Friendly reminder that Israel doesn't really mind bombing "safe routes"

The argument against Golden Rice should have nothing to do with GMO and everything to do with monocultures.

Greenpeace is fucked in the head.

Israel struck an Iranian embassy. Some things demand a response.

Not everyone can be China and shrug off the US bombing their embassy in Serbia.

Israeli army tells Anadolu that they have no information confirming allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’

https://twitter.com/anadoluagency/status/1711812910035407131?t=CZNFDo56htjK64S-gQfDGg&s=19

Do people enjoy ingesting disinformation?

Jews != Zionists

This is an indication of modern warfare: small guided munitions are extremely effective and the days of "force projection" using large vehicles may be over.

This war is going to completely reshape military doctrine this decade. We haven't really had a war where both sides can utilize state-of-the-art technology since, what, Vietnam? A lot has changed since then, particularly in terms of computational power.

Israeli army says it does not have 'confirmation' about allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’

Israel on Tuesday threatened Egypt that it would bomb any aid convoy heading to the Gaza Strip amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes on Palestinian territory.

Israel bombs Rafah crossing to block Egypt aid to Gaza

I'm sure the US is going to do a great job!

This is the entire reason why countries like China are investing hard into ultra-high-voltage transmission lines.

While regions like Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have immense wind and solar potential, getting that electricity to the population centers is challenging.

Selling electricity to Eastern Europe, to Northern Africa, hell even to the Middle East is an option if Europe is truly operating an electricity surplus.

Jesus Christ are y'all stupid?

Baidu

SCMP, which, admittedly, is a Hong Kong news agency and not a mainland China one.

Beijing Daily, citing Jilin City Public Security Bureau

Not reported my fucking ass. I always wonder how much this shit stems from US reporters not actually speaking or understanding Chinese... Fuck off NBC and go find a journalist qualified to report on international events.

Fraud in China has far worse consequences than fraud in Australia. Even if I were to be arrested, I'd prefer it to happen in Australia where I can get off with a slap on the wrist.

I'll tell this story in three parts:

1. Tesla's US subsidies

2. China's EV exports

3. China's "overcapacity"

Part 1.Tesla's US subsidies. Under the US' Inflation Reduction Act, purchases of new EVs made in the USA were given a tax incentive of $7500. Previously, states such as California has other incentives such as the $7500 incentive under CVRP. How much in subsidies has Tesla received from tax credits alone under the IRA in 2023, ignoring state-level benefits and carryover from pre-2023 benefits? 654000 sales, for a total of almost $5 billion dollars in purchase-side government subsidies. For 2023. We also know that Tesla has received billions in state-level government funding to set up factories in California, and billions more in government funding for their other various efforts. In comparison between 2009 and 2022, China handed out about $28 billion in EV subsidies, much of that at the state-level to encourage companies to set up factories. In fact, Tesla received huge subsidies to set up it's factories in Shanghai. By the end of 2022, China had phased out most purchase-side subsidies (except some lingering programs that are not set for renewal). Note that the maximum purchase-side subsidy was about $1750. China's most significant subsidy today is in it's expansion of the domestic charging network: China makes up 68% of the world's charging stations, with a huge number of them being fast chargers. Much of that expansion came out of government coffers and is a huge driver for EV adoption in China.

Part 2. China's EV exports. In 2022, China's EV exports were as follows, sorted by volume:

270k - Tesla

140k - SAIC (mostly under the British brand MG)

72k - European joint ventures

55k - BYD

(others)

So, let's be more clear about what the EU means: they don't like that foreign companies (including European ones, but mostly Tesla, and almost all European/American brands) are setting up shop in China to produce cars for export.

Part 3. China's "overcapacity". It's no secret that China has pitiful O&G reserves. Oil, notably, is needed for ICE vehicles, but not for EVs. That is, the switch to EVs is a matter of national security for China as it reduces Chinese reliance on foreign oil supplies. Indeed, a huge proportion of Chinese EV production is going to the domestic market, and exports make up only about 10% of total sales (for reference, this number is more like 70% for Toyota).

