Eggs became a symbol of our temperate-zone Spring festival, Easter, because egg production requires a set amount of daylight; without affordable artificial illumination, winter eggs were a rare and special treat. Modern technology meant we learned to treat eggs as a reliable source of cheap protein. But even if, miraculously, we don’t get a human H5N1 spillover, it’s already a global pandemic that has changed the zoological landscape… and, increasingly, a disease decimating chicken flocks.
I know not everybody has the chance or the stamina to wade through my weekly Disease-of-the-Week updates, so here’s a couple of longer pieces that might be helpful.
As egg prices soar, Trump administration plans new strategy to fight bird flu https://t.co/WUVoa2Rl0e
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 19, 2025
Cynic that I am, I would bet cash money that Trump minions’ idiotic Build an anti-geese wall! will prove even less useful than the original slogan. Ignore the headline, read the AP article:
With egg prices soaring, the Trump administration is planning a new strategy for fighting bird flu that stresses vaccinations and tighter biosecurity instead of killing off millions of chickens when the disease strikes a flock.
The federal government will seek “better ways, with biosecurity and medication and so on” rather than the current standard practice of destroying all the birds on a farm when an infection is detected, Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”…
Kevin Hassett on Trump's avian flu plan: "What we need to do is have better ways with bio-security and medication and so on to make sure that the perimeter doesn't have to kill the chickens. To have a better, smarter, perimeter… they're killing chickens to stop the spread, but… pic.twitter.com/a3s8WvMWFg
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 16, 2025
Normally when chickens or turkeys start dying from the disease, officials will “depopulate,” or destroy all the birds on the farm to prevent it from spreading.
But the resulting culling of millions of chickens per month has caused egg prices to skyrocket, with shortages that have led some retailers to ration sales. The average price of a dozen Grade A eggs in U.S. cities hit $4.95 in January, and the USDA predicts it will soar another 20% this year…
The poultry industry has long resisted vaccinating flocks against bird flu because of the potential impacts on export markets, as well as the expense. Most U.S. trading partners won’t accept exports from countries that allow vaccinations due to concerns that vaccines can mask the presence of the virus…
Leaders of the Congressional Chicken Caucus said in a letter to Rollins last week that while the egg industry has lost the most birds, the broiler industry could bear a disproportionate share of the costs of any policy change. According to USDA figures 77.5% of the nearly 159 million commercial birds lost to avian influenza since February 2022 have been layers, or over 123 million. That compares to 13.7 million broilers, or 8.6%, and 18.7 million turkeys, or 11.8%.
Avian influenza vaccines have long been available. Animal health company Zoetis announced on Friday that it had received a conditional license from the USDA for a new vaccine. But using it would be up to federal authorities in partnership with the industry, the company said in a statement. Other manufacturers are also working on them.
Dr. Carol Cardona, a bird flu expert at the University of Minnesota, said tighter biosecurity to prevent cross-contamination and limit outbreaks to one barn “requires an incredible amount of work on the ground,” she said…
For “precision depopulation” to work, she said, there must be effective barriers to transmission between barns, such as ensuring that farm workers don’t carry the virus on their boots or clothes. And workers need to be alert for the earliest signs of abnormal deaths, she added.
Another barrier is the logistical difficulty in giving shots to up to 3 million birds or more at a single egg farm. Current vaccines are all injectables. Farms might opt to limit them to new pullets coming onto a farm, she said.
Vaccines that could be economically administered through a farm’s water supply would require new innovations, Cardona said. But until there’s a market for vaccines, she said, there won’t be an incentive to develop them…
In an ideal world, keeping three million birds poultry production units penned up in a single facility would not happen. Welcome to capitalism, comrade! Any and all solutions to this problem are going to cost money… and even that might not be enough.
From farms to bakeries, egg shortages and price hikes are challenging small businesses https://t.co/PHrlaJrkNC
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 18, 2025
… Most owners are taking the increase in stride, looking at it as just one of many hurdles they constantly face. But if the problem persists, they could be forced to raise prices or adjust their products…
“It’s not just the cost of eggs, right? It’s also just the availability,” she said. She prefers to buy medium-sized white shelled eggs, buying a box with 18 dozen eggs, but two weeks ago those were unavailable, so she had to buy brown eggs in individual cartons of 12.
“It sounds kind of silly, but when I I’m the sole proprietor and I have a huge volume of work, to have to take a dozen of eggs out of my walk-in at a time as opposed to a flat of eggs, it’s just it’s a pain,” she said…
At Daisies, a pasta restaurant in Chicago, chef/partner Joe Frillman and chef/partner Leigh Omilinsky haven’t raised prices but are thinking of adjusting menu items.
Omilinsky said she is thinking of adding more vegan and egg-free deserts to the menu and has been working more with flax seeds. She said the shortage has made her more conscious of the ingredients she is using and wasting less.
“You know, if we need egg yolks we are absolutely saving those whites,” she said.
Meanwhile, Frillman said the restaurant has shifted to making pastas that use less eggs.
“We’ve just changed the shape of the noodle,” he said. “We use an extruder which is a piece of equipment that allows us to basically extrude pasta without eggs.”…
“We have a pappardelle on our menu that’s been on since day one,” he said. “If this gets to the point where it’s just cost prohibitive, it’s very egg yolk heavy, we would then transfer to something like a spaghetti or a fettuccine that is a similar noodle that we can make without eggs.”…
Meanwhile, Stephanie Maynard, co-owner of Ox Hollow Farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, faces a different issue: skyrocketing demand.
The farm she owns with her husband produces beef, pork, poultry, eggs and vegetables. They have 950 laying hens, with 300 more coming in March. The winter is generally a quieter time as the farm prepares for busy spring and summer months, increasing the inventory on hand until it is ready to sell. But this year, they’re rushing to increase egg production for customers at greenmarkets.
