Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• “We Have to Get Out of This Phase”: Ashish Jha on the Future of the Pandemic - President Biden’s COVID czar talks about his public-health philosophy, his Twitter threads, his unlikely path to the White House, and where we go from here. - link

• What a Disturbing New Film Reveals About Modi’s India - “The Kashmir Files” depicts the decades-old exodus of Hindus from the Muslim-majority region. For nationalists, it’s perfect propaganda. - link

• What We Learned About Trump, Pence, and the January 6th Mob - The third hearing on the attack on the Capitol revealed that the Proud Boys would have killed the Vice-President “if given the chance.” - link

• What It Means to Be Targeted by the President - Witnesses at the latest January 6th hearings share an experience that, since Donald Trump, has become a hallmark of politics: being terrorized by the full modern machinery of American hate-mongering. - link

• What’s Behind All the Talk of a Recession? - Several factors point to a significant slowdown in the economy, but the gloomy forecast isn’t yet a sure thing. - link

From Vox

• One Good Thing: Two ’90s Asian films that capture the loneliness of modern life -

  

  In Chungking Express and Rebels of the Neon God, the vibes are melancholy but incredibly aesthetic.

  Years before I watched my first film from the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, I encountered a collection of stills on Tumblr from his 1994 film Chungking Express. I reblogged the images onto my blog without any previous knowledge of it, on the sole basis of the film’s aesthetics. The images featured one of its protagonists, a boyishly handsome Takeshi Kaneshiro, holding a corded phone up to his left ear with a listless gaze. Below him, the subtitles read: “Password is ‘Love you for 10,000 years.’”

  This peculiarly romantic line of dialogue is among a handful of recognizable Wong Kar-Wai scenes that, years later, frequently surface on my social media feeds. Stills like these have helped spark modern online intrigue toward a certain genre of East Asian cinema and the (primarily male) directors that compose this category. Even though the average American moviegoer doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite for foreign films, a subset of Western viewers appears to be more receptive to East Asian works — at least according to social media.

  In recent years, too, more Asian American directors are producing films that pay stylistic homage to influential East Asian works. One of the multiverses in Everything Everywhere All At Once, for example, was heavily inspired by Wong’s In The Mood for Love, a film about two beautiful people quietly yearning, but never acting upon their unrequited love. (Various posts on Twitter have gone viral for showcasing the two works’ stylistic parallels.) Alan Yang’s Tigertail, released on Netflix in 2020, attempted to emulate the sprawling domestic drama of an Edward Yang film through an expansive multigenerational storyline.

  There are many great East Asian directors, but recently, I’ve found myself drawn to the striking work of two Sinophone filmmakers: Wong Kar-Wai and his less-discussed Taiwanese contemporary, Tsai Ming-Liang. Two of their early feature films, despite being produced over two decades ago, capture the unbearably bleak mood of life in 2022. Their overall vibe, so to speak, is steeped in melancholic languor, featuring characters that are so close in proximity, yet remain perennially distant toward other people’s inner lives.

  Tsai’s 1992 debut feature Rebels of the Neon God and Wong’s 1994 Chungking Express both chronicle the lives of wayward urban youths coming of age during an economically prosperous yet politically uncertain time. Set respectively in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the films, released within a few years of one another, hint at the looming forces of globalization and the new political hierarchies ushered in at the turn of the century. These films also tackle themes that resonate with a pandemic-afflicted audience: alienation, nostalgia, longing, unfulfilled romance, and a sense of ennui toward current events. And despite predating social media, Tsai and Wong both manage to presciently capture the loneliness in modern relationships.

  Tsai’s Rebels of the Neon God is split into two parallel storylines featuring four city-dwelling youths — two petty thieves, a student, and a roller disco rink employee — whose lives slightly overlap in strange and unexpected ways. Hsiao-Kang, a disaffected high school student, is in trouble with his parents for ditching cram school. He frequents an arcade that is robbed after-hours by two boys his age who make a living off of petty thievery. In a fit of random road rage, one of the thieves smashes Hsiao-Kang’s father’s side-view mirror and speeds off on his motorcycle, girlfriend (the rink employee) in tow.

  Similarly, Chungking Express follows an ensemble cast of characters. The film is divided into two sequential storylines featuring two disparate Hong Kong couples, whose lives fleetingly intermingle. Cop 223 listlessly wanders through the city buying cans of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, the day he expects to get over an unrequited love. He meets a woman in a bar sporting sunglasses and a blonde wig, who is secretly a drug dealer. The next vignette introduces us to Cop 663, who is heartbroken after his relationship ended with a flight attendant girlfriend. He befriends a server at a local food stand he frequents. The server, unbeknownst to the cop, is in possession of a spare set of keys to his apartment, which was left behind by his ex.

