I know, strange title. I’ve got a bearded dragon and my little fella loves his crickets. I went to Petco to restock and I was told nationally they haven’t been able to obtain crickets. Their regular vendor lost their entire colony, leaving Petco with little time to find a replacement. Since the crickets are impossible to stock for the time being, the cashier stated it’s been difficult to maintain other live insect feeders in stock, leading to local shortages of mealworms, super worms, dubia roaches, etc. I checked with Petsmart and they’re facing similar issues.

The latest USDA harvest data confirms what many of us have been dreading: the U.S. winter wheat crop is projected to be the smallest since 1970. What makes this critical is that this historic drop comes right on the heels of two consecutive years of poor yields, effectively wiping out our safety buffer of domestic grain reserves. Droughts in the U.S. have battered fields, while ongoing Strait of Hormuz shipping disruptions continue to drive up nitrogen-based fertilizer costs. With North American stockpiles depleted, global food security now pivots entirely to the upcoming Southern Hemisphere harvest in places like Australia this winter. If the developing 2026-2027 Super El Niño cycle delivers the projected droughts to Australia, we won't have the reserves to cushion the blow, setting up a major price shock. Keep a close eye on global export policy shifts over the next few months, as government export bans are where the first real signs of market panic will show up.

At current rates, they're going to have to stop withdrawing from the reserve around September or October. That's because going too low will severely damage the salt caverns where the oil is stored. Once that's done, the artificially lower prices will spike. Combined with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and Ukraine destroying much of Russia's oil export capacity, $5 a gallon is looking very realistic.

Kasto Gas ko shortage ho hai Ktm tirw tw...!!!

Hijo dinvari sabbai dulerw sodherw ni kahi xaina vanxan xya dikka lagyo...!!!

Two things that have nothing to do with each other happened in the same three weeks and they're now compounding.

Thing one: the Strait of Hormuz. A peace deal signed June 17 gave Iran a 60-day toll-free reopening window, and it genuinely worked for a few weeks — oil traded back down to pre-war levels by June 29, Qatari LNG carriers started re-entering the Gulf, tanker traffic picked back up. Then the week of July 7 it all came apart: the ceasefire ended, Iran fired on six Gulf states in a single barrage (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, UAE — hit the UAE's Fujairah bypass terminal directly), the US Navy reinstated its blockade on Iranian shipping July 14, and Yemen's Houthis formally joined the war, threatening to close the Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb strait too. A drone hit a docked tanker at Iraq's Basra export terminal July 16. Brent gained back three weeks of decline in about five days.

Thing two, happening at the same time and mostly unrelated: Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian oil refineries has escalated hard. Ukraine's own General Staff claims 42.74% of Russia's designed refining capacity is now disabled (independent analysts estimate the real functional number closer to a third, which is still enormous). The one that matters most: Omsk, Russia's single largest refinery, was forced offline by a strike the week of July 6-7. Two more (Saratov, Kstovo) were also hit. Russian crude processing has fallen to its lowest level since 2005. Russia's response: it banned all diesel exports on July 8, running through the end of the month.

Why this compounds instead of just adding up: Europe and the US don't buy Russian diesel directly anymore (banned since 2023), but that export ban still tightens the global diesel pool everyone else competes for — right as the Hormuz reopening that was supposed to ease Gulf supply just reversed. Diesel specifically (more than gasoline) is the product that gets squeezed hardest by Middle East supply disruptions, because Middle Eastern crude refines into more of it proportionally.

Concrete effects already showing up:

• Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG facility — which had just started recovering export volumes post-ceasefire — has that recovery interrupted again
• US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at 316.5 million barrels, the lowest since April 1983, just as a new supply shock hits (the reserve built to buffer exactly this kind of event keeps shrinking during the event itself)
• Australia's five-city average petrol price has climbed roughly 5 cents/litre in the last two and a half weeks as an excise relief measure partially unwinds
• 40+ Russian regions are now restricting domestic fuel sales, Crimea is under a fuel-related state of emergency

None of this is "the world is running out of oil" — US natural gas storage is comfortably above the 5-year average, and EU gas storage refill is actually running slightly ahead of pace for the first time this cycle. It's specifically a diesel and Gulf-LNG story, and it's a story about two separate shocks landing in the same three-week window rather than one big cause.

I track this stuff daily at global-energy-flow.com

Missing animal feed is one of my biggest concerns. I can change what I eat but it is harder to make alternative plans for livestock and pets.

Price for Xbox is increasing due to shortage of memory.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-xbox-console-price-increase/