Latest / The Daily Sarcast / May 11th, 2026: Cokechella, The Journey Of Oil And My Weekend

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May 11th, 2026: Cokechella, The Journey Of Oil And My Weekend · The Daily Sarcast

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  Today's episode is brought to you by Long Quiet Weekends Alone.
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  They're exactly how they sound.
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  What's happening right now is very real for all of us here. We're not just a
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  story. We're not just headlines.
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  We're people. People with families, with lives, with people waiting for us at home.
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  A woman on board the Hantavirus cruise ship.
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  Insert theme song here. This is the Daily Starcast. I give you the news and maybe a laugh.
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  I'm Lindsay Vernick and today is May 11th, 2026.
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  I hope you guys had a great weekend and a great Mother's Day,
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  and if you're a mom, I hope you got some beautiful flowers and breakfast in
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  bed, and if you didn't, I'm sorry, that sucks.
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  In real news, so according to Vladimir Putin, the Russia-Ukraine war is coming
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  to an end, which is interesting because this war has had more final seasons than Grey's Anatomy.
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  Apparently, Putin says he's open to negotiating new security arrangements in
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  Europe, and would prefer to speak through the former German chancellor,
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  which honestly feels less like diplomacy and more like when divorced parents
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  insist on communicating through that one emotionally exhausted mutual friend.
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  Also, Putin says he'll only meet with Zelensky once a peace deal is agreed to.
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  Okay, I thought that meetings were usually where agreements happened,
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  not the opposite way, but what do I know?
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  I'm just an Upper East Side girl with a microphone attached to her computer
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  and a crippling dependence on oat milk.
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  Apparently also Russia's Victory Day parade was scaled back this year.
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  Nothing says everything's going great like shrinking your giant military parade
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  that's basically a country version of posting an old selfie because you look terrible today.
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  And look, maybe this really is movement toward peace. That would obviously be really good, right?
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  But Putin saying the end is near during a war is kind of like a contractor saying
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  we're almost done renovating. You hear it and you immediately think,
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  okay, so another 18 months?
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  At this point, the global economy is just held together by immature men,
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  anxiety, and one shipping route having a normal week.
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  India is currently dealing with aluminum shortages because of the Strait of
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  Hormuz crisis, and somehow the first casualty appears to be Diet Coke.
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  I mean, not fuel, not infrastructure, Diet Coke.
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  Apparently, Gen Z in New Delhi responded to the possible disappearance of Diet
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  Coke the same way Americans respond to economic collapse, by turning it into
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  a theme party by influencers.
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  This woman threw a sold-out Diet Coke party where 150 people showed up dressed
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  in Coke-themed outfits to drink Diet Cokes, listen to house music,
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  and post photos with the Diet Cokes.
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  That is where our society is now.
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  Previous generations survived wars by rationing food and growing victory gardens.
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  Gen Z survives geopolitical instability by making a Canva flyer and calling it Coke-chella.
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  The event featured something called a cocktail menu
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  which is both deeply very stupid and
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  objectively good branding at the same time also
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  there was no alcohol served which makes
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  this even more gen z code ed they're like i would love to spiral emotionally
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  about this but like in a wellness forward why the whole thing doubled as a listening
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  party for drake's new album ice man because no modern event can exist without
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  at least one emotionally unavailable Canadian man hovering over it.
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  My favorite part about all this is that the shortage itself made the drink more
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  desirable, which is basically the entire economy now.
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  Nobody wants anything until there is only like three left.
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  And this is how civilization ends, not with fire, with a waitlist for Diet Coke.
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  In bad news, Delta Airlines has announced they're removing free snacks and drinks
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  on short flights under 350 miles, which is very brave considering the only thing
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  keeping some passengers from becoming feral was a tiny Biscoff cookie.
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  This is a devastating moment for women who consider Diet Coke and snacks a personality
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  trait, which, to be fair, is most women in TV. I would know.
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  Delta says the flights are too short for attendance to safely do beverage service,
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  which translation, you'll survive an hour without a ginger ale and a cookie.
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  But people are furious because airline tickets now cost roughly the same as
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  first month's run in 2009.