To sum it up: unlike Toyota/Japan (and others), China is consuming the vast majority of its production. Meanwhile, a huge number of it's exports are from foreign companies. It's most notable exporter is Tesla, which is notable for having received $5 billion in purchase-side tax incentives in 2023 in the US... Alone. This is compared to $28 billion between 2009 and 2022, most of which have been phased out, and for which a big proportion was to encourage setting up factories in specific provinces or to build out a domestic charging network.

Edit: to clarify, China does have more car factories than they know what to do with. This is because ICE companies are getting fucked by EV companies. All those factories dedicated to producing ICE cars? Fucked. Idling. Useless. Sales of all cars in China: Volkswagen (-0.2% YoY), Toyota (-3.8% YoY), Honda (-12.3% YoY), Nissan (-14.3% YoY). The only foreign brands that are staying alive in China are EV brands like Tesla (+20% YoY) and luxury cars like BMW (+7.8% YoY) and Audi (+11.3% YoY). These idling ICE factories are currently being closed by the government and the government is limiting licenses handed out for new factories.

Ironically, Tesla is a large part of the reason why Chinese EVs are so cheap because they started the price war... They just couldn't win it.

Already bombed a UNRWA school

Palauan-flagged, Ukrainian-owned and Polish-operated bulk cargo carrier that had docked in Malaysia and was on its way to Italy carrying wood.

Maybe this was an attack on Palau? Poland? Malaysia? Italy? No, using Ukraine will generate more clicks.

sigh

Do people consider the US to not be capitalist because of SEC regulations, the FDA, FAA, and other organizations impeding the free market? Do people consider the US to not be capitalist because of tariffs on, say, Canadian aluminum?

Why do people consider only end-stage communism to be true communism? Why do people consider only end-stage socialism to be true socialism?

Some might say they're concentrating Palestinians into a camp?

While the developed world rests on its laurels having already developed key technologies that insulate from the worst effects of climate change, the Global South is attempting to push through rapid industrialization to achieve the same effects, bringing with it public infrastructure, electricity, robust food supply, reliable transportation, healthcare...

Meanwhile, the developed world looks at the Global South and says "ah, but why aren't you being greener about it? despicable! how dare you raise emissions?" while simultaneously restricting the free trade of essential green economy components like solar panels and batteries. The fact is, we don't actually care about climate change. Our political entities and economies are not structured to reward innovation in that space, so we simply end up pulling teeth to push through minor advances. Germany used to be a world leader in solar panels before it stagnated due to political pressure. The US used to be a world leader in developing nuclear before it stagnated due to political pressure. Japan used to be the world leader in batteries before it stagnated due to, well, Japan.

Source: x.com

Yeah, try again.

There's been rather public infighting on lemmy.world based on the previously pinned posts on this community.

A moderator on this community (@MightBe) collected community feedback on a post (https://lemmy.world/post/10102462) because of discontent with how the community was being run. The other moderators were unhappy with that mod, so they removed him, removed the post, and pinned this post instead: https://lemmy.world/post/10656753

I'm not sure what's going on in private, but publicly there's been a lot of drama. It's also been revealed that some members of the current group of moderators have been rather unprofessional imo. I'm quoting from a previous comment:

Some mods have also been deleting comments that add context to mod abuse. @naturalgasbad gave me the full DM context for their "bad faith argument" with a moderator (they did not specify which one), which I posted in a comment in the other pinned thread. It's a rather childish escalation sequence imo. That comment was deleted for "violating Rule 6", but I have copied it below for the record:

For the record, naturalgasbad sent me their exchange with the moderator, which stemmed from the moderator in question removing SCMP articles due to "SCMP not meeting reliability guidelines."

@moderator:

Al Jazeera is reliable when they aren’t talking about things that involve Qatar, that seems to be their specific blind spot.

Kyiv Post and the Telegraph I haven’t specifically looked at, if they get reported I’ll check them out.

@naturalgasbad:

Literally by the standards on SCMP you quoted, they’re unreliable.

@moderator:

SCMP: Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing.

Al Jazeera: Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar.

You: “bUt ThEyR’e ThE sAmE!!!”

Poor sourcing is poor sourcing. You picked a shitty news agency. Try to do better next time.