  Courtesy of Criterion Collection

  It’s worth noting that Wong and Tsai aren’t usually discussed comparatively despite the complementary nature of these specific films. (Tsai is often characterized as an experimental auteur, mentioned in line with Taiwanese contemporaries like Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien; meanwhile, Wong has achieved a level of industry success that grants his work broader international recognition.)

  Wong tends to romanticize his characters, interspersing dreamy, music-laden interludes into their daily activities. There is, on the contrary, little glamour to the lives of Tsai’s protagonists. The thieves inhabit perpetually flooded and damaged apartments. They dawdle around internet cafes, arcades, and cheap motels, and get drunk often. They spend their nights committing acts of debauchery and thievery to scrape by.

  Rebels of the Neon God is set in post-martial law Taiwan in the 1990s, wherein citizens were granted significantly more civic freedoms than before. Yet, Tsai’s protagonists respond with little joy to these newfound liberties. Hsiao-Kang is clearly disinterested in attending college, and seems fascinated by the lives of delinquents his age. This is perhaps an allusion to the “darker underpinnings of Taiwan’s assimilation into the global market,” observed the New Yorker’s Dennis Zhou, referencing Tsai’s interest in “drifters, idlers, and insomniacs on the fringes of the world’s supply chain.” His use of dialogue is also spare, highlighting the aimlessness of characters’ behaviors and the tedium of their lives.

  Chungking Express, while decidedly more aesthetic, also carries slight political undertones. Wong has said that the film is about Hong Kong in that “it reflects the way people felt at that time.” Chungking was released three years before 1997, when Hong Kong was ceded to mainland China after 156 years of British colonial rule. Critics have interpreted the movie’s “chaotic, confusing and … unclear environmental setting” as commentary on the decade’s pervasive uncertainty, heightened by sudden visual shifts between blurry, slow-motion shots and facial close-ups.

  Rebels and Chungking are not necessarily foreboding films. Still, there is the underlying sense that something is wrong or slightly off within these realities, even though the stakes seem relatively low. There are no supervillains or potential world-ending catastrophes to stop. Rather, it’s the encroachment of technology or globalization that adds to the characters’ pervasive alienation. One scene in Rebels shows the motorcycle-riding thief and his girlfriend having sex next to a TV with porn playing on it. It’s unclear whether they’re truly interested in sex with each other or simply emulating what’s suggested to them via mass media. In another scene, one of the thieves asks his friend to find him a girl to hug so that he can feel the warmth of a woman’s body after he was beaten up on the street.

  Isolation and ennui in Chungking are depicted in a more lighthearted (and arguably more romantic) manner, but the unsettling mood persists. Film scholar Michael Blancato wrote that the film is representative of “a culture subject to temporal compression and tele-surveillance — characteristics that define modern-day globalization. [Wong’s] films illustrate that the national cost of participation in a modern, global economy is affective discontent among citizens.”

  It’s slightly ironic, then, that scenes from Chungking Express have become so widely disseminated on the internet, reaching audiences across the globe who discover within these characters something to relate to. Wong’s hallmark shots are colorful and captivating, easy to screenshot into shareable content. Even when seen out of context on a Tumblr or Instagram feed, the visual strength of his cinematography, coupled with the muted dialogue between characters, enchants the viewer. (Stills and clips from Wong’s films are often shared on popular film Instagram accounts including the Criterion Channel’s, and some are solely devoted to posting his oeuvre.)

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Wong Kar Wai (@wongkarwaimonamour)

While Tsai’s work is less shared than Wong’s, a similar sentiment applies. The current streaming ecosystem makes his films readily available to a mass international audience, despite how Tsai, who considers himself a non-commercial director, has struggled to attract a mainstream Taiwanese viewership.

Social media compresses their old works into something consumable and relatable for a Western audience, occasionally stripping away the naturalistic cadence of the film. (Rebels is noticeably slower than Chungking, with Tsai purposefully dwelling on characters doing “normal” things, like walking around or lying about their apartments.) Still, there is something poetic about this digital transfiguration. Thanks to the popularity of streaming services, Rebels of the Neon God and Chungking Express, two distinct films about alienation within urban spaces, can be watched alone in the privacy of one’s home. As lonely as that may seem, I find it comforting; there is a communal feeling within the individual experience of rediscovering cult classics that so keenly reflect how life is isolating, no matter how connected we seem to other people.

Rebels of the Neon God is available to stream on Prime Video. Chungking Express is on HBO Max. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.

• Afghanistan’s staggering set of crises, explained -

  

  Almost a year after Kabul’s fall and the US’s withdrawal, the economy remains in free fall, and the country faces a near-constant humanitarian disaster.

  The markets in Kabul have food, but few can afford it. A sack of flour can cost about $30. Businesses struggle to get materials because of lack of access to bank accounts or foreign currency. Teachers and government workers weren’t getting paid, and even if those salaries have resumed, incomes are lower. People sell furniture and silverware for cash. They also sell their kidneys.

