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You are here: Home / Archives for Economics / Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Communicating

by Anne Laurie|  March 7, 20256:53 am| 224 Comments

This post is in: Democratic Response to Trump 2.0, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

TGIFriday Morning Open Thread 18

(Jeff Ohman via GoComics.com)

Last-minute reminder, in case anyone has a free lunch hour:

SO MANY STAND UP FOR SCIENCE EVENTS TO CHOOSE FROM—153 and COUNTING!
To get more information on our local events and to register your own, head to www.standupforscience2025.org/local-event-information/ ??????

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— Stand Up for Science 2025 – DC and Nationwide! (@standupforscience.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 2:14 PM

Donald Trump is lying to you.

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— JB Pritzker (@jbpritzker.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 11:37 PM

.@JasmineForUS @RepJasmine: "It's not the trans people who made you lose your job… who started a tariff war with Mexico or Canada or China… who are taking away the Department of Education… it's also not the immigrants. And it's definitely not the Black folk." pic.twitter.com/IN396LhfuB

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) March 6, 2025

Trump take job

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— Nick (derogatory) ? (@slothropsmap.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 1:34 PM

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This is not a winning message lmao

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 11:47 AM

BOLD STRATEGY COTTON

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 12:25 PM

lmao I just fucking can't.
Lets do the "prices are too damn high" election and win by promising to lower prices, and then.. *waves hand at everything*

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 12:25 PM

First Trump take egg, now Trump take stock

— Vituperative Erb (@vituperativeerb.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 4:25 PM

I can't believe when I started the TRUMP TAKE EGG push people were like "uh what are you gonna do when egg prices go back to normal and everything's fine" instead of realizing that shit like this was gonna happen instead:

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— mtsw (@mtsw.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 4:05 PM

'trump crash plane' and 'trump take egg' aren't the messages themselves, they're the strategy. the messages are the repetition of the images

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— BeijingPalmer (@beijingpalmer.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 2:49 PM

TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: CommunicatingPost + Comments (224)

Sad Grey Dawn Open Thread: Dropping Like A SpaceX Starship

by Anne Laurie|  March 7, 20253:19 am| 82 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Tech News & Issues, Elon Musk

Same ‘rapid unplanned disassembly’, different day…

Second SpaceX launch in a row blew up tonight, here’s a video from inside a commercial airline.
If you’re wondering why they are allowed to fly in this area, the FAA had grounded flights but the leadership involved got DOGE’d.

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— Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog.cyberplace.social.ap.brid.gy) March 7, 2025 at 12:09 AM

people are calling it the Cybertruck of investments

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— O.K. Computermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) March 6, 2025 at 6:30 PM

Embarrassed Tesla owners are attaching the logos of other cars to make it look like they aren't driving Teslas.
www.dmarge.com/cars/tesla-o…

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— Mark Lemley (@marklemley.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 8:19 PM

guy in the 1920s putting a "i bought this before he went crazy" sticker on his Model T

— leon (@leyawn.bsky.social) March 5, 2025 at 11:26 AM

The TL is bleak but Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, donated her Tesla to @npr

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— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 10:43 AM

Tesla is falling apart, Musk is desperately trying to raid the government for enough SpaceX contracts to make up for what will be a massive continuing hit to his wealth and now the economy is very loudly falling apart while the entire business community withdraws it's support.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) February 28, 2025 at 11:55 AM

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"Few weeks ago, some of us were putting our VINs on Carvana just to see the price. I think My FS Cyberbeast was like 80k. Just got an email update from Carvana today… Dropped 35k in one week? lol"
I think that "lol" is pronounced ??????

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— vantazach (@vantazach.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 3:53 PM

Overwhelmingly the biggest saving that Musk has delivered to the American people is that they can now buy Tesla stock much more cheaply.

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— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 8:51 PM

Elon Musk's only profitable company, Tesla, has created a cumulative grand total net income of $34 billion in its more than 20 years of existence.
That's less than the total amount of US federal subsidies his empire has collectively received.
The economics of Elon Musk are as bad as the politics.

