Gaslighting

A woman named Gwen McCrae was the first to release an official recording of a song that would become a touchstone country ballad for countless big-time artists. Popularized by Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, and perhaps most memorably by the pop band Pet Shop Boys, the song consists mostly of a simple, elegant refrain: “You are always on my mind.”

On that note, gas prices. Unless you’re a hermit or a metrosexual, you may have opted for just a half tank this past week, as the bill for a full tank of gasoline at a median price of $4.33 per gallon—the highest average ever recorded in the United States, per AAA Gas Prices—was just too painful. Or maybe you filled it all the way in the morning, suspecting the same amount of gas would cost more by the time you drove home from work in the evening. Impelled by a combination of record inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now President Biden’s ban on Russian oil imports, prices at the pump are only expected to increase in the near future.