Fresh Blood
We have a bunch of new subscribers this week, so we thought it might be appropriate to back up and review what we are trying to accomplish with this newsletter.
Women suck at grocery shopping. Yaaa, I said it! After paying close attention since the spring of 2022, it's the only logical conclusion that can be drawn? Let's assume for the moment that most grocery store CEOs are men. Marketing managers, men. Advertising executives , men. store managers, men. And these poor women are now asked to have a career, look like Annette Benning, create new life, raise monsters into humans and figure out how to shop for tuna? A bridge too far, if you ask me! Men are superior shoppers, chefs, hairdressers, fighter pilots, etc. ... and have successfully bamboozled the girls for generations into paying way too much for groceries! Men are awesome.
OR
Both sexes are equally inept or skilled at a variety of things. They are just too busy. Work, family, soccer, piano lessons, you know ... life in the fast lane. Grocery executive know this and use a couple of simple time-tested gimmicks because they hope that families will not have the time to read all the flyers, compare all the offers and time their purchases to cherry pick the best values. They will go where they usually go, buy what they usually buy, lumber up and down the aisles like grazing buffalo until their carts are full. When they go to check out and the the girl says; "you have nine dollars in points, would you like to use them? You think you have hit a home run and say "sure. Now, which one of these two scenarios sound more likely?
Wait, we can test the first hypothesis (about men being superior shoppers)? Ask any guy what he paid for his last pickup? He will go on and on about how he got the greatest deal ever. How the Sales Manager folded like a four-dollar lawn chair under his unrelenting bargaining pressure. How they asked that he go somewhere else next time. Meanwhile, back at the dealership, this is the sales guy coming back into the office ....
So, that's why we are here. The flyers, the offers, the timing, I do that for myself ... and share it with you. Along with a peek at what is going on in our lives, what with guitars and gardens, recipes and roadhouses, dogs and documentaries. I might tackle an event on the world stage or talk about what I found on the still edible licorice I found on the sidewalk. What you will get, every Thursday morning: is a curated grocery list showing you how to game the system. The best sales, the best offers, the best timing. Look for an Email from Optimum Prime. If you enjoy the content, tell a friend. Sign up is free (for now). If you don't, let me know and I will disengage from your in basket. Either way, I thank you in advance for your time. Eight minute read this week. Here we go.
Movember is over
Shout out to three lady friends of mine. I thank you. Men's cancer research thanks you. You (RC, KH and NL) can shave those things off now! 〰️
Rare Eartha Kitt
As power shifts from the west to the east, the two largest players are going to be India and China. China is in the news lately, mostly due to their indifference to Trumps bluster and rare earth metals. Here at home, we get this news on three levels. You get the blurb (15 seconds) on the nightly news or from a FB Short. Believe it at your own risk. The latest example of questionable journalism was the fraught reporting about how Carney's budget had no chance of passing. Really? The odds of the CPC or the NDP (or the Bloc for that matter) forcing a Christmas election against Carney ... were zero percent. Read the polls. Read the conservative party balance sheet. It was just never going to happen. On the next tier, you might have a news story from a major respectable publication (MacLean's, the NYT, the Trib, or your own dive down the rabbit hole. Google the subject? Read a few viewpoints. Remember that the Zuckerberg algorithm is trying to slant the news to how you already lean! For this reason, I have retained my Washington Post subscription. They routinely do the deep dive for you. They pull the covers all the way off, providing some full frontal nudity. So let's talk about three disparate stories that inform the current global conversation that you are seeing every day about rare earth minerals. Patience. This is a one-minute read.
1) I'm a geology geek, so we start there. Pre-Cambrian blocks of crust were subducted under China over a billion years ago. Once there, rare earth minerals get infused, and that material is later thrust near the surface as magma, which solidifies into igneous rock. You need just the right amount of weathering over millions of years to wash away the granites but leave the rare minerals behind. You are left with kaolinite clays, which are easily extracted. It only happened, a lot, in one place on the planet. Guess where?
2) When we say easily extracted, we are talking about getting the clay out of the ground. Getting these minerals out of that clay is a brutal, environmentally destructive horror show for any living thing within the same time zone. Of course, protesting a rare earth processing plant in Southern China carries the death sentence. Try building that plant in Oregon or Northern Ontario?
3) The electricity required for that extraction is beyond the pale. Each factory draws more power than a small town. China has 350 such enterprises concentrated near the city of Ganzhou. Where would we, in the West, get the power for that? I mean, Canada has Niagara Falls. The U.S. has the Hoover Dam. We lead the world in hydroelectric, right? Well, we used to (... watch the last ten years of this video closely? We appear to be going backwards. We are not. Just standing still)
So, there you have it. The right clay. Not a big environmental leader and lots of power. We need this stuff for electric cars and cell phones. They have this huge bargaining chip and they are not going to lose it anytime soon. If, the North American public faces a choice between the iPhone 24 Pro Max and Taiwanese independence, I believe Beijing will have boots on the ground in Kaohsiung (their principal port) during our lifetime. We can talk about tungsten and cobalt another day. Now you know more about rare earth minerals than all of your friends.
Our Optimum Week
Every year around this time, I suggest stocking up on those luxury items that you will need before getting down to the serious business of overcooking a turkey and hiding the good scotch from your brother-in-law. Do you put the little glasses of tomato juice in front of each place setting? To me, that just screams Christmas dinner in Peterborough. A shrimp ring? After Eight dinner mints? Christmas Crackers? Now's the time to get all of that off your list. I picked the best deals from few sources. The Zehr's flyer was OK. They had a good deal on charcuterie items from the deli counter, but it's a little early to purchase cheese for Christmas? Here is this weeks list:
I Am Reading
Ursula K. Le Guin
We Are Watching
Furiosa on Netflix - The prequel to the Charlize Theron movie. One long car chase (of course) with great special effects and sub-standard CGI. Worth a watch if a little overlong. Three stars.
Mare of Eastown on HBO - The supremely elegant Kate Winslet plays a rough around the edges blue collar detective in small town America. Talk about acting! They planned it as a limited series, but there was more here if they had wanted it. Four stars!
Ridley on Britbox - Burnt out retired detective inspector is brought back because of the potential link to a very public cold case of his from fifteen years earlier. I'd say predictable stuff, but it's really not. Great script, and it kept us guessing right to the credits. Four stars.
... and finally
I am losing the battle for "Bosch" in the naming of our new puppy. Milo seems to be the leading contender, with me still making a weak case for Sherman. He just looks and acts like a Sherman to me, but I watched a lot of Rocky & Bullwinkle as a kid. When he is in my arms I call him Furry Piranha. Those little teeth are like razors. When he is on the ground, I call him Floppy Potato. Video evidence as to why, next week.
Mitch & Maddie