People who might normally buy eggs at supermarkets are turning to greenmarkets due to the shortages, and regular customers are increasing their orders just to make sure they have eggs, she said…
"[Avian flu] can kill chickens within 2 days—it's rapid..What do you have in place right now to prevent the spread to the rest of the flock? If there's nothing there, the rest of the birds will die a painful death w/ attendant suffering w/i the next week” https://t.co/EK0RKHwF04
— Amesh Adalja (@AmeshAA) February 17, 2025
Speaking of ‘greenmarket’ production, another mood-spoiler from the Washington Post — “Bird flu fears have backyard chicken coop owners on edge for what’s next”: [gift link]
On her picturesque farm in the suburbs of Chicago, Kimberly Henny is used to having visitors drop by to snap up fresh eggs, honey and vegetables. But as concerns over bird flu ripple across the country, Henny and her family are now accustomed to chasing away uninvited guests — the Canada geese and other migratory birds that like to gather on the golf course next door.
Henny, 44, said she and her husband spot the geese through the window and can only pray they pass by their small-scale “hobby” farm. She’s worried that geese and other wild waterfowl carrying highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, could infect her free-range chickens and wipe out the flock — and the economic tentpole of her family’s small operation.
“It’s terrifying. Eggs are our number-one business,” Henny said. “But we also have two little kids; we live here on the farm and we also don’t want to get sick.”
For owners of small flocks that range from backyard coops to small egg farms, anxieties are already high over an ongoing avian flu outbreak that some experts predict could worsen as spring approaches and wild birds migrate. But even as disease fears grow, record-high egg prices are spurring people with no experience in raising chickens to start backyard flocks of their own.
HPAI has infected more than 1,550 combined commercial and backyard flocks since it was first confirmed in commercial flocks two years ago. In the past 30 days alone, nearly 160 combined backyard and commercial flocks have been affected, according to data from the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. In January, a Louisiana man who was older than 65 and had underlying health conditions was the first known human to die in the outbreak, though the disease is generally considered low-risk for humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...
Infected birds can transmit the virus in respiratory droplets and secretions like saliva and feces, while other animals pick up the virus from contaminated sources such as chicken feed, soil, water dishes and cages.
Cardona warns that the current threat level is only likely to rise as spring approaches; chickens spend more time outdoors (sunlight stimulates their egg production) and wild birds will pack migratory flyways.
Once a single bird is infected, it can be all but impossible to stop the spread in a large commercial flock or a backyard setting, Cardona said…
Steve LaBonne
Much respect as always to your incredibly informative posts on such topics, but my totally useless comment is that it’s going to be a while before I stop laughing about the existence of a Congressional Chicken Caucus. There are just so many places you can go with that.
alquitti
Fire the chickens.
frosty
Anne, I love your Disease-Of-The-Week updates. In 2020 I read them every morning and then pulled the covers over my head.
They kept me safe and gave me info I could send to my friend with Long COVID. They’ve been invaluable.
Now back to read your post.
FelonyGovt
Interesting that vaccines for chickens are A-OK but vaccines for humans, not so much.
ETA are you feeling any better, Anne Laurie?
dmsilev
@FelonyGovt: Look, if human breast and thigh meat was marketable, they’d be supporting human vaccination and mass antibiotic injections and all that.
FelonyGovt
@dmsilev: Creepy but true!
Ohio Mom
TIL that eggs are a traditional spring treat.
Of course it makes perfect sense that chickens don’t lay eggs in the winter — less nutrition available for the hens, so survival could depend on not using up calories on making eggs, and in the colder weather, the little baby chicks could freeze. That scraggly down is not going to keep them warm.
I will eat the hard boiled egg appetizer at the next Seder with deepened appreciation.
I admit I skimmed most of the post, at this point in the day I am worn out trying to keep an even mood in the face of this coup.
dmsilev
Can’t Elon Musk’s team of a half a dozen twenty-year-old self-certified geniuses come up with a solution? Preferably one using AI and blockchain?
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
Three thoughts:
1) Is there going to be enough of any federal agency left to address this issue? The DOGEbags seem compelled to prevent that.
2) A vaccine? What about avian autism? (/s) Seriously, though: it’s ok for livestock but not humans? Quite the contradiction.
3) Love the unintentional humor in the typo “adding more… egg-free deserts”.
dmsilev
@FelonyGovt: I have a Modest Proposal I’d like to run by you.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@dmsilev: Got to wait until Those Other People* get just a wee bit more dehumanized. But if we don’t stop them, then it’s Mrs. Lovett’s Pie Stand as the new up-and-coming national fast food chain.
Melancholy Jaques
I’m sure Kevin Hassett doesn’t know anything about chickens & the notion that he or anyone hired by Trump is smarter or better than the people Biden hired is hard to believe.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@dmsilev: Irish is such an 18th century delicacy. Especially when there are Haitians and Somalis aplenty, and domestic cats and dogs to protect.
/s
scav
Universal health care for chickens with mandatory vaccination! Of course.
eta And the man who objected the birds being hypothetically killed by windmills will order all wild alien immigrant birds to be shot on sight if they attempt to cross into our airspace. Probably by ai-enabled drones developed by dearest elon.
Another Scott
I read that as white shelled-eggs and thought, yeah, that would be an innovation and maybe save some time shelling them, but then you have to spend the time pouring out just the right amount of white while you’re counting the yolks…
Thanks for all you do, AL.
Best wishes,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Melancholy Jaques:
Given that Hassett’s the “Dow 36,000” guy, he doesn’t even understand his own field, let alone anyone else’s.
TONYG
Personally, it always makes me confident when someone proposes “and so on” as a solution to a difficult problem.
