Adam touched on this last night, but I think it bears repeating. Not that anyone who’s paying attention needs it, but yesterday we got confirmation straight from the horse’s ass that the President of the United States has been running interference for Vladimir Putin:
It’s shameful because no U.S. president should be caping for a blood-gargling sociopath like Putin, ever. It’s stupid because though the dim bulb doesn’t realize it, Trump just confirmed the worse suspicions aroused by his consistently sycophantic behavior toward Putin.
On top of that, Trump hurling the toys out of his pram above scans as impotent whining because that’s what it is. The self-described dealmaker who alone could fix it got nothing from Putin, and he tried so hard, hence the tantrum
He got nothing for the repulsive attempt to bully Zelensky in the Oval Office. He got nothing after sending a clueless toady to frame a “peace deal” that was a giveaway to the Russian dictator.
After all that, Trump got nothing from Putin on Ukraine except further escalations that indiscriminately murder Ukrainian civilians while making Trump look weak and pathetic on the world stage. Because he is.
***
Speaking of water boys, the Bezos Post caught up with Trump’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, who was back in Texas yesterday to preside over another rapid unscheduled disassembly. The Post says Musk “appeared reflective,” but he sounded as whiny as Trump.
STARBASE, Tex. — Elon Musk, returning to SpaceX on Tuesday for a test flight of his Starship spacecraft, said in an interview that slashing the size of federal government proved far tougher than he expected and lamented the intense criticism leveled at the U.S. DOGE Service, which he has led…
He said repercussions over DOGE cuts had been severe. “DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” he said. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
He also expressed dismay over the reputational hit his companies took: “People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool.”
Boo-fucking-hoo. But no one should buy the walk-back:
Eager to demonstrate that his attention is now rededicated to his companies, Musk returned here ahead of a test flight Tuesday of Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket and a key part of NASA’s plan to return to the moon and Musk’s quest to send people to Mars…
Gone was the Dark MAGA cap, the black blazer, the belligerence toward his perceived foes in Congress and the Washington press corps. For now, there will be no more Cabinet meetings or unsuccessful forays into political races…
Even so, he vowed that his work with the U.S. DOGE Service was not done. He said he plans to focus DOGE’s efforts on improving the federal bureaucracy’s computer systems, a less-controversial goal than taking a chainsaw to the workforce.
That goal might be a good deal more controversial than the Post currently deems if people understood that “improving the federal bureaucracy’s computer systems” entails giving unvetted DOGE chuds an opportunity to exfiltrate everyone’s personal data and place it in the hands of a group of ultra-rich weirdos who are building a dystopian panopticon.
So while Trump is looking weak and pathetic on the world stage and his benefactor is feigning a butt-hurt retreat to his companies, the billionaire weirdos are creating a domestic surveillance system that will live on when Trump is Cheeto dust. Unless we stop them. Can we? Fuckifino.
***
To end on a more positive note, I saw this cool Roseate Spoonbill a couple of days ago.
Not a great pic because it was across the river, but I was happy to see it. This morning, I saw two massive alligators swimming upriver. They were so big they left a wake as they swam — my guess is they were at least 10-footers, maybe more.
I also saw a marsh bunny scampering around the vegetation at the water’s edge. No pic because the dogs spotted it too, and they are allowed to bark at rodents, so their furious woofing and snarls sent poor bunny careening into the thicker brush — away from the gators.
Open thread.
Baud
Be secretive and dishonest, invite accusations.
WTFGhost
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/05/jd-vances-claim-scotch-irish-ancestry-hits
Vance’s claims of his ancestry falls apart with the same explosive power as a piece of old couch fabric parting before his loins. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
hells littlest angel
Gee, you would think the world’s most powerful rocket would be able to, you know, fly.
Gin & Tonic
Trump not only looked pathetic with that post, he looked laughable. Russian media are openly laughing at him. I do not link to them, or to Medvedev, out of principle, but it’s all over if you’re interested.
WTFGhost
I think you’re trying to confuse us into thinking you’ve seen lots of roseate spoonbills, just because you know there’s no way I can spell rosseatte sbillpoons correctly. But I think that’s the same one you showed us last time, when it was using its feet as udders.
Er, rudders, I mean.
Gin & Tonic
@hells littlest angel: It can. But you probably think it should fly all in one piece.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
I hate that Trump has forced us to have something in common with Russian media.
ETA: As pointed out on Reddit, still no new tariffs on Russia.
Barney
Just going to point out that bunnies are not “rodents”, but lagomorphs. Their next closest relatives are indeed rodents, but lagomorphs got the cuddly gene, but cuddle that rodent and you’ll never play the guitar again.
Betty Cracker
@Barney: Good to know, thanks! (Not that it will stop my dogs barking at them…)
rusty
I like that Musk’s response to his rockets blowing up is to launch more of them faster. I’m sure that’s the solution. It explains much of the problems with his various companies.
satby
@WTFGhost: Soonergrunt and I, with a few others, had some fun with that on BS a couple of days ago. Thread
Extra fun if you read the guy who tried to mansplain to me it was on the American side they couldn’t trace and my answer.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: A significant majority of white people voted to become Russia’s second fiddle. So much for supremacy.
Baud
@Barney:
The Lagomorphs sounds like the something I’d expect to see in a Marvels movie.
suzanne
LMMFAO!
This utterance serves as another point of evidence that these people are all just swirling in a storm of grievance. WHY DON’T YOU THINK I’M AWESOME?!?!
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
They effectively also gave China a huge boost.
prostratedragon
@WTFGhost: Huh, so Elizabeth Warren is more Cherokee than Sofa King is Irish or Scot. Life is just a box of chocolates.