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— O.K. Computermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) February 26, 2025 at 10:44 AM

As Elon goes, so goes Tesla stock pic.twitter.com/7PAVNIAcf9

— Paul Leigh-Some Rascal on the Internet ?????????? (@Pleightx) February 26, 2025

Musk is looting the government and stealing our money to prop up his failing businesses. Hail to the thief

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— mtsw (@mtsw.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 4:17 PM

Tesla can survive or the American Republic can. Not both. fortune.com/2025/02/27/t…

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— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 10:54 PM

Anyone got an Arte Johnson ‘very innnteresting‘ gif?

Your continuing reminder that it sure is kind of interesting how Elon's public/private statements ("We make some mistakes, we're trying to fix them." v. "USAID needs to die, I am the law.") and his general weakening coincide with that moment where they accidently fired the people who watch the nukes

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 2:21 PM

Sad Grey Dawn Open Thread: Dropping Like A SpaceX StarshipPost + Comments (82)

Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: Move Fast & Break Stuff, Ebola Edition

by Anne Laurie|  February 28, 20253:50 am| 122 Comments

This post is in: DOGESHIT, Healthcare, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Elon Musk

Elon Musk said DOGE made a mistake by cutting USAID’s Ebola prevention but it had been “restored.”
That’s not true, current and former officials told me and @johnphudson.bsky.social.
“There have been no efforts to ‘turn on’” Ebola prevention, said Nidhi Bouri, who oversaw team until January.

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— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 6:41 PM

Who are you gonna believe, every responsible expert, or God-Emperor Musk? Per the Washington Post, “Musk says DOGE ‘restored’ Ebola prevention effort. Officials say that’s not true”: [gift link]

… Hours after Musk asserted that USAID had restored its Ebola prevention efforts, the agency informed several organizations working with the U.S. government to prevent the spread of the virus overseas that their contracts had been terminated, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. The organizations — which included UNICEF, which had been working with USAID on Ebola prevention in Uganda and other countries — were among thousands of organizations affected by the Trump administration’s move to cancel foreign-assistance contracts on Wednesday…

Last month’s Ebola outbreak has now receded, but some former U.S. officials say that’s in part because of past investments in prevention efforts that helped position Uganda to respond — and that other countries remain far more vulnerable.

Bouri said her former USAID team of 60 people working on disease-response had been cut to about six staffers as of earlier this week. She called the recent USAID response to Uganda’s Ebola outbreak a “one-off,” far diminished from “the full suite” of activities that the agency historically would mount, such as ramping up efforts to monitor whether the disease had spread to neighboring countries…

The good news — don’t panic (yet) — the latest outbreak in Uganda is under control, and it doesn’t seem to have spread beyond the original cluster. On the other hand:

So – I've actually led Ebola outbreak response at @USAID.

This is bunk from Elon. They have laid off most of the experts, they're bankrupting most of the partner orgs, have withdrawn from WHO, and muzzled CDC.

What's left is a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically. https://t.co/496aRBXYnM

— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025

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I led USAID's response to the 2014-15 outbreak in West Africa.

Also went to Congo with WHO to assess response at peak of the 2019 outbreak (under Trump 1).

Those were both robust USG ops.

That capacity has now been wrecked.https://t.co/dsDhOZiUBT pic.twitter.com/rkV4O8GVMj

— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025

Normally there would be:
– resources rapidly pushed to partners & host govt
– robust interagency (USAID/CDC/DOD) teams deployed to field, backstopped by Ops Centers in DC and Atlanta
– real-time operational cooperation and info-sharing with WHO

But not this time.

Some limited resources have gone to partners, but things that would normally move in hours or days took weeks this time.

And meanwhile the huge wave of global program cancellations today (in violation of a court order) is crippling partner orgs’ response capacity.

Most experts and operations staff at USAID have been pushed out.

