| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a dessert tray of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here. Summer’s just around the corner here in the Northern Hemisphere, and with the heat, the delights of ice cream are almost irresistible. Unless you’re worried about the price. Javier Blas has an alarming column about commodity inflation that could make you pay more for those refreshing scoops. Specifically, that’s coconut oil — which the big manufacturers need for their milky treats, even more if they want to cater to the growing vegan market. Here’s one trigger for the price increase: the El Nino weather cycle disturbed precipitation patterns in Southeast Asia, and rather than the wet and cool climate required by coconut palms, it was hot and dry. “[T]he stressed palm trees in 2024 are now yielding significantly less than normal, reducing supply.” In addition, the Philippines — the world’s largest supplier of the dried coconut at the heart of oil — has mandated that an increase in the amount of coconut oil be used in biofuels. That may be good for running trucks and cars but will further reduce the product available for ice cream. The result? Javier writes: “Last week, the benchmark wholesale price for Filipino coconut oil delivered in Rotterdam, an industry benchmark, rose above $2,700 a metric ton, nearly double from a year ago, and roughly 200% higher than the 2000-2020 average. The previous record high was set in 2011 at about $2,300.” May I get you a sorbet? Sacre Bleu! Is This Bubbly English, Too? | Adrian Wooldridge is beside himself with the discovery that his fellow Britons are increasingly, gasp, French. He notes the prevalence of good croissants and pastries in non-posh parts of London. The shelves in English supermarkets heave under the weight of wine — the variety of which outnumbers the beer once favored by the islanders. “The sparkling wines are even good,” he says of the local bubbly from Kent and Sussex. (Lara Williams has compared them to the famous products of Champagne.) Adrian notes that it is not just culinary culture that is taking a gallic turn. So is government. “Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, is masterminding a Labour Employment Rights Bill that aims to reinforce employment rights, entrench statutory sick pay and family leave and outlaw zero-hour contracts; it will, in other words, make the British labour market as rigid as the French.” He also says successive UK prime ministers have been taking more and more executive power into their own hands a la French presidents. At the same time, the British electorate has swerved toward right-wing issues such as anti-immigration and populism — also espoused by voters across La Manche. Scholars and politicians throughout the ages have noted that the difference between England and France has often been a matter of degree and perspective ever since the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Georges Clemenceau, the early 20th-century French prime minister, went as far as to say, “La Langue anglaise n’existe pas’: C’est du français mal prononcé” — “The English language doesn’t exist: it is merely French pronounced badly.” Think prison/prison, forest/forêt, carpenter/charpentier. Though academics would point out that “carpenter” preserves a Norman “k” pronunciation of the French “ch”. Anyway, wordplay’s all fun and games. Just don’t bring up German. “Smaller cars are an obvious fix for crowded cities, limited resources and a warming planet. Yet they’ve become an endangered species, as tougher regulations made them uneconomical to produce and we gravitated towards muscular SUVs. A continent that built iconic, utilitarian and wildly popular city cars, like the Fiat Cinquecento and Mini in the 1950s, needs to make tiny cars appealing and affordable again. Smarter rulemaking and financial incentives can help.” — Chris Bryant in “Your Car Shouldn’t Look Like It Pumped Iron at the Gym.”  “With Nissan’s announcement of a ¥670.9 billion ($4.5 billion) loss ... alongside a promise to close seven of its 17 factories, one of the world’s great carmakers may be approaching its endgame. … The stock is now trading like scrap metal, at less than a quarter of the value of the assets on its books. Its debt is also junk, in the view of all three major ratings companies. Its ¥1.3 trillion market cap is less than the ¥1.5 trillion value of its net cash. If you bought Nissan shares at almost any time since 1975, you would currently be sitting on paper losses.” — David Fickling in “Nissan Is Dying and Taking Globalization With It.” India and Pakistan have to snap out of it. — Editorial Board Who are you to block the sun? — Lara Williams How Chinese is your OS? — Catherine Thorbecke The trouble with the UK’s national insurance tax. — Matthew Brooker A DeepSeek Moment for China’s arms industry. — Shuli Ren We’re past US peak oil but don’t expect a decline and fall. — Javier Blas China has what the NBA needs. — Adam Minter Warren Buffett’s Japan handbook. — Gearoid Reidy You can’t do a quick patch to these bad haircuts. — Andy Mukherjee Separating HBO from Max was silly in the first place. — Jason Bailey The Swiss like playing games of chicken too. — Paul J. Davies Walk of the Town: Paris Edition | I’d hoped to get into Notre-Dame de Paris during a visit last month, but it was the day after Pope Francis died and the church — already busy with tourists eager to see its post-fire restoration — limited visitors as it commemorated the late pontiff. So, I headed for the second-largest church in the French capital: Saint-Eustache. The present building is not as old as Notre Dame: just about half a century (depending on what year you consider it completed) compared to the 862-year-old Gothic masterpiece. But it has a glittering panoply of historic parishioners. Among those baptized in Saint-Eustache were Cardinal Richelieu, the most eminent of King Louis XIII’s ministers; Madame de Pompadour (the influential mistress of Louis XVI); and the playwright Moliere. Louis XIV had his first communion at Saint-Eustache. Mozart sat in its pews for his mother’s funeral. But there’s an installation that brings the church past the French Bourbons and into our times: a triptych by the American pop artist Keith Haring. The silver panels — etched with Haring’s characteristic graffiti humanoids — are a shiny surprise amid all the late Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque artwork. After his death in 1990 at 31 from AIDS-related complications, Haring left the piece to a San Francisco-based foundation with instructions to find it a suitable home. The choice was Saint-Eustache, the first and only church in Paris to welcome HIV-positive people at the onset of the pandemic. Haring’s triptych has been there since 2003. Who really wants to win the rat race, anyway?  “We’re going to need a bigger mousetrap!” Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send pest-control strategies and feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net.
Sign up here and find us on Bluesky, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads. | 