  This is Afghanistan in the months after the Taliban marched into Kabul, the Afghan government fell, and the United States withdrew. America’s 20-year war ended, but another crisis replaced it: economic collapse. This was brought on by the near-instant evaporation of billions of dollars in foreign aid, sanctions on Taliban leaders, and the US’s freezing of Afghanistan’s foreign currency reserves. A severe drought, the Taliban’s struggles to govern, and now the global shocks from the Ukraine war have pushed Afghanistan toward humanitarian catastrophe.

  On Wednesday, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit the southeastern part of the country, killing about 1,000 people and injuring at least 1,500 more, according to a state-run news agency. The quake hit a rural, poor region near the Pakistan border, another humanitarian crisis for the country to face. Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions called for more foreign aid to help respond to the disaster.

  Sardar Shafaq/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

  But Afghanistan is already depending on humanitarian assistance to stave off crisis after crisis. Nearly 20 million Afghans were already facing acute food insecurity, about half of the country’s entire population. In March, the United Nations said almost 95 percent of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat, what a UN official called “a figure so high that it is almost inconceivable.” More than 1 million children under 5 will face severe malnutrition this year. According to the World Food Program, 92 percent of households reported having debt; 88 percent said buying food forced them to borrow money.

  The UN has raised billions in aid for Afghanistan this year. But this kind of relief is supposed to be an emergency measure. In Afghanistan, it is serving as the replacement for an economy that cannot function.

  “Every single possible coping mechanism and social safety net has been ripped from underneath them,” said Athena Rayburn, Save the Children’s director of advocacy, communications, and media in Kabul. “The last frontier should be humanitarian agencies, but we’re increasingly having to do more and more and more because there’s nowhere else for people to turn.”

  Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

  Afghanistan’s predicament is a long story, and a short one. It can be told in decades of international intervention, or in 20 years of US foreign policy failures, or it can begin in the immediate aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover, when development assistance disappeared and members of the Taliban went from being heavily sanctioned terrorists to the heavily sanctioned leaders of the de facto government.

  The US Treasury Department has made substantial exceptions to Afghan sanctions in the months after the withdrawal, but they continue to have a chilling effect. And one of the toughest measures remains in place: The US continues to block Afghanistan’s central bank from accessing about $7 billion of its own assets, funds necessary to triage an economy in free fall.

  The Taliban have also struggled to govern Afghanistan. They lack resources, but also the technical know-how — and many who have it are sidelined or have left. The Taliban have crushed any hope that they might emerge as a new and more moderate group, instead targeting minorities, banning girls from high school, and requiring women to wear the burqa in public. So far, they are unwilling, or unable, to change.

  The West can blame the Taliban for failing to take reasonable steps that would ease Afghanistan’s isolation. The Taliban can blame the West for sanctions and blocking the central bank reserves. And the world is struggling to figure out what happens to a country that was suddenly cut out of the global system after two straight decades of international intervention.

  It’s a “tug of war in some ways,” said Madiha Afzal, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The people who are suffering are ordinary Afghans.”

  Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

  That leaves humanitarian assistance to mitigate the disaster. But it does not offer Afghanistan a real pathway out of this crisis. “It will save lives for today,” said Sayed Hameed Sadaat, who worked in policy and planning in Afghanistan’s Office of the President, until the government’s collapse last August. “But tomorrow, there’s again a question mark: What will they eat? What will they live with?”

  “There’s no strategic plan agreed [to] by [the] international community to save these needy people, to get Afghanistan out of international crisis,” Sadaat added.

  When an economy craters overnight

  Over 20 years, the United States had set aside nearly $150 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). (The total US cost of the war is estimated at $2.3 trillion, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project.) That funded Afghan’s security services, governance and development programs, and more. According to the Congressional Research Service, the US and international donors supported more than half of the Afghan government’s $6 billion annual budget and as much as 80 percent of its total expenditures. About 40 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP came from foreign assistance.

  All of that stopped abruptly when the Taliban swept into Kabul. This was billions, gone. “When the Taliban came in, not only did the government collapse, but everything — all the relationships, all these institutions, and all the processes that had been built over two decades, in terms of economic development aid that was flowing into Afghanistan — it all collapsed,” said Abid Amiri, an economist and author of The Trillion Dollar War: The U.S. Effort to Rebuild Afghanistan 1999-2021.

  This was the money that paid teachers and public sector employees their salaries. It also hit the artificial economy that bubbled up around foreign investment — taxi drivers, day laborers, the restaurateurs who catered to civil servants.

  “No country in the world could withstand a sharp cutoff of that aid,” said William Byrd, a senior expert on Afghanistan at the United States Institute of Peace.

  Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

  Now add in sanctions. Both the United States and the United Nations had existing sanctions on members of the Taliban; for example, those accused of orchestrating or coordinating attacks on the US and its allies or of having financial ties to terrorists. There are sanctions on specific groups, like the Haqqani network, a distinct entity within the Taliban. The Taliban takeover meant many of these sanctioned leaders became the de facto leaders of the Afghan government.