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  Yet the experience somehow keeps getting closer and closer to being feel like
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  you're being shipped in an Amazon return box.
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  And let's be honest, nobody was eating the Biscoff cookie because they were hungry.
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  People ate the cookie because when else are we going to eat them in real life?
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  And what else are you supposed to do on these flights?
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  That cookie represents hope, stability, a tiny rectangle that whispered to us,
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  we know you're crammed into this tiny little seat
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  and we know the baby in the back can't stop crying but
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  here's some sugar also airlines love
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  using the phrase creating a more consistent experience like every company says
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  that right before they remove something that people really like it's never we're
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  creating a more consistent experience by giving everyone free champagne it's
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  always we're creating a more consistent experience by taking away the last remaining joy.
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  Meanwhile, they are upgrading some slightly longer flights to full service,
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  which means America now has a beverage system based entirely on mileage.
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  Imagine being on a 340-mile flight, watching the 355-mile passengers getting
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  handed drinks like the capital citizens in the Hunger Games.
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  Honestly, at this point, I expect airlines to start monetizing oxygen.
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  And for just $14.99, upgrade to Delta Air Plus, and you can breathe better.
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  In Lindsay life, this past weekend, I had a very quiet weekend.
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  Everyone was either away or home for Mother's Day, so I was on my own.
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  I drank champagne on Madison Avenue. I went to the Apple store and waited for
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  an hour and then realized that I didn't need to be there at all,
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  that I wasn't actually having problems with my iPod.
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  And then I wrote the Daily Sarcast waiting in the crazy long Trader Joe's line
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  and then I took the ferry home because who doesn't take a boat home from the grocery store?
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  Thing of this week is the oil's month-long quest from the Middle East to your gas station.
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  I don't know about you, but before this year, I had never heard the phrase straight
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  of Hormuz in my entire life.
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  And now it's mentioned on the news like every six minutes, and we're all supposed
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  to just know what it means.
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  And even now, we're all just kind of like, okay, it's a water road for oil,
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  got it. Or maybe that's just me.
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  But I actually learned how gas actually gets to us, and now I'm going to tell you.
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  Because oil does not move quickly. It moves like an employee at 4.52 p.m.
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  On the Friday before a holiday weekend.
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  It takes more than 30 days for oil to go from the Persian Gulf to an actual
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  gas station, like in Japan, let's say.
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  So first, the Tangier leaves the Persian Gulf.
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  Obviously, it has to do that. and then it crosses the Indian Ocean and then
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  it goes through another shipping choke point because apparently the planet designed
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  global trade like an escape room built by divorced engineers.
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  And then after weeks at sea, the oil finally arrived and everyone's like,
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  yay, okay, great, we did it. But no.
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  Now the oil has to be unloaded, refined, separated into gasoline and jet fuel
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  and tested and blended and stored and shipped again,
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  moved through depots, loaded onto trucks, and eventually delivered to your gas station.
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  This entire process takes more than a month, which means every time you complain
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  about gas prices, just know that your gas has already survived.
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  International conflict, weeks at sea, industrial refining, quality assurance.
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  Multiple forms of transportation, and at least one guy named Greg delaying paperwork somewhere.
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  Meanwhile, my Uber driver still can't find my building, and apparently this
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  process can't really be sped up at all.
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  The ships could go faster, but that burns more fuel and costs more money.
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  So the entire global energy system is basically held together by patients and
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  giant floating parking lots.
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  And even once shipping disruptions clear up, all the backed up tankers still have to move through.
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  So it's basically like when one lane opens when there's like an accident or
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  something and everyone immediately turns into a sociopath and tries to get in there.
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  And the ripple effects are huge because oils and everything,
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  like gasoline, plastics, paint, adhesives.
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  Half the economy is essentially waiting for one tanker to finish its extremely
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  stressful journey across Earth.
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  Honestly, the biggest revelation for me was just realizing
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  modern civilizations basically just hopefully the
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  boat gets there soon so that's it that's how you get your gas cooking tip of
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  the day adding tofu to your leftover chinese food is the perfect dinner feedback
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  comments questions and a Jewish by looking for a date email me at lindsay at
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  thedailystarcast.com thanks so much for listening talk to you guys tomorrow.