vote with your wallet

“I don’t think I’ll super size it after all”, I saw as I drive past the MegaCity One GigaChad data center.

We’ve done more in the last five years to curb fossil fuel consumption than at an point in human history.

From a massive pivot to renewable energy to our Green-Centric foreign policy of blowing up Nordstrem II, embargoing Venezuela, and shutting down the Straight of Hormuz, we are absolutely turning a corner on future fossil fuel consumption.

Donald Trump may go down in history as the most climate friendly leader in our generation. A hundred thousand Greenpeace activists could not have achieved in their lifetime what he’s done in less than two terms as president.

US Domestic oil markets are absolutely vibrating with demand.

Anyone reliant on the Saudis, Qataris, or Kuwaitis for oil… less so.

Slams

Okay.

Flipping through my copy of The Bell Curve smugly

Love to watch someone bust out the calipers when they talk politics.

I hear the low sloped forehead and close-set eyeballs are a clear indication of Paleo-Libertarianism. Meanwhile, if your second toe is longer than your big toe, there’s a good chance you voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary.

They’re literally addicted to getting pissed off.

The only thing more addictive is medicalizing your ideological beliefs.

Poking someone with a stick, shouting “Why are you mad, tho? Why are you mad?!”, and then calling them Trump voters when they take a swing at you. Maybe calling in a body-language expert to do a riff on the Chris Rock bit - “Does anyone notice how Democrats walk like THAT but Republicans walk like THIS?”

Absolute bottom-of-the-barrel eugenics-tier propaganda.

At this point, getting the standard high-profile screamer streamers whipped up into apoplexy is just part of the marketing strategy.

“Woke” is just the new Rage Bait that a marketing company can use to raise its profile. And conservative pundits are more than happy to play along, because “Listen to Tucker Carlson review Christopher Nolan” only ever benefits both Carlson and Nolan.

There are better movies than Odyssey in theaters right now that will be far more Woke/Based and get far less attention, simply because they don’t have the marketing budget to kick the Internet Ant Hill. Even if we’re stuck on remakes of Greek Tragedies, I had way more fun watching Hadestown.

Well, it was nice while it lasted, folks. Guess we’re just doing the Global Holocaust now, while everyone claps.

And Bilateral Angola-China trade in 2024 was USD 18.5 billion

That’s not what I’m seeing.

Idk about a trend, but perhaps a necessity. The Trump government is flinging around so many tariffs and sanctions that it may no longer be practical to hold USDs in reserve for anything. Also doesn’t help that Americans aren’t producing a lot of products people want to buy. Angola and China do $24B in business annually. By comparison, the US and Angola do $3.2B and a healthy chunk of that is just us selling their refined oil back to them.

This guy used to be a minister of foreign affairs, so he had access to critical, secret information from inner circles of the EU.

Critical secret info like “Europe is running out of fossil fuel power” and “the auto industry is lagging the globe”, certainly.

I’m sure he’s also got all sorts of contacts with port and rail administrators, regulatory admins, and dealership networks, such they fast tracking import, license, and sale becomes significantly easier

Sucks that the EU makes foreign imports so devilishly complex that you need a guy on the inside just to get a phone directory. But that’s European politics in a nutshell for centuries.

joining the Chinese carmaker BYD, after helping it – as a minister – to get a firm foothold in Hungary and thus avoid EU’s tariff wall.

You know… Hungary might have imported EU-built electric cars if they were willing to build any.

Carmakers across Europe and beyond are now reassessing their electrification timelines, as weaker-than-expected demand and shifting policy signals complicate the transition.

Several major manufacturers have already softened or delayed their targets. Companies including Ford, Stellantis and Volvo have adjusted their timelines for going fully electric, while Honda has stepped back from plans to fully phase out combustion engines by 2040. Mercedes-Benz has also signalled a more gradual approach than previously outlined.

So much of this seems like Fossil Fuel agitprop, fixated on keeping Europe pegged to the petrodollar for another decade.

Signing with BYD means entering the service of the Chinese Communist Party …

BYD, a company founded just west of Hong Kong, listed on their stock market since 2002, and enjoying western capitalist investments from no one less than Warren fucking Buffett? BYD, a company that built its brand as an international outsourcer of battery parts to a host of Japanese, Korean, and American electronics firms? BYD, a company that rapidly expanded its commercial base through private development of capital, labor, and sale into a highly competitive international automotive market? THAT BYD?

Is buying gasoline from Exxon equivalent to supplanting yourself to Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman? Is purchasing a Microsoft License the same thing as becoming a QAnon fantastic? Fuck off with this Red Baiting bullshit, already.

It really seems that most Russians think this is a manpower intensive occupation with some occasional violence.

Well, the first part is kinda true. The second is wildly off.

These are reasonably well-off Moscow people who didn’t seem to understand that this war is more like world war 1 than like Afghanistan.

I’ve heard more than a few of the big advances described as Battle of the Somme, especially with regards to how the reporting diverged from the reality on the ground.

I don’t think anyone really does. If they did, proper war journalists wouldn’t exist. No sane person would stick their necks out like that if they understood the gory details.

As to the “curtain of media propaganda”, we’re all suffocating in it. That’s part of what has dragged the conflict out for as long as it has. Everyone’s fed this false narrative that the other side is on the brink of internal collapse. Russians get deluged with media about their glorious impeding victories, with every European economic hiccup or American military stumble presented as a final desperate gasp. Westerners are inundated with “Putin on death’s door! Russians out of toiletpaper, insurgency imminent! Ukraine scores critical war-defining victory with latest long-range strike!” news updates, suggesting just one more big push will crack the entire Russian socio-economic system like an egg.

This, combined with any hint of diplomatic resolution squashed under a wave of “You can’t trust their government! Only total victory will assure your safety!”

And so we’ve got this systematic terror bombing all the way from the Polish border to the Serbian wilderness, with people convinced the end of the war is just around the corner for year after year after year.

Iran’s conflict with the US is shaping up the same way. We scream bloody murder while we’re firing off another volley of cruise missiles, then publicly announce “Peace negotiations imminent” while our batteries reload.

We were burning over ten billy a month during the Iraq War.

Ukraine has open enlistment.

Get out there and kill some rapists.

No no no. I was told that this would set off an economy-killing inflationary spiral.

You can’t honestly tell me that more working-class residents with a higher income might become the foundation for domestic economic growth. Why, that’s downright Fordist! And we disproved Fordism under Reagan, when we decoupled wages from growth and the economy was 100% perfect for all eight years with no exceptions.

Very easy to forget that the original, explicit purpose of NATO as an organizational entity was to prevent the state of Germany from reconstituting itself as a central European military power. The organization was co-opted by Truman and Eisenhower as a weapon of the Cold War. And its senior staff was jam packed with ex-Nazi commanders, dooming the vision of Pax Europa for another forty years. But it still ultimately served that purpose - keeping European powers from re-arming in any meaningful capacity, while the US gobbled up what remained of western colonial outposts.

A dissolved NATO, along with a financially prosperous EU, would put Germany back in the driver’s seat again. In the short term, that might not mean much. But with the Russian economy burning out and the Ukrainian states hollowing out, you’re talking about an enormous landmass ripe for re-colonization in a way the 1930s fascists could have only dreamed.

Every TACO Tuesday, sure. He’s also threatened to leave the UN, withdraw from NAFTA, and pull out of the ICC.