Jay
Canadian eggs at Safeway, (pricier than Costco or Save On) are $2.79 CDN, or $1.96 USD for a dozen, large, free range. antibiotic free, grain fed.
karen gail
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
Soylent Green; the movie with Charlton Heston about 2022; after all so many other books have become realty why shouldn’t “Make Room! Make Room!”. After all Harry Harrison wasn’t all that far off about what the world would become.
I suspect if Fox “news” came out and said that long hog was the new meat; people would believe.
Jackie
I saw a meme coloring potatoes for Easter instead of eggs.
It could have been here.
What other foods could be dyed in lieu of eggs?
Jay
Actual quote from your Bird Flu Czar before the media sane washed it,
Viva BrisVegas
I read somewhere (it may even be true), that the H5N1 fatality rate among farmed chickens was between 80% and 90%. So there is little to no point to not culling all the chickens when the bird flu strikes.
The main problem is the size of the commercial flocks. Millions of chickens in the one flock is not a farm, it’s a factory. It is so large that if the flock gets wiped out, then that is significant proportion of the egg production capacity wiped out in the surrounding states. Smaller, more isolated flocks are an obvious measure to take.
The other problem is that hygiene on US chicken farms is generally pretty disgusting. Which is one of the reasons that chicken carcasses in the US are dipped in bleach before sale. US producers are always looking to a cheap chemical fix rather than go back to the basics of hygiene.
As usual Big Chicken has had it’s way with regulation for too long and now the lack of regulation is coming back to bite it and consumers.
karen gail
I raised chickens for years; both meat birds and egg layers. It is a lot of work especially since I lived where it got below zero. Sure you can purchase ready to lay pullets, but they are expensive; and chicks are a different story. (I used to cheat, get chicks in late May or early June; give them to a couple of “motherly” hens and let them raise the chick, I rarely lost a chick.)
All the people who I see are going to suddenly have a backyard flock without a clue; or any idea that neighborhood cats would consider chicks and young pullets as “snacks” ready for eating.
frosty
@Jay: You Canadians! Always rubbing our noses in how backward we are. I blame Abe Lincoln. If he’d let the Confederacy go the rest of us would be much better off.
I mean, when those states weren’t in Congress we passed the Land Grant College act and funded the transcontinental railroad. So there’s a precedent!
True, it might have been a little tough on Mexico and Cuba, what with the South trying to export slavery after we cut them loose.
Sure Lurkalot
My liquid diet (guidance from a dental procedure) ended this evening with a dinner of 3 scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and mushed avocado. So, I’m going to be buying eggs for the next 3-week “mushy food” regimen regardless of cost. The dozen I have in my fridge cost over $7.
Liquid diets (smoothies, broth, puréed vegetable soups) are primarily sugar and made me feel like shit and weak. So I missed a week of workouts too. How does crap like this “help you heal”?
At Costco today, there were a couple of carts with 3 flats of 2 dozen eggs each…don’t think I can go to that extreme, I don’t like eggs that much.
jackmac
Congressional CHICKEN Caucus???
BTW, my search for eggs today (in far west suburban Chicago) found none for sale at Costco, none at Whole Foods, a very limited supply at smaller nearby market in Naperville (I bought 2 dozen at $4.95 per) and ample supply at Mariano’s (aka Kroger) costing $8.95 for a dozen and around $16 for 18 eggs.
I didn’t bother to check Jewel/Osco, which is notorious for price-gouging. It’s repeated sticker shock strolling those aisles.
lgerard
I don’t really know what a “smart perimeter” is, but I think you would have a hell of a time trying to teach chickens the password
Ryan
I mean, just cancel the flu vaccine. You’ll save hundreds of millions of eggs there and chop off your nose to spite your face.
Jay
@lgerard:
It’s called a “fence”
Yes, they are going to gather the Greatest Minds in Dolt47’s Administration and the Apartheid Clyde’s DogBoys to try to reinvent “the fence”.
Sister Golden Bear
@dmsilev: Don’t give them ideas….
hells littlest angel
It’s that “and so on” that really inspires confidence that they know what they’re doing. If only he’d added a few etceteras, we could really rest easy.
Martin
@Jay: The price of eggs before, and now, has nothing to do with the cost of producing eggs. They cost $10 a dozen because the grocery store wants them to cost $10 a dozen.
We’ve lost about 3% of the total US egg production. Prices have quadrupled. Inelastic markets are a thing, but FFS, they’re eggs. This isn’t a supply/demand problem, but a choice.
Jay
@frosty:
In Canada, our farms operate on a “Supply System”. You have to buy a license to produce, milk, eggs, cheese, beef, pork, etc, and the amount you can produce is limited by the license.
It minimizes overproduction, limits big Ag, and ensures that farmers get a fair price and consumers pay a fair price. This is all controlled by Provincial Marketing Boards, which are apolitical and part of the Civil Service, advised by experts.
The only egg shortage we had here, was during the Fraser Valley Floods of 2020, when thousands of acres of farmland was under 6 feet of water. Chickens don’t swim well.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Jay: That is one sick chicken.
Steve in the ATL
@Viva BrisVegas:
That term has special meaning to Atlanta area residents!
Steve in the ATL
@Jay: they’re all about the new cyberfence
hells littlest angel
@Jay: The best scientists! I guess that means Elon Musk and his top engineers are going to get to work on the CyberEgg, with optional self-laying.
Jay
@Martin:
USDA says in 2024 34.3 million egg laying hens were lost, 8.333%.
And of course, it’s regional, which also has a big impact on pricing.
Hardest hit, (so far) have been Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, California.
Canada has lots of eggs, we are the largest exporter of eggs to the US, Mexico has lot’s of eggs as well, but are not a large exporter of eggs to the US, because they don’t wash them free of the cuticle or refrigerate them, as Mother Nature intended.