(for reference, the Daily Telegraph is also "mixed due to poor sourcing" and Kyiv Post is "mixed due to failed fact checks")

@naturalgasbad:

MBFC claims SCMP has poor sourcing based on the suggestion that they’re misrepresenting the US import ban on China (the one “failed fact check” according to them). That’s how MBFC gives the commentary on their ratings. It’s based on a sample-size of one. There’s no long-term commentary provided by MBFC because their entire ratings system and commentary is based on sampling a small number of articles (we don’t know which ones) and going off of what goes wrong within that sample.

It’s also reflecting the problem of a US-based bias assessment > website: it suggests that ideas within the US Overton window are “correct” will those shared by the Global South are “less correct.”

From what I can tell, some of the problem is what they assume the basic level of skill is for readers. A few weeks ago, I posted a story about SCMP reporting on a research study published in Science. Members of this community failed to find it, despite being told the subject, authors, where it was published, and when it was published. That’s not poor sourcing, but poor research ability on behalf of the readers.

@moderator:

Continuing to argue with a mod who has made their decision will not win you any favors. Keep it up and you’ll get a ban on top of having your shitty links removed, oh, wait, you’ve already been banned for abusing the report feature. I can easily extend that.

@naturalgasbad

But again, MBFC’s entire commentary on SCMP’s issues is reliant on this single sentence from a single article. It’s inherently because MBFC relies on a small sample set of each site to determine a rating because they lack the manpower and the educational foundation to provide comprehensive analysis of a news source. Either way, that article was an editorial, not a news report. (In any cases, SCMP is commenting on Chinese reports written in Chinese, which American readers struggle to find because they don’t speak Chinese).

[The [U.S. import ban] has been taken without evidence being provided.]

Unlike SCMP’s reporting, Polygraph is unable to source the article this claim can be found in. From the articles I can find that, SCMP is comnenting based on this statement:

[The ban creates a “rebuttable presumption” that any Xinjiang goods were tainted by the use of forced labour – a “guilty until proven innocent” principle that effectively inverts US customs laws related to forced labour]

In fact, Ad Fontes’ media bias chart considers SCMP to be “reliable” (reliability score of 41.56 on a 0-64 scale) and “centrist” (bias score of -3.3 on a scale of -42 - 42). This is on par with Al Jazeera (41.65, -6.71) and New York Times (41.92, -7.96) and better than Washington Post (38.08, -8.69). (Ad Fontes also has issues, but your obsession with MBFC in particular is a little odd).

@moderator:

7 day ban. Want to go for 30?

@naturalgasbad:

I cited Ad Fontes. Feel free to criticize their methodology.

@moderator:

30 days. Keep going.

@naturalgasbad:

So… Do you not like Ad Fontes’ methodology, then?

@moderator:

And permaban. Good luck on your next account.

The same argument can be applied for free market capitalism: it's too fragile and susceptible to corruption and outside influence. The reality is that the big economies of the world lie somewhere in the middle.

Have you been following media recently or have you been living under a rock?

Palestine was relying on some type of pan-Arab response or Arab unity, but now it seems as though the only country that has any influence on Israel in the region is Iran. Everyone else is either beholden to other interests or reeling from decades of conflict.

America once again helping to unseat a democratically-elected leader and replace him with an oppressive right-wing military government.

This is, again, just a plainly incorrect take. Basically everyone in China is housed, yes, but a vast proportion of them still live in rural villages. The rural-to-urban transition does need to be planned for, and it's been a huge factor in China's real estate market. China's urbanization rate today is 66%, compared to 75% in Russia and 83% in the US.

MBFC is a joke that evaluates factuality based on how well it aligns with the state department. We already know this.

DolphinMath is a propagandist that uses MBFC to whitewash propaganda. We also already know this.

In case the US has forgotten, China is selling key technology like drones to Ukraine, too. If that's not staying neutral and not picking a side, I don't know what is. The US wants China to pick the US side, not stay neutral. In fact, China currently has a trade deficit with Ukraine.

In February 2024, China exported $221M and imported $477M from Ukraine, resulting in a negative trade balance of $256M.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/03/31/dji-drones-become-vital-tool-in-ukraine-resistance/?sh=ea4c59879e6c

https://www.wsj.com/world/how-american-drones-failed-to-turn-the-tide-in-ukraine-b0ebbac3

In the name of national security, who cares about the rights of a few foreigners living on foreign (allied) soil? This isn't a coincidence, this is literally a core component of US foreign policy.