  There was another sweeping measure: a freeze on the assets of the Da Afghanistan Bank, or DAB, the country’s central bank. It’s hard to get a perfect figure, but Afghanistan held about $9.5 billion in foreign reserves in Western institutions, with about $7 billion or so in the New York Federal Reserve. The US completely blocked the Taliban from accessing these reserves, saying that Afghanistan’s democratically elected — but now defunct — government is the steward of these assets. This should be the money Afghanistan could use to manage the macroeconomy, to do things like help control inflation, insert liquidity into the economy — all problems plaguing Afghanistan.

  The United States has peeled back sanctions, but it hasn’t really worked

  When the Taliban took over, Afghanistan was effectively cut off from the global financial system. That created a liquidity crisis: basically, not enough cash. The frozen central bank funds mean there isn’t enough currency, whether dollars or afghanis, to back up commercial banks. People and businesses cannot access their bank accounts, even if they have money in there. Physical cash in circulation is wearing down, and Afghanistan doesn’t print its own money.

  It is harder to import things; businesses can’t tap their accounts to buy products, and even if they could, the afghani has depreciated, making imports more expensive. Prices have gone way, way up, even as incomes have gone down. “The fundamental issue of our economy right now is just people not having enough money to buy things,” said Haroun Rahimi, an Afghan researcher and law professor at the American University of Afghanistan.

  Afghanistan’s poverty rate was at 72 percent around the time of the Taliban takeover, with most of the country living on less than $2 per day. As much as 97 percent of Afghanistan was expected to sink below the poverty rate by mid-2022.

  Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

  Bilal Guler/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

  Petros Giannakouris/AP

The dire situation ultimately prompted the United Nations and the United States to begin issuing sanctions exemptions to allow the free flow of humanitarian assistance. The US continued to expand on these “general licenses,” which allowed more and more transactions over time. In late February, the Treasury Department issued a general license that gave private companies and NGOs the legal cover to do a wide range of transactions, including with governing institutions in Afghanistan — even those headed up by sanctioned individuals.

The US “definitively and categorically said sanctions on the Taliban do not mean that all engagement with or economic activity with the Afghan government is sanctioned,” said Andrew Watkins, senior expert in Afghanistan at the United States Institute of Peace. In other words, it largely permitted the majority of economic activity that foreign actors might want to have with Afghanistan.

“That hasn’t sent people rushing back into Afghanistan,” Watkins added.

As some experts told me, this licensing process was too gradual and took too long. Businesses had already ended their dealings with Afghanistan and, because of the many uncertainties, didn’t see it as a worthwhile investment to return. Foreign banks and entities are still scared they might end up inadvertently violating sanctions rules, or that the rules might change.

“The problem was everybody had to figure out: ‘Okay, what does this license cover? And how far open is this? Are there things I can’t do even within the license?’” said Jeffrey Grieco, president and CEO of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce. “The Afghan business guys are not lawyers in the US. They’re just trying to sell food and import wheat and import rice.”

All of that has created a deterrent effect that is hard to overcome. Afghan businesses are struggling to export and import goods, or even get parts to fix machinery from suppliers to produce things at home. “Once you tell them these materials go to Afghanistan, they just ignore you,” said one Afghan businessman, who was granted anonymity to protect his safety.

The conundrum of Afghanistan’s central bank funds

Deepening the paralysis of the Afghan economy is the freeze on DAB’s assets. The country does not have a functioning central bank, so it lacks the tools to ease some economic constraints, like lack of liquidity or high inflation.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images

The central bank assets are also the most visible and symbolic element of the battle over Afghanistan’s future. Treasury froze the assets in August 2021; soon after, some 9/11 victims’ families began pursuing the funds as potential compensation in terrorist judgments against the Taliban and others.

The Biden administration was in some ways boxed in by this litigation, which is still weaving through the courts and may not ultimately succeed. But in February, the White House issued an executive order that set aside about half of the assets for possible compensation in the lawsuit, and committed about $3.5 billion “for the benefit of the Afghan people,” which would be made available through a third-party trust.

The move angered many critics, who say the assets belong fully to the Afghan people. Afghan advocates and others have also challenged the legality of using these reserves for a judgment in this suit, since the Afghan people bear no responsibility for 9/11, and doing so would likely prolong the crisis in Afghanistan.

“The change of the government shouldn’t lead to the freezing of assets in the case when, for example, a country doesn’t recognize the results of an election or [the] overthrow of government. It’s money of the state; it’s not money of the government,” said Alena Douhan, the United Nations special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.

