Not even that. Russians are Europeans, and they would do the same to them in a heartbeat if they could.

Chengdu is a lovely city from what i’ve seen in other photos and videos, but there’s something about these pictures in particular that doesn’t sit right with me. There’s a weird filter on them or something, maybe over-saturation, i don’t know, but i don’t like the way it looks.

I appreciate how they showcase the greenery though. I’ve always been a fan of how cities look and feel when they’ve got a lot of greenery. Especially trees, they help so much with temperature regulation.

You’ve got to hand it to Medvedev, he wins this year’s award for world’s best twitter troll. He ratioed Trump and Lindsey Graham so hard they had to move nuclear subs to cope. Chen Weihua must be getting jealous, it seems he needs to up his game.

Lol.

Turns out if you take a page out of China and Russia’s book and stand up to the bully, more often than not you will win and the bully will back down. (Brazil isn’t the only such example in the Western hemisphere btw, Mexico’s current government has also pretty deftly managed the whole situation imo.)

If you choose to bend the knee and completely cuck yourself like Canada and the Europeans, you will just appear weak and so you still get slapped with the tariffs and you also end up with a much worse deal than you could have had if you stood firm. Being a spineless sycophant is no guarantee of protection.

Comprador traitors doing and saying comprador traitor things.

India doesn’t need to take a strong stance against Trump, all it has to do is do nothing. The trajectory is already set. They can keep doing the exact same as they’ve been doing so far and that already completely undermines what the US is trying to achieve. Let Trump claim credit and declare victory in the media, in fact that is probably the best way to play this, he is incredibly easy to manipulate by simply flattering his ego. Meanwhile in reality he achieved absolutely nothing if India just keeps refining and reselling Russia’s oil.

Communism = Soviet Power + Electrification of the Whole Country Railway Network

We will see. There have been predictions about peak oil before but then new technologies unlocked previously inaccessible deposits. So i don’t have a really good feel for how long exactly they can keep kicking this particular can down the road. It may be longer than we think.

The real impetus for change is going to have to also be political, not just purely economic. Driven by the increasingly undeniable reality of climate change rather than price inflation, since prices can be manipulated in a lot of ways by governments and by cartels like OPEC.

Of course it also helps that renewable technologies are rapidly becoming more economically appealing while fossil fuels are getting more expensive, but i think that leaning too much into the notion that change has to be driven by economic considerations is not such a great idea.

Because that leaves the door open to the possibility that if somehow the problems of prices and scarcity weren’t there then we wouldn’t need to ditch fossil fuels. But even if fossil fuels were endless and free, we would still need to transition away from them asap.

Great info, thanks! I read about a few prototypes and proposals for nuclear powered cargo ships but i think the general inertia of diesel based shipping as an industry is just too big for the time being, so we’re still a ways away from that. But yeah i could see shipping becoming the cleanest and most efficient option in the future, as it was historically for a very long time.

Theoretically, in terms of raw energy use per ton, sure, but in practice tankers run on diesel whereas most modern trains are electric.

Then it becomes a question of how you generate that electricity. It shifts the problem from the vehicle itself to the generation, which is a step forward as there are also efficiency gains in going from individual power generation, such as combustion engines, to big national grids.

There are huge investments being made by China in transitioning away from fossil fuels, with enormous production of solar capacity, as well as being at the forefront of nuclear technology development, and most recently news also dropped about an absolutely gigantic new hydropower dam being built.

So yes, if you could connect big ocean-faring tankers to a clean energy grid somehow, they would be more efficient just in terms of how the math works out. But in practice they are still major polluters at the moment.

I guess one possibility would be sticking nuclear reactors on tankers and cargo ships to power them cleanly like has been done with subs and carriers, but that opens up a whole other set of issues including geopolitical ones.

I doubt it will stay this way in subsequent months, these things fluctuate so we will probably still see sporadic imports, but it’s a sign of progress nevertheless.

Ideally the way this goes is we will see more and more such “zero months” in the coming years until all months are “zero months”.

It’s good for national security in case there’s a war, but even if there isn’t one it’s still good for the environment, either way it’s good.

Even if you don’t phase out fossil fuels immediately, at least get them from the same continent so they don’t have to be shipped across oceans. Russia and Iran are literally nextdoor and pipelines and trains are much less polluting than tankers.

China’s imports of major US energy products—crude oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal—hit nearly zero in June, marking a significant shift as Beijing and Washington prepare for their third round of trade talks in Stockholm next week. Chinese crude oil imports from the US fell to zero for the first time in almost three years, down from $800 million in June 2024, while gas deliveries remained at zero for the fourth consecutive month and coal purchases dropped to just hundreds of dollars from over $90 million a year ago. The collapse follows Chinese tariffs of 10%-15% imposed on American energy products since February. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet Chinese counterparts in Stockholm to extend the tariff truce beyond August 12, with discussions expected to include China’s continued purchases of sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil amid US threats of massive tariffs on countries buying Russian energy.

Good. Everyone everywhere should treat European leaders like the irrelevant non-entities that they are.

More begging, more grifting. As if the EU and US aren’t already paying for everything in Ukraine.

Let me guess, Euros came with lectures and demands again, China politely listened and then showed them the door.

I get that impression too.

I would say temper any expectations on this issue with a bit of skepticism. Seymour Hersh has not always been right and he gets a lot wrong about the Ukraine conflict.

We’ve seen negative coverage of the Zelensky regime in Western media before and it usually serves the purpose of applying pressure, not necessarily to signal any radical shift.

Here’s a good thread arguing the opposite view, that Zelensky’s political position is actually quite strong and the real threat comes from Russia’s objective military successes:

https://xcancel.com/EventsUkraine/status/1946539569194914031

I’m not sure who is right here, maybe there’s a bit of truth to both.

There are definitely some intense factional struggles going on inside Ukraine. There are Ukrainian sources which confirm as much:

https://xcancel.com/leonidragozin/status/1946475900058632574

Then again this is nothing new. There has always been infighting in the Maidan crowd.

But as a general rule i think it’s fair to say that those who control the security apparatus usually have the upper hand. And at the moment those are Zelensky and his pet Nazis.

Called it. Fash on fash violence. You love to see it.