On 03/28/2021 02:46 PM, marika wrote:
I knew a guy who had a girlfriend who used to say "everything white is bad'

She was well before her time.


wonder if the stuck container ship will have an impact on rice availability in usa. Apparently we are in for a shortage of coffee and toilet paper. again

The US exports about 3.5 metric tons of rice out of a total production
of 10.2 million metric tons in 2018. Direct consumption is around 4.2
million metric tons with a lot being used for beer and other products.

The US does import rice, mostly jasmine from Thailand as basmati from
India and Pakistan. Unless the ship is really lost those wouldn't go
through Suez.


I also knew someone who was a freight ship captain as his career, he was married to a friend of mine, but I never heard the expression €œcontainers€� from him..

My brother-in-law was a merchant seaman with captains papers although he
never sailed as captain. The vast majority of ships today are not US
flagged and the US maritime fleet has declined to the point where the
MM&P union was only allowing its members to sail 6 months a year in an
attempt to spread the work around.

Anyway, even in the early '70d he was sailing on container ships. That
sort of put the end to the romantic see the world thing since what you
mostly saw was a container port for a few hours in the middle of the
night when they swapped your containers and then you were gone again.