With the executive order, the administration tried to guarantee that some of the assets would return to Afghanistan in some form, though it’s still not clear what form that might be. And many see the central bank funds as an urgent component necessary for ameliorating Afghanistan’s economic precarity. “You’re going to need to give them aid, but you’re also going to need to figure out how to restore some elements of their economy, so they can slowly move toward greater levels of sufficiency,” said Masuda Sultan, co-founder of Unfreeze Afghanistan, a campaign calling for the release of the assets.

Shah Mehrabi, a professor of economics at Montgomery College and member of the Board of Governors of Da Afghanistan Bank, has proposed restoring the funds through a limited, monitored release. “We want to be able to prop up the value of the afghani and stabilize prices, and then help meet the needs of ordinary Afghans,” he said. “That’s the whole purpose of what we want to do is to avoid financial sector crisis, and to allow businesses who are having difficulty to be able to pay for imports to be able to do that.”

Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Some proponents favor releasing funds in waves, carefully monitored in case the Taliban abuses the funds. But even within that proposal, there are debates as to whether it should be done through some sort of separate mechanism, like a third-party trust, or through the DAB itself, which, though technically independent, is now being run by a Taliban official.

It’s also still a question of how successfully Afghanistan’s DAB can manage those funds. The chill of sanctions and lack of foreign investment may mean there are limits to how much these reserves can repair the economy. Many of the top leaders of the bank also fled after Afghanistan’s fall, and others are trying to leave or have been pushed out of positions by Taliban leadership. “They are not willing to use people who can work: technocrats, the experts that are already there, at home; they go to work, they have no role. And every day that passes, they become more irrelevant,” said Aref Dostyar, senior adviser at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a former Afghan government official.

And politically, it’s difficult for the US to release these funds as long as the Taliban remains in charge. “The US can’t really just say, ‘Okay, you know what, we’re going to unfreeze your central bank funds and essentially insert liquidity in the economy,’ because that really looks like you’re essentially letting the Taliban get away with it,” Afzal, of the Brookings Institution, said.

Which means it is possible that — even if Afghanistan’s plight worsens — these assets could stay frozen until there is a democratically elected Afghan government, or at least until the Taliban leaves or changes.

The Taliban are not doing themselves — or the Afghan people — any favors

Except the Taliban are not changing. In March, in Qatar, the US planned to begin discussions with the Taliban about economic issues, including those frozen funds, but talks fell apart after the Taliban issued their decree stopping girls from attending secondary school.

The Taliban are content to blame the West, and especially the US, for Afghanistan’s suffering — but their continued human rights violations and ideological extremism have kept Afghanistan cut off from the world. The Taliban continue to curtails women’s rights, like barring girls from attending school beyond sixth grade after they promised they would allow it. The Taliban’s restrictions on freedom of movement for women and girls, and on employment outside the home, have added to the economic strain, as they can’t earn income or seek access to things like health care.

The Taliban have also continued to target civil society. They embarked on revenge killings of former members of the Afghan security forces, and human rights groups have documented arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings across the country, along with the targeting of minority groups.

Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP via Getty Images

The Taliban are still a very secretive and shadowy organization. There are likely some members who do want to try to build a functioning government, but others see the Taliban’s retrograde vision for the world as central to the organization’s character, and do not necessarily want to have a good relationship with the outside world.

“They see these pro-engagement voices as a threat to the Taliban’s identity,” Rahimi, of the American University of Afghanistan, said. If the Taliban moderate their behavior, they may do so at the expense of internal legitimacy.

In some ways, the central bank funds and sanctions are the two points of leverage still available to the West, the things it can use to pressure the Taliban on reforms. So far, that has not been successful. But it is also risky, to make what should be a matter of basic human rights into a kind of quid pro quo — and there are few guarantees the Taliban will keep its word, or work to the benefit of the Afghan people.

Afghanistan, still on the brink

Afghans in the country, or who do business in Afghanistan, all say a version of the same thing: Nobody has any money.

Fixing that requires ending Afghanistan’s isolation, which requires a menu of things: easing sanctions, releasing central bank funds, and encouraging or incentivizing reinvestment. These are all difficult options because of the political situation. Without them, Afghanistan risks being trapped on the precipice of humanitarian catastrophe.

There are improvements on the margins. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has physically delivered batches of cash to Afghanistan. The World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, which previously financed Afghan government programs, has announced that it will fund three programs worth nearly $800 million.

These are just small measures in the bigger crisis. According to one UN estimate, Afghanistan will still require about $200 million in humanitarian assistance each month. In March, the United Nations sought to raise a record $4.4 billion for Afghanistan, the largest-ever appeal for a single country. It raised $2.4 billion, with the US contributing $204 million. (As of May, the US has set aside $720 million for Afghanistan since mid-August 2021, according to the State Department.) But some advocates and experts worry that it will be difficult for the world to meet or sustain such a level of support, especially with so much international focus on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Afghanistan avoided some of the most dire predictions of this winter because of humanitarian aid successes. But with suffering on a country-wide scale, anything — a natural disaster, global food shocks — can push it even deeper into crisis. “It’s not just going to go away if we want it to go away,” Dostyar, the former Afghan official, said. “What it does is that it will multiply the amount of the trouble that will haunt us again, later.”

