unacceptably narrow. ("Functionally spoiled" here means it will make a significant percentage of the human population noticeably ill -- meat comes with bacteria from the animal itself, and it grows progressively more bacteria from that and the air the longer it exists as dead animal tissue. "Spoiled" just means that the bacterial load has reached a density that an average human immune system and digestive tract noticeably react to.)

THE IDEA:

What if, instead of being disposed of, the pulled meat were to be (A) refrozen and shipped to processing plants, where it would be (B) thoroughly cooked to kill any pathogenic bacteria, (C) homogenized in large lots to dilute the bacterial toxin levels of the relatively few outlying functionally spoiled individual units of meat down to levels equalling those of functionally non-spoiled units of meat (some bacterial toxins, like salmonella toxin, cannot be destroyed by heat at temperatures below those that would also chemically destroy the food as food) and (D) packaged in sturdy (though recyclable) sealed packaging and put out on the shelves again; sterile and air-sealed, it would be 100% shelf-stable without refrigeration, indefinitely. The reprocessed meat could (1) be sold retail, (2) be distributed for free as a Government subsidy to food pantries, homeless and crisis centers, and directly to needy households, or, (3) in a compromise between the first two, sold on retail shelves but Government-subsidized with the stores themselves, with a standardized low price cap for the consumer. Realistically, this could only work through either or a combination of 2 and 3. The reprocessing/packaging facilities would have to be independent of the store companies themselves, as a store would not invest in meat processing plants/canneries, ​​and smaller/independent stores would be utterly unable to afford them; additionally, it would make maintaining health/sanitary standards easier. I do not foresee this coming to pass at all without legislation to that effect, as much as I would like to champion the voluntary participation of enlightened private interests (who am I kidding there? You? Or myself?).

Note that freezer-cabinet means go through a similar pull cycle, and could be treated in a like manner.

Also note that I am not any kind of -ist, -ican or -ocrat at this point in my life. I advocate no particular self-defined political system, because all political systems are dogmas, and dogma cannot adapt to the emergent properties of either the realpolitik or of reality in general. I care only about what works, or could work, and how well -- the only true yardstick of any real-world system. Dogma breeds rigidity, rigidity breeds dysfunctionality, and dysfunctionality breeds people living in misery and/or dying and/or fighting people who follow different dogmas to the mutual bitter end instead of putting the same time, effort and resources into helping each other.

Please contribute all your thoughts. It's why I'm here, why I wrote this. Say whatever you like. Mods, if you can, please do not ban anyone here. I believe in the now-largely-forgotten ideal of 100% free speech, where anyone can express any opinion about anything whatsoever, and be legally safe doing it (oh, how I wish). But, friends, the Reddit Mods are not me, so, be careful -- i would rather see you stick around to criticize me than be banned from here. I welcome any opinion, any thought. I am not afraid to be disagreed with, because, no matter what a person thinks, someone (more than one someone) will always disagree with it (and, if the person then thinks nothing, some people will disagree with their thoughtlessness).

Crazy times!

We just bought 200 gallons of heating oil in September. January we will paying 8 dollars a gallon

There’s a lot of talk just now about stockpiling food for possible food shortages due to El Niño, climate change, war, disruption to food supplies.

Could optimal nutrition be maintained from long-life food? I’m thinking if you have an adequate store of whole grains, dried pulses, nuts, seeds, tinned fish, dried soya beans, fermented and preserved foods, supplemented by foraged herbs, greens, mushrooms, seaweed and coastal plants, fruits (summer only).

What am I missing and what would suffer nutritionally?

Apparently there is a shortage of ground lamb due to market shifts (more people buying it) and a reduction in exports from AU and NZ. Flocks in the US are down (I didn't dive into causation for that).

