In my part of town on July 29th I stopped to photograph a large sunflower plant (Helianthus annuus). When I got close to one of its flower heads I noticed a crab spider on it, as you see above. Although the plant had many flower heads and some opening buds on it, one leaf had died and curled up, as shown below.
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Math and language lover that I am, I'll tell you that at least some people, and perhaps many, misinterpret the statement that "inflation is coming down" to mean "prices are coming down." While it's true that over the past year the rate at which prices are increasing has been coming down, prices themselves have on average kept rising. For certain products the prices have risen a lot, as documented by Jesse Newman in a July 8th Wall Street Journal article titled "The Supermarket Aisle Where Prices Are Still Soaring." The sub-head is "Cost increases for meat, eggs and produce have been tamed, but inflation is running hot in grocery stores' inner aisles, home to packaged food and household goods."
The article included these examples of price increases from a year ago (and remember that prices then had already risen noticeably from the year before that):
- Hot cocoa: 15.6%
- Frosting: 14.3%
- Pretzels: 16.7%
- Cereal 16%
- Jellies and jams: 17.5%
- Potato chips: 16.7%
You're welcome to read the full article.
© 2023 Steven Schwartzman
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