• When you drive for work, $5 gas hurts -

  

  A look at how high gas prices are hurting workers and what to do about it.

  Back in February, when US gas prices were around $3.50, most Americans said they’d change their driving habits or lifestyle if gas hit $4. It now costs just under $5 on average.

  In the short term, high gas prices have meant that some people have become more conscientious about how often they drive. But for those who have to drive for work, either as a commute or as part of their job — like health care workers, farmers, tradespeople, and Uber and Lyft drivers — there’s less wiggle room. For them, sustained high gas prices have long-reaching repercussions that affect their take-home pay, where they live, and if they’ll be able to perform their jobs at all.

  “If they’re required to drive as a condition of their livelihood, they’re stuck,” Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, told Recode. For those people, increased gas costs will come out of their discretionary income, the same way clothing and trips do. If they are low-income and had limited extra money to begin with, that can mean much harder choices about food, housing, and debt.

  People who live paycheck to paycheck “are definitely seeing this have an enormous effect on what’s left in their wallet,” Cohen said.

  In May of this year, the average transaction price at gas stations was up 34 percent from May 2019, according to Earnest Research, a company that analyzes anonymized US credit and debit card data. And those charges are taking up a larger share of people’s spending in the US.

  For now, the bad news is that there’s not much the government can do to adjust gas prices since they’re due to large global events outside government control. When the pandemic in 2020 began causing travel of all kinds to grind to a halt and demand for gas plummeted as a result, oil companies closed down refineries that process oil into gas — a move that’s not easy to quickly reverse, even as demand for gas in the US has grown again. Additionally, the war between Ukraine and major oil producer Russia has caused prices for crude oil — which are set on a global basis — to soar. As a result, analysts expect gas prices to grow to $6 a gallon this summer and remain high for some time.

  The good news is that the current situation is quite a bit different from the gas crisis of the 1970s, which was marked by gas-guzzling cars and much higher foreign oil reliance. These days, more of the money spent on gas stays within the US economy, and less of people’s paychecks are going to gas than back then. Additionally, in the long run, high gas prices could accelerate existing trends — buying more electric vehicles, living closer to work, or working remotely — that would further decouple us from the volatile swings of gas prices.

  In the meantime, there will be a lot of pain — especially for Americans who drive to make a living.

  How high gas prices are affecting those who drive for their livelihoods

  New research shows that demand for gas is more elastic — meaning demand does change as prices go up — than previously thought. That said, it’s most inelastic among people or small businesses that have no choice but to drive.

  “They could get more efficient, they could pass it on to customers, or they can eat it,” said Adie Tomer, a senior fellow at public policy nonprofit Brookings Institution who leads its Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative.

  Tianna Kennedy, owner of The 607 CSA, which delivers produce, meats, dairy, and other goods from farms in upstate New York to subscribers nearby and in New York City, is trying to make changes where she can.

  The CSA already cuts down on gas mileage for its 40 member farms by consolidating their deliveries and bringing them to pick-up points where subscribers live. But part of the organization’s mission is to bring fresh food to low-income people in poorer, more far-flung neighborhoods in the Bronx and East New York, rather than just wealthier areas in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

  “We’re intentionally inefficient,” Kennedy said. “It’s a lot of driving, so it gets really expensive.”

  She doesn’t want to raise the fees to farmers, who already don’t make much on their goods, and she doesn’t want to pass it on to customers, so she hasn’t raised the prices of food shares. Kennedy is in the process of transitioning her business into a nonprofit to try and make things work.

  Jae C. Hong/AP

  Others are raising prices, but it’s a delicate dance.

  Brian Stack, president of Stack Heating Cooling & Electric outside Cleveland, Ohio, says the gas bill for his shop’s 40 trucks is now $20,000 a month — that’s double what it has been in recent years — so he’s had to raise prices.

  In addition to other inflation costs — he’s now paying fuel charges from his suppliers and has offered salary increases to workers to help them deal with that inflation — Stack said gas prices are eating into the company’s bottom line. Service calls are often unscheduled and urgent — like when someone’s heat isn’t working in winter — so it’s largely impossible to optimize routes for better gas mileage.

  “I need the trucks to generate revenue,” he said. “Without them, we’re out of business.”

  Some people who drive for a living, like truck drivers working for large outfits or project managers who do site visits in their own cars, have company gas cards or are paid or reimbursed based on gas spending, but that’s not always the case. Uber and Lyft drivers, for the most part, have to take it on the chin.

  That’s bad news for the companies and the people who work for them.

