Commoditizing something is harder than showing a demonstrator (even if it's less cool than the demonstrator)

Musk is really good at headhunting and cutting through middle management cruft. He's actually really good at being a CEO, he's just also... y'know

Switzerland lifts ban on the development of nuclear power plants due to geopolitical tension and climate targets

In more local news, Falcon ends B.C. United campaign, throws support to Conservatives

Dude who literally kicked the BC Conservative leader out of the party is now supporting the BC Conservatives (apparently without consulting his candidates). Now BC United candidates are stuck up shits creek, meanwhile the party that Falcon said was "too extreme to govern" is now the party he supports.

Oh, and BC just approved single-stair apartments.

Wouldn't explain the pilot death so it doesn't work

I honestly don't understand what the US obsession with low-ROI government spending is. Like, it's not that hard to spend money so that a dollar in leads to multiple dollars in future cost savings or multiple dollars in economic growth.

I guess it's because the US doesn't price in the cost of healthcare? Maybe the zero-sum global perspective? The high cost of war?

Build a subway. Build climate mitigation infrastructure. Plant trees. Feed children. Give people doctors. Education for all. There's this whole individualist "fuck you got mine" mentality that seems to completely stall progress in the US and blows up the cost of doing anything that benefits other people to the point of it not being worthwhile.

Basically all Western reporting on China is hampered by having no native speakers on the journalism or editorial team.

Wait, what happened in Minnesota? I'm out of the loop.

Ok but can we talk about how insane Pan Zhanle is?

Dude breaks his own 100m world record and gaps the rest of the field by a bodylength... Then a few days later, takes the 4x100m home by making up a 2m gap and then some... And in the process, does the whole leg in sub-46 seconds.

The guy is straight up 2-3% faster than everyone else. It's insane.

As for complaints about the pool being slow? Americans set new world records for the 1500m free and women's 4x100 medley, so that argument doesn't work anymore. Plus, the fastest recent 50m free is a 21.04, so it's not like it's impossible for someone to swim a sub-46 100m.

At this point the US should really consider planting some drugs on him because otherwise they're so fucked... This is as Chinese athletes are being tested as much as 7 times a day by WADA.

Asian markets are bleeding.

RMB is at 7 month highs.

US recession fears seem to be triggering a flow of money into China.

Constraining exports is a way to artificially introduce oversupply.

All you're saying is that the US intentionally put Intel in a position of oversupplying the semiconductor industry... Which would be sort of funny if it didn't cost 15000 people their jobs.

So anyone want to tell me why Intel laying off 15% of their staff isn't an indication of how the CHIPS Act introduced state-sunsidized oversupply into the semiconductor industry?

No? American companies can't possibly contribute to oversupply? I see.

Meloni had the quickest image rehabilitation in a while

So, looking at China's GDP/capital growth rate relative to representative Asian economies, it seems like the construction glut was actually a net drawdown on GDP growth? Growth rates fell in 2011 and have only recovered in the 2021 era (coinciding with the rise and fall of China's real estate market).

This intuitively should make sense given how China imputes rent, but it's still surprising.

I hate how elections work in Canada man.

So Trudeau's been getting absolutely terrible poll numbers, but the Conservatives have basically no platform except "Trudeau bad pt. 7"...

But anyway, now that the Conservatives are gaining support federally against the Liberals, they're also gaining support provincially against the BC NDP (which by all accounts is doing a pretty great job at actually getting stuff done).

But of course, the provincial Conservatives used to be called the Liberals, but now they're the Conservatives because the provincial Liberal party imploded.

So anyway, now there's not terrible odds we'll get put under a Conservative provincial government because the federal government can't get their shit together.

I mean... Canadian education really isn't that great on global affairs lmao

His last ounce of resistance was to force them to DocuSign that shit lmao

Canada one was out of negligence, this one was out of willful ignorance.

Politics is about power and, well, how do you compete with the kind of power that can flip a country in an instant?

Bernie has no competence in foreign policy, but seems like it would be decent for domestic issues?

I mean... wasn't this inevitable? Iron is basically infinitely recyclable, and eventually China will build up enough scrap to saturate demand. There's a reason electric arc furnaces are becoming increasingly popular in China lol

Let's talk macro for a little bit: with the JD Vance pick (and assuming the Democrats can't fix their campaign), are we not seeing the balance of power in DC shift from New York & finance to San Francisco & tech?

That shift in power lends far more credence to reindustrialization and a change in the US Treasury than anything else. A weak dollar is far less important to the Silicon Valley elite than it is to the New York elite. Is it unreasonable to expect a weakening dollar emerge over the next four years, bringing with it a rise in onshoring, a rise in real incomes (which are overwhelmingly from domestic consumption), and a fall in purchasing power abroad?

The Secret Service runs a pretty robust EW suite I thought?

Gotta protect your kids I respect that

Yeah I'm sorry this photo is so fucking metal Jesus Christ

The only people who tap the gas when they see a yellow light are from places where all intersection left turns are signalled.

Macron sees blood in the water and doesn't want his party to be a part of it. Let someone else lead, let them take the fall, and swoop in.

obviously because immigration just spontaneously happens because the US is simply just that desirable of a place to go

We knew this. Everybody knew this. Ukraine still requested them.

Frankly, this isn't Canada's problem. The Senator isn't designed for actual combat operations. It's a glorified armoured car designed to protect against shrapnel and small arms fire. At best, it's an ERT vehicle.

A vigorous fascist is preferable to a corpse

Same reason the NDP in Canada runs Singh instead of Notley or Eby.

The dollar-crunched Global South is a direct consequence of the dominance of the USD in global trade. There's absolutely a third route here where China's pursuit of trade through local currencies decouples regional blocs from the USD (ASEAN, the AU, etc.), or where government borrowing in this countries begins to be RMB-backed with China acting as the supply of USD. The RMB's soft peg with the USD introduces many opportunities for forex fuckery.

Done

In 2020, I nearly died from mysterious industrial chemical exposure at my home. Later I discovered my employer (Apple) was dumping toxic waste into our windows from their Skunkworks semiconductor fab next-door. I tipped off EPA, who raided them in 2023. EPA just sent me the report

Only so many ejects your body can take

Don't you shit on cooks. Cooks are the lifeblood of any large organized group.

China achieved this at the cost of rising income inequality, though. Entirely part of Deng Xiaoping's plan ("some regions get rich quicker than others"), but if left unchecked it would've been pretty disastrous. Fortunately, recent years have seen a reversal in this policy and it's the less rich regions that are growing more quickly now.

The EU is trying to tax German and American car manufacturers... This was the best way they could come up with.

BYD will just circumvent these tariffs by going all-in on hybrids for the EU market anyway. It's a silly game.

National security! Think of the children! Shale oil is good for the economy!

Wait, I'm confused.

I don't think China's goal has ever been financialization. Doctrine treats excess financialization like a cancer that inhibits progress towards socialism.

The solution is really a move towards increased currency independence through something like mBridge - by facilitating transactions in local currencies, it increases efficiency in financial markets and makes a single reserve currency more difficult to justify.

Edit: from the BRICS side, this is the only solution. India will never support a reserve currency that India does not have an outsized influence on, and neither will China.