“UNRWA received reports that yesterday a group of people with trucks purporting to be from the Ministry of Health of the de facto authorities in Gaza, removed fuel and medical equipment from the Agency’s compound in the Gaza City,”

Given that Hamas is the de facto authority in Gaza, this cannot be Hamas lmfao

Otherwise, Hamas made no effort to disguise who they were, which is even funnier

There's been rather public infighting on lemmy.world based on the pinned posts on this community.

A moderator on this community (@MightBe) collected community feedback on a post (https://lemmy.world/post/10102462) because of discontent with how the community was being run. The other moderators were unhappy with that mod, so they removed him, removed the post, and pinned this post instead: https://lemmy.world/post/10656753

I'm not sure what's going on in private, but publicly there's been a lot of drama. It's also been revealed that some members of the current group of moderators have been rather unprofessional imo. I'm quoting from a previous comment:

Some mods have also been deleting comments that add context to mod abuse. @naturalgasbad gave me the full DM context for their "bad faith argument" with a moderator (they did not specify which one), which I posted in a comment in the other pinned thread. It's a rather childish escalation sequence imo. That comment was deleted for "violating Rule 6", but I have copied it below for the record:

For the record, naturalgasbad sent me their exchange with the moderator, which stemmed from the moderator in question removing SCMP articles due to "SCMP not meeting reliability guidelines."

@moderator:

Al Jazeera is reliable when they aren’t talking about things that involve Qatar, that seems to be their specific blind spot.

Kyiv Post and the Telegraph I haven’t specifically looked at, if they get reported I’ll check them out.

@naturalgasbad:

Literally by the standards on SCMP you quoted, they’re unreliable.

@moderator:

SCMP: Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing.

Al Jazeera: Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar.

You: “bUt ThEyR’e ThE sAmE!!!”

Poor sourcing is poor sourcing. You picked a shitty news agency. Try to do better next time.

(for reference, the Daily Telegraph is also "mixed due to poor sourcing" and Kyiv Post is "mixed due to failed fact checks")

@naturalgasbad:

MBFC claims SCMP has poor sourcing based on the suggestion that they’re misrepresenting the US import ban on China (the one “failed fact check” according to them). That’s how MBFC gives the commentary on their ratings. It’s based on a sample-size of one. There’s no long-term commentary provided by MBFC because their entire ratings system and commentary is based on sampling a small number of articles (we don’t know which ones) and going off of what goes wrong within that sample.

It’s also reflecting the problem of a US-based bias assessment > website: it suggests that ideas within the US Overton window are “correct” will those shared by the Global South are “less correct.”

From what I can tell, some of the problem is what they assume the basic level of skill is for readers. A few weeks ago, I posted a story about SCMP reporting on a research study published in Science. Members of this community failed to find it, despite being told the subject, authors, where it was published, and when it was published. That’s not poor sourcing, but poor research ability on behalf of the readers.

@moderator:

Continuing to argue with a mod who has made their decision will not win you any favors. Keep it up and you’ll get a ban on top of having your shitty links removed, oh, wait, you’ve already been banned for abusing the report feature. I can easily extend that.

@naturalgasbad

But again, MBFC’s entire commentary on SCMP’s issues is reliant on this single sentence from a single article. It’s inherently because MBFC relies on a small sample set of each site to determine a rating because they lack the manpower and the educational foundation to provide comprehensive analysis of a news source. Either way, that article was an editorial, not a news report. (In any cases, SCMP is commenting on Chinese reports written in Chinese, which American readers struggle to find because they don’t speak Chinese).

[The [U.S. import ban] has been taken without evidence being provided.]

Unlike SCMP’s reporting, Polygraph is unable to source the article this claim can be found in. From the articles I can find that, SCMP is comnenting based on this statement:

[The ban creates a “rebuttable presumption” that any Xinjiang goods were tainted by the use of forced labour – a “guilty until proven innocent” principle that effectively inverts US customs laws related to forced labour]

In fact, Ad Fontes’ media bias chart considers SCMP to be “reliable” (reliability score of 41.56 on a 0-64 scale) and “centrist” (bias score of -3.3 on a scale of -42 - 42). This is on par with Al Jazeera (41.65, -6.71) and New York Times (41.92, -7.96) and better than Washington Post (38.08, -8.69). (Ad Fontes also has issues, but your obsession with MBFC in particular is a little odd).