Scout211
Not to worry!
They are trying to hire them back, people! It’s all good, every thing is fine . . . and so on.
Jay
@hells littlest angel:
Self driving chickens,
youtube.com/watch?v=M13lp-8OJic
Jay
@Scout211:
And like the Nuclear Weapons Safety Engineers, the Dog Boys wiped the computer systems, emails and contact information,…………….
bbleh
But the resulting culling of millions of chickens per month has caused egg prices to skyrocket … The poultry industry has long resisted vaccinating flocks against bird flu because of the potential impacts on export markets, as well as the expense.
Well all I can say is thank HEAVEN that both the industry and the administration are focusing on what’s IMPORTANT — retail prices, exports, and operating expenses — rather than SILLY things like the HEALTH of Americans or birds, including but not limited to poultry. I mean, priorities, amirite?
Jay
@bbleh:
If you don’t have any eggs, how do you export them?
mapanghimagsik
So does “chickens don’t fly” because it means they really don’t understand what’s happened on the ground. Having a poultry vet in the family they’re pretty dour about the whole thing.
Vaccination *could* work, but will stop our markets because no one will take a chance the bird is carrying the real disease as opposed to vaccinated.
The idiot trying to blame Biden didn’t help.
And of course, its *completely* ignoring the mammal to mammal transmission that’s going on right now.
@hells littlest angel:
Steve in the ATL
@Jay: it’s like the Irish potato “famine” where there were plenty of potatoes but they were shipped to England to feed the English, leaving the Irish who grew plenty of potatoes to starve
mapanghimagsik
@Jay:
So weird. I can’t believe its easy to get all the backups.
Martin
@Jay: Right, but an 8% drop in supply shouldn’t result in even a doubling of prices, let along a quadrupling. Large contracts like McDonalds can aggravate that (since they get supply priority) but Krogers is also one of those large contracts.
The thing to compare it to is milk prices, which have been stable despite dairy herds also being culled, mainly because the federal price regulation around milk is really solid and factors in things like regional supply/demand imbalance. Now, that same system could be built for eggs, but there seems to be no interest in doing that. Biden could have pushed for that, but didn’t. Trump certainly isn’t going to push for that either.
Martin
@Jay: Well, there’s case in federal court right now from a decade back when egg distributors were deliberately exporting eggs in order to keep prices high.
This is hardly new. The US is by far the largest oil extractor and refiner in the world, and domestic prices are often high because there’s more money to be made exporting and pulling domestic prices up.
Jay
@Martin:
The US is a major export supplier, the largest.
Export markets generally pay more, (unless it’s a market flooding), so when you go to Kroger’s, and there are no eggs, Jamaica has them.
Kristine
@jackmac:
I thought it was just my imagination. I only shop there if I get great sale deals.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
I’m curious as to why he didn’t. Similarly, for why he didn’t more strongly push for DeJoy to be ousted as postmaster general. He and the Senate Dems allowed three nominations to expire before the end the last Congress, including the renomination of Bill Zollars, a Trump appointee who was under investigation for defrauding the federal government by the DOJ in 2020. Why Biden would want this guy to stay on the Postal Board I have no idea. Biden had 5 members on the board at one time and could’ve pushed for more to be added to the Board. It only takes like 6 governors to remove the PG. I have no idea why Biden’s nominees apparently approved of the job Dejoy was doing. And now, after Trump is reelected, he steps down
On top of that, I don’t know how that Colleen Joy Shogan was selected for the National Archivist job and was allowed by the administration to whitewash history at the Archives for an entire year. She’s married to Rob Rafferty, the communications director for Stand Together, aka the Koch Network for god’s sake! Was this person even vetted by the administration?! By Senate Dems?! Didn’t ultimately save her job from Trump though, hilariously enough.
Jay
@Jay:
Oh, BTW, old sailor’s trick, take a washed egg, dip it in melted paraffin for a second, keeps on the shelf for 3 months or more because it creates the same impermeable layer that a chicken uterus does
Partially cooks the membrane inside the shell, adding another layer of bioprotection.
Kayla Rudbek
@Jackie: tofu? Vegan cupcakes?
Jackie
@Kayla Rudbek: Marshmallows?
RaflW
So I think I encountered some Wignut Wurlitzer this evening on F*ceBook. On a TV news station’s post about cuts to the National Parks and how it may impact summer plans, at least two different people made comments that were variations on “I’d rather keep my Social Security than have the parks stay open.”
Reeks of astroturfed garbage. Dunno what we do about it, because fighting off that nonsense is whackamole crap, and the people who post that stuff (just echoing what they’re fed from OAN or email chain ‘newsletters’ or whatever) will not listen to facts. Just tryna notice that the RW knows cutting parks is unpopular, so they have to lie their asses off in response. And it might work, for at least some gullible people.
Kayla Rudbek
@Steve in the ATL: no, the Famine was caused by a blight on the potatoes, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans which didn’t affect the wheat production. So Ireland was shipping wheat to England while the potatoes were dead of blight (which the potato crop was susceptible to because the potato plants were basically genetically identical, thanks to the fact that you can cut the potatoes up and grow several plants from one potato).
Fields of Athenry is a song about the Famine and how the prisoner was sentenced for stealing Trevelyan’s corn, in modern terms, the prisoner was stealing the wheat bound for England (Trevelyan was the colonial administrator in Ireland responsible for this policy en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet).
Kelly
Confined Animal Feeding Operations are factories not farms. Any place labeled a factory farm is just a factory.
Kayla Rudbek
@Jackie: yes, marshmallows and vegan cupcakes with white frosting.
Jay
@RaflW:
They ain’t getting either.
They probably don’t get SS anyway, in Saint Petersburg, ruZZia.
Jay
Flax seeds, whizzed up with some water, make an okay egg substitute for baking.
