There were some shortages in Belgium that I didn’t expect. Like frozen broccoli missing everywhere for a week or two. Flour went missing for a month, probably due to panic buying. But otherwise, I enjoy fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts which are definitely imported from somewhere.

There are odd disappearances from the grocery shelves from time to time. For example, one thing I’ve noticed is that outside of the trinity of Cola/Diet-Cola/Lemon-Lime soda, the availability of other sodas has been hit or miss for the last year. There have been others, less memorable because they’re more transient, but it’s more often the case that I’m likely to not be able to find product X at the grocery store in the last year than previously.

The reason for the soda thing is that there's been an ongoing aluminum can shortage for over a year (apparently it's still a problem), so they've had to focus more on the more popular core sodas and other varieties have been a lot more sporadic.

https://www.wastedive.com/news/ball-molson-coors-aluminum-ca...

Here in Japan, There are now very little shortage for daily items but I found that Nestle Dolce Gusto is in shortage since April. That's imported from Europe and delayed by the canal accident.

what kind of savage eats frozen broccoli?

EDIT: not trolling, i'm really curious. Fresh broccoli is available all year round everywhere and it is so much better than the frozen stuff. Why would anyone buy it frozen?

You can store it in a deep freezer without losing much nutritional value, which means it’s available on a whim without having to make a trip to the store. In many places that means you have it if you have a hankering without spending 1+ hr tracking it down first (typical if you’re not in an urban center or next door to a grocery store). I usually have some fresh broccoli stocked, but sometimes I already ate it. If you have kids, or are more remote (so it’s 2 hrs round trip or more), that is huge because you just can’t make that trip many times - too many other demands on your attention.

It's really only North America plus possibly Australia and a handful of other westernized countries that have this problem of food deserts.

The vast majority of people in the world live within walking distance of a small neighborhood market.

Most of those markets don’t carry frozen broccoli though?

Definitely not. My local markets only sell fresh produce (that you can freeze yourself). You can only buy frozen food on freeze-specialized small shops or on large supermarkets.

I prefer the frozen stuff almost always. I can microwave it for 3 minutes, drain off a little bit of water, add in salt, pepper, and a tablespoon of butter, shake until emulsified and violá.

The only time I go for fresh broccoli is when making a stirfry or salads.

can you share what makes you think fresh broccoli is better than frozen broccoli?

I can see why fresh would be better if you were planning on eating the broccoli raw or perhaps steamed, but since I mostly use broccoli in soup or stir fries, it ends up fairly thoroughly cooked. In which case I don't believe I would notice a difference.

I purchase frozen vegetables (stuff like brocc, cauliflower, peas, carrots) because they come pre-chopped, last near indefinitely so I don't have to worry about finishing them before they rot, and whatever amount I want at that moment can just be poured out of the bag, pre-chopped, into whatever (usually single pot) meal I am making.

i only eat steamed broccoli (15min for the stalks and 4min for the greens), and the frozen variety never has the familiar "crunch". Maybe I tried only bad quality frozen stock.

Freezing breaks down cell walls (ice crystals form and puncture cell walls, faster freezer leads to smaller ice crystals leads to less breakdown). I'm not an expert but I suspect you may never get the crunch from frozen broccoli.

> fresh broccoli is better than frozen broccoli?

Stir-fry for one. Frozen release "tons" of water that just slams the heat to "0".

Fresh, dump it in and it cooks without adding water.

I think that I agree. I think the frailty of people, not supply chains, have been exposed. Oh man, you might have to keep your three year old car or two year old phone an extra year. Oh the humanity!

Fairly sure the companies reliant on selling cars care more about this than the people buying cars.

Probably there is no semiconductor shortage. You can still order promptly many advanced electronics that use similar parts quickly, GPUs notwithstanding.

Something happened to the people in China who take 10-100 electronic parts manufactured there and turn them into 1, to deliver to assembly in the auto’s destination for the purposes of tariffs (by reducing the count of imported parts from 100 to 1). Because of the weird mechanics of manufacturing origin, which definitely affects how cars and networking equipment have to be made, this is my hypothesis for why we’re only hearing about these issues from a very narrow set of industries and not others.

In terms of what could have happened my bet is it’s going to be pretty horrible.

> Because of the weird mechanics of manufacturing origin

Yes

Without special RVC exception for car companies, some US made cars would have to be stamped as Made in China/Germany/Mexico as per rules of origin.