@moderator:

7 day ban. Want to go for 30?

@naturalgasbad:

I cited Ad Fontes. Feel free to criticize their methodology.

@moderator:

30 days. Keep going.

@naturalgasbad:

So… Do you not like Ad Fontes’ methodology, then?

@moderator:

And permaban. Good luck on your next account.

Anadolu is operated by the Turkish state, which has normalized relations with Israel recently.

i24 news has been the source of the claim that Business Insider is quoting. i24 has reported outright lies using "IDF sources" before:

https://x.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1425039717079392275?s=20

https://misbar.com/en/factcheck/2021/08/11/idf-accuses-palestinian-stabbing-attempt-using-image-from-2018

The official Twitter account of the Israeli Defense Force posted a tweet in Hebrew which claimed that their fighters recently (August 9, 2021) identified a suspicious woman who pulled out a knife and tried to stab an IDF fighter. Upon further investigation, it was found that the image was used even earlier on 13 February 2018 on an Arabic news site along with a similar story, as seen below.

Yes but that would have tax implications.

NYT credible ahahahahahahaha

Oh you're serious. The NYT is rather good for domestic affairs, but it's foreign bureaus have been underfunded for ages.

Fremont factory, Nevada Gigafactory, Texas Gigafactory, Berlin Gigafactory...

Gee, Tesla sure outsourced all production to China.

Everyone has the appetite for the secrets of everyone.

Surprisingly, China publishes a lot of it. Like, a lot a lot. As in, pretty much all the work done at CAS and similar institutions is published, which is the equivalent to US national labs or Lincoln Lab or what have you.

At the same time, Huawei itself publishes an obscene amount of work and is incredibly proactive in academic research - they open-source code, fund top-tier conferences, and publish basically every result they get. It's actually stupid how much money they dump on conferences.

Now, you might ask yourself, what secrets does the West have? Well, China already leads in 80% of critical technology fields, so unless you're working in integrated circuit design/fabrication, quantum computing, high performance computing, natural language processing, vaccines, small satellites, or space launch systems... You probably don't have much to hide. Plus, if you're working in a field where secrets are important, you already likely have security clearance.

As a Canadian I'm pissed off about Nortel too, but a bunch of Canadian companies got fucked by the dotcom crash and the 08 crisis and Nortel was unfortunately one of them. I'm more pissed off about Bombardier, which is an issue I'm actually affected by. Fuck the hyenas at the DOJ that killed Bombardier and the CSeries to protect their golden goose. How's 737 Max sales going, Boeing? Getting outcompeted by the A220 that Bombardier was forced to sell to AirBus for $1? Yeah...

Plus, Nortel outsourced their entire manufacturing and product design teams to Huawei in the 90s, so I don't have too much sympathy for Nortel.

The big powers bully us because we have no choice. That's the repercussions of Trudeau's foreign policy.

So... The Chinese real estate model? Overbuild, saturate the market, and suddenly housing is no longer an issue.

McCarthyism has changed because now the "communists" look different and talk different and aren't white.

Racism, everybody.

This is such a silly gesture lmao

If you don't know, Myanmar's junta (and it's allies) primarily control coastal regions while the rebels primarily control inland areas. In fact, I'm fairly sure only one rebel group has ocean access. These patrol boats are about as big of a white elephant as possible.

Most insurgency groups run resupply through Yunnan and move money through Chinese companies. You can see this being reflected in their territorial control: it's predominantly in the north, with some territories along the border with Thailand (from which other groups smuggle resources through Thailand).

Whoever engineered this deal is a comedian.

AA (the only group with coastal access) basically doesn't use naval resupply, and Myanmar isn't exactly known for being an open plain. White elephant indeed.

Those CGI artists need to be fired.

There's no excuse for such shitty CGI when gen AI tools exist.

Better tell all the people critical of the Chinese government on weibo that they're in jail lol