Jay
@Kayla Rudbek:
India has entered the chat,………………………….
scav
@Jay: Or aquafaba for egg whites. Utterly useless for dyeing purposes. Excellent at hiding though.
NotMax
City folk soon to be raiding rooftop pigeon coops?
Jay
@NotMax:
Probably not, Whole Paycheck has eggs, pricy, but eggs.
Elmers Gas and Go doesn’t.
And in the country, you will probably get shot, because your neighbor won’t know if you are just stealing eggs, or diddling their chickens.
NotMax
Stocked up on mayonnaise last time was in town.
ArchTeryx
@RaflW: FB is now just as much of a nazi bar as Xhitter. Since Zuckerberg openly trashed moderation there and basically said the nazis had a free hand, right wing trolls have been popping up en masse in EVERY SINGLE THREAD there – even the ever-popular and dedicatedly non-political cat groups are starting to bend under their weight. Banning them all is worse than whack-a-mole because they never stop coming.
Kayla Rudbek
@NotMax: they do make vegan alternatives to mayo, which work reasonably well, are more expensive, and have less sulfur tang to them than real mayonnaise. Real mayo tastes better than vegan mayo which tastes better than Miracle Whip. But vegan mayo means that I don’t get sick, so vegan mayo it is for me.
NotMax
Atrophy of technique by the servers trained to make authentic Caesar salad at tableside.
Kayla Rudbek
@Jay: the English practiced on Ireland first and then turned their attention to the rest of the world. Was it Shiv Ramdas over on Bluesky who pointed out just how much of the world has a holiday to celebrate independence from the English?
Bostondreams
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I get the frustration, but she was more than qualified for the position, at least moreso than anyone Trump will appoint. She was a director with the Congressional Research Service and had a leadership role at the Library of Congress and the White House Historical Association.
Her decision-making in office was not quite what it should have been though, that’s for sure.
ArchTeryx
@Bostondreams: The real problem was that she was a Republican. The more Democrats appoint Republicans to these positions, the more the public gets the idea that the Republicans are the only ones fit to govern. The lack of self-esteem in the party is just killing us, and right now we’re reaping that whirlwind.
Darkrose
@Bostondreams: Personally, I think the National Archivist should be, you know, an archivist. She wasn’t trained as one, and was not a member of the Society of American Archivists. Had she been, she might have realized that some of the shit that she did was directly contrary to the SAA Code of Ethics.
NotMax
@Kayla Rudbek
Miracle Whip is of the devil.
“If it tastes good it’s a miracle.”
;)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Bostondreams:
Actually, she wasn’t a trained archivist, from what I understand. She had a political science degree and a doctorate in American politics. She was just good at networking
Very low bar.
Absolutely. I’d still like to know Biden and his team’s reasoning for selecting her and then also allowing her to run amok for a year censoring unpleasant aspects of American history, like removing exhibits that featured the Japanese-American internment camps of WW2 and replacing a birth control pill exhibit with one for the bump stock. He could have stepped in and stopped her but didn’t. Trump fired her and didn’t even give a reason to Congress as he’s supposed to
I mean, the guy ran on preserving democracy and stopping the threat of Trumpism while allowing the Archivist of the United States that he appointed to obey fascism in advance by whitewashing American history, all to appease MAGA
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
As many people are just starting to clue in to, you can’t appease MAGA you can’t educate MAGA, you can’t reason with MAGA, etc,
they live in an alt-reality.
Colette South
@karen Gail and there are the raccoons and weasels, hawks and owls. . ..
When I was a child, the chicken coop was my least favorite part of the barnyard.
Jay
@Colette South:
Never had an issue with chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats, donkeys, lamas, alpacas, cows, horses, etc,
but geese,……………………………… whole other matter.
Yutsano
@Jay: You know why Canadians are so nice right?
Because they put all their asshole into the goose.
Jay
@Yutsano:
Right now, looking south, we are not so nice.
youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ktSPMzKqVPo&t=54s
Ohio Mom
@ArchTeryx: Oh yes. I think I’ve said this before. I used to stop by my feed on the way to browse FB Marketplace. There were always tons of posts from the local
Buy Nothing group, announcements from various local disability groups I follow, local restaurant announcements and sometimes, local museums would be announcing a new show.
I found out some useful things. But after Election Day, those posts are gone, it’s almost all right wing sites, like I care about some sheriff’s department somewhere in Arizona? No matter how I try to block things, there are always more. I hardly ever see the groups I used to follow, no matter how many times I click “more like this.”
It’s a sewer and there is no fixing it. I feel bad for the nonprofits who used to find it useful for communicating with their constituencies.
WTFGhost
@Jay: Oh, yeah. I was set upon by geese in leather jackets once. I always thought geese were mostly vegetarians and, you know, bug-e-tarians, but there they were with switchblades in their wings, talking about how they wanted something that didn’t lay eggs to try. To eat, I mean. They didn’t just want to “try” me like a legal case.
I explained to them, that, in the great tradition of western jurisprudence, we don’t send ordinary citizens to be destroyed by geese without the benefit of counse… HOLY SHIT A 12-gauge!”
(Yes, The Far Side misnamed me. And mis-speciesed the geese.)
I leapt into my Chevy Sprint (precursor to the Geo Metro) and floored it, and in 15 seconds was driving far faster than a goose could goose-st… well, faster than a goose could walk. By the time they figured that out, and started flying, the game was on.
12 hours later, and roughly 800 miles eastbound, I got out of my Sprint and walked down the alley, and six Philly toughs, armed with switchblades *and* .45 ACPs, met the geese, and delighted their girlfriends who didn’t understand what “goose” for dinner meant.
I had to pay for cheese steaks the next day, *plus* a pitcher of the best, but, back in Philly, it was worth it.
