Category Archives: Uncategorized

Chinese EVs into the global south

The end of Western hegemony, one data point.

《Still, the threat to Western auto market share posed by Chinese EVs is one for which Western policy makers have no obvious answer. “You can shut off your own market and to a certain extent that will shield production for your domestic needs,” said Sebastian. “The question really is, what are you going to do for the global south, countries that are still very happily trading with China?”》

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-ev-juggernaut-is-a-warning-for-the-west-1389f718?st=e88hda3fy76y7zu&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Climate Shocks Are Making Parts of America Uninsurable. It Just Got Worse.

I think it is hi-larious that the first major impact making climate change real for people is insurance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/climate/climate-change-insurance-wildfires-california.html?unlocked_article_code=jNqQQ3KxRnognLlf4E3o8-ksmAA0-8dXGuWxaX5XSl3X7Ziqr0aWrufjZFG9YoVucV0uYctEwOGqsBSd3VTopkiZoonX1vPqPvyocD_cUv4jPX8sBhgqlX3GYvjygj1RWem8LrkdexM25mFs-fSKPSCECFPdBYTvtXa27f7MfS8Gq1E_eYz-6A2oneU2oc8AV7P5ZWyXx_jW4yPjIh31LI19nFQjF90WSf521Jt0V5TqJOXGyFLFRhdsz2kvRyj8zIJwqnKG8c56TW0413-gcmeCt5UUqyUqxLqNlEk76AGTCIHAnzfxx8D7I0jhRBDYmwqkLLurpofTk1pVPN1MpVIYf4Zu1-rd4PCvVIbIFgFV2ibr8_cs&smid=url-share

Ok, now that I’m not laughing any more, that actually makes sense. You won’t get clobbered by sea level rise or the mother of all forest fires or hurricanes, but none of the people whose job it is to know these things will take your bet that you’re going to be fine.

Native American – Political Conquest, Assimilationist Perspectives, and Boarding Schools | Britannica

Was looking at the Wikipedia list of US military deaths (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war) over the years and was struck by how many wars against the noble savage we engaged in during our noble expansion west in this great land of ours which we now possess.

I have always wondered how many were slaughtered, how many died of imported diseases, how many were exiled to bad land no one wanted, and how many were assimilated. Let’s read….

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Native-American/Assimilation-versus-sovereignty-the-late-19th-to-the-late-20th-century

Yikes, this is quite a list:

《Programs promoting assimilation were framed by the social and economic ideals that had come to dominate the national cultures of Canada and the United States. Although they varied in detail, these ideals generally emphasized Euro-American social structures and habits such as nuclear or, at most, three-generation families; patrilineal kinship; differential inheritance among “legitimate” and “illegitimate” children; male-led households; a division of labour that defined the efforts of women, children, and elders as “domestic help” and those of men as “productive labour”; sober religiosity; and corporal punishment for children and women. Economically, they emphasized capitalist principles, especially the ownership of private property (particularly of land, livestock, and machinery); self-directed occupations such as shop keeping, farming, and ranching; and the self-sufficiency of the nuclear household.》

This entire article seems pretty solid, btw.