Baud
@satby:
To be fair, if I were Ireland, I’d hide any records proving that Vance has Irish blood.
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic: For a moment I tbought you were talking about the roseaste spoonbill, which far as I know does fly.
Old School
Things like the supply of baby formula and the price of eggs?
Ten Bears
Kayfabe. Drumpf uck’s declarations. Drama to keep the rubes rubed …
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Spanky
Wired had a rather long article on the Shanghai Auto Show, which apparently was mammoth. While not solely populated by Chinese auto makers, they certainly were there to be noticed. Among the tidbits in the article:
Oh my!
Spanky
@rusty:
“Move fast and break things” is the antithesis of space travel, but Elon is a very slow learner.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yes they did. And our Ivy League dominated media provided an assist to the despot both now and in 2016.
lowtechcyclist
If somebody took a sledgehammer to my car and it stopped running, who does he think I’d be blaming?
satby
@Spanky: The cool cars available other places that we don’t have access to really is sad, especially on the EV front.
NotMax
Not to dismiss, deny or ignore the daily torrents of malevolence, malfeasance, incompetence and unadulterated rank stupidity, for both mental and physical health it behooves one from time to time to take a step back and recharge with the likes of an Awful Lot of Sunshine.
The above by way of injecting some bouncy beats into midweek.
;)
Baud
@satby:
You’re not satisfied with mammoth pick-ups with huge cabs and small beds?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
They prefer to be big fishes in a small pond.
satby
@Baud: Nah…
My favorite Transportation Secretary was on the Bulwark podcast yesterday, and you should watch it, if only the first few minutes, to see Pete’s reaction to the opening question before Miller even finishes asking it. TBF, he got his game face back quickly.
Belafon
@Ten Bears: Sometimes, I think people using the word kayfabe are trying to distract us.
It’s very on brand for Trump to be annoyed at world leaders that won’t listen to him.
Baud
First comment in the reddit post about Musk’s self pity party.
Old School
@NotMax: A fun little tune.
Belafon
@Spanky: It’s kind of how he got his reusable rockets to land. But he’s stopped learning, and is interfering with his company’s ability to learn from previous tests.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat: in their eyes, being subjugated by white Christian Russians is far superior than being subjugated by the democratic coalition of blacks, gays and women, all of whom are united in our universal hatred of straight white christian. men.
Snarki, child of Loki
Juicy Divan Vance said that he was Scots-Irish at heart.
Clearly, it needs to be extracted for close examination.
No worries, he’s not using it anyway.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Indeed. When things break in space, people die.
satby
@Baud: Appropriate.
YY_Sima Qian
Trump is actually pretty transparent. He also tweeted an intention to take Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae public, but also the intention to continue the implicit USG guarantee (which he just mad explicit). Talk about privatizing the gains & socializing the losses.
Harrison Wesley
@Baud: Or a W.C. Fields epithet. “Are you a mooncalf? Are you a lagomorph?”
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan:
No one was subjecting them. People were asking them not to be douchcanoes. It’s a subtle difference, I know.
Baud
@satby:
I watched about 5 minutes in. Solid as always, but I’m not sure I saw the part you were referring to.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Oh my indeed! Inexpensive EVs, amazingly fast charging stations, and they’ve gone into high-speed rail in a big way.
I’m ready to welcome our new Chinese overlords, whenever they get around to taking over this country after Trump makes it easy.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Pretty sure they’ll liberate Taiwan first.
lowtechcyclist
@WTFGhost:
What does the post say that Kevin Kruse is responding to?
Professor Bigfoot
@prostratedragon: Barack Hussein Obama is more Irish than Shady Vance.
A little fact that cracks me right up.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yeah. Its easy to blame the working class and make fun of their trucks but without the assist that the Ivy League dominated Beltway media provided Trump wouldn’t have been able to win either in 2016 or in 2024. And yes I am holding the Bernie Bros in the media responsible too
Add comedians and podcasters to the list as well
Seeing everything through the lens of class (Marxist perspective) is not enough.
Professor Bigfoot
Well… it ain’t like we don’t got REASON to, after all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Doug R
Thankfully Katie Perry was on the “non-firework” spaceship.
suzanne
The most interesting/ironic thing about Vance being a liar about his ancestry is how much it potentially undermines his “heritage Americans” bullshit.
“Seven generations of my family buried in the same cemetery” doesn’t make you any more American than coming through Ellis Island, like my Italian ancestors, or being “rootless cosmopolitans” who moved across the country chasing opportunity, like my German Jewish ancestors.
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Alan: They should talk to some people who have lived behind the Iron curtain.
You know how I came to speak to them? They were fellow international students when I was in grad school.
Doug R
@Professor Bigfoot:
That’s why it’s spelled O’bama, dontcha know?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m not sure how many people who actually need pickups for work are satisfied with their choices.
Fancy pickups seem like more of a status symbol these days.
Doug R
@suzanne:
Or like Mennonites living in Ukraine who saw Stalin coming and GTFO of there before the Holodomor.