  In March, when gas was around $4 a gallon, Lyft and Uber added small surcharges to each trip — 55 cents for Lyft, 45 to 55 cents for Uber — to help drivers offset gas prices, but the companies haven’t raised that fee since. Even then, the fee wasn’t enough for drivers like Hector Castellanos.

  “It’s an insult,” said Castellanos, who works in the Bay Area where gas is now nearly $7 a gallon.

  His Chevy Malibu gets around 30 miles per gallon, but he says the trips are often long, upward of 20 miles. That means the surcharge only helps with a small portion of the trip. Castellanos works 12-hour days where he earns roughly $300. After spending $120 a day on gas — but before car maintenance, insurance, and cellphone costs — he makes $180. In an area with a very high cost of living, that means he faces hard decisions about what he can afford.

  “Now we need to think about what are we going to eat,” said Castellanos, who is currently applying for jobs in food service where he thinks he’ll make more. “Everything is so expensive.”

  Other people who drive for work don’t have anything mitigating their fuel costs.

  Diondre Clarke, a certified nursing assistant in Charlotte, North Carolina, uses her vehicle to drive to home care facilities and to run errands for a private client. Gas, which is more than $4.50 a gallon in Charlotte, comes out of her own pocket.

  “This gas has really taken a lot away from me,” Clarke told Recode. She makes $20 an hour, but says with inflation she’s unable to save or pay down debt. “I’m not able to do the things that I wanted to do.”

  High gas prices are also hurting those who simply have to drive to and from work. And it has the most impact on people who can afford it the least. Low-wage workers already had trouble making ends meet on the US’s $7.25 minimum wage — an amount that can be erased with just a commute, especially in rural areas where travel times are long and public transit rare.

  What can — or, more likely, can’t — be done

  Inflation is very unpopular politically, and the gas pump is one of the most obvious places where consumers notice it. But the government has very few levers to pull to help with gas prices, and some of the things the Biden administration is doing are more symbolic than effective.

  The Federal Reserve has already raised interest rates, a painful process that tries to slow down spending by making borrowing more expensive, which is supposed to make costs go down. While that could help with demand, aiding with supply is much harder since that’s tied to refinery capacity and global oil prices (and geopolitical whims).

  Biden has already released fuel from the country’s emergency stores, a move that has done little to ameliorate gas prices since it can’t make up for declines at the global level, where oil prices are set.

  On Wednesday, Biden announced he’s also asking Congress to suspend federal gas taxes for three months. Some states have already paused their gas taxes as well. But those state and federal taxes only account for 12 percent of the cost of gas.

  “The price is already five bucks; 20 cents isn’t going to make a huge difference,” Kyle said, referring to how much federal taxes are per gallon.

  Drew Angerer/Getty Images

  Additionally, those taxes would normally help pay for road and highway improvements — stuff that will eventually have to be paid through other taxes.

  Lutz Kilian, a senior economic policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said such moves to lower gas prices could in fact have “perverse effects” on prices because making gas less expensive could increase demand, which in turn would cause prices to grow. “It could make things worse,” he said.

  In the short term, many American workers will have to grit and bear the high price of gas. In the long term, they could make changes, which aren’t easy and will take time.

  “In the short run, they have the car they have and they have the job they have,” Steven Kyle, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. In the longer run, these people could switch jobs and move to different industries.

  “We’re going to see those kinds of professions depopulate — people are going to leave if they can’t afford the cost-revenue calculation,” Kyle said. “That will eventually make [employers] have to pay those people more, but all of these things take a while to work out.”

  Those who can afford it could buy electric and fuel-efficient vehicles, though bottlenecks for EV supplies are putting a damper on this transition.

  High gas prices might also affect where people live, causing those who work in-person to ensure they live close to their jobs. It could also accelerate the demand for remote work. In April, 20 percent of jobs on LinkedIn in the US were for remote work, but they received more than half of all applications, according to the company. Those who are coming into the office two or three times a week might ask their bosses if they could come in once a week or even a few times a month — especially since many office workers aren’t convinced there’s a point to going into the office at all.

  Early indicators suggest that high prices could be starting to keep people from fueling up, which in turn could help drive down prices: There were 5 percent fewer gas station transactions in May 2022 than in May 2019, according to Earnest Research, and Energy Information Administration data shows that implied demand for gasoline in the week ending June 10 shrank slightly from a week earlier and from the same week a year before.

  Even still, gas prices are expected to rise this summer and not substantially decline till 2023. And the longer gas prices stay high, the more drastic will be the changes workers have to make.

From The Hindu: Sports

• SL women vs India women first T20: Clinical India chokes Sri Lanka, takes 1-0 lead - The second match of the series is slated for Saturday.