USAID’s ops centers have been shut down (the main ops centers were in USAID’s Reagan Building HQ, which Elon has now leased to DHS).

USAID’s capacity to deploy response teams is totally broken.

…even as WHO is the lead on int'l support to the Ugandan govt.

WHO is really good at this – in large part because of USG investments in their emergency capacity over the past decade.

But Trump has withdrawn the US from WHO and cut off support. https://t.co/59qpZpz9EP pic.twitter.com/nVRX2dtXah

— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025

Bottom line: Elon's vendetta against USAID and the federal workforce is shredding all of the systems that the USG has built up to protect the US homeland against global outbreak risks.

Scrambling to recall a few staff and issue some belated funding is just window dressing.
/end

— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025

Remember in 2014 when Obama handled an Ebola outbreak responsibly and Republicans said that the opposite was true and the MSM were an echo chamber for their lies and when Dems protested journalists said they were just doing their jobs? Hmm, interesting.
bsky.app/profile/news…

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— 40% Chickpeas (@chickpea7.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 3:36 PM

If you read the replies to Mr. Konyndyk’s thread [which I do not recommend]: Africa’s a long way away. Those people aren’t, y’know, like us. Why should *we* be responsible for the whole world’s healthcare?…

That mf stood in that meeting and announced an “oopsie” regarding Ebola prevention and the mfs in that room giggled about it. Know why? They see Ebola as a Black disease and didn’t really see it as a grave mistake.

— MrsBundrige (@mrsbundrige.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 3:23 PM

Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: Move Fast & Break Stuff, Ebola EditionPost + Comments (122)

Monday Morning Open Thread: Mere Anarchy Is Loosed

by Anne Laurie|  February 24, 20257:54 am| 153 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Trump Crime Cartel, Elon Musk

"Republicans in Congress ignore imminent death of government to focus on actively killing government" pic.twitter.com/oZonObvsnC

— The okayest poster there is (@ok_post_guy) February 23, 2025

Warren Buffett issues a not so veiled warning to trump.
“Take care of the many who, for no fault of their own, get the short straws in life. They deserve better.”
He now holds more Japanese shares than US. He is bearish on the US for the first time ever.
www.financialexpress.com/trending/war…

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— Thomas Long (@rayosunlong.bsky.social) February 23, 2025 at 10:43 AM

Maybe hating on dick bosses is the great unifier, the thing that brings all Americans together.

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— Senator Tina Smith (@smith.senate.gov) February 23, 2025 at 2:21 PM

Something is shifting. They are still breaking things and stealing things. And they will keep trying to break and to steal. But the propaganda magic around the oligarchical coup is fading. (1/2)

— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 9:06 AM

Nervous Musk, Trump, Vance have all been outclassed in public arguments these last few days. Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular. People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power. (2/2)

— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 9:06 AM

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Remember, Feds, Elon doesn't have the authority to direct you to the Restroom.
He can't order you a fucking pizza.

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— soonergrunt (@soonergrunt.bsky.social) February 24, 2025 at 12:22 AM

Marker: If there is a ‘fever breaking’ moment for Trump (recession, shocker special election result, etc) and it becomes clear that there isn’t going to be a thousand year trumpenreich, you’re going to see a scramble of belated efforts from places like SCOTUS to prove they are totally independent

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— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 12:33 PM

Me, angrily, to a leopard: I voted for cheap eggs, not measles!

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 2:52 PM

Trump before the election: “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one” https://t.co/0PsqnBBzGb pic.twitter.com/DON3dnmndh

— FactPost (@factpostnews) February 21, 2025

$200 million dollars of waste. pic.twitter.com/LfOJtq69uZ

— Karly Kingsley (@karlykingsley) February 22, 2025

Monday Morning Open Thread: Mere Anarchy Is LoosedPost + Comments (153)

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Watching the GOP Electeds…

by Anne Laurie|  February 24, 20252:40 am| 117 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Trumpery, Schadenfreude

I’m getting the sense that town halls are not going well for Republicans. Trump booed today. Duffy booed today. This is good.