Kinda glad grandpa picked Canada now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: It is pretty easy to see the difference between a working truck and a “salt of the earth” status symbol truck,
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: IDK either. On a personal level I have experienced more prejudice from the genteel, I voted for Obama so I can’t be racist types than the ones who use their work trucks to earn a living
Also one can more easily steer clear of in your face racism. Because it is obvious. It took me a while to figure out the barbs/put downs some ww use when talking about non-white people.
cmorenc
@WTFGhost:
Vance’s claims of Irish ancestry are by far the least problematic or offensive aspects of him. My mother’s family lineage is undoubtedly of the classic southern white’s hybrid of Scotch/Irish/English ancestry, but the ability to accurately trace her family’s ancestry goes stone-cold once you cross the time before when birth and death certificates were formally recorded as public records, and whatever family bible or other personal documents the ancestors may have recorded such events in have long since disappeared to persons/places unknown. My mother’s family trail runs impenetrably cold past my great-grandfather, born 1854. That said, I can also confidently guess that none of my ancestors ever earned the seeming personal disapproval of the Pope for their un-Christian behavior.
karen gail
@satby: I get so tired of the mansplaining; so I have only one head, that is all I need to think.
moonbat
@Harrison Wesley: Well done, Mr. Jabbernow!
suzanne
@Doug R: Every time I read anything promoting “heritage America”, I wonder why half of America’s white people are so fucking stupid as to think they’re included. These people think “the Ellis Island period was a mistake”.
Too many white people have fooled themselves into thinking that the authoritarians won’t come for them, too. Racists are never just racist! They’ll find some other axis of hierarchy by which to discriminate.
Harrison Wesley
@Snarki, child of Loki: His heart is in Ireland. His johnson is in the furniture.
mrmoshpotato
Definitely too big to throw through a Wendy’s drive-thru window.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@lowtechcyclist:
That matches the conclusions drawn by the investigations of every death in space with the possible exceptions of Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11. Particular emphasis on Apollo 1 and Feynman’s appendix to the Challenger report (“reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled“).
YY_Sima Qian
@Spanky: To the Chinese observers (& the few Westerners who paid attention over the past few years), Shanghai Auto Show 2025 was actually somewhat sedate compared to Shanghai Auto Show 2023 & Beijing Auto Show 2024 (they alternate). Most of the new product launches & new tech unveils (such as BYD’s “megawatt/megavolt” charging system) happened in the weeks & months prior. Not so many delightfully (or garishly) wacky designs. Chinese marques found that crowding all of unveils at a single show sapped the oxygen & buzz for the vast majority of players, your launch might trend for 45 min before it is superseded by a rival launch at the adjacent stand. This less phrenetic vibe was taken as a sign that the Chinese New Energy Vehicle (NEV) industry is becoming more mature & confident.
The CEOs of foreign legacy makers had their shock & awe in ’23 & ’24, what they saw this year only reinforced the dread they were already experiencing. OTOH, this year’s show attracted by far the larges contingent so far of foreign media & influencers, & they experienced the shock & awe that the foreign legacy makers’ CEOs experienced in ’23/’24.
Not present at the Shanghai Auto Show 2025 were Tesla, the Korean marques, the French brands, & the Italian/British luxuries. The Koreans & the French are no longer relevant in the PRC auto market, & the Americans are headed there, too. Tesla is spinning its wheels in the PRC & losing market share. The cache of the likes of Land Rover, Maserati & even Bentley & Rolls Royce are not what they were 5 years ago.
The Germans & Japanese (& to a lesser extent GM) are trying to stay alive in the PRC by coming out NEV offerings that are essentially rebadged models from their Chinese JV partners, or at least built on NEV platforms & using software developed by their Chinese JV partners, in an ironic reversal of fortunes from less than a decade ago. The further irony is that these fairly compelling offerings from Germans/Japanese/GM will be sold only in China, where they probably will be received w/ lukewarm response (far too much better positioned competition, will need to slash prices to entice potential buyers), but they would be very well positioned in the US or Europe (where the choices are far more starved).
If you want to see what the leading edge of Chinese NEV tech looks like, search for YouTube video reviews of the NIO ET9, the BYD Yangwang U7/8/9, the Li Auto Mega, the AITO M9, the Avatr 12, & the Zeekr MIX.
MobiusKlein
If trump wants to punish Russia for continuing to attack Ukraine, trump can send a bunch more missiles to them, and otherwise support Ukraine’s defense.
Until that happens, trump is blowing smoke out his ass.
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky:
Fixed.
satby
@Baud: when he rolled his eyes and ducked his head for a second to regain his game face. Subtle, but the eyeroll was there, and he’s usually able to avoid it.
cmorenc
@suzanne:
People who think the whole immigration / Ellis Island paradigm was a big mistake are especially offensive to me, personally.
My grandmother immigrated through Ellis Island as a terrified 13 yo girl as what amounted to a term of indentured servitude to the dairy farmer who paid her passage. She did not speak a word of English before arrival, and was accompanied only by her 16yo sister, whose passage was also paid by an indentured service contract but not at the same place as her sister, and so they would be separated. Family circumstances back in the Bavarian region of SE Germany must have been very difficult to send the daughters alone off to America in hopes of making a better life than was then available to them back in Germany c. 1900-1910. I take the contemporary cruel, inhuman treatment of immigrants by the Trump Administration as especially offensive. Keep in mind that her establishment in America coincided not long after her arrival with a protracted period of intense dislike of Germans because of World War 1 and inflammatory anti-Hun propaganda that makes today’s racist remarks seem like mere slight faux pas.
suzanne
@MobiusKlein:
Isn’t it “blowing smoke up his ass”?
The pedant in me is deeply concerned about the direction of the smoke relative to the ass.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WTFGhost: I have never seen someone so desperate to be considered white trash as Vance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I consider him to be white trash. Does that count?
satby
@cmorenc: Try census records. Mandated by the Constitution, first one was 1790. That’s where my info came from in the Americas (Canadian census as well).
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne:
Just like “Those who hate Jews seldom hate only Jews.”
American conservatives always seem to hate EVERYBODY else; and they WILL find some reason to turn on other white people.
Niemöller wept.