Okay, I admit it. I lied.
They used 10mm, not .45 ACP.
Peale
@Steve in the ATL: The Hoboken Chicken Emergency
One of the forgotten gems of American Literature. D Manus Pinkwater is a treasure.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
” With biosecurity and medication and so on”
Socialized medicine for the chickens?
SpaceUnit
We should be clandestinely providing chicken costumes to immigrants crossing the border.
You know, just to muddy the political waters a bit.
Melancholy Jaques
@lowtechcyclist:
Well, it took 20 years, but the DJIA did get there.
glc
Cal-Maine’s profits up 700%
That was May 2023. Lately:
finance.yahoo.com/news/cal-maine-foods-reports-results-200500238.html
There’s a good chance you’re buying from them, whatever the brand or style of egg. They’re doing very well rolling up the egg industry and any stress in the market works in their favor … up to a point. They’d like to be the last ones standing. There’s not a lot of competition in U.S. markets generally, and they aim to bring this sector into line with the others.
mrmoshpotato
Brought to you by the same shitstains who said COVID-19 was just a flu.
I hope Hillary and Kamala are avoiding all news for their mental health.
NotMax
Strange (in a good way) little film, Men & Chicken.
;)
John Revolta
@Peale: I love that book!
I lived in Hoboken for ten years in the 80s and 90s. I miss it, but it really isn’t what it used to be.
NotMax
Giant fowl, anyone? #1 — #2
;)
Quaker in a Basement
“So supposing we hit the chicken with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked because of the testing,”
Jeffg166
Free download of 1984.
https://archive.org/details/GeorgeOrwells1984
Chief Oshkosh
@Jay: It’s become banal to point it out, but if one single Biden appointee at any level of the government in any little nook or cranny had herp-derped his way through an interview with such absolute bilge, it would have been the entire news cycle of everyday of every week until Biden would’ve been “forced” to fire him.
When it’s a Republican? Doesn’t even make it past noon on Sunday.
p.a.
The next cabinet meeting on the egg problem will focus on how to blame it on the transgendered.
Shalimar
Killing all of the chickens within a defined perimeter is the opposite of random. Ignoring all of the rest of the gibberish, that one word alone is careless stupidity you don’t expect from a trained economist.
Baud
@p.a.:
IIRC, “transgendered” is considered a slur. Not sure if you were using it to mock how the right thinks or just weren’t unaware (like I am, most of the time).
Baud
prostratedragon
@Shalimar:
trained economist
Good Lord, Penn again! And Swarthmore should be mortified, ’cause that’s some sloppy thinking in ways that have nothing to do with advanced training.
p.a.
@Baud: I was unaware, as usual.
Baud
@p.a.:
My comment should have said “were unaware” so I’m glad you understood.
I think some of this stuff is fairly new to people. But the other thing is that right wingers do a pretty good job of getting people to use language they prefer and making it feel natural (like Democrat as an adjective).
AM in NC
@Steve in the ATL: Rollin’ down Highway 41!
AM in NC
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I hope every Democrat moving forward understands and acts on the reality that EVERY Republican at this point is anti-America, and staff their administrations accordingly.
NO Republicans in ANY position. Not the PO, not National Archives, not the FBI, not ANY Cabinet position.
Until the MAGA fever breaks, and Republicans have accepted responsibility, apologized, AND MADE AMENDS to our nation, Democrats shouldn’t think about giving them ANY position. And probably not even then.
TBone
I am pretty certain (well, it’s intuition mostly) that we lost Josey Wales of the Nicked ear to Avian Flu, and that it spread to Noah Three Miracles. The rapidity of the weight loss in both cats was astounding. Two days of illness and they looked like walking skeletons. Also, there were lung issues with Josey that rapidly worsened and then Noah developed copious nasal discharge and he’s still wheezing intermittently. Thankful that we haven’t yet lost Noah, but worried about hubby and I having been so completely exposed to both cats daily and continuously.
Neither of us got any overt flu symptoms, but additional fatigue and some sneezing fits have occurred. The fatigue is to be expected given the level of care we are administering, but that doesn’t explain all of it. Ugh, the doctors here will laugh if I say we should be checked…GAH.
TBone
Noah will voluntarily eat normal cat food only during a certain window of time each morning. I know his sense of smell has returned because I can see him reacting to scent now. But the weaning from tube feeding is slow going because I am skittish that he has not yet gained enough weight back that I can let him go hungry enough to force himself to eat orally instead of esophageally.
It is a slog. One that I must attend to momentarily. I give him the Entyce appetite stimulant at 6:30 a m. each day with First Breakfast. By Second Breakfast he is drinking stinky tuna water and eating some Fancy Feast, but not enough yet. YET.
MagdaInBlack
WTF is this nonsense I’m seeing about DOGE/elno giving everyone a $5000 check from all his “cost cutting.”
clickorlando.com/news/politics/2025/02/20/trump-floats-plan-to-pay-doge-stimulus-checks-to-taxpayers…
( if i hit my head hard enough on the desk will all this go away?)
JoyceH
A couple days ago I saw Trump responding to a reporter’s question about egg prices. He word saladed for quite a while, during which the word inflation was mentioned several times and the name Biden repeated over and over – but not a single mention of bird flu. So the question is, did his staff not tell him about bird flu, or did they tell him and he forgot?
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Red meat for the marks.
Soprano2
@Jay: I’ve been thinking about that. It’s totally unnecessary and might be illegal. I’m sure many of those records are subject to FOIA requests. I doubt that any business just wipes a fired person from their system. You just deactivate their stuff in the system. If they really did wipe their records away, that’s dumb too, and possibly illegal.