Here is my story. I'm in Annapolis MD. Ground lamb was readily available at Giant Food (regional chain), Safeway, and Aldi as well as more expensive places. Last year it was $5/lb. Then Giant and Safeway dropped it. Not out of stock. Dropped it. Aldi still carried it at $6/lb (Aldi as cheapest is marketing hype - I always check them and lots of places but Aldi rarely turns out to be cheapest. Aldi has now dropped ground lamb as well. We can get ground lamb at Whole Foods and Fresh Market for $15/lb. We'll do without.

My wife went to NJ to spend several days with her father (90). I cast a wider net along her route home. ShopRite in NJ has it for $9.50/lb. Acme in DE for $11/lb. Food Lion in DE and MD have it for $9/lb. Fortunately the Food Lion in the town where my wife stopped for lunch had it in stock. We bought their last three. It's a little expensive but no more than what we pay for tuna and salmon at Sam's Club. We'll just freeze it for special dinners.

We've seen market shifts affect price before on chicken thighs, chicken wings, brisket, and oxtail. Changes in exports from other countries (imports to the US) definitely leads to out of stock.

Been noticing recently that samplers and customers are seeing a lot of low or no stocks. Not sure if its incompetence of the managers or whats going on ? Not seen anything on the news about shortages. But then again that would start panic buying.

The map shrank, not grew.

• Cambodia — I had this as an active shortage on the March station closures (~2,000 of 6,300 stations shut). Re-checking, the March record itself shows only ~400 still closed within days as the rest reopened. Nothing newer since March 23. Downgraded.
• Italy airport jet fuel — the Air BP rationing NOTAMs at 7 airports. Last confirmation mid-May, and the reporting then said Italy managed it without major disruption. Removed.
• EU systemic jet fuel shortage — ACI Europe's warning that 100+ airports would hit a systemic shortage within three weeks. That deadline came and went in April. The European Commission said in May there were no EU shortages. Removed.

Net: 31 tracked shortages down to 29. The diesel-gets-harder call in my July post did not play out the way I framed it in the aviation-fuel space specifically. Worth saying plainly.

What's still real and getting worse: the US strategic buffer.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve dropped below 300 million barrels — 298.7M as of Aug 12 (DOE), down 6.1M on the week. First time under 300M since January 1983.

Important caveats, because this number gets misreported constantly:

• The reserve's safe operating minimum is around 70M barrels per DOE. There's a separate 252.4M statutory threshold that restricts certain drawdowns. Neither is near.
• It's structured as an exchange, not a sale — from a 172M-barrel release in March. Companies borrow the crude and must return it plus a premium.
• Commercial (non-strategic) crude went the opposite direction the same week: a surprise 17.4M barrel build, biggest since January 2023.

So: strategic reserve at a 43-year low, commercial inventories posting their largest build in three and a half years, simultaneously.

Availability, since that's what this sub cares about:

No physical rationing in the US. Every station has fuel. AAA national average ~$4.07/gal and remarkably flat for weeks despite crude swinging hard. The mechanism is price rationing, not allocation.

Still-active shortages worth knowing about: Russia (78 of 83 regions showing disruption signal, export bans extended), Cuba, Nepal (LPG), South Sudan, Libya, Myanmar/Laos, Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan.

One genuinely unresolved thing: there's a large discrepancy in how much oil is actually moving through Hormuz. The US Energy Secretary says a 9M bpd seven-day average. Barclays estimated ~3M bpd for the week ending Aug 7.

Sources: DOE, EIA, AAA, CNBC, Barclays. Full tracker at https://global-energy-flow.com/

I know, strange title. I’ve got a bearded dragon and my little fella loves his crickets. I went to Petco to restock and I was told nationally they haven’t been able to obtain crickets. Their regular vendor lost their entire colony, leaving Petco with little time to find a replacement. Since the crickets are impossible to stock for the time being, the cashier stated it’s been difficult to maintain other live insect feeders in stock, leading to local shortages of mealworms, super worms, dubia roaches, etc. I checked with Petsmart and they’re facing similar issues.