Odds And Ends -- Late Afternoon -- Part 1 -- March 7, 2022

Food security: Iraq announced, three hours ago, about 1:30 p.m. CT, March 7, 2022, an initiative to enlarge stockpiles of wheat in the country in light of the war between Russia and Ukraine. 

The decision has been made to import three million tons of wheat. A budget of $100 million has been allocated for this "urgent purchase." [The link takes you to kurdistan24; access at your own risk.] 

Reuters is also reporting this. At Nasdaq.com. Back in February, Iraq said it had enough wheat on hand, but if the war went long, they would buy more. 

Iraq has oil money and can afford to buy / stockpile wheat. Egypt: probably not.

GasBuddy record: the US national average has just set a new all-time record: $4.104 / gallon, eclipsing 2008's record of $4.103 / gallon. 

My hunch: there's been a bit of inflation since 2008. Let's see the numbers adjusted for inflation and for average mileage of cars currently on the road and in 2008. 

Alberta Province, Canada: will waive the provincial fuel tax; will save consumers 13 Canadian cents / liter at the pump. Link here. 

Demand destruction: the phrase is thrown around by "everyone." GasBuddy says there are signs of "demand destruction." 

Without a definition of "demand destruction" and metrics to go with that definition, "demand destruction" is nothing more than a juvenile meme.

Gold: hit $2,000 / ounce today, then dropped back again. I didn't bother to look where it closed.

European energy crisis: a reader spotted this earlier and send me a note. Posted. 

Now, we have confirmation: this morning European natural gas traded at the energy equivalent price of $620-oil. Link here. 

As soon as I saw her nails ... link here.

Apple Safari: I am Apple Fanboy #3 -- previously posted. I love Apple. 

Apple can do no wrong. But I don't use Safari as my browser. It's too slow and too persnickety.

I use Firefox 99% of the time. When I can't get a connection to a financial institution, I telephone them and one of the first questions they ask: which browser are you using? Browser of preference in every case (your experience may be different) is Google's Chrome. I have Chrome on all my non-phone devices and use Chrome when Firefox doesn't work for some reason. I won't used Safari except on my iPhone which I seldom use except for telephone calls, alarm clock, and family photography. Occasionally Duolingo on my iPhone when Sophia won't give up the iPad.

Now this, from Macrumors: Chrome now scores faster than Safari in speedometer benchmark. I did not need a "tech" study to tell me that. I already knew.

In a post on the Chromium blog, Google explains the technological improvements that have been introduced over the past months to make Chrome the "fastest possible browser." Google says that in the M99 release of Chrome, which is the newest version, it was able to "substantially" increase browser speeds across all major platforms.