TBone
We used to revel in watching all the variety of species at our bird feeders. Then in 2021, PA Wildlife sent out a missive to all PAians to STOP feeding immediately, remove feeders with gloves, and use bleach (not internally, hahaha).
pa.gov/agencies/pgc/newsroom/game-commission-lifts-recommendation-to-cease-feeding-birds.html
Then they abruptly changed course … As seen at link.
Nothing to see HERE!
We sadly discarded all feeders and food in 2021 and will not resurrect feeding ever again.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: ..I thought they wanted eggs?
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
$5000 = one egg.
TBone
@Baud: all my eggs are unfertilized.
We’re at $8 per dozen, a bargain basement price!
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: if Elno signs the checks in Sharpie this time, we can declare him officially King and burn Donold’s throne to the ground with him in it. I personally want to smash that stupid “TIME” crown right through his eggshell skull.
If you haven’t seen that depiction that he xitted, don’t!
Gvg
@Martin: No. it’s a supply demand thing.
Grocery stores have one of the lowest profit margins of all industries. They have had for over 60 years. They are an old industry with no real new innovations possible to increase or change profits. That’s why there are fewer chains, and they consolidate when someone goes under. The management is not raking in the bucks like many industries and taking over an actual store chain doesn’t yield profit even for asset strippers. Investment money looks elsewhere. This means that 1 store chain raising prices more than its customers are used to will send them to other stores, unless all stores are having to raise them at once. They can’t arrange it which is collusion or they will get sued. People always report grocery chains for gouging even when there is not cause. And costs are not all tied to one thing, costs and profits come from the total of all goods sold, so they can wait out temporary spikes on a few things without raising prices.
Consumers don’t like prices rising, so chains resist it as long as they can but our grocery prices stayed ridiculously low for the last few decades compared to inflation of other things. This was because of too much competition and not enough profit. The pandemic gave an excuse to reset prices that was needed, but it’s more saved from bankruptcy than price gouging. Sorry, I know people in the industry and I have watched the prices. They should have been higher 10 years ago….or more but we had a recession and wages haven’t grown at lower tiers either, until lately a little.
People always think grocery chains are gouging even farmers. It’s just not true. Well as an industry. Of course there are some crooks everywhere.
TBone
@TBone:
MOOD
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz9DX_VMXdI
TBone
@TBone: and furthermore music
m.youtube.com/watch?v=7pyo2f0uMBA
MomSense
We haven’t had a good holiday scuffle since the Tickle me Elmo sale on Black Friday so many years ago.
Easter is gonna be lit!
MomSense
@hells littlest angel:
Maybe they’ll pull Big Balls out of our social security data so he can go after eggs.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Within that article is a link to the ” DOGE Savings Tracker” if you’re so inclined to look. No real proof of work, of course, just proclamations from elno as to how much he has saved.
my brain hurts
youtube.com/watch?v=1ybAw78mStI
Geminid
This morning’s Politico Playbook tells me that the Senate will vote on the Patel/FBI nomination today at 1:45pm. Patel is expected to be confirmed. Then–
Lindsey Graham justified Thune’s course by telling reporters:
Senate Democrats will offer plenty of amendments. None are likely to pass, but debate and voting will go late into the night, maybe into tomorrow. Then Republican Senators will pass Thune’s bill and it will be Mike Johnson’s turn.
Booger
@dmsilev: Put the chickens in the cloud, duh.
MomSense
@MagdaInBlack:
Melon Husk is bad at math.
TBone
@MomSense:
@MomSense:
@MagdaInBlack:
Thanks to you both for the deescalation lols!
I’m attempting to douse the raging fire in my belly with only limited success so far. Laughter really helps, it is carbonated holiness. Reserved for assholios hahahaha!
TBone
@Booger: bwahahahaha!
Booger
@Steve in the ATL: Pretty sure that’s not what the potato famine was about. Wheat and other grains were exported, not potatoes; the potatoes had turned to ooze overnight in the fields. That’s why the locals starved.
ETA: Kayla beat me, and more eloquently.
Barbara
@RaflW: Under Biden we had both!
TBone
@Barbara: 🎯 stick it to ’em!
TBone
How to Know You Are in a Cult
m.youtube.com/watch?v=rfLp3ZznYB0
Before you know it, whoops! you’re IN! LOL
Barbara
I can’t remember where I read it, but one reason egg prices have risen so much, yet inconsistently, is that retailers tried to keep them artificially low and stable for so long. It’s an item that brings people to the store so they might even lose money on a temporary basis to preserve stability. At a certain point that became impossible but it’s not the same point for everyone.
Vegan desserts and egg-free ice cream are feasible alternatives for restaurants but there’s a learning curve.
catclub
Proof by induction is a thing.
catclub
@MagdaInBlack:
Someone who looked at the actual numbers revised that estimate of $5000 to $11
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I don’t know about p.a., but I certainly can’t keep up. Is there a glossary for this somewhere? It would never have occurred to me that ‘transgendered’ was a slur.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Now that has always just seemed stupid, both on their part, and on ours to get riled up about. Especially because getting us riled up is the whole point.
JML
@MagdaInBlack: I’m not surprised; “stimulus” checks are popular with the low information voter, and it’ll be even harder to convince those people that the DOGE thing is just a scam if they get money “because” of it. The fact that it’s a) bad policy, and b) predicated on wrecking huge chunks of the federal government that we actually need won’t matter to the Current Occupant’s base, because they think that anything they don’t personally use (or think they need) is teh badz.
gvg
@Steve in the ATL: Not quite. The English landowners made the irish tennent farmers grow wheat and ‘corn” to export to England because it was more profitable due to the tax structure and incentives the government had set up. I think it may have had to do with supplying their navy to keep their Empire but I am not up on the details.