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: We aren’t the people he wants approval from. Gotta downplay that elite Ivy education somehow.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And when that jerk says “What are going to do about?” to you, why would anyone be surprised if if you set fire to his car? Something an’t right about the Musk, but I doubt it is autism, my experience is Austy understand the golden rule.
suzanne
@cmorenc: My great-grandmother crossed an ocean, alone, at the age of sixteen, with no spoken English and no family to meet her on the other end, and $10 to her name. I hear you.
I honestly find some aspects of immigration discourse annoying, namely that we should be extra-welcoming to wealthy people or their children or those who have specialized skills. Fuck that. The American promise should be that anyone who wants to come is welcome.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Omnes Omnibus: yes, but that’s one’s pedestrian couch fucking white trash, not the sister fucking white trash like Mr Vance strives too.
snoey
@suzanne: Both – up is gaslighting – out is bullshitting.
suzanne
@snoey: OOOOH!!!! I love it!
Shades of meaning, man.
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian: Meanwhile, GM in the US:
WTFGhost
@suzanne: It could be “blowing smoke,” combined with “talking out one’s ass,” which delights the punster, while frustrating the pedant, in me.
You are, of course, very wise to watch for the correct direction of smoke. With all the smoke Trump pays people to blow up his ass, there must be a crap-ton of creosote in there!
(I’ve never used “crap-ton” before, I don’t believe, but this seems more or less appropriate.)
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: Short sighted, only able to plan as far as next year’s numbers based on last months analyses… Yep, watch ‘em step in it.
Ten Bears
@Belafon: Take his word for it, no bark off my shins
I’m not the one who’s been suckered by his shit …
Doug R
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, if they’re serious they have a van or panel van or sometimes a trailer behind a pickup truck.
laura
@MobiusKlein: trump, republicans, and the “press” have memory holed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum regarding America’s obligation to defend Ukraine. How awkward it must be for trump to make mouth sounds harshing on Putin when he, and any casual observer can see how owned by Putin trump actually, personally, is.
sab
@suzanne: I re-read the Declaration of Independence the other day, and one odf the listed complaints was that the King and his government were discouraging immigration into the colonies.
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners…”
Soprano2
@WTFGhost: All he has to do is take a DNA test. I’m probably more Scots-Irish hillbilly than he is, I get it through my dad. I think his family probably came here from North or South Carolina. My Ancestry DNA test showed both Scottish and Irish ancestry, as well as English, German, Dutch and Norwegian. I’m like Colbert, one of the whitest people you know.
Doug R
@cmorenc: The pimp Fredrick Drumpf emigrated in 1885, 1881-93 averaged over 500,000 a year or about 8.9 per 1000. Which would be over 3,000,000 a year at current population.
prostratedragon
@Professor Bigfoot: And so am I😉
Fair Economist
Starship’s problems have been the same for at least the last 3 launches; it’s basically a whole bunch of rockets strapped together, and if any of them malfunction the whole thing goes boom. Apparently the latest involved a leak that set the thing spinning, which would have been quite a spectacle if it had happened where it could be filmed. With Musk’s “move fast and break things” ethos they’ll never get the quality control good enough for it to work. As the no-longer-proud owner of a Tesla, I can testify that low quality is a chronic problem with Musk enterprises.
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t know why the US automakers aren’t going all in on plug-in hybrids (w/ large enough batteries & electric motors so that the driving experience is that of a battery electric vehicle in the vast majority of use cases, & the small ICE only kicks in as needed & runs at the optimal part of the envelop for max efficiency). Seems perfect for the vast majority of the US. It is very popular in the PRC & uptake rising fast in Europe. GM/Ford/Stellantis can find plenty of Chinese NEV makers w/ viable PHEV drive train tech they can license.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
Like the country, US car companies are run by conservatives. They’re not great at the vision thing.
Doug R
@YY_Sima Qian:
Just before the election, Canada harmonized its tariffs on Chinese EV to near 100% to match the USA.
Now that trump is trying to screw us, maybe Canada could lower the tariff rate, especially if the Chinese build an assembly plant or battery plant or something in Canada.
scav
@satby: Only heads of household listed in US census until 1850 I’m pretty sure. Everyone else in the household (not just blood family) is just counted in gender/age brackets. Earlier censuses tend to need more outside supporting evidence than later ones.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: you are getting slack. You read this post title and didn’t post anything from The Waterboys?
Spanky
@YY_Sima Qian: Have you seen truck commercials over the last, oh, 30 years or so? The population is thoroughly indoctrinated into the manly Megatruck ideal. It’s gonna take a hell of a lot of reverse propagandizing to get the Amerkin public to accept sissy vehicles that don’t go vroom
Eta, ideally, (yeah, I know) US automakers would start with commercials NOW about their totally awesome soon-to-come evs. Then they’d better get moving on actually designing something.
Or just steal the technology from the Chinese.
Steve LaBonne
@YY_Sima Qian: How many years now has the US auto industry been trying its best to go out of business (and already would have if Obama hadn’t saved their ungrateful asses)? They don’t know how to do anything else.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I saw this article in Oil Price Magazine today:
These numbers are based on projections, but enough previously announced projects are threatened that the reporter could identify Texas, Michigan, Nevada, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia as the states most “adversly affected” if the bill becomes law.
Meanwhile, according to an Oil Price article from May 22:
Steve LaBonne
@Spanky: As usual men are the problem.
M31
DEI
Anyway
It’s not just the media that gave Dolt47 an assist in the elections but our MOTU — business elites – Jamie Dimon, Tim Cook, the HD CEO etc etc all are consistently subservient to R presidents but have no qualms being disrespectful to Dem presidents. I think their attitude has a huge effect on the media coverage and news analysis.
