If you live anywhere there is weather, you should probably have a weather radio. This is a bespoke device that renders the weather forecast, if that interests you, at the push of a button. But its real purpose is to make alarming noise when bad weather approaches, so that you might spend your final minutes lamenting that you have no basement. We had four days of, first, terrible storms then endless rain beginning a week ago tonight.
The other day I was at the grocery store, grumbling that the house-brand refried beans, 69 cents for quite some time, are now 89 cents, an increase of more than 20 percent. Then I noticed that the house-brand dry-roasted peanuts, $1.99 since forever, have gone up by more than 10 percent.