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— David Waldman (@kagrox.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 9:21 PM

… who are discovering, as my Nana would’ve said, that they’ve made a rod for their own backs.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN0z…

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— David Waldman (@kagrox.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 12:59 AM

Leopards, faces, things of that nature:

Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska) told constituents that there was nothing he could do to stop DOGE layoffs affecting people in his state. Says said he found out about budget cuts impacting Alaska "on Twitter" and "had no idea these things were going on" in advance.
popular.info/p/freshman-c…

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— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) February 23, 2025 at 1:53 PM

As someone who sat through more than one hostile town hall in WI where tea party activists berated my then-boss about Obamacare, and I occasionally feared for my physical safety, I find these video clips so cathartic to watch.

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— Melissa Ryan (@melissaryan.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 12:53 AM

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Remember: pro-Trumpers now control the flow of information in America, so their next move will be trying to suppress news of Rep Rich McCormick being booed in GA (Elon already doing it on the other site) and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy being booed in CA.

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— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 11:43 PM

i am finding it extremely satisfying to read all the stories of republican congresscritters trying to bluster through and getting chewed and booed the fuck out

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) February 22, 2025 at 12:54 AM

They’re going to have people following them around, including picketing their homes. They’re not going to evade this.

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— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 1:22 AM

never, if they rebel they lose their primaries. they're trapped here until Trump dies or strokes out so bad he can't denounce them via tweet https://t.co/A8OIs3isTk

— Fentanyl Tsar (@canderaid) February 22, 2025

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Watching the GOP Electeds…Post + Comments (117)

The Cost of Eggs: Counting the Chickens

by Anne Laurie|  February 19, 20259:17 pm| 160 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., H5N1 Bird Flu, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

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%.

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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…

The Cost of Eggs: Counting the ChickensPost + Comments (160)

Monday Morning Open Thread: The GOP Is *Not* the Farmers’ Friend

by Anne Laurie|  February 17, 20257:15 am| 195 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Elon Musk

The GOP Is *Not* the Farmers' Friend 1

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

 
Good news, if we can keep (them to) it:

Beyond the cruelty, there’s the dumbfounding incompetence.
First, they push through an announcement that 2200 employees would be fired from the Indian Health Service, removing doctors & nurses from our poorest citizens.
Then they reduced it to 950 layoffs.
Now it’s zero
ictnews.org/news/rfk-jr-…

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— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 8:29 AM


Backstory:

If any of you know Neil Gorsuch (a longtime defender of Indian tribes' rights), please send him this piece about the devastating layoffs of about 1,000 employees in the Indian Health Service — which means we're abrogating our obligations as mandated by treaties. ictnews.org/news/life-or…

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— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 9:01 AM


 
Meanwhile…

new john mellencamp about to drop

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— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 12:33 PM

show full post on front page

“This isn’t just hippie-dippy stuff,” said Aaron Pape, who raises cattle, pigs and poultry on 300 acres in Wisconsin. “This is affecting mainstream farmers.”

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— Erin Sikorsky (@erinsikorsky.bsky.social) February 14, 2025 at 2:37 PM


[gift link]

Congress has to pass a budget, and if the Republicans who represent most of rural America wanted, they could demand that the farmers who got screwed by the Trump administration be made whole.
Of course, that would require standing up for their constituents. Wonder what they'll do?

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— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 10:36 PM


[gift link]

Ag person here, can confirm that the farm world is in absolute chaos right now over the freezing of these and other payments related to conservation, energy, infrastructure, etc.

— Connor Stedman (@connorstedman.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 10:39 PM

The GOP Is *Not* the Farmers' Friend

Yes, there are at least four different reasons to expect a very bumpy food supply year (deportations & fear thereof, payments freeze, bird flu, increasingly likely climate disasters)

— Connor Stedman (@connorstedman.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 11:06 PM

Monday Morning Open Thread: The GOP Is *Not* the Farmers’ FriendPost + Comments (195)

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