M31
“Has this truck ever had anything put in the back?”
prostratedragon
@YY_Sima Qian, @Geminid:
Madness.
Eunicecycle
@Baud: that was pretty much all the responses on BS too. Not one sympathizer.
Anyway
puhlease, China was doing well on its own — they are happy to take advantage of US stumbles but had their eyes on the ball the whole time
prostratedragon
New meme in town: Anne of Green Goebbels
Soprano2
@Omnes Omnibus: They believe that being asked not to be douchecanoes is subjugation. A big part of MAGA is “I should be able to be a flaming asshole and not be called on it by anyone, if you call me on it you’re cancelling me”.
Soprano2
@Omnes Omnibus: You should see our truck, it’s two toned black and red because we switched the bed and one door with another truck that had been wrecked! People are always trying to buy it from me because no one makes trucks like the 1980’s S-10s anymore.
Baud
@Anyway:
Your comment doesn’t undercut mine. I didn’t suggest China was flailing before Trump. I said Trump’s election boosts them.
snoey
@M31: I’d go with “Does this truck have a place to lock up my tools?”
karen gail
@M31: That is big tell; mine not only had dings, gouges, heavy dents on inside of bed but scratches from driving in places with little clearance. Won’t mention the wrong colored panel from when step son put it in ditch from a “watch this” moment. It finally died; too many years on salted roads rusted out too many places to repair.
YY_Sima Qian
@Doug R: That is already what a number of EU member states (particularly Hungary & Spain) have been doing w/ Chinese battery & EV makers.
Of course, the EU Commission hasn’t quite given up convincing Trump 47 to return to the Trump 45/Biden play of partial trans-Atlantic alignment to partially contain the PRC, perhaps not quite yet come to terms w/ the fact that Trump 47 & gang wants to engage in the most naked & unconstrained extortion & domination in all directions. OTOH, the PRC government has long treated the EU Commission w/ open distain (precisely because of its eagerness under von der Leyen to align w/ Biden), & prefers & expects to be able to “divide & conquer” the EU via its member states. Therefore, the Sino-EU trade negotiations are slow going, but there is a deadline of a high visibility & high stakes Sino-EU summit at the end of Jul. in Beijing to celebrate the 50 years anniversary of Sino-EU relations. Presumably both sides want the summit to succeed (or at least not to fail).
I am not aware of any resumption of senior level Sino-Canadian contacts, yet. Other than opportunistic moves such as purchasing Canadian oil/gas/grains to replace US imports, the PRC does not seem to be in a hurry. I suspect the PRC government views Canada (legacy of the Trudeau’s alignment w/ Trump 45/Biden’s PRC policy) in a similar vein as the EU Commission.
Personally, I don’t think that is smart diplomacy on the part of the PRC government vis-à-vis both the EU Commission and Canada (as opposed to its stance wrt South Korea, Japan, Australia, let alone the ASEAN, LATAM & Africa), but CPC leaders have historically not been shy about playing hardball to extract the maximum benefit.
Incidentally, the ASEAN & the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) just invited the PRC to their bilateral summit, making it a trilateral, to promote economic & technology integration. This on the heels of Trump’s visit to the ME.
YY_Sima Qian
@Spanky: They can take a look at the BYD Shark pick up truck, already selling & well received in Mexico.
Gary K
means “tweeted on the toilet”
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: Short sighted American industry that sells to short sighted Americans.
There’s a reason you almost don’t see sedans on the road here anymore; they’re almost all SUVs, many of them very large (and luxurious) because that’s what Americans are actually buying.
A plug-in hybrid would be ideal for most Americans— electric to pootle around town, ICE for longer trips.
But if it ain’t in a vehicle the size and height of an F150, most of my fellow citizens ain’t buyin’ it.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Betty Cracker @ Top:
And speaking the Bezos Post, the Rick Perk adage, “Conservatism never fails. It is only failed.” is once again confirmed with a George Will column entitled, get this:
I have no words.
Apparently, Will is trying to get ahead of the inevitable (someday, in the future …) collapse of Trump conservatism by calling it … progressivism.
Conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed – by those who are not not pure and not conservative enough.
And, I guess, somehow, Will thinks he can convince people that Trump isn’t a right-wing conservative.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And every other despot on the planet,
Nettoyeur
@Spanky: I am an engineer. Megawatt charging in the hands of consumers worries me. Connectors REALLY matter.
Belafon
@Spanky: GM did with their Hummer EV.
I saw something that said by 2027 it will cost as much to make an EV as it does to make a ICE vehicle. Then it won’t matter that Trump has killed the incentives. Also, the Slate pickup is supposed to be out next year. If it does, that will be a huge deal in the automotive industry.
The Audacity of Krope
They burn themselves, after all.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Yeah, IMO one of the vastly underreported & underappreciated ongoing world-historical developments is the PRC’s rapid evolution into an electrified economy & society, mutually reinforcing w/ its massive investments into renewable energy & efficient transmission infrastructure (w/ the goal of energy abundance & energy self-sufficiency), which then bolsters the development of new forces boosting productivity (AI, automation, etc.). When you come down to it, everything is about energy conversion, & so much more is possible when energy is cheap & abundant, along w/ all of the other productive factors & inputs being cheap & abundant, which in turn makes what people consume for sustenance & high standard of living cheap & abundant. That is true “Abundance”.