• Ranji Trophy final | Sarfaraz Khan's defiant century propels Mumbai to 374, M.P. finish day two at 123/1 - Sarafarz Khan’s 134 off 243 balls included 13 fours and five sixes

• Supernatural, Fortunate Son, Mojito, Theon, Chopin and Speaking Of Love impress -

• Quiz | Easy like Sunday morning: on auto racing - Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports… all the others are games: Ernest Hemingway

• India jump two places to 104 in FIFA ranking - India had their best ever Asian Cup qualification campaign earlier this month when they won all three of their league matches to top group D and secure a place in the 24-team Finals to be held in 2023

From The Hindu: National News

• Postal employees stage demo -

• Urdu teachers raise concern over schools’ merger, G.O. 117 - They demand sanction of teachers posts over due since upgrading of upper primary schools

• Andhra Pradesh: NIA team in Vizag to probe missing woman’s case - Radha, a nursing student, was allegedly kidnapped by the Maoists and forcefully inducted into the movement in 2017

• Travancore Devaswom Board gears up to retrieve lost properties - Estimates show TDB lost 490 hectares in Kerala alone

• Ford extends production at its Chennai plant till July - Management, workers to hold discussions on severance package

From BBC: Europe

• EU leaders to back Ukraine as candidate at Brussels summit - A summit on Thursday will give the green light but Kyiv says “real integration” will start after the war.

• Germany takes step closer to gas rationing - The country triggers the “alarm” stage of its emergency gas plan after a drop in Russian supplies.

• Ukraine war: Russia aiming to ‘destroy’ Donbas, Zelensky says - An advisor to Mr Zelensky says the battle for two key Donbas cities has reached a ‘fearsome climax’.

• Kaliningrad row: Lithuania accuses Russia of lying about rail ‘blockade’ - The prime minister says talk of a blockade is untrue and a tiny amount of goods are affected.

• North East pigeon racers say post-Brexit rules ‘devastating’ - UK pigeons must have a signed health certificate before they can take part in cross-Channel races.

From Ars Technica

• Cult of the Lamb hands-on: Animal Crossing meets the dark arts - Devolver resurrects Actraiser’s half-sim-half-adventure in hilariously dark fashion. - link

• 13-inch MacBook Pro review: Apple’s M2 is a worthy follow-up to the M1 - The new Pro feels like a tease for the upcoming Air, though. - link

• FDA reportedly preparing to force Juul products off the US market - The regulatory denial could come as early as Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. - link

• Who gets credit for science? Often, it’s not women - Part of the problem is that there are no objective rules for who gets credit. - link

• Night owls beware, Fitbit knows your sleep type and wants to educate you on it - Sleep Profiles are part of Fitbit’s latest paywalled health insights. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A guy goes to Las Vegas to gamble and he loses all his money. -

  He doesn’t even have enough for a cab, but he flagged one down anyway. He explained to the driver that he would pay him back next time and gave him his phone number, but the driver told him, “Get the fuck out of my cab.”

  He walked all the way to the airport and got home.

  Some times rolls by and he decides to go back to Vegas again and this time he wins BIG.

  He gets his bags and is ready for the airport with all his new winnings.

  There are a line of cabs and at the very end he sees the driver from last time that kicked him out.

  He stood for a moment thinking how can he get his revenge on that driver.

  So, he gets in the first cab.

  “How much is it to the airport?” he asks.

  The driver says, “$15.”

  “Great, how much is it for a blowjob on the way there?”

  The cab driver says, “Get the fuck out of my cab.”

  So he goes to the next one and asks the same thing.

  “How much to airport?”

  “$15.”

  “Great, how much for a blowjob on the way there?”

  And that cab driver also tells him to get the fuck out of his cab.

  He does this all the way down the line of drivers, each one kicking him out.

  He finally gets to the last driver, the one from his last trip.

  He asks, “Hey how much to the airport?”

  Driver responds, “$15.”

  The guy hands him $15 and says, “Great let’s go!”

  And so the driver leaves, slowly passing all the other drivers who are staring out their window while the guy in the back smiles back with a thumbs up.

  submitted by /u/Remarkable-Youth-504
  [link] [comments]

• One night, Pinnochio’s girlfriend says to him, “This stinks. Every time we make love I get splinters.” -

  So Pinnochio goes to Gepetto to ask his advice. Gepetto says, “Sandpaper, my boy, that’s all you need.”

  A few days later Gepetto runs into Pinnochio and says, “So how are you doing with the girls now?”

  Pinnochio says, “Who needs girls?”

  submitted by /u/EntrepreneuralSpirit
  [link] [comments]

• A friend gave me a free guitar the other day, but I’ve been having trouble playing it -

  I guess I can’t complain though, it’s not often someone just gives you something with no strings attached

  submitted by /u/RexPooz
  [link] [comments]

• Just woke up from a dream about Roman numerals 5, 4, 1, and 500. -

  It was VIVID.

  submitted by /u/WildAndFreeee
  [link] [comments]

• A gorgeous woman waved to me at the beach yesterday. -

  But there was no way I was swimming out that far, to talk to her.

  submitted by /u/VERBERD
  [link] [comments]