Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, August 5, 2025
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30 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
I noticed a lot of price jumps at the local Kroger yesterday. Normally I order online and only go in for produce. Yesterday I had to traverse the store for some sundry stuff and had a chance to check stock.
Turns out, being an old hippie has some advantages. Snack and processed foods prices are much higher. Being a scratch cook and baker for decades saves lots of the other kind of scratch. All meats and seafood are higher than last week. Instead of one pound bags of shrimp, it’s 12oz for the same price. Shrinkflation is everywhere, tho, to be fair.
So, definitely no relief at the grocery and none in sight.
Thanks, maga
@becca: I have a sister in law who owns a toy store in a modestly sized town (Pop 50,000 with MSA of around 220K). It has been a modest success and survived the pandemic. However, the economic conditions are deteriorating and, with the huge uncertainty over tariffs, she is now looking at closing the store and declaring bankruptcy. Nothing seems to have improved her prospects, including adding a resale/consignment section. I suspect small businesses around the country are facing an uncertain future.
I don’t know who is buying beef these days. We are strictly chicken and pork. Every now and then beef shoulder is on sale which I buy and grind myself for ground beef but that’s about it.
@becca: Agreed. I’ve been considering going back to making my own yogurt if the price of that goes any higher. Some of the prices are crazy. Hershey’s syrup (I add a small amount to my coffee in the morning) has gone from $3.99 a bottle to over $5.49. This is probably due to the cost of chocolate soaring (bad harvest due to weather and tariffs), but I can make that from scratch too, as long as I have cocoa powder on hand. I’ve also noticed weird shortages, like brown sugar. I’m guessing this is tariff-related, but haven’t really checked.
Our grocery bills in summer are typically less because I am part of a local CSA, so my veggies, eggs, and produce are essentially prepaid in spring, but this year I’m paying essentially what I do in mid-winter, but for much less food.
Trump says he has brought all the prices down.
So obviously you are all wrong.
He would never lie about such a thing.
About nuclear reactors on the Moon, I assumed the need to power a lunar base or some other long term project or presence. Not simply planting one in the middle of nowhere for some reason.
BTW, I mentioned sodium cooled reactors. I’d this notion sodium has a low melting point. It does, for a metal, at around 95 C. That’s just short of water’s boiling point at sea level of 100 C*. The advantage is it won’t boil until it reaches a crazy high temp, like several hundred C, therefore it doesn’t need to be pressurized to keep from evaporating.
Anyway, I next thought of a sodium potassium alloy, usually known as NaK, which has a melting point of room temperature, and also a very high boiling point. That would be even better than sodium as a coolant, were it not that the alloy is even more explosively reactive than either sodium or potassium. Expose it to air and it rusts as it blows up. let it touch water and run for the hills (actually you should run first).
But in space, where there’s neither water nor air… Turns out an experimental NASA reactor launched into orbit used NaK as a coolant, as did a few Soviet satellites. How about that…
*What an amazing coincidence!
@becca:
@Scott:
@Jen:
It would be hilarious if cost of living pressures would motivate Americans to emigrate to other countries with more responsible fiscal policies, say like Mexico, Brazil, Colombia….
I hear some US citizens like to retire to Mexico, and this predates El Taco’s Magical Mysery Term.
@Daryl:
I saw posts on Bluesky yesterday where EL Taco claims drug prices have fallen 1500%. This would mean pharmaceutical companies would be paying people to take their drugs. A $100 drug would require a payment of $1,400.
Quick! Get your doctor to prescribe three of every drug in existence. You’ll make millions!
@Scott:
A few years ago I took the plunge and bought a chest freezer and a quarter side of beef. Was a bit of a headache coordinating with a processing plant/butcher, figuring out what cuts I wanted, vacuum sealing the meat when I got it. But it ended up being $3 a pound, with no distinguishing between cuts. At the time I think that was slightly high for ground beef but insanely cheap for all other beef. The next year I did the same for a half an acorn-finished hog.
When properly vacuum sealed, the meat will last years. I know this is not an option for everyone, due to storage space, time, proximity to beef production, etc. But if this is an option for anyone, I highly recommend it.
More on the BLS “accuracy” flap:
It appears that the majority of the employers reporting payroll data monthly are doing so via secure website transmission of spreadsheet form supplied by BLS. BLS gets reports from approx 120,000 employers and 600,000 worksites. This raw (employer) supplied data is then extrapolated to reflect the overall national trend. The same extrapolation model is used every month.
So, if the monthly extrapolated data is “inaccurate”, the root cause seems to be either 1) late submissions by employers or 2) employers that are “cooking” their reports.
It is important to recognize that reporting to BLS for the Current Employment Survey is voluntary, (only 10% of the states require participation).
BTW, independent of BLS – ADP reports on jobs gained/lost tracks BLS’s estimates. ADP uses actual anonymized payroll data from their 38 million payroll checks each month ( approximately 1 in 6 US employees)
@Kathy: After thinking about it more, I believe the “reactors on the moon” proposal was floated as a way to keep Musk in check. The most logical way to ferry all of the stuff that would be needed are Musk’s rockets, assuming he can keep them from exploding on or near the launchpad. If he plays nice and doesn’t challenge Republicans running for office, he gets the SpaceX contracts for the moon reactors.
@Neil Hudelson: I’m thinking of doing exactly this. One of the nice things about living in a rural area is that I can locate farmers pretty easily to see if they’re doing shares this year.
@Jen: that’s a great idea about making yogurt at home. I eat a lot of Greek yogurt these days and would love to cut down on plastic containers it comes in. That is a whole other discussion, trying to avoid plastic packaging for food. Nigh on unpossible.
@Neil Hudelson:
I’ve been buying ground beef at Costco. I forget the exact price, but a package with about 3.2 kilos cost almost exactly what 1.5 kilos would cost at the supermarket. I portion it , wrap the portions in foil, put them in freezer bags, and stick them in the freezer. They won’t last years, but they will last a couple of months just fine.
@becca:
I tried the yogurt at home years ago. It was a miserable failure. I may try again since the multipot has a yogurt function. I suppose this means it keeps the mix warm enough to let the bacilli thrive and make lactic acid.
And I still don’t know for sure I can use commercial yogurt as a starter, or whether I should get dormant cultures…
@Neil Hudelson: @Jen: @becca: Because I’m retired and have more time on my hands I am making a lot more of some basic food stuff. I regularly make vegetable broth out of vegetable scraps that I freeze, chicken broth from a rotisserie chicken and vegetable scraps (again). I’m a big instant pot user so I always make pasta or rice with the broth. Lots of garden herbs. I buy a 16 lb pork shoulder from Costco (preferably on sale) and make pulled pork and grind some more for breakfast and Italian sausage, and chorizo. I even threw some earthworms in the compost file. They multiplied like crazy. Now when the grandkids need worms for fishing, they just come over and dig them up themselves. I also have a batch of microgreens growing.
@Jen:
It would be par for the course for El Taco’s so-called administration to award a reactor contract to someone who has zero experience in making reactors.
If you meant getting the reactors to the Moon, currently there are exactly zero (zip) vehicles capable of sending large cargoes to the Moon. Conceivably the Xalcon 9 Heavy could boost such a thing*, but the chief nazi is hell bent on using the Xtarship (X is for Xplosion).
Lex Bezos did ok with the New Glenn rocket, but it’s far from a proven system. Allegedly he wants to launch his Blue Moon lander next. I’ll believe that when I see it.
The Xtarship, now, after it stops blowing itself up every time or nearly so, next will require much testing of the orbital upper stage, plus development of refueling, plus uncrewed tests of the lander, and so on. Meaning any contracts he gets from El Taco wouldn’t have any hardware to launch until well into the next administration.
*I’m not sure it wouldn’t require a third stage for lunar insertion.
@Kathy:
I also would assume so. But the current reactor thing seems cart/horse with any plan for a base or whatever.
The administration seems hot to return to the moon. I’ve seen little discussion of why. Going to the moon originally was a big cold war propaganda thing, but it also drove technology development and provided some minimal scientific data, along with a few hundred pounds of rocks. We haven’t gone back because there’s been no reason to. What’s changed? (Rhetorical question, not a query directed to Kathy.)
@gVOR10: Serendipity. I went from here to Eschaton, where Atrios answered my rhetorical question,
@Kathy: I think I read that they want about a 100kW reactor. That would have to be developed. Seems to be it would be easier (and cheaper) to string existing thermoelectric reactors in series to get that output.
@gVOR10: I think the “rational”* reason to establish a moonbase is to have a launch pad to Mars.
* a reason beyond national pride or national “security”.
I suppose ti was inevitable. He lost his dashing North Korean boyfriend, he lost his kind Russian master, so all El Taco has left is his trump virus. It almost makes logical sense he’d want it to thrive.
How bad is it?
Not as bad. Yet.
Between people who got vaccinated, have taken boosters, and those who were infected (and mixtures of all three), overall we’re no longer naive to the virus and can fight it better. So we won’t see overflowing hospital, freezer truck morgues, or mass graves. Yet.
But letting the trump virus circulate more, among people who will have a more limited variety of antibodies and T cells primed to recognize more variants, the higher the odds of a more virulent, more contagious variant will emerge.
And there’s still H5N1 bird flu around…
@Kathy: I use Stonyfield organic yogurt for the starter, but I have the best success using their whole milk yogurt as the starter. It’s the only yogurt I’ve found at the store that has (I think) six strains of bacteria.
@becca: I’ve found it’s super easy to make yogurt–warm milk (if it’s been opened for a day or more, I take it up to 200 degrees first), bring it down to around 100 degrees, mix some into a couple of tablespoons of yogurt (see above, Stonyfield whole milk plain), mix that into the tepid milk, cover, and then keep it in a warm spot for ~12 hours. I use the oven with the light on, but there are lots of options–a slow cooker that has a warming function (check the manual to make sure it doesn’t get too hot, that’ll kill the good bacteria), or even just on the counter in the summer. Refrigerate (it’ll get thicker).
To make Greek yogurt, I just put some of it in a gold metal coffee filter and let the whey drip out.
@gVOR10:
Partly.
Fact is the escape velocity off the Moon is lower. therefore if you could mine materials, manufacture ships, and make fuel for them, it would be far cheaper to launch from the Moon than from Earth.
But here you run into a Catch-22 situation: developing the infrastructure to mine, refine, and manufacture on the Moon (and even to grow food there) requires a lot more money than launching several missions to Mars from the Earth. Eventually the investment on the Moon would lower costs, but we’re talking about a time frame measured in several decades.
And as I keep pointing out, there is no return on investment.
Conceivably over the long run, say 50-100 years, and given a large manufacturing base on the Moon, you might make stuff for export to Earth. Assuming you can overcome lots of obstacles, like scarce water, lack of atmosphere, initial costs (trillions), the infernal lunar dust that clings to everything, temperature extremes between roasting and freezing, etc.
Bottom line:
El Taco would be very, very fortunate to be able to land one or maybe two Apollo type missions (ie a few days on the Moon, bring back some more lunar samples, set up longer term instruments), by 2028.
Polls, schmolls, but this has got to be sending the ketchup flying…
https://news.gallup.com/poll/693155/pope-leo-favorably-viewed-newsmakers.aspx
Look at the poll, it’s hilarious. Zelenskyy I understand, but Macron? Huh?
They both have higher favorability ratings than any American.
And Bernie Sanders and AOC are more favorable than Vance or Trump or any other magagop.
RFK Jr also scores well, but I swear, it’s because they think of Bobby.
@becca: As a Floridian, it’s entertaining to see how Rubio’s popularity has dropped off. ETTD.
@Kathy:
This being the Trump years, this moon thing brought to mind a song by Gil Scott-Heron:
“Whitey on the moon” from his 1970 album ‘Small Talk at 125th and Lenox’.
btw … R.I.P. Gil.
@Jen:
Brands are a bit different here. Ones you might recognize are Phage, Oikos (Danone), and Yoplait. Ones you might not, Lala, Alpura, Flor de Alfalfa (organic!*), I’ve no clue how many types of bacilli each has.
Last time I heated the milk, let it cool down (all measured with a thermometer), added some yogurt, stirred, covered, and kept in the oven for some hours. I later filtered it through a cheese cloth. I got lots of whey, so something did happen, but the remainder was more like thick acidic milk or very thin yogurt.
My guess is I didn’t keep the bacilli warm enough long enough. Ergo the possible attempt with the multipot (I am not getting a yogurt maker, I’d get a larger air fryer first for other things).
*And expensive enough to prove it.
@Scott:
Mars?
That would impinge on the tax cuts for the wealthy.
@Daryl:
But it’s got a red hat.
@Kathy:
It was always interesting that Heinlein’s Loonies exported mined fresh water, some other simple raw materials, and sunlight to Earth in the form of (largely dehydrated) wheat. Mike’s prediction of food riots within a few years as water grew scarce is what convinced Prof de la Paz to join the revolution, and to incorporate the secret tactic of having Earth destroy the primary catapult to stop water exports. Sanity check in real life — Arizona and California export large amounts of fresh water to Saudi Arabia and China respectively in the form of (barely dehydrated) alfalfa today, despite impending fresh water crises.
Also that steel, copper, silicon and sunlight are enough to launch payloads to Earth. And that a 25 ton rock — the individual stones at Stonehenge — and enough steel to let the electromagnetic catapult grab it, coming straight down at escape velocity, has the energy release of 2.5 kilotons of TNT. All of the current US nuclear bombs are dial-a-yield, and include a sub-kiloton setting, because that’s useful for many targets.
@Michael Cain:
There are plans to move asteroids into Earth orbit to mine them.
Maybe, contrary to Niven, the dinosaurs had a space program and did things like this.
Oh, this is rich. Newscorp warns El Taco AI is pillaging his books, and profiting off his thoughts.
What thoughts?
the whole thing is reverse flattery: ““The AI age must cherish the value of intellectual property if we are collectively to realize our potential,” News Corp said in a statement”
Yeah, they’re upset LLM training is using their intellectual property, not El Taco’s.
But the thing to keep in mind is El Taco is in the Epstein list.