… lol

Isn’t he the guy being medicated for asthma, allergies, and ADHD… For which the medication just coincidentally happens to be performance-enhancing? Yeah forgive me if I have no sympathy for the guy.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says U.S. agency USADA broke the global code by letting several athletes it had caught between 2011 and 2014 violating drugs rules go undercover and keep on competing without prosecution in exchange for information on other violators.

US gold medals, 2000 to 2016:

2000 - 37 (300 events)

2004 - 36 (301 events)

2008 - 36 (302 events)

2012 - 48 (302 events)

2016 - 46 (306 events)

On one hand, we have clear US overperformance in gold medals from the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. On the other hand, we have proof that athletes CAUGHT DOPING between 2011 and 2014 were allowed to continue competing for years afterwards.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, maybe it’s a duck?

IMF: your housing market is collapsing

China: yeah we know

IMF: so how about you bail out those poor housing investors

China: …no thanks

IMF: surprised Pikachu

Global positive test rate is 0.67%. 25% of those are “legal” (~250). Of the illegal ones, 25 Chinese, 57 Americans, 135 Russians.

The Beijing lab reported 25 AAFs, for a 0.23% positive test rate over 10326 tests. The LA and SLC labs together reported 153 AAFs, for a 1.54% positive test rate over 9904 tests. So… Eh? Isn’t this the opposite result being claimed? The US is able to run interference for a good proportion of their AAFs by claiming “medical reasons” and other bullshit.

Hey how about you take your homophobia somewhere else?

Chen picked up Chang in a bridal carry for a photo after they receiving their gold medals, which led many netizens to joke that Chang and Chen are in a romantic relationship, posting online fan-made edits of their interactions in slow-motion paired with romantic captions

“If love has miracles, I would be the happiest creating them with you,” wrote one Xiaohongshu user who posted a series of moments between the pair moments during the competition.

“The most romantic thing is to have your names engraved together in sporting history,” commented another user.

US sanctions going well

Odd how this happens just as America’s foreign policy talking heads had to turn onwards to deal with Biden’s collapse…

Almost as if the US is the main impediment to peace in the region.

Can you spell racism for me?

The CHIPS Act was signed in 2022.

In 2022, what were the top bleeding-edge node semiconductor fabs? TSMC (Taiwan), Samsung (South Korea), and Intel (USA). Do you see China on that list?

In 2022, what was the only company with a functioning 28nm DUV lithography machine? ASML (Netherlands).

US sanctions – and US sanctions alone – pushed Chinese investment into semiconductors. If you actually worked in the industry, you’d know that the Chinese government has tried for more than a decade to get Chinese companies to use Chinese semiconductor tech… To no avail. The US stabbed itself in the foot, pushed Chinese private capital into Chinese semiconductor firms (instead of foreign ones), and the rest is history. This is basic capitalist theory.

I guess you can also ignore the $15 billion bailout for airlines?

But sure, let’s talk about the great backlash to the GM bailout… ignoring the Chrysler bailout. Ignoring the bailouts of JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs… All essential for national security, or so I’m told.

Let’s now talk about companies in China’s EV race… WM Motor, which used to outsell Tesla, is gone. Byton, gone. Aiway, gone. Levdeo, gone. Mitsubishi, gone. Honda, Hyundai, and Ford? All desperate to cut out their JVs.

Western countries support individual companies constantly.

Intel received $8.5 billion in funding under the CHIPS Act

The General Motors bailout forced the US government to write off a $11.2 billion loss

Shell, ExxonMobil, and others have received countless billions in O&G subsidies

Government sales make up $49.2 billion, or 74.6% of Lockheed Martin’s total sales

The entire principle of US industrial policy is that the government does nothing and everything should be outsourced to a private contractor. Inherently that must mean supporting some private companies more than others.

Your argument makes literally no sense when considering that Chinese companies consistently and notoriously sell their products in China for a fraction of the cost of the export models. BYD’s Atto 3 sells for $20k in China and more than $40k in the EU, for example. Those export prices aren’t subsidized. In fact, their margins are absolutely absurd.

The fact is that China has figured out industrial manufacturing and can build the same class of product for half the price… Or less. Of course, there’s no reason to pass those savings onto consumers without competition, and export markets are simply less competitive than China.

Economics says that Chinese companies are just more efficient as a whole - through sheer competitive advantage, China can produce more per work-hour than everyone else. In fact, this has been a huge problem for China’s labour demographics as there’s just simply no more manufacturing jobs - an auto factory that would’ve employed thousands just a decade ago might employ barely a few hundred today. Instead of outsourcing to other countries, most of those jobs have been literally outsourced to robots

The story not being told is that Chinese factories are absurdly automated compared to the rest of Asia - their competitors are South Korean and Japanese factories, but they’re entering markets that are still heavily labour-centric. China is spearheading this new evolution of industrial manufacturing and everyone else is forced to either adapt or die.

4.7% YoY Q2

5.3% YoY Q1

0.7% QoQ Q2

1.5% QoQ Q1

Retail sales were the contributor (2.0% YoY growth, vs. 3.3% expected)

Retail growth is being sandbagged by a few key factors:

1. Luxury goods demand being beaten to the absolute ground. Eviscerated.

2. Foreign brands have tanked in China - Apple, foreign cars, etc. and have been replaced by (cheaper) domestic alternatives like Huawei, BYD, etc.

3. New trade restrictions with the US and Europe have limited Chinese consumption patterns. For example, the RTX 4090 is blocked from being exported to China.

Genocide is ok because it happened in the past? Glad to know how much you respect the rule of law and whatever.

Canada’s military was responsible for the subjugation and genocide of many First Nations group, including against the Metis, Cree, and Assiniboine peoples, as well as deployed abroad to subjugate the Boers in South Africa in support of the British Empire. The Canadian Army was also deployed in Afghanistan, where Western powers fought for two decades to replace the Taliban with the Taliban and caused untold amounts of suffering in the process.

Now do Iran.

Considering Canada declared Iran’s army as a terrorist entity…

Saying that a radar jammer is protecting Russia’s nuclear triad is like… Well, obviously? Like, are you stupid, or are you just trying to justify nuclear war?

Some analysts point to a nearby Soviet NIP-16 Space Tracking and Deep Space Communication Centre near the city of Yevpatoria on the Black Sea coast that is a nuclear early-warning station.

nuclear early warning system

Car infrastructure has always been funded out of public coffers. The personal automobile is not inherently a profitable enterprise to a country. It serves primarily as a way of improving personal mobility and thus second- and third- order economic productivity.

Subways and trains are vastly more efficient systems, but unfortunately they don’t have the same military logistics benefits.

In terms of actual companies, we’re seeing a bit of a renaissance with EVs because EVs are inherently simple, easy to commoditize, and don’t require as significant amounts of government support. China has basically cut government backing out of their EV industry, which has led to some consolidation but somehow has not ended the price war.

That’s $1 million per loitering munition? Meanwhile the Lancet is $20000, the Chinese equivalent is even less, and the Israeli-made IAI Harpy (sold to China, India, etc.) is about $70000.

I’d love to be a US defence contractor.