The PRC is also facilitating this transformation in the Global South (there has to be an outlet for its “overcapacity” in solar, batteries, wind, etc.). Case in point, a few years ago Pakistan was suffering from crushing power shortages. In the past few years so much cheap solar panels were imported from the PRC, installed in either solar farms or in distributed setups, that now some of Pakistan’s coal fire plants’ (many also built w/ PRC help) generation capacity are redundant. Unfortunately, the Pakistani government seems to think the excess capacity is best used for crypto-mining. A sad commentary on the pathologies of Pakistan’s socio-/political economy.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: GM in particular is absolutely famous within the auto industry for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by killing a program just as it’s maturing into a great product. It’s amazing just how bad their business decisions* have been for at least 60 years
ETA: *Their business decisions regarding actual automobile design, development, production, and sales. No doubt they’ve made good decisions wrt financing endeavors and political lobbying.
Belafon
@Chief Oshkosh: They invented the hybrid engine.
Edit: And then sold it.
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: One can make a PHEV out of any sized vehicle. Of course, if the vehicle is too large, the battery needs to be huge & heavy to have any useful battery-only range at all, & the it is a death spiral in weight.
jonas
His engineers just weren’t being hard-core, x-treme to the max enough, I guess. More x-treme-ness and hard-core-ness should do the trick.
Chief Oshkosh
@Lacuna Synecdoche: I had no idea that George Will is still alive.
Steve LaBonne
@jonas: He needs to be a passenger on the next one.
jonas
@YY_Sima Qian: My brother had a Chevy Volt for a while and really liked it. Used it in EV mode most of the time, but for longer road trips, knowing you had the small ICE engine to back you up was great. Of course GM decided to bail on it because, I dunno, reasons.
Emily B.
@Professor Bigfoot: Hmm, I may have seen this movie before. US automakers build big, gas-guzzling cars because that’s what consumers want! Then gas prices rise, consumers discover more efficient, better-engineered foreign cars….AND cue taxpayer bailout of American auto industry.
We’ll see whether Trump’s isolationism and the fossil fuel industry can keep the foreign (Chinese) EVs at bay to short-circuit this cycle. Either way, I don’t think Americans win.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
The tell on pickups is whether they have that orange or blue water dispenser in the back.
jonas
Musk is really boned. His brand is toxic. Tesla sales are in a free fall globally (even as sales of other EV brands are doing fine) and the GOP tax bill making its way through Congress guts the EV tax and carbon-trading credits that are the only things keeping Tesla afloat. Tesla’s board apparently won’t fire him, and so will go down with the ship along with him. And his rockets are blowing up and solar radiation is frying Starlink satellites.
For a supposed genius, this guy sure is an idiot.
Melancholy Jaques
Ohio Republicans looking to completely obliterate Democrats.
Mais où sont les Celestes d’antan?
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: Governor Ramaswamy will obliterate our state entirely. I hope Sherrod runs but I wouldn’t put a lot of money on him.
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: It would be nice if all those people who think abortion should be legal in the state would realize that they’re going to have to do more than just vote for an amendment.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Oil Price also reported that China’s domestic crude oil production has reached its highest level level ever, at around 4.6 million barrels a day.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
We are always surprised by how many SUVs are out there. I think they may actually outnumber sedans in our area. We drive a Nissan Altima so we’re constantly blinded to traffic because our view is blocked by SUVs on all sides.
I would have thought an SUV or pickup is already uneconomical at our local prices, which run $3.09-$3.29 in most stations around here (Delaware County PA). But apparently not.
Juju
: “People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool.”
I hope someone asked Musk if he was sure the burning Teslas didn’t spontaneously combust.
RaflW
It seems like TACO Wednesday is not Donaldo’s favorite day. Trump Always Chickens Out (on tariffs, but also I’d argue on Russia) was a question tossed to him today in some press avail, and apparently he said back “Don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question.”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
The SpaceX genius didn’t know about the solar wind or that satellites need to be radiation-hardened? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.
Well, not that shocked actually.
I’ve always figured if he ever actually mounted a Mars mission, they would die halfway through the mission due to some stupid oversight. I’m going to revise that estimate downward to “probably would die of radiation exposure before reaching the Moon”.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: The only energy source in the PRC that has seen a fall is coal. However, the PRC does not use oil for power generation, not much gas for that purpose, either. Oil imports have been falling.
This is about petrochemicals & chemical feedstock, which the PRC envisions eventually being replaced by green hydrogen.
West of the Rockies
@rusty:
Faster, Musky Cat, Kill, Kill!
Soprano2
@YY_Sima Qian: Sadly this isn’t surprising, not at all. Backwards looking just like the MAGA’s. I’ve also noticed that a lot of the car ads now emphasize how much of their vehicle is made in the U.S.A.
YY_Sima Qian
Speaking of EVs, BYD is something else (gift link to FT article below):
Baud
@RaflW:
Sounds like he chickened out from answering.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fair Economist: Starship’s real problem is they did their best stuff as Great Society and should have called it quits after they ran their course as Jefferson Airplane.
Wait, what?
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: He’s definitely a dumb cluck.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: The salesman who sold me my new Sonata hybrid said 3 of the 4 vehicles they sold that day were Sonatas, probably because they still have sedans. A lot of carmakers dropped them, not because there isn’t demand but because they don’t make as much money on them as they do on SUV’s. I drove two SUV’s, I just don’t like them for some reason.
Redshift
Ahem, you need to explain to the dogs that rabbits are lagamorphs, not rodents. /pedant
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Do you want a bang on the ear?
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
Side Two of Blows Against the Empire is an interesting artifact of the period.
Harrison Wesley
I’ve seen enough SpaceX. When do we get America’s rapid unscheduled disassembly?
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, but you forget: The worst, most cruel form of discrimination that exists in this country is when straight white Christian men are not allowed to cruelly discriminate against other people they don’t like.
Redshift
@Chief Oshkosh:
Only technically. His is one of the rare jobs that could definitely be replaced by a LLM AI; it could easily churn out things like the twice-yearly “these kids today should dress better (i.e., like him.)”
Steve LaBonne
@Harrison Wesley: You must not be following the news.
Bill Arnold
(Playing here. :-)
It’s not Trump, precisely. Trump’s patron entity is using him (cosplay orange antichrist) as the form of the destructor for the USA, chosen by The Voters but with DJT the preferred choice.
For instance, the May 10 2024 geomagnetic storm[1] caused by a double(triple) cannibal CME would have knocked out the Russian electric grid (and other grids) without its intervention.
In Christian terms, The Restrainer, Paul/2 Thessalonians 2 was asked to stand down.
Or not. :-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2024_solar_storms
RaflW
@YY_Sima Qian: As the US is being jammed into a New Dark Age by a gaggle of ideologue-idiots, most of the world will hopefully just muddle along (or better!) without us.
Of course it would make sense for us to build a ton of cheap, clean electrical generation, and move people off nat gas heat, hot water & cooking. That conversion would be a bonanza of manufacturing, installation & infrastructure.
But a handful of corporate agendas (centered on not leaving ‘stranded assets’, aka unburned carbon fuels, in the ground) coupled with politicians being able to elicit guttural grunts from MAGA voters about their gas stoves + ‘from my dead hands’ means we’ll be left in the dust.
Just like we’re committing medical and science research suicide on the daily now, in cancelled grants, visas, and of course book bannings and long list of verboten words.
I’ve worried about American collapse for a long time, yet here I am genuinely surprised by how fast it’s going. We’re not in unstoppable land yet. But the tipping point approaches.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: My “daily driver” is 2018 Taurus, chosen partly because it wasn’t a freakin’ SUV. (and partly for the 3.5 liter twin-turbo V6 all-wheel drive ;) )
NobodySpecial
Not sure that $200k EV’s are going to mean anything to the majority of the world. But I guess they get good press.
JMG
Because of the need to haul stuff from place to place, I have an SUV, a 2018 Subaru Forester. It’s a good vehicle, but it’s not small. Despite that it is often dwarfed by other SUVs and pickups in parking lots around town. I was at the supermarket today and a GMC Denali took the next spot. It was like a kayak being docked next to the QE2.
Aziz, light!
Musk is in a hurry to get the Starship to stop blowing up because of his schedule for Mars, which to this day he is still promoting as a real thing:
This plan leaves out two or three decades of the actual development needed, and let’s not overlook Musk’s pledge to colonize Mars with a million people by 2050. With regard to Mars in particular Elon Musk is a highly advanced form of stupid that leaves Trump in the dust.
Gin & Tonic
@Aziz, light!: I hope everyone understands very clearly that there is no workable plan for getting any humans back, if the near-impossible happens and SpaceX actually gets anyone to Mars alive. That’s just elementary physics.
suzanne
@Aziz, light!: I’m in a hurry to send Elon Musk to Mars.
Belafon
@Gin & Tonic: Musk had already stated that, and was looking for volunteers for one way.
Shalimar
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Vampire notorious for shitposting in middle of night losing battle with sunlight
Belafon
@Professor Bigfoot: I have a 2013 Fiesta that is 1,085 miles away from one light second.
artem1s
IIRC his government contracts are milestone based, not cost reimbursable. Not meeting milestones = $0. SpaceX should dump his ass now if they are SMRT.
Belafon
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
His plan was to keep putting up new satellites at the rate they were falling back to earth. He didn’t plan on tearing up the atmosphere with this plan, but he’ll just cheer that it’ll make us stronger.
RandomMonster
Can we just call them “varmints”, in a Yosemite Sam voice?
opiejeanne
@suzanne: He says he wants to die there. That could be arranged.
RevRick
@satby: The smartest thing Ford and GM could do would be to buy a dozen of the Chinese EVs and reverse engineer them.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: But it would take quite a few years to build up the industrial clusters to build all the components as efficiently as the Chinese companies can. And that’s before considering labor costs. We have almost certainly missed the boat already. But hey, we want big manly V-8 trucks, not girly little electric cars!
Steve LaBonne
@opiejeanne: On the way works just as well.
Sister Golden Bear
Speaking of water boys…. So yesterday Trump threatens to withhold federal funds from California if trans girls are allowed to participate in sporting events with girls, and “orders” local officials to block trans girls from competing. This comes after a 16-year-old trans girl took first place in a single track event, and placed third and 8th in two other events.
The California Interscholastic Federation, the non-profit regulating high school sports promptly caves by offering consolation spots to cis girls who lose to trans girls, so that the cis girls can now qualify for the state championships even if they otherwise wouldn’t have made the cut.
So what does Gov. Unctuous Hairgel do? Gives the policy his blessing and then went further to say that trans girls should be scored separately,* i.e. so there could now be three first place winners in the long jump competition, for example: one cis boy, one trans athlete, and one cis girl. This effectively shunts trans girl athletes—because no one ever gives a shit about trans boys competing against cis boys—into an entirely separate category. It’s an essentially a rogue attempt to do an end-run around CA’s laws banning anti-trans discrimination.
Because ya see, they’re not actually banning trans girls from competing against cis girls, they’re just moving trans girls into their own category where they only compete against other trans girls. Never mind there’s a single digit number of trans athletes, out of more than a half-million student athletes, in the entire state.
Still sends a clear AF message that trans people aren’t “real” people.
*There’s no equivalent policy for trans boy athletes.
StringOnAStick
Yeah, DOGE is really “helping”. This morning I got an email from Medicare, asking if I’d like to switch to all paperless communications, so I went to my Medicare account and tried to do so, and of course it doesn’t work and says to “try again later”. Brilliant to send out this request to how many millions, but DOGE has already fucked things up enough that I can’t do something that would actually save Medicare some money; nice job, boys. And I do mean “boys”.
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Golden Bear: Newsom is really into showing his whole ass. Disgraceful.
Aziz, light!
@Belafon: The launch requirements are the best part of the one million people to Mars colony plan: 100 passengers per Starship* times 10,000 launches for passengers plus 10,000 launches for their habitats and supplies by 2050, if you start sending by, say, 2040, that adds up to five or six rockets going up every single day for 10 years.
* No, you can’t cram 100 people into the ship and leave them strapped into their chairs for 8 months with no living space and no protection from radiation. After the first million die on the way there he will have to send up another million. This is roughly the same planned obsolescence scheme as Starlink sats burning up.
Just as Musk started drawing the Cybertruck in his notebook when he was 10, his Mars dream is something he read in a copy of Popular Mechanics when he was eight. Why is the U.S. being led by children?
Belafon
@Steve LaBonne: http://www.slate.auto
suzanne
@opiejeanne:
Funny. I also want him to die there.
Eolirin
@Aziz, light!: Because a plurality of its voters are uneducated children.
Kayla Rudbek
@cmorenc: heck, the US Archives have stitched samplers that were used as evidence of parentage before the invention of birth certificates (from people trying to get pensions from being the daughters of Civil War veterans, this was in Piecework’s latest issue)
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: I just want him to GO.
”If he dies, he dies.” But whatever he does, he ain’t doin’ it HERE.
gvg
@Baud: I think it has to do with Supream court decisions stating that the primary responsibility of management is to the shareholders profits. I think our businesses have been doomed since them on a long tem basis. A “well run”company really has to balance competiting interests and market forces and guess what the future will bring, The really have to watch the profits now AND think about the profits 10 and 30 years from now. That’s why they have to invest in keeping employees happy and trained, why they have to invest in equipment to make the next product and not just rest on their laurels etc. If you over do that you go bankrupt before you see the profit. It’s always about balancing the interests and it’s not easy or clear cut. Telling management they HAD to always pick one answer or get sued, or fired, weighted the test results to always get the same answer which is not balanced and is killing us. I think the tax code is also unbalanced but that may be because too many things are really flim flam meant to hide what they are. Also I am not as sure about that part. But I do think the court has proven it does not really understand the implications of business policy and screwed things up several decades ago. Congress naturally has not helped.
Marc
There are multiple pictures of Chinese EVs driving in and near Detroit with manufacturers plates, as they’re allowed to import them for R&D. The CEO of Ford has said that he uses a Xiaomi SU7 as his daily driver. Reverse engineering is in progress, for better or worse.
Lapassionara
@Sister Golden Bear: You deserve a prize for “unctuous hair gel.” Well done! He is a smarmy sob.
gvg
@Steve LaBonne: I am coming to think Newsom really is himself predjudiced against trans. It might not be political, it might be what he actually thinks. People are weird and even a person who is liberal about a great many things can have a bit of “not that” in them. It’s personal. They may not even be able to explain it, or understand that other people who have always agreed with them before, don’t agree this time. That could be why he is misreading the room so badly.
WTFGhost
@RaflW: “So it’s true, then?” would have been a smashing follow-up.
@suzanne: That raises an important point.
OKAY PEOPLE! TAKING BETS!
This one is at 10-11, either way:
Does Elon Musk understand that being exposed to cosmic rays, on Mars, will not turn him into one of the Fantastic Four, and will, in fact, harm or kill him?
Marc
I got that email, too. With my bank, no problem, I trust them not to intentionally screw with the numbers. With this government, I want information that can’t change overnight.
catclub
@Gin & Tonic:
The Russians are even more crazily out of touch than Trump. Their terms for peace talks _start_ with a complete concession of the entire nation of Ukraine.
Gloria DryGarden
@WTFGhost: please don’t tell him. Let him go…
catclub
@Chief Oshkosh:
Not so sure. If they were not reflexively part of the business class tribe, they would have backed national healthcare. It would have relieved them of huge retiree healthcare obligations. They did not make a peep.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Baud: Or in a Steven King short story.
Gloria DryGarden
From last night, adams thread
russia is a terrorist. The worst terrorist.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@suzanne: Isn’t it wrong to think that seven generations of Vance buried in one cemetery is one generation too few?
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@WTFGhost: Wait until he learns what he thought was a sound is actually upholstery piping.
YY_Sima Qian
@Marc: The hardware & especially the design is not hard to copy. The software is much more difficult to imitate, & the entire supply chain/ecosystem all but impossible. After all, EVs are now computers w/ supersized batteries on wheels. Yet policies implemented by Biden & Trump have made it very expensive for US automakers (& anyone hoping to sell into the U.S. market) to leverage the Chinese supply chain, & forbidden to leverage Chinese software.
& the ultra competitive environment that incentivizes/drives the rapid advancement? Not in this version of America. That is terrible for profits (a.k.a. producer surplus), & thus shareholder values (a.k.a. interests of capital owners).
Paul in KY
@Barney: Lagomorphs are somewhat closely related to primates too.
Paul in KY
@The Audacity of Krope: Unfortunately we can’t legally burn Elon, so Tesla will have to do…
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: I like sedans/coupes cause I think they are safer. Less likely to roll over, etc. Plus they look better.