Better than Britannica

Better than Britannica

Hey Friends,

Good morning to literally everyone who is not a dictator of a country blocking access to free press.

The Lorem Ipsum will always fight for freedom, as much as an email can. To that end, to ensure that the Lorem Ipsum is always the people’s email, I’m opening up an ask me anything segment intermittently within issues of The Lorem Ipsum Weekly.

Do you have a question that your World Book Encyclopedia set printed in the 1960s doesn’t yet have the answer to? Are you tired of the hasty shallow answers from the likes of Google? Ask The Lorem Ipsum.

Email [email protected] and your question will be considered for a future issue.

For now, let’s get to The News.


This week Ukraine still tops the headlines, however social media posts are predominantly pictures of gas pump meters. To keep you informed I pledge that The Lorem Ipsum will continue to follow mainstream news sources, local Ukrainian journalists on twitter, and social media users who lack an understanding of gas prices. More to come on that topic.

What else happened this week?

Hot Takes

Week 10 of 2022

I’m not going to not not talk about gas prices. If you want to donate to Ukraine, one indirect way to do so is by getting a tank of gas. For every tank, about 7% or more of the proceeds do not go to Russia, because Biden banned the importing of Russian oil.

In a press briefing on Tuesday, President Biden explained how the oil economics work as part of an international network not priced by the president. Republican critics responded “Let’s Go Brandon”.

What are we truthing about? Truth Social launched February 20th but has pretty much just bombed and its founder and chairman has been cussing ever since. Evidence suggests its failure is due to a combination of Russian bots and cyber attackers being preoccupied with other projects along with a lot of Trump things failing in general (see TRUMP Steaks).

Need directions to your next abortion? If you’re currently looking for an abortion, I can give you directions to any state other than Texas. Evidently, that’s what people actually in Texas are doing too. The law, meant to benefit unborn children has actually benefited the oil industry more in fill-ups on the way out of state.

Tis is not actually the season. Tornados have invaded Iowa earlier in the year than normal, with 135 mph winds treating the Hawkeye State like Putin would treat an apartment in Kyiv. Related, the winds reached my home in Indianapolis and knocked over my grill, but I didn’t really like it anyway.

Masking the problems. We’ve forgotten the Pandemic, but also many of the Covid-related measures are being dropped including mask mandates. A local citizen asked to comment said “Oh, we stopped wearing those a long time ago.”

In other Covid news, pay no attention to that science behind the curtain, because Florida’s Surgeon General urges parents not to get their kids vaccinated, despite the mathematical findings favoring it.

Thats it for the new, now for The Gist.


How do gas prices work, if at all?

The Gist

Hey Daniel,

What’s up with gas prices these days? And why isn’t ya boy doing anything about it? I just spent over a hundy filling up my dually truck!

Sincerely (as always) Ted C., from Texas.

—

Well first of all Ted, I’ve already explained that Joe is not “ma boy” and for the record, please show some respect. It’s President Ya Boy. Okay?

Gas prices are complicated.

One thing you may have heard about gas prices is that The President alone controls them entirely. If a President wants to overwhelm your budget but only whelm your gas tank, all they need to do is get elected, and be in a party you don’t like. Still, prices ebb and flow no matter who is in office. Today they are what we call “higher than they ever were, as long as we don’t account for inflation.”

This of course brings me to the topic of inflation. What causes that? Well, Ted, it’s caused by there being more money than there are things to buy. This can sometimes happen when you print lots of money. For example, in 2020, The US ran its biggest deficit since 1945 and had to somehow pay those bills. Making new money seemed like the best approach. A similar budget just slightly less was passed by the same president to pay the bills in 2021 as well. The next President came in to take the blame but didn’t get to pass his own budget until the end of the year in 2021.

Based on what I’m seeing on social media, we have some guy named “Brandon” to thank for all this.

Of course, this doesn’t answer your question about gas prices, but inflation is not entirely irrelevant, because inflation does lead to increased prices. It would be fun to blame it on a President and some do, but unfortunately, the only one to blame is a tiny microscopic beast that reproduces like someone from the Dugger family and devolves almost as quickly. I’m talking about Coronavirus and its many variants.

If you remember, in March of 2020, we were fed the line “15 days to slow the spread”. For two weeks, the nation (and nations across the world) banded together to “flatten the curve” by closing businesses, wiping down our groceries, and if possible working from home. This obviously didn’t work, but it did result in people driving much less.

This is where the gas part starts coming in. Demand for gas plummeted just like people’s interest in working a regular job did. Production of gas plummeted too.

So while some of us were working from home, others were trying to keep up with our surging Amazon ordering habits while fewer people were producing the products we were buying.

Basically, the whole market got yanked back and forth for a few months, and the curve didn’t flatten for a full two years and neither did gas prices.

So as we can see, high gas prices were caused by thinking that we could stop a virus with only two weeks of effort, but it actually took two years and trillions of dollars.

As far as we know, no one named Brandon was involved.

Thanks for your question, Ted. I hope you continue to enjoy the oil coming to your state through the Keystone pipeline that has been flowing since 2014! Cheers! 🍻

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend!


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