The potatoes they grew on small plots around their houses had fed them barely all died of a “blight”. They turned black and slimy in the ground and died. It turned out that since the potatoes were being grown from cut up pieces of the prior years crop with an eye, that all the potatoes were esentially one clone and the blight was being passed along with seemingly healthy pieces of potatoe. Potatoes are still rarely grown from actual seeds from a pollinated flower. Farmers and growers get their “seed” potatoes to cut up from certified clean sources. Specialists that can check for viruses and such. Also we do not grow just one kind and we grow named varieties so if one starts catching something new, we can switch. But I don’t think they even found out the cause till long after.
The landlords could have fed the tennants maybe, however I think their taxes were set up so that they had to pay in cash or loose the land. It was basically given to them with conditions set by the Government/King to force them to extort as much as possible from Ireland. The British/Irish relations then were mean.
Soprano2
@MagdaInBlack: That’s based on the idea that they can actually “save” $2 trillion. Of course, they can’t.
Soprano2
That would have been a good follow-up question, which I am sure didn’t happen. He’s going to be blaming everything bad on Biden for the next 4 years, and the press will let him get away with it.
Kristine
@Barbara:
I can’t eat most ice creams, especially the super premium brands—it’s a saturated fat thing. I’ve been making Sicilian-style gelato, which is made with milk and thickened with cornstarch. It’s basically frozen pudding. I’ve made it for my ice cream-loving friends and they love it.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
The Internet will tell you when you’re wrong.
different-church-lady
I suppose it should have been obvious theres a congressional chicken caucus.
Baud
@JML:
It’s not even a stimulus check that goes to everyone. They’re proposing essentially a tax credit. So it would effectively go to people who pay at least $5000 in taxes. If you’re poor, you’re out of luck.
TBone
@different-church-lady: I was gonna dunk on that too but anger got the better of me first. Thank you!
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
It’ll tell me I’m wrong even when I’m right, so there’s no signal, just noise.
Geminid
Egyptian President al-Sissi is visiting Cairo today. He will talk with Saudi leaders about a common plan for Gaza. I think both governments are on the same page and have been for a year, but the optics of this meeting will still be significant.
I saw a report that loaders clearing debris in northern Gaza were flying Egyptian flags. Egypt sent a big convoy of supplies and equipment to Gaza a couple days ago. Gulf Arab states likely footed the bill.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
True. By why expect the Internet to do all the work. Figure it out yourself.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
So it wouldn’t be a refundable tax credit? (Duh, of course it wouldn’t. “Why, this tarnished piece of tin is worthless!”) But it would still reduce one’s taxes to zero if one’s tax liability was greater than zero but less than $5000. It’s just that you wouldn’t get the full value of the credit unless you owed >$5000 to begin with.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
As far as I know, that’s correct
kalakal
@gvg: It was a world wide problem.First found in Philadelphia, then Belgium where 40,000 died. It came in waves throughout the 1840s, all of Europe suffered starvation, by far the worst affected was Ireland with the Scottish Highlands coming second.
What made it worse was the politics of the day, this was the heyday of Manchester Liberalism, Small Govt Libertarianism on steroids. The UK changed govts half way through, politically it was as if in the US went from FDR to Hoover in 1932. Those bastards really did not believe in Govt interference in private enterprise and Irish landlords made more money exporting than selling domestcally. The Torys felt the only legitimate govt expense was ( reluctantly) defense – they opposed setting up a police force – and they sure as heck weren’t going to do the equivalent of USAID farm subsidies and so over a 1,000,000 died of starvation in the sacred name of the free market. Still happens today, I remember seeing Somali lentils for sale in western supermarkets while simultaneously seeing famine appeals on tv
JML
@Baud: politically, that’s the stupid way to do it; you’d be amazed how much loyalty you get by actually sending people a check. In MN, people kept talking about “Jesse Checks” for years when Ventura did a refund of the state surplus. (It was a foolish idea, but at least less damaging than his successor’s tax cuts)
But of course they’d do it in such a way where wealthier people would benefit the most. I’ve never seen a party that despises the poor more than this. The Current Occupant, of course, famously hates the poor, which is one of the reasons it’s so baffling that so many poor people back his disgusting ass.
Baud
@JML:
Biden sent people checks. They complained it wasn’t big enough.
But I agree checks are better than tax credits politically, for Trump.
Miss Bianca
@FelonyGovt:
Funny, that was my first thought, too.
TBone
@kalakal: this truly is a full service blog, thank you!!!
Also too to America they fled
irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/the-story-of-the-irish-famine-orphan-girls-shipped-to-australia…
Barbara
@kalakal: As Amartya Sen would say, when you really study the issue, modern famines are usually attributable as much to political as agricultural failures. People did die of starvation in the low countries (in particular), but the scale of privation and death was exponentially worse in Ireland.
jimmiraybob
I don’t know, this all sounds like a job for the Department of Thoughts and Prayers (DOTP).
Matt McIrvin
@JML: I assumed they’d be sending checks, just not to anyone too poor to pay federal income tax.
TBone
LOL! Again!
H-Bob
Hopefully, the Famous San Diego Chicken has been vaccinated!
Kayla Rudbek
@Booger: there was a history course on the Irish Exodus at Notre Dame in the 1970s (my father used to joke that the priest who taught it was so old that he had been part of the Famine exodus)
Kayla Rudbek
@Barbara: and a practice and taste curve when it comes to vegan desserts. Not impossible, but the game switches to a higher difficulty level in terms of recipes and preparation.
MEH
@karen gail: Karen your remark about people with backyard coops that don’t have a clue is kind of scary. I was on a thread that the CDC was posting (prior to the current administration doing its throttle-down of all things health related) and I kept this one (below link). It shows how coop owners can actually get infected from their chickens. Quite informative and alarming, all at the same time.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/media/pdfs/2024/07/